7. The End of the Spanish Revolution in Barcelona

Under the extremely difficult circumstances of war and Revolution, union activists fought to create a competitive national market and to modernize and rationalize industry. Despite the shortages in food and raw materials, the effects of the bombardments on factories, and the loss of traditional markets, the militants and technicians bought and manufactured new machinery, created products, improved working conditions in many firms, opened new sources of raw materials, and eliminated some of the most glaring inequalities in the workplace.

Even their adversaries often praised their control of industry. The pro-Franco historian of the large textile firm, España industrial, wrote that the “reds” had permitted technicians to act skillfully and efficiently and “thus they were able to manage the ship in the best way despite the absence of the captain.”^[1] The conservative historian of the Maquinista Terrestre y Marítima noted that at the end of the war and Revolution, the factories of his company were in much better condition than its directors “had ever hoped.”^[2] The union militants who controlled the gas and electricity industries of Catalonia maintained their equipment so well that after the war production quickly returned to prewar levels once problems of coal supplies were resolved.^[3] French diplomats confirmed the rapid return of industry, and one observer noted that trams and electric railways offered normal service shortly after Franco’s occupation of Barcelona.^[4] Despite their contribution to the productive forces, many union militants who participated in the management of collectives and controlled enterprises were purged or imprisoned, as their colleagues watched, afraid or indifferent.^[5]

It is difficult to present an overall evaluation of the purely economic performance of workers’ control in Barcelona for various reasons. First, the interruptions in supplies of food and raw materials lowered production in many collectives and controlled factories. Second, the traditional markets for Catalan industry—Andalusia and other regions—were under franquista control, and exchange was often impossible. Third, the difficulty of acquiring foreign currencies and the fall of the peseta hindered purchases of needed foreign-made machinery; domestic enemies of the collectives were often reluctant to provide capital and equipment. Fourth, beginning in the spring of 1937 and continuing much more intensively in the first months of 1938, enemy bombardments reduced industrial output. Fifth, the transformation of many Catalan industries to war-related activities distorted productivity. Therefore, industrial production dropped between 33 and 50 percent during the civil war.^[6]

Yet an approach that seeks to judge only the economic performance of workers’ control will, like the purely political appraisals of the Spanish Revolution, surely miss the significance of this Revolution, which some have called the most profound of the twentieth century. My concern has been to avoid an exclusively political or economic evaluation and instead to explore the social relations in the collectivized factories and workshops. In this regard, the technicians and union militants who took control of the productive forces confronted the same problems that have affected both the Western bourgeoisies and the Communist parties that have rapidly developed the means of production. The new factory managers often ran into the resistance of the workers themselves, who continued to demand more pay, fake illness, sabotage production, reject the control and discipline of the factory system, and ignore calls to participate in managing the workplace.

In response to workers’ resistance, the union militants disregarded their democratic ideology of workers’ control and opted for coercive techniques to increase production. Many collectives gave technicians the power to set production levels; piecework reappeared, and incentives tied pay to production. The new managers established strict control of the sick, severe surveil lance of the rank and file during worktime, and frequent inspections. Firings and dismissals for poor performance and “immorality,” that is, low productivity, occurred. The CNT realized its plan for the “identity card of the producer” that would catalogue workers’ behavior. Socialist realist posters glorified the means of production and the workers themselves so they would produce more. Labor camps for “parasitic” enemies and “saboteurs” were founded on the modern principle of reform through work.

The reactions of the leaders of the working-class organizations to the rank and file’s actions in the collectives and controlled firms were revealing. Federica Montseny, the CNT Minister of Health and Public Assistance in the republican government, posited a theory of human nature to explain the problems in workers’ control. According to this prominent faísta, who was the daughter of a well-known anarchist theoretician, human beings “are as they are. They always need an incentive and an interior and exterior stimulus to work and to produce the maximum production in quality and quantity.”^[7] As for the CNT Metallurgical Union, “the collectives…have underlined the bad side of human nature. This has consequently led to a decrease of production when it is most necessary to produce.”^[8] At the end of 1938, Felipe Alaiz—a faísta who was elected editor of Solidaridad Obrera in 1931 and was later named director of Tierra y Libertad—defined the “essential problem of Spain” as “the problem of not working.”^[9] “In general,” he complained, “there is low productivity, and low productivity means…irremediable ruin in the future.”

