the need for a standing army - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The 'no government' movement.
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#14539530
Red_Army wrote:Well here again you run into the problem that everyone has with anarchism. You are just making assumptions about what would happen in post-revolutionary society just based on hope and dreams. You have no examples of a successful military without hierarchy. Every successful military in the world has had discipline and hierarchy as components and this is not coincidence.


I have two issues with this statement. 1, I myself only advocated for a largely de-hierarchised army and so do most anarchists. Makhno, Durutti, my own avatar, Cipriano Mera were all leaders of their respective forces, technically only the last was an official General, however they all wielded authority, with everything that entails. Granted they deferred to their soldiers and their elected representatives, but at the end of the day they had the last say. There was also discipline, as much as could be obtained under the circumstances. Some more Orwell on the topic.

Orwell wrote:Later it became the fashion to decry the militias, and therefore to pretend that the faults which were due to lack of training and weapons were the result of the equalitarian system. Actually, a newly raised draft 'of militia was an undisciplined mob not because the officers called the private 'Comrