Anarchy Works.pdf - Infoshop.org

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Anan::hy Works
Each section was administered by an engineer designated
by the union and a worker delegated by the general
membership. The delegations of the various sections
coordinated operations in a given area. While the sections
met separately to conduct their own specific operations,
decisions affecting the workers in general were made at
general membership meetings.
The engineers and technicians, rather than comprising an elite
group, were integrated with the manual workers. "The engineer,
for example, could not undertake an important project without
consulting the other workers, not only because responsibilities
were to be shared but also because in practical problems the manual
workers acquired practical experience which technicians often
lacked:' public transportation in Barcelona achieved greater selfsufficiency
too: before the revolution, two percent of maintenance
supplies were made by the private company, and the rest had to be
purchased or imported. Within a year after socialization, ninety
eight percent of repair supplies were made in socialized shops. "The
union also provided free medical services, including clinics and
home nursing care, for the workers and their families:'51
For better or worse, the Spanish revolutionaries also
experimented with Peasant Banks, Labor Banks, and Councils of
Credit and Exchange. The Levant Federation of Peasant Collectives
started a bank organized by the Bank Workers Union to help
farmers draw from a broad pool of social resources needed for
certain infrastructure- or resource-intensive types of farming.
The Central Labor Bank of Barcelona moved credit from more
prosperous collectives to socially useful collectives in need. Cash
transactions were kept to a minimum, and credit was transferred
51 All the quotes and statistics in the paragraph come from Sam Dolgofl',
The Anarchist Collectives, New York: Free Life Editions, 1974, pp. 88-92.
as credit. The Labor Bank also arranged foreign exchange, and
importation and purchase of raw materials. Where possible,
payment was made in commodities, not in cash. The bank was not a
for-profit enterprise; it charged only one percent interest to defray
expenses. Diego Abad de Santillan, the anarchist economist, said in
1936: "Credit will be a social function and not a private speculation
or usury ... Credit will be based on the economic possibilities of
society and not on interests or profit... The Council of Credit and
Exchange will be like a thermometer of the products and needs of
the country:'5Z In this experiment, money functioned as a symbol
of social support and not as a symbol of ownership-it signified
resources being transferred between unions of producers rather
than investments by speculators. Within a complex industrial
economy such banks make exchange and production more
efficient, though they also present the risk of centralization or
the reemergence of capital as a social force. Furthermore, efficient
production and exchange as a value should be viewed with suspicion,
at the least, by people interested in liberation.
There are a number of methods that could prevent institutions
such as labor banks from facilitating the return of capitalism,
though unfortunately the onslaught of totalitarianism from both
the fascists and Communists deprived Spanish anarchists of the
chance to develop them. These might include rotating and mixing
tasks to prevent the emergence of a new managing class, developing
fragmented structures that cannot be controlled at a central or
national level, promoting as much decentralization and simplicity
as possible, and maintaining a firm tradition that common
reSources and instruments of social wealth are never for sale.
But as long as money is a central fact of human existence,
myriad human activities are reduced to quantitative values and
value can be massed as power, and thus alienated from the activity
52 Ditto, pp. 75-76
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