The CNT activist asserted that the “strikes were partially responsible for the decline of the work ethic.” Though strikes were necessary on occasions, workers had abused the right to strike. Political, general, sit-down, slowdown, and other kinds of strikes may have been useful in the past, but now they only hurt the new “consumer-producer.” Likewise, holidays on Sundays, weekends, May Day, and numerous other public holidays as well as vacations injured the cause. Sick leave, work accidents, featherbedding, and job security hurt the “proletarian economy” and food production: “To be on the payroll for a year really means working a half year. This shortfall has deservedly ruined many firms, but if it continues, it will ruin all the workers.” Enlarging the focus, Alaiz reiterated: “If we do not work, we will lose everything, even if we win the war.” One of the most important UGT leaders and a prominent Communist agreed that it was the conduct of the workers that most endangered the collectives.^[10] In a confidential conversation with CNT members of the Optical Collective Ruiz y Ponseti, this UGT economist said that though few would state so publicly, the workers were merely “masses,” whose cooperation was unfortunately necessary for the success of the enterprises.

The union leaders were joined by lower-ranking militants who embarked on extensive propaganda campaigns to convince and compel the rank and file to work harder. Solidaridad Obrera claimed that the women who were making uniforms in the new CNT tailoring shops were content; it contrasted the space, lighting, and machinery of the Confederación’s workshops with the unhygienic conditions that prevailed before the Revolution.^[11] The CNT daily proudly stated, “We are organizing some workshops with the same system as in the United States.” Yet in June 1937 the tailoring union’s Central Committee criticized the “immense majority” of workers for misunderstanding the Revolution.^[12] The rank and file had not yet realized that they must sacrifice and, as a result, the tailoring industry had had to postpone plans for collectivization. Women, who were the majority in the textile industry, received special criticism since they used the factory not merely as a workplace but also as a social space. One CNT militant complained, “It is not rare that many women come to work, gossip too much, and do not produce enough. If the lack of raw materials is added to this, the collapse of production is considerable.”^[13]Síntesis, the magazine of the CNT-UGT Collective Cros, attacked laziness and vice, and it warned workers who considered “work a punishment” that they had better change their attitude quickly. Petróleo, the organ of the UGT petroleum militants, criticized workers who, “as in the time of black capitalist domination,” wanted to celebrate traditional holidays and to receive pay hikes. “The Revolution,” it bluntly stated, “is not a party time (juerga).”^[14]

Not surprisingly, sailors were singled out as an especially undisciplined group of workers. In March 1937 CNT Marítima stated that, with some exceptions, the majority of sailors had not been working energetically. In July 1937 it rebuked them for low productivity, fake illness, and absenteeism. A “lamentable majority” of CNT sailors felt that they had fufilled their union duties when they paid their dues; CNT Marítima estimated that only 20 percent were working as hard as they should. A report of July 1938 stated that sailors who had been receiving pay on shore for months had resisted orders to sail.^[15] Near the end of the civil war and Revolution, the CNT Maritime Union became extremely blunt: “The majority of workers are an inert mass who, carried by circumstances, came to the unions because life was impossible without a union card.…You must guess what the sailors are thinking because they are not able to express themselves in assemblies and meetings.”^[16]

Under the circumstances, even anarchosyndicalist militants admired the Soviet model, since the Bolsheviks had built new industries and had modernized the old, thereby securing the economic base of the Revolution. According to one faísta, the Soviet Union continued to progress despite capitalist attempts to strangle its triumphant revolution.^[17] The CNT Building Union esteemed not only Soviet art and architecture but to a certain extent the Soviet economic model as well: “The gigantic thrust of industry and agriculture in Russia derives from the producers and not from the rulers.”^[18]

This statement revealed the Confederación’s belief that workers must construct an economy without coercion from above. However, given the industries that the unions wanted to build and the division of labor that they had decided to impose, coercion proved to be as necessary in Barcelona as it had been in the Soviet Union. Therefore, with UGT cooperation, the CNT came to accept and even to promote Stakhanovism, a Soviet technique for increasing production. In February 1937 the CNT Textile Union of Badalona called on workers to imitate Stakhanovism, which had aroused “keen enthusiasm” among Soviet laborers.^[19] The CNT review even published a photograph of the Communist work hero. “Here is an example that the Spanish worker must strive to imitate for the benefit of the industrial economy.” The CNT and UGT militants of the Collective Cros lauded Stakhanovism and determined to make work “a sporting game, a noble competition” in which the victor could achieve a great prize: “the title of distinguished worker of production.”^[20] The collective called the Soviet Union an example of “successes obtained by rationalization and efficient work organization.” For the Collective Marathon, formerly the General Motors branch in Barcelona, the Soviet Union was the “guide and example for the world.”^[21] The UGT Metallurgical Union and other organizations friendly to the Communists supported the Soviets’ ideal of work; the CNT Building Union proposed a five-year plan “of technical modernity and stringent morality” that would liberate Catalonia from “international capitalism” and orient the economy in the postwar period.^[22]

In a pamphlet, The Front of Production, F. Melchor—one of Communist leader Santiago Carrillo’s principal lieutenants—cited Stalin’s and Molotov’s praise of Stakhanovism, which, said Molotov, produced “a happy and cheerful working class” that went to the factory “joyously.”^[23] Melchor advocated a popular front of production; he praised the example of a shock brigade in a Catalan munitions factory where four comrades—two from the Communist-dominated JSU (Juventudes socialistas unificadas), one from Estat català, and one from the CNT—“encouraged” their comrades to work “intensively.” A Barcelona UGT leader claimed that shock workers offered a contagious example of higher output that other workers felt inspired to emulate.^[24] He cited the feats of various “production heroes,” among them one truck driver who worked overtime to maintain his vehicle in good repair and had driven more than 95,000 kilometers without a breakdown. The UGT activist warned that workers must remain vigilant in the workplace since “saboteurs” and “Trotskyists” were trying to wear down workers’ enthusiasm by mouthing slogans such as We should work only if the government feeds us.

In practice, though, the shock brigade seemed to have arisen not from a spontaneous demonstration of enthusiasm but rather as a response from above to workers’ indiscipline. In a PSUC cell meeting, militants reported that the head of the Sabadell aviation factories had agreed to establish shock brigades because “even though the majority of the workers belong to the [Communist] party…new members lacked the spirit of sacrifice that, given the present circumstances, they should have.”^[25] To give the Sabadell workers the proper example, it was “an absolute necessity” to form a brigade with several comrades who were “accustomed to this kind of work.” The activists decided to appoint several dismissed UGT subway militants as shock workers in the factory. After meeting with their Sabadell colleagues, the shock workers returned disgusted by the aviation workers’ lack of “political and union education and spirit of sacrifice.” According to the militants, what really concerned the Sabadell workers was “to hold jobs that would let them avoid work. [They gave] the impression of a fascist, not Communist, cell meeting.” On the other hand, CNT militants “provided an example worth imitating.” PSUC shock workers recommended a purge of the Sabadell cell.

The unions made it perfectly clear that the workers had to build a new society based on work. The Revolution must create a “new dawn” where “work was essential.”^[26] Whereas true art and science had been destroyed by capitalism, work was “the only value that remains unblemished.”^[27] One CNT activist wrote that “work is the source of life”; the Confederación itself praised the “sublime song of work.”^[28] The anarchosyndicalist militants came to accept uncritically a value that in other European countries had accompanied the rise of the bourgeoisie, and they lauded the union as the basis of the new economy because its productive capacity was supposedly superior to that of private property: “The union is the form par excellence that permits the extraction of the maximum of efficiency and output from its members.” The journal of the UGT petroleum workers, Petróleo, explained, “We want to make a new society in which work and the worker will be everything.”^[29] The Confederación fervently desired to “lay the foundations of a society based on love of work”; activists composed poems dedicated to work as “the divine sun” that “gives light to nations.”^[30] The future society would not revolve around religion, sex, art, or play: the workers would be central, and it was certain that they must labor.

Even though production was the top priority and coercion served to increase output, the unions and the state provided leisure activities to attract the rank and file. Before the Revolution, spectators and participants enjoyed a wide choice of hobbies and sports.^[31] Swimming, cycling, tennis, boxing, jai alai, bullfights, wrestling, and soccer had aroused great interest in the early and mid-1930s. The playing of basketball and baseball were signs of incipient Americanization, and nonpolitical clubs promoted hiking and other activities. The Amateur Soccer League coordinated the activities of approximately two hundred clubs.^[32] In fact, during the election campaign of 1936 the Left accused the Lliga of distributing, significantly enough, soccer balls and sport shirts to buy votes.^[33]

The Revolution continued most prewar leisure activities and politicized Catalan sports. The National Federation of Catalan Students declared that sports offered a way of mobilizing youth to defend Spain. The Amateur Soccer League was proud to be the “sporting organization that has the most militants at the front.” The Boxing Section of the CNT asserted that some of its thirty boxing clubs had 80 percent of their members in the military.^[34] In addition, the unions held festivals and established rest homes.

Certain groups of CNT militants tried to purify more traditional leisure and sporting activities. In the nineteenth century, anarchists had argued for the elimination of bullfights. During the Revolution, libertarian militants continued to distinguish between educational and noneducational leisure activities but often maintained the latter to avoid an increase of unemployment. Some CNT activists demanded greater taxation on noneducational entertainment—bullfights, frontones (pelota courts), dog tracks, boxing, and even soccer.^[35] Reduced numbers of dog tracks and frontones operated throughout the struggle.

Licentious popular culture was attacked but did not disappear. Anarchosyndicalist and Communist militants criticized the lazy for congregating in bars and cafés.^[36] Some CNT activists wanted to end immorality by shutting down such unproductive activities as bars and music or dance halls by 10:00 P.M.; several music-hall managers reduced the number of bars. Authorities executed a number of drug dealers and pimps and supposedly cleaned up “neighborhoods of vice.”^[37] In general, the Left frowned on pornography. One CNT militant equated pornography with “evil influences that make children turn pale.”^[38] According to a military publication, pornography produced masturbation that provoked tuberculosis; the militant CNT Graphics Union even destroyed “a pornographic novel.”^[39]

The campaign against prostitution, with posters and propaganda, did not eliminate the major problem of venereal disease in Barcelona. The sailors’ port also attracted many soldiers, who usually had a good deal of disposable income. Indeed, venereal disease was the primary cause for discharging militiamen, who received repeated warnings against the malady.^[40] In July 1938 army physicians were ordered to inspect brothels located away from the front lines and to check their men every two weeks. If soldiers became infected more than once, they could be sent to a military prison. Three-time offenders were subject to the accusation of self-inflicted wounding and might receive the death penalty, a certain cure.

Besides traditional streetwalking, new vices prefiguring the consumerist future arose. The use of the automobile was one of the most frequent. Countless members of committees and councils drove vehicles without proper authorization. Even the most dedicated revolutionaries were fascinated by the car. Many collectives took measures to limit the use of automobiles since members were wasting precious gasoline. Militants spent great amounts of time and energy discussing the unauthorized trips, accidents, insurance, repairs, confiscations, and the enormous expenses of what would become the centerpiece of twentieth-century consumption. Anticipating Spaniards of today, the activists pleaded for safe driving and proper care of vehicles. The telephone, not yet banalized and vulgarized, became a symbol of power and authority. Committee members were awarded a phone when elected and forced to relinquish it when their term expired.^[41] As with automobiles, abuses developed: many activists demanded phone service on the slightest pretext, and former committee members avoided having their phone disconnected when they left office. The elevator completed the modernist trilogy and became, like the car and the telephone, a necessity for unions and their militants.

Anarchosyndicalists’ plans for a rationalized, modern Barcelona within an economically independent nation failed to inspire many of the rank and file to wholehearted sacrifice. In fact, direct and indirect resistances were a negation of the values of the Spanish Revolution, which glorified the development of modern productive forces and production itself. The workers’ refusal to participate enthusiastically in workers’ control demonstrated that their class consciousness differed from that of their new industrial managers. For the union militants, class consciousness meant active participation in the building of socialism or libertarian communism; many workers expressed their class consciousness by avoiding the space, time, and demands of wage labor.

