Collectivist anarchism
[8] Bakunin had been inspired by the traditional agrarian collectivism practiced by the Russian peasantry and wished to see its principles of mutual aid applied to industrial society, which he hoped to mobilise in favour of liberty and social equality.
[11] Bakunin's collectivism had widespread appeal in Spain, where industrial workers and rural peasants found inspiration in its precepts of decentralisation and direct action.
[16] But Serrano's collectivism differed from Pi's federalism by rejecting reformist political parties and instead upholding the working class as the agents of revolutionary change.
[18] Following the collapse of the FRE-AIT, in 1881, the Barcelona branch reconstituted the organisation as the Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region (FTRE), which was established according to the principles of collectivist anarchism.
[22] The anarcho-communists criticized the collectivist model of workers' entitlement to the fruit of their labour, which they believed would disenfranchise non-producers and risk creating a new ruling class that determined wages.
[24] In organizational terms, the communists opposed the trade unions advocated by the collectivists, viewing them as fundamentally reformist and bureaucratic, and thus as incompatible with anti-authoritarian models of organization.
[25] Instead, the communists preferred small affinity groups that could carry out violent attacks against the economic order, upholding the theory of propaganda of the deed.
[31] In 1888, the Catalan regional federation of the FTRE was reorganised into the Pact of Union and Solidarity (PUS), which nominally retained a collectivist orientation, but accepted members from all tendencies.
[33] The collapse of the FTRE marked the supplanting of collectivism as the dominant anarchist ideology in Spain, as the communists consolidated control over the movement.
[40] Although he personally favoured anarcho-communism, he distinguished between his desired ends and the means by which the social revolution would take place, believing that the organisation of society should be left to spontaneous development.
