The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868-1936 by Murray Bookchin (PDF)

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The seminal history of Spanish anarchism: from its earliest inception to the organizations that claimed over two million members on the eve of the 1936 Revolution. Hailed as a masterpiece, it includes a new prefatory essay by the author.”I’ve read The Spanish Anarchists with the excitement of learning something new. It’s solidly researched, lucidly written, and admirably fair-minded… Murray Bookchin is that rare bird today, a historian.” —Dwight MacDonald”I have learned a great deal from this book. It is a rich and fascinating account… Most important, it has a wonderful spirit of revolutionary optimism that connects the Spanish anarchists with our own time.” —Howard ZinnMurray Bookchin has written widely on politics, history, and ecology. His books To Remember Spain: The Anarchist And Syndicalist Revolution Of 1936, The Ecology of Freedom, Post-Scarcity-Anarchism, The Ecology of Freedom, and Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm—are all published by AK Press.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: About the Author Murray Bookchin is cofounder of the Institute for Social Ecology. An active voice in the ecology and anarchist movements for more than forty years, he has written numerous books and articles, including: Anarchism, Marxism and the Future of the Left, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism, The Spanish Anarchists, The Ecology of Freedom, Urbanization Without Cities, and Re-enchanting Humanity. He lives in Burlington, Vermont.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Wonderful historian. Murray Bookchin has thoroughly and factually documented the history of Spanish Anarchism. His pursuit of knowledge even leads him to refreshingly recommend books on or relating to the Spanish Civil War by authors antipathetic to anarchism. He finally clarified to me why Spain had such a huge anticlerical movement, some of the contradictions within the CNT (like the treintistas), and exactly how the anarchists fought off the army in the early days of the war (taking guns from ships, sympathetic police, and sporting goods stores!)

⭐Bookchin gives a great account of the prelude to the CNT-FAI’s intervention in the Spanish Civil War using many historical records, accounts, etc. Worth every cent.

⭐Very disrespectful in sending me this damaged and heavily commented in ink. Either refund me totally for book and shipping or send in replacement acceptable book. This is a terribly damaged book. Heavily commented pages: dozens of pages with commentaries in ink on the margin and on the text. Send replacement and instructions to return it. Please refund me for both item and shipping expenses. Nabil Kassatly

⭐Murray Bookchin (1921-2006)wrote an important book which provided readers with the political and social events that led to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). His book titled THE SPANISH ANARCHISTS gives the historical background to the Spanish Civil War which erupted in 1936. Bookchin informed readers that the Spanish Civil War did not “just happen,” and events in the 19th. century resulted in this tragic, deadly Spanish Civil War.Bookchin began this study with the suprising reception that Bakunin (1814-1876)received when he visited Spain in 1868. What was suprising is that Bakunin did not know the Spanish language, but his political concepts were well received among the Spanish working classes or what some may refer to as the Spanish proletariat. Another foreigner(an Italian) whose ideas were popular was Fanelli (1827-1877). These two men articulated the frustrations of the Spanish working classes when the latter could not effectively do so.Bookchin gave readers some insight into the plight of working classes. They faced the usual problems of low wages, unsafe working conditions, and exceedinly long hours which were sometimes 18 hours a day. The Spanish poor workers faced the additional problems when technology replace manual labor. While the industrial workers were not originally a large section of the Spanish population, the problems of economic dislocation eventually affected the agricultural population.Historians are often perplexed by the anti-Catholicism of the eventual Spanish Anarchists and other Spanish revolutionary groups. Bookchin gave a good explanation of this resentmeent. For over a thousand years, the Spanish Catholic bishops, priests, monks, friars, etc. stood between the Spanish agricultural population and greedy landlords and Spanish royalty. When the Spanish Liberal Party confiscated the Catholic Church’s land in 1873 in an effort of “reform,” the Catholic hierarchy used the money they had and invested in real estate with all the speculation and corruption that often occurs with real estate booms and collapses. The Spanish farm workers who had been close to the rural villages and the village Catholic Church and priest, were suddenly dispossessed and went to industrial centers to find work while losing what social cohesion they had. Some of the Spanish Anarchists tried to oppose the debilitating effects by opposing patronizing brothels, opposing drinking, obscene language, etc. Their arguement was that such vices played into the hands of the capitialists who wanted a demoralized working class who were to unaware to complain.The problems that beseigned the Spanish “left” occured early after the visits of Bakunin and Fanelli. The Anarchists distrusted the Socialists, union leaders, Communists, etc. because the Anarchists distrusted any central bureacratic organization which often led to only to exchange of masters, bureaucratic blunders, corrpution, etc. Borkenau mentioned all of this because the divisions of the “left” aided their defeat in the Spanish Civil War.Bookchin mentions the numerous political parties and unstable political conditions in Spain especially after 1873. Liberal governments lost and regained power to royalists and vice versa. Assassinations and martial law became the order of the day. These tragic events culminated in the judicial murder of Ferrer (1859-1909). When he was shot without formal charge, he became a martyr. His execution brought severe criticism not only in Spain but from abroad. As an aside Ferrer started the Modern School Movement which became very popular in Europe and in the United States.Spain’s political instability continued, and a new Anarchist movement started in 1923. These men and women not only committed “Anarchism of the Deed,” they were knowledgeable, well organized, and effectively gained support in what appeared to be a disintegrating Spain. The previous Spanish governments regardless of political label (Monarchists, Liberals, Federalists, Carlists, etc.)never took account of the Spanish working classes. The CNT and the Spanish Anarchists did so, and Bookchin is clear the Anarchists effectively made a formidable force out of these people.Bookchin concluded this book with the Barcelona workers’ uprising in 1936. The installed Spanish Republic faced a military coup which was not new in Modern Spanish History. What was new was that masses of workers, some armed and some unarmed, attacked the military forces with such ferocity that the generals had to retreat.Bookchin wrote a solid book. However, he could have started this book with Spanish population who helped drive Napolean’s forces out of Spain between 1808-1813 (The Peninsular Campaign). The succeeding Spanish monarchs and other liberal ministers refused to acknowledge these people. The Carlist Wars which started in 1833 would have been a better introduction to subsequent Spanish History. Bookchin could have made a point that the Spanish Anarchists and other Spanish “lefists” may have blundered when they massacred Catholic priests, nuns, etc. While the Spanish Catholic hierarchy were scorned, there was enough support for Catholicism that such massacres offended many of the Spanish. If the Spanish Catholic clergy were considered irrelevent, making these men and women martys may have been a major political mistake. Another issue that Bookchin could have mentioned is Spanish geography. Southern Spain is semi-arid and not as good for farming as sections of Nothern Spain. The fact that many Spanish Anarchists came from Southern Spain may in part have been explained by this geographical phenomenon.However, Bookchin still wrote a good book. To “fill some of the gaps” readers should consult Brennen’s (1894-1987)book titled THE SPANISH LABYRINTH. This book gives the reader a good description of Spanish geography plus events after 1936. Borkenau’s (1900-1957)book titled THE SPANISH COCKPIT is also a solid book. George Orwell’s (1903-1949)book titled HOMAGE TO CATALONIA is a good book and brilliant prose. These writers plus Bookchin wrote surprisingly honest accounts of the Spanish Civil War.

