Spanish Labor Movement: Anarchism and Marxism Evolution

Origins of the Spanish Labor Movement

This first association moved between the forbidden and tolerated. Politically, part of the labor movement supported Democratic Republicanism; these supporters later left to join internationalism and form their own class organizations. The Sexenio Democrático recognized the right of assembly and association, which allowed these groups to emerge from hiding and form their own class organizations.

The First International and Ideological Spread

The First International (AIT) arrived in Spain with leading anarchist principles; Bakuninism spread among the Catalan workers and peasants in Andalusia. The spread of Marxism occurred later; although its ideological weight was greater in the AIT, it only succeeded in Madrid. The confrontation between these two ideological currents prevented their alliance.

Internationalism and the First Republic

Internationalism reached its peak during the First Republic, when several anarchist groups tried to carry out the revolution and the collapse of the state. The Restoration regime forced the worker and peasant organizations of the AIT back into the shadows until the accession to power of the Liberals opened a new era of tolerance.

The Division of Anarchism

Anarchism was divided into two streams:

• Supporters of mass industrial action leading to the revolution.
• Supporters of social revolution through "direct action" by small groups that violated the basic tenets of bourgeois capitalist society: the State, the Church, and the bourgeoisie.

Anarchism was accused of being behind the Black Hand (La Mano Negra), a group that acted in Andalusia at the end of the century and to which murders and crop arson were attributed. The government responded with brutal repression of the anarchist movement, thus forming a spiral of violent action-repression-action. This situation deepened the division between anarchists.

Formation of Major Labor Organizations

Radical supporters rejected mass action and turned to terrorism in the early twentieth century. Two major anarcho-syndicalist organizations emerged: Solidaridad Obrera and the CNT. Meanwhile, the Marxist group in Madrid followed the watchwords of the AIT (from which Bakunin had been expelled) to form the PSOE and the UGT.

Marxism could not be established in places dominated by anarcho-syndicalism, such as Catalonia, nor did it extend to rural areas. The UGT was more moderate in its demands and its form of struggle than anarcho-syndicalism.

The Emergence of Labor Law

The harsh living and working conditions of workers, combined with increased union pressure across Western Europe, produced the first labor laws that protected workers from capitalist exploitation. In Spain, the first laws were passed in the late nineteenth century.