Despite their proclaimed Marxism, even historians of the extreme Left—Trotskyists, pure anarchists, and autonomes—have viewed the conflicts of the Spanish Revolution as essentially political. Some have criticized the CNT leadership for its participation in government, increasing bureaucratization, and compromises with other parties and unions, particularly with the Communists. Extreme leftists have often seen Los amigos de Durruti, a group that was active in the street fighting of May 1937, as offering an alternative to the CNT’s compromises and bureaucratization. Los amigos proposed to strengthen the collectives at the expense of the private property still remaining in Catalonia, and it desired to revitalize the CNT so that the Confederación could exercise a revolutionary dictatorship against the Republican and Communist opposition. Nonetheless, it is difficult to believe that even the extremists of Los amigos offered a response to the fundamental problems of the Spanish Revolution. As the CNT and the UGT did, this group called for more work, sacrifices, the end of salary increases, and even “forced labor” (trabajo obligatorio).^[42] Los amigos de Durruti failed, of course, to take power, but its type of anarchobolshevik program would not have resolved the differences between the militants and the base. Like its opponents, Los amigos offered basically political solutions to problems that had deep social and economic roots.

The rank and file’s daily negation of the values of the Spanish Revolution, which were also the values of Communists, anarchosyndicalists, and even many progressive Republicans, did not mean that these workers agreed with the military and clerical Right. The rank and file’s resistance to the modernization and rationalization of the productive forces desired by the militants should not be identified with political conservatism or reaction. Their opposition was diffuse, unarticulated, and both individual and collective. They proposed no alternative to party, union, or private control of the means of production; yet their refusal to participate enthusiastically in workers’ control must not be dismissed as false consciousness or unconsciousness. Nor should it be attributed to the peasant or preindustrial character of the Barcelonan working class since over two-thirds of the workers were natives of Barcelona or veteran industrial laborers. As shall be seen in Paris, direct and indirect refusals are present in much more advanced industrial societies; these phenomena indicate that resistance to workspace and worktime is not confined to developing countries but occurs through many stages of industrialization.

Historians of the Spanish Revolution have focused on the political and ideological divisions among Communists, Socialists, and anarchosyndicalists and have thereby neglected the central problem of the divorce between militants committed to a certain vision of the future and workers who were reluctant to sacrifice to fulfill this ideal. The militants used coercion to force the workers to work harder both to win the war and to build the new society. The war merely reinforced, but did not create, the need for coercive methods. The war was thus not the cause of the coercion and repression of the rank and file but, like the militants’ vision of the future, the result of a long historical process with prewar roots.

Ironically, after the defeat of the Left, Franco’s governments adopted many aspects of the militants’ vision of the future. After two generations of stagnation, in the late 1950s the means of production began again to be rationalized and modernized. Spain strengthened its agriculture, improved its infrastructure, and developed its industrial base. New needs—such as the automobile and the telephone—were refashioned, and no longer could CNT militants lament that “Spanish backwardness derived, to a great degree, from racial laziness that leaves [the Spaniard] satisfied with a crust of bread.”^[43] Cars began to be mass-produced, and the anarchosyndicalist project of cities of large apartment complexes and massive automobile circulation was partially realized. Considering the ability of postwar Spain to achieve much of the CNT and UGT militants’ dream, it is no wonder that anarchosyndicalist and other large-scale, working-class, revolutionary movements have nearly disappeared in present-day Spain.

The decline of revolutionary movements can be traced to the rapid economic growth from the late 1950s to early 1970s. For our purposes, it is important to note that the spurt to increased prosperity did not result from an industrial revolution undertaken by the Spanish bourgeoisie but rather from Spain’s proximity to the expanding labor and capital markets of post-World-War-II Europe. A mass tourist industry grew to accommodate northern Europeans attracted by the sunny beaches and the cheap peseta. Spanish workers traveled in the opposite direction and sent a hefty part of their salaries back to the Iberian Peninsula. The Franco regime kept wages low, limited strikes, and maintained a repressive order, which established a climate favorable to investments by multinational corporations. In addition to the old model of the pronunciamiento, Spain can now offer certain Hispanic and Third World countries a new model of democratic consumer society.

Notes