During the early decades of this century, anarchism assumed a predominant position in the Argentine labor movement. Nonetheless, the history of Argentine anarchism remains little known, largely because the police systematically persecuted and exiled leaders, destroyed meeting centers and libraries, and confiscated and burned documents. Abad de Santillán’s study, originally published in 1933 and one of the very few secondary works dealing with this epoch of labor history, long has been scarce, indeed almost unobtainable, in Argentina and elsewhere. The publication of this new edition therefore represents a major contribution to scholarship.
After a lengthy prologue in which historian Juan Lazarte summarizes the socio-economic setting of early twentieth-century Argentina and discusses the ideological forerunners of the republic’s anarchist movement, Abad de Santillán narrates the emergence, growth, and decline of F.O.R.A. (Federación Obrera Regional Argentina, as the movement was known after 1904). F.O.R.A.’s bitter clashes with the socialists and with moderate anarchists (who formed a separate organization, F.O.R.A. IX, in 1915) absorb much of the author’s attention, but Abad de Santillán also analyzes in detail Argentina’s severe labor unrest of the 1902-1919 period and the brutal state repression it engendered.
Several themes recur in Abad de Santillán’s analysis. F.O.R.A. envisioned the destruction of capitalism and the rise of a vaguely defined “anarchic communism” in which workers’ syndicates would organize production and which would abolish the state, viewed as the repressive arm of the capitalist class. Although in the short run anarchists bargained with employers for improvements, they also remained confident that ultimately, in a period of crisis, the general strike would destroy capitalism. Thus, on the one hand, F.O.R.A. did not support the use of terror and violence to advance its ends, and on the other hand, it vigorously opposed the gradualism and political participation which the Argentine Socialist Party espoused. Finally, F.O.R.A. sharply rejected the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the period following the overthrow of the capitalist state.
The volume contains a vast amount of information useful to historians of the Argentine labor movement. For example, Abad de Santillán’s meticulous description of the proceedings of crucial anarchist congresses of 1902, 1904, and 1915 will clarify many murky misconceptions concerning internal labor politics. Unfortunately, the author omits certain important aspects of anarchist history; he barely mentions relationships between F.O.R.A. and the nascent rural labor movement, and he overlooks the huge strikes of farm workers which the government savagely repressed in 1919 and 1920.
