this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
11 points (78.9% liked)

Anarchism

3713 readers
40 users here now

Are you an Anarchist? The answer might surprise you!

Rules:

  1. Be respectful
  2. Don't be a nazi
  3. Argue about the point and not the person
  4. This is not the place to debate the merits of anarchism itself. While discussion is encouraged, getting in your “epic dunks on the anarkiddies” is not. As a result of the instance’s poor moderation policies and hostility toward anarchists by default, lemmygrad users are encouraged not to post here, though not explicitly disallowed if they aren’t just looking to start a fight.

See also:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
poVoq@slrpnk.net
sexy_peach@feddit.de
11
How George Orwell Paved Noam Chomsky’s Path to Anarchism (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
submitted 4 months ago by ray@lemmy.ml to c/anarchism@lemmy.ml
1 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] redrumBot@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 months ago

Notice the time lag between the events of 1936 and the realization that the Soviets were “wag[ing] a war against the Anarchists.”

That's not correct. If the Comintern Parties[^note1] and their comissaries were waging a war into the anti-fascist forces, were against other communists: mostly against the POUM and troskist.

The POUM (Partit Obrer d'unificació Marxista / Workers Party of Marxist Unification), the group where George Orwell joined, was a non-troskist Marxist-Leninist Party, which wanted to do the revolution at the same time as overcoming fascism, i.e. the same strategy that the anarchists of the FAI (Federació Anarquista Ibèrica / Iberian Anarchist Federation) and CNT (Confederació Nacional del Treball / National Confederation of Labor).

The POUM was banned (accused of collaboration with fascism) and its leader Andreu Nin disappeared.  Until the 90s, with the declassification of KGB documentation, it was not known what had happened to him: he was detained, tortured and murdered by the NKVD without having 'confessed' to any crime.

I do not deny that there was persecution against anarchists, but I do deny the degree of animosity towards them that anarchist historiography often presents. The greatest ideological "danger" of the Comintern, those against whom they showed the greatest animosity within the anti-fascist bloc, were not the anarchists, nor the majority socialist party, nor the petty-bourgeois parties... they were other communists who do not share their positions.

[^note1]: PCE (Partit Comunista d'Espanya / Communist Party of Spain) and PSUC (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya / Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia).