A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #357 - What to do? The theoretical contribution of the Friends of Durruti (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

With each defeat of the revolutionary camp, and faced with the supposed 
disorganization and ineffectiveness of the anarchists, analyses emerge 
to explain the causes of the movement's failure. New theoretical 
proposals are then formulated, aiming at the creation of a common 
program as well as the ideological, strategic, and tactical unity of the 
anarchists, and even of all revolutionaries. One can think, in 
particular, of the Organizational Platform of Archinov and Makhno, 
written in 1926 following the annihilation of the libertarian movement 
by the Bolsheviks in Russia and Ukraine, but also of the proposals 
developed by Spanish comrades during the decline of the revolutionary 
movement in Spain, especially in Catalonia. Published in 2019 in its 
French version by La Roue, Mr. Amorós's book, entitled Homage to the 
Spanish Revolution , traces the journey of the group "The Friends of 
Durruti", officially formed on March 15, 1937, during the Spanish Civil 
War (1936-1939), through their leaflets, manifestos, writings in the 
newspaper "El Amigo del Pueblo" and their correspondence.

Dissenting voices within Spanish anarchism
Contrary to the positions defended by the leadership of the National 
Confederation of Labor (CNT) and the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), 
the Friends of Durruti emerged as a dissident and radical voice within 
the libertarian camp itself, from which the majority of their members 
originated. The group chose its name in homage to Buenaventura Durruti, 
a symbol of direct action, revolutionary intransigence, and the refusal 
of any compromise with the State.
Faced with the setback of the social revolution, the Friends of Durruti 
formulated a lucid and virulent critique of the role played by the 
CNT-FAI, and in particular by its leaders (to name a few: Federica 
Montseny, Juan García Oliver, Diego Abad de Santillán, etc.), whose 
immense responsibility they emphasized in this lost historical 
revolutionary opportunity. According to them, in the aftermath of July 
19 and 20, 1936, after the defeat of the nationalist military uprising 
by the armed proletariat in a large part of Spain, the CNT possessed 
sufficient social, military, and popular force to simultaneously wage 
war against fascism and the social revolution. This implied the 
immediate destruction of the state and the capitalist economy, as well 
as the establishment of libertarian communism. The Friends of Durruti 
fiercely opposed the participation of CNT and FAI members in government 
bodies, first in the Generalitat of Catalonia, then in the Republican 
government. They denounced the collaboration with bourgeois parties and 
the Stalinists of the PCE-PSUC, justified by the anarcho-syndicalist 
leadership in the name of a supposed anti-fascist unity, which only 
served to relegate the revolution to the background, even stifling it. 
They also rejected the militarization of the workers' militias, seen as 
an instrument for restoring discipline, hierarchy, and state authority. 
For the Friends of Durruti, the CNT should have-and still should-take 
back control of the revolutionary process: "The CNT should have risen to 
the leadership of the country and given a solemn kick to everything 
archaic and outdated. In this way, we would have won the war and saved 
the revolution." But the exact opposite happened. We collaborated with 
the bourgeoisie in state circles at the very moment the state was 
collapsing[...]We held the streets, why did we surrender them so 
foolishly?[...]When things are done halfway, what we're talking about 
happens: the July disaster." In his book, Mr. Amorós clearly sides with 
the group and argues, like them, that it was the anarchist leadership 
that sabotaged the possibility of waging war and revolution 
simultaneously, and thus of defeating the Francoist rebels and the vast 
local and international coalition that supported them. He states: "The 
shift of Spanish anarchism toward the state, patriotism, and militarism 
was the most important political event of the Civil War."

The answer to the drift of the CNT-FAI: a revolutionary program
Criticizing the lack of a revolutionary theory within the CNT-FAI and 
convinced that the revolution could still be saved, the Friends of 
Durruti developed a political program summarized in a few points:
1) The formation of a revolutionary junta, which they themselves 
considered a variant within anarchism. This junta would be composed of 
delegates democratically elected from within the trade unions and 
workers' militias. Marked by the repeated betrayals of the CNT-FAI 
leadership, they insisted on the imperative, revocable, and strictly 
controlled nature of the mandates by the assemblies. This junta would be 
tasked with directing the revolutionary process and ensuring 
revolutionary order against counter-revolution.
2) All power to the trade union soviets: the non-capitalist, 
collectivized, and proletarian economy must be entirely in the hands of 
the trade unions.
3) Free Municipalities: Communes take over social functions that fall 
outside the purview of trade unions. This decentralization aims to 
prevent the reconstitution of a state apparatus, through a federation of 
municipalities at the local, regional, and peninsular levels.
This program was doomed by the failure of the May 1937 uprising. Once 
again, the leaders of the CNT-FAI called on the insurgents to lay down 
their arms and return to work. May 1937 is considered the last 
revolutionary gasp and represents the emblematic date of the 
counter-revolution, as well as the definitive break between the CNT-FAI 
and its militant base.

Repression is winning
According to the Friends of Durruti, this latest betrayal by the CNT 
leadership was the primary cause of the defeat. Following the May Days 
uprising, members of the Friends of Durruti-most of whom were affiliated 
with the CNT and the FAI-were arbitrarily expelled for their 
participation in the insurrection, their anti-government stances, and 
their refusal to obey the leadership's orders. Prior to this, the CNT 
and the FAI had waged a widespread smear campaign against the group 
through their respective media outlets. State repression also fell upon 
them: their offices were closed by the police, their newspaper was 
censored, and numerous activists were imprisoned, including Jaime 
Balius, the newspaper's main organizer and editor. Nevertheless, the 
group continued its activities clandestinely, defending its 
revolutionary program and organizing a campaign for the release of 
comrades imprisoned by the Republican government.
Far from learning the lessons of the first ten months of the war, and 
despite their non-participation in the new reactionary, 
counter-revolutionary government dominated by Negrín's Stalinists, the 
CNT-FAI bureaucrats clung to the defense of the bourgeois state in the 
name of republican order and the continuation of the war, and were 
intent on restoring their authority. After doing everything possible to 
rejoin the government, their efforts were rewarded in April 1938. They 
then waged war on the "incontrolados" both at the front (militiamen 
refusing militarization) and at home (Friends of Durruti or workers 
reluctant to accept the return of discipline, hierarchy, authority, and 
wage inequality in factories and workshops).

A lucid critique of the situation and the failure of the CNT-FAI strategy
In the midst of civil war, surrounded by fascist armies and undermined 
by internal betrayals, the Friends of Durruti attempted to analyze the 
failures of the libertarian movement and propose a new theory and a new 
revolutionary organization. Their main merit lies in having dared to 
name what many refused to see: the bureaucratic drift of some 
libertarian leaders, transformed into a self-proclaimed, authoritarian 
vanguard, increasingly detached from the rank and file and the workers. 
We fully identify with this critique. It arises at a time when 
revolution is both still possible and already threatened, when every 
decision commits the future of the proletariat.
The refusal to embrace a clear revolutionary break ("revolution without 
transition") led the libertarian movement into a deadly spiral of 
compromises, always justified by the imperative of "winning the war": 
militarization of the militias, forced increase in industrial and 
agricultural productivity, disarmament of groups deemed "uncontrolled," 
subjugation of insubordinate elements, and so on. These measures, seen 
as reasonable by the CNT leadership, only widened the gap with a 
militant base that remained deeply revolutionary. Worse still, these 
concessions did not strengthen their position vis-à-vis the other 
political forces of the republican camp; on the contrary, they weakened 
the libertarian camp on all fronts.
We also join the Friends of Durruti in their criticism of the CNT-FAI's 
blatant unpreparedness for the military putsch of July 1936, which had 
been anticipated for at least two years. The powerful and deeply rooted 
libertarian organization seems to have been caught off guard at the very 
moment when it should have been addressing the most crucial questions, 
including the organization of armed struggle. On this subject, in a 2019 
text, F. Roux poses a series of unanswered questions: "[...]how is it 
that the CNT militants never decided what they would do concretely in 
the aftermath of their victory?[...]While the CNT had officially chosen 
libertarian communism as its societal model, how would its 
implementation be carried out in a country at war and a society largely 
hostile to the abolition of property?" These pertinent questions expose 
a profound strategic flaw.
The Spanish libertarian movement-particularly in Catalonia where it held 
a majority-thus faced a twofold problem that it had never truly 
resolved: the problem of power and the problem of war. Neither classical 
anarchist theories, nor the lessons of past experiences (the Paris 
Commune, Makhnovshchina, etc.), nor even the internal debates within the 
CNT during the years of preparation for the confrontation had led to the 
development of a strategy reconciling anarchist principles with 
revolutionary effectiveness. It is precisely this strategic void that 
the Friends of Durruti denounce. However, they somewhat too readily and 
almost exclusively blame the betrayal of the anarchist leaders.

