Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

OBJECTIVITY AND LI BERAL SCHOLARSHIP
that 30 percent of the collectives were completely destroyed. In
Alcolea, the municipal council that governed the collective was
arrested; the people who lived in the Home fo r the Aged ... were
thrown OUt on the street. In Mas de las Matas, in Monzon, in
Barbastro, on all sides, there were arrests. Plundering took place
everywhere. The stores of the cooperatives and theif grain supplies
were rifled; furnishings were destroyed. The governor of Aragon,
who was appointed by the central government after the dissolution
of the Council of Aragon-which appears to have been the signal
for the armed attack against the collectives-protested. He was told
to go to the devil.
On October 22, at the National Congress of Peasants, the delegation
of the Regional Committee of Aragon presented a report of
which the following is the summary:
96
"More than 600 organizers of collectives have been arrested.
The government has appointed management committees that
seized the warehousing and distrusted their contents at random.
Land, draught animals, and tOols were given to individual families
or to the fascists who had been spared by the revolution. The harvest
was distributed III the same way. The animal raised by the collectives
suffered the same fate. A great number of collectivized pig
farms, stables, and dairies were destroyed. In certain communes,
such as Brodon and Calaceite, even seed was confiscated and the
peasants are now unable to work the land."
The estimate that 30 percent of the collectives were destroyed is consistenr with figures
reported by Peirats (Los anarquistas en Ia crisis politica espafiola, p. 300). He
points out that only 200 delegates attended the congress of collectives of Aragon in
Seprember 1937 ("held under rhe shadow of the bayoners of rhe Elevenrh Division"
of Lister) as compared with 500 delegates at the congress of the preceding February.
Peirars states that an army division of Catalan separatists and another division of the
PSUC also occupied parts of Aragon during this operation, while three anarchist
divisions remained at rhe front, under orders from the CNT-FAI leadership .
Compare Jackson's explanation of the occupation of Aragon: "The peasants were
known to hare the Consejo, the anarchists had deserted the front during the Barcelona
fighting, and the very existence of the Consejo was a standing challenge to the authority
of the central government" (italics mine).
108 Regarding Bolloten's work, Jackson has this to say: "Throughout the present chapter,
I have drawn heavily on this carefully documented study of the Communist Parry
in 1936-37. It is unrivaled in its coverage of the wartime press, of which BoHetell,
himself a UP correspondent in Spain made a large collection" (p. 363 n.).
109 See note 64. A number of citations from Berneri's writings are given by Broue and
Temime. Morrow also presents several passages from his journal, Guerra di Classe. A