Above my computer I have a poster that I stole from a London bus-stop. It says in big letters "Capitalism Destroys You - Destroy Capitalism!". Actually it doesn't have the exclamation mark, because it comes from the notoriously glum socialist party, but I think if you don't put an exclamation mark on a slogan like that there's no point to sloganeering at all. Next to the nice slogan is a picture of some poor member of the working class pushing a wheel-barrow-like contraption, no doubt filled with manure, while some rich toff with a top-hat and cane* walks by. Recently I read a biography of Bueneventura Durruti (link to the wikipedia article which totally omits the neatest parts of his life) and it reminded me of that poster. Hell, if the poor member of the working class smashed his wheelbarrow over the toff's head, robbed a bank, and led an anarchist army, it would be practically same!

Durruti was born to a half-French half-Catalan family in Spain on the fourteenth of July, 1896. At the time Spain was the most feudal West-European country: it was run by a corrupt Catholic Church and a royalty-tied aristocracy. Socialism was sweeping the world, and Spain was constantly experiencing strikes. Durruti had his political consciousness first raised when his father, a leather-dresser, was jailed for joining a strike. His uncle, Ignacio Durruti, did the same for all of Catalonia by starting the first workers' organisations there (they demanded a 10 hour day!). Ten years later young Durruti decided he wanted to become a machinist, and so he sought out a machinist famous for being a socialist, and apprenticed himself.

The only thing that exceeded his temperament for metallurgy was his thirst for revolution. He quickly became more and more radicalized - after two years his master told him "I can teach you no more, either in mechanics or in socialism". Durruti went to another shop, and soon became both an official metallurgist and a trade unionist. He became attached to a socialist intellectual, Iglesias Muniz, but when Muniz began to complain about the CNT being too revolutionary, Durruti wanted to know more. Muniz - and other socialist leaders - criticized him for being too impatient, but he gave rousing speeches that stirred other young workers.

A few years later Spain was going through an economic revival, and Durruti and other machinists were sent to work with miners in Leon. The miners soon struck to protest management's snotty attitude towards them, and other miners struck in solidarity. With the machinists still working the strike wouldn't do much good, so Durruti led the machinists in strike as well. The strike was successful, but Durruti had to leave, because the head of the provinces had heard about him and "didn't like extremists". He went to the Northern Railroad Company, where he discovered anarchism.

It wasn't long before strikes broke out at his new job, too. These strikes were on a much wider scale - most workers in the section were striking to protest mistreatment. The strikes were led by more moderate socialists, but Durruti led other radical youth to acts of sabotage - destroying tracks, setting fire to railroad cars, and other ways of showing their displeasure. Though this helped the strikes, it displeased the socialist leaders, who kicked out a whole list of people - at the top of which was Durruti. He moved around the country, joined the CNT (the anarchist union!), and had to flee to France to dodge the WW1 draft. There he met up with other anarchist exiles and began to study in earnest. He did this for two years, becoming a commited anarchist, and in 1919 returned to Spain, where the CNT had built up quite a lot of strength (their most recent conference had had delegates from about a million workers).

There are still risks for striking workers, like losing pay, or worse, your job altogether. In those days, however, workers were frequently beat senseless by the cops, and sometimes executed altogether as an example to the others. It was in this atmosphere that a team of young anarchists assassinated a governor who had ordered the execution of thirty-three anarchists. Inspired by this, Durruti's group (Los Justicieros!), planned to execute the King. They dug a tunnel under a route where they knew he'd be coming, and Durruti gathered explosives. Sadly, they weren't subtle enough about their digging, and the cops found them out. Some railroad workers hid them, and they managed to escape to Aragon. This was Durruti's first labeling in the press as a dangerous anarchist, but not his last at all.

In Saragossa Durruti made friends with Francisco Ascaco, another anarchist revolutionary. Durruti repeated his simple message of worker-led revolution over and over, swelling his influence in the CNT. By this time he'd basically become the person he'd be for the rest of his life - large, with an athletic frame, and very friendly. Around this time the state was engaging in one of its periodic repressions, and Durruti decided - against the counsel of, well, everyone - that he should visit them. Him and Ascaco disguised themselves as a foreigner and a tourist, respectively , and visited one of the political prisoners. Sadly, as they left, they were recognised, and Durruti was immediately arrested for a number of offences.

