Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
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The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo ( CNT ) is a confederation of anarcho-syndicalist trade unions in Spain . With around 2 million members, she was one of the most important protagonists of the resistance against General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War . In the course of this, it decisively initiated a libertarian revolution in the regions in which it had a corresponding membership base. After Franco's victory in 1939, the organization was broken up. She reorganized her resistance against Franquism in the underground and in exile, the latter especially in France. After Franco's death, it formed again in 1976, but without being able to pick up on the previous meaning. In its hundredth year of foundation (2010), the CNT had around 10,000 members. Today the CNT focuses on basic trade union activities in company groups with the aim of company self-administration.
history
Beginnings
The CNT was founded on November 1st, 1910 in Barcelona . It was a successful attempt to federate the anarcho-syndicalist individual trade unions at the national level and thus to form a counterweight to the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT). At that time it had around 30,000 members and its main organization was in Catalonia . One of the founding members of the CNT was Anselmo Lorenzo . At the first congress in 1911 a general strike was called, which led to the ban on the CNT until 1914. After the ban was lifted, it formed an action unit with the UGT. In 1917 both unions jointly called for a general strike.
A decline in demand with the end of the First World War in 1918 caused a crisis in Catalan industry and a deterioration in working conditions, which resulted in a boom for the CNT. The delegates to the Congress, which took place in Madrid in December 1919 , represented 705,512 workers, 424,578 of them from Catalonia, the industrial center of Spain. As early as the spring of 1919, a strike in an energy supply company in Barcelona, which was colloquially known as huelga de La Canadiense , resulted in a general strike that brought 70% of industrial production in Catalonia to a standstill and assumed the shape of a social revolution. In the course of this conflict, u. a. the eight-hour day will be enforced in Spain. The employers' associations reacted by forming pistolero groups that carried out attacks on trade unionists and workers. Numerous leaders of the CNT were murdered by pistoleros in the following years, for example Salvador Seguí, Secretary General of the Regional Federation of Catalonia on March 10, 1923 . The anarchist movement encountered the u. a. with the establishment of armed grupos de afinidad (affinity groups), which in turn murdered members of the Spanish political class. Against this background, the period between 1919 and 1923 is referred to as the remaining years .
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At the CNT congress in 1919 a provisional membership in the Third International was advocated, because at that time there was great sympathy in the organization for the October Revolution , which was expressed in the formation of its own current, the "communist-syndicalists". This trend included u. a. Andreu Nin . After the visit of the CNT delegate Ángel Pestaña to the Soviet Union and on his advice, the CNT left the Third International in 1922. The same year the CNT took part in the founding congress of the International Workers' Association (IAA) in Berlin .
Primo de Rivera dictatorship
The government of General Miguel Primo de Rivera , which came to power through a military coup in 1923 , chose a strategy of division vis-à-vis the two major Spanish trade union confederations. While she incorporated the UGT into social partnership institutions (Comités Paritarios) together with the employers' associations, she pursued a line of repression against the CNT. The mandate holders of the National Committee were arrested several times, thereby making the nationwide structure illegal. In 1924 the local federation of the CNT in Barcelona and its newspaper Solidaridad Obrera were also banned.
The continuing repression severely impaired the discussion and democratic decision-making of the grassroots members about various tactics and ideological ideas. In this context, tensions within the organization became increasingly apparent between the prominent advocates of violent resistance in the underground and those who advocated the establishment of open trade union practice under the conditions of this "gentle" dictatorship. Again, there was disagreement among these syndicalist anarchists as to which compromises to make. For example, Ángel Pestaña pleaded for the CNT to participate in the elections for the Comités Paritarios in order to legalize trade union work. A majority faction around the Secretary General of the National Committee Juan Peiró rejected this as a departure from the apolitical principles of Spanish syndicalism.
In 1927 grupos de afinidad of pure anarchists merged and founded the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI). They wanted to prevent the CNT from deviating from anarchist principles and shifting to a more moderate course. Following the tactic of trabazón (association), which u. a. was represented by Diego Abad de Santillán , the FAI organized itself parallel to the structures of the CNT at all levels and tried to influence their policies through action committees, each consisting of members of both organizations.
