A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion: Notes for an Assessment - By LIZA (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Being precedes consciousness. In other words, consciousness is an 
attribute of being. Without theorizing the historical experiences of the 
proletariat, there is neither revolutionary theory nor theoretical 
advancement. A lapse of time-longer or shorter-may exist between theory 
and practice, during which the weapon of criticism transforms into the 
criticism of weapons. When a revolutionary movement appears in history, 
it breaks with all dead theories, and the long-awaited hour of 
revolutionary action strikes; this action is worth more than any 
theoretical text, for it lays bare the movement's errors and 
inadequacies. That practical experience, lived collectively, shatters 
the useless barriers and clumsy limits established during long 
counter-revolutionary periods. Revolutionary theories prove their 
validity in the laboratory of history.

Table of Contents
Introduction
The Problem of the Program
The Vanguard and the Assessment
Notes for an Assessment of '36
I. The revolution could only accomplish that for which it had previously 
created the conditions of possibility
II. Historical experience crystallizes into new organizational forms
III. The development of the revolution itself reveals the limits of the 
forms attained
IV. The development of the revolution produced problems that had not 
previously existed in a real sense
V. The vanguard function is not always exercised by the same detachment
Praxis, Potentialities, and Limitations
Conclusions
Endnotes

Introduction
Revolution is a monumental task. It requires a collective effort capable 
of intervening in an extraordinarily complex and ever-changing reality. 
However, the forces of any revolutionary movement are always limited. 
Not everything can be done at once, nor does every intervention possess 
the same historical significance. An inevitable question then arises: 
How to determine the specific tasks that a given situation demands? Or, 
put another way, how to consciously guide revolutionary action?

This question has often received two equally inadequate answers. The 
first seeks answers in a pre-established doctrine, as if history 
consisted of implementing a previously discovered program. The second 
renounces all theoretical elaboration and trusts that practice itself 
will eventually find the way. One reduces politics to exegesis; the 
other, to spontaneity. Both separate what appears inseparable in 
history: the development of practical experience and the conscious 
elaboration of that same experience.

If revolution cannot be reduced to the application of a pre-existing 
truth, but neither can it be abandoned to the mere course of events, 
then we must frame the problem in other terms. The question ceases to be 
what the correct program is and becomes how a class historically 
produces the mediations that guide its own practice. It is precisely 
here that the assessment ceases to appear as a retrospective or 
scholarly exercise and reveals itself as a necessary moment in the 
development of the class struggle.

This article is merely an approach to this problem. It does not aim to 
offer a finished method or formulate a program for the present day. Its 
purpose is more modest: to propose some notions that allow us to 
understand the balance sheet as a constitutive moment of revolutionary 
praxis and, from there, to reframe the problem of the program as a 
mediation historically produced by the actual movement of the class itself.

In other words, we propose to provide some ideas to answer the question: 
How can a class produce true knowledge about its own historical practice 
and turn that knowledge into a force capable of transforming the 
material conditions that produce it?

The problem with the Program
Every revolutionary organization sooner or later faces a fundamental 
question: determining the specific tasks that a given situation demands. 
No collective practice can develop indefinitely through mere 
improvisation, but neither is simply repeating past experiences 
sufficient. Action involves selecting objectives, establishing 
priorities, formulating guidelines, and organizing efforts. Ultimately, 
all conscious practice presupposes some kind of program, whether 
implicit or explicit.

However, asserting this need immediately raises a deeper problem. What 
do we mean by a program? Is it a set of principles whose correctness 
exists independently of historical development and which we must 
discover and apply? Or, on the contrary, is the program a historical 
construct inseparable from the contradictory development of the class 
struggle itself?

The question before us is not merely terminological. Our answer will 
also determine how we understand revolutionary theory, the historical 
assessment, and political practice itself.

When a revolutionary organization asks itself what specific tasks it 
should undertake in a given situation, a prior problem inevitably 
arises: where do these tasks come from? How can one distinguish an 
orientation capable of advancing the class struggle from one condemned 
to reproduce the limitations of the previous cycle?

The most common response is to assume that the Program already exists as 
an established truth. Under this view, history is nothing more than the 
stage where a previously correct doctrine finally finds its proper 
application. The task of revolutionaries then consists of studying this 
doctrine, interpreting it correctly, and applying it with sufficient 
fidelity. Defeats are misinterpretations; victories, confirmations of a 
truth discovered beforehand. This way of understanding the Program 
transcends very different traditions. It matters little whether the 
sacred text is authored by Marx, Bakunin, Lenin, or Malatesta. The 
problem remains unchanged.

At the opposite extreme, we find a seemingly contradictory response, yet 
one that shares the same underlying premise. Where some reduce politics 
to the exegesis of the classics, others proclaim the self-sufficiency of 
immediate practice. It would suffice, they argue, to intervene in real 
conflicts for experience itself to spontaneously generate the necessary 
answers. Theory then appears as an intellectual luxury or, at best, as a 
subsequent systematization of what practice has already resolved on its own.

Both positions, however, run up against the same limitation. The first 
reduces history to a mere illustration of pre-existing truths. The 
second assumes that experience speaks for itself, forgetting that all 
practice is already mediated by historically produced categories, 
habits, and ideologies. No one acts upon a bare reality. Even the most 
immediate action presupposes a certain understanding of the world, 
however implicit it may remain.

In the second case, then, history is reduced to the will of individuals. 
In the first case, the role of history is reduced to the progressive 
realization of an idea: The Program.

Thus, the Program cannot exist prior to history, because history itself 
does not constitute the progressive realization of an idea. What Marx 
calls the real movement of the class does not designate the sum of 
workers' struggles, nor the activity of existing organizations, nor a 
fully constituted revolutionary subject. It designates the historical 
process by which the class itself, confronted with the objective 
contradictions of its conditions of existence, produces new forms of 
organization, consciousness, and practice that tend to negate those very 
conditions. The real movement is not what theory observes from the 
outside; it constitutes the very historical process of which theory is a 
part.

At this point, it is worth pausing to ask ourselves: if this movement 
exists by straining the inherent contradictions of capital, why doesn't 
it automatically produce revolution? The fact is, the objective 
contradictions of capital do not, in and of themselves, bring about 
their overcoming. Between the material conditions of a class's existence 
and its revolutionary transformation lie specific historical forms 
through which that class manages to consciously appropriate its own 
movement. We will call these forms mediations.

The problem, therefore, is not choosing between theory and practice. 
That opposition is completely unproductive. The issue is understanding 
how a class produces genuine knowledge about its own historical 
experience and how that knowledge can consciously reorganize its future 
practice.

Once forms have reached their limit, they cease to describe reality and 
no longer allow the movement to be projected toward higher forms. The 
need for balance then emerges, beginning where historical experience 
compels us to recognize this exhaustion. Put another way, a historical 
form expresses certain relationships and contradictions, allowing us to 
understand the concrete within the movement as a synthesis of multiple 
determinants. While these determinants can develop within it, the form 
constitutes an effective mediation between the class's experience and 
its capacity to represent itself ideally within the possibilities opened 
up by its own practice. But when the development of these contradictions 
exceeds the determinations contained within the form, it ceases to 
adequately express the reality that produced it and, at the same time, 
ceases to allow the ideal projection of its movement toward new forms. 
It is at this point that the need for balance emerges.

Therefore, the Balance Sheet is not an exercise in scholarship, nor a 
chronological compilation of victories and defeats, nor simply a 
retrospective critique of our actions. It constitutes the moment through 
which the historical experience of the class turns back upon itself and 
tests the categories with which it had hitherto understood its own practice.

Each cycle of struggle produces organizational forms, strategies, 
slogans, and worldviews. As long as these forms allow for the 
development of the movement, they appear adequate. But historical 
development itself eventually reveals their internal limitations. 
Certain categories cease to explain reality; certain organizational 
forms cease to respond to new conditions; certain strategies, which at 
one time propelled the movement, end up becoming obstacles to its 
further development.

Therefore, it is not merely a matter of pointing out errors. It 
consists, above all, in discerning which moments of truth the previous 
forms contained, what their historical limits were, and under what new 
determinations they can be preserved and transcended. This is why the 
Balance Sheet is an essentially dialectical process. It does not destroy 
the past to start from scratch, but neither does it make it an 
untouchable authority. It negates certain aspects of exhausted 
historical forms, while preserving what historical development itself 
has shown to be true.

Its result is not a repetition of the experience-it cannot be-but a 
reorganization of the categories through which the class understands its 
own existence. For every historical form exists within a specific set of 
relations, possibilities, and limits that do not stem from an abstract 
necessity, but from the concrete development achieved through the 
contradictions that constitute it. We will call historical 
determinations this objective set of conditions that make certain forms 
of practice possible and render others impossible. Historical 
determinations change because real movement transforms the conditions 
that gave them existence. Therefore, the assessment consists of 
recognizing when a particular historical configuration has exhausted the 
determinations from which it could continue to develop.

However, the Balance Sheet is not an end in itself. If it were, it would 
be claiming the end of history, since it would only describe limits 
without a class movement. Moreover, even if the Balance Sheet resolves 
renewed categories, what are these without a practice to embody them? If 
a class movement is necessary for a balance sheet to exist, what then 
guides that movement? If historical experience reorganizes our 
categories, it is because it immediately poses a new demand: to guide 
future practice. Put another way, the resulting categories need to be 
expressed to address this need; thus, the Program emerges, which should 
not be understood as a closed text or a fixed set of slogans. The 
Program reveals itself as the means by which a given historical 
experience is condensed into practical orientations capable of 
intervening in a specific conjuncture, transforming reality.

In other words, the Program constitutes the mediation between the 
accumulated experience of the class and the tasks that this same 
experience makes possible at a given historical moment. Precisely for 
this reason, the Program does not exist as a transhistorical truth. 
There exists only the historically determined elaboration of a 
revolutionary program suited to the concrete development of the class 
struggle.

Slogans change. Organizational forms change. Possible alliances change. 
Even the revolutionary tasks themselves are transformed as the 
historical form of capital transforms. What remains is not a fixed 
content, but the permanent need to produce that mediation between 
accumulated historical experience and the new conditions of the present. 
Thus, we can summarize that the Program is the historical form through 
which a class manages to consciously represent itself in the objective 
movement of its own emancipation.

However, this raises a question: If the path to be followed by the 
objective movement is not given, how can a class represent itself within 
it? In other words, if the class is moving toward a place, but the path 
doesn't exist before it begins walking, how can our class recognize 
itself on this path? The point here is that the Program contains that 
path in potential . While it remains only as an ideal representation of 
the necessary tasks, it is still an objective possibility, but not yet a 
material force. Every revolutionary aim demands to be embodied in 
organizational forms capable of effectively intervening in reality. And 
it is precisely at this point that Praxis appears.

Praxis is often identified with any form of conscious activity or simply 
with political activism. But such an identification is entirely 
insufficient. The manager who organizes production, the official who 
administers the state, or the worker subjected to the discipline of 
capital also engage in conscious activity. However, none of these 
activities constitutes revolutionary praxis.

Praxis begins when the Program ceases to exist merely as a 
representation and becomes tangible through collective activity capable 
of effectively transforming the material conditions of existence. Only 
that praxis which lays the groundwork for negating the material 
conditions that make the existence of the proletariat necessary is 
revolutionary praxis. It is not simply acting. It is acting on the basis 
of historically developed experience. It is continually reorganizing 
one's own categories as reality reveals new contradictions. It is 
producing new organizational forms where previous ones prove 
insufficient. And it is, finally, converting that new knowledge into 
material power through the class's conscious intervention in its own 
historical development.

Balance, Program, and Praxis do not, therefore, designate three 
independent moments. They constitute a single movement. Praxis is 
conscious historical experience. Balance is the experience of 
conceptually reorganizing that experience. And the Program, being and 
only existing in movement, condenses its fundamental determinations and 
guides a new Praxis. The relationship between them is neither linear nor 
successive in time; they are dialectical moments that exist 
simultaneously and only in movement.

Each new cycle reproduces that movement on different historical bases, 
elevating the accumulated experience of the class to higher forms of 
self-knowledge and transformation of reality.

The assessment, therefore, is not limited to noting limitations: it 
shows how, in its unfolding, a historical form produces the conditions 
for its own exhaustion and thereby opens up new demands for future 
practice. It is on this basis-and only on this basis-that the question 
of the subject who realizes, condenses, and returns to the class those 
determinations opened up by the real movement itself can be raised.

The Vanguard and the Balance
At this point, it is urgent to ask: if the assessment only acquires 
meaning when it reorganizes historical experience and transforms it into 
a new practical orientation, who carries this out? Who condenses the 
discovered determinations into a program? Who returns them to praxis in 
a form capable of developing them? 2

If the program only exists in motion, and if that motion only becomes 
conscious through assessment, then there must be a concrete historical 
form in which that consciousness is objectified, organized, and becomes 
material force. We will call this function the vanguard. The vanguard, 
therefore, designates the historical function through which certain 
detachments crystallize the assessment of a collective experience, 
reorganizing inherited categories, making visible new determinations of 
the real movement of the class, and transforming them into orientations 
capable of opening a new cycle of praxis. 3

To the question, "Who is the vanguard?" the usual answers oscillate 
between two equally inadequate poles. Some identify the vanguard with a 
subject separate from the class, invested with a truth that it 
subsequently transmits to the workers' movement, as if consciousness 
could be instilled from the outside. Others, in reaction, dissolve any 
specific function into an abstract appeal to "the masses," assuming that 
the program will emerge spontaneously from the very course of the 
struggle. Both positions, however, share the same premise: they consider 
the vanguard as a pre-existing subject. They disagree only about who 
occupies that position.

But the path taken so far leads to a different conclusion. If the 
program does not pre-exist praxis, neither can the subject responsible 
for carrying it out. Just as the program constitutes a historically 
produced mediation, so too does the avant-garde constitute a 
historically produced form.

Reframing the question "Who is the vanguard?" as "What does it mean to 
exercise a vanguard function?" shifts the focus from identity to the 
historical conditions that make such a function possible. The question 
ceases to be who occupies that position and becomes, under what 
historical circumstances, that function can be objectified within the 
actual movement of the class. Exercising a vanguard function consists of 
being able to assess a historical experience, reorganize the categories 
through which that experience was understood, and, on that basis, open 
up new practical possibilities, not only potentially, but actually.

