I do enjoy how the defenders of liberal capitalism like to pretend that fascism is totally separate from their own ideology, and that fascism isn't simply the logical consequence of capitalism - a more stressed out version. And they also pretend that international capital didn't fully back and collaborate with what Hitler and Mussolini were doing.

@ Putin

''Does this negate the fact that anarchists hoarded weapons that could have been used at the front? Does this negate the fact that the anarchists assassinated their own supposed heroic leader, Durutti, for being too compromising with the communists?''

We will never agree about Spain and the respective contributions of the Russian Commissars in Madrid and the Anarchists in Barcelona. Your statement of 'fact' above is actually not so definitive. Check out Anthoney Beevor or this form a primary source -

''We passed a little group of hotels which are at the bottom of this avenue (Queen Victoria Avenue) and we turned towards the right. Arriving at the big street, we saw a group of militiamen coming towards us. Durruti thought it was some young men who were leaving the front. This area was completely destroyed by the bullets coming from the Clinical Hospital, which had been taken during these days by the Moors and which dominated all the environs. Durruti had me stop the car which I parked in the angle of one of those little hotels as a precaution. Durruti got out of the auto and went towards the militiamen. He asked them where they were going. As they didn't know what to say, he ordered them to return to the front. The militiamen obeyed and Durruti returned towards the car. The rain of bullets became stronger. From the vast red heap of the clinical Hospital, the Moors and the Guardia Civil were shooting furiously. Reaching the door of the machine, Durruti collapsed, a bullet through his chest.''

@ Ivo -

''From time to time, someone of them may end up becoming a member of this 'club of 400'. Just by being smart, hard-working and lucky.''

You discount inherited wealth and privilege from your thoughts on this matter then?

When I lest school I worked in a bakery, I now work in a university department. I have to tell you that the equation between hard work and monetary reward which you suggest, is nothing but a lie!

Oh fantastic, an unnamed primary source. The 'fact' that the anarchists were openly trying to overthrow the Spanish Republic and sabotaged the Popular Front is not in dispute, especially in May 1937 in the middle of the Condor Legion's brutal bombings of Basque country in Guernica. They simply try to justify it (the Republic was 'authoritarian' and 'Stalinist' blah blah blah). And of course, anarchists and their anti-communist friends have whitewashed the history of the Spanish Civil War. There is nary a book or movie on it from of the perspective of anyone except Orwell, the CNT, and the Trotskyites. They have even gone as far as to demonize the heroic International Brigades, because they know damn well who organized these volunteers, so it contradicts their entire bs narrative about Communist "betrayal".

For a look into the type of propaganda peddled as Spanish civil war 'history' from the anarchist/Trotskyist line, look at the abomination of movie called Land and Freedom (which is based on Orwell's Tory-pleasing screed - Homage to Catolina). They have the audacity to claim the International Brigades were jack booted thugs and they even claim the Brigades were involved in putting down the anarcho-Trot uprisings.

@ Putin

Talking of murders and murderers what is your view of Aleksandr Mikhailovich Orlov and the slaying of Kurt Landau? As to Stalin he helped by supplying, mostly clapped out, material until the Republican gold ran out (remembering there was a lot of it in 1936 and it had all gone by 1938).

Julio Grave, Durruti's, driver gave the eyewitness account of his death, where does your information come from?

http://iberianature.com/barcelona/history-of-barcelona/barcelona-radical-history/buenaventura-durruti/

There's absolutely no evidence that Orlov killed Laudau. But I know this story is put out there by anarchists/Trots and the like as incontrovertible "fact". According to people who were with Landau, all they know is he vanished. They don't know what happened to him, and Orlov's file does mention anything about catching or assassinating him.

*does not.

Given the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 (and the often forgotten associated sale of Russian oil to Hitler), the Russian treachery in Spain is hardly surprising.

Right, so on one hand you people claim that the Soviets didn't provide any aid, in the next breath you'll claim that Spain depleted its entire gold reserve, which was supposedly one of the largest in the world at the time (it was not "all gone" by the way, most of the anti-communist tracts out there say 2/3)

So which is it? Did they provide no aid or did they provide so much material that Spain depleted its entire gold supply? It can't be both.

