Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

OBJECTIVITY AND LIBERAL SCHOLARSHIP
with the POUM militia. His exposure of the fatuous nonsense that was
appearing at the time in the Stalinist and liberal presses appears quite accurate,
and later discoveries have given little reason to challenge the basic facts that he
reported or the interpretation that he proposed in the hear of the conflict.
Orwell does, in fan, refer ro his own "political ignorance." Commenting on
the final defeat of the revolution in May, he stares: "I realized-though owing
to my political ignorance, not so clearly as I ought [Q have done-that when
the Government felt more sure of itself there would be reprisals." But this form
of "political ignorance" has simply been compounded in morc recent hismcical
work.
Shortly after the May Days, the Caballero government fell and Juan Negrin
became premier of Republican Spain. Negrin is described as follows, by BrOllt
and T emime: " ... he is an unconditional defender of capitalist property and resolme
adversary of collectivization, whom the CNT ministers find blocking all
of their proposals. He is the one who solidly reorganized the carabineros and
presided over the transfer of the gold reserves of the Republic to the USSR. He
enjoyed the confidence of the moderates ... [and] was on excellent terms with
the Communists."
60
The first major act of the NegrIn government was the suppression of the
POUM and the consolidation of central control over Catalonia. The governmenr
next turned to Aragon, which had been under largely anarchist control
since the first days of the revolution, and where agricultural collectivization
was quite extensive and Communist elemenrs very weak. The municipal councils
of Aragon were coordinated by the Council of Aragon, headed by Joaquin
Ascaso, a well-known CNT militant, one of whose brothers had been killed
during the May Days. Under the Caballero government, the anarchists had
agreed (Q give representation to other antifascist panies, including the
Communists, but the majority remained anarchist. In August the Negrfn government
announced the dissolmion of the Council of Aragon and dispatched
a division of the Spanish army, commanded by the Communist officer Enrique
Lister, to enforce the dissolution of the local committees, dismantle the collectives,
and establish central government COntrol. Ascaso was arrested on the
charge of having been responsible fo r the robbery of jewelry-namely, the jewelry
"robbed" by the Council fo r its own use in the fall of 1936. The local anarchist
press was suppressed in favor of a Communist journal, and in general
local anarchist centers were forcefully occupied and closed. The last anarchist
stronghold was capmred, with tanks and artillery, on September 21. Because
of government-imposed censorship, there is very little of a direct record of
these events, and the major histories pass over them quickly. 100 According to
Morrow, "the official CNT press ... compared the assault on Aragon with the
subjection of Asturias by Lopez Ochoa in October 1934"-the laner, one of
the bloodiest acts of repression in modern Spanish history. Although this is an