The CNT (Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo - the anarchosyndicalist revolutionary union of Spain) held its fifth congress in 69 years of existence on December 8th to 16th in the Hall of the Casa de Campo in Madrid. A revolutionary union with a paid up membership of 85,000 and 300,000 adherents is a matter of great importance for the Spanish working class. Unfortunately it appears that the CNT is at present more a closed shop than an outward going organisation responding to the needs of the workers. It appears that it is being controlled by purist anarchists who are more concerned to preserve their doctrine than to make it a constructive force in the class struggle.
If the LCG supported its reconstruction in 1976, it was because it represented then an initiative to construct a class and mass movement that was both anti-capitalist and anti-statist. We have always taken a critical position on anaracho-syndicalism, but we thought that a CNT implanted in the working class by its practice in the workplaces could bypass the errors of the Spanish libertarian movement, coming to grips with the questions that anarchosyndicalism has, even today, never clearly responded to. For that, it was necessary that the CNT had democratic structures, and was implanted in the workplaces, leading a political drawing from the real practice of its militants and advancing towards a revolutionary libertarian alternative.
We supported the CNT because some of its militants seemed to be in agreement with this schema and the entire libertarian workers movement was rallying to it. This support did not mean that we stopped criticising all the mistakes of the past, the lack of democracy and the temptations to make the CNT a sanctuary of purist ideology. (See previous articles in LC, Libertarian Spain 1 & 2, and our supplement on Spain.) Unlike some anarchists and libertarians, we did not want to enshrine the myth of the CNT still further, but to support its practice, in the workplaces, and its part in the construction of a libertarian workers movement.
1979 was a year of diminishing struggle in Spain. The movement that had developed after the death of Franco outside the reformist unions (the Socialist UGT and the Communist CC.OO) in the factory assemblies has been undermined and isolated. Even where militant strikes have succeeded, e.g. the victory of the petrol pump attendants in January, there have been victimisations of militants. The government has been introducing legislation to make strikes illegal (contracts with employers would be binding for their duration) although lockouts were legal. Likewise, political and solidarity strikes were to be forbidden, and factory committees could order a return to work above the heads of the workers themselves. New legislation also facilitated redundancies, and made payment of the national minimum wage dependent on produtivity.
Much of this has been accepted by the CC.OO and UGT, who have campaigned mainly over the issue of redundancies arguing for negotiated procedures.
This decline in militancy, especially outside the Basque country-has left the militants of the CNT exposed. There have been two reactions-either to concentrate on activity outside the legal framework wherever this framework prevents direct action, or to adopt a more flexible approach, working from within the factory committees for revolutionary strategies. The proponents of the first option have been called purists and idealists; the proponents of the second course have been denounced as reformists and marxists.
Readers of Libertarian Spain No.2 (copies still available, send 30p in stamps to LS, Box 3, 73 Walmgate, York) will be familiar with the expulsion of the ASKATASUNA current of anarchist communists by the CNT of the Basque country. This expulsion was a precedent for the treatment given to Sebastian Puigcerver, a former member of the CNT national committee and a tendency with which he was associated, the Anarcho-syndicalist Affinity Groups. The grounds for this expulsion were that the individuals expelled had set up parallel groups which aimed to control the CNT. This had already been used against the comrades of the Movimiento Communista Libertaria (MCL). If one bears in mind that the CNT was only reconstructed on the merger of different tendencies-the councillists, the libertarian communists, Askatasuna, autonomists, traditional anarchists, etc,etc,etc, and that the basis on which it attempted to function was the reconcilliation of different points of view, then his change is quite amazing. BICICLETA, an independent anarchist collective, who had themselves been expelled from the CNT, published a letter outlining the links between the Federacion Anarquista Iberica (the grouping that had dominated CNT internal life for so many years) Luis Andres Edo, a dominant voice in the Barcelona building workers' CNT union, and the old CNT exiles in Toulouse. Let two facts suffice on this point: 1) Juan Ferer, a central leader of the FAI, had proposed at an intercontinental meeting of the anarchíst federations that the exiles should take the reins of the CNT; 2) a statement made by Federica Montseny, leading Toulouse exile and one of those who had served as minister in the Republican government in the Civil War, at the Mutualite Hall in Paris that rather than let the CNT escape from their hands they would prefer to see it dead.
There can be little doubt that the charge made against the "reformists" was that the parallel organisation set up by the "orthodox" anarchists had decided to put the boot in. The eхpulsions were associated with physical attacks on some "reformists". The voting of expulsions had been accompanied by counter-charges that the meetings were fixed deliberately. At any event the internal power struggle has been effective in driving workers out of the unions - for example the voting on the expulsion of Puigcerver and 11 comrades was 48 to 18 with 18 abstentions in a union of 1,000 members.
Following this and other expulsions in April and May last year the editorial of Solidaridad Obrera, the CNT's largest paper, a fortnightly, was voted out. "Soli" changed from a paper that was open to debate on all points to a more boring but orthodox uncontroversial paper. The orthodox political justification for this is, in the words of the new general secretary of the CNT Jose Bondia, that they should have dared to question the historic basis of the CNT and its anarchosyndicalist theory. Dogmatism rules OK!