Second Spanish Republic
After the fall of the dictatorship, the CNT initially took a benevolent and passive position towards the Second Spanish Republic . This changed when the new center-left government tried to establish corporatist institutions by decree , as they already existed during the military dictatorship. The period from 1931 to 1933 was marked by numerous industry strikes and several general strikes. In January 1932 and in January and December 1933 there were uprisings in various regions that were quickly and sometimes brutally suppressed by the government, for example on January 10, 1933 in the Andalusian village of Casas Viejas , where 22 villagers came through after an attempted anarchist uprising the Guardia de Asalto were killed.
In the early 1930s, the CNT achieved a prominent position within the labor movement in Catalonia, Aragon and Andalusia . Within the union, however, the clashes between the representatives of a pure and those of a syndicalist anarchism came to a head. After the publication of the Manifesto of Thirty in 1931, in which the syndicalist faction criticized both the government and the insurgent strategy of the pure anarchists, these conflicts escalated. The faction close to the FAI finally prevailed and the so-called Treintistas were expelled and left the CNT. These opposition syndicates founded the Federación Sindicalista Libertaria (FSL) in 1934 .
In the black years of 1934 and 1935, after the electoral victory of the right-wing parties, the UGT radically changed its policy and now also aimed for a social revolution. In this context, she propagated a united front against fascism in Spain. The offer to cooperate was rejected by most of the CNT regional federations because they felt they were strong enough to carry out a libertarian revolution without the socialists. Only in Asturias was there intensive cooperation that culminated in the municipality of Asturias in October 1934 . The uprising was finally crushed by the military, around 1,500 insurgents died and 30,000 people were imprisoned across Spain.
The CNT was generally held responsible for the election victory of the right wing alliance in 1933, as it had called for a boycott of the elections. After the government of Alejandro Lerroux fell apart, it changed its position with regard to the elections in February 1936. However, it was not possible to agree on a common line. In addition to the staunch non-voters, others were of the opinion that it was left to the individual decision of the members whether to vote or not, while others again openly campaigned for the Popular Front . In the event of an election victory, the Popular Front promised u. a. an amnesty for political prisoners. She finally narrowly won the 1936 elections. The period after the Popular Front won the elections was marked by intense fighting between left and right forces, with the defeated right openly planning a military coup .
At the congress of the CNT, which took place in Zaragoza between May 1 and 15, 1936 , the organization decided to set up a u. a. Anarcho- communist framework program proposed by Federica Montseny , in which the Free Communes were given the role of the political foundation after a libertarian revolution. At this congress a u. a. Diego Abad de Santillán rejected an anarcho-collectivist alternative proposal that identified the foundations of the desired libertarian society in the factories. The FSL syndicates rejoined the CNT with this congress. In the course of this, there was a self-critical examination of the insurrectionalist tactics of previous years. As a result, the congress decided to focus the union forces more on concrete demands for an improvement in working conditions. At this congress the delegates represented 548,693 CNT members. The strongest regional federations were Andalusia (150,210) and Catalonia (178,085).
The libertarian movement in Spain in the summer of 1936 consisted of the CNT, FAI, the women's organization Mujeres Libres and the youth organization Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL).
Revolution and civil war
After the military rose against the republic on July 17, 1936, the CNT called for a nationwide general strike on July 18, which turned into a social revolution. After bloody clashes, the insurgent military were defeated on July 19 in Barcelona by organized workers' groups and units of the Guardia de Asalto and the Guardia Civil that were loyal to the republic . The following day the fighting in Madrid ended with the same result. The military coup was also unsuccessful in Valencia . In other parts of the country, however, the military prevailed. The structures of the CNT and other anti-fascist organizations were immediately smashed in these regions, and the active members of the anti-fascist organizations were executed in their thousands.
