Another general assembly was called. The workers’ committee made it clear that it considered the company’s attitude absurd. The assembled workers decided that they were not prepared to suffer hardships to benefit the company’s shareholders, who had been making considerable profits for years; if someone was to make sacrifices, it would have to be the capitalists. By acclamation, the workers decided to collectivize the factory.
—It was while this was going on that the regional committee called me to take up the post. My knowledge of economics was very limited, I was a worker. I had never been in favour of the CNT entering any sort of official organization or government. Either we made our total revolution or remained in opposition. All social improvements come from the pressure of the masses in the streets and nowhere else. Politics corrupts, power corrupts …
Meanwhile, a works council had been set up and had taken over the factory’s management, though leaving the former managers in their posts. One of the first steps taken was the abolition of piece-work, an objective which the CNT textile unions had long been fighting for. The first week, production fell by 40 per cent.
—We had calculated that if it fell by no more than 25 per cent it would be possible to fix a fair wage for all. But 40 per cent was impossible, it spelt the collective’s collapse. We called a general assembly, called on the workers not to fail the collective attempts being made by the Spanish proletariat to achieve social justice. For several weeks production did not rise, we had to go round the shop floor, haranguing the women workers. In the end they managed to get production up to 70 per cent of its former level …
He noticed one big difference in the workforce after collectivization. Prior to the war, none of the workers ‘knew how to talk’; if there was a claim to be made, he or one of his union companions had to meet the management. While the workers’ control committee functioned, the mass of the workforce still didn’t speak up. But the moment the factory was collectivized and there were general assemblies, everyone started to talk.
—It was amazing, everyone turned into a parrot, everyone wanted to say what he or she thought and felt. They obviously felt themselves in charge now and with the right to speak for themselves …
The CNT regional committee rang him again; there were very few cadres worthy of the CNT’s complete trust, and he was needed.
—I spent several hours in a state of terrible nervousness. I knew I didn’t have sufficient education to be in charge of the economy. I knew, too, in the revolutionary situation we were living through, when the workers had to take over the economy, that such problems as mine were bound to arise, especially when most of the working class was illiterate. I’d gone to work hardly knowing how to read or write, I’d rebelled when I saw the injustices done to the workers, especially the women. I’d joined the dyers’ union, as it then was, and made friends with anarcho-syndicalists, vegetarians, nudists. I’d grown up in that sort of atmosphere. I never smoked, I never touched alcohol, I spent my life working and studying peacefully with my compañera; I had the opportunity of becoming a businessman, a foreman, but I always refused. I lived by my work, I never exploited others. I was an anarchist, but for all that I abhor violence. I was always opposed to the pre-war attempts by small groups to make the libertarian revolution by violent means. I was not a treintista, but I believed that the revolution had to spring from the proletariat as a whole, and that a great effort had to be made to raise the proletariat’s level of understanding so that it would be prepared for the revolution.
From the age of thirteen, when I first joined the CNT, I held the belief that for man to live in conformity with the laws of nature, to live with mutual respect, the exploitation of man by man must end. To live healthily, to enjoy a tranquil conscience, a man must live soberly …
When he got to the Economics Council, Joan Fàbregas informed him that he was to be its Acting President. Within a month, he was presenting the draft collectivization decree for discussion. The debate lasted until 3 a.m. It was heated.
—The PSUC and Esquerra fought extremely hard to reduce the number of firms liable for collectivization, while the CNT–FAI held out for the most radical decree possible.13 The reason the CNT had agreed to collectivization was that we could not socialize, as was our aim. The workers, as a matter of life and death, had taken over the factories – but the victory was not exclusively the CNT’s. We couldn’t, in consequence, take over and control the whole Spanish economy, couldn’t socialize …
Collectivization brought order to the chaotic situation which had arisen as a result of individual unions taking over enterprises, in his view. All the parties and organizations solemnly agreed to respect the letter and spirit of the new law; ‘but within three months the republican parties were systematically obstructing it; and soon afterwards, the communists were sabotaging it’.
Why had the CNT made any concessions?
—Because of our original concession; from the moment Companys offered the CNT power and it was turned down, the CNT’s position became tragic. Companys was a much cleverer politician than any of us. Once we had compromised – knowing that we couldn’t make our total revolution – every political party was able to manoeuvre and plot against us. They couldn’t stand us because we were opposed to politics. As the war began to go badly, as the social aspects of the revolution frightened England and France, who imposed their Non-intervention committee on us, so we slowly began to lose power.
International capitalism was determined to do everything in its power to force the failure of the collectivized Catalan economy. That is no idle statement. One day, talking with one of the Spanish former managers of my own company, I said I found it hard to understand why the British parent company had shown such intransigence – an intransigence which had led to the factory’s collectivization.
