Anarchist Socialism in Early Twentieth-Century Spain: A Ricardo Mella Anthology

333 Pages·2020·3.125 MB·English

by  Stephen Luis Vilaseca

HISPANIC URBAN STUDIES
Anarchist Socialism
in Early Twentieth-
Century Spain
A Ricardo Mella Anthology
Stephen Luis Vilaseca
Hispanic Urban Studies
Series Editors
Benjamin Fraser
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ, USA
Susan Larson
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX, USA
Hispanic Urban Studies is a series of scholarly monographs, edited
volumes, and translations focusing on Spanish, Latin American and US
Latino urban culture. The humanities and the social sciences are closer
in methodology than ever before. Hispanic Urban Studies serves a dual
purpose: to introduce radically original humanities work to social science
researchers while affirming the relevance of cultural production to discus-
sions of the urban. This book series takes advantage of and further
contributes to exciting interdisciplinary discussions between Hispanic
Studies and Cultural Geography with the aim of bringing in new ideas
about space, place, and culture from all parts of the Hispanic world.
Monograph titles bring together analyses of the cultural production of the
Hispanic world with urban and spatial theory from a range of disciplinary
contexts. The series also welcomes proposals for edited volumes related to
cities that contribute in creative ways to our understanding of the spatial
turn in Hispanic Studies. Translations published in the series introduce
English- language readers to the rich legacy of materials on urbanism, urban
culture, and cultural geography originally published in Spanish.
About the series editors
Benjamin Fraser is Professor of Spanish at the University of Arizona, USA.
Susan Larson is Professor of Spanish at Texas Tech University, USA.
Advisory Board
Malcolm Compitello, University of Arizona, USA
Monica Degen Brunel, University, London, UK
Cecilia Enjuto Rangel, University of Oregon, USA
Amanda Holmes, McGill University, Canada
Marcy Schwartz, Rutgers University, USA
Álvaro Sevilla Buitrago, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain
Armando Silva, National University of Colombia, Bogotá
Michael Ugarte, University of Missouri, Columbia, USA
Víctor Valle, California Polytechnic State University, USA
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14872
Stephen Luis Vilaseca
Anarchist Socialism
in Early Twentieth-
Century Spain
A Ricardo Mella Anthology
Stephen Luis Vilaseca
World Languages and Cultures
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL, USA
ISSN 2662-5830 ISSN 2662-5849 (electronic)
Hispanic Urban Studies
ISBN 978-3-030-44676-5 ISBN 978-3-030-44677-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44677-2
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For my dad, Luis, and for all who fight for the continual
shake-up of everyday life
A
cknowledgments
Although creative activism in Spain, the focus of my earlier scholarship, is
heavily influenced by anarchistic practices, I was unfamiliar with Ricardo
Mella’s work. I would like to thank Benjamin Fraser for introducing me to
Mella’s significant body of texts and for encouraging me to pursue this
translation project. I gained much insight into Mella’s thought through
speaking with Iria Presa. This book would not have been possible without
her tireless and exhaustive archival research, and her willingness to share
what she had found. Thanks go, too, to George Richard Esenwein for
graciously agreeing to ground my reading of the relationship between
Mella’s anarchist thought and the city with his expertise in Spanish anar-
chism. I am also indebted to Matthew Smith for his invaluable suggestions
regarding the translation itself, and I thank my wife, Emily Knudson-
Vilaseca, for her careful reading of the final manuscript prior to publica-
tion. I would also like to extend my gratitude to David Yan who created
the maps of Vigo that are included in my introduction to this translation.
Finally, thanks go to the anonymous readers solicited by Palgrave who
provided thoughtful and constructive feedback.
I owe much to colleagues who have encouraged me over the years. In
particular, Bryan Cameron, Malcolm Compitello, Matthew Feinberg,
Susan Larson, and Araceli Masterson-Algar. I also am grateful for the
support given to me by my co-workers at Northern Illinois University.
Lastly, I thank my parents and sisters for giving me the strength to be a
freethinker. I hope that my sons, Tryggve and Viggo, will someday read
this translation and be inspired by Mella’s anarchist ideas.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The contents of this book comprise texts that Mella signed with his
own name (these are the sections I have translated as “Anarchist Socialism:
Prolegomena”, “Free Cooperation and Community Systems”, “The
Principle of Reward and the Law of Needs”, “Is Labor a Physiological
Need?”, “The Practical Meaning of Anarchism”, “Bellicose Literature”,
“For the Barbarians”, “Guilty Idealisms”, “Authoritarian Bad Habits”,
“The Absurdity of a Judgment”, “Concerning Antinomy”, “The Old
Routines”, “How a Method is Strengthened”, “Productive Labor”, “The
Great Resources”, “Revolutions”, “Savagery and Ferocity”, “The Sadness
of Living”, “Enclosures”, “Dialogue about Skepticism”, “Reason is not
enough”, “The Bankruptcy of Beliefs”, “Enough Idolatries!”, “Beyond
the Ideal”, “The Intellectualist Hyperbole: Intellectual Workers and
Manual Workers”, “Worn-out Socialism”, “Central Error of the Power of
Nations”, “Verbalism in Education”, “The Two Spains”, “Culture”, “The
Death of Pi y Margall”, “Anselmo Lorenzo: A Young Old Man”, “One
Opinion and Another”, “Two Speeches: Maeztu and Alomar”, “Fictions
and Realities”, and “Two Books”), with the initials of his first and last
name or with the initials of his first name only (“The Uselessness of Laws”,
“The Future of Latin America by M. Ugarte”, “Works of Auguste Dide”,
and “The Christian Legend”), under his pseudonym Raúl (“Compound
606”, “Official Science of Criminology”, “Regimentation and Nature:
Civilization’s Work”, “Vote, but Listen”, “Insignificant Things of an
Insignificant Philosopher”, “Vision of the Future”, “Dead Things”, “The
Weight of Immorality”, “Secondhand Morality”, “Sincerity”, “Signs of
the Times”, “Liberalism and Interventionism”, “Brain and Brawn”, “The
Drawbacks of Cheap Philosophy”, and “César o nada, Novel by Pío
Baroja”), his pseudonym Mario (“An Indictment”, “Insignificant Things
of an Insignificant Philosopher”, “Dunces and Crafty Devils”, and
“Costa”), his pseudonym Dr. Alén (“Justice and Triable Issues: The Case
of Sancho Alegre”, and “Ideas and Realities”), his pseudonym X (“Regional
Monographs”), and texts that Mella did not sign, publishing them as lead-
ers or editorials in the newspapers Acción Libertaria (Gijón, Vigo and
Madrid) and El Libertario (“Those Who Rule”, “A Day of Almsgiving”,
“Crème de la crème”, “Revolutionaries, Yes; Spokesmen for the
Revolution, No”, “The Great Lie”, “Overpowering Centralism”,
“Questions of Tactics”, “Libertarian Tactics”, “How One Fights”,
“Political Evolution and Social Evolution”, “Sowing Death”, “Voices in
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
the Desert”, “The Uselessness of Laws”, “Psychology of Authority”,
“Libertarians and Authoritarians”, “The Essence of Power: Dictatorships”,
“Not Pessimistic or Optimistic”, “First of May”, “October 13, 19…”,
“Class Struggle”, “Concerning Justice”, “The Problem with Education”,
“What is meant by Rationalism?”, “Questions of Education”, “For the
Spanish Bourgeoisie: An Adversary’s Advice”, “Hunger and
Lasciviousness”, and “The Anarchist Danger”).
t ’ n
rAnslAtor s ote
Our ideals are the experimental result of each moment. (my translation,
Mella 1926, 18)
This kind of ever evolving storytelling and meaning-making in and through
translation—where words are always in continuous and critical creative
motion—fundamentally challenges our received ideas about “the expert.”
(Nagar 2017, 124)
When I began to translate Ricardo Mella’s work, the pressure to produce
a faithful, definitive translation weighed heavily on my shoulders. I was
unsure how to carry across Mella’s unique style and voice from Spanish to
English. My uncertainty was crippling until I realized that the appropriate
approach to translating his texts was to be found in his anarchist thought.
Mella vehemently argues that anarchism’s “philosophy stems from the
following principle demonstrated everywhere: science is a body of knowl-
edge in perpetual formation” (my emphasis and translation, Mella 1926,
17). The concept of continuous variations, and of constant evolution and
movement marks Mella’s world vision. He advises against pre-determined
formulas and constraints, and, as his quote that precedes this note suggests,
he believes that each moment is an infinite unleashing of multiple spaces
of becoming.
Mella’s early twentieth-century thought is reinforced by recent translation
theory. Not only Richa Nagar (Nagar 2017, 124), whose quote, also,
introduces this note, but Christi Merrill (Merrill 2009), as well, view
translation as a retelling, in which both text and context are constantly
xi