Just saying, if you have Kbin nazis tempting you to defederate hexbear, you need to reevaluate how you’re carrying yourself.

Just like with fascists though, it’s better not to let them propagandize, even if you aren’t personally triggered by it.

“Totalitarian” is a totally made-up, meaningless distinction. There is no conceivable metric by which you could call any socialist state “totalitarian” that wouldn’t apply a hundredfold to the US Empire. Seriously, this conversation cannot continue unless you read Blackshirts and Reds, it sums up every point I could make to argue with you with much more depth and eloquence. If you have the slightest pretention to intellectual seriousness, go and read that. Then, once you have, message me and I’ll send you a link to season 3 of a podcast called Blowback, covering the Korean war. I think you’ll find it informative.

I’ve taken a harsh tone with you, because you need to be jolted out of this fundamentally incorrect mindset. But if you read what I’ve suggested and actually process the information, if you try to understand the societies you harshly criticize in the depth and richness of their actual existence and not the literal Saturday morning cartoon evil version you’ve had ingrained in you by a multi-trillion dollar propaganda campaign, you’ll arrive at the same opinions I have now - including feeling the way I do about people espousing the views you have done. Until you understand that no “western” country has EVER come closer to socialism than the USSR, China, Cuba or the DPRK (or even had the merest potential to) you are not only useless to the international cause of the workers but an active detriment, a stooge of the Empire that is currently enslaving humanity. That might only manifest as irritating, trivial anticommunist memes on a backwater internet forum, but it still might as well be fought against, and if there’s the slightest chance you can be educated into a helpful comrade then I might as well try.

You can lie to yourselves all you want. Anarchists remember the backstabbing very well and the real reason why they couldn;t fight back efficiently. I’m not here to discuss with tankies though. Plenty has been written about this stalinist revisionism already.

My dude, the vast majority of Republican tanks were provided by the Soviet Union. Let’s take a look at the Wikipedia article about tanks in the Spanish Civil War shall we: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tanks_in_the_Spanish_Civil_War#Tanks_supplied_by_foreign_powers

Locally produced tanks: 24-32

Soviet tanks: 331

French/Polish tanks: 64

Paraguayan tanks: 1

So out of the 420-428 tanks deployed by the Republicans, more than 75% came from the Soviet Union. This is not “backstabbing.” If the Republicans didn’t want the Soviet Union to “interfere” with their civil war, they could have fun with their 89 tanks versus the Francoists’ 280 tanks. Yes, when you accept material aid from another country, that country has a say in the trajectory of your political project. That’s literally how all aid works. The Soviet Union was not a charity. If the Republicans did not want the Soviet Union to interfere with their political project, they could’ve just rejected the material aid. But to accept the substantial material aid and then cry about Soviet interference is called being ungracious. It’s called biting the hand that feeds you.

Show me one ML nation which is not totalitarian right now, or didn’t fall back into capitalism and fascism as soon as it inevitably collapsed

Show me one anarchist nation ever that has survived more than a couple of years or is not just a tiny commune somewhere isolated.

Yes, I spoke in anger and I don’t really know that much about Makhno, I also don’t care because he’s an irrelevant footnote. The proletarian masses spoke, they chose who to give their energy and strength to and their choice was the Bolsheviks. Those Bolsheviks safeguarded the Soviet people against the capitalists literally turning out the bowels of hell upon them. Without the Red Army, the genocidal colonial expedition of Nazi Germany would have exterminated every single person between Ukraine and Siberia. And the Red Army was ONLY built through the absolutely tireless work of millions upon millions of workers building socialist industry under the guidance of the Communist Party. Communist Parties! Each region had its own branch! Each nation had its representation guaranteed! Soviet linguists helped invent alphabets for languages that had never been written down before, so they could record their oral histories and partake in the creation of culture on an equal basis with other nations! Truly the actions of a totalitarian dictatorship.

Ah, but it’s much easier to talk about “authoritarians and libertarians” and read the opinions of a bunch of white westerners who know better, than read the words of the people who built socialism under constant siege from the world empire. Hypocritically (?), I’m not interested in reading anything you have to link because I’ve already passed through the phase of anarchism I had before stumbling across The State and Revolution. I’m pressed because I used to be you until I got schooled, and had the humility and intellectual honesty to actually try and learn more. So go and read Blackshirts and Reds, S&R, Losurdo’s Stalin, Vijay Prashad’s Red Star Over the Third World and Washington Bullets and then come back and tell me whether or not you followed my footsteps or just bounced off back into “western-left” arrogance.

on freedom under Makhno

https://isreview.org/issues/53/makhno/

When occupying cities or towns, Makhno’s troops would post notices on walls that read:

This Army does not serve any political party, any power, any dictatorship. On the contrary, it seeks to free the region of all political power, of all dictatorship. It strives to protect the freedom of action, the free life of the workers against all exploitation and domination. The Makhno Army does not therefore represent any authority. It will not subject anyone to any obligation whatsoever. Its role is confined to defending the freedom of the workers. The freedom of the peasants and the workers belongs to themselves, and should not suffer any restriction.61

But left in control of territory that they wanted to secure, the Makhnovists ended up forming what most would call a state. The Makhnovists set monetary policy.⁶² They regulated the press.⁶³ They redistributed land according to specific laws they passed. They organized regional legislative conferences.⁶⁴ They controlled armed detachments to enforce their policies.⁶⁵ To combat epidemics, they promulgated mandatory standards of cleanliness for the public health.⁶⁶ Except for the Makhnovists, parties were banned from organizing for election to regional bodies. They banned authority with which they disagreed to “prevent those hostile to our political ideas from establishing themselves.”⁶⁷ They delegated broad authority to a “Regional Military-Revolutionary Council of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents.” The Makhnovists used their military authority to suppress rival political ideas and organizations.⁶⁸ The anarchist historian Paul Avrich notes, “the Military-Revolutionary Council, acting in conjunction with the Regional Congresses and the local soviets, in effect formed a loose-knit government in the territory surrounding Guliai-Pole.”⁶⁹

[…] skipping a paragraph and a quote for brevity

Anarchist attacks on the Bolsheviks’ civil war policies often focus on the severe military discipline, conscription, grain requisitioning, and creation of a secret police. Yet, under the same conditions of civil war, Makhno’s army adopted all these measures, albeit with different names.

military discipline and conscription:

In his army, Makhno claimed that units had the right to elect their commanders. However, he retained veto power over any decisions.⁷¹ He increasingly relied on a close group of friends for his senior command.⁷² As Darch notes, “Although some of Makhno’s aides attempted to introduce more conventional structures into the army, [Makhno]’s control remained absolute, arbitrary and impulsive.”⁷³ One regiment found it necessary to pass a resolution that “all orders must be obeyed provided that the commanding officer was sober at the time of giving it.”⁷⁴ As the war went on, his forces moved from voting on their orders to carrying out executions ordered by Makhno to enforce discipline.⁷⁵

The pressures of war forced Makhno to move to compulsory military service, a far cry from the free association of individuals extolled in anarchist theory. Tellingly, all the anarchist histories call it a “voluntary” mobilization (complete with quotation marks).⁷⁶ Historian David Footman describes the linguistic back-flips:

Accordingly, at Makhno’s insistence, the second Congress passed a resolution in favor of “general, voluntary and egalitarian mobilization.” The orthodox Anarchist line, expressed at an Anarchist gathering of this period, was that “no compulsory army…can be regarded as a true defender of the social revolution,” and debate ranged round the issue as to whether enlistment could be described as “voluntary” (whatever the feelings of individuals) if it took place as the result of a resolution voluntarily passed by representatives of the community as a whole.⁷⁷

Just in case people did not understand the meaning of “voluntary,” the Makhnovists issued a clarifying bulletin:

Some groups have understood voluntary mobilization as mobilization only for those who wish to enter the Insurrectionary Army, and that anyone who for any reason wishes to stay at home is not liable…. This is not correct…. The voluntary mobilization has been called because the peasants, workers and insurgents themselves decided to mobilize themselves without awaiting the arrival of instructions from the central authorities.⁷⁸

