Why people think that Catalonia was "true socialism"

Militias were ineffective because they were unable of coordinate, had shit discipline and training and their equipment was looted. Turning them into a trained and organized army equipped with soviet weapons solved those problems, even if it had limitations on each own.

The proper way to fight that war would have been using protracted people's war, but the spanish communists didn't have time machines, so they made what they could with what they had.

That's retarded. You need discipline in order to win a war.

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Marching and fighting aren't the same user. You could easily put on the appearance of a disciplined army for your own political gains, without it actually being very experienced in figthing. The PCE did this by taking the time to train their militias to salute and look nice while marching down the street.

Military discipline takes away individual responsibility, and that's the opposite of what the anarchists wanted to achieve. If an anarchist militiaman acts like an obedient soldier who doesn't understand for himself what he's doing then the anarchists have already lost.

And the biggest advocates at the time for a protracted guerilla war were the dissident anarchists who opposed collaboration and militarisation. Camillo Berneri was one of them, guess what happened to him

Whatever, man. Given how communists were able to control at some point half of the globe while anarchists have never ever won any war, I would expect some degree of auto-criticism but I see that it won't happen anytime soon.

Even so, nobody has told me yet why supposedly Catalonia was a stateless society, which was my initial question.

I know but I'm completely ok with that ("democracy is to be exercised among the people, while dictatorship is to be exercised over the enemies").

Anyway, yes the CNT-FAI did not abolish the state, and there was infighting because of this, “el anarcosindicalista no puede figurar entre aquellos que tienen la misión de conducir el carro del Estado, puesto que está convencido de que este carro, este famoso carro, debe ser absolutamente destruido” - Sebastian Faure. And it's true that the expropiated land belonged to the Ministry of Agriculture, but the anarchists still had some important seats, and the state was clearly socialist, Largo Caballero wasn't a moderate.

I'm more than ready to admit that communists in the 20th century had better propaganda than anarchists and where better at spreading their ideas. Nobody really tries to say that it was a stateless society in the sense of there not being a Catalan state there, but that the experience serves as an example of the kind of organisation that allows people to live without relying on the state.

I agree.
In fact, there even were several anarchists ministers (like Capmany) so I don't understand were the "Catalonia is true socialism not like the USSR" meme comes from. And even if the Generalitat had been dissolved, the Spanish Government was based on Madrid, not Barcelona.

I suppose that the reason of this meme is that the USSR, China and Albania have been heavily and consistently demonized by the American press and academia for a century, while the Spanish anarchists are sometimes seen in a good light (mainly because they lost, of course), and given how most of leftypol is formed by young american socialdemocrats who pose as "radical communists" without accepting proletarian dictatorship, the kekalonia meme naturally follows.

It's not just better propaganda, the communists have proved that their doctrine is able to organize an effective fighting force able to overthrow the government and defend the revolution from foreign imperialism, while the anarchism have not and always point at others (Stalin, America… whatever) when they end up being crushed. There is a reason why the Russian reds won and the Ukrainian blacks didn't, and the same applies to Korea and countless other places. Anarchists refuse on principle to seize power exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat, but when they found themselves on a revolutionary situation they either do it anyway (like in Catalonia) or get crushed.

Because the Makhnovist movement was a relatively small insurgency in the countryside and anarcho-syndicalism was practically nonexistent in Russia?
If the anarchists had seized power in Catalonia then there wouldn't have been a republican state for the CNT to collaborate with in the first place.

Rojava is our main meme.

Russia is basically when modern anarchism was born, while marxism was not relevant there until the late XIX century, so there you have another brilliant anarchist succes.

The anarchists didn't seize power, the proletariat did, though the Comitè de Milícies Antifeixistes. That's why it's called dictatorship of the proletariat, user. There was a situation of dual power between the republican institutions and the antifascist militias.

Oh, Rojava. Another totally-not-a-state with an army, private property, a government and a single functioning political party. And funded by the USA, no less!

Truly anarchism is the way forward.

No, it isn't. Bakunin and Kropotkin were Russian, but anarchism never became a mass movement in Russia.
Wasn't the proletariat already supposed to be in power through the Popular Front?

It was close to statlelessness. Way closer than any tank fest ever got 'whithering away'

Remind me of all the stateless withered tanky paradises again….

Rojava, may or may not be a state, is the most successful attempt at a democratic, free society in the middle east.

Considering its ideologically very similar to anarchism, we'll take that as a win.

You could just google it or have read any non tankie book on the history of the civil war. CNT and POUM members were arrested in mass. The telephone office issue was just the beginning of that.

It's funny how someone can be so condescending while being ignorant. Being Catalan doesn't give any superior authority, especially when you are deeply biased towards a tankie approach of the war that says that all of the problems were caused by anarkiddos. FAI had a great impact during the defense of Madrid, ignoring that just on every post of this thread just proves my point.

sources:
homage to catalonia annex
we the anarchists!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War,_1937

This guy is right to a certain degree, I'm not anarchist by any means, but if it wasn't for them Catalonia would have initially fallen to the fascists for example.

I still do not see where that wiki article says that 30,000 people were arrested. Orwell's book certanly doesn't, I've read it and it just claims that the party cadres of the POUM were arrested. And even so, they tried an insurrection against the government in the middle of the war against fascism. That's treason.

