A Return to Principle (1938)
by Diego Abad de Santillan:
Robert Graham, ed., Anarchism: A Documentary
History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume 1: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE-1939),
(Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2005). Selection 128.
Abad de Santillan was one of several
prominent anarchists in the CNT-FAI to collaborate with the Republican
government, becoming a Generalidad minister from December 1936 to March
1937. In May 1937, there was a civil war within the Civil War, the "May
Days" in Barcelona, where the anarchists were forced to fight for
their lives and the social revolution, attacked by Communist and Republican
forces. Hundreds of anarchists were killed, including many prominent
militants, such as the Italian anarchist writer, Camillo Berneri, and
the Libertarian Youth leader, Alfredo Martinez, who were both murdered.
Abad de Santillón ceased his collaboration with the government and
later wrote the following article, "Apropos of Our Libertarian
Goals," published in Timon (Barcelona), No. 2, August 1938. In
January 1939 he left Spain, was interned in various concentration camps
in France, and towards the end of the Second World War returned to Latin
America. The translation is by Paul Sharkey.
***
No idea has been so disfigured by its
own and by outsiders as the anarchist idea has been, some in order to
cover up their defection to the other side, others to halt its spread
through the broad masses. Has any school of thought in modern times
ever been attacked with as much vitriol as has been thrown at us by
those whose over-riding aim is to live off another man's labours?
But it must be conceded that no ridicule,
no criticism, no underhanded tricks, no political dishonesty by our
adversaries has ever done us as much harm, nor provoked us to such outrage,
as the ridicule and criticism emanating from those who, having-thanks
to our movement-attained a certain degree of popularity, have sought
to use it as a springboard to defect to the other side where the pickings
are easier and the thorns less sharp.
If they mean to tell us that they are
not the stuff of which revolutionaries are made, that they have no faith
in the people and that they are weary of "sacrifices," there
is no need for them to throw mud at an idea that stands above such pettiness
and demands no reluctant tribute from anybody.
Our anarchy's only defenders are those...whom
understand it and feel for it. It does not force itself on anybody nor
does it require that anyone make sacrifices for it. Be they few in number
or many, anarchists are sufficient and more than sufficient unto themselves
when it comes to bringing credit to their ideas, in no matter what terrain
they operate. We force no one to become an anarchist and to give his
life or his sweat for anarchy, but neither do we remain silent as a
sublime ideal is besmirched through the malice of unscrupulous adversaries
or the weariness of faithless friends.
The doors are open for anyone to join
us and open for any who would leave again. But there is not an open
door when it comes to turning anarchy--a perfectly clear, well-defined
teaching with a clear-cut profile--into a ridiculous monstrosity just
to cover up desertions. Nor is there an open door for turning basic
anarchist ideas into slavish pillars of diametrically opposed principles.
Might we make so bold as to argue that this is not our movement's present
function?
As for those who have learned over the
past two years that a change of tack is called for, let them change
tack! But let them leave our colours untouched, let them not drag them
through the mire, let them not disfigure them just to carry on usurping
the benefits; let them flourish the colours of whichever party or organization
suits them best; or let them come up with a new doctrine, a new party.
We will have no quarrel with them. But we do have a quarrel if they
claim that anarchy can be turned to any use; that the revolution boils
down to wading through the blood of martyrs and heroes to high positions
of political and economic privilege. Against such, every anarchist with
any love of anarchy has a right and a duty to resist and criticize...
Anybody taking fundamental exception
to our ideas is entitled to do so. We shall even afford him space in
these columns so that he may do so, but we reserve the right to respond
immediately. We declare that, apart from the accretions of historical
evolution, which bear out rather than rebut anarchy's underlying principles,
there is nothing that we would strike from our ideological baggage.
We are what our predecessors were.
As for methodology, the practices whereby
we implement our aspirations, there is ample room for discussion. Tactics
are circumstantial and dependent upon surroundings and opportunities,
the locality and the time in which we live. There is no requirement
to act the same in industry as in agriculture, or in a country that
displays certain features as in another where conditions are different.
We facilitated the victory of the republican left in the February 1936
elections, in order to thwart fascism's taking power by a lawful route.
We had a comprehensive debate then on principles and tactics, stressing
the fundamental character of the former and the contingent nature of
the latter. We could return to this debate now. But the upshot will
always be that we agree that certain methods leave us further removed
from rather than closer to our goals.
Participation in political power, say,
which we thought advisable due to circumstances, in the light of the
war, will demonstrate for us yet again what Kropotkin once said of the
parliamentary socialists: "You mean to conquer the State, but the
State will end up conquering you."
...Contrary to the experience of all
the socialist and revolutionary movements in history, we in Spain have
known a phenomenon that is hard to comprehend. The best trained, most
prestigious, sharpest-witted avant-garde minorities have not been in
the vanguard of economic and social change; these have instead proved
a hindrance, a brake, a hurdle to that change.
Awaiting instructions from none, the
broad masses embarked upon the realization of what they carried in their
hearts, and what they carried in their hearts was an intuitive grasp
of and enthusiasm for a new order, a new regimen of economic and social
relations.
With all of the shortcomings of impromptu,
spontaneous activity, the Spanish people laid down the course to be
followed from July 1936. And, no matter how this war turns out, the
achievements of that people cannot be wiped from our memories and will
live on in the memories of upcoming generations as a mighty spur to
action and as a reliable guide.
The avant-garde minorities, over the
two turbulent and hazardous years of our war against fascism, give the
impression that they were taken aback by their own daring and they have
gladly retreated to older positions that the broad masses have long
since left in their wake with their revolutionary creations. Fear of
freedom? Fear of the unknown? Ignorance? Stuck in a rut, even though
that rut be as anti-revolutionary and anti-proletarian as can be? We
shall leave it to historians of the future to unravel that mystery,
which may in any case be explained thus:
1. The avant-garde minorities were not
equal to their task nor were their words thought through and heartfelt.
2. The broad masses were better prepared
than their supposed mentors and guides when it came to revolutionary
reconstruction.
It is otherwise hard to understand the
ease with which those who seemed to be marching in the vanguard reconciled
themselves to what they had been fighting only the day before as if
it were Public Enemy Number One.
In every revolution, the vanguard minorities
aim to strike as deep as possible into the territory of practice, for
the destruction of the old regime and the building of new ways of life.
In the Spanish Revolution those minorities facilitated, not society's
advance, but its retreat. Because there has been a lot of ground lost
since the early months after the July events. And that ground was lost,
not at the people's instigation, but at the prompting of what appeared
to be the most advanced revolutionary minorities. But those minorities
were revolutionary only in appearance, for show, and the people were
more revolutionary than those minorities!
History teaches us that a motley society
contains a large inert mass bereft of any will of its own, readily dragged
to the right or to the left, depending on whether the minority forces
of progress or reaction wield the whip in hand. Events in Spain have
caused us to amend that outmoded outlook: in Spain there was a huge
mass yearning for revolution and some so-called leading minorities,
our own among them, which not only failed to egg on, articulate and
facilitate the realization of that yearning, but indeed did all they
could to clip its wings. The Spanish revolution was not the doing of
any organization or party, but was eminently an achievement of the people,
of the greater number. The retreat was made by so-called progressive
social minorities...
We commonly hear remarks that mirror
unhappiness with current conditions, but which also disclose an utter
ignorance of our ideas and our methods. There is all too much glib talk
such as: Dictatorship for dictatorship, ours would have been the better
option!
It would have been preferable for those
who act out the part of dictators, but not for the producing masses,
the people, the community. As far as the people are concerned, no dictatorship
is to be preferred over any other; they are all equally repugnant.
The dictatorship approach, its methodology
and its demands are the same, the very same, whether it is exercised
by self-styled fascists or those who profess to be communists, republicans,
democrats or anarchists.
