Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

OBJECTIVITY AND LIBERAL SCHOLARSHIP
Whereas Jackson anributes the ebbing of the revolutionary tide to the discovery
of the unsuspected complexity of modern society, Orwell's firsthand observations,
like those of Borkenau, suggest a fa r simpler explanarion. What calls
for explanation is not the disaffection of the workers of Barcelona but the cutious
constructions of the historian.
Let me repeat, at this point, Jackson's comments regarding Juan Comorera:
Comorera "immediately took steps to end barter and requisitioning, and
became a defender of the peasants against the revolution"; he "ended requisitions,
restored money payments, and protected the Catalan peasants against
further collectivization." These comments imply that the peasantry of
Catalonia was, as a body, opposed to the revolution and that Comorera put a
stop to the collectivization that they feared. Jackson nowhere indicates any
divisions among the peasantry on this issue and offers no support for the
implied claim that collectivization was in process at the period of Comorera's
access ro power. In fact, it is questionable that Comorera's rise to power affected
the course of collectivization in Catalonia. Evidence is difficult to come by,
bur it seems that collectivization of agriculture in Catalonia was not, in any
event, extensive, and that it was not extending in December, when Comorera
rook office. We know from anarchist sources that there had been instances of
forced collectivization in Catalonia,91 but I can find no evidence that
Comorera "protected the peasantry" from forced collectivization. Furthermore,
56 it is misleading, at best, to imply that the peasantry as a whole was opposed to
collectivization. A more accurate picture is presented by Bolloten (p. 56), who
points out that "if the individual farmer viewed with dismay the swift and
widespread development of collectivized agriculture. the farm workers of the
Anarchosyndicalist CNT and the Socialist UGT saw in it, on the contrary. the
commencement of a new era." In short, there was a complex class struggle in
the countryside, though one learns little about it from Jackson's oversimplified
and misleading account. It would seem fair to suppose that this distortion
again reflects Jackson's antipathy towards the revolution and its goals. I will
rerum to this question directly, with reference to areas where agricultural collectivization
was much more extensive than in Catalonia.
The complexities of modern society that baffled and confounded the
unsuspecting anarchist workers of Barcelona, as Jackson enumerates them,
were the following: the accumulating food and supply problems and the
administration of frontier posts, villages, and public utilities. As JUSt noted. the
food and supply problems seem ro have accumulated most rapidly under the
brilliant leadership of Juan Comorera. So fa r as the frontier posts are concerned,
the situation, as Jackson elsewhere describes it (p. 368), was basically
as follows : "In Catalonia the anarchists had, ever since July 18, controlled the
cusroms stations at the French border. On April 17, 1937, the reorganized
carabineros, acting on orders of the Finance Minister, Juan Negrin, began to
reoccupy the frontier. At least eight anarchists were killed in clashes with the