10 ms·

Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War (2002)

97 points by dgarceran 8y ago

tomohawk 8y ago
All these years later and these guys are still trying to rewrite history. There were very few good guys in this conflict, other than the ones who were duped into going there, such as the Lincoln Battalion, and used. For a balanced viewpoint on this history: https://www.amazon.com/Comrades-Commissars-Lincoln-Battalion-Spanish/dp/0271029102/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524589009&sr=1-1&keywords=Cecil+D.+Eby https://www.amazon.com/Comrades-Commissars-Lincoln-Battalion...
- Avshalom 8y ago
  The article doesn't really try to paint them as good guys? It's mostly a list of things that happened before concluding that the anarchists were completely unprepared for partial success which caused them to fracture and ally them selves with various lesser-of-two-evil factions which further fractured them leading to their eventual irrelevance.
  - mrslave 8y ago
    Is the problem with anarchists that they cannot stay together?
    - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
      In the case of the Spanish civil war, the problem was that the communists and the fascists both wanted them killed, and so with some effort they succeeded.
      - jancsika 8y ago
        Any documentary evidence that elucidates why the communists were against the anarchists?
        mercurial 8y ago
        The strategy of the Stalin-backed communists was to not alienate the middle class. The anarchists, on the other hand, were not about letting war get in the way if social reform, and had taken over factories and collectivised land. It was also a good opportunity for Stalin to purge communists not allied with the USSR.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        rumcajz 8y ago
        Also see the history of anarchist "Free Territory" in present-day Ukraine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Territory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Territory
        coldtea 8y ago
        Loads and loads of books, historical documents, documentaries , and so on on the matter. Not just in Spain, in USSR and elsewhere too. In fact the ideological enmity between communists and anarchists starts even back at the time of Bakhunin and Marx (and they were many critiques from one to another).
        dgarceran 8y ago
        Yes, in the first years of the Federación Regional: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federaci%C3%B3n_Regional_Espa%C3%B1ola_de_la_AIT https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federaci%C3%B3n_Regional_Espa%... in fact from their separation the socialist party (PSOE, the second most voted party in SPain nowadays) was created by Pablo Iglesias.
        hutzlibu 8y ago
        In short: communists generally wanted a central government/(controlled by he socialist party). And anarchists not.
      - m0skit0 8y ago
        Anarchists also attacked communists when it suited them. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Ses%C3%A9 https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Ses%C3%A9
  - paulific 8y ago
    Well its a marxist magazine, so its essentially pushing a political line that the anarchists were wrong not to pursuing socialist goals.
- msrpotus 8y ago
  I'll take misguided socialists and communists over fascists and Nazis any day.
  - strken 8y ago
    The question at hand is not whether you would support Franco, because pretty much nobody is going to own up to that; it's who you would support out of the insanely complicated web of alliances that made up the Republic. The Russians managed to acquire millions of dollars of gold reserves from the Republic in exchange for a disappointing array of weaponry, distributed only to their cronies, and accompanied by incompetent military advisors who were more interested in looking good back home than in winning the war. The anarchist unions seem to get more respect, but there's a strong argument that they were militarily ineffective, that their resistance to the Russia-aligned PSUC was destabilising at a critical period, and that the middle of a war against ascendant fascism was not the greatest time in the world to start redistributing land and making enormous social reforms. That's not even getting into Catalan/Basque independence, all the little minor parties, the different police factions, the wave of assassinations that led up the war (though fewer in number and in response to similar assassinations), the immense difficulty of forming a stable government, etc. Reading into the war gave me a greater awareness of exactly how badly the "good guys" can behave, while in no way mitigating the horrors the Nationalist faction committed.
    - mrtree 8y ago
      Franco wasn't so bad guys.
    - m0skit0 8y ago
      Soviets, not Russians. Stalin was not Russian.
  - krakatau1 8y ago
    No. I'll take Franco over socialists and communists every day. At the end of the day you have property, order and hierarchy.
- frabbit 8y ago
  The Lincoln Brigade/Battalion were not dupes. They were the only Americans who actually volunteered to fight fascism, while large numbers of their countrymen and corporations actively collaborated with it. They were exploited and betrayed, but the same could be said for the majority that stayed home and later were sent off to be slaughtered by the power that the USA worked with "against communism". And at the least the CPUSA volunteers had some agency. Eby's book is good though.
  - markvdb 8y ago
    Makes me think of Pete Seeger[0]'s songs about "his friends who went to Spain" (example [1] ). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Seeger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Seeger [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqe7LpBUzqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqe7LpBUzqU
  - ptaipale 8y ago
    I actually think one is not very wise to go and fight fascists when it is quite obvious that if you contribute to a win, the harvest will be collected by stalinists. Of course we could say that at the time it was too hard to see, but Purges had already been going on for long, with millions dead in murders and famines, and people knew. Many just chose not to believe.
    - lsc 8y ago
      "If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the house of commons." Hitler was as involved in the Spanish civil war as Stalin. During the following great war, the allies decided that Stalin was the lessor of the two evils, and I think that history has largely judged that to not have been the wrong decision.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Of course we could say that at the time it was too hard to see, but Purges had already been going on for long, with millions dead in murders and famines, and people knew. Many just chose not to believe. There was also the fact that they didn't had many legs to stand on. What Stalin did to its own people, the western powers did the same and worse in their colonial territories. Mass executions, dictatorships, torture, forced labour, police brutality, concentration camps, state-caused famines, and the like. Just one example: "On the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French invaded Algeria in 1830. Directed by Marshall Bugeaud, who became the first Governor-General of Algeria, the conquest was violent, marked by a "scorched earth" policy designed to reduce the power of the native rulers Dey; this included massacres, mass rapes, and other atrocities. Between 500,000 and 1,000,000, from approximately 3 million Algerians, were killed within the first three decades of the conquest." It didn't continue any better than that. In fact, until the very 60s, decades after WWII ended, the police beat to death 100 demonstrators, not in some remote backwater, but in Paris itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961 And that's just one example from France. There are many other examples from France, Britain, Belgium, and so on. Besides, they could not care less for the Jews. What they wanted, and fought Germany for, was not to let it rule the world (trade lines, developing nations, crucial territories and so on) -- the same thing WWI, WWII, and the Cold War happened for. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267 https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
ian0 8y ago
For anyone interested, George Orwell's account of his experiences during the civil war, "Homage to Catalonia" is a good english language read on the subject. Not an expert, but it seems pretty impartial. And its Orwell so its easy to read.
- tanbog 8y ago
  Well, Orwell fought with the POUM, who were Socialists but twith Anarchist leanings so I don't think you can really say he was "impartial". Having said that I fully concur with your recommendation of Homage to Catalonia. Amazing book about a pretty amazing time.
  - frabbit 8y ago
    The POUM were Trotskyists and most definitely did not have "anarchist leanings". The only commonality they had with the anarchists (who were far more numerous and militarily effective) was that the Communists attacked both of them.
    - ptaipale 8y ago
      Stalinist Communists, controlled by NKVD, attacked them. Trotskyists were Communists too.
    - MichaelMoser123 8y ago
      Not exactly Trotskyist either: Andres Nin the leader of POUM had his differences with Trotsky and they did not have contact after 1935 - so it was something like an independent Communist party. POUM had its differences with Moscow controlled Communists (the third International) - Moscow was for a broad coalition government that would postpone socialist reforms (that's called the 'Popular Front' approach, similar to what was done in France); while POUM was all for pressing on with socialist reforms right during the civil war (mostly within Catalonia). So POUM was more similar to the anarchists in its politics, but the anarchists were much larger movement than the Marxist POUM. In any event POUM was a small local party that did not matter a lot, but its suppression (that went on with the persecution of the Anarchists) in later stages opened rifts within the Spanish Republic. All that happened once the Spanish government came under increasing control of Moscow - that came as a result of international isolation while the Soviet Union remained as the only backer. Left wing politics is all very factional, so it gets complicated. I think the Popular Front approach would have been more productive, but Orwell for example did not think so; in any event it became quite bad once the NKVD came in. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/spain/spain03.htm https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/spain/spain03...
xashor 8y ago
That's a fine write-up on the history, especially for the mistakes that were made. The final conclusion, that anarchists should abandon their theories in favor of Trotsky's, has a bad taste. There was another anarchist-y society, the Free Territory[0] in east Ukraine, which, with its 3 years of existence, was quite successful (for anarchist societies standards). Sadly, it is often unmentioned, though it had even better starting conditions: while the CNT had to struggle with Franco's army (and the support of the other facist leaders), the equivalent reactionary White Army was later defeated by the alliance of Soviet and anarchist troops. They didn't mingle with any local government, and their leader Makhno[1] - though not elected - did limit himself to the militancy. So there was only one part left of the problems of spanish anarchists, as analyzed in the article's conclusion: Franco’s army, the complicity of the PSOE leadership, and the treachery of the Communists–but [also] the betrayal of the revolution by the anarchist leaders. With former diplomatic aggressions from Trotsky[2], attempted assassionations by the Cheka, finally the Red Army took over the Free Territory. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Territory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Territory [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestor_Makhno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestor_Makhno [2] http://nestormakhno.info/english/trotsky/ord1824.htm http://nestormakhno.info/english/trotsky/ord1824.htm
- mercurial 8y ago
  The article forgets to mention a crucial point: one of the Republicans' main reasons for not granting independence to Morocco was to avoid antagonizing the UK and France, who were major colonial powers. Throughout the war they hoped to gain their support. They never obtained it, which means they were pretty much hostages of the Stalin-backed communists, as the USSR was their main provider of arms and ammunition.
otalp 8y ago