‘You’re a man of good faith, Capdevila,’ he said, ‘but a bit naïve. What seems absurd to you seems entirely natural to me. The Coats board recognized the justice of the workers’ proposals. But it isn’t a matter of a dispute between the company and its workers; what’s at stake is the life or death of international capital itself. All the capitalist monopolies have reached agreement to boycott the red zone and to give their unconditional support to Franco who represents the continuity of capitalism; the company has simply been carrying out this agreement … ’
He wasn’t wrong. I tried to reach agreement with two other international companies and they refused to discuss the matter or come to an agreement with their workers.14
As a member of the Economics Council, CAPDEVILA received a salary of 1,000 pesetas a month. The CNT regional committee took the decision that any CNT member who joined an official organization, and received a higher wage than in his previous job, should pay the balance to the committee. When he went to do so, after receiving his first month’s salary, he was told not to bother: ‘That was just an agreement, but it’s not being put into effect.’
—That wasn’t so important. The real problem was the possibilities of corruption that an official position afforded; the case of the man from Reus who offered me so much on every litre of olive oil if I would get him an export licence; the women who came in an attempt to save their husbands or brothers and would say, ‘Well, if we can’t settle the matter here, come to my house –’ And you knew very well what that proposition involved. I threw them out of my office. Once you compromised there was no end. All those dirty, sickening ways that politics bring with them and which result only in the people being swindled. I could have made millions – and I reached France without a céntimo in my pocket at the end of the war. I retained my morality to the very end …
* * *
With or without the collectivization decree’s blessing, the libertarian revolution was collectivizing or socializing everything from the textile industry to greyhound racing in Barcelona.
Textile manufacturing, Catalonia’s basic source of wealth, employing some 200,000 workers (nearly three times as many as in engineering, the seco
nd largest industry), was facing great problems. Dependent on importing the bulk of its raw material and on selling its finished products in the rest of Spain – one third of which approximately was now in insurgent hands – the industry had been in difficulties before the war started. When the workers took over España Industrial, one of Catalonia’s largest textile plants, they found only enough money in the company’s bank account to pay the 2,500 workers for a fortnight.15 Luis SANTACANA, the CNT militant in the firm who had proposed to a general assembly of the workers that they take over the factory because the directors and managers had fled, knew that the worker-managed enterprise had been saved only because they had discovered a considerable amount of stock in the factory, which they sold little by little as they needed money to pay the workers’ wages.
—That and war work saved us.16 During the whole three years, there was never a week when the workers didn’t receive their full wages, even if it had been possible to work only three days …
Although the factory had been taken over in the first flush of the revolution, it was not collectivized until the decree was published. There was little internal difference, in his view, between the two situations: the workers’ committee now became the works council on which – in contrast to the past – a Generalitat supervisor sat and reported every three months on the state of finance, stocks, production, etc. The most important difference was that the workers’ revolutionary conquest of their factories was now given legal status.
With one exception the workers’ committee and later works council members continued to work at their normal jobs, holding their meetings after work on Saturdays. The exception was a member delegated permanently to remain in the office on duty.
—Those who have alleged that collectivization meant there were a dozen bosses where before they had been one are simply not telling the truth. I felt myself a servant of the collective; I didn’t ask or expect any economic reward. At the technical level, I knew I wasn’t sufficiently trained to be one of those running the factory; I’d only had six months’ schooling in my life. But as far as social and economic – and to some degree even administrative – questions went, I felt capable enough. Any deficiencies I suffered from I believe I fully made up with will-power, enthusiasm and good faith … 17
Twenty factory technicians who had remained at their posts dealt with technical problems. ‘“Each one to his place and to his work”, had been the union’s call to the factory. We knew very well that the technicians were necessary to us if the factory was to continue in production, and in consequence they were given two seats on the works council. They were able to improve some of the antiquated machinery in the plant and build showers for the workers.’ The administrative staff also had two representatives on the council, while the manual workers had eight. Technicians and staff frequently found themselves out-voted 8–4.
Wage differentials were reduced, though not eliminated. Because of economic difficulties, it was impossible to raise the workers’ wages; instead, the technicians and staff were asked to lower theirs. They replied by proposing a 20 per cent cut.
—That was magnificent. Achieved without any violence on our part. The money saved was used to pay pensions to workers who should have retired long ago, but couldn’t because there was no social security or pension scheme. They received full wages in retirement …
SANTACANA was a believer in the ‘single’ wage as being the ‘most perfect in terms of economic justice’. If needs were equal why should not wages be equal?
—We libertarians have a maxim which is binding: each shall produce according to his abilities, each shall consume according to his needs. Production is like a clock – each part is interdependent, if one part fails the clock will no longer show the hour. It’s very difficult to determine which of the workers fulfilling so many different tasks is the most important. The miner digging out the coal, the worker transporting it to the factory, the stoker shovelling it into the factory furnace? Without any of them the process would stop. All should be paid the same wage; the only difference should depend on whether a man is single or married and has a family; in the latter case, he should get so much extra per dependant. Money, after all, has only a representational value; real value is what is produced …
But the ‘single’ wage could not be introduced in his plant because it was not made general throughout the industry. Women in the factory continued to receive wages between 15 per cent and 20 per cent lower than men, and manual workers less than technicians.
—Inevitably, collectivization could not resolve all problems; there were people who lacked self-discipline, a consciousness of what was demanded of them. There was a mechanic who stole a spanner. I told him he was no longer stealing from the capitalists, he was robbing himself and his fellow-workers. Under the old regime, he would have been sacked on the spot. ‘Please, please, don’t steal again’ …
Within a fortnight the man was back and SANTACANA had to take disciplinary action. The collective, he said, would not sack him because he had children and needed his weekly wage. Instead, they were going to move him to a new section, the cleaning department. But that would require public notification.
—‘You will write your full name on the blackboard, underneath it that you have stolen two spanners and that is the reason for your move to a section where you will have no chance of further theft.’ ‘No, no,’ he cried, ‘not the blackboard.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it can’t hurt you to write the truth up there.’ There were no more cases of indiscipline; the threat of the blackboard was sufficient …
The works council called bi-monthly or quarterly assemblies18 of all the workers in a cinema or theatre to explain the current state of production, stocks, resources etc. After three or four months of the workers taking over, shortages of raw materials (the price of which had in some cases doubled owing to the fall of the republican peseta) had reduced the factory to a three-day week. Added to the shortage of cotton and dye-stuffs was the shortage of coal; the difficulties of receiving supplies from Asturias were almost insuperable, and the factory had on occasion to fire its boilers with wood. The CNT textile union looked after the sales as well as the import of raw materials for the factory, although smaller collectives were able to do their own deals with other collectives or even directly with individuals.
Under the decree, the works councils were considered to be ‘assuming the functions of the former board of directors’ and were answerable to the collective’s workers. Each council appointed a managing director to run the plant on a day-to-day basis. The first director appointed by the España Industrial works council turned out to be unsatisfactory, and the technical section was asked to put forward a new candidate. They suggested a weaving technician, a man of liberal ideas, who was duly accepted.
Under the decree, the works council could be dismissed by the workers in a general assembly, or by the general industrial council in the case of ‘manifest incompetence’. In fact, it rarely happened.
—Had such a vote of censure ever taken place in my mill, I would have been the first to have given up my post, and all the rest of us the same, I’m sure. The committee was not a dictatorship, it was elected by the base; and it was only right that those who had the right to elect should have the right to sack. Time was always put aside for ‘any other business’ at the end of general assemblies for any worker who wanted to criticize the way things were being run, or move a vote of censure. It never happened in my plant – and I don’t know of any cases in any other factories. In any event, half the council was renewable by election every year under the decree …
The question of workers’ trade union representation within the collective led, in SANTACANA’S view, to some confusion. Before the war each factory had had a trade union committee; in many factories when they were taken over, it was this committee which was elected en bloc as the new workers’ control committee or works council. Frequently, no new trade union committee was set up.
—Although it should have b
een, so that the workers still had their direct union representation to take up any grievance on the shop floor. It was a failure very common to the Barcelona area, a failure to understand the real situation created by a union moving from the stage of class struggle to that of self-management, a confusion between the two roles …
The workers of a particular mill section elected their own foremen; the latter were not permitted to earn more than they had before, but were relieved of direct work tasks. The foremen liaised on technical matters between the section and the works council.
Towards the end, when the factory was hardly able to work at all, the workers came in on Fridays to collect their pay. Few then turned out for the general assemblies – ‘less from apathy than that they were out searching for food’ – until the works council announced that all who didn’t turn up would lose a day’s pay.
But those sombre days were still in the future. Some of the problems facing workers in newly formed collectives were experienced in the department stores, which Joan FERRER, secretary of the CNT commercial employees’ union, was able to observe closely.
—It came as a psychological shock to some workers to find themselves suddenly freed from capitalist tutelage. Exchanging one individualism for another, they frequently believed that, now that the owners had gone, they were the new owners. Though affecting white-collar workers in this instance, the problem was by no means confined to them …
As soon as the decree came into force, his union withdrew from the running of the stores since the concept of collectivization did not, in principle, admit union-management. This, FERRER felt, was an advantage, for the employees, who had to elect their own works council, now felt more directly involved in the running of the stores. Being at the orders of a union was, in his view, much the same as being at the orders of the state. Though the workers often felt themselves the owners, they also defended the enterprise as though it were their own.
Blood of Spain Page 31