The Makhnovists needed conscription for the same reason the Bolsheviks did: the bulk of the peasantry was sick of fighting. The difference between the two is that the Bolsheviks had a political outlook that saw conscription as part of a transitional period with the future depending on world revolution, when the productive power of humanity first unleashed by capitalism could be brought to bear on all spheres of life, in the interest of the vast majority. The peasants of Russia and the Ukraine were still using wooden ploughs and harvesting by hand. They stood to gain immensely from an increase in both productivity and leisure time. In contrast, Makhno had no similar perspective and had no generalized plan or vision for the future.

food requisitioning:

An army needs to eat. As they moved through the Ukraine, locals would point out the kulaks who would “agree” to provide food.⁷⁹ Despite orders to the contrary, Makhnovists would loot town after town, adding to the workers’ misery. One witness recalled:

Food supply was primitive, on the traditional insurgent pattern: the bratishki—the Makhnovists’ name for each other—would scatter to the peasant huts on entering a village, and eat what God sent; there was thus no shortage, although plundering and thoughtless damage to peasant stock did occur; I saw them shoot peasant cattle for fun more than once, amid the howls of women and children.⁸⁰

From their earliest days, they took the equipment they needed from those who had it.⁸¹ As they passed through towns and villages, they required the populace to quarter them.⁸²

secret police:

While condemning the Soviet Cheka as an authoritarian betrayal, Makhno created two secret police forces that carried out numerous acts of terror.⁸³ After a battle in one village, they shot a villager suspected of treachery with no trial. They summarily executed many of their prisoners of war.⁸⁴ Their secret police were tasked with getting rid of “opponents within or outwith [sic] the movement.”⁸⁵ Their activities led to one anarchist Congress asking Makhno to explain his activities:

It has been reported to us that there exists in the army a counter-espionage service which engages in arbitrary and uncontrolled actions, of which some are very serious, rather like the Bolshevik Cheka. Searches, arrests, even torture and executions are reported.⁸⁶

This is an excerpt from a longer article. I added the three headings for readability

Authoritarians and libertarians

I don’t give a shit what you say, if your politics is “authoritarian bad and libertarian good” you’re a fucking idiot.

Makhno

Imagine stanning a guy who armed and trained pogromists on an oopsie, and then in exile didn’t have the spine to support a much better anarchist seeking to kill a notorious leader of pogroms. Makhnovists are people who look at Trotsky and say “we need someone even less dignified, someone who accomplished still less and was spiteful and shit-flinging to even more people” and old Nestor comes to their rescue. Go follow his example and publish a newspaper that no one reads except to disparage it while alienating every leftist in your life even despite having the common enemy of the boogeyman tankies, and then die alone.

Wait, did they seriously confuse Chinese and Korean? I guess I shouldn’t have expect much from a comic that depicts Mao with slanty eyes.

George Orwel

I love his popcorn.

Ah, at least we come to the crux of the disagreement. “Anarchists, babies! MLs, strong!”. It always comes down to that, but it’s refreshing to see you just straight up say it sometimes, so that people can see it.

Anyone paying attention to what they actually said and not your petulant response will notice how far your characterization is off from the actual source. You’re putting on a shameful display.

Have you read anything about the failures of coordination among the anarchist militias in Catalonia? Or their failures of economic coordination beyond the local level?

Have you even absorbed the critiques enough that you are in a place to argue against them?

Because this is serious stuff that you should be educated about before you make judgements about it.

PS: I like how you sneaked in that call to emotion at the end. Very manipulative. Love it!

I like it

I love it

It’s funny that

It’s ironic that

It’s interesting that

Reddit-brained smug enlightened centrist liberals like yourself try to mask your rage with tedious “totally not mad” sentence openers.

PS: I like how you sneaked in that call to emotion at the end. Very manipulative. Love it!

Go back to Reddit.

Because its not anarchists job to do that but worker’s job, and they are very good at self-organizing.

The anarchist workers didn’t do a good job. The popular front workers did a better job, the Soviet workers did a better job.

You say this as if they had multiple chances to do so lol.

They had a chance in Catalonia, a much smaller field, and couldnt coordinate there.