I was reading George Orwell’s hommage to Catalonia the other day and was just shocked by how brutal this was.
For context Orwell served in the POUM (anti-authoritarian marxists) in the spanish civil war against the facist-conservative-feudalist camp. However over time the liberal bourgeoisie and the Stalinist side of the republic (anti-facist forces), allied themselves together and started brutally repressing the Anarchist and Anti-Stalinist Marxist Factions. They basically handed the victory over to the facists by purging the left.
The fascists won because
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They had more foreign aid from nazi Germany and fascist Italy. The luftwaffa especially was a key advantage for the fascists as they had air superiority and were able to bomb republican positions with little cost. If France, the UK and the US had a backbone and sent aid the Republicans would have won.
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They had more military expertise and discipline. Pluralism and anarchism are great in peace time but you can't win a war with them. The anarchist system was a wonder to behold in Catalonia, but they were never going to be able to spread it to the rest of Spain because they were never able to win a battle after the opening skirmishes in aragon. Say what you will about the communists, they had discipline and had proven there system can win a civil war in russia. If only they had a trotsky and lenin to competently lead the fight against fascism.
Did the communists go too hard on repressing the anarchists? Yes
Did the communist have a valid reason to suppress a movement about not following orders and leadership during a war? Yes
I would very much recommend reading Orwell’s Hommage to Catalonia.
Especially the Appendixes. Even though written before the war even ended he explains quite well how the arguments you make were quite meticulously crafted by the republican government’s ministry of propaganda, and broadcast to the communist press worldwide through soviet intervention.
At the end, Orwell comes to the chilling conclusion which is actually fairly common amongst historians, that the Stalinists saw the worker controlled revolution of Spain as more of a threat than both the bourgeois state of things and the Facists. Hence why the allied with the bourgeois liberals and rolled back the revolution.
Here’s a quote
Except for the small revolutionary groups which exist in all countries, the whole world was determined upon preventing revolution in Spain. In particular the Communist Party, with Soviet Russia behind it, had thrown its whole weight against the revolution. It was the Communist Party thesis that revolution at this stage would be fatal and that what was to be aimed at in Spain was not workers' control, but bourgeois democracy. It hardly needs pointing out why 'liberal' capitalist opinion took the same line.
Quotes I think illustrate the tension well
It was queer how everything had changed. Only six months ago, when the Anarchists still reigned, it was looking like a proletarian that made you respectable. On the way down from Perpignan to Cerbères a French commercial traveller in my carriage had said to me in all solemnity: ‘You mustn't go into Spain looking like that. Take off that collar and tie. They'll tear them off you in Barcelona.’ He was exaggerating, but it showed how Catalonia was regarded. And at the frontier the Anarchist guards had turned back a smartly-dressed Frenchman and his wife, solely – I think – because they looked too bourgeois. Now [under the stalinists] it was the other way about; to look bourgeois was the one salvation.
On one side the CNT [Anarchists], on the other side the police [Stalinist]. I have no particular love for the idealized ‘worker’ as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.
Ignore that the Ukrainian Black Army was pretty helpful in beating the White Army and only lost after the Red Army had finished all of its other opponents and decided to focus all its efforts on beating its former Black Army allies.
Seems like there is a bit of a trend of Marxist-Leninists thinking their anarchist allies are prime for a knife to the back
They had more foreign aid from nazi Germany and fascist Italy.
Misleading half-truth. Franco received copious amounts of logistic support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy while the US and Britain went out of their way to ensure that the Republican side couldn't receive the same. This forced the Republicans to accept poisoned "aid" from Stalin, virtually ensuring eventual fascist victory. Even so, Franco's fascists had a hard time achieving any of their objectives.
They had more military expertise and discipline.
Another misleading half-truth. George Orwell himself expressed a wish to join an anarchist formation, not because he shared their ideology, but rather because (in his view) they were the most dedicated of the combatants on the Republican side.
Also see what George Orwell had to say about the numbers of defectors they received from the fascist side - so much for your vaunted "discipline."
Did the communist have a valid reason to suppress
How would a tankie even know what the word leadership means?
What the actual fuck are you doing on slrpnk.net you complete bootlicker?
"We don't understand their military command structure" is totally a valid justification for stabbing allied anarchist groups in the back and throwing a civil war to fascists, as long as you don't go "too hard" on repressing them
is not a take that belongs on an anarchist instance.
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The testimony of Paul Robeson before the HUAC, after he was snitched on by George Orwell.
I mean, at least they're up front about it. If a Nazi is breathing, they're lying, but I've had commies straight up tell me that I'd get the bullet too.
Yeah, friends with reds. Do all the hard work for them lazy asses to be backstabbed in the end.
The reds where I live come to rallies to recruit people into a very cult like group that constantly demands money from it's members, to sell expensive tickets to meetings and their newspaper, even when we make a point to say no stalls are welcome and to not profit off of our work. They're very icky and I feel very bad for the students they recruit because they get all the flack for being duped.
Fuck leftist unity, if leftist unity means sacrificing the revolution for some some tyrant to twist class consciousness into a "dictatorship of the proletariat" im not playing along.
DEATH TO REACTION, DEATH TO DECEIT, DEATH TO TYRANNY
Left unity is a lie to use anarchist labor into making their own graves when the state-based socialists get into power.
This thread:
Tankies are not that honest.
I think the problem of left unity is a symptom capitalism. Models of anarchism, communism, and socialism have wildly differing systems of social relations, organizing, governance, economics, etc. Even the sub-models in each of these categories have vast differences. But in our political discourse they're all compressed into the same box of the "left", because our prevailing system so dominates the narrative that these other systems are all erroneously viewed through a lens that presumes private property and redistribution of wealth vs no redistribution of wealth as the dividing line. Nevermind the hypocrisy of "redistribution of wealth," as corporations are speedrunning to unjustly pump virtually all forms of wealth into their coffers.
I remember when I was young and dumb and finding myself fascinated by the Venus Project and Zeitgeist Movement. The basic idea seemed so elegant and promising to me: we can use technology to solve our problems, to use technological progress to obsolete scarcity itself!. I tried to chat with people about it, and on more than one occasion somebody would just shut the conversation down with, "But that's socialism." That was the first time I realized something was very broken in our discourse, because it was like, yeah kind of technically, but it's also something very different from what we normally think of what socialism is.
That's kind of what a lot of these labels are, ultimately. Thought stopping cliches.
Marxism-Leninism explicitly calls on using technology to eliminate scarcity. That's what collectivized agriculture and mass electrification were for. Along the development pathway the leadership sort of forgot this because they ran into a lot of problems (not the least of which was an incredible amount of hostility from the capitalist powers).
In my view Zeitgeist was just an update on The State and Revolution, but somehow without the armed overthrow of the government. Like technology will somehow allow us to surpass our class antagonisms and ingrained social structures (eapecially militarism) without toppling the ruling elite. I think it turned out to be a naive view unfortunately.
Yeah, its hard to discuss with someone how the soviets could have worked but they hemorrhaged themselves with war cost when they've been taught "socialism=communism and communism bad". We can still be a republic but have economic socialism.
This meme is from a movie based on the Kangoroo Chronicles books. Atleast the original german versions are quite funny
Can we focus on the common enemy for now? Can we all agree that of there is going to be a repeat of a dynamic from 100 years ago, it isn't likely going to happen real soon? Just seems like a waste of energy at this point of political reality.
Anarchists and State Communists do not have the common enemy as both have many differing enemies.
Fascists and capitalists? Those are the enemies I see right now, and it is going to take a lot more revolutionary energy (and time) to defeat them. I am someone with a foot in both Anarchism and Communism. I'm not "choosing a side" in some fight that we will only get the chance to have after we defeat capitalism! I've got criticisms and admirations for how both types organize, but I can't stand seeing people waste their energy tearing down comrades when there's actual work to be done.
Yeah, what's a little authoritarianism between friends?
- Guy who wants everything labeled and documented, because it will be easier to do sweeping economic reforms later
VS
- Guy who is into good vibes and not rocking the boat, but if you harsh his mellow he'll start breaking anything that looks expensive
Who would win?
Not true. The left are always fighting. Always disagreeing methods. If the left would be one strong front we would actually achieve something and fight nazis better.
The problem is trying to group vastly different ideologies such as Marxism and anarchy as one "left". You can't reduce political/social ideologies to a one-dimensional slider. Maybe if you project them on an axis that represents some "issue" they might fall close to each other, but they can also be at the opposite ends depending on how you choose that axis.
Nazis are a tool against communism. If you fight nazis you exhaust yourself as intended.
Does the movie actually have a social democratic Koala bear, or not?
The second one does (according to Wolfgang M Schmidt).
Yes, Uncle Makhno, we will give you the bullets you wanted to defend against the Whites. Shoots the black brigades in the back
I wish it was this but instead its constant infighting. Btw im a socdem(socialist if tou stretch the definition), tear me apart lol
Sure, this guy thinks socdems are socialists, everyone point and laugh!
(It's not your fault that all the other liberals bully and gaslight you, we accept you as the only good kind of liberal ❤️)
we accept you as the only good kind of liberal ❤️
Good enough for me as another socdem 😂
Oh no i meant that as im a socdem but if we had that system properly in place and it didnt work i would support trying socialism. Theres extremely little data about any proper socdem, socialist, communist government in the world that actually functioned(mainly because of the us and ussr).
I was a socdem once. My elders told me I would move right when I paid taxes. Now, I'm "friends" with a kangaroo until the revolution or something. From what I understand, the kangaroo believes in a classful, stateful communism.
I know you were joking but it's fucking hilarious seeing people actually arguing about it in the reply threads
Pretty much. We can dismantle capitalism together. But you better believe we’re building a socialist state for the transition.
Sorry. I don’t think y’all are necessarily wrong, but your goals are better implemented over a century than a decade.
Nah mate, the way we defeat capitalism specifies on what we end up with, and if it is done with anarchist methods, there isn't going to be a state. And if we don't follow anarchist praxis, then we're not "doing it together", are we?
we’re building a socialist state for the transition
Why is that necessary/beneficial?
When I was an anarchist during the Bush years I remember telling an exceptionally crunchy gutterpunk they could use a shower. They accused me of being a Nazi telling them I wanted them to go to the gas chambers. They were then in a grant writing class I took the following summer.
I see this kind of dynamic playing out quite often in online debates about leftism.
Truly a lover's quarrel
Why would communists not get along with anarchists? Communists are anarchists
Also it needs to be remembered that political parties are corporations
What makes you think communists are anarchists? Communism takes democracy to its logical extent. Social democracy is where we govern as a community and we vote on everything that is anything. Laws get voted on and business gets voted on. Communism > the masses decide. Anarchism > I'll do what I think is good for me.
Wikipedia describes communism as a stateless society.
A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state.
In response to the question "What will be the course of this revolution?" in The Principles of Communism (1847), Friedrich Engels wrote: "Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat." While Marxists propose replacing the bourgeois state with a proletarian semi-state through revolution (dictatorship of the proletariat), which would eventually wither away, anarchists warn that the state must be abolished along with capitalism. Nonetheless, the desired end results (a stateless communal society) are the same.
How do you explain the existence of anarchist communism if the two are mutually exclusive?
Because we have conflicting methods of achieving our system and because for many Marxists, their "communism" would look very different than ours
