States: An Inhibitor to Revolutions

At this point I really don't care who succeeds, just so long as someone does.

Because this is [COMMON ERA]. The fact you need to go back to the Bronze Age for a successful example should tell you something about horizontally structured militaries.

No, ^this is a meme.

I used examples of modern armies who has great efficiency, but were disadvantages due to where they occured.
Again all these statist armies had terrible efficiency and and thus were weak in all but manpower.
In all but two examples they only succeeded because they had the backing of a nuclear super-power, and in those two cases, both hardly ever saw the coordinated massive foreign interventionism that Catalonia had.

Therefore the only advantage statism has is that by historical happenstance it had a lot of man-power available. This is like Xerxes bragging that he won at thermopylae

You are not claiming that the Black Army was a modern army, are you? I suppose they can at least claim to have formed Anno Domini.

Nigger, please. Every revolution is disadvantaged in some way. You make due with what you have.

It ain't about how you play. It's whether you win or lose.

The world is nuclear. Marxists call that a material condition.

No, it's like Georgy Zhukov telling Leonidus that his phalanx is not going to hold back the 2016 Iranian Army.

Anarchism is barred from modern technology somehow? The whole point was that you need to compare apples to apples when it comes to technology.

And really, are you going to apply this to all cases, in a world where capitalism must endure top-down hierarchical armies, not because they're efficient but because they're the only ones the bourgeoisie can control.

This social-darwinist argument would also lead to the "fact" that socialism is inferior because it doesn't exist right now. I doubt you'd refrain from using the Paleolithic as an example of communism.

No, the question of how we organize is EXACTLY about how we play.
You might as well say that we should concentrate only on large nation-state, because we can only win when the odds are stacked in our favour, as it was in Russia and China.

This is EXACTLY about how we play, and Marxist practice have shown themselves to be shitty players, both in terms of military organization and in terms of actually achieving the goal of the revolution.

Yes, you are. Modern military technology is designed to function as part of the modern military system. Your egalitarian militias can not operate or maintain it effectively. A modern military is one functioning body; it can not be divided and be effective. You should read some analyses of modern military structure. I am sure that some of the stuff from the Nineties at least will be declassified. Of course, that is not going to cover the more recent advances in command and control, but it is at least closer than Leonidas.

You are not bringing an apple to the table. It is an anachronism. You have an apple seed, maybe.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Hundred year-old casualty stats are not indicative of a system's effectiveness.

Yes, I would, because hunter/gatherer protocommunism is not the system I advocate. My world has industrialization, rapid transportation, massive public works, and long-distance communication. Communism is not taking an anachronism from the distant past and plugging it into the present.

We play to win and organize accordingly.

They did a hell of a lot better than the anarchist three-years-and-die system did.

Of course it needs to be organized. This is not the same as being top-down and centralized. The same was absolutely true for the Greeks. Without organization, they could not have won, of course, but their decentralized nature proved much superior to the top-down system of the Persians.

Again, when you compare the black army and the red army, when it comes to efficiency, even against the white army, who used the decentralized Prussian Army model, the Red Army got BTFO.

When you compare apples to apples, you discover that top-down is an incredibly weak system, and I don't know why we would sabotage ourselves with one.

You're playing to win, if you have to have the odds overwhelmingly on your side to begin with to even be able to compete.

Don't forget to take equipment and technology into account.
Persians were all about manpower.
Also, the Scythians "defeated" the persians, simply by not fighting.

Also, antiquity is not the same as modernity.

Define "succeded".
Russia went state capitalism, cause there were no matterial conditions.
China.. .. China first went full autism and then full one party capitalism.

What marxist revolutions???

For a modern military, yes, it is. If it is not centralized, then it will not be able to react immediately and with certainty to the situation as it unfolds.

I am loathe to bring this up, but I worked in command and control before. The level of integration between disparate units in a theater is extraordinary. The CINC can play the entire war like a damn video game. Every unit acts in an immediate and predictable manner. Support is nearly instantaneous. Everyone knows exactly what is going on, and Command and Control can see absolutely fucking everything– every object in the sky, every vehicle on the ground, every boat at sea, every infantry unit with an imbedded TAC-P, and every enemy unit under a JSTAR.

You can't do that with militias.

Twenty-five hundred years ago.

Let's compare them head-to-head. Oh wait. They already did that.

No. But there are definitely parallels. Doens't change the fact that de-centralization and relative autonomy for hightens efficiency.

Muh dirty peasant subhumans what is ikko ikki, mazdaki and revolutionary ukraine :'[

Even so, centralization is not the same as top-down hierarchy nor is it really dependent upon a state.
Also, if you think this system is truly efficient, ask youself why the US military is doing such a terrible fucking job against goat-herders and rice-farmers.

Yeah. So? The whole argument that communism is possible is based on the fact that we were communists 27.000 years ago.

With a difference in man-power of about 20 times. No matter how efficient you are, you're not going to beat those odds. If not if those who attack you are supposed to be your allies and have signed a formal treaty with you.

Again, unless state magically clone people and thus inherently have more man-power in every case, you're not making much of a point for yourself.

Illiteracy is not the peasant's fault.
I don't blame the people for the historical conditions.

There are no parallells between pic 1 and pic 2 beyond the fact that they are both skilled killers.

Okay, so the point on centralization has been conceded. Now let's deal with the anarchists' anathema: hierarchy.

Imagine that a long-range nuclear bomber has been detected by a remote radar station breaching the sector's airspace and proceeding on a pattern that will ultimately place it over a military installation. Luckily, the one particular militia that operates all of the remote radar stations in the sector (let's assume this, since otherwise your air picture will be a complete shitshow) has a close working relationship with the militia that somehow maintains an airfield with a squadron of fighter planes. Of course the syndicate that operates the oil refinery also supplies the air militia with enough JP-8 to keep their fighters mission-ready. The radar site informs the fighter squadron of the breach of airspace.

What happens next? The fate of the planet now rests in the hands of some dipshit pilots. Will they behave like knob-pollishing fuckwits, as pilots are oft want to do, and shoot the Bear-H down? Will they have enough fuel to get back home? They did notify the militia in charge of keeping up the KC-767s about where they were going, right? Did they share their crypto with the radar guys so they can get bogey dope on the way? Are they able to get weather info in real-time so that they can avoid dangerous natural events?

And even if they manage, against all odds, to intercept the bomber, it is still a handful of pilots with the fate of everyone on the ends of their itchy trigger fingers. Now, do you want to know how this situation plays out in a top-down military?

Yeah, they are not there to hold the cities and the oil fields long enough for Haliburton to wring every last drop out of the area or anything, no! They really want to control and occupy the deserts and the mountains and settle American colonies there. Right.

They already have everything they want. They have their oil. They have their fuckhuge bases to check the Iranians. They could not give two shits about some angry goatherders in no-man's land causing trouble for the country peasants. Iraq is just another resource extraction node, and Afghanistan is good for nothing but an airbase. Mission accomplished.

I don't even.

It was totally unfair to use conscription like that!

Makhno was a shitty ally who encouraged desertion in the Red Army, cut off grain shipments in a famine, and abandonded his AoR in the theater. If he thought that a treaty was going to give him carte blanche to pull shit like that, then he was a damn fool.

Not necessarily at all.
That I said that one in not necessarily the same. Indeed, assymertical warfare with decentralized militaries has worker great for insurrectionaries.

You think, somehow, that hierarchs have better access accurate information that the people actually on the ground. There is nothing that says that these pilots could not recieve that information and act rationally according to that information.
You think that few heads are somehow better than a lot.
Of course it's a nice hypothetical scenario, but history has frankly shown you to be wrong. Centralization has proven to be largely unneccesary (especially since no revolution is going to have pitched battles anymore) and hierachy has proven to be both anti socialist and massively inefficient.

Again, even this they've done a horrible job of. They don't control Iraq and hardly have control in Afghanistan.

If you're going to turn people into slaves, what is the point? At that point you have already destroyed any possiblity of achieving socialism, and the struggle is lost before any bullet is fired.

Yes. Clearly that justifies killing people and sending assassins.

Oh so they were just unwashed masses to didn't read zizek and this still doesn't explain the Ikko Ikki and the Mazdaki.

Btw, not necessarily very good.

Like with kings, is a complete toss-up whether you have good leaders or not, and mostly their will prioritize loyalty over competence in the officers.

Chris Hedges:

Revolutions are subject to the dialectical process as well, you know. The backlash from revolutions are and always have been immense. The revolutionary state will have to use extraordinary measures to accomplish its goal of self-preservation. I really don't see how an anarchist revolution would work. It seems to me that there needs to be a state in order to quickly allocate resources and troops in order to fend off counterrevolutionary factions/armies/nations.

No revolution has ever been completed as neatly as planned. The reactionary force in history always stymies revolutionary potential in one way or another. But I would rather have a dictatorial provisional government seeking to establish socialism than a moderate capitalist government trying to appear civil beneath the guise of liberal democracy. At least in the former situation there is more potential to actually achieve socialism. Who knows, maybe after the Marxist/socialist revolution, anarchists will be able to make themselves useful and abolish the state altogether. But in the meantime, capitalism can't be crushed without a strong socialist government and army. That's how I see it, anyway.

History has shown that a large part of that opposition to the new order of things would be dealt with when you allow each community self-determination on a lot of issues. It was so in Ukraine, and it is so in Kurdistan.

You wouldn't, for the same reason you don't need top-down hierarchy and a set of shareholder to manage a business and all its individual functions properly. People are really good at organizing themselves democratically, the rest is just memes spouted by those who want to preserve and maintain power.
It is exactly the problem that the revoultionary state seeks self-preservation, because it is this that has ensured that no Marxian revolution has resulted in socialism.

This combined with…

…this makes it seem like you have no idea what military success is. Sitting in the mountiains freezing and starving until your enemies are done plundering and leave of their own accord is not a victory. It is abject failure.

Yes! Holy fuck, yes. Are you kidding? Field reports are inaccurate as fuck.

You don't know pilots. And what would be rational? What are the rules of engagement? When does the bogie become a hostile? Who is to say that the bomber does not have an escort trailing behind it? Who calls the CIC of the offending aircraft and defuses the situation?

It is not so hypothetical, and the only history you have on your side features spears and sandals.

Survival. You have to survive the war before you can be free. There is no place for idealism in the middle of a civil war.

It absolutely fucking does.

I have seen the dozens of plaques on a wall commemerating the successful resolution of the above "hypothetical" scenario and participated in one myself. Other sectors have their own walls, and the Russians no doubt have their own walls full of plaques. The fact that absolutely nothing ever happened throughout the history of NORAD and the Soviet Union says that, yes, it does necessarily turn out well.

Who won the Vietnam War?
The Americans got tired and their resources ran out. That is a form of victory, Fabian tactics, as far as I remember.

Who have better information about the facts than the people gathering those facts?

These same problems are present in a hierarchicla system, you just think that leaders must neccesarily take better decisions, because the rest of us are unwashed dirty peasants.
Why was it you wanted socialism again? You clearly don't think it would work.

Um, yes. If we give up on socialism, the whole affair is pointless. If the primary goal has already been compromised, there is no victory, no matter how well we do in the field.

You think bad words is a capital offence.
Fair enough, I will remember to kill your kind for encouraging a state.

Again, much like a workplace, people can coordinate without a leader. All of this could easily have been organized without any one unelected person calling the shots.
When leaders are present, everything is up to them, for better or worse. This lead to huge inefficiency, both on behalf of the Russians and the Germans. Luckily, the Russians eeked out a victory due to foreign aid from the US.

By the way, even though technology have gotten much more advanced, let us not forget the fact that information technology is also much more advanced, thus that it is much easier to communicate that it was during antiquity; in fact, most of your point would have been more true in the age of swords and sandals than they would have been today.

Of course, none of this excuses the terribly inefficient mess that both the USSR and China was on both and administrative and military level.

The tankies. And later Nike.

Yes. The NVA controlled territory, fielded a conventional military. They fought in the cities and untilized the hierarchal structure that you hate. They did not just hide in the mountains fighting a durrilla war.

The people analyzing the reports. You are talking about a lot of stuff that you have idealistic theories about and quite obviously absolutely no practical knowledge of. Anyone who has actually been in a military will tell you that the people getting shot at have the least information about what is going on. They do not have time or perspective to analyze their situation reliably or in detail.

No, they are not.

You know what? Fuck you. You are both ignorant and intellectually dishonest. This is a waste of keystrokes.

And you have a lot of authoritarian memes that are not reflected in historical facts. Authoritarianism has shown itself to be weakness again and again.

And again, since whoever people are, are reporting to officers appointed primarily for their loyalty to the hierarchs rather than their actual ability, we get giant inefficiency as seen under Stalin. Sure they won in the end, but there was no excuse for the military to perform that poorly.

Not the same user you were talking with btw.

America left because of the political climate at the homefront. The resources of the U.S would've definitely allowed them to win if they bothered to continue the war.

