And the fascists. Helped by an arms embargo from the capitalist nations that crippled the anarchists ability to defend themselves.
Stalin’s bastardry didn’t help, but it wasn’t the main cause of the fall of Spain.
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The Spanish anarchist experiment was terminated by the communists, not by the fascists, as it was the Ukrainian one. Bitter, but true.
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The Spanish communists ended the anarchist revolution in 1937. The fascist occupied the formerly anarchist areas in Aragon and Catalonia in 1938-1939.
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Yeah; I deleted my post while you were writing your reply because I realised that I was wrong on the history. Mea culpa.
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After reading the comments, it appears to me we are suffering from a disconnect between the term “Anarchy” and the political beliefs of anarchism. Much in the same way conservatives incorrectly all lump socialism in with the communist nations of the cold war. Anarchy and Anarchism are not the same things.
I myself fall strongly in the social democracy camp of political beliefs, feeling that it does take some sort of structure to help manage things to the benefit of the people, but it is the people who MUST benefit from those structures, and primarily those on the margins who derive the most assistance (as opposed to our current system which benefits mainly the wealthy elite and punishes the poor). So while I admire them for their attempt to help others, it strikes me as a bad idea, one that will ultimately lead to stronger pushes on the conservative end of things to end programs of assistance for the people. After all, if we can all just “help each other,” then there’s no need for government assistance programs. But the help will be spotty, piecemeal, and will miss large swaths of people. There are way too many structural changes need for us to become a true anarcho-syndicate collective in one lifetime. You need to go after the capitalist power structure first, and THEN take on the little things like pot hole filling.
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Err, there’s a professor in Politics and Governance at the door. She’d like a word about the nature of government in an (at least nominally) democratic society…
The government is us.
Letting the people we select to be in government persuade us otherwise is the problem.
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I’m just sayin…you go out into the street with a jackhammer and the cops catch you tearing up a street because you want a bigger lawn, they’re going to call that something like destruction of city property.
Anarchists believe that there needs to be some sort of structure too. There are significant differences, like how in non-anarchist systems managers are (mostly) unelected and there to manage the workers under them. In an anarchist system the workers would elect a manager who would manage whatever they are working on without having the power over the workers that a non-anarchist manager would have.
This is over simplifying how it would work, because I to be somewhere else soon, but I hope it gives you an idea of how things could be different.
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Sure, but a proper analysis of that should not be that the police are doing the City’s bidding because “the City” owns the streets.
It should be that officers appointed by the citizenry to oversee and enforce the laws enacted by the citizenry to govern their interaction with each other are acting to prevent damage to property belonging to the public (or in your example the increase of one citizen’s property at the expense of the rest of the populace).
My point being - ‘the government’ is not some amorphous entity that we have no control over or responsibility for. That kind of thinking makes it all too easy to shrug at whatever is not working the way we think it should and say “I can’t do anything about that, it’s the government/the city”.
If one accepts that we are the government, then it is our responsibility to do what we can to ensure the government acts in ways we approve of.
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One correction. it was the Spanish Stalinists who ended the anarchist revolution. The Anarchists and Trotskyists may have had an uneasy alliance in Spain, but they never tried to purge each other.
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The link actually provides a good primer on the theoretical background, but roadwork is not the sort of thing you “get right the first time after 30 minutes of internet research”.
Looks like there’s lots of resources to learn how to fill potholes:
The secret, as I understand it, is to wear the reflective vest.
And besides, I don’t think these guys are advocating filling in holes in busy downtown streets. I may be wrong, but for all we know they’re filling in holes in obscure backroads that would otherwise be unfixed for years and in the meantime do more damage to cars than they themselves are doing to the road by patching it.
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Really? I’ve seen a lot of socialists say this but I can’t recall any anarchists saying the same.
A.1.4 Are anarchists socialists?
Yes. All branches of anarchism are opposed to capitalism. This is because capitalism is based upon oppression and exploitation (see sections B and C). Anarchists reject the “notion that men cannot work together unless they have a driving-master to take a percentage of their product” and think that in an anarchist society “the real workmen will make their own regulations, decide when and where and how things shall be done.” By so doing workers would free themselves “from the terrible bondage of capitalism.” [Voltairine de Cleyre, Anarchism p. 32 and p. 34]
(We must stress here that anarchists are opposed to all economic forms which are based on domination and exploitation, including feudalism, Soviet-style “socialism” — better called “state capitalism” –, slavery and so on. We concentrate on capitalism because that is what is dominating the world just now).
…
Ayn-caps are not anarchists.
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So anarchism is a type of socialism but may, at points, be opposed other types of socialism although they’re fellow travellers against capitalism at the moment? Have I understood correctly?
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Pretty much, yes. We just focus on what we agree on because we really do not want another Hague Congress right now.
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That would explain my confusion with @Wanderfound’s statement because I’ve usually seen the communists lump both groups together but the anarchists objecting to this. This explains why and why they’re often found together. Thanks, that was very informative!
I think that’s based on Trotskyist groups, although it can be a problem for anyone. The Tories only keep themselves together with their shared hatred of socialism.
There are a lot of rival Trotskyist political parties in the UK, and they struggle to get along with each other.
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