Local work is good and commendable, but wider societal change requires centralized leadership and the use of force to counter the violence which the capitalist class will engage in to protect its existence both during and after any revolution
Anarchist cells operating simulteanously can accomplish the same thing without relying on a single point of failure or granting a figurehead to attack.
Revolutionary Catalonia was not in any way a collection of independent anarchist cells. If you actually read the work of historians on Catalonia you’d realize that they had basically everything in terms of state apparatuses that someone like you would be ideologically opposed to, if you were consistent in your politics.
Workers couldn’t even leave their villages without the permission of the village council in Revolutionary Catalonia my guy. I don’t know how to tell you this but that sounds awfully like a repressive state doing what a repressive state does, even if it flies a black (and red) flag.
They were still sustainable. The same thing is going to happen to any startup anarchist collective as nations and corporations hold an ungodly amount of power and material wealth. It was destroyed because it was actually working but couldn’t defend itself completely from a nation. That is a flaw but its one any up and coming revolution starts with.
Revolutionary Catalonia[1] (21 July 1936 – 8 May 1937) was the period in which the autonomous region of Catalonia in northeast Spain was controlled or largely influenced by various anarchist, syndicalist, communist, and socialist trade unions, parties, and militias of the Spanish Civil War era. Although the constitutional Catalan institution of self-government, the Generalitat of Catalonia (led by the Republican Left of Catalonia, ERC), remained in power and even took control of most of the competences of the Spanish central government in its territory, the trade unions were de facto in command of most of the economy and military forces, which includes the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT, National Confederation of Labor) which was the dominant labor union at the time and the closely associated Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI, Iberian Anarchist Federation). The Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT, General Worker’s Union), the POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification) and the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC, which included the former Communist Party of Catalonia) were also prominent.
Idk seems like they were already a collective. Do you think adding a figurehead or singular leader would have stopped the establishment government from using their already existing material wealth to crush dissent?
Do you think adding a figurehead or singular leader would have stopped the establishment government from using their already existing material wealth to crush dissent?
Local work is good and commendable, but wider societal change requires centralized leadership and the use of force to counter the violence which the capitalist class will engage in to protect its existence both during and after any revolution
Anarchist cells operating simulteanously can accomplish the same thing without relying on a single point of failure or granting a figurehead to attack.
Can it? When in history has that ever actually worked?
It worked in Revolutionary Catalonia for one.
Revolutionary Catalonia was not in any way a collection of independent anarchist cells. If you actually read the work of historians on Catalonia you’d realize that they had basically everything in terms of state apparatuses that someone like you would be ideologically opposed to, if you were consistent in your politics.
Workers couldn’t even leave their villages without the permission of the village council in Revolutionary Catalonia my guy. I don’t know how to tell you this but that sounds awfully like a repressive state doing what a repressive state does, even if it flies a black (and red) flag.
They lasted less than a year before they were destroyed by nationalist forces.
They were still sustainable. The same thing is going to happen to any startup anarchist collective as nations and corporations hold an ungodly amount of power and material wealth. It was destroyed because it was actually working but couldn’t defend itself completely from a nation. That is a flaw but its one any up and coming revolution starts with.
Damn, I wonder if there’s anything they could have done to address this problem
Idk seems like they were already a collective. Do you think adding a figurehead or singular leader would have stopped the establishment government from using their already existing material wealth to crush dissent?
You mean Lluis Companys right?