Dictatorship is a reversion to the most
bestial tyranny and absolutism which should have been beaten back by
revolutionary social progress. It now offers itself to us in a new garb,
be it fascist or communist, but totalitarian rule which is to be enforced
and employed as a pre-requisite cannot help but arrive at the same destination,
regardless of how it is dressed up, the name it goes under or the colours
it flies.
An anarchist dictatorship would be as
poisonous for Spain as a fascist or communist dictatorship. Not to mention
that in practicing it, we would become the very negation of what we
are and what we stand for. It is not a question of personnel, but one
of systems and procedures. As government men we are no worse and no
better than anybody else and we know by now that our intervention in
government serves no purpose other than to bolster governmentalism and
in no way upholds the rights of labour against its parasitical enemies,
economic and political.
As dictators, as tyrants, we are not,
and no one is, made of better stuff than any other dictator and tyrant.
On the other hand there is no need for us to lend a willing hand to
the doing of evil and the practice of iniquity, forging the chains of
human slavery. All of this has been proceeding for centuries without
our being missed. Passivity or tolerance from us is enough if we want
to stray from the path of freedom and justice for all; but let us at
least fight shy of active complicity.
We have already highlighted the outstanding
difference in our revolution. The minorities that seemed to be leading
from the front were the biggest brakes on the constructive revolutionary
action of the people. Might these minorities, less daring than the broad
masses, be called upon to embody the anarchist dictatorship?
The merest whisper and hint of the nonsensical
lamentation that we should, when we had the chance, have imposed our
dictatorship should not be countenanced by comrades. The "going
for broke" argument is a latent expression of the craving for dictatorship
that the libertarian movement has had the good sense to thwart.
Since we have proved incapable of entrenching
the revolution begun by the labouring people, let no one accuse us of
being the grave-diggers of that revolution or accessories to the smothering
and crushing of the revolutionary movement. And our dictatorship would,
like any other, have smothered and buried that revolution.
Heads everywhere, centre nowhere! We
have said it over and over, a thousand times. We continue to say it.
From the organizational viewpoint, our own, as well as from the politico-national
point of view.
No doubt about it: we have made mistakes
and had our shortcomings; but rejection of our own dictatorship was
neither a mistake nor a shortcoming, for our social message consists
precisely of systematic opposition to all dictatorship, on the grounds
that it is anti-revolutionary and anti-human...
The grounds for our irreconcilable opposition
to statism are economic, moral and intellectual in nature. Day to day
experience and the lessons of history furnish unambiguous proof to support
us. The State subsists, not because of any raison d'etre, not because
it has convinced its victims to put up with it and support it, but because
it has strength and, as long as it has more strength than its adversaries,
it will carry on playing the lion's part in social life, carrying on
with its drive to smash culture and stifle individual and social life.
Let us summarize the economic basis for
our anti-statism:
1. The State is an unduly expensive parasitical
organism. It performs no service that could not be performed directly
by those concerned at infinitely less cost and, above all, with much
more efficiency. Twelve thousand million dollars are squandered yearly
in the United States on the fight against crime. Prior to the war, Spain
had 55,000 men spared productive toil and engaged in so-called public
order duties. And the United States has not succeeded in eradicating
the usual instances of so-called crime; and in Spain, the public order
authorities have never managed to guarantee any such order.
2. Starting out as an agency defending
the position of the wealthy classes, the modern State has become an
end in itself, a supreme master of lives and finances, at the heart
of everything. Which is why its bureaucracy, police and militarism have
expanded. With every passing day the costs rise and humanity is thrust
into shortage and penury just so that the State can be maintained. The
tastiest and finest tidbits from life's banquet are gobbled up by statism,
and the economically privileged devour the rest. Leaving only crumbs
for the toilers of society. All in order to preserve a redundant agency
whose functions society could perform for itself through its own direct
organs, at no discernible cost to the producers. The State is unduly
expensive and thoroughly sterile and sterilizing. It performs no essential
social function. Bureaucracy, the military and police are its very essence.
Although the State had meddled in it, nothing else is essential to statism.
For instance, the railways, the posts and telegraphs services, public
education, etc. Do we need the State to get the trains running, to get
the mail distributed, so that we have schools, to make the wheat sprout
in the fields?
3. As the ever-expanding ramifications
of the State gobble up the greater and better part of socially useful
labour, its existence represents a standing offence to human life, a
curtailment of the right to life and development inherent in every human
being.
But in cultural terms, the State is like
Attila's horse: it leaves devastation in its wake. Its centralism cannot
be reconciled with thoughtfulness, because it wants to see everything
subjected to its guns, its ordinances, its interests, and thought, unless
it be free, is nothing or only a caricature of thought. The creative
endeavours of the mind require freedom and that freedom perishes on
contact with statism...
We will always falter, make mistakes
and make wrong moves: that was true yesterday, just as it will be today,
tomorrow and always. Our human condition and our condition as dynamic
activists ever ready to give it a go, will always keep us teetering
on the edge of error. But trial and error are the cornerstone of all
progress, in science as well as in matters political and social. We
must give it a go and risk error so that we can harvest morsels of truth
from the unknown.
It is not the making of mistakes that
frightens us. Given a choice between error on the one hand and passivity,
indifference and a deadly coldness in the face of life's many problems
on the other, we should rather make mistakes, groping in the dark, and
stumble. If we fall by the wayside, let us do it in our own style, while
searching for the light, a better way for humanity. More damaging than
error is persisting with an error and an inability to set mistakes aright.
But what we are concerned to state as
our conclusion is that whereas there is no infallible criterion for
truth, there is one way of always looking truth in the face: the people.
If we are with it in good times and the bad, in its successes and its
failures, we may not always feel satisfied but we shall never feel that
we have strayed from our course. With the people, alongside the people,
interpreters of its grievances and aspirations, carrying out its mandates.
That must be our unvarying position, the only sure and always worthy
one.
But one cannot serve two masters at once.
If we are with the people, we cannot be with the State, which is its
enemy. And right now we are with the State, which is tantamount to being
against the people. For the first time in history, in anarchism's name,
we prize the interests of governmentalism over those of the people.
And the people, which has a healthy instinct, and an intuitive feel
for the truth, is beginning to see plainly, to feel disheartened and
hopeless when it sees us who had always offered our lives in defence
of its cause forget it for a mess of ministerial pottage.
Nearly all of you, beloved comrades,
will have been stung by some spontaneous popular exclamation, the truthfulness
of which you cannot gainsay: "They're all the same when they make
it to the top!"
We are all the same as those who went
before us in the manning of high public and government office. The people
cast this up to us. And the people are right. In order to hang on to
those posts, from where the only thing we can plant is decrees, fresh
taxes, new impositions and burdens, we must stand up to the people's
demands. And should the people tomorrow, wearying of suffering, take
to the streets as they so often have when we were on its side and in
its midst, it will fall to us to massacre them. And unless we want to
find ourselves facing that splendid prospect, we must deploy our every
organizational resource to ensure that injustice, hunger and outrage
are supinely and universally borne without complaint.
For how long, comrades? This sacrifice
that we have made of our revolutionary identity: can there be any other
outcome to it than furnishing all too much justification for snuffing
out the trust that the people had placed in us? In government we are
all the same! And we cannot serve two masters. Hence our insistence
that we make our minds up. With the people, or with the State? Our conclusion
is that in standing with the State and thus against the people, we are
not only committing an irreparable act of betrayal of the revolution,
which is taken as read, but we are also betraying the war effort, because
we are denying it the active support of the people, the only invincible
force, provided that it and its boundless resources are properly deployed.
For the future of the revolution and the prospects of the war, comrades, we may yet be in time, if we stand always alongside the people!