Therefore, the assessment does not consist of abandoning the previous 
categories, but rather in demonstrating the historical limits of their 
validity, preserving the moment of truth they contain, and reorganizing 
them into a higher form capable of understanding the new determinations 
of the historical moment. For this reason, the subject who performs this 
function is neither given a priori nor constructed in the abstract to 
respond to the assessment. It is realized insofar as it contributes to 
making conscious and organizing objective possibilities opened up by the 
very development of the class struggle, returning them to the struggle 
in the form of new practical mediations.

In other words, the constitution of the vanguard happens in concrete 
analysis, in practical connection with the class to demonstrate, in 
action , the validity of the new categories when it comes to 
understanding the world and transforming it .

Thus, the avant-garde cannot be understood as a fixed essence or a 
permanent identity. It is a function that exists only in motion and, 
therefore, under historically determined forms. The group that embodies 
this function today need not be the same one that exercises it tomorrow, 
nor can it claim to do so under the same program eternally. What defines 
the avant-garde is not its permanence, but its capacity to consciously 
express already mature determinations and contribute to their further 
development.

This function, moreover, cannot be conceived in terms of a rigid 
opposition between subject and object. The vanguard emerges from the 
class and, by consciously objectifying in practice the determinations 
that the class produces, it also transforms the class itself and is 
transformed with it. In turn, it needs the class as the material subject 
of praxis: without this social base, without this organized mass, no 
program can be anything more than mere representation. The vanguard is, 
therefore, both subject and object of the class's transformation 
process, but only insofar as it forms part of a contradiction that 
continually produces and transcends it. In other words, formulating the 
vanguard as a differentiated aspect presupposes its negation, that which 
is not the vanguard but is part of the class. In this sense, the 
existence of a vanguard requires another pole, which we will call the 
masses. The attempt to separate the vanguard from the masses, even if 
only to separate it in order to then intervene upon them, destroys any 
material basis for its existence.

A different interpretation of a historical thesis formulated by Agustín 
Guillamón can be considered here: in 1936, there was no detachment 
capable of acting as a vanguard, formulating practical guidelines aimed 
at destroying the State and organizing the working class into its own 
organs of power; in 1937, the Friends of Durruti partially formulated 
these guidelines, but without a sufficient base to implement them. If we 
provisionally accept this diagnosis, an immediate conclusion seems to 
follow: to avoid repeating that failure, our present task would consist 
of building the vanguard that was lacking then, so that, when a new 
revolutionary moment arrives, it can play a strategic role and organize 
the proletariat into its organs of power.

However, this conclusion introduces a determination that historical 
development itself cannot establish beforehand. If the vanguard is a 
function that emerges from the actual movement of the class, it cannot 
be constituted beforehand as a subject destined to exercise it. We do 
not know which detachment will exercise that function until the 
development of the struggle allows us to determine it. The Friends of 
Durruti were not the vanguard because they had been previously 
constituted as such, but rather insofar as, under specific historical 
conditions, they were able to condense certain contradictions of the 
revolutionary experience, formulate them consciously, and transform them 
into practical guidelines. That this function could be exercised in a 
limited, contradictory, or ultimately defeated way does not invalidate 
this determination; on the contrary, it is part of the very object of 
the assessment.

The difference between building the vanguard and building the conditions 
of possibility for a vanguard function to emerge is therefore not merely 
terminological. The first formulation presupposes that we can determine 
in advance the subject, the organizational form, and the tasks that will 
correspond to the vanguard before the historical movement has produced 
the conditions that allow us to determine them. The second shifts the 
question to the development of the class's concrete capacities: its 
forms of organization, its organs of deliberation and coordination, its 
theoretical capacities, its cadres, its experiences of struggle, and the 
mediations that allow it to transform particular experiences into 
collective knowledge. Only in the development of these relationships can 
a detachment capable of exercising a vanguard function crystallize; and 
only historical practice itself will allow us to determine whether it 
has actually exercised it.

From this follows an immediate consequence for the present tasks. If 
the vanguard does not constitute a subject that can be constructed in 
the abstract, neither can we deduce our political priorities from a 
predetermined image of what that vanguard should be. The tasks must 
emerge from existing material conditions, from the contradictions that 
currently permeate our class movement, and from the potentialities 
contained within those conditions. It is not, therefore, a matter of 
first constructing the vanguard and then relating it to the class, but 
rather of developing the means by which the class can expand its 
capacities for organization, knowledge, and action, making it possible 
for certain detachments to assume a vanguard role.

In this sense, the problem of the avant-garde necessarily leads back to 
assessment, program, and praxis. Assessment allows us to determine which 
capacities were historically produced, which reached their limits, and 
what new determinations emerged from their development. The program 
condenses these determinations into guidelines for action. And praxis 
sets these guidelines in motion again, transforming the conditions that 
made them possible and producing new experiences upon which to conduct a 
new assessment. The avant-garde is not situated outside this movement: 
it is one of the historical forms through which this movement becomes 
aware of its own possibilities and transforms them into material force.

Thus, the assessment is presented as an exercise that distills concrete 
answers from the abstract historical narrative to the following 
questions: What material conditions did the revolutionary movement 
produce that, when the moment of insurrection arrived, served as the 
basis for its development? Conversely, what developments, or lack 
thereof, limited the revolution's development, both in its scope and 
depth? Likewise, what potentialities failed to materialize, despite 
having the material basis for them, and why? Perhaps even more 
importantly, what forms of struggle, institutions, and traditions were 
crystallizations of class consciousness that, when an organic crisis 
arose, provided the basis for the possibility of an insurrection? 4

Notes for the Balance Sheet of 1936
If we understand the balance as the elaboration of the historical 
experience through which we distinguish the conditions that enabled a 
certain development from those that limited its unfolding, then it is 
possible to formulate, even provisionally, some hypotheses about the 
revolution that began in July 1936.

This is not about conducting an exhaustive study or drawing universal 
lessons. Much less about retrospectively reconstructing a supposedly 
correct program that, had it been implemented, would have guaranteed 
revolutionary triumph. Precisely because history does not constitute the 
necessary unfolding of a pre-existing truth, the assessment can only 
identify potentialities that were actually developed, concrete 
historical limitations, and open possibilities that were thwarted by the 
very course of the class struggle.

From this perspective, I propose to point out five elements whose 
consideration can serve as a starting point for an assessment of the 
Spanish revolution and a current program.

I. The revolution could only accomplish that for which it had previously 
produced the conditions of its possibility
One of the most striking events of July 1936 was the speed with which 
large sectors of production passed into the hands of the working class. 
Within days, forms of worker management emerged, encompassing everything 
from small workshops to large industries, transportation networks, and 
public services. However, this phenomenon is often presented as an 
immediate consequence of the defeat of the military coup, when, in 
reality, it constitutes the visible result of a much longer process.

The spread of libertarian pedagogy, the daily practice of direct action, 
the consolidation of a federal organizational culture, direct action 
struggles, assembly-based decision-making, and the development of 
industrial federations had, over decades, produced social capacities 
that the revolution itself was able to mobilize. The development of 
studies on production processes, the experiments in industrial 
coordination, and the prior experiences of self-management were not mere 
propaganda exercises; they constituted a historical accumulation of 
practical knowledge without which it would have been virtually 
impossible to organize production once the state apparatus had collapsed.

The assessment therefore compels us to shift our focus from the 
revolutionary event to the historical conditions that made its 
development possible. In the words of our comrade Genís, "July 19, 1936 
cannot be explained without speaking, as Guillamón says at the beginning 
of his lecture, of the previous 70 years. And the fact is, we rarely 
stop to talk about the issue." 5 The revolution did not create the 
capacity to organize production from nothing; it brought into effect a 
potentiality that previous practice had been slowly building up .

II. Historical experience crystallizes into new organizational forms
The skills developed by a class do not remain as abstract knowledge. 
They become embodied in institutions, habits, organizational methods, 
and forms of intervention capable of condensing the experience 
accumulated during a given historical cycle .

The evolution of the defense committees is a prime example of this 
process. Born in a context still marked by the strategy of revolutionary 
gymnastics, their transformation after October 1934 reflects a genuine 
process of practical reassessment. The failure of previous insurrections 
forced the abandonment of spontaneous approaches and led to much more 
systematic forms of preparation, terrain analysis, logistical planning, 
and clandestine organization.

The concrete assessment of this experience is very well illustrated by 
the report of the National Committee of Defense Committees, presented in 
1934, in the heat of the ongoing Asturian insurrection:

There is no revolution without preparation; and the more intense and 
intelligent the preparation, the better the revolution will prevail. We 
must put an end to the prejudice of improvisation, driven by exalted 
inspiration, as the only possible course of action in times of 
difficulty. This error, this reliance on the creative instinct of the 
masses, has cost us dearly. The indispensable means of war for combating 
a state with experience, strong resources, and superior offensive and 
defensive capabilities are not procured as if by spontaneous generation .

When the military coup occurred in July 1936, these committees did not 
improvise their response. The possibility of defeating the army in 
Barcelona was not solely the result of popular heroism, but also of a 
previously developed organizational experience, materialized in concrete 
forms of revolutionary preparation . In this sense, the committees 
constitute an example of how historical practice, when evaluated, 
generates new material capacities for future action.

III. The very development of the revolution reveals the limits of the 
forms achieved
However, every historical form contains limits that only become visible 
when it reaches the maximum development permitted by its own 
constraints. Precisely because the revolution managed to deploy the 
capacities built during the previous cycle to an extraordinary degree, 
it was also able to reveal what those capacities could no longer resolve.

