Pistoleros!: the Chronicles of Farquhar McHarg, Volume 1 by Farquhar McHarg

Author:Farquhar McHarg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2011-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

THE CNT AND ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM

The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT—National Confederation of Labour) was a national anticapitalist and aggressively revolutionary-syndicalist labour union founded in Barcelona in 1910. Its foundations had been laid in 1907 with the formation of Workers’ Solidarity (Solidaridad Obrera), a citywide federation of socialist and anarchist labour unions firmly rooted in the informal but finely meshed social networks of the barris.

Directly democratic in structure, the union had no apparatus or bureaucracy that could be taken over by power-hungry factions. And although set up and guided by an anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist rank and file whose fundamental tenets were working-class solidarity, direct democracy, and direct action, the CNT was always a pluralist, nonsectarian body that welcomed members from across the political spectrum regardless of creed and politics. Membership encompassed socialists, Republicans, Marxists, trade unionists, Roman Catholics—and even Carlists.

As committed anarcho-syndicalists in an industry-based, early capitalist society, our political centre of gravity was the union, as opposed to political parties, parliamentary politics, or the state. The barri, the shop floor, and the economy were our battlefields, direct action our strategy of choice, and self-managed labour associations our preferred agencies for implementing workers’ power. We organised by industry rather than craft or trade and didn’t believe in concepts such as ‘shared class interests’. To us class interests were irreconcilable. Our creed was the inescapability of the class struggle, that the state was a destructive force, that power corrupted—and that submission to force; manipulation or arbitrary authority was servitude.

While our short-term objectives were improving wages and conditions, our other immediate and long-term goal was to provide the collective organisation that would allow us to overthrow capitalism, outflank the state, and replace them with worker managed industries and directly democratic local and national councils—what we called libertarian or anarchist communism. The tension between these two objectives, however, created serious ongoing problems for the union, and for years the role of anarchists in unions had been a subject of heated debate between anarchist-communists and anarcho-syndicalists. Some anarchist groups, such as those affiliated to Barcelona’s Bandera Negra Federation, weren’t interested in the workers’ struggle; instead they focused their energies into organising discussion groups and corresponding nationally and internationally with like-minded groups on every subject under the sun—except the class struggle. Actively hostile to labour unions, especially to the anarcho-syndicalist CNT, their argument was that militants shouldn’t involve themselves in movements for social reform or improving wages and working conditions. The anarchist’s role, they insisted, was to promote the spirit of individual and collective revolt by constantly challenging and attacking the employers and the state through education, direct action, and propaganda of the deed.

‘Reform is a function of the ruling class,’ they argued, ‘not something with which anarchists should concern themselves. The union’s role is to ameliorate capitalism by seeking for its members immediate and partial improvements in pay and working conditions—which makes them complicit in maintaining the existing economic system, in all its manifestations and relations. Joining a union means entering into a mutually supportive partnership

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