Interesting that Anarchism is largely ignored despite it playing a crucial role in the 20th century as well as being to diametrically opposed to all of Fascism, Capitalism and Soviet Lennism/Stalinism. For those unaware, Gandhi's philosophy was largely based on Leo Tolstoy's Pacifist-Anarchism, and Gandhi subsequently served as a major influence to both MLK and Nelson Mandela. That 3 of the most positively viewed figures of the 20th century, as well as people like Bertrand Russell and George Orwell were all influenced by an idea that most people have never heard of is fascinating. Anarchism itself is so broad and varied that it resists characterisation. You have the entire spectrum, from primitivists to pacifists to futurists. People who claim that voting in elections is pointless(like many on the Occupy movement) to people who advocate for the lesser evil(Noam Chomsky 'endorsing' Hillary Clinton) to people who advocate for the worse evil(accelerationists) The one thing that can be said about it with certainty, is that it is seen as "a tendency in human affairs, to question existing power structures". Whether that be the state, religion or interpersonal power relations between race or gender. Much of what we define as "progress" is in reality questioning deep-seated assumptions that seem so obvious that only a fool would question them. In the past, some of these assumptions were things like "It is obvious there are significant difference between races", "It is obvious that men and women are not intellectually equal", "It is obvious that we need a monarch or ruling class to maintain peace and order". Today it is things like "It is obvious that corporations are here to stay and beneficial" or "It is obvious that we need a centralised government to keep order". One of major problems with society today is that people are essentially told there are 2 positions: 1)You think on balance Government is worse and bloated, and therefore steps should be taken to reduce government influence and increasing private control of resources. 2)You think on balance corporations are worse, and therefore steps should be taken to reduce corporate influence by increasing government control of resources. Most Anarchists contend that Government and Corporations are undesirable, and that we must work towards some kind of decentralized, federated, non-hierarchical system with free association. I think in general people need to think more about Libertarian Socialism(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism) as a viable alternative to the US/Soviet model, which are more alike than different, as they are both in essence state-capitalist systems. They aren't identical, but fall in a pretty narrow spectrum and incentivise power-seeking. An approach that questions everything on the other hand is the essence of anarchism: a first-principles based method of determining the structure of society.
slx26 8y ago
The article continuously talks about and highlights the importance of the socialist/anarchist movements in Catalonia and how it was a focus of resistance against the spanish government in many of its forms. From an outsider perspective, it's easy to forget or not realize that Catalonia is only 1 of the 17 autonomous communities in which Spain is divided. I think it's very interesting to put it in context to better understand Catalonia's history, especially to see that the current situation (independentism as a movement of opposition to the spanish government) is not something new at all, and that Catalonia has been historically a very singular region. But what I wanted to talk about is something the article omits. Basically because it wasn't really known until barely half a year ago, when Sònia Garangou published Les Joventuts Llibertàries de Catalunya (1932-1939), about the libertarian youth in catalonia (JLC from here on), not to be confused with the FIJL, the iberian federation of libertarian youth. Even within the libertarian and anarchist movements, Catalonia had many differences with other spanish groups, and it really went on its own path. > As late as 1936, the CNT devoted an entire discussion at its national congress to the place of vegetarians, nudists, naturists, and "opponents of industrial technology" in a libertarian communist society. CNT, FAI, POUM, etc. have always been the highlighted organizations in the spanish anarchist, communist and libertarian movements, but the recent research tells us that in Catalonia, the JLC might have been equally or even more relevant (in those years, CNT had around 550.000 affiliates in all Spain, FAI between 5.000 and 30.000, POUM even less, and JLC around 32.000 only in Catalonia). They were highly organized and decentralized, and besides vegetarianism and naturism, and maybe even more importantly, they were one of the first organizations in Spain to promote gender equality, have many women leading the local and regional groups, and also promoting culture through the creation of local libraries. I think we will be able to read more about all this in a few years, after more studies and research are done, but for the moment, I thought it was interesting to mention this forgotten fragment of history, that might be so relevant to put the historical events and differences in context. Nowadays, it's true that the anarchist movements have lost a lot of strength, but even if they seem residual, they are still organized enough and have the capacity to initiate direct action and mobilize people when needed, and the last events in catalonia are good proof of it. We have been seeing a resurgence of small groups of people organized at a local level, and even when it might seem they are organized for a very different reason, anarchist groups and individuals have been highly participative in these processes, as they have historically been with any social movement. And it's really characteristic that the differences between the anarchist groups from Catalonia and the rest of Spain that we talk about from 85 years ago still happen nowadays. 85 years later, and in Madrid they still don't quite understand what catalans are doing. P.S. I'm not an expert, so don't take my words too seriously, I'm just giving my opinion on a few points I think can be interesting to better understand anarchist movements in Spain and the influence they still have today.
alienjr 8y ago
Here's a good read on that subject: http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/spain.htm http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/spain.htm

