# What if the Spanish Revolution had survived? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 9, 2010, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116 "2010-07-09T17:29:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/21 "2010-07-13T01:52:57Z")
> [@transprog](#): > > What would it look like? > > Probably like [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation) . > > Or at least something similar. That would be more inspiring if not for the name: MONDRAGON Corporation. Sounds like something with Evil Overlords for executives and Stormtroopers for security . . . ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/22 "2010-07-13T05:24:04Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > So: How would an economy largely based on self-organized collectives, independent of non-worker owners, independent of the state, independent of any political party, have developed over the following decades? > > 1. Would it have been economically viable in the long run? > > 2. Would it have inspired imitation in other countries? > > 3. Would it, despite its radically egalitarian intentions, inevitably have produced some sort of managerial or leadership elite functionally indistinguishable from the capitalists in the West or the party bosses in the USSR? 1. Could an anarcho-syndicalist Spain have won the World Cup? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/23 "2010-07-13T05:52:16Z")
BrainGlutton, if I can ask you directly, what’s your opinions on the issues I raised in posts 3 and 11? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/24 "2010-07-13T06:04:08Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I think it would be possible. You could organize businesses like micronations. Each business would have its “citizenship” - the employees. And it would have a democratic government where the citizen/workers could vote on the government/management. > > I don’t see any inherent reason why this couldn’t function. Businesses organized by collective managment might not be as flexible as more traditionally managed companies. But a diminished flexibility is, at worse, a survivable liability and might even be an asset in some situations. > > The biggest problem I would foresee would be the one I mentioned in the other thread. It’s relatively easy to start up a traditionally managed company. All you need is an individual or a small group with the necessary capital and a plan of how they want to use it. But starting up a collectively managed business would be a lot harder. You’d need to have a plan and then find a large group of people who are interested in joining the collective, are available to join, and have the skills and assets the proposed company needs. It would make each start-up work like a jigsaw puzzle. Except that instead of having all the pieces in a box, most of the pieces you need are already fit into other puzzles. And all the puzzles want to keep their own best pieces and the pieces themselves get to pick which puzzle they’re in. And you’re not exactly sure what the picture looks like. That would be a problem. Of course, a traditionally managed company seems so much easier to create because we **know** how it works; countless real-world models are available, and studied, and taught in business schools. And even a traditionally managed company is “not exactly sure what the picture looks like” if it’s trying something new, like early Microsoft and, I am sure, a dozen companies from the same period who tried the same thing and failed. But, remember, what we’re talking about here is the rank-and-file seizing control of the **whole economy** more or less at once, rather than just trying out a different model within a capitalist economy. And mostly they just took over going concerns and reorganized them on a more egalitarian/participatory basis. If that had lasted, over several decades, with the bugs being worked out and new approaches being tried and mistakes being made and learned from (as they **would** be learned from, in a syndicalist as opposed to a Stalinist economy), I think it might have provided the world with models that could be tried in other countries with reasonable certainty of success. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/25 "2010-07-13T06:07:10Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Another issue would be voting weight. Let’s use the hypothetical shoe factory I mentioned in the other thread. Let’s say it was started ten years ago by a hundred workers, all of who had an equal share in the company, and the company has become a success. Enough so, that the workers have decided to expand the business to triple its current size. > > Now the problems would arise. How many of the hundred current workers would accpet the idea of two hundred additional workers coming in and being given equal shares in ownership and voting power. > > They’d be telling each other, _“We spent ten years building this company up from nothing and now these new guys get to walk in and grab a share of our business? Why should they get an equal share of all the profits we worked for? And why should we let them have a say in running things? We spent years learning this business - what do these guys know about making and selling shoes? What if the 200 of them start outvoting the 100 of us and ruin the business? Hell, what if the 200 of them just vote the 100 of us out altogether?”_ > > And these are not unreasonable concerns. So what would end up happening is the one hundred current members would vote in a policy giving them some protection - like maybe they get a vote for every year they worked so they all have ten votes and the new guys only have one. Not unreasonable but the result is you’ve now got a heirarchy where one hundred senior workers control a thousand votes and run the business while the two hundred other workers are second class employees. Yes, industrial democracy is very complicated, compared to traditional capitalist management models. Just as political democracy is complicated, compared to traditional monarchy or aristocracy; that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. We’ve been experimenting with democracy for centuries now, trying out ways to make it more responsive to the people’s desires while still being an efficient and effective system of practical government; and we’ve learned a lot, haven’t we? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/26 "2010-07-13T06:35:16Z")
