Labor Movements: Revolts, Ideologies, and the First International
Workers’ Revolts
The living conditions of the first proletarians in factories were dire. The first manifestations of protest came after 1830 and had a Luddite character, as seen in Alcoy and the famous fire at the Bonaplata factory in Barcelona in 1835. Unemployed workers started a fire there. In Barcelona in 1834, the first union formed by weavers.
In Barcelona in 1854, the first general strike in Spain occurred. The labor movement spread to other areas and gained momentum during the six-year revolutionary period. Peasant revolts demanding land distribution and workers demanding better pay and living conditions became abundant. Republicans initially coalesced around the discontent of the labor movement, but after coming to power and not responding to their demands, workers and peasants moved away from the official policy to benefit from internationalist organizations and ideas that were beginning to spread in Spain: anarchism and socialism.
Ideologies of the Labor Movement
Utopian Socialism
The so-called utopian socialist ideas sought a level playing field for all men. They believed in improving the living conditions of workers by appealing to the goodwill of the owners and entrepreneurs. They were characterized by an abundance of projects and experiments (Blanqui, Fourier).
Marxism (Marx)
Marxism aims to emancipate the working class from the capitalist system. Workers should develop class consciousness and organize into political parties independent of the bourgeoisie to conquer the state and abolish private property. It is the most important ideology of the labor movement.
Anarchism
Anarchism emphasizes freedom and rejects any kind of authority or hierarchy. Although, like Marxism, it seeks the emancipation of workers, it differs in its rejection of political activity, rejection of dictatorship, and emphasis on freedom over equality, as well as education for all.
The First International and its Impact in Spain
Founded in London in 1864, it initially brought together British trade unionists, anarchists, and French and Italian socialist Republicans. Its purposes were the political organization of the proletariat in Europe and around the world, as well as a forum to discuss common problems and propose courses of action. It included Karl Marx, Engels, and Mikhail Bakunin.
The great tension, resulting from programmatic differences between Marx and the partisans of scientific socialism, and Bakunin and supporters of collectivist anarchism, led to a split between the two sectors: Marxists and Bakunists. The Marxists considered the first organizational model exceeded the associationist one and proposed a program in favor of training an international match of highly centralized socialist workers with a minimum program based on the struggle for social achievements and concrete work, and a maximum one based on the struggle for social revolution through the conquest of political power by the proletariat.
In 1872, the General Council of the IWA was relocated from London, where it had been since its inception, to New York, and was officially dissolved in 1876. In 1889, the Second International, of a social democratic nature, was established as the successor to its political ends, and ran until 1916. In 1922, the International Workers Association, an anarchosyndicalist organization, appeared, which even pretended to collect the libertarian witness and currently continues.