As early as 1934 after the failed attempt at insurrection in Asturias, clandestine defense committees (Comité de Defensa) were established in every district and in every village where the CNT and FAI were present , the task of which was to prepare the social revolution in their area in detail. They played an important role in suppressing the military coup. From these structures, the CNT-FAI militias were formed at the beginning of the war . Together with the militias of other anti-fascist organizations, they fought on the front against the insurgent military. The most famous militia was the Durruti column .
In contrast to the republican and communist forces who wanted to win the war first, the members of the CNT advocated the slogan that the war and the revolution are inextricably linked. In regions where the CNT had a strong membership base, collective self-government in industry and agriculture was promoted. Whether and how the factory workforce and (small) farmers participate in the collectivizations was usually left to them. As a result, various libertarian and socialist collectivization concepts were implemented in the individual municipalities. Agricultural and industrial federations were founded supra-regionally, which coordinated the collectivizations and u. a. Managed compensation funds (Cajas de Compensación) from which less profitable collectives received support. Committees, in which representatives of the anti-fascist organizations sat, coordinated the political processes in the villages and towns. In the collectivized areas, work and consumption were regulated according to the motto: "Everyone according to his possibilities, everyone according to his needs."
The CNT had between 1.5 and 2 million members during the civil war. In Catalonia, at that time the stronghold of revolutionary syndicalism in Spain, she was offered the takeover of government by the President Lluís Companys i Jover in July 1936 . It initially refused, but from November of the same year appointed four ministers in the central government under Prime Minister Largo Caballero (Juan Peiró, Federica Montseny, Juan García Oliver , Juan López Sánchez ) and also participated in the Generalitat de Catalunya (including Diego Abad de Santillán). Joining the government was a break with the apolitical principles of the CNT, but it was seen as necessary because, in the context of the civil war, it was not sufficiently successful to establish powerful grassroots democratic structures that could replace the central state. Supported and politically influenced by the Soviet Union, the state structures regained increasing influence. The Caballero government increasingly went on a confrontation course with the CNT, which culminated in the May events . After Juan Negrín came to power , the Spanish Revolution came to an end. Despite their steadily growing membership base, the CNT and FAI continuously lost political power in the course of the civil war.
Franquism
After the victory of Franquism in 1939, the CNT was banned and all of its property was confiscated. Many of its members went into exile in France. In the same year, the Exile CNT and the Movimiento Libertario Español (MLE) were constituted in Paris , to which the Exile FAI and the Exile FIJL also belonged. The MLE had to operate covertly during the occupation of Northern France in World War II , but was able to appear again openly from 1945. Domestically, between 1939 and 1951, every attempt to rebuild the organization in illegality was thwarted. Every national committee that was constituted during this period was arrested. At the beginning of the 1950s, the CNT hardly existed in Spain.
In the 1940s, various guerrilla groups formed in the vicinity of the MLE . They took part in the Resistance and finally in the liberation of France. From the end of the Second World War, the MLE prepared for an invasion of Spain. At this point there was hope that the Allies would also eliminate the regime in Spain. Guerrillas such as Josep Lluís Facerías and Francesc Sabaté attacked banks and factories and murdered representatives of the French institutions. At the end of the 1940s, most of the libertarian guerrilla groups in Spain were smashed and the Western powers came to terms with the Franco regime in the context of the beginning of the Cold War . The MLE then ended the armed struggle.
Transición
With the death of the dictator Franco in November 1975, the Transición began , the transition phase from Franquism to a parliamentary monarchy . On February 29, 1976, the first CNT meeting took place in Barcelona. It marked the beginning of the reconstruction of the organization across Spain, to which u. a. Luis Andrés Edo made an important contribution. During 1976 and 1977 the CNT organized mass rallies in various cities. On July 2, 1977 alone, over 200,000 people took part in a rally on Montjuic in Barcelona. Between 1976 and 1979 the CNT was able to organize cross-company strikes, particularly in Catalonia. During this period it was also the most influential organization of the radical opposition to the uninterrupted transition from military dictatorship to parliamentary monarchy that the political class was striving for. As such, she opposed the Moncloa Pact , among other things .