"Given the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 (and the often forgotten associated sale of Russian oil to Hitler), the Russian treachery in Spain is hardly surprising."

Your people were having a revolutionary party away from the front in the middle of a fascist invasion and you have the audacity to talk about Soviet "treachery"?

You do realize that shipments were blown up by the Italians and Germans, and when they weren't they were being blocked by the so-called "non-interventionist" western countries who did absolutely nothing while the fascists took Spain.

And of the British-Nazi pact to dismember Czechoslovakia in 1938? How come you never mention that? Appeasement? Who was that made famous by? During this time the Soviets had repeatedly called for an anti-fascist alliance. Your government wasn't interested. The western powers were also busy courting their fascist friend Mussolini. Churchill claimed Mussolini was a great leader. They had a lot in common. Both reactionary to the core.

It's hilarious that you - an anarchist - still manages to love Churchill, a man who thought it'd be a good idea to test chemical weapons on "recalcitrant Arab tribes". Priceless.

there is entirely too much discussion of wwii on this forum.

there's so much i think we need an equivalent of the live games thread for WWII debates. just saying.

and yeah, Sicarius, you are right about the role of chiefs. But I have a few questions about that:

1) How is that anarchy? There is still a power structure. Unless I am way off base about what anarchy means.

2) How is monarchy not a logical conclusion from that, given time? With power (which a chief had, even if it was consensual and non-hereditary), comes privilege, and then a desire to prolong said power.

3) How in the world can a world with 6-7 billion people support themselves with just chief systems? Millions and millions of chiefs leading groups of maybe a few hundred each at most. How does the world coordinate anything? Say we need to deal with a global issue like global warming (yes I know global warming would never have happened if we were anarchists, so, to humor you, what about an asteroid impact)? How would we mediate conflicts over resources? How would we grow enough crops on the large mechanized scale we do now to feed everyone?

I mean, you could put the chiefs in charge of larger groups, say groups of millions.

Oh but wait. That's kind of like what democracy is trying to do.

So what was wrong with democracy again?

Something else about anarchy.

Remind me again why crime would disappear? Do you really blame *all* crime on the state of society? When even animals behave towards each other in a reprehensible way?

How do you prevent crime, and punish/rehabilitate criminals? Because there WILL be criminals. I really won't take you seriously if you claim there will be zero deviants in an anarchist society.

How do you deal with an atrocity like this for instance:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/03/08/texas.assault.arrests/index.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6554442/Diaries-of-reporter-who-exposed-Stalins-atrocities-go-on-display.html

Also Putin, both Animal Farm and 1984 were banned by Western governments, the former because WW2 was still on and they didn't want to alienate Stalin, the second during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And who loves Churchill despite being an anarchist?

@ Thucydides
''there is entirely too much discussion of wwii on this forum.''

I am not sure about that, but replace the word 'forum' with 'thread' and I will agree with you. For my part I can only plead that 1930s Spain (specifically Catalonia) provided one of the rare examples of anarchism in action; it is therefore relevant to the debate. Unfortunately, as you have seen, it provokes much heated and at times over-emotional debate, particularly with some Stalinists and/or Marxists.

lol.

i mean on a forum with a communist, fascist, and some anarchists, world war two is bound to ridden with revisionism. so it doesn't surprise me really.

talking about it is fine. using it as an example for *everything* and then inevitably debating every phrase or detail is really really dull after awhile

@ Thucydides
I agree, it is the broad ideas rather than the minutae which are more appropriate to this thread. To that end I would advance the hypothesis that it is anarchism which threatens the status quo above all else.

