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.
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
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.
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?
How is 1 a half truth? It seems we agree, the western bourgeoisie democracies failed to provide aid to the Republicans while the fascists did. I guess I didn’t mention that the soviets gave aid, but not as much as the fascists so they had the advantage on that front.
Why would you say the civil war was lost then? I agree the fascist aid wasn’t decisive, and the Republicans could win in spite of it, but they didn’t. It wasn’t because the communist turned on the anarchists, the republicans were losing the war prior to that. The anarchists had ample time and supplies to martial an army and relieve Madrid but they never did, they were content to hold there lines in aragon and wait for Franco to mop up the basque country before turning on them because the fundamental military issue of anarchism, no one is going to vote to go on the offensive.
I’m not a tankie, I just recognize the military weakness of the anarchist cause, just as I recognize the communist weakness of devolving power. I recognize anarchists can’t win wars and communists can’t give up power once the war is won. History has shown both to be true in every scenario its come up. Understanding the weaknesses of both causes is necessary if we want to achieve liberation from oppression and exploitation.
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
Yeah, the meme is accurate. After the right has been defeated the anarchists and authoritarians will turn on each other, both sides understand this. The blacks didn’t defeat the reds because of lack of will or a naive commitment to left unity, they lost because they lacked the discipline and organizational capacity to win a civil war.
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.
“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.”
This quote goes hard, I love it. Onto the reading list it goes
I wouldn’t recommend reading anything from orwell personally. Dude was a cop and a hitler apologist. I prefer isaac asimov’s review of 1984.
In this chapter, I will discuss the book, but first: Who was Blair/Orwell
and why was the book written?
Blair was born in 1903 into the status of a British gentleman. His father
was in the Indian civil service and Blair himself lived the life of a British Imperial official. He went to Eton, served in Burma, and so on. However, he lacked the money to be an English gentleman to the full. Then, too, he didn’t want to spend his time at dull desk jobs; he wanted to be a writer. Thirdly, he felt guilty about his status in the upper class. So he did in the late 1920s what so many well-to-do American young people in the 1960s did. In short, he became what we would have called a ‘hippie’ at a later time. He lived under slum conditions in London and Paris, consorted with and identified with slum dwellers and vagrants, managed to ease his conscience and, at the same time, to gather material for his earliest books.
He also turned left wing and became a socialist, fighting with the
loyalists in Spain in the 1930s. There he found himself caught up in the
sectarian struggles between the various left-wing factions, and since he believed in a gentlemanly English form of socialism, he was inevitably on the losing side. Opposed to him were passionate Spanish anarchists, syndicalists, and communists, who bitterly resented the fact that the necessities of fighting the Franco fascists got in the way of their fighting each other. The communists, who were the best organised, won out and Orwell had to leave Spain, for he was convinced that if he did not, he would be killed
From then on, to the end of his life, he carried on a private literary
war with the communists, determined to win in words the battle he had lost in action.*
*And he would be heavily propped up as an author by the CIA for doing so:
George Orwell’s novella remains a set book on school curriculums … the movie was funded by America’s Central Intelligence Agency.
The truth about the CIA’s involvement was kept hidden for 20 years until, in 1974, Everette Howard Hunt revealed the story in his book Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent.
]
During World War II, in which he was rejected for military service, he
was associated with the left wing of the British Labour party, but didn’t
much sympathise with their views, for even their reckless version of
socialism seemed too well organised for him.
He wasn’t much affected, apparently, by the Nazi brand of totalitarianism, for there was no room within him except for his private war with Stalinist communism. Consequently, when Great Britain was fighting for its life against Nazism, and the Soviet Union fought as an ally in the struggle and contributed rather more than its share in lives lost and in resolute courage, Orwell wrote Animal Farm which was a satire of the Russian
Revolution and what followed, picturing it in terms of a revolt of barnyard
animals against human masters.
This would make him a bit of a hypocrite in that regard, no? Perhaps a bit of projection happening?
Went through the Wikipedia for it and read appendix 6. I still stand by my opinion that the anarchists were doomed by either fascist or communist hands due to there lack of discipline. Yeah everyone was aligned against the anarchists, but everyone was aligned against the bolsheviks in 1917 and they were still able to win a civil war and establish a government.
Most of the appendix I read was litigating the conflicts in Barcelona in May and how the communist press distorted and lied about what happened. I’m willing to accept the communists did a coup and tried to cover it up and blame it on the POUM. The question is whether that was the right strategic move given the circumstances, and Orwell recognizes this:
Of course it is arguable that the C.N.T. workers ought to have handed over the Telephone Exchange without protest. One’s opinion here will be governed by one’s attitude on the question of centralized government and working-class control.
And elsewhere he emphasizes the difference between communists and anarchists:
So, roughly speaking, the alignment of forces was this. On the one side the C.N.T.-F.A.I., the P.O.U.M., and a section of the Socialists, standing for workers’ control: on the other side the Right-wing Socialists, Liberals, and Communists, standing for centralized government and a militarized army.
In a war you need centralized military control to win, and war has never been won without a commander and a hierarchy below them controlling the troops. Orwell seems to be of the mind that a revolutionary discipline can be achieved through a sincere belief for a cause. This makes sense for a foreign volunteer who signed up for there belief in socialism, but your average person isn’t motivated enough by ideology to voluntarily risk there life.
This is shown by the anarchists unwillingness to relieve Madrid. By the time of the POUM purge the Republicans were losing the war. What needed to be done was a mass conscription drive and then a push to relieve Madrid. The anarchists couldn’t do that because conscription was authoritarian and a democratic militia is never going to vote to leave there defensive lines and go on the offensive as that would mean more danger and casualties. So they were content to man the front in aragon and not much else. Orwells account shows this.
I share Orwells love for the worker control and true democracy of Barcelona during the civil war, but I don’t think that system can survive the realities of a civil war. I’d love to be proven wrong but I haven’t found any evidence to the contrary. If you have one please let me know, it’d restore my faith in the ability of man to overcome oppression.
Great argument, really debunked all my bullshit there
Perhaps you should get your military education from something other than video games?
?
Where’d that come from, i didnt cite any games, and as far as I know there aren’t even any games about the Spanish civil war .
If your such a military history expert could you point me to a civil war where an anarchist faction won and wasn’t eventually defeated by authoritarians?
I’m not going to read the rest of your comment but starting it with “I read on Wikipedia” is a good way to make sure people don’t listen to what you have to say if they have read primary sources.
I read appendix 6 and even gave some quotes from the source showing my point. I’m not gonna read the whole thing in a day to reply to a comment, most of it is his war memoir and has little to do with the discussion. Appendix 6 was the one talking about propaganda that op directed me to.
The fascists won because
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.
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
What the actual fuck are you doing on slrpnk.net you complete bootlicker?
is not a take that belongs on an anarchist instance.
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.
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.”
How would a tankie even know what the word leadership means?
How is 1 a half truth? It seems we agree, the western bourgeoisie democracies failed to provide aid to the Republicans while the fascists did. I guess I didn’t mention that the soviets gave aid, but not as much as the fascists so they had the advantage on that front.
Why would you say the civil war was lost then? I agree the fascist aid wasn’t decisive, and the Republicans could win in spite of it, but they didn’t. It wasn’t because the communist turned on the anarchists, the republicans were losing the war prior to that. The anarchists had ample time and supplies to martial an army and relieve Madrid but they never did, they were content to hold there lines in aragon and wait for Franco to mop up the basque country before turning on them because the fundamental military issue of anarchism, no one is going to vote to go on the offensive.
I’m not a tankie, I just recognize the military weakness of the anarchist cause, just as I recognize the communist weakness of devolving power. I recognize anarchists can’t win wars and communists can’t give up power once the war is won. History has shown both to be true in every scenario its come up. Understanding the weaknesses of both causes is necessary if we want to achieve liberation from oppression and exploitation.
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
Authoritarians tend to hate when people don’t fall in line.
Yeah, the meme is accurate. After the right has been defeated the anarchists and authoritarians will turn on each other, both sides understand this. The blacks didn’t defeat the reds because of lack of will or a naive commitment to left unity, they lost because they lacked the discipline and organizational capacity to win a civil war.
Really? Seems to me that Bolsheviks only got any kind of “discipline” after they defected to the Makhnovists…
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
Quotes I think illustrate the tension well
This quote goes hard, I love it. Onto the reading list it goes
I wouldn’t recommend reading anything from orwell personally. Dude was a cop and a hitler apologist. I prefer isaac asimov’s review of 1984.
This would make him a bit of a hypocrite in that regard, no? Perhaps a bit of projection happening?
Went through the Wikipedia for it and read appendix 6. I still stand by my opinion that the anarchists were doomed by either fascist or communist hands due to there lack of discipline. Yeah everyone was aligned against the anarchists, but everyone was aligned against the bolsheviks in 1917 and they were still able to win a civil war and establish a government.
Most of the appendix I read was litigating the conflicts in Barcelona in May and how the communist press distorted and lied about what happened. I’m willing to accept the communists did a coup and tried to cover it up and blame it on the POUM. The question is whether that was the right strategic move given the circumstances, and Orwell recognizes this:
And elsewhere he emphasizes the difference between communists and anarchists:
In a war you need centralized military control to win, and war has never been won without a commander and a hierarchy below them controlling the troops. Orwell seems to be of the mind that a revolutionary discipline can be achieved through a sincere belief for a cause. This makes sense for a foreign volunteer who signed up for there belief in socialism, but your average person isn’t motivated enough by ideology to voluntarily risk there life.
This is shown by the anarchists unwillingness to relieve Madrid. By the time of the POUM purge the Republicans were losing the war. What needed to be done was a mass conscription drive and then a push to relieve Madrid. The anarchists couldn’t do that because conscription was authoritarian and a democratic militia is never going to vote to leave there defensive lines and go on the offensive as that would mean more danger and casualties. So they were content to man the front in aragon and not much else. Orwells account shows this.
I share Orwells love for the worker control and true democracy of Barcelona during the civil war, but I don’t think that system can survive the realities of a civil war. I’d love to be proven wrong but I haven’t found any evidence to the contrary. If you have one please let me know, it’d restore my faith in the ability of man to overcome oppression.
Ie, you’re full of shit.
Perhaps you should get your military education from something other than video games?
Great argument, really debunked all my bullshit there
?
Where’d that come from, i didnt cite any games, and as far as I know there aren’t even any games about the Spanish civil war .
If your such a military history expert could you point me to a civil war where an anarchist faction won and wasn’t eventually defeated by authoritarians?
I’m not going to read the rest of your comment but starting it with “I read on Wikipedia” is a good way to make sure people don’t listen to what you have to say if they have read primary sources.
I read appendix 6 and even gave some quotes from the source showing my point. I’m not gonna read the whole thing in a day to reply to a comment, most of it is his war memoir and has little to do with the discussion. Appendix 6 was the one talking about propaganda that op directed me to.