97 points by dgarceran 8y ago

All these years later and these guys are still trying to rewrite history. There were very few good guys in this conflict, other than the ones who were duped into going there, such as the Lincoln Battalion, and used. For a balanced viewpoint on this history: https://www.amazon.com/Comrades-Commissars-Lincoln-Battalion-Spanish/dp/0271029102/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524589009&sr=1-1&keywords=Cecil+D.+Eby https://www.amazon.com/Comrades-Commissars-Lincoln-Battalion...

Avshalom 8y ago
The article doesn't really try to paint them as good guys? It's mostly a list of things that happened before concluding that the anarchists were completely unprepared for partial success which caused them to fracture and ally them selves with various lesser-of-two-evil factions which further fractured them leading to their eventual irrelevance.
- mrslave 8y ago
  Is the problem with anarchists that they cannot stay together?
  - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
    In the case of the Spanish civil war, the problem was that the communists and the fascists both wanted them killed, and so with some effort they succeeded.
    - jancsika 8y ago
      Any documentary evidence that elucidates why the communists were against the anarchists?
      - mercurial 8y ago
        The strategy of the Stalin-backed communists was to not alienate the middle class. The anarchists, on the other hand, were not about letting war get in the way if social reform, and had taken over factories and collectivised land. It was also a good opportunity for Stalin to purge communists not allied with the USSR.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - rumcajz 8y ago
        Also see the history of anarchist "Free Territory" in present-day Ukraine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Territory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Territory
      - coldtea 8y ago
        Loads and loads of books, historical documents, documentaries , and so on on the matter. Not just in Spain, in USSR and elsewhere too. In fact the ideological enmity between communists and anarchists starts even back at the time of Bakhunin and Marx (and they were many critiques from one to another).
        dgarceran 8y ago
        Yes, in the first years of the Federación Regional: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federaci%C3%B3n_Regional_Espa%C3%B1ola_de_la_AIT https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federaci%C3%B3n_Regional_Espa%... in fact from their separation the socialist party (PSOE, the second most voted party in SPain nowadays) was created by Pablo Iglesias.
      - hutzlibu 8y ago
        In short: communists generally wanted a central government/(controlled by he socialist party). And anarchists not.
    - m0skit0 8y ago
      Anarchists also attacked communists when it suited them. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Ses%C3%A9 https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Ses%C3%A9
- paulific 8y ago
  Well its a marxist magazine, so its essentially pushing a political line that the anarchists were wrong not to pursuing socialist goals.
msrpotus 8y ago
I'll take misguided socialists and communists over fascists and Nazis any day.
- strken 8y ago
  The question at hand is not whether you would support Franco, because pretty much nobody is going to own up to that; it's who you would support out of the insanely complicated web of alliances that made up the Republic. The Russians managed to acquire millions of dollars of gold reserves from the Republic in exchange for a disappointing array of weaponry, distributed only to their cronies, and accompanied by incompetent military advisors who were more interested in looking good back home than in winning the war. The anarchist unions seem to get more respect, but there's a strong argument that they were militarily ineffective, that their resistance to the Russia-aligned PSUC was destabilising at a critical period, and that the middle of a war against ascendant fascism was not the greatest time in the world to start redistributing land and making enormous social reforms. That's not even getting into Catalan/Basque independence, all the little minor parties, the different police factions, the wave of assassinations that led up the war (though fewer in number and in response to similar assassinations), the immense difficulty of forming a stable government, etc. Reading into the war gave me a greater awareness of exactly how badly the "good guys" can behave, while in no way mitigating the horrors the Nationalist faction committed.
  - mrtree 8y ago
    Franco wasn't so bad guys.
  - m0skit0 8y ago
    Soviets, not Russians. Stalin was not Russian.
- krakatau1 8y ago
  No. I'll take Franco over socialists and communists every day. At the end of the day you have property, order and hierarchy.
frabbit 8y ago
The Lincoln Brigade/Battalion were not dupes. They were the only Americans who actually volunteered to fight fascism, while large numbers of their countrymen and corporations actively collaborated with it. They were exploited and betrayed, but the same could be said for the majority that stayed home and later were sent off to be slaughtered by the power that the USA worked with "against communism". And at the least the CPUSA volunteers had some agency. Eby's book is good though.
- markvdb 8y ago
  Makes me think of Pete Seeger[0]'s songs about "his friends who went to Spain" (example [1] ). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Seeger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Seeger [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqe7LpBUzqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqe7LpBUzqU
- ptaipale 8y ago
  I actually think one is not very wise to go and fight fascists when it is quite obvious that if you contribute to a win, the harvest will be collected by stalinists. Of course we could say that at the time it was too hard to see, but Purges had already been going on for long, with millions dead in murders and famines, and people knew. Many just chose not to believe.
  - lsc 8y ago
    "If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the house of commons." Hitler was as involved in the Spanish civil war as Stalin. During the following great war, the allies decided that Stalin was the lessor of the two evils, and I think that history has largely judged that to not have been the wrong decision.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Of course we could say that at the time it was too hard to see, but Purges had already been going on for long, with millions dead in murders and famines, and people knew. Many just chose not to believe. There was also the fact that they didn't had many legs to stand on. What Stalin did to its own people, the western powers did the same and worse in their colonial territories. Mass executions, dictatorships, torture, forced labour, police brutality, concentration camps, state-caused famines, and the like. Just one example: "On the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French invaded Algeria in 1830. Directed by Marshall Bugeaud, who became the first Governor-General of Algeria, the conquest was violent, marked by a "scorched earth" policy designed to reduce the power of the native rulers Dey; this included massacres, mass rapes, and other atrocities. Between 500,000 and 1,000,000, from approximately 3 million Algerians, were killed within the first three decades of the conquest." It didn't continue any better than that. In fact, until the very 60s, decades after WWII ended, the police beat to death 100 demonstrators, not in some remote backwater, but in Paris itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961 And that's just one example from France. There are many other examples from France, Britain, Belgium, and so on. Besides, they could not care less for the Jews. What they wanted, and fought Germany for, was not to let it rule the world (trade lines, developing nations, crucial territories and so on) -- the same thing WWI, WWII, and the Cold War happened for. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267 https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

ian0 8y ago

For anyone interested, George Orwell's account of his experiences during the civil war, "Homage to Catalonia" is a good english language read on the subject. Not an expert, but it seems pretty impartial. And its Orwell so its easy to read.

tanbog 8y ago
Well, Orwell fought with the POUM, who were Socialists but twith Anarchist leanings so I don't think you can really say he was "impartial". Having said that I fully concur with your recommendation of Homage to Catalonia. Amazing book about a pretty amazing time.
- frabbit 8y ago
  The POUM were Trotskyists and most definitely did not have "anarchist leanings". The only commonality they had with the anarchists (who were far more numerous and militarily effective) was that the Communists attacked both of them.
  - ptaipale 8y ago
    Stalinist Communists, controlled by NKVD, attacked them. Trotskyists were Communists too.
  - MichaelMoser123 8y ago
    Not exactly Trotskyist either: Andres Nin the leader of POUM had his differences with Trotsky and they did not have contact after 1935 - so it was something like an independent Communist party. POUM had its differences with Moscow controlled Communists (the third International) - Moscow was for a broad coalition government that would postpone socialist reforms (that's called the 'Popular Front' approach, similar to what was done in France); while POUM was all for pressing on with socialist reforms right during the civil war (mostly within Catalonia). So POUM was more similar to the anarchists in its politics, but the anarchists were much larger movement than the Marxist POUM. In any event POUM was a small local party that did not matter a lot, but its suppression (that went on with the persecution of the Anarchists) in later stages opened rifts within the Spanish Republic. All that happened once the Spanish government came under increasing control of Moscow - that came as a result of international isolation while the Soviet Union remained as the only backer. Left wing politics is all very factional, so it gets complicated. I think the Popular Front approach would have been more productive, but Orwell for example did not think so; in any event it became quite bad once the NKVD came in. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/spain/spain03.htm https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/spain/spain03...

xashor 8y ago

That's a fine write-up on the history, especially for the mistakes that were made. The final conclusion, that anarchists should abandon their theories in favor of Trotsky's, has a bad taste. There was another anarchist-y society, the Free Territory[0] in east Ukraine, which, with its 3 years of existence, was quite successful (for anarchist societies standards). Sadly, it is often unmentioned, though it had even better starting conditions: while the CNT had to struggle with Franco's army (and the support of the other facist leaders), the equivalent reactionary White Army was later defeated by the alliance of Soviet and anarchist troops. They didn't mingle with any local government, and their leader Makhno[1] - though not elected - did limit himself to the militancy. So there was only one part left of the problems of spanish anarchists, as analyzed in the article's conclusion: Franco’s army, the complicity of the PSOE leadership, and the treachery of the Communists–but [also] the betrayal of the revolution by the anarchist leaders. With former diplomatic aggressions from Trotsky[2], attempted assassionations by the Cheka, finally the Red Army took over the Free Territory. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Territory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Territory [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestor_Makhno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestor_Makhno [2] http://nestormakhno.info/english/trotsky/ord1824.htm http://nestormakhno.info/english/trotsky/ord1824.htm

mercurial 8y ago
The article forgets to mention a crucial point: one of the Republicans' main reasons for not granting independence to Morocco was to avoid antagonizing the UK and France, who were major colonial powers. Throughout the war they hoped to gain their support. They never obtained it, which means they were pretty much hostages of the Stalin-backed communists, as the USSR was their main provider of arms and ammunition.

otalp 8y ago

Interesting that Anarchism is largely ignored despite it playing a crucial role in the 20th century as well as being to diametrically opposed to all of Fascism, Capitalism and Soviet Lennism/Stalinism. For those unaware, Gandhi's philosophy was largely based on Leo Tolstoy's Pacifist-Anarchism, and Gandhi subsequently served as a major influence to both MLK and Nelson Mandela. That 3 of the most positively viewed figures of the 20th century, as well as people like Bertrand Russell and George Orwell were all influenced by an idea that most people have never heard of is fascinating. Anarchism itself is so broad and varied that it resists characterisation. You have the entire spectrum, from primitivists to pacifists to futurists. People who claim that voting in elections is pointless(like many on the Occupy movement) to people who advocate for the lesser evil(Noam Chomsky 'endorsing' Hillary Clinton) to people who advocate for the worse evil(accelerationists) The one thing that can be said about it with certainty, is that it is seen as "a tendency in human affairs, to question existing power structures". Whether that be the state, religion or interpersonal power relations between race or gender. Much of what we define as "progress" is in reality questioning deep-seated assumptions that seem so obvious that only a fool would question them. In the past, some of these assumptions were things like "It is obvious there are significant difference between races", "It is obvious that men and women are not intellectually equal", "It is obvious that we need a monarch or ruling class to maintain peace and order". Today it is things like "It is obvious that corporations are here to stay and beneficial" or "It is obvious that we need a centralised government to keep order". One of major problems with society today is that people are essentially told there are 2 positions: 1)You think on balance Government is worse and bloated, and therefore steps should be taken to reduce government influence and increasing private control of resources. 2)You think on balance corporations are worse, and therefore steps should be taken to reduce corporate influence by increasing government control of resources. Most Anarchists contend that Government and Corporations are undesirable, and that we must work towards some kind of decentralized, federated, non-hierarchical system with free association. I think in general people need to think more about Libertarian Socialism(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism) as a viable alternative to the US/Soviet model, which are more alike than different, as they are both in essence state-capitalist systems. They aren't identical, but fall in a pretty narrow spectrum and incentivise power-seeking. An approach that questions everything on the other hand is the essence of anarchism: a first-principles based method of determining the structure of society.

slx26 8y ago

The article continuously talks about and highlights the importance of the socialist/anarchist movements in Catalonia and how it was a focus of resistance against the spanish government in many of its forms. From an outsider perspective, it's easy to forget or not realize that Catalonia is only 1 of the 17 autonomous communities in which Spain is divided. I think it's very interesting to put it in context to better understand Catalonia's history, especially to see that the current situation (independentism as a movement of opposition to the spanish government) is not something new at all, and that Catalonia has been historically a very singular region. But what I wanted to talk about is something the article omits. Basically because it wasn't really known until barely half a year ago, when Sònia Garangou published Les Joventuts Llibertàries de Catalunya (1932-1939), about the libertarian youth in catalonia (JLC from here on), not to be confused with the FIJL, the iberian federation of libertarian youth. Even within the libertarian and anarchist movements, Catalonia had many differences with other spanish groups, and it really went on its own path. > As late as 1936, the CNT devoted an entire discussion at its national congress to the place of vegetarians, nudists, naturists, and "opponents of industrial technology" in a libertarian communist society. CNT, FAI, POUM, etc. have always been the highlighted organizations in the spanish anarchist, communist and libertarian movements, but the recent research tells us that in Catalonia, the JLC might have been equally or even more relevant (in those years, CNT had around 550.000 affiliates in all Spain, FAI between 5.000 and 30.000, POUM even less, and JLC around 32.000 only in Catalonia). They were highly organized and decentralized, and besides vegetarianism and naturism, and maybe even more importantly, they were one of the first organizations in Spain to promote gender equality, have many women leading the local and regional groups, and also promoting culture through the creation of local libraries. I think we will be able to read more about all this in a few years, after more studies and research are done, but for the moment, I thought it was interesting to mention this forgotten fragment of history, that might be so relevant to put the historical events and differences in context. Nowadays, it's true that the anarchist movements have lost a lot of strength, but even if they seem residual, they are still organized enough and have the capacity to initiate direct action and mobilize people when needed, and the last events in catalonia are good proof of it. We have been seeing a resurgence of small groups of people organized at a local level, and even when it might seem they are organized for a very different reason, anarchist groups and individuals have been highly participative in these processes, as they have historically been with any social movement. And it's really characteristic that the differences between the anarchist groups from Catalonia and the rest of Spain that we talk about from 85 years ago still happen nowadays. 85 years later, and in Madrid they still don't quite understand what catalans are doing. P.S. I'm not an expert, so don't take my words too seriously, I'm just giving my opinion on a few points I think can be interesting to better understand anarchist movements in Spain and the influence they still have today.

alienjr 8y ago

Here's a good read on that subject: http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/spain.htm http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/spain.htm