The fall of Zaragoza, Cádiz, and Seville should not be understood solely 
as a series of military defeats. Each one revealed structural 
deficiencies in the organizational structures achieved up to that point. 
Revolutionary preparations had reached a high level of development in 
numerous local areas, but the very scale of the war demanded higher 
forms of regional, confederal, and even international coordination.

The case of Seville is particularly illustrative. On July 18, the 
fascists quickly seized key points in the city. However, in 
working-class neighborhoods like La Macarena, San Julián, and Triana, 
popular resistance was intense. Workers and CNT militants, along with 
other popular sectors, erected barricades and engaged in fierce street 
fighting for days against the rebel troops. However, these positions had 
little light weaponry, scarce ammunition, and little capacity to respond 
to the systematic use of artillery and professional troops. Thus, on 
July 21, Triana fell, and between the 22nd and 23rd, the organized 
workers' resistance in La Macarena, San Luis, and San Julián succumbed .

The problem lay not only in the courage of those defending the 
barricades, but also in the fact that this resistance remained virtually 
isolated. Once the fighting began, the resistance lacked a regional 
structure capable of concentrating resources, effectively coordinating 
the various fronts, and transforming them into a unified military response.

The contrast with Barcelona is significant. There, the Defense 
Committees did not emerge spontaneously on July 19th. After the failure 
of previous uprisings, and especially after October 1934, they had 
abandoned the logic of revolutionary posturing in favor of much more 
systematic preparation: reconnaissance of the terrain, acquisition of 
weapons, development of plans, organization by neighborhood, study of 
strategic objectives, and coordination among numerous militant groups. 
This preparation allowed them to respond in a relatively unified manner 
to the military coup and, above all, to transform the army's defeat into 
the starting point of a revolutionary process.

However, even this experience quickly revealed its own limitations. The 
Defense Committees constituted an extraordinary form of organization for 
urban insurrection, but their implementation was profoundly uneven 
across the territory. Where they had not achieved such development-as in 
much of western Aragon, Andalusia, or Galicia-the revolutionary movement 
found itself deprived of a tool whose construction required years of 
organizational accumulation. Added to this was an even deeper 
limitation: the effective incapacity of the confederal mechanisms to 
stably coordinate this experience beyond the local or regional level . 
The uneven development of the Committees could not be compensated for by 
common planning on a peninsular scale.

It is no coincidence that, during the war itself, attempts began to 
emerge to respond to this new situation through unprecedented bodies, 
such as the so-called Committee of Committees or, later, the CNT's 
Political Advisory Commission . Regardless of the merits of their 
specific solutions, their mere appearance reveals something more 
important: it was the revolution itself that transformed latent 
contradictions into effective organizational problems. The inherited 
forms could no longer resolve them on their own, and history demanded 
new categories for understanding them. It is precisely for this reason 
that we can now critically discuss the scope and limitations of those 
responses.

It is not, therefore, a matter of retrospectively asserting that "there 
was a lack of coordination." Such a formulation reduces the assessment 
to a mere enumeration of shortcomings. The crucial point is to 
understand that it was the very development of the revolution that 
brought this need to the forefront as a new historical imperative. While 
revolutionary preparations had to respond to localized conflicts, the 
existing organizational structures proved remarkably effective. But when 
the confrontation acquired territorial dimensions and the revolution 
began to grapple with problems of political leadership, logistics, and 
economic coordination of general scope, those same structures revealed 
the historical limits of their own development. The contradiction was 
not external to them; it arose from their very success.

Contradictions thus appear not as accidental errors, but as the point at 
which a historical form exhausts its possibilities for development and 
makes visible the need for a higher form.

IV. The development of the revolution produced problems that did not 
effectively exist before.
Perhaps the most important lesson of the revolutionary process is that 
its biggest problems stemmed not only from what it inherited, but also 
from what it itself produced.

The partial defeat of the state apparatus and the emergence of 
revolutionary bodies opened up a completely new situation. The problem 
was no longer solely how to destroy the old power; it also became how to 
organize the new power born from the revolution itself. The formation of 
the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias precisely expresses this 
new contradiction. Similarly, the policy of anti-fascist collaboration, 
the debates on government participation, and the events of May 1937 can 
only be understood as responses, whether successful or not, to a 
historical problem that, before July 1936, simply did not exist in any 
tangible form.

It is here that the balance sheet reveals its full power. The revolution 
did not fail because a previously correct program was neglected, but 
because its own development produced historical tasks for which the 
workers' movement had not yet developed the corresponding theoretical, 
organizational, and political frameworks. Questions of revolutionary 
power, class alliances, and the articulation of a program for the entire 
proletariat did not appear as doctrinal problems, but as demands posed 
by the revolution's unfolding. Nor was its outcome merely mechanical; 
the revolutionary course itself provided concrete answers to these 
problems. Was the CNT destined to follow this path? No, not necessarily; 
only now, in retrospect, can we judge it as a mistake because it 
followed a course of material development within history .

