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20th century Analytic theory Anarchism Books Capitalism Direct democracy Europe Socialism Statism - Representationism Strategic theory

The Anarchist Collectives (1974)

Workers’ Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939
Author(s)

Sam Dolgoff (editor)

Murray Bookchin (introduction)

Contents

“What are these basic principles of workers’ self-management?

Let us go through them briefly.

By definition, “self-management” is self-rule. It excludes rule over others–domination of man by man. It excludes not only the permanent, legally sanctioned authority of the state through its coercive institutions but demands the very extirpation of the principle of the state from within the unofficial associations (miniature states) of the people : from within the unions, from the places of work, and from within the myriad groupings and relations which make up society.

By definition, “self-management” is the idea that workers (all workers, including technicians, engineers, scientists, planners, coordinators–all) engaged in providing goods and services can themselves efficiently administer and coordinate the economic life of society. This belief must of necessity be based upon three inseparable principles :

1) faith in the constructive and creative capacity not of an elite class of “superior” individuals but of the masses–the much maligned “average man”;

2) autonomy (self-rule);

3) decentralization and coordination through the free agreement of federalism.

By definition, “self-management” means that workers are equal partners in a vast network of interlocking cooperative associations embracing the whole range of production and distribution of goods and the rendering of services. It must of necessity be based upon the fundamental principle of free communism, that is, the equal access to and sharing of, goods and services, according to needs.

The contemporary significance of the Spanish Revolution lies not so much in the specific measures improvised by the urban socialized industries and the agrarian collectives (most of them outdated by the cybernetic-technological revolution) but in the application of the fundamental constructive principles of anarchism or free socialism to the immediate practical problems of the Spanish social revolution.

These principles are beginning to be understood more and more today. It is hoped that this collection will contribute to that understanding.”

Sam Dolgoff

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Dolgoff, Sam

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20th century Analytic theory Anarchism Books Capitalism Direct democracy Europe Socialism Statism - Representationism Strategic theory

The Struggle against the State & Other Essays (1996)

Author(s)

Nestor Makhno

Alexandre Skirda (editor)

Contents

“The fact that the modern State is the organizational form of an authority founded upon arbitrariness and vio­lence in the social life of toilers is independent of whether it may be ‘bourgeois’ or ‘proletarian’.

It relies upon op­pressive centralism, arising out of the direct violence of a minority deployed against the majority. In order to enforce and impose the legality of its system, the State resorts not only to the gun and money, but also to potent weapons of psychological pressure. With the aide of such weapons, a tiny group of politicians enforces psychological repression of an entire society, and, in particular, of the toiling masses, conditioning them in such a way as to divert their atten­tion from the slavery instituted by the State.

[…] The final and utter liquidation of the State can only come to pass when the struggle of the toilers is oriented along the most libertarian lines possible, when the toilers will themselves determine the structures of their social ac­tion. These structures should assume the form of organs of social and economic self-direction, the form of free ‘anti­authoritarian’ soviets.

The revolutionary workers and their vanguard – the anarchists – must analyze the nature and structure of these soviets and specify their revolutionary functions in advance. It is upon that, chiefly, that the posi­tive evolution and development of anarchist ideas in the ranks of those who will accomplish the liquidation of the State on their own account in order to build a free society, will be dependent.”

Nestor Makhno

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20th century Analytic theory Anarchism Books Europe Feminism Patriarchy

Free Women of Spain (1991)

Author(s)

Martha Ackelsberg

Contents

“In 1936, groups of women in Madrid and Barcelona founded Mujeres Libres, an organization dedicated to the liberation of women from their ‘triple enslavement to ignorance, as women, and as producers’. Although it lasted for less than three years (its activities in Spain were brought to an abrupt halt by the victory of Franco’s forces in February 1939), Mujeres Libres mobilized over 20,000 women and developed an extensive network of activities designed to empower individual women while building a sense of community.

Like the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement in which these women were rooted, Mujeres Libres insisted that the full develop­ment of women’s individuality was dependent upon the development of a strong sense of connection with others.

In this respect, as in a number of others, Mujeres Libres represents an alternative to the individualistic per­spectives characterizing mainstream feminist movements of that time and of our own.”

Martha Ackelsberg

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