Mertcan Bulak
@MBulak
1183 okur puanı
Ağustos 2020 tarihinde katıldı
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The leaders of the CNT felt that it had to compromise to obtain foreign aid and to win the war against Franco. But inevitably they were obliged to reinforce the very institutions which they had so vehemently denounced in the past. They checked the collectivization process. They oversaw the transformation of the popular militias into an army. The subsequent regimentation and militarization demoralized many of the anarchist militias and workers.
Reklam
The experiment however was short-lived. The CNT-run factories were unable to provide the militias with the necessary equipment because of the shortage of raw supplies. They failed to win the support of the majority of the working class, and their attempt to develop the social revolution was checked by the war with Franco’s army and the struggle with other Republican factions, notably the Communists. As Franco’s troops were closing in on Madrid, the CNT in Barcelona agreed with the UGT to accept the need for a unified command, military discipline, and conscription.
The revolutionary process was halted on 24 October 1936 when the provisional government of Catalunya, the Generalitat, issued a Collectivization Decree which recognized the collectives, but tried to bring them under government and not workers’ control. It not only checked their further development but restricted collectivization of industry to those enterprises employing more than a hundred workers. In privately owned factories a Workers’ Control Committee was established to increase production and ensure strict discipline. A planning and co-ordinating body called the Economic Council (with powers of compulsion as the ultimate industrial authority) and a Council of Enterprises (with workers’ representatives joined by a ‘controller’ from the Generalitat) were set up. They both reflected the drift towards central government control.
Orwell was drafted into the dissident Communist group POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista), and he preferred it to the International Brigades. But he confessed that if he had understood the situation better he would have probably joined the anarchists. Orwell moreover went out of his way to correct the misrepresentations of the anarchists and syndicalists in England and to stress the remarkable achievements of Spanish anarchism at the beginning of the war, especially in Catahinya.
The decision to collaborate with the Catalan government however put a break on the further development of the social revolution. Within two months the Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias was abolished. On 27 September 1936 the anarchist leaders of the CNT-FAI entered the government of the Generalitat, vainly trying to justify their action by referring to it as a Regional Defence Council. They had started down the slippery slide to parliamentary participation. Forgetting their function as delegates, they tried to direct the popular movement. They became mesmerized by the slogan: ‘ Sacrificamos a todo menos a la victoria!’ (We sacrifice all except victory!) In the long run, the social revolution itself was to be sacrificed for the war against Franco.
Reklam