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.
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.
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
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?