For information as to the extent of Soviet military aid to the Republic, and the considerable risk and losses the Soviets took in furnishing this aid - read "Soviet Military Aid to the Spanish Republic in the Civil War 1936-1938" by DC Watt, published in the Slavonic and East European Review. It is not fraudulent scholarship like Gerald Howson's Arms for Spain, which just makes up stuff out of whole cloth. It comes from primary sources. What is interesting is the extent to which the Italians engaged in piracy to destroy Soviet aid shipments, and considering this was during the height of Italian-British reproachment, the fact that nobody in the Non-Intervention Committee gave a damn about what the Italians were doing, in fact they were openly aiding the Axis. Nobody mentions the shameless duplicity of the Non-Intervention Committee at all, instead they heap abuse on Spain's one real ally. The Non-Intervention, coupled with anarchist and Trotskyist putsch attempts, ensured the fascist takeover of Spain. One of the sources you cite, Beevor, says as much. But not you.

Furthermore, people in the International Brigades, not anarchists playing at revolution with Francoist agents in Barcelona, point to the fact that it was Soviet trainers who taught them how to fly a plane, Soviets who taught them how to shoot a gun, and Soviets who taught basic military tactics. On the hand, the anarchist revolutionists completely sabotaged Republican war efforts from the beginning by forcing the disbanding of the 8 pre civil war army divisions which had remained loyal to the Republic. The Republic then had to rely on party militias and lacked professional officers. This, combined with the fact that the Republic had to waste precious resources putting down illegal anarchist occupations of telephone exchanges (which were defended with machine guns, of course they couldn't be used at the front, could they?) and other uprisings.

As for the so-called "plundering of gold", a sizeable portion of Spain's gold (at least 1/5) also went to France. Did France steal it? If the Soviets were interested in swindling the Republic, why did they repeatedly sell Spain weapons on credit? After all, the gold reserves supposedly ran out in 1938, but yet Spain kept getting weapons to continue the fight. Furthermore, before any gold had arrived in the Soviet Union, the Soviets had already sent - > 187 aircraft, 147 tanks and armored vehicles, 114 artillery guns, 3,703 machine-guns, 60,183 rifles, 95,528,860 rounds of ammunition, and 150 tons of gunpowder. The material that was sent, far from being "shoddy", was superior to the German and Italian equipment, particularly the tanks and planes. The Soviets sent around 900 tanks, these tanks were equipped for a 45 mm gun, and were more powerful than the small tanks the italians and germans provided that had two machine guns (150 Panzerkampfwagen Is, 7.92 mm guns ). Howson talks about the poor quality of rifles but the Nationalists had Italian guns from 1893. In all the Soviets provided something around 415,000 rifles to the Republic it supposedly "betrayed". In addition, the Spanish never paid for at least $50 million worth of material they received. So, this idea that the Soviets somehow stole the gold or ripped off the Spanish is complete horsepuckey invented by Gerald Howson.

And what people like Howson and anti-communists refuse to acknowledge is, aside from the use of the gold reserves, thanks to the damned "Non-Intervention" Committee, there was no by which the Republic could get arms to fight the war. The gold in the Soviet Union was used to set up an account with the Soviet State bank to make payments on arms sales to numerous foreign countries. The same thing happened in France, where the Soviets had a front account through Eurobank. No Spanish historian who has investigated this matter has concluded that Spain was defrauded.

Finally, the idea that the status quo is afraid of anarchism is a joke. Anarchists have never posed a real threat to anything, which is why you were forced to bring up Spain as the only real example of anarchists having any influence. What revolutions are anarchists leading today? Absolutely none. I can point to many being led by Marxists. And I can point to many Marxists being arrested and/or executed (or outright murdered) by the authorities of many countries. Not so with anarchists. Most anarchists are lifestylers who do little to no political organizing, preferring to live their morally pure life outside of society.

"Also Putin, both Animal Farm and 1984 were banned by Western governments, the former because WW2 was still on and they didn't want to alienate Stalin, the second during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And who loves Churchill despite being an anarchist?"

I'm not sure what you're replying to with the first part. I don't know where you got this idea that Animal Farm was restricted, the book sold out within a couple of weeks. Publication was initially delayed not out of any deference to the Soviets, but due to a paper shortage. Regardless Orwell became the patron saint of the anti-communists during the cold war and remains so to this day, despite being a snitch, a plagiarist, and a bigot. He is the single biggest proof that you don't have to be a good writer to win awards and be hailed by the press, all you have to do is plagiarize an unknown book and be critical of certain enemies of the state, then you're the best thing since sliced bread.