So they were unable to create a mass movement in Russia (or any other place except a couple of strongholds in Spain, Ukraine and Korea), while marxism did. Maybe there is a reason, don't you think?
No, not even the Communist Party was part of the Popular Front. It was a coalition of socialdemocrats, the communists and anarchists only supported it because they wantes their political prisoners free. And no marxist-leninist ever said that the proletariat can conquer power through bourgeoise elections.

Dude, it failed as hard as modern China. What you say is just wishful thinking.

So the objective of anarchism is not the abolition of private property and state power? Good to know.

They were better at spreading their ideas, it's already been said.

I can accept that. But thee Guardia d'Assalt also had a pivotal role in crushing the fascist uprising in Catalonia, but I have never seen an anarchist say so, because it kills their narrative.

And even if the FAI had a role in the defense of Madrid (mainly in the Battle of Guadalajara), the main organizer of the defense was the PCE. I've never seen an anarchist recognise this either.

The point is not to recognise that point, but to see what is the reason behind it.

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What is the reason?

Anarchism is an idealist ideology which denies the need of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and its philosophical foundation is classical liberalism, so it is unable to fight against it.

That's why you can find "anarcocapitalists" (even if they are retarded) but not marxism-leninism-freemarketism or some cancer like that.

they had an insurrection beacuse stalinst nkvd agents kept killing them

jaun negrin was in the communist party not in the cnt

How does it feel to know Mondragon Corp has done more for workers than any socialist regime ever?

they seem pretty based

Mondragon is a successful experiment in cooperative industry, but don't fool yourself into thinking that it doesn't have serious issues that stem from competing with capitalist industry.

Said problems exist because they exist within a capitalists economy, which the October Revolution failed to destroy

Don't fool yourselves, left-wingers, You are the ones that failed, not the anarchists

are you shocked that people with no exposure other to these things other than here and rarely other sources have misguided views of history?

dont take leftypol seriously, really, id say a good 95% of people on here only have a passing knowledge of anarchism, it history o anything else, not to mention the attempts at direct disinformation (or possibly just acute ignorance) by our 'fellow leftists'

i am an anarchist. Mondargan is not anarchist, dont be stupid.

And its not anarchistic because it exist within a capitalist economy

Because Marx coopted the First International (an organization founded primarily by socialist of anarchist tendencies) and proceeded to expel most of the anarchists. This cut them off from a lot of the networking that had historically given their movement traction, and this was a trend that was continued in the subsequent Internationals. Thus the instances where anarchism did take root had to be basically home-grown rather than engaged in a larger international support base (though obviously loose associations did exist between some of the groups). It's a bit disingenuous for Marxists to complain about the often regionalist tendencies of historical anarchist uprisings when it was said Marxists that pushed the movement into such circumstances.

Also Russia DID have a large anarchist movement: it's just that many of them joined/supported the Red Army because many thought that working as a more coherent coalition would ensure greater success for the worker's revolution. This would proceed to bite them in the ass when the Bolsheviks took power when those who failed to adopt the subsequent party line got the boot or got dead.

..no, its not anarchist because its not trying to be anarchist, its just a large worker cooperative and because of it size it has to to compete with large capitalist industry which has led to some parts of Mondragon act hierarchically and forcibly taking workers participation away form their industry in order to stay a part of the Mondragon Copreration.

At its best it can be see as an alternative model to capitalist forms of production, but it its worst it acts exactly like capitalist companies do just to survive.

workers co-ops, not only Mondragon cannot achieve anything more because they will become uncompetitive under a capitalist system

IMO it was the closest any society has been ever..

Heres what Orwell said about walking into Barcelona

"I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper
articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time
and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. The
Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was
still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it
probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was
ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was
something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been
in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building
of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with
the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the
hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost
every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were
being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an
inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been
collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers
looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial
forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senior' or 'Don' or
even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' and 'Thou', and said
'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first
experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a
lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and
all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and
black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in
clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs
of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of
people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing
revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the
crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town
in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small
number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all.
Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, or some
variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in
it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I
recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also I
believed that things were as they appeared, that this was really a workers'
State and that the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed, or
voluntarily come over to the workers' side; I did not realize that great numbers
of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and disguising themselves as
proletarians for the time being." ~Homage to Catalonia

A lot of that stuff (saying "salud!" to salute, church burning, criticizing people who dressed conservantly, propaganda everywhere) was being done by leftists even years before the war. There was really a lot of momentum for a socialist revolution at the time.

That's bullshit, their reasons are clearly stated in their newspapers and propaganda. Also, not all the anarchists rebelled, so you're wrong.

Juan Negrín was in neither, he was a socialist of the PSOE. You people talk without even knowing what are you talking about.
Mondragón exploits labour as any other capitalist business. Most of their work it's done by subcontracted workers.

Nice to see again that anarchists don't wanna really abolish capitalism.

This.

Orwell was a bureaucrat of the British Empire glorified by the anticommunist "left" who sold countless communists to the secret service, and anybody who has read 1984 should know that he was a classist asshole: "proles are barely humans and without intelligence or revolutionary potential". Besides, even in his text he says that "that this was really a workers' State and that the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed, or voluntarily come over to the workers' side" so he is demonstrating my point: it was a proletarian dictatorship, not a classless and stateless society. And if I gave you a similar text of the USSR or Maoist China you would dismiss it as propaganda.

This. It would be also nice if people here made a quick research about the 1934 spanish revolution, or how the CNT was for some time part of the III International, the "authoritarian organization of the ebil stalinists" and that for most of its early history wasn't even anarchist.