Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

OBJECTIVITY AND LIBERAL SCHOLARSHIP
66
Funhermore, the trust placed in the bourgeois government by the anarchist
leaders was not honored, as the history of the counterrevolution clearly shows.
In retrospect, it seems that Berneri was correct in arguing that they should not
have taken part in the bourgeois government, btl[ should rather have sOll
hr to
replace this government with the institutions created by the revolurion.11 The
anarchist minister Garcia Oliver stated that "we had confidence in the word
and in the person of a Catalan democrat and retained and supported
Companys as President of the Generalitat,"113 at a time when in Catalonia, at
least, the workers' organizations could easily have replaced the state apparams
and dispensed with the former political parties, as they had replaced the old
economy with an entirely new structure. Companys recognized fully that there
were limits beyond which he could not cooperate with the anarchists. In an
imerview with H. E. Kaminski, he refused to specifY these limits, bur merely
expressed his hope that "the anarchist masses will nOt oppose the good sense of
their leaders," who have "accepted the responsibilities incumbent upon them";
he saw his task as "directing these responsibilities in the proper path," not further
specified in the interview, but shown by the events leading up to the May
Days. 114 Probably, Companys' attitude towards this willingness of the anarchist
leaders to cooperate was expressed accurately in his reaction to the suggestion
of a correspondent of the New Statesman and Na tion, who predicted
that the assassination of the anarchist mayor of Puigcerda would lead to a
revolt: "[Companys] laughed scornfully and said (he anarchists would capitulate
as they always had before."1 1) As has already been pointed out in some
detail, the liberal-Communist Parry coalition had no intention of letting the
war against Franco take precedence over the crushing of the revolution. A
spokesman for Comorera pm the matter clearly: "This slogan has been attributed
to the IS.U.C.: 'Before taking Saragossa, it is necessary to take
Barcelona.' This reflects the situation exactiy ...." I 16 Comorera himself had,
from the beginning, pressed Companys to resist the CNT. III The first task of
the antifascist coalition, he maintained, was to dissolve the revolutionary committees.118
I have already cited a good deal of evidence indicating that the
repression conducted by the Popular Front seriously weakened popular commitment
and involvement in the antifascist war. What was evident to George
Orwell was also clear to the Barcelona workers and the peasants in the collectivized
villages of Aragon: the liberal-Communist coalition would not tolerate
a revolutionary transformation of Spanish sociery; it would commit itself fully
to the anti-Franco stru g gle only after the old order was firmly re-established,
by force. if necessary. I 1 '9
There is linle doubt that farm workers in the collectives understood quite
well the social content of the drive towards consolidation and central control.
We learn this not only from anarchist sources bm also from the socialist press
in the spring of 1937. On May l, the Socialist party newspaper Adelante had
the following to say: