Unit 13: Going Global - International Organisation, 1872-1922
This Unit is about the attempts to organise a revolutionary international in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. From the fall of the First International in the early 1870s (see Unit 3), the desire for a truly revolutionary international organisation gathered strength. Even at this early stage, labour activists were aware that capitalism was an international system that could not be fought within national boundaries alone. As revolutionary syndicalism exploded onto the international labour scene from the early 1900's onwards, the desire increasingly became an imperative. Only an international organisation could organise effective global solidarity, co-ordinate the offensive against capitalism, and develop the tactics of anarcho-syndicalism by sharing experiences between local organisations. The need for such a body became increasingly urgent as reformist international organisations began to emerge, which the syndicalists perceived as diverting workers from the real struggle against capitalism.
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Unit 14: Anarcho-syndicalism in Britain, 1914-30
In this Unit, we return to Britain, picking up the development of syndicalism from where we left off in Unit 6 - the First World War. The outbreak of war had a profound effect on the revolutionary syndicalist movement, and on the workers' movement in Britain as a whole. By 1914, the huge membership of militant, active workers' organisations had become a major threat to the privileges of the ruling class.
Rather than attempt to document the entire movement, in this unit we attempt to provide an in-depth case study mainly of one industrial sector - that of engineering. This sector is chosen because, after an initial decline, syndicalism re-emerged within engineering in the form of the Shop Stewards and Works Committee Movement. In this Unit, we trace the rise of this movement and the part syndicalism played within it.
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Unit 15: Spain, 1868-1936 - Build-up to revolution
It was in Spain that anarcho-syndicalist ideas came to fruition. In particular, the period of revolution and civil war in 1936-9 constitutes, in many ways, the birthplace of modern anarcho-syndicalism (see Units 16-18). Here, we examine the build up and background to this period.
In an attempt to assess the nature, growth and success - as well as the failures - of the CNT, we look back at the political and social atmosphere of late 19th Century Spain, starting with the arrival of anarchist ideas in 1868. We then look at the changing fortunes of libertarian organisations up to the establishment of the CNT, and the crucial period of the late 1920s and 1930s.
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Unit 16: Spain - Culture, education, women and sexuality
As introduced in Unit 15, social and cultural issues were at the core of the anarcho-syndicalist movement in Spain, right from the start of the first anarchist unions in the early 1870s. The level of discussion - and disagreement - on topics such as education and sexuality was high around the turn of the Century, as Spain took the first faltering steps towards ‘modernisation'. Anarcho-syndicalists were outspoken in their opposition to both the intransigent traditionalist right, often backed by the Catholic Church, and the liberal bourgeois lobby, which held education as the basis for modernising the country.
By the 1930s, the CNT had developed an integrated and sophisticated revolutionary culture of free expression, along with an impressive number of local social and educational facilities. In this Unit, we examine culture, sexuality and education, in an attempt to highlight the character and importance of the social dimension to the revolutionary struggle in Spain.
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Unit 17: Spain 1936-39 - Revolution and civil war
This Unit is a short introduction to the Spanish Revolution and Civil War of 1936-39. Ideally, it should be read in conjunction with Units 15, 16 and 18, which deal with the events leading up to 1936, the cultural and social programme of the anarcho-syndicalists, and the collectives respectively. Following on from Unit 15 and intertwined with Units 16 and 18, this Unit provides a chronology and commentary, particularly on the political and military events of 1936-39.
Although many books and articles have been written on the Spanish Revolution, few attempt to draw practical lessons from it that we can apply to the modern world. This is one of the intentions of these four Units. This one is particularly concerned with how the state and forces of capitalism went about attacking the revolution and protecting their wealth and privilege, and how the revolutionary working class acted in trying to achieve the best outcome possible, given the prevailing situation.
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Unit 18: Spain - The Collectives
Some of the many social and cultural aspects of the run up to the Spanish Revolution are described in Unit 16, and the main events of the period are presented in Unit 17. Here, we turn our attention to the collectives, which lay at the heart of the socio-economic system established wherever anarcho-syndicalism was put into practice.
The collectives built by the CNT and the Spanish people remain, to this day, a most striking example of the possibilities of collective organisation and economy. Both the scale and pace of collective development (despite the rigours of fascist attack) and the confidence and zeal with which it was embraced are remarkable. While the achievements of this period were short-lived, one purpose of this Unit is to indicate how lessons learned from the Spanish collectives are still relevant today. Indeed, over 60 years on, collective organisation based on workers self-management of society on the Spanish model still offers a modern and real alternative to both capitalism and the Marxist state run economy.
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