V. The vanguard role is not always performed by the same detachment
The question of revolutionary power allows us to observe with particular 
clarity how a historical determination can reappear in different forms 
as the class experience reorganizes its own categories. After the 
military defeat of the uprising in Barcelona, García Oliver supported, 
at the Plenum of Local and Regional Committees on July 21, the proposal 
put forward by José Xena, representing the Baix Llobregat regional 
committee, to advance the revolution in order to implement libertarian 
communism, known as the "go for it all" proposal.10 The proposal was 
defeated by a large majority, and the CNT opted to participate in the 
Central Committee of Antifascist Militias, a class collaboration body. 
It is not our interest here to retrospectively determine whether that 
decision was right or wrong in the abstract, but rather to observe what 
historical possibility each position expressed and what happened to it 
in the subsequent development of the revolution.

Antifascist collaboration gradually transformed the CCMA into the 
fundamental political mediator of the Catalan revolution, but it did not 
resolve the contradiction that had emerged on July 19th. The working 
class had partially dismantled the existing power structure and built 
its own organs of organization, production, and defense, without 
constituting a political form capable of unifying and developing that 
class power. The issue that had arisen in July did not disappear; it was 
displaced and reappeared, under different conditions, as the 
contradictions of class collaboration became increasingly evident.

By the end of April 1937, the Friends of Durruti had already formulated 
the slogans of "Revolutionary Junta" and "All power to the working 
class." During the May Days, these slogans took on practical meaning, 
contributing to the revitalization of the revolutionary struggle on the 
barricades. Later, in August, the Friend of the People reiterated the 
need for this Junta and the reasons for its formation. The specific form 
of the Junta proposal was not identical to the formulation of July 1936: 
it was the result of a different historical experience and subsequent 
theoretical development. Moreover, throughout 1937, it was updated as 
history unfolded . However, both positions can be interpreted in light 
of the same underlying principle: the need to provide the revolution 
with its own political form, independent of class, capable of organizing 
and materially exercising the power arising from the workers' struggle. 
The difference, therefore, does not lie in the emergence of a completely 
new truth, but in the transformation of a determination that previous 
experience had left unresolved.

It is precisely here that the historically determined nature of the 
vanguard function becomes apparent. Whoever expresses a revolutionary 
possibility is not thereby invested with a permanent vanguard status. 
García Oliver was able to express in July a possibility opened up by the 
development of the insurrection and yet later participate in political 
mediation that contributed to containing it. The Friends of Durruti, for 
their part, formulated a response months later that revisited the 
problem of revolutionary power under new conditions. The vanguard 
function, therefore, does not reside in the permanent identity of a 
detachment nor in the constitution of one specifically to be a vanguard, 
but rather in its concrete capacity to recognize the determinations 
produced by the real movement, raise them to consciousness, and return 
them to the movement in a practical form capable of developing them.

Practice, Potentialities and Limitations
Perhaps more important is understanding these elements as historical 
potentialities , not as necessary developments . That is to say, the 
presence of these elements does not automatically determine a specific 
course of revolution, as many other factors are at play, and we cannot 
ignore the subjectivity of the moment. Nevertheless, these elements 
constitute a condition of possibility for the triumph of the revolution. 
Therein lies their great value.

Far from offering definitive answers, an exercise like this allows us to 
understand the nature of our own assessment. It doesn't consist of 
reconstructing an ideal past or pointing out, from the comfort of the 
present, what others should have done. Its task is different: to 
identify the historical potential that was actually developed, the 
organizational forms that crystallized that experience, the 
contradictions that revealed its limitations, and the new tasks that 
emerged from that same process.

The potential we have outlined did not materialize through mere inertia, 
nor could their resolution have arisen from an isolated will. Precisely 
because the revolution produced problems that had not previously existed 
in practice, the inherited organizational structures demonstrated their 
capacity in one area and their inadequacy in another. Where accumulated 
experience had allowed the insurrection to be sustained, that same 
experience also revealed that the new level reached by the struggle 
demanded new forms of mediation, capable of reorganizing what had 
previously been scattered.

Precisely for this reason, these elements must be understood as 
conditions of possibility and not as guarantees of any historical 
outcome. None of them contained within itself the triumph of the 
revolution, just as their absence does not mechanically determine 
defeat. Rather, they constitute the objective terrain upon which 
historical praxis produces new possibilities, new contradictions, and, 
with them, new tasks for the revolutionary movement.

If the assessment constitutes the conscious elaboration of our class's 
historical experience, its function cannot be limited to the description 
of the past. The critique of past practices only acquires meaning when 
it reorganizes present practices. Otherwise, the assessment would be 
reduced to a historiographical exercise incapable of intervening in the 
actual movement.

