Valeriano Orobón Fernández in 1920

On Dictatorship and Unions

Valeriano Orobón Fernández is best known for writing the lyrics to the CNT anthem ‘A las barricadas’, and for proposing a revolutionary alliance between the CNT and the UGT in 1934. The two articles he published on the latter subject suggested that the ideological differences between the unions should not prevent both organisations agreeing to a council system in the post-revolutionary period. In support of his position he evoked the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, in which both anarchists and Marxists participated.

This was not the first time Orobón had written on the question of post-revolutionary organisation. Fourteen years earlier, as a nineteen-year-old, he contributed to the turn this debate had taken in the light of the Russian Revolution. His piece appeared in Solidaridad Obrera, the short-lived mouthpiece of the CNT’s northern Spanish unions – not to be confused with the Catalan daily newspaper of the same name – which was based in Bilbao, on 3 December 1920. Orobón at the time lived in his native city of Valladolid. 

The article was titled ‘Regarding the dictatorship: Soviets or Unions?’. Orobón began by remarking on the tendency of the anarchist press to write in praise of events in Russia, not only of the ‘revolutionary event, which deserves all the praise it gets’, but also of the institutions thrown up by the revolution. He rejected the idea that revolutionaries in Spain should emulate the Russian example by seeking to establish a proletarian soviet state. He considered this position to be ‘a cause of disorientation and confusion’, and thought CNT activists should disseminate ‘a clear definition of our ideological standpoint with regard to the modes and procedures adopted in Russia.’ The two points he identified as requiring clarification were the dictatorship of the proletariat and post-revolutionary organisation.

Orobón noted that the editor of the French anarchist newspaper Le Libertaire had recently rejected the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and insisted that it was the task of anarchists to engage in widespread educational work that would make dictatorship unnecessary. Responding to this idea, Orobón wrote:

Can we really carry out this work under the regimes in place where we live? When we are harassed and our fundamental rights are suspended? When everything we do is furiously persecuted?

And even if we could do it, wouldn’t it be so complicated and drawn out a task that it would indefinitely postpone the overthrow of present society, making us the most pacific and fatalist of evolutionists?

For Orobón, the need for dictatorship was akin to ‘a biological fact’, ‘a circumstantial imperative that safeguards the health of the revolution’, against the inevitable counterrevolution. It was only in such circumstances that the work of education could take place, preparing individuals for ‘life in anarchy’, and thereby making dictatorship obsolete.

This was not a dictatorship conceived of as rule by a single party, still less a single individual. So, having made his case for dictatorship, Orobón then turned to his second theme, the question of what was ‘the most appropriate organisation to carry out this dictatorship’. This organisation was ‘the union. Or more accurately, the unions’:

The unions – in the first place – embody the true and genuine representation of the proletariat, so the dictatorship, emerging from them, will be exercised effectively by the workers.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the title of his article, Orobón did not counterpose the union to soviets as such, but rather to political parties, which he considered ‘unnecessary and even dangerous in the present moment, as well as being absolutely useless when it comes to the organisation of collective life’. Soviets as assemblies of working-class, peasant and soldiers’ delegates – the soviets of the 1905 and 1917 vintage – are not discussed here. However, Orobón concludes his article by affirming that, while the slogan of the Russian revolution called for all power to the soviets, that of Spain would proclaim ‘all power to the unions!’

I thought it would be worth glossing this short article for anyone interested in the intellectual trajectory of Orobón Fernández. It is curious that his later, more famous intervention as an activist – calling for an alliance between unions based on committing to council democracy – was evidently not a rekindling of youthful pro-soviet sentiment. In fact, the article suggests a reversal of the classically ‘libertarian’ approach to the Russian revolution, which hails the soviets and rejects the dictatorship. As suggested by Arturo Zoffmann Rodriguez, whose book on this subject has just been released, Spanish anarchist enthusiasm for the Russian revolution cannot be reduced to its libertarian characteristics. Here, Orobón is enthusiastic about the revolution despite seeming to equate soviet power with one-party rule. This enthusiasm, which was widespread albeit not unanimous amongst Spanish anarchists, would wane as reports confirmed the repression of anarchism in Russia. Furthermore, the Bolshevik leadership would soon make clear that activists such as Orobón, who welcomed the Russian revolution while conceiving of a different organisational path towards proletarian power, would not be welcome in the Communist International.