Over the next few months he was held in jail while a number of repressions went down. The largest was in response to the assassination of the Archbishop Soldevilla, a notoriously corrupt man. The actual actors were never found, but the press blamed anarchists and most militants were jailed. Ironically despite being labeled as a principle actor (from behind bars!) Durruti was freed around this time. The King was planning to overthrow the government and establish a dictatorship, and only the CNT was actively opposing this with large revolutionary strikes. They were a bit short on funds (for guns), however, so Durruti robbed his first bank. They stole 650,000 pesetas, and left the bank, only to find the cops had been alerted. They went into two groups, one of which ran off with the money, the other of which, led by Durruti, traded fire with the cops. The cops realised it was Durruti and concentrated their fire on him (which allowed the others to escape). Durruti ran into a house, upstairs - all while being shot at, mind - out onto the roftops, where he jumped across rooftops until he managed to escape, upon which time he went to Barcelona.

(Press at the time actually reported that he held up a priest for his cassock and then escaped by pretending to be a priest. As awesome as this it, it's probably also not true, and Durruti is cool enough that one doesn't need to make anything up about him)

The dictatorship was declared, and sure enough, only the CNT fought back by declaring a general strike. They weren't big enough, though, and none of the other unions joined them, so they were forced to go underground. The other unions, incidentally, simply agreed to collaborate. Francisco Ascaco managed to escape from jail around now, he met up with Durruti, and together they escaped to France.

In France the situation was a bit depressing. Anarchism was on the wane with the rise of Bolshevism, and the french anarchists were all a bit glum. There were some spanish folks commited to guerilla war in the Pyrennese mountains against the fascists in Spain, which Durruti helped out with. Soon though France too tired of them and the anarchists had to leave. Most left to Belgium, but Durruti was understandably wary of more European adventures. So with Ascaco he decided to go to South America, where they would keep in contact with European anarchists through a series of sailors. In December 1924 they left for Cuba aboard a Dutch cargo boat.

For skimmers, this is where the story gets truly awesome

Durruti and Ascaco had only planned on being in Cuba for a little while, but when they got there the situation was so horrible they knew they needed to help. A dictator was in charge and the police were corrupt. They got jobs as dock-workers, and repeated over and over this message: "Don't ever put your fate and the solution to your problems in the hands of political professionals and don't allow leaders to appear among you. Both will betray you and you won't escape from your situation as slaves. You will start to be free when you are capable of conducting your struggle yourselves." Within a few weeks they had organised themselves in a radical union, which displeased the cops. As the book puts it, they then "prudently left the capital" to join a sugar plantation.

Within days of joining the plantation the workers went on strike. The foremen weren't happy about this, so they seized three workers at random and beat them senseless - when the workers were returned they couldn't even move. That pretty much ended the strike, but Durruti watched furiously and decided that the boss must die. The next day he was found in his office, a note pinned to his chest: "Justice of the Wanderers". Durruti and Ascaco were gone. As with the bank robbery their legend grew, soon a team of anarchists had killed half a dozen landlords (in reality, one more foremen was killed with a note like the first).

Durruti and Ascaco wisely decided to leave Cuba for Mexico. They rented a little pleasure boat and took it out to a fishing boat, which they hijacked. By the time they got to Mexico the captain was actually happy to work with them. There authorities took them for smugglers and they were arrested. Durruti understood how the cops worked, however, and bribed them for his freedom.

In Mexico the anarchists needed money badly. Besides producing regular publications the unions wanted to start libertarian schools on the lines of Francisco Ferrer. Durruti decided to help in the best way he could. Durruti and Ascaco robbed a number of banks, and gave all the money to various radical organisations, mostly to start the schools. The cops searched all the slums for them, but they were hiding out in the swankiest hotel in town, pretending to be oilmen. One day, after they had robbed millions from the rich to give to the poor, they skipped the bill and headed to Argentina (hounded by police on all sides).

Argentina had lots of Italian immigrants, so continental drama was being replayed there, with fascists and anarchists fighting in the streets. There was a big anarchist union there, the FORA, but Durruti couldn't associate with anarchists too strongly, lest they both get in trouble. He became a dock-worker again (under the alias Ramon Carcana Caballero). Him and Ascaco robbed a few trains and several banks, getting the cops really riled up, and eventually had to leave for France, where they set off an international incident.

When they got to France they were excited to hear that the King of Spain was about to visit. They really didn't like him. They were all prepared to assassinate him when, just like last time, the cops arrested them. Countries around the world fought for the honor of extraditing and murdering them, but French, with a sort of Gallic stubbornnes, refused to let them go.


TO BE COMPLETED WHEN I RETURN FROM CLASS

*Ditching the top-hat and cane was the savviest pr-move of the bourgeois swine
11:21 AM