⭐”Can anarchy work” or “Is anarchy a mere utopia” are questions asked frequently by people who are not informed about the ideology and philosophy of anarchy but, most importantly, the history of anarchy. Since you arent going to be taught any of all this in school the burden falls on your shoulders to discover it (amongst most other meaningful things that you will not be told about). Murray Bookchin, is a great historian, and does an awesome job of documenting the most recent and most convincing attempt at anarchy in pre-war Spain. Bookchin descibes a movement that found roots in the “lumpen proletariat”, that part of the working class with almost zero education that marxists looked upon with contempt considering them incapable of ever starting a revolution. Yet, exactly that part of the working class was the one that through appaling living and social conditions embraced the concept of anarchy, namely, no masters, equality, work as creation and not braindead toil, education that promotes free thinking and not unquestioned swallowing of dogma and above all liberty. This is a fascinating story, perhaps overly fascinating compared with modern times where most the people take social conditions as self-understood. A movement, that, through a massive network of action that ranged from strikes against brutally oppressing regimes that inevitably and repeatedly resulted in massive bloodbaths, direct action, informing people about their present future and past while actually opening up to them a whole new world of possibilities that would drive them out of their every day misery and into a new situation where through thriving freedom the society would transform. Bookchin introduces the readers (as he had to) to some of anarchy leading theoriticians (and practicians) such as Bakoonin and their influence on the Spanish anarchists while he goes into exhaustive detail highlighting internal conflicts concerning differing anarchistic tendencies as well as the ones against socialists (who more than often proved to be disguised conservatives) and of course against the establishment itself and its organs of suppresion. It’s a back n’ forth story he tells as well, as the struggle of the spanish anarchists to establish themselves at the front for social change (“not tomorrow, now!” said the pickets at the massive protests and demos) was often sunk in blood, often thrown back by mass executions, often took a step backwards because the need for biological survival took a priority or simply because disapointment would momentarily settle in before a new spark would “detonate” the movement again. The history of the spanish anarchists is remarkable in more ways than initially obvious. In a very intense sense it proves that the philosophy of anarchy doesnt demand from anyone to be well educated in order to comprehend it. “Absolute” freedom is not a complex concept and everything that derives from it is equally simple. It doesnt recquire reading bulky volumes of economic politics that lead nowhere nor trying to improve a system within which has already failed from the get-go (capitalism). It demands the “impossible” but simoultaneously the natural. While Bookchin writes in a rather heavy style that wont easily grab you, he’s an incredible historian who leaves no stone unturned in his effort-mission to explain thoroughly a historical event. That is my only objection to this book. Other than that, this is more than recquired reading for anyone interested in anarchism (here, its history )or in examining political philosophies in general.It would help if you started from Emma Goldman’s “Essays on anarchy” before this if your knowledge of this philosophy is somewhat superficial.

⭐Studying Europe’s interwar period without reference to the Spanish Anarchists felt incomplete, but Bookchin came to my rescue. My introduction to Bookchin came via an audio Bookchin Reader, and I am delighted to report that his own writing (at least in this text) is far less pretentious, more concise and clearer than the Reader led me to believe.1868-1936 Spain, was a time of new ideas which spread through the regions like wildfire and created idealists in both the moderate and radical left. This book tells their stories – their mistakes and successes, and the difficulties and suppression (from government and paramilitaries and communist “comrades”) they faced. A wonderful read if you have any interest in leftist politics or twentieth-century European history.

⭐a piece of history too many don’t knot about. A bit of history that will inspire the masses, if read by the masses. Love it and suggest any and all should get it!

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