After the decades of dictatorship, in which the libertarian movement in Spain could not operate freely, no unified movement came out to the public. Rather, different, mutually contradicting currents formed within the CNT. The influences of the New Social Movements after 1968 contrasted with a traditional libertarian way of thinking that had been cultivated over the years, especially by the older generation in exile. The newly constituting movement lacked the experience of dealing constructively with these contradictions. In 1978 there was a legal process against members of the CNT, the so-called Caso Scala . They were accused of having carried out an arson attack on the Scala ballroom in Barcelona. Four workers were killed in the fire, two of whom were CNT members. It was not until 1981 that it became known that a police agent provocateur was responsible for the crime.
The first post-Francoist congress of the CNT in December 1979 in Madrid was clearly marked by the decline between internal tensions and public discrediting. The delegates spoke for 30,288 members. The strongest region was still Catalonia (16,795), followed by the province of Valencia (3,614). As recently as September 1977, 116,900 members were members of the Confederation. In general, there was a strong process of depoliticization within Spanish society. The internal conflicts culminated at the congress with the question of whether the CNT should participate in the elections for the newly installed operating committees and take advantage of the associated state subsidies. The congress spoke out against what the defeated group took as an opportunity to found its own organization. This was also called the CNT (Congress of Valencia) until 1989, when a court ruled that only the original CNT could claim the name, the compensation payments for the expropriations of 1939 and the historical archive of the union, which is located in the International Institute for Social history is located in Amsterdam. The split then changed its name to Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT).
today
On October 3, 2017, the Regional Federation of Catalonia and Balearic Islands of the CNT, together with the CGT and various Catalan base unions, called for a one-day general strike. The union alliance mobilized against the restriction of fundamental rights by the Spanish central government, which had come about in the course of the independence referendum on October 1st . In addition, the calling unions opposed the increasing deterioration in working conditions during the previous years, for which they blamed the labor market reforms of 2010 and 2012 in particular. The general strike brought the logistics sector, in particular the Catalan ports and local public transport, the civil service, agriculture, trade, as well as education and health to a standstill. In the manufacturing sector, the call to strike was followed to a much lesser extent.
Alignment
The CNT's unique selling point compared to other Spanish unions is its boycott of the elections to the works committees, as well as the related refusal to accept state subsidies and the exemption of officials. According to its own information, it is financed exclusively from the contributions of its members and focuses on basic union activities in company groups. The CNT promotes the founding and networking of self-managed businesses. Against this background, it describes itself as the only union in Spain that is independent of the political class.
organization
The foundation Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo (FAL) is close to the CNT. The union’s national newspaper CNT is published quarterly. She also publishes the theory magazine Estudios every year. The newspaper of the Catalan CNT is the Soli or Solidaridad Obrera .
In December 2016, the CNT, together with the Free Workers' Union (FAU) and the Unione Sindacale Italiana (USI), were expelled from the IAA after these three member sections had spoken out in favor of “reforming anarcho-syndicalism on an international level”. In May 2018 she was a founding member of the International Confederation of Workers (IKA) with six other unions .
In France there is an anarcho-syndicalist union of the same name, the Confédération nationale du travail .
literature
- Diego Abad de Santillán / Juan Peiró: Economy and Revolution (Ed. Thomas Kleinspehn). Vienna 1986, ISBN 3-900-434-09-3 .
- Walther L. Bernecker : Anarchism and Civil War. On the history of the social revolution in Spain 1936–1939 . Verlag Graswurzelrevolution , Nettersheim 2006. ISBN 3-939045-03-9 .
- Walther L. Bernecker: 'Pure' or 'Syndicalist' anarchism? On the tension between libertarian organizations in Spain . In: Wolfgang Braunschädel (Hrsg.): Archive of resistance and work . No. 8, Verlag Germinal, Bochum 1987. ISSN 0177-9400 and ISBN 3-88663-408-6 .
- Pablo César Carmona Pascual: Transiciones - De la Asamblea Obrera al proceso de Pacto Social. CNT (1976-1981) . Madrid 2004, ISBN 84-86864-63-1 .
