Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

CHOMSKY ON ANARCHISM
Africa. Furthermore, Jackson makes little attempt ro disguise his antipathy
rowards the forces of popular revolmion in Spain, or their goals.
It is no criticism of Jackson's study that his point of view and sympathies
are expressed with such clarity. On the contrary, rhe value of this work as an
interpretation of historical events is enhanced by the fact that the author's
commitments are made so clear and explicit. Bur I think it can be shown that
Jackson's account of the popular revolution that rook place in Spain is misleading
and in part quire unfair, and thar the fa ilure of objectivity it reveals is
highly significant in thar it is characteristic of the attitude taken by liberal (and
Communist) intellectuals towards revolutionary movements rhar are largely
spontaneous and only loosely organized, while rooted in deeply felt needs and
ideals of dispossessed masses. It is a convention of scholarship that rhe use of
such terms as those of the preceding phrase demonstrates naivete and muddleheaded
sentimentality. The convention, however, is supponed by ideological
conviction rather than history or investigation of the phenomena of social life.
This conviction is, I think, belied by such events as the revolution that swept
over much of Spain in the summer of 1936.
The circumstances of Spain in the 1930s are not duplicated elsewhere in
the underdeveloped world today, to be sure. Nevertheless, the limited information
that we have about popular movements in Asia, specifically, suggests
certain similar features that deserve mllch more serious and sympathetic srudy
than (hey have so far received. 56 Inadequate information makes i( hazardous
to try to develop any sllch parallel, but I think it is quite possible to note longstanding
tendencies in the response of liberal as well as Communist intellectuals
to such mass movements.
A5 I have already remarked, the Spanish Civil War is not only one of the
critical events of modern hisrory bur one of the most intensively studied as well.
Yet there are surprising gaps. During the months following the Franco insurrection
in July 1936, a social revolution of unprecedented scope rook place
throughout much of Spain. It had no "revolutionary vanguard" and appears to
have been largely spontaneous, involving masses of urban and rural laborers in
a radical transformation of social and economic conditions that persisted. with
remarkable success, until it was crushed by fo rce. This predominantly anarchist
revolution and the massive social transformation to which it gave rise are treat
ed, in recent historical studies. as a kind of aberration, a nuisance that stood in
the way of successful prosecution of the war to save the bourgeois regime from
the Franco rebellion. Many historians would probably agree with Eric
Hobsbawm57 that the failure of social revolution in Spain "was due to the anarchists,"
that anarchism was "a disaster," a kind of "moral gymnastics" with no
"concrete results," at best "a profoundly moving specracle for the student of
popular religion." The most extensive histOrical study of the anarchist revolu
rion58 is relatively inaccessible, and neither its author, now living in southern
France, nor the many refugees who will never write memoirs bur who might
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