Meanwhile, the logic of “circumstances” induced the leadership of the CNT to take the following step: it began to seek ways to participate in the direction of military-political affairs, hoping this would help to consolidate the revolutionary conquests.

The representatives of the CNT remained in the government until May 1937. The result of this “passage into power” turned out to be catastrophic for Spanish anarchosyndicalism. Its ministers were able neither to bring about an improvement in the military situation, nor stop the assault on the revolutionary conquests. Montseny publicly acknowledged the failure of participation in the government, and López stressed the impossibility of any kind of achievement in a situation where the other economic posts were in the hands of communists and right-wing socialists.

Many researchers who belong to the Marxist tendency have attempted to lay all the blame for the defeat of the Spanish Revolution on the anarcho-syndicalist movement, maintaining that the governmental collaboration of leaders of the CNT and FAI was a consequence of anarchist ideology which rejects the taking of political power by the workers. [1] However such a viewpoint is untenable.

The international anarcho-syndicalist movement in 1936- 1939 was torn between all out practical solidarity with the Spanish Revolution and criticism of the policies of the leading activists of the CNT. Besnard, the General Secretary of the IWA from 1936, visited revolutionary Spain three times in the autumn of that year and ultimately found a deep departure from the principles of anarcho-syndicalism which he associated with the regression of the Revolution.

Several months after the defeat in Spain, the Second World War broke out – completely paralyzing the activity of the IWA. The FORA, disturbed by the decisions of the 1938 congress, resolved to “temporarily cease to have relations with the IWA,” until the next congress re-examined these decisions.

The Argentine and Uruguayan anarchists continued to insist the functions of syndicates must cease as soon as revolution took place and, as a consequence, they rejected the notion of syndicalist control over working class militias.

Despite the hopes of the anarchists, World War II did not develop into social revolution; on the contrary, it led to the strengthening of national States and the establishment in Western Europe of a system of social partnership within the framework of “democratic corporatism” – collaboration between government, corporations, and trade unions. In Eastern Europe there were dictatorial regimes led by communist parties.

The panorama of world anarcho-syndicalism at the beginning of 21st century would be incomplete without a brief mention of analogous initiatives in contemporary Russia. The revival of the libertarian movement in the Soviet Union began in the era of perestroika at the end of the 1980’s. However the views of the first activists were often quite muddled, which can be explained to a large extent by the decades of isolation of self-educated oppositionists from the rest of the world.

The history of anarcho-syndicalism has been little studied. Social historians have been attracted in the first instance to social-democratic and communist trends in the workers’ movement; less frequently they have studied Christian and other “mainstream” trade unions. In the Soviet Union, under the conditions of the ideological monopoly of the CPSU, anarcho-syndicalism was perceived as an ideological enemy with which one must carry on an uncompromising struggle. In the books and brochures of V. Yagov, B. M. Leibzon, V. V. Komin, F. Ya. Polyansky, N. V. Ponomarev, S. N. Kanev, E. M.

The anarcho-syndicalist International is commonly referred to by one of several acronyms:

IWA International Workers’ Association (English, used in this book)
AIT Association Internationale des Travailleurs (French)
Asociacion Internacional de los Trabajadores (Spanish)
IAA Internationale Arbeiter-Assoziation (German)
MAT Mezhdunarodnaya Assotsiatsiya Trudyashchikhsya (Russian)