- CNT-AIT (ed.): Solidaridad Obrera - 100 años de anarcosindicalismos . Barcelona 2010. ISSN 1887-8660 .
- Bernd Drücke , Luz Kerkeling, Martin Baxmeyer (Ed.): Abel Paz and the Spanish Revolution . Publisher Edition AV, Frankfurt / M. 2004, pp. 13-32. ISBN 3-936049-33-5 .
- Beltrán Roca Martínez: Renaissance of Anarcho-Syndicalism. An investigation using the example of the CNT Seville . FAU Moers, Syndicate A Medienvertrieb, Moers 2007.
- José Peirats : The CNT in the Spanish Revolution . Christie Books, Hastings 2005/2006.
- Heleno Saña : The Libertarian Revolution. The anarchists in the Spanish Civil War . Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2001. ISBN 3-89401-378-8 .
- Dietrich Peters: The Spanish anarcho-syndicalism . Ulm 1989.
- Augustin Souchy : Night over Spain. Anarcho-Syndicalists in Revolution and Civil War. A factual report . Nevertheless publisher , Frankfurt am Main 2004. ISBN 3-922209-51-3 .
- Horst Stowasser : Anti-aging for anarchy? Libertarian Barcelona, 70 years after the Spanish Revolution. A report . Edition AV, Lich / Hessen 2007. ISBN 978-3-936049-72-5 .
- Arturo Zoffmann Rodriguez: "Marxist and Proudhonist at the same time": The Communist-Syndicalists of the Spanish CNT 1917-1924 , in: Work - Movement - History , Issue 2017 / III, pp. 74–96.
Movie
- Un Pueblo en Armas - People in Arms by John Pallejá and Louis Frank. 48 minutes, production: YOU (Sindicato de la Industria del Espectáculo de Barcelona), Spain 1937.
- Durruti - biography of a legend by Hans Magnus Enzensberger . 92 minutes, production: Westdeutscher Rundfunk , Germany 1972.
- Vivir la Utopia. El anarquismo en Espana - Live the utopia! by Juan Gamero. TVE, Spain 1997.
- Durruti in the Spanish Revolution by Paco Rios and Abel Paz . 55 minutes, production: Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo, Madrid 1998.
- No god, no lord! A Little History of Anarchy , Part II by Tancrède Ramonet and Patrick Barberis. 72 minutes, production: Temps noir ARTE Edition, France 2013.
- Economia col·lectiva - Europe's last revolution by Eulàlia Comas. 66 minutes, Spain 2014.
- Memoria Viva - Living memory by Antonio J. Garcia de Quirós Rodríguez. 120 minutes, production: Guerillart and CNT, Spain 2014.
- Assassinations on Franco - resistance against a dictator by Daniel Guthmann and Joachim Palutzki. 44 minutes, production: Second German Television , Germany 2016.
Web links
- Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT)
- Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) in the Lexicon of Anarchy
- The "Manifesto of Thirty"
- Online archive of the Libertarian Press of Spain until 1939
Individual evidence
- ↑ Una nueva generación revitaliza el sindicato - CNT-AIT: un siglo de utopía rojinegra . In: Periodico Diagonal , April 30, 2010, accessed March 24, 2018.
- ↑ Arturo Zoffmann Rodriguez: "Marxist and Proudhonist at the same time": The Communist-Syndicalists of the Spanish CNT 1917-1924 , in: Work - Movement - History , Issue 2017 / III, pp. 74–96.
- ↑ Bernecker: Anarchism and Civil War , Nettersheim 2006, p. 22. ISBN 3-939045-03-9 .
- ↑ Movilización masiva en Catalunya en la huelga general del 3 de octubre . In: El Salto Diario, October 3, 2017, accessed November 5, 2017.
- ↑ Jan Marot: Hesitation on the home straight . In: Jungle World , 2017/40.
- ^ Declaration of the FAU Congress 2016. FAU, May 17, 2016, accessed on October 2, 2019 .
- ^ Founding of the International Workers' Confederation (IAC) in Parma. In: fau.org. May 13, 2018, accessed October 2, 2019 .