In Germany, however, where the moderate wing of political socialism had attained power [1], socialism, in its long years of absorption with routine parliamentary tasks, had become so bogged down that it was no longer capable of any creative action whatever.
Even a bourgeois paper like the Frankfurter Zeitung felt obliged to confirm that “the history of European peoples had not previously produced a revolution that has been so poor in creative ideas and so weak in revolutionary energy.”
The mere fact that a party with a larger membership than any other of the various Labour parties in the world, which was for many years the strongest political body in Germany, had to leave the field to Hitler and his gang without any resistance speaks for itself and presents an example of helplessness and weakness which can hardly be misunderstood.
One has only to compare the German situation of those days with the attitude of the anarcho-syndicalist labour unions in Spain and especially in Catalonia, where their influence was strongest, to realise the whole difference between the labour movement of these two countries.
When in July, 1936 the conspiracy of the fascist army leaders ripened into open revolt, it was by the heroic resistance of the National Federation of Labour (CNT) and the Anarchist Federation of Iberia (FAI) [2] that the fascist uprising in Catalonia was put down within a few days, ridding this most important part of Spain of the enemy and frustrating the original plan of the conspirators to take Barcelona by surprise.
The workers could then not stop half-way; so there followed the collectivisation of the land and the taking over of the plants by the workers’ and peasants’ syndicates. This movement, which was released by the initiative of the CNT and FAI with irresistible power, overran Aragon, the Levante and other sections of the country and even swept along with it a large part of the unions of the Socialist Party in the General Labour Union (UGT).
This event revealed that the anarcho-syndicalist workers of Spain not only knew how to fight, but that they were also filled with the constructive ideas which are so necessary in the time of a real crisis. It is to the great merit of libertarian socialism in Spain that since the time of the First International it has trained the workers in that spirit which treasures freedom above all else and regards the intellectual independence of its adherents as the basis of its existence.
It was the passive and lifeless attitude of the organised workers in other countries, who put up with the policy of non-intervention of their governments that led to the defeat of the Spanish workers and peasants after a heroic struggle of more than two and one half years.
![[1] Friedrich Ebert’s Social Democrats](/sites/default/files/inline-images/-1-friedrich-ebert-social-democrats.jpg)
[1] Rocker is referring here to the period shortly after World War One, which saw parliament dominated by Friedrich Ebert’s Social Democrats.
[2] The CNT was the largest anarchist union ever created, claiming a membership of up to 3 million people at its height. The FAI was a grouping within the wider CNT which was formed to prevent it sliding into bureaucracy or rightwards and exercised a considerable level of control during the Civil War – though prominent FAI figures would later take senior government posts.