[ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM] [CATALONIA] "Un grupo de obreros"

[Printed Broadside]: A Los Obreros

Manresa: Imp. Boixeda, 1919. Printed broadside on newsprint; 37cm x 32cm (approx); text in three columns beneath headline; signed in type "Un grupo de obreros," with printer's identification lower right. Old folds; slight toning, but just slight wear; Very Good.

A Spanish-language broadside addressed to "los obreros manresas" (workers in the Catalonian industrial centre of Manresa), promoting the work of the anarcho-syndicalist "Sindicatos Obreros" and denigrating the Church and the organization of Catholic worker's movements, which the authors characterize as designed: "para instruye y prepara al trabajador para que se deje explotar paciente y resignadamente" ("instruct and prepare the workers to accept their exploitation with patience and resignation"). The text provides a brief history of Socialism, extending back to early Christianity, then presents the systems of Marx and Kropotkin as the "purest expression" of socialism in the modern world. The text concludes with a rally cry to workers to join the syndicalist movement: "El Sindicato es el arma más eficaz para hacer valer nuestros derechos...Y si alguien, aunque sea jesuita, para desviaros de vuestro camino os habla de mansedumbre, de derechos adquiridos por los poderosos, de ciertos privilegios del clero y otras monsergas por el estilo, volvedle le espalda y limitaos a responderle estas palabras del apostol San Pablo: 'El que no quiera trabajar, que no coma' (The Syndicate is the most effective weapon to assert our rights... and if someone, even a Jesuit, to divert you from your path, speaks to you of meekness, of rights acquired by the powerful, of certain privileges of the clergy and other nonsense of that kind, turn your back on him and consider these words of the Apostle Saint Paul: 'He who does not want to work, should not eat)."

A rare labor broadside from a formative period of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement, highlighting the class and religious divisions that, a decade and a half later, would lead to the violent fracture of the Civil War. Not located in OCLC, KVK or COPAC; not in the catalog of the BNE.

Price: $400.00

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