Nowadays, devotees of capitalism are happy to adorn themselves with a whiff of “Anarchist”, Caron’s latest perfume. The word had very different connotations in 1936, when the Spanish workers carried out a far-reaching libertarian revolution in the areas where they defeated the generals’ revolt against the republic. In the words of a former member of the Iron Column militia. “Anarchists did not wage war for the pleasure of defending the bourgeois republic… We fought for social revolution”.
Collectivisation of large sectors of industry, services and agriculture was one of the revolution’s most striking features. It was rooted in the strong political consciousness of the Spanish working class. While many workers belonged to the socialist UGT (General Union of Workers), the great majority were organised in the anarcho-syndicalist CNT (National Confederation of Labour). At that time, the total population of Spain was 24m. The anarchist union had over 1m members and – a unique occurrence in the history of trade unionism – only one paid official.
Two months before the military coup of 18 July 1936, the CNT congress in Saragossa passed a resolution that left no doubt about its intentions: “Once the violent phase of the revolution has been completed, private property, the state, the principle of authority, and consequently all the classes that divide men into exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed, will be abolished. With all wealth socialised, producers’ organisations, free at last, will take over the direct administration of production and consumption”.
The workers implemented this programme spontaneously, without waiting for orders from on high. In Barcelona, for example, the executive committees of the CNT declared a general strike on 18 July 1936, but stopped short of calling for collectivisation. Yet on 21 July the Catalonian workers collectivised the railways. On the 25th they took over the trams, buses and (…)
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(2) Unless otherwise noted, Sahra Wagenknecht’s quotes come either from an interview with the authors in Berlin on 10 April 2024 or the book in which she lays out her platform Die Selbstgerechten: Mein Gegenprogramm ‒ für Gemeinsinn und Zusammenhalt (The Self-Righteous: My Counter-Programme for Public Spirit and Cohesion), Campus Verlag, Frankfurt, 2021.
(4) See Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Holt, New York, 2004; and Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2016. See also Pierre Rimbert, ‘Quelle coalition face au bloc bourgeois?’ (Which coalition can take on the bourgeois bloc?), Le Monde diplomatique, February 2022.
(6) Jean-Luc Mélenchon with Marc Endeweld, Le Choix de l’insoumission, Seuil, Paris, 2016.
(7) La Repubblica, Rome, 21 July 2024.
(8) She expands on this in her book Reichtum ohne Gier: Wie wir uns vor dem Kapitalismus retten (Wealth without Greed: How to Save Ourselves From Capitalism), Campus Verlag, Frankfurt, 2016.
(10) BSW, ‘Unser Parteiprogramm’, Berlin, 2024, bsw-vg.de/.
(11) BSW, ‘Programm für die Europawahl 2024’, Berlin, 2024, bsw-vg.de/.
(13) Patrick Moreau, ‘L’émergence d’une gauche conservatrice en Allemagne: l’Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht pour la raison et la justice (BSW)’ (An emerging conservative left in Germany: the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance ‒ Reason and Justice (BSW)), Foundation for Political Innovation, Paris, January 2024; and Thorsten Holzhauser, ‘Ni à gauche ni à droite, mais les deux à la fois? L’Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) au lendemain des élections européennes’ (Neither left nor right, but both at once? The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) in the aftermath of the European elections), Note du Comité d’études des relations franco-allemandes (CERFA) (Notes from the Research Committee on German-French Relations) no 178, French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), Paris, July 2024.
(14) Helge Emmler and Daniel Seikel, ‘Wer wählt “Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht”?’ (Who votes for the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance?), WSI Report, no 94, June 2024, www.wsi.de/. See also Albrecht Meier, ‘BSW im Umfrage-Hoch: Wagenknecht-Partei punktet vor allem bei Deutsch-Türken’ (BSW high in the polls: Wagenknecht’s party mostly scores points among Turkish Germans), Tagesspiegel, Berlin, 31 July 2024.