A historical look back at the divisions within the Spanish anarchist 
movement
The analysis by the Friends of Durruti, sometimes psychologizing the 
leaders of the CNT-FAI - paralyzed by fear of power and betraying the 
revolution - seems less convincing here. The work of Myrtille, of the 
Giménologues, has shown that a fracture in the libertarian movement 
existed well before July 1936. Indeed, the socio-economic-cultural 
specificity of early 20th-century Spain favored the emergence of two 
antagonistic currents: (1) Collectivist anarchism, heir to Bakunin ("to 
each according to his work"), mainly rooted in the nascent Barcelona 
proletariat, and evolving towards an "industrialist" anarcho-syndicalism 
for which the union constitutes the organizational basis of libertarian 
communism and (2) anarchist communism or ruralist communalism, inspired 
by Malatesta and Kropotkin ("to each according to his needs"), majority 
in the Andalusian peasant masses, deeply distrustful of the union, 
perceived as a product of the industrial society that they reject.
This long-standing theoretical debate, which had stirred the libertarian 
movement for decades, seemed to come to a surprising close at the 4th 
CNT Congress in Zaragoza in May 1936, in favor of the rural anarchist 
communists (who were, however, a minority). The famous motion on the 
"confederal conception of libertarian communism" was adopted there. As 
Myrtille5 points out, this resolution appeared to be a deceptive 
victory, as it immediately met with hostility from the CNT leadership, 
who deemed it inopportune on the eve of the anticipated confrontation 
with the fascists. It was therefore quite natural that a split occurred 
after a CNT-FAI-FIJL6 plenum on July 23, 1936, when the anarchist 
leaders - ignoring the votes of the Zaragoza congress - renounced 
calling for the implementation of libertarian communism and opted for an 
alliance with the other forces of the republican camp within the Central 
Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias (CCMA), while the more radical 
militant base committed itself wholeheartedly to the revolutionary 
process, culminating in particular with the Aragonese agricultural 
communities.
The Friends of Durruti clearly belonged to the anarcho-syndicalist 
movement, sharing certain aspects of it, notably the praise of work and 
industry.7 However, they broke radically with the so-called 
"circumstantialist" or "collaborationist" strategy advocated by the 
CNT-FAI, which was based on an alliance at all costs with other 
anti-fascist forces. Furthermore, in their program, they attempted a 
compromise between rural communalism and syndicalism, granting equal 
weight to the free commune and the trade union. This attempt strongly 
resembled Isaac Puente's 1933 manifesto, "The Purpose of the CNT-WAIT: 
Libertarian Communism," whose theoretical fragility had already been 
highlighted. Drawing on statements by Abad de Santillán (before his 
about-face), Myrtille recalls the profound incompatibility between 
communalism and syndicalism: "for him, the union was only a means of 
defense adapted to the capitalist organization of production, it could 
not be an element for the reconstruction of the future society."

The revolutionary junta: an authoritarian slide?
Let us now turn to the most problematic part of the Friends of Durruti's 
program: the revolutionary junta. Fontenis, in a 1983 text on this 
group, emphasizes the proximity of this concept to that of the Russian 
anarchists of the Platform, while noting that the Friends of Durruti 
never explicitly refer to it. Here, we echo the criticisms leveled by 
Voline and Sébastien Faure against the Platform: the danger of a small 
group arrogate to itself the right to lead the masses in the name of 
military and revolutionary efficiency. The revolutionary junta risks 
becoming a disguised state, even a transitional one, concentrating the 
monopoly on "revolutionary" violence and gradually becoming autonomous 
from the proletariat. We are dealing with a reconstitution of political 
power in a supposedly libertarian form, close to Leninist conceptions. 
Within this framework, with a centralized governing body and imposed 
discipline, how could popular initiatives and the self-organization of 
the proletariat be expressed? When would this junta be dissolved? 
Nothing is clearly established.
We understand the bitterness and rage of the members of the Friends of 
Durruti: they saw the revolution within their grasp, before it was 
snatched away from them. From the lessons learned from defeat, they 
developed a fascination with revolutionary effectiveness. From their 
desire to correct the errors of the CNT-FAI emerged a conception far 
removed from anarchist ideals, one that could have opened the door to 
another dead end: that of a revolutionary power separated from the 
masses, in the very name of their emancipation.

August

Notes
1. On November 4, 1936, the union decided to participate in the Madrid 
government. The confederation was represented by four ministers: Juan 
García Oliver at Justice, Joan Peiró at Industry, Juan López Sánchez at 
Commerce, and Federica Montseny at Health. They remained in these 
positions until May 1937 and the fall of Largo Caballero's government. 
It had three representatives on the Council of the Generalitat of 
Catalonia since September 27.
2. The decree was issued in October 1936 and took many months to be 
fully implemented. Its aim was to disarm the proletariat.
3. In Barcelona, the proletarians took up arms against the police and 
the assault guards who were attempting to seize the telephone exchange, 
which they perceived as a provocation too far. Without any directives 
from the CNT, barricades went up in the neighborhoods of Barcelona, 
defended by armed workers (members of the Defense Committees and some of 
the Control Patrols), by FAI affinity groups, militiamen from the front 
(or on leave), the Libertarian Youth, and Trotskyist militants from the 
Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM). The Friends of Durruti 
also actively participated. The clashes then spread to several locations 
in Catalonia.
<sup>4</sup> Roux F. (2019). <sup>War and Revolution in 
Spain</sup>.[http://acontretemps.org/spip.php?ar...].
<sup>5</sup> Myrtille, giménologue (2019). The paths of libertarian 
communism in Spain, 1868 - 1937 Lessons from the Spanish revolution, 
July 1936-September 1937. Volume 3, Paris, Éditions Divergences, 260 p.
6. Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth
7. The Friends of Durruti demanded "more work, sacrifices, the end of 
wage increases, and even compulsory work" and deplored the lack of 
"morality on the home front" (Seidman, 2010, Workers against work. 
Barcelona and Paris during the popular fronts, Marseille, Éditions 
Senonevero, 134 p.).

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4638
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