Augustin Souchy Bauer - With the Peasants of Aragon. Libertarian Communism in the Liberated Areas

Although he is well known in Europe, he is not so well known in the English-speaking world. Augustin Souchy Bauer was born August 28, 1892 (died, Munich 1894). In 1917, he escaped from Germany to avoid the draft. He then was expelled from Sweden to Norway and from Norway to Denmark because of his participation in anti-war activities.

In 1918, he started writing articles and books for the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movement, and continues to lecture and write actively to this day, at 89 years of age.

He has had a knack to be at the centre of historic developments during his life that few, if any, could equal. He was in Russia in 1920 for eight months in connection with the first International Congress of Red Trade Unions.

He lived in Germany from 1921 to 1933 when Hitler came to power. He served as editor of Der Syndicalist, organ of the German anarcho syndicalist labour organization. He was a founder of the International Working Men's Association, IWMA, the anarcho-syndicalist international, and was co-secretary of the International with Rudolf Rocker and Alexander Shapiro.

After 1931 when it became a Republic, he went to Spain many times as a representative of the IWMA. He was in Spain in 1936, two weeks before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and Social Revolution. He was immediately put in charge of information in foreign countries and was an adviser on foreign relations.

In 1939, fleeing ahead of Franco's troops, Souchy left Barcelona with half-a-million Spanish anti-fascists. Since then, Souchy has spent a great deal of time in Mexico. He visited Israel and wrote about their collective settlements. He travelled through most of South America, and has spent time in Africa teaching trade union organisation to the native populations. He has lectured and written in Sweden, Germany, the United States, and in many other countries. His books and articles have been published in German, French, English, Swedish, Danish, Spanish and Yiddish.

At age 89, he still conducts active campaigns in behalf of anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism with lectures and writing in Germany as well as recent visits to Sweden and Israel.

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The social and economic story of Aragn was the finest chapter of that period. A majority of the 500,000 people in that rural area put their personal property into the collectives voluntarily and committed their families to the free and equal life of libertarian communism. But individualists lived among them and enjoyed the respect of their neighbours.

The voluntary character of the social transformation from private ownership to collective communities is described at length in the first person account of what happened in the town of Alcampel. (See Appendix.) About half of the town goes collective. Among those who do not join are three teamsters who drive their own trucks, the only trucks in the town. The Collective cannot function without some means of transportation. Does the Collective requisition the trucks? No. They understand and respect the fear of the teamsters; they could lose their livelihood if they gave up their trucks. So, the Collective leaves the only three trucks in town in private hands and sends a delegation to Barcelona to obtain a truck.

How did it happen that the spirit of liberty had such strong roots in Spain, that 8,000,000 of 12,000,000 people lived or worked in voluntary collectives in Loyalist Spain, without benefit of government decrees requiring compliance with regulations from above?

The libertarian labour movement was born in Spain in October 1868, following a visit by Giuseppe Fanelli, an Italian comrade and supporter of Michael Bakunin in the fight within the First International Workingmens Association between the authoritarian Karl Marx and the anarchist Bakunin.