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.
“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
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.
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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.
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.
Both are without government
Anarchism > No government
Communism > people work together without classes (means no government because that would put people above others. Your idea of communism being the tyranny of the majority does not stand)
Communism is just a form of anarchy
No, communism is absolutely a form of government. There are elected leaders and policy is still passed. Arguably there is more bureaucracy than in socialist countries if real communism is implemented.
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.
