The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organizational principles throughout various portions of the country. Anarchists played a central role in the fight against Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. At the same time, a far-reaching social revolution spread throughout Spain, where land and factories were collectivized and controlled by the workers. Their legacy remains important to this day, particularly to anarchists who look at their achievements as a historical precedent of anarchism's validity.
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Anarcho-syndicalist organizations were involved in the Spanish Revolution, such as the CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo / National Confederation of Labor), which was long affiliated with the International Workers' Association (AIT). When working with the latter group it was also known as CNT-AIT. Historically, the CNT has also been affiliated with the Federación Anarquista Ibérica.
The most notable aspect of the social revolution was the establishment of a libertarian socialist economy based on coordination through decentralized and horizontal federations of participatory industrial collectives and agrarian communes. In anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%. Factories were run through worker committees, and agrarian areas became collectivized and run as libertarian socialist communes. Many small businesses like hotels, barber shops, and restaurants were also collectivized and managed by their workers.
The International Brigades (Spanish: Brigadas Internacionales) were military units set up by the Communist International to assist the Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The organization existed for two years, from 1936 until 1938. It is estimated that during the entire war, between 40,000 and 59,000 members served in the International Brigades, including 15,000 who died in combat. They participated in the battles of Madrid, Jarama, Guadalajara, Brunete, Belchite, Teruel, Aragon and the Ebro.
The International Brigades was strongly supported by the Comintern and represented the Soviet Union's commitment to assisting the Spanish
… Read more Republic (with arms, logistics, military advisers and the NKVD), just as Fascist Italy, Fascist Portugal and Nazi Germany were assisting the opposing Nationalist insurgency. The largest number of volunteers came from France where the French Communist Party had many members, and communist exiles from Italy and Germany. Many Jews were part of the brigades, being particularly numerous among the volunteers coming from the United States, Poland, France, England, and Argentina.
Republican volunteers who were opposed to Stalinism did not join the Brigades but instead enlisted in the separate Popular Front, the POUM (formed from Trotskyist, Bukharinist and other anti-Stalinist groups, which did not separate Spaniards and foreign volunteers -such as George Orwell), or anarcho-syndicalist groups such as the Durruti Column, the IWA and the CNT.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region in northeastern Syria. It consists of self-governing sub-regions in the areas of Afrin, Jazira, Euphrates, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Deir Ez-Zor. The region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 in the context of the ongoing Rojava conflict and the wider Syrian Civil War, in which its official military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has taken part. The region has implemented a new social justice approach which emphasizes rehabilitation, empowerment and social care over retribution. The death penalty was abolished. Prisons house mostly people charged with terrorist
… Read more activity related to ISIL and other extremist groups, and are a large strain on the region's economy. The autonomous region is ruled by a coalition which bases its policy ambitions to a large extent on democratic libertarian socialist ideology of democratic confederalism and have been described as pursuing a model of economy that blends co-operative and market enterprise, through a system of local councils in minority, cultural and religious representation. The main military force of the region is the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Syrian rebel groups formed in 2015. The SDF is led by the Kurdish majority People's Protection Units (YPG).
Mujeres Libres (Free Women) was an anarchist women's organization that existed during the Spanish revolution from 1936 to 1939. Founded by LucÃa Sánchez Saornil, Mercedes Comaposada, and Amparo Poch y Gascón as a small women's group in Madrid, it rapidly grew to a national federation of 30,000 members at its height in the summer of 1938. It emerged from the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement, composed of three main organizations: the CNT union, the FAI federation, and the FIJL youth wing. Many women who participated in these groups felt that their issues were being ignored by the predominantly male anarchists. As a result, the autonomous Mujeres Libres groups were created, pursuing
… Read more both women's liberation and the anarchist social revolution. They argued that the two objectives were equally important and should be pursued in parallel. Aiming towards the empowerment of working-class women, they organized activities ranging from education programs and technical classes to childcare centers and maternity care.
As participants in the anarcho-syndicalist movement, Mujeres Libres believed in the abolition of the state and of capitalism. Many anarchists at the time presumed that gender inequality was a product of these economic hierarchies, and that it would disappear once the social revolution had been achieved. However, following their negative experiences within male-dominated anarchist groups, the anarchist women who founded Mujeres Libres began to reject the idea that the struggle for gender equality was subordinate to the wider class struggle for economic equality.
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