As for the anarchist who loves Churchill, that'd be Fulham, who admitted he gets butterflies in the stomach from hearing the old drunkard's speech during the Battle of Britain.

"there is entirely too much discussion of wwii on this forum."

For whatever reason both you and Obi find the need to denounce whatever is being discussed in various threads if they don't match up with what you want to discuss. We barely talk about WWII at all compared to say, religion and entertainment.

@Putin - reusing ideas even to the extreme Orwell did is not plagiarism. Plagiarism *must* be word for word. But, it does makes Orwell's work very derivative and unoriginal.

the putin thread?

Ahh but Putin the reason people love Animal Farm, plagiarized or not, is because it is just too too true.

It explains better than any dry old book what is wrong with communism in practice. And people love it for that. Because communism in practice was cruel and inefficient.

Cue revisionist response; I don't care, you won't really be convincing anyone.... especially if they've read the book.

Although I agree communism doesn't work in practice I think animal farm shows more that totalitarianism and the inability of then contemporary communists to establish perfect equality is what makes communism faulty not communism as a whole...

It was sold out after it was published, it was delayed for a year on fear of offending the USSR. Also, I don't see how Orwell is a snitch or a plagiarist.

"Plagiarism *must* be word for word"

*Sigh*. Glad you're not in academia.

http://www.mla.org/repview_profethics

"In this statement we adopt the definition of plagiarism given in Joseph Gibaldi's MLA Style Manual: "Using another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source constitutes plagiarism.... [T]o plagiarize is to give the impression that you wrote or thought something that you in fact borrowed from someone, and to do so is a violation of professional ethics.... Forms of plagiarism include the failure to give appropriate acknowledgment when repeating another's wording or particularly apt phrase, paraphrasing another's argument, and presenting another's line of thinking" (6.1; see also Gibaldi, MLA Handbook, ch. 2)."

No it absolutely does not have to be 'word for word'. It's stealing ideas from other people and passing them off as your own. Which Orwell absolutely did. 1984 is copied from a book by Yevgeny Zamyatin called "We".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/jun/08/george-orwell-1984-zamyatin-we

He copied Animal Farm from a book written in the 1920s by Władysław Reymont called "The Revolt".

As for snitching, that's not even in dispute anymore. Orwell gave a list of people he suspected of being communists (and marked next to their name things like 'Jew') to British intelligence, namely Robert Conquest's (the fraudulent "historian") assistant Celia Kirwan, whom he was in love with.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/jun/24/highereducation.books

"Cue revisionist response; I don't care, you won't really be convincing anyone.... especially if they've read the book."

I'm well aware people worship at the altar of St. George, no matter how bad his writing and how no matter how much of a loathsome person he was.

Orwell could write something about how communism is bad in caveman speak, or in wingdings, and you people would love it anyway.

I think Putin's view on Orwell are too harsh, but his arguments have merit. And there are many would agree. Vladimir Nabokov, himself, called a Orwell a plagiarist (or did him call him cliched? - I can't remember exactly)
Personally I loved 1984 and Animal Farm. They would rank amongst my favourite books ever. But is am not considering his literary worth in some kind of academic sense. For me they were good stories, well written, they made me think, and they were memorable. Were they entirely original? Apparently not. But Shakespeare wasn't always completely original either...

This article in the guardian sums up my views:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/jun/08/george-orwell-1984-zamyatin-we

"So does it matter that Orwell borrowed plot and characters from the earlier book? After all, it seems clear that he made a superior work of literature out of them. Nineteen Eighty-Four's importance comes not so much from its plot as from its immense cultural impact, which was recognised almost immediately when it won the £357 Partisan Review prize for that year's most significant contribution to literature, and which has continued to this day. Most of the aspects and ideas of the novel that still resonate so strongly in political life are his own: newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime, the Thought Police, Room 101; the extreme use of propaganda, censorship and surveillance; the rewriting of history; labels and slogans that mean the opposite of what they say; the role for Britain implied in the name Airstrip One. References to these things pervade all levels of our culture."