The potentialities and limitations we have outlined are therefore not a 
collection of abstract lessons or a catalog of successes and failures. 
They express historical problems whose resolution remains open. 
Precisely because the form that capital takes is constantly 
transforming, the ways in which the working class organizes its 
resistance and builds its revolutionary capacity must also be 
transformed. An assessment only fulfills its purpose when it allows us 
to formulate new tasks in accordance with these historical realities.

The first of these concerns the very formulation of the program. If the 
Spanish Revolution highlighted the need to address problems related to 
revolutionary power, class alliances, and political coordination, the 
current task cannot consist of mechanically repeating the answers 
formulated then, but rather of reconstructing the spaces capable of 
producing them anew under present conditions. This requires developing 
organizations, working methods, and forums for discussion where 
different political lines can be confronted, tested in practice, and 
collectively refined. There is no other path to the development of 
revolutionary theory than the ongoing critique of historical experience 
itself. Social practice remains the sole criterion of truth.

But the program cannot be developed in isolation from the concrete forms 
of class organization. If revolutionary capacities are always the result 
of a prior historical process, then one of the fundamental tasks is to 
discover, through praxis itself, those forms of self-organization that 
allow us to develop today the capacities that will demand deeper 
revolutionary processes tomorrow. It is not simply a matter of 
organizing immediate conflicts, but of doing so in such a way that these 
conflicts produce new collective capacities: higher forms of solidarity, 
knowledge about the organization of production, experience in 
self-management, territorial coordination, and habits of collective 
decision-making.

The organizational forms we adopt today are not politically 
inconsequential. They constitute the terrain on which the historical 
capacities of our class are developed-or limited. Just as decades of 
libertarian organization made possible the rapid socialization of 
production in July 1936, the forms we build today will condition the 
possibilities opened up by future eruptions of the class struggle. 
Organization thus ceases to be a mere instrument and becomes a 
constitutive moment in the very historical development of the proletariat.

This reflection takes on even greater importance under the conditions of 
contemporary capitalism. The internationalization of production chains, 
the integration of markets, and the global nature of capital render any 
strategy confined to the strictly local or national sphere insufficient. 
Just as capital organizes its reproduction internationally, the working 
class can only fully develop its own capacities through effective forms 
of regional, confederal, and international coordination. The only 
possible counter to imperialist capitalism is an equally genuine class 
internationalism, capable of translating into common organization, 
solidarity, and action.

However, it would be contradictory to conclude this article by offering 
a closed set of guidelines. Precisely because the program constitutes a 
historically produced mediation, its development cannot be deduced from 
a text nor resolved through doctrinal formulations. It is up to the 
concrete analysis of the current situation, the debate among the various 
factions of the labor movement, and, above all, social practice itself, 
to determine the specific forms that these tasks must take. If this work 
seeks to defend anything, it is precisely that this elaboration 
constitutes a collective and historically open task.

Conclusions
The assessment and development of the program require collaborative 
work. The various currents and factions are particular condensations of 
our class's experience. Sectarianism isolates us; assessment compels us 
to compare our practice with that of the entire class, learning from 
both minorities and majorities.

To quote Augustine one last time:

Without revolutionary theory there is no revolution. Without a 
theorization of the historical experiences of the proletariat there is 
no revolutionary theory, nor any theoretical progress.[...]. 
Revolutionary Marxism is a method of analyzing social and historical 
reality, which transforms the weapon of critique into the critique of 
weapons.[...]. The party of the proletariat is not only a program, but 
also its defense by individuals driven by revolutionary passion, and 
organized in various parties, nebulous groups, and class vanguards, 
which advocate different tactics. 12

Our task now is to examine the concrete application of these guidelines. 
That is, to determine the specific forms they can take, according to the 
current form of capital in a given geographical area. This task entails 
collective debate among the detachments, analysis of the current 
situation, and, above all, the practical and creative application of new 
organizational forms that preserve the strengths of existing forms while 
simultaneously negating and overcoming their limitations. It is 
important to emphasize that progress can only occur through concrete 
guidelines capable of addressing existing contradictions and opening new 
possibilities for the class movement. The criterion, therefore, cannot 
be the reproduction of a specific organizational form, but rather its 
capacity to develop, under concrete historical conditions, greater 
degrees of self-organization and generalized class independence .

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate my appeal. 
An appeal for the socialization of theory and cooperation in practice, 
for the sake of balance and the advancement of the class struggle. These 
tasks, I believe, are not the exclusive domain of platformism; they call 
upon every militant who fights for emancipation. This is not a call for 
abstract unity to resolve them. Not at all. Far from this notion of 
setting aside our differences, we must find unity in the concrete, which 
necessarily implies a degree of separation for the development of 
conscious practice.

T. Morago, Liza militant

https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/10/09/apuntes-para-el-balance
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