Workers´ encyclopaedia: the anarchist publishing revolution 1881-1923

Abstract

Once convinced that social revolution would be impossible following the criteria established by middle-class, Spanish anarchists promoted a transformation without precedent of the fixed cultural models that found within the world of publishing one of its most solid basis. Being convinced that existent systems were corrupted and at the service of the leading class, in transition from XIX to XX century, new means of work production and promotion were practised; new concepts of what a book was and what issues it should tackle opened a debate that strongly caught on with new readers; changed the editorial outlook of the coming century completely and even attracted many left wing middle-class people, who were inspired by it for the new literary humanization of the 1930s. Aware of the subversion power of this alternative cultural model motivated by anarchist publishers, national oligarchy reacted with rage to those proposals by strongly repressing the instigators, prosecuting their works and causing their fall under Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship.