[Peace-discuss] A different world is possible

[C. G. Estabrook]

 From <http://www.truthout.org/remembering-fascism-learning-from-past58724>:


...a collection of primary documents about collectivization [was] published in 
1937 by the CNT, the anarcho-syndicalist union that is celebrating its centenary 
this year. One contribution has resonated in my mind ever since, by peasants of 
the village of Membrilla. I would like to quote parts of it:

"In [the] miserable huts [of Membrilla] live the poor inhabitants of a poor 
province; eight thousand people, but the streets are not paved, the town has no 
newspaper, no cinema, neither a café nor a library.... Food, clothing and tools 
were distributed equitably to the whole population. Money was abolished, work 
collectivized, all goods passed to the community, consumption was socialized. It 
was, however, not a socialization of wealth but of poverty.... The whole 
population lived as in a large family; functionaries, delegates, the secretary 
of the syndicates, the members of the municipal council, all elected, acted as 
heads of a family. But they were controlled, because special privilege or 
corruption would not be tolerated. Membrilla is perhaps the poorest village of 
Spain, but it is the most just."

These words, by some of the most impoverished peasants in the country, capture 
with rare eloquence the achievements and promise of the anarchist revolution. 
The achievements did not, of course, spring up from nothing. They were the 
outcome of many decades of struggle, experiment, brutal repression - and 
learning. The concept of how a just society should be organized was in the minds 
of the population when the opportunity arose. The experiment in creating a world 
of freedom and justice was crushed all too soon by the combined forces of 
fascism, Stalinism and liberal democracy. Global power centers understood very 
well that they must unite to destroy this dangerous threat to subordination and 
discipline before turning to the secondary task of dividing up the spoils.

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