Sorry Robb Stark. The cause would also be for nothing if we lost. Victory first. Then we can cry bout those dead Lannister boys later

I wouldn't know.

You think all he did was say a couple bad words?

How would a decentralized military structure be able to coordinate more efficiently than one that has a command structure? Not a rhetorical question, I want to know. The militias of Catalonia often had this problem due to lack of centralized command so I'm doubtful.

Perhaps this would make a difference. The efficacy of said difference is yet to be seen though.

same here buddy. im supporting whoever rises up first.

What caused a decline in morale amongst the American public if not the resistance of decentralised guerillas denying America any true victory through insurrection?

If we give up on the goal of the war, then we have already lost. If we threw out socialism in order to win, then that would be no victory and many would have died pointlessly.

Makhno did nothing wrong. He raised his own army and when the Red army demanded that he took orders from them, he was called a deserter. When he wanted self-determination and worker's ownership of the farms in exchange for grain and food, he was called a bandit.

And thus, for not bowing to people he justifiably doubted would ever implement socialism, he and his men were purged.

Mind you, again, the centralised/decentralised question is a different one than the hierarchical one. Not having appointed leaders does not mean decentralisation, although I would pose that both things are better depending on the concrete military problem you're facing.
Insurrectionism works great with a decentralised structure for example.

Retards like you are setting us up for another Stalin.

In support of :
Someone is succeeding already and has been. Improve your criteria.

Now you're just meme'ing.

You seem to have forgotten the huge Marxist parties outside of your Seattle suburb, in India, Middle East, and South America.

Meanwhile, once we go outside said cosmopolitan western areas you'd notice it's increasingly hard to find any relevant Anarchist presence.

Marxist third-worlders are a shit example. All they really bade themselves on is soviet nostalgia, and they too are doing nothing to build socialism.

They are just worshippers of a god that failed.

Meanwhile you have Rojava.

Pls no bully Turks.

How about you actually post some evidence, articles from reputable sources maybe, that proves the superior efficiency of anarchism over a state, instead of just expecting us to agree just because you say so?

Red Army BTFO phase

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuban_Offensive
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea_Operation_(1918)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bolshie_Ozerki
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suchan_Valley_Campaign
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tulgas

PLS HALP ANARCHISTS WE SUCK AT WAR PHASE

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Peregonovka_(1919)

WE WIN CAUSE HUMAN WAVE PHASE

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shenkursk
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syzran–Samara_Operation

To be fair there was the Simbirsk Operation that went fairly well, but a tendency is showing here; even though the Black army was not as well equipped as neither the White or the Red army, they were better at achieving tactical victories without as huge advantages in numbers.

This trend of centralized top-down inefficiency survived long into WWII. I don't think I'll have to provide sources for that one.

Meanwhile, the YPG perform better that DAESH on a consistent basis, despite having inferior weaponry.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Kobanî

Bump for meme-dispelling.

Which has strains of Marxists in their ranks, and has enforced conscription before. So much for your ""totally voluntary anarchy army""

You claim Marxists worship a god that failed while your knees sucking Makhno's dick. Fucking idealists man….

*while you're on your

Neglible strains, because Marxism is not really taken that seriously anymore.

Rumours were that one of the cantons did it. The only source I could find for this was a pro-Assad newpaper though.

Even if it had used conscription, which I am still against, this has nothing to do with how the army itself is organized. Bottom-up rather than top-down systems are still by far the strongest. Makhno was far from perfect, and made many errors.
This does not change the fact that top-down systems have proven themselves weaker and less efficient at protecting a revolution.

But I know, idealism is to question theory when it does not even once reflect reality.

PLEASE read something on the war before making a fool of yourself (a little late for that tho).

You're making it more and more obvious that you do not know what Makhno actually did and the context of it all. That was almost painful to read.

Even with my limited knowledge of the Civil War, I can tell you have little idea of what you're talking about. If you are educating yourself, PLEASE make an effort to study both sides. Not that it means anything, but I used to be greatly in favor of an Anarchist uprising. Since then, after studying the Marxist account, I've changed my leanings.

Call it propaganda if you want. If you cannot overcome this indoctrination of yours, so be it.

OMG I CAN'T EVEN
EDUCATE YOURSELF!
UGH

What kind of propaganda have you read that changes the fact that the black army was started independently of the Russian state behind enemy lines?