"Towards a Fresh Revolution" by The Friends of Durruti Group (Our Position)

Our Position

It is time to be specific. We shall be so, with respect to each of the problems posed by the present situation.

With regard to the problem of the war, we back the idea of the army being under the absolute control of the working class. Officers with their origins in the capitalist regime do not deserve the slightest trust from us. Desertions have been numerous and most of the disasters we have encountered can be laid down to obvious betrayals by officers. As to the army, we want a revolutionary one led exclusively by workers, and, should any officer be retained, it must be under the strictest supervision.

We insist that the war be directed by the workers. We have grounds aplenty for this. The defeats at Toledo, Talavera, the loss of the North and Malaga point to incompetence and lack of integrity in the government circles, for the following reasons:

The North of Spain could have been saved if the war materials needed for resistance to the enemy had been obtained. The means were there. The Bank of Spain had enough gold to flood Spanish soil with weaponry. Why was it not done? There was time. We must remember that the non-intervention controls did not begin to make their presence felt until the war in Spain was already some months old.

Leadership in the conduct of the war has been disastrous. Largo Caballero’s record is lamentable. That the Aragon Front has not been given the arms its so needs is his fault. His reluctance to arm the Aragonese sector has prevented Aragon from assuring her own redemption from the clutches of the fascists. At the same time this could have taken the pressure off the fronts around Madrid and the North. And it was Largo Caballero who expressed the sentiment that sending arms to the Aragon Front was like handing them over to the CNT.
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We are opposed to collaboration with bourgeois groups. We do not believe that the class approach can be abandoned.

Revolutionary workers must not shoulder official posts, nor establish themselves in the ministries. For as long as the war lasts, collaboration is permissible - on the battlefield, in the trenches, on the parapets and in productive labour in the rearguard.

Our place is in the unions, in the work place, keeping alive that spirit of rebellion which will bloom on the earliest occasion that presents itself.

We must have no part of combinations devised by bourgeois politicians acting in concert with foreign chancelleries. That would be tantamount to strengthening our enemies and tightening the noose of capitalism. No more portfolios. No more ministries. Let’s get back to the unions and the nitty-gritty of work tools.
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Let us campaign for unity among the proletariat. But on the understanding that this unity must be between workers, and not with bureaucrats or sinecurists.

At present, an agreement with the revolutionary wing of the UGT by the CNT is a feasible prospect. But we do not believe that an understanding is possible with the UGT of Catalonia, or with Prieto’s followers.
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Socialisation of the economy is crucial to victory in the war and progress in the revolution. The present drift cannot continue. Nor should anyone believe there is any advantage in the various centres of production operating to no co-ordinated pattern.

But it has to be the workers who see that this is done.
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Nor should the business about religion come up for further discussion. The people have already delivered its final verdict on that issue. Nonetheless, a tendency aimed at re-opening the churches, has emerged. Implementation of the law of freedom of worship and celebration of masses lead us to the conclusion that those in Government have forgotten the days of the great burnings.
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There must be strict rationing in the distribution of goods. That workers should go hungry while hoarders find food in restaurants controlled by the working class is intolerable.

Distribution must be socialised and accompanied by rationing.

Bureaucracy must go. The thousands of bureaucrats who have descended on Barcelona are one of the worst plagues ever visited on us. In place of a bureaucrat, there ought to be a worker. And by bureaucrat we mean any cafe layabout.
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Absolute suppression of the bureaucracy.
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Fabulous rates of pay must go immediately. It is scandalous that where militiamen are earning ten pesetas a day, the bureaucrats are taking home such huge wages. Azana and Companys are still drawing the same salary as before.

We want to see the introduction of the family wage. And an end, once and for all, to this galling inequality.

It must be the people who administer justice. We cannot countenance the false practice that has grown up in this regard. There has been a drift away from the early class tribunals to courts made up of career magistrates. And we are going back to the way things used to be. Now they are doing away with the juries.

Proletarian justice belongs to the workers alone.
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There must be progress towards socialisation of the farming industry in Spain. The sabotaging of the collectives has harmed agriculture enormously and has favoured speculation. Contact between town and countryside will bring the peasants closer to the proletarian class. And the mentality of the farm worker used to tilling his own particular plot will be changed.
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Like any other activity in the country that falls under the headings social, cultural or economic, cultural problems are the indisputable province of the workers. It was they who set the pattern of this new era.
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Revolutionary order will be enforced by the workers. We insist that the uniformed corps, which are no guarantee of revolution, be dissolved. The unions must supply the men whose task it is to guard the new order we wish to implant.
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As to foreign policy, we shall accept no armistice; and, when it comes to propagandising our revolution, we are of the view that that work must be done among the production centres abroad; not in any chancelleries, let alone any cabals.

We must speak to the workers abroad in the language of revolution. So far the vocabulary of democracy has been employed. It has to be brought home to the workers’ organisations, to everyone, that they must act: to sabotage fascist production: to refuse to load raw materials or war materials for the assassins of the Spanish people. And that they must demonstrate in the streets, to demand fair treatment by their governments for the cause we defend, which is the cause of the world’s proletariat.