Excerpts from ANARCHISTS IN THE SPANISH REVOLUTION by José Pierats #2

Anarchism is largely responsible for its own bad reputation in the world. It did not consider the thorny problem of means and ends. In their writings, many anarchists conceived of a miraculous solution to the problem of revolution. We fell easily into this trap in Spain. We believed that "once the dog is dead, the rabies is over." We proclaimed a full-blown revolution without worrying about the many complex problems that a revolution brings with it. Nettlau said that those who believe that a society can change itself overnight through a heroic struggle have not learned the lessons of history. As Bakunin was wont to say, "a people develops extraordinary capacities when it is able to defeat its worst enemy: the State." But we must not forget what we have learned from more recent history (which Bakunin did not experience) - that the state is a virus that can take hold in each of us, and that revolutions set free not only the enslaved masses, but also millions and millions of viruses. For example, to the Iberian anarchist of my generation the notion that there is an inevitable reaction to any revolution was unthinkable, or unimportant. Some Spanish comrades still lament that our revolution happened to be accompanied by a civil war. But when had there been a revolution without a civil war? Is not a revolution a civil war by its very nature?

And yet we were caught unprepared when our revolution inevitably provoked a civil war. As I say in the text of this book, the Spanish anarchists suffered from an excessively urban orientation in their revolutionary, or rather insurrectionary, plans. If the insurrection was lost in the cities, the villages were written off. We never thought that we would have to prepare for civil war by organizing support bases for guerrilla actions in the countryside and the mountains, and by developing supply systems for such activities and training select troops as guerrillas. With its tortuous geography Spain is a good terrain for guerrilla warfare, and a wen organized guerrilla force would have defeated soldiers trained for a war of continuous fronts. In the last world war the Spanish Army itself used guerrilla warfare (which it called commandos), and the Vietnamese and the Palestinians are still using it. Guerrilla organization could have saved the North from Franco. Our trench warfare was a gift that we made to Franco, Mola, Quiepo del Llano, Yagile and the other strategists of the enemy camp.