Wealth & Money Quote by Frederica Montseny

No hedging, no technocratic tinkering: Montseny’s “therefore” is a guillotine blade. It doesn’t invite debate so much as close the case. The line is built like a proof, not a plea, and that’s the point: in moments when institutions are collapsing or complicit, she argues that incremental reform isn’t merely insufficient, it’s structurally impossible. The only “solution” left is to reroute the economy’s steering wheel to those who actually produce its value.

The insistence on “directed by the workers” carries a double target. It rejects capitalist ownership, obviously, but it also swats at state socialism’s promise that a benevolent government can manage industry on workers’ behalf. Montseny, an anarchist and a leading figure in Spain’s CNT-FAI milieu, stakes out the syndicalist bet: power should sit in federated workplace organizations, not in parties, parliaments, or ministries. “Organisations of control” is the key phrase. This isn’t romantic talk about dignity at work; it’s a blueprint for governance, with oversight and discipline replacing bosses and bureaucrats.

Context sharpens the urgency. Montseny’s politics were forged in early 20th-century Spain, where brutal inequality, labor militancy, and the looming catastrophe of civil war made “who controls production?” a life-or-death question. Read against that backdrop, the quote is less utopian than defensive: a claim that without worker control, any economy will revert to exploitation or authoritarian management. The subtext is austere and uncompromising: if you want freedom, you can’t outsource it to the state.