‘Economic democracy means that participants in economic institutions … decide on the policy of the institution.’ Can We Do It Ourselves? Noam Chomsky, 2015
But while political democracy dominates our societal life, there’s another order that dominates our working life. ibid.
‘When people come to realise – we can run this ourselves, then I think we’re on a path towards a higher level of economic development.’ ibid. Roland Paulsen, Lund University
‘You have a different mentality when you are participating in a cooperative system.’ ibid. Noam Chomsky
‘It takes enormous resources just to enter their market.’ ibid. Lars Magnussen, Uppsala University
‘Anarchism is freedom.’ Living Utopia: The Anarchists and the Spanish Revolution, Miguel Alba, 1997
‘I woke up to the sound of the factory sirens. And it was as if all of Barcelona were beating with a single heart. It was something you experience maybe once in 100 years. And one thing I can say is that it marked my life. That emotion is always with me.’ ibid. Federico Arcos
‘The real revolution started on July 19th. The people started it spontaneously defending themselves against the army. It was the one and only time that the people defeated the army.’ ibid. Francisco Carrasquer
‘The people discovered they were the masters of their own fate.’ ibid. Federico Arcos
The misery in which so many Spaniards lived in 1930 had barely improved since the start of the industrial revolution the century before. Illiteracy and great social inequality continued while the authorities, the Church and the bourgeoisie did nothing. Anarchism, which seemed like a Utopian socialist proposal to fight against social injustice had been gradually establishing itself among the country’s poorest classes. ibid.
For anarchists it is the people who have to acquire a revolutionary awareness and get to know reality so as to change it. ibid.
In 1923 with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera the CNT was outlawed and many anarchists went into exile. ibid.
‘The unions were being constantly closed down; the jails were full of workers.’ ibid. witness
It was the citizens who organised the new society. ibid.
The people put into practice all the libertarian ideas cherished over a century … Barcelona became the advanced guard of the revolution. ibid.
‘Money was abolished. All landowners would have their property expropriated whether they were to the left or to the right. All machinery would be at the people’s disposal. All buildings would be used for lodging inhabitants no matter who the owner was. Work was done collectively.’ ibid. witness
‘Everyone adapted very well.’ ibid.
The social revolution in rural Spain had the support of most of the peasants. 3 million Spaniards were living under the principles of libertarian communism. ibid.
The structure was complicated but everyone was involved. ibid.
‘Anarchism is the greatest thing.’ ibid. witness
‘Lister did that because just as in Russia the Bolsheviks, the dictators, wouldn’t allow the existence of a libertarian movement.’ ibid.
‘We’d lost our ideals and we knew that it was for ever. The struggle was lost. The retreat began.’ ibid.
‘They arrested all of us.’ ibid.
1920: Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti were accused of robbery murder, but it was widely felt that they were being made scapegoats for the unrest sweeping the United States. Great Crimes & Trials s3e17: Sacco & Vanzetti, BBC 1996
Two immigrants, Sacco and Vanzetti, were taken into custody on 5th May 1920 having been found carrying anarchist literature. ibid.
Most of the evidence seemed to point away from the two anarchists. ibid.
The protests were not confined to the United States. ibid.
Appeals for mercy were received from prominent international figures. ibid.
Bandits Kill Guard And Steal $27,000. Boston Post front page
I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature of the earth, I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. But my conviction is that I have suffered for things that I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I am an Italian and indeed I am an Italian ... if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already. Bartolomeo Vanzetti trial statement
Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding to man as now we do by accident. Bartolomeo Vanzetti
The guilt or innocence of these two Italians is not the issue that has excited the opinion of the world. Possibly they were actual murderers, and still more possibly they knew more than they would admit about the crime ... Europe is not ‘retrying’ Sacco and Vanzetti or anything of the sort. It is saying what it thinks of Judge Thayer. Executing political opponents as political opponents after the fashion of Mussolini and Moscow we can understand, or bandits as bandits; but this business of trying and executing murderers as Reds, or Reds as murderers, seems to be a new and very frightening line for the courts of a State in the most powerful and civilized Union on earth to pursue. H G Wells essay
Attorney General [A Mitchell] Palmer went on a mission to track down every last anarchist in America. The Italian Americans: Becoming Americans 1910-1930, PBS 2015
Now indicted for first-degree murder, Sacco and Vanzetti stood trial in the summer of 1921. From the start it was clear that the case was really about anarchy, and being Italian. ibid.
The murder trial of two Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti was one of the most controversial legal cases in American history. Millions of people around the world followed the case, and it raised fundamental questions about civil liberties and the rights of immigrants that are as alive today as they were in the 1920s. Sacco and Vanzetti, History 2006
It is a story about injustice [and] prejudices in society. ibid.
When arrested were not told the reason … his first assumption was that they had been arrested for being radicals. ibid.
The atmosphere was spectacular. ibid.
The trial lasted seven weeks. ibid.
‘Extremism is the midwife of anarchy.’ Anarchism in America? Hubert Humphrey, 1983
‘If he or she believed that society could be managed without the state … So anarchists generally believe that whether as groups or individuals people should directly run society.’ ibid. Murray Bookchin
Anarchism had a colourful past and a legacy that was laced with drama and tension. ibid.
The prime targets of government oppression. ibid.
The Cheka, the secret police, suppressed all non-Bolshevik factions including the Russian anarchists. ibid.
It opposes the idea of authority itself. ibid.
On a cold December morning in 1919 just after 4 a.m. Emma Goldman, her companion Alexander Berkman, and more than 200 other foreign-born radicals were roused from their Ellis Island dormitory beds. In the freezing darkness the deportees began a journey into exile. Emma Goldman: An Exceedingly Dangerous Woman, PBS 2004
The newspapers called her a modern Joan of Arc, a heretic, a woman possessed of uncompromising single-mindedness. ibid.
American anarchists were idealistic, articulate and organised. Though few in number they had surprising influence. ibid.
Government would be replaced by a spirit of free cooperation. ibid.
To create a more perfect society acts of political violence were occasionally justified. ibid.
Her talk of insurrection, of doing without government, of encouraging the unemployed to take matters into their own hands, of thousands of workers going door to door demanding food, was terrifying to authorities. ibid.
Goldman was sentenced to one year in prison. ibid.
Considered the most dangerous woman in the country. ibid.
The Espionage Act went into effect: it decreed stiff fines and prison terms for anyone who obstructed the draft. A year later the Sedition Law threatened those who defied the government with expulsion. ibid.
Throughout the Autumn of 1919 Attorney-General A Mitchell Palmer directed round-ups of radicals in what would come to be known as the Palmer Raids. ibid.
Revealing the truth about the Bolshevik regime became a crusade for Goldman and Berkman. ibid.