> [@](#): > > But, remember, what we’re talking about here is the rank-and-file seizing control of the whole economy more or less at once, rather than just trying out a different model within a capitalist economy. And mostly they just took over going concerns and reorganized them on a more egalitarian/participatory basis. If that had lasted, over several decades, with the bugs being worked out and new approaches being tried and mistakes being made and learned from (as they would be learned from, in a syndicalist as opposed to a Stalinist economy), I think it might have provided the world with models that could be tried in other countries with reasonable certainty of success. True, but I think collective management can only be judged as a success if it’s capable of handling an ongoing economy. And that means that collective management has to be able to develop new indutries and phase out old ones. You don’t get to call yourself a pilot just because you can fly a plane in the air - you have to be able to take off and land a plane as well. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/27 "2010-07-13T06:41:36Z")
> [@](#): > > Yes, industrial democracy is very complicated, compared to traditional capitalist management models. Just as political democracy is complicated, compared to traditional monarchy or aristocracy; that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. We’ve been experimenting with democracy for centuries now, trying out ways to make it more responsive to the people’s desires while still being an efficient and effective system of practical government; and we’ve learned a lot, haven’t we? This reponse seems to be ducking the question. The situation I described was not complicated and it would not be uncommon. What’s your personal opinions on how it should be handled? On the specific issue I mentioned, do you feel that the new workers should have the same rights as established workers? Or do you feel the established workers deserve something extra to reflect the work they’ve already put into the business? On a broader note, should a workers collective be allowed to run its own business, even to the point of establishing heirarchies within the business? Or should there be some outside tribunal that has the power to step in and forbid the collectives from taking some actions? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/28 "2010-07-13T09:53:50Z")
Cooperativas (worker-owned businesses) _are_ very popular in Spain, from canneries to one of the country’s biggest supermarket chains (Eroski); it’s a form that’s exported to many Latin American countries via ONGs as it works quite well if done right. But note that: 1. joining the coop is voluntary. If you’re offered a spot and decline it, you do not get shot. 2. many of them have some hired workers, often managers or finance people. Eroski for example was pretty slummy until they hired external managers; many farmer’s coops hire an accountant (who can’t be a coop member because he doesn’t have any produce to sell, but has financial skills beyond those of the cooperativists). Before that, any attempt from managers to direct lower-ranking worker’s work risked being met with “I’m as much as an owner as you are!” I don’t know of any where seniority is an official “grade”. If you own one share, you own one share. People who have been along longer are listened to because they have more experience (but only if they also have a brain), but they have as many votes as the latest newbie: one. One of the things that got taken over in '36 was many ships in the Navy, whose officers got murdered. Those ships immediately proceeded to run aground… cooperative ownership is nice so long as someone knows how to steer. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/29 "2010-07-13T09:59:43Z")
Out of time: Eroski’s hired managers are just a handful of people in Central, managers in stores are cooperativists. ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/30 "2010-07-13T11:49:14Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > That is certainly true. And maybe all those who said, “Fight Franco now, social revolution later,” were in the right of it, at least in strategic terms. “Maybe”? “Maybe”?? They not only were right, they were _sane_. Franco was fighting with military supplies and “volunteers” provided _for free_ (well, at least provided not in exchange for money) by Germany and Italy. He was the one with superiority of material and men. In order to have even a slight chance of winning a war against Franco’s forces, the VERY LAST thing you would want to do would be to spend energy and manpower in “social revolutions” that won’t do anything against the rather more pressing problem of having an army in front of you that wants to annihilate you. The anarchists that pressed for the “social revolution” right there, right now… The best I can say about them is that they were woefully deluded. The only thing they achieved with their behaviour was to guarantee the demise of the Republic at the hands of Franco. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/31 "2010-07-13T12:53:37Z")
My Republican grandfather claims that his thought upon hearing about the Navy ships was “we’ve lost the war”. The middle of a war is not the time to be reorganizing the whole society inside, out and sideways, and many of these people were doing it gun in hand, substituting one form of tyranny (as they viewed it) for another (as those forced at gunpoint but not shot did). It’s bad enough and sad enough that so many people on both sides took it as the time to be taking people for a final walk for real or imagined individual or collective grudges without making it the government’s goal, the country’s modus operandi. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/32 "2010-07-13T13:40:00Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > You can go back much farther, too. Communes, and communal businesses, were tried in variopus utopian schemes in the post-Revolutionary America era, and they all failed. Actually, one didn’t - it became a for-profit business and made oodles of cash! It’s amazing then, if communal and cooperative businesses are doomed to fail, that capitalist states have felt it necessary to use violence and the law against them. Rather than sit back and wait for their inevitable failure, they’ve criminalized them, or sent troops or hired thugs in against them. Seems to me to be a bit pointless to go so far to deal with something that’s just going to fail anyway. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/33 "2010-07-13T14:54:14Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > “Maybe”? “Maybe”?? They not only were right, they were _sane_. > > Franco was fighting with military supplies and “volunteers” provided _for free_ (well, at least provided not in exchange for money) by Germany and Italy. He was the one with superiority of material and men. > > In order to have even a slight chance of winning a war against Franco’s forces, the VERY LAST thing you would want to do would be to spend energy and manpower in “social revolutions” that won’t do anything against the rather more pressing problem of having an army in front of you that wants to annihilate you. > > The anarchists that pressed for the “social revolution” right there, right now… The best I can say about them is that they were woefully deluded. The only thing they achieved with their behaviour was to guarantee the demise of the Republic at the hands of Franco. I included the “maybe” only because I’m thinking that if everything had been done the way the Communists wanted (remember, they were the ones mainly resisting the Revolution and calling for a more “pragmatic” policy), the result might have been victory – and a Stalinist Spain. Granted, even that would have been preferable to Franco. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/34 "2010-07-13T16:25:29Z")
> [@](#): > > It’s amazing then, if communal and cooperative businesses are doomed to fail, that capitalist states have felt it necessary to use violence and the law against them. Rather than sit back and wait for their inevitable failure, they’ve criminalized them, or sent troops or hired thugs in against them. > > Seems to me to be a bit pointless to go so far to deal with something that’s just going to fail anyway. As historical examples here have stated, radical governments don’t always fail quietly. They sometimes kill a lot of people and cause a lot of other damage before they collapse. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/35 "2010-07-13T16:58:11Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > As historical examples here have stated, radical governments don’t always fail quietly. They sometimes kill a lot of people and cause a lot of other damage before they collapse. Communal and cooperative businesses aren’t the same thing as radical governments. The assaults on the Diggers and the laws banning white men living in Native American villages, for example, weren’t attempts to deal with threats from radical governments. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/36 "2010-07-13T19:05:26Z")
> [@](#): > > Communal and cooperative businesses aren’t the same thing as radical governments. The assaults on the Diggers and the laws banning white men living in Native American villages, for example, weren’t attempts to deal with threats from radical governments. You don’t feel that Winstanley and his supporters were radicals? While they were non-violent, they were denouncing the English government. As for laws against white people living with Native Americans, what does that have to do with communal and cooperative businesses? Laws prohibiting different races from associating were racist in origin. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/37 "2010-07-13T19:09:48Z")
They were radicals but they weren’t a government (other than outside their individual communities). Nor were the cooperative mills who saw their equipment destroyed by thugs hired by the capitalists. And the laws against living in native communities weren’t race based from what I have seen as much as social order based. And anyway I’d argue it isn’t possible to separate race relations from the overarching economicc structure anyway. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/38 "2010-07-13T20:12:55Z")
> [@villa](#): > > It’s amazing then, if communal and cooperative businesses are doomed to fail, that capitalist states have felt it necessary to use violence and the law against them. What’s illegal about them now? You’re free to set up such businesses all you want. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/39 "2010-07-13T20:21:44Z")
Congratulations for a non-sequitur there. When people have set them up in the past, especially during the Industrial Revolution, they were subject to assaults from both the groups of thugs hired by capitalists, and the law enforcement forces, also in the control of capitalists. Whether they are legal or not now is somewhat irrelevant to that. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/40 "2010-07-13T20:59:19Z")
> [@villa](#): > > It’s amazing then, if communal and cooperative businesses are doomed to fail, that capitalist states have felt it necessary to use violence and the law against them. Rather than sit back and wait for their inevitable failure, they’ve criminalized them, or sent troops or hired thugs in against them. > > Seems to me to be a bit pointless to go so far to deal with something that’s just going to fail anyway. I guess my education is lacking, so please enlighten me. Can you give examples? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116.md?page=3)