The question does arise, however, of whether the climate was made so coercive by the war and the nearness of the anarchist militia that individual choice was impossible?
The facts speak for themselves — rural collectivization in Aragon embraced more than 70% of the population in the area saved from fascism. Around 30% of the population felt safe enough not to join a collective, a sizable percentage. If the collectives had been created by anarchist terror or force, we would expect a figure of 100% membership in the collectives. This was not the case, indicating the basically voluntary nature of the experiment (we should point out that other figures suggest a lower number of collectivists which makes the forced collectivisation argument even less likely). In addition, if the C.N.T. militia had forced peasants into collectives we would expect the membership of the collectives to peak in size almost overnight, not grow slowly over time. However, this is what happened: “At the regional congress of collectives, held at Caspe in mid-February 1937, nearly 80 000 collectivists were represented from ‘almost all the villages of the region.’ This, however, was bu