Given such a polemical background it was only to be expected that the 5th Congress should be traumatic. The first two days were filled with discussions on credentials. 737 delegates representing 350 unions were present. (The CNT is made up of regional unions of trades.) The conference was a meeting for many international observers, including sections of the International Workers Association, the syndicalist international, in Norway, Italy, France, Venezuela, Germany, Britain, Chile, Cuba, etc. The third day was taken up with procedural discussions largely on how the main conference motion should be discussed, and on the report of the national committee.
The actual debate on anarchosyndicalism and libertarian communism (the method and aim of the CNT) left many problems.
How are these principles to be put into practice? The classical slogans of anarchosyndicalism: antiparliamentarianism, anti-capitalism, anti-militarism, federalism, direct action etc create as many problems as they solve. The reaffirmation of the Zaragozza 1936 Congress motions ignores the many obvious criticisms that the '36 motions on sexuality, libertarian communism, education etc are open too. These criticisms were not allowed to be debated at Congress.
The debate on organisation became the last straw for the minority of delegates who were unhappy with the proceedings. Disagreement centred on the question of "double" militancy should a member of the CNT be allowed to be active in another organisation? The traditional answer was "no" it meant that communists had no power in the CNT but it caused controversy in relation to the FAI since "double" militancy in the CNT and FAI was always allowed. Today, with the development of many libertarian currents, the problem is accentuated since the FAI is still allowed a privileged position that is refused to all other political groups. When this position was reaffirmed 50 delegates including the Aragon federation left the Congress, angry that the FAI and exiles hold over the CNT could not be challenged in the Congress.
Thus the major part of the conference appears to have acheved little beyond sterile sectarian debates which will only have pleased traditionalists who wanted to reaffirm principles of the past.
The last two days of the conference were taken up with re-election of the new national committee and debates on all the questions of day-to-day strategy. The new General Secretary was voted in by only 45 of the 350 unions which were present at the start. Many unions had left in disgust, others were clearly committed to supporting attempts to question the validity of Congress, or attempts to set up a rival libertarian revolutionary union. Whilst a definite majority does exist for the orthodox anarchists, this hegemony has been won partly by default since all its opponents are divided into smaller tendencies, and partly because some unions have not taken sides.
Congress decided against the previous policy of working in assemblies, and voted for the establishment of CNT committees in each factory. It also decided not to stand in the stateorganised elections to factory committees, and made commitments to alternative strategies, sabotage and unlimited strikes. Whilst it did not rule out the possibility of participating in collective bargaining, congress argues that it should only take part when it could do so directly without intermediaries. These final debates on union strategy, unemployment, the press, prisoner international organisation, the CNT exiles, privileged relations with the FAI, education, ecology etc recieved little attention and were passed over hurriedly.
The main impression created by the conference was one of disarray and division. Doubtless the purified CNT may still play a role as a bunker for the revolutionary opposition, but given its sectarianism, its lack of democratic debate, and maximalism, it is doubtful if it can play a role as the centre for an opposition.
The congress has confirmed the splintering of the CNT. In the weeks that followed entire regions refused to accept the result of the conference. On 26 and 27 January a national meeting of unions declared that it did not recognise the new general secretary and set up structures to permit coordination between these unions, including the appearence of the paper "CNT"
A national plenum followed in Zarragozza where the unions represented decided that the process of appeal against conference decision was over of only recognising the secretariat elected at the plenum, and to regard as exterior to the CNT all those who had sabotaged its democratic functioning (including Bundia, the General Secret Secretary elected at the December congress, and the FAI exiles). It was decided to prepare for a congress on the 25, 26, 27 and 28 of July to restore a democratic structure and to plan a union strategy.
These militants have been attacked as fascists, marxists and reformists. It has been alleged that they are a small minority acting outside the factories. Certain "anarchosynicalists" have attacked and ransacked the offices of unions in opposition, like the "Water, Gas and Electricity" in Barcelona in mid-January, and the entertainments industry union in Barcelona in the beginning of March.
The worst incident was-on the 16th March, when 60 "anarchosyndicalists" attacked the office of the CNT in Maturo, near Barcelona, where a regional plenum of the unions in opposition was being held. Firing shots in the air and laying about them with iron bars, they wounded several militants, including Enrique Marcos, the former general secretary, and a militant of Maturo who risks losing an eye.
Far too many people who tried to pull the CNT out of the crisis it was in were expelled by those who are tragically incapable of anything else other than threats and aggression, expulsions and fixed ideology.
Today the comrades who did not recognise the congress are trying to construct an organisation capable of real debate and real union strategy. They are united in the need to construct an organisation based on worker's democracy and affirming its attatchment to the libertarian workers' movement. Their political positions are not as yet well developed, but we must support them in their desire to confront problems in practice and without sectarianism. If these comrades reappropriate the CNT, then we still support the CNT. We have political differences with these comrades, but they are differences that can be argued in debate.
Some lessons to be drawn from the disarray of the CNT are that:
1) Revolutionary strategy for unions must be dialectical: it must advance the general level of class consciousness towards revolutionary goals by drawing on the strength of the class as a whole. The small impact that the CNT made was due to its support for factory assemblies in the period 1976-78, its fall is due to its failure to find a realistic policy in a period of downturn of class struggle where it should have played a decisive role in the struggle for worksharing against unemployment.
2) The policy of the purist orthodox anarchists is vanguardistic, since it places the needs of their small groups above that of class struggle.
3) The disarray of the CNT flows from the ideological confusion of the Spanish working class as a whole - the massive apathy developed by the reformists and the government has defused the radicalisation following on from the dismantling of Francoism.
Terry Sheen and Billy Williams