War and Revolution

‘To guarantee revolution, it is not enough for the mob to be armed or for them to have expropriated the bourgeoisie: it is necessary for them to destroy the capitalist system entirely and to organise their own system. They must be able to combat the ideas put forward by Stalinist and reformist leaders with the same vigour with which they attack capitalist individuals and the leaders of the bourgeois parties. As of May 1937, any revolutionary endeavour that does not remain faithful to this experience condemns itself purely and simply to not existing. Attacking the state, unhesitatingly confronting the Stalinist-reformist counter-revolution: such are the distinctive characteristics of the coming revolution.‘ These extracts from the secret republication in 1973 (in Spanish) of Berneri's writings by the Iberian Liberation Movement (whose symbolic figure is Puig Antich, garrotted on 2nd March 1974) explain the reason for the publication of these writings. Also included are Berneri's views on Marxism and the militias.