- "It was the first time I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically any building of any size had been seized by the workers. Every shop and café had an inscription saying it was collectivized; even the boot blacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black.Waiters and shop walkers looked you in the face and treated you as equals. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. There were no private cars; they had all been commandeered. It was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist.Above all there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in a capitalist machine." George Orwell, describing the workers' Catalonia in the Spanish Civil War in "Homage to Catalonia. Not quite socialist yet (boot blacks? Waiters?) but a hint of the feeling when the real socialist revolution comes along!
For socialism, John Ayers
The Glasgow & Edinburgh Branches Blog. Towards a better understanding of the world, in order to change it.
Yes. However romantisised this period has been by many movements/people (probably by myself in the past if the truth be known) it does provide a snapshot of a (very brief) time when workers took control of production.
ReplyDeleteIt must have felt like spring in the middle of an ice age!
However, we have to remember that this was only able to happen in the context of a civil war, with Barcelona being well behind the front line.
Wars lead very quickly to paranoia, fear of spies and fifth columnists. When Laurie Lee arrived in northern Spain he had a very different welcome. He was imprisoned in a hole in the ground for days whilst the anarchist militia discussed whether to shoot him or not. Luckily they didn't as I enjoy his writing too.
Fear also lead to many office workers, professionals and so called middle class people adopting working class attire such as boiler suits to avoid rough "justice" from the militia.
Inevitably, these workers collectives were doomed and certainly not socialism. Money and wages still existed.
Soon it was to be a race between the "Communists" and the Fascists to see who could smash the most collectives in the most brutal way. Needless to say the "Communists" came out tops.