Anarchism in One Country: Diego Abad de Santillán and the Invention of Participatory National Economic Planning in Interwar Anarchism

This article examines the transformation that occurred in anarchist political economy during the interwar period by tracing the intellectual trajectory of Diego Abad de Santillán, an important labor organizer and policymaker during the Spanish Revolution and Civil War (1936–39). Representative of a broader intellectual struggle within anarchism, Abad de Santillán moved away from nineteenth-century ideas about inaugurating anarchism through autonomous communes and gravitated toward participatory national economic planning. Uncovering this shift sheds light on the techniques of governance available to anarchists during the conflict and it highlights their efforts to steer elitist discourses about planning toward democratic management.