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overblown and ill-behaved bureaucracy invaded the factories - a swarm
of inspectors and directors who owed their position solely to their
political affiliations, in particular to their recent membership in the
Stalinist Communist Party. The workers became demoralized as they
saw themselves deprived of control over enterprises which they had
created from scratch during the first critical months of the war, and
production suffered in consequence.
In other branches, Catalan industrial self-management survived until the
Spanish Republic was crushed. It was slowed down, however, for
industry had lost its main outlets and there was a shortage of raw
materials, the government having cut off the credit necessary to purchase
them.
To sum up, the newborn Spanish collectives were immediately forced
into the strait jacket of a war carried on by classic military methods, in
the name of which the Republic clipped the wings of its own vanguard
and compromised with reaction at home.
The lesson which the collectives have left behind them, however, is a
stimulating one. In 1938 Emma Goldman was inspired to praise them
thus: "The collectivization of land and industry shines out as the greatest
achievement of any revolutionary period. Even if Franco were to win and
the Spanish anarchists were to be exterminated, the idea they have
launched will live on." On July 21, 1937, Federica Montseny made a
speech in Barcelona in which she clearly posed the alternatives: "On the
one hand, the supporters of authority and the totalitarian State, of a state-
directed economy, of a form of social organization which militarizes all
men and converts the State into one huge employer, one huge
entrepreneur; on the other hand, the operation of mines, fields, factories
and workshops, by the working class itself, organized in trade-union
federations." This was the dilemma of the Spanish Revolution, but in the
near future it may become that of socialism the world over.
By Way of Conclusion
The defeat of the Spanish Revolution deprived anarchism of its only
foothold in the world. It came out of this trial crushed, dispersed, and, to
some extent, discredited. History condemned it severely and, in certain
respects, unjustly. It was not in fact, or at any rate alone, responsible for
the victory of the Franco forces. What remained from the experience of
the rural and industrial collectives, set up in tragically unfavorable
conditions, was on the whole to their credit. This experience was,
however, underestimated, calumniated, and denied recognition.
Authoritarian socialism had at last got rid of undesirable libertarian
competition and, for years, remained master of the field. For a time it
seemed as though state socialism was to be justified by the military
victory of the U.S.S.R. against Nazism in 1945 and by undeniable, and
even imposing, successes in the technical field.
However, the very excesses of this system soon began to generate their
own negation. They engendered the idea that paralyzing state
centralization should be loosened up, that production units should have
more autonomy, that workers would do more and better work if they had
some say in the management of enterprises. What medicine calls
"antibodies" were generated in one of the countries brought into
servitude by Stalin. Tito's Yugoslavia freed itself from the too heavy
yoke which was making it into a sort of colony. It then proceeded to re-
evaluate the dogmas which could now so clearly be seen as anti-
economic. It went back to school under the masters of the past,
discovering and discreetly reading Proudhon. It bubbled in anticipation.
It explored the too-little-known libertarian areas of thinking in the works
of Marx and Lenin. Among other things it dug out the concept of the
withering away of the State, which had not, it is true, been altogether
eliminated from the political vocabulary, but had certainly become no
more than a ritual formula quite empty of substance. Going back to the
short period during which Bolshevism had identified itself with
proletarian democracy from below, with the soviets, Yugoslavia gleaned
a word which had been enunciated by the leaders of the October
Revolution and then quickly forgotten: self-management. Attention was
also fumed to the embryonic factory councils which had arisen at the
same time, through revolutionary contagion, in Germany and Italy and,
much later, Hungary. As reported in the French review Arguments by the
Italian, Roberto Guiducci, the question arose whether "the idea of the
councils, which had been suppressed by Stalinism for obvious reasons,"
could not "be taken up again in modern terms."
When Algeria was decolonized and became independent its new leaders
sought to institutionalize the spontaneous occupations of abandoned
European property by peasants and workers. They drew their inspiration
from the Yugoslav precedent and took its legislation in this matter as a
model.
If its wings are not clipped, self-management is undoubtedly an
institution with democratic, even libertarian tendencies. Following the
example of the Spanish collectives of 193~1937, self-management seeks
to place the economy under the management of the producers
themselves. To this end a three-tier workers' representation is set up in
each enterprise, by means of elections: the sovereign general assembly;
the workers' council, a smaller deliberative body; and, finally, the
management committee, which is the executive organ. The legislation
provides certain safeguards against the threat of bureaucratization:
representatives cannot stand for re-election too often, must be directly
involved in production, etc. In Yugoslavia the workers can be consulted
by referendum as an alternative to general assemblies, while in very
large enterprises general assemblies take place in work sections.
Both in Yugoslavia and in Algeria' at least in theory, or as a promise for
the future, great importance is attributed to the commune, and much is
made of the fact that self-managing workers will be represented there. In
theory, again, the management of public affairs should tend to become
decentralized, and to be carried out more and more at the local level.
These good intentions are far from being carried out in practice. In these
countries self-management is coming into being in the framework of a
dictatorial, military, police state whose skeleton is formed by a single
party. At the helm there is an authoritarian and paternalistic authority
which is beyond control and above criticism. The authoritarian principles
of the political administration and the libertarian principles of the
management of the economy are thus quite incompatible.
Moreover, a certain degree of bureaucratization tends to show itself even
within the enterprises, in spite of the precautions of the legislators. The
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