Yes. As Murray Bookchin puts it, "[i]n Spain, millions of people took large segments of the economy into their own hands, collectivised them, administered them, even abolished money and lived by communistic principles of work and distribution — all of this in the midst of a terrible civil war, yet without producing the chaos or even the serious dislocations that were and still are predicted by authoritarian 'radicals.' Indeed, in many collectivised areas, the efficiency with which an enterprise worked by far exceeded that of a comparable one in nationalised or private sectors. This 'green shoot' of revolutionary reality has more meaning for us than the most persuasive theoretical arguments to the contrary. On this score it is not the anarchists who are the 'unrealistic day-dreamers,' but their opponents who have turned their backs to the facts or have shamelessly concealed them." ["Introductory Essay," in The Anarchist Collectives, Sam Dolgoff (ed.), p. xxxix]

Sam Dolgoff's book is by far the best English source on the Spanish collectives and deserves to be quoted at length (as we do below). He quotes French Anarchist Gaston Leval comments that in those areas which defeated the fascist uprising on the 19th of July 1936 a profound social revolution took place based, mostly, on anarchist ideas:

"In Spain, during almost three years, despite a civil war that took a million lives, despite the opposition of the political parties . . . this idea of libertarian communism was put into effect. Very quickly more than 60% of the land was very quickly collectively cultivated by the peasants themselves, without landlords, without bosses, and without instituting capitalist competition to spur production. In almost all the industries, factories, mills, workshops, transportation services, public services, and utilities, the rank and file workers, their revolutionary committees, and their syndicates reorganised and administered production, distribution, and public services without capitalists, high-salaried managers, or the authority of the state.

"Even more: the various agrarian and industrial collectives immediately instituted economic equality in accordance with the essential principle of communism, 'From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.' They co-ordinated their efforts through free association in whole regions, created new wealth, increased production (especially in agriculture), built more schools, and bettered public services. They instituted not bourgeois formal democracy but genuine grass roots functional libertarian democracy, where each individual participated directly in the revolutionary reorganisation of social life. They replaced the war between men, 'survival of the fittest,' by the universal practice of mutual aid, and replaced rivalry by the principle of solidarity . . .

"This experience, in which about eight million people directly or indirectly participated, opened a new way of life to those who sought an alternative to anti-social capitalism on the one hand, and totalitarian state bogus socialism on the other." [Op. Cit., pp. 6-7]

Thus about eight million people directly or indirectly participated in the libertarian based new economy during the short time it was able to survive the military assaults of the fascists and the attacks and sabotage of the Communists. This in itself suggests that libertarian socialist ideas are of a practical nature.

Lest the reader think that Dolgoff and Bookchin are exaggerating the accomplishments and ignoring the failures of the Spanish collectives, in the following subsections we will present specific details and answer some objections often raised by misinformed critics. We will try to present an objective analysis of the revolution, its many successes, its strong points and weak points, the mistakes made and possible lessons to be drawn from the experience, both from the successes and the mistakes.

This libertarian influenced revolution has (generally) been ignored by historians, or its existence mentioned in passing. Some so-called historians and "objective investigators" have slandered it and lied about (when not ignoring) the role anarchists played in it. Communist histories are particularly unreliable (to use a polite word for their activities) but it seems that almost every political perspective has done this (including liberal, right-wing libertarian, Stalinist, Trotskyist, Marxist, and so on). Indeed, the myths generated by Marxists of various shades are quite extensive (see the appendix on "Marxists and Spanish Anarchism" for a reply to some of the more common ones).

Thus any attempt to investigate what actually occurred in Spain and the anarchists' role in it is subject to a great deal of difficulty. Moreover, the positive role that Anarchists played in the revolution and the positive results of our ideas when applied in practice are also downplayed, if not ignored. Indeed, the misrepresentations of the Spanish Anarchist movement are downright amazing (see Jerome R. Mintz's wonderful book The Anarchists of Casa Viejas for a refutation of the historians claims, a refutation based on oral history, as well as J. Romero Maura's, "The Spanish case", contained in Anarchism Today, edited by J. Joll and D. Apter. Both are essential reading to understand the distortions of historians about the Spanish anarchist movement).

All we can do here is present a summary of the social revolution that took place and attempt to explode a few of the myths that have been created around the work of the C.N.T. and F.A.I. during those years.

In addition, we must stress that this section of the FAQ can be nothing but an introduction to the Spanish Revolution. We concentrate on the economic and political aspects of the revolution as we cannot cover the social transformations that occurred. All across non-fascist Spain traditional social relationships between men and women, adults and children, individual and individual were transformed, revolutionised, in a libertarian way. C.N.T. militant Abel Paz gives a good indication of this when he wrote:

"Industry is in the hands of the workers and all the production centres conspicuously fly the red and black flags as well as inscriptions announcing that they have really become collectives. The revolution seems to be universal. Changes are also evident in social relations. The former barriers which used to separate men and woman arbitrarily have been destroyed. In the cafes and other public places there is a mingling of the sexes which would have been completely unimaginable before. The revolution has introduced a fraternal character to social relations which has deepened with practice and show clearly that the old world is dead." [Durruti: The People Armed, p. 243]

The social transformation empowered individuals and these, in turn, transformed society. Anarchist militant Enriqueta Rovira presents a vivid picture of the self-liberation the revolution generated:

"The atmosphere then [during the revolution], the feelings were very special. It was beautiful. A feeling of — how shall I say it — of power, not in the sense of domination, but in the sense of things being under our control, of under anyone's. Of possibility. We had everything. We had Barcelona: It was ours. You'd walk out in the streets, and they were ours — here, CNT; there, comite this or that. It was totally different. Full of possibility. A feeling that we could, together, really do something. That we could make things different." [quoted by Martha A. Ackelsberg and Myrna Margulies Breithart, "Terrains of Protest: Striking City Women", pp. 151-176, Our Generation, vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 164-5]

Moreover, the transformation of society that occurred during the revolution extended to all areas of life and work. For example, the revolution saw "the creation of a health workers' union, a true experiment in socialised medicine. They provided medical assistance and opened hospitals and clinics." [Juan Gomez Casas, Anarchist Organisation: The History of the FAI, p. 192] We discuss this example in some detail in section I.5.12 and so will not do so here. Therefore, we must stress that this section of the FAQ is just an introduction to what happened and does not (indeed, cannot) discuss all aspects of the revolution. We just present an overview, bringing out the libertarian aspects of the revolution, the ways workers' self-management was organised, how the collectives organised and what they did.

Needless to say, many mistakes were made during the revolution. We point out and discuss some of them in what follows. Moreover, much of what happened did not correspond exactly with what many people consider as the essential steps in a communist (libertarian or otherwise) revolution. Economically, for example, few collectives reached beyond a mutualist or collectivist state. Politically, the fear of a fascist victory made many anarchists accept collaboration with the state as a lessor evil. However, to dismiss the Spanish Revolution because it did not meet the ideas laid out by a handful of revolutionaries would be sectarian and elitist nonsense. No working class revolution is pure, no mass struggle is without its contradictions, no attempt to change society will be perfect. "It is only those who do nothing who make no mistakes," as Kropotkin so correctly pointed out. [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 143] The question is whether the revolution creates a system of institutions which will allow those involved to discuss the problems they face and correct the decisions they make. In this, the Spanish Revolution clearly succeeded, creating organisations based on the initiative, autonomy and power of working class people.

For more information about the social revolution, Sam Dolgoff's The Anarchist Collectives is an excellent starting place. Gaston Leval's Collectives in the Spanish Revolution is another essential text. Jose Pierat's Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution and Vernon Richards' Lessons of the Spanish Revolution are excellent critical anarchist works on the revolution and the role of the anarchists. Robert Alexander's The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War is a good general overview of the anarchist's role in the revolution and civil war, as is Burnett Bolloten's The Spanish Civil War. Noam Chomsky's excellent essay "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship" indicates how liberal books on the Spanish Civil War can be misleading, unfair and essentially ideological in nature (this classic essay can be found in The Chomsky Reader and _American Power and the New Mandarins). George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia cannot be bettered as an introduction to the subject (Orwell was in the POUM militia at the Aragon Front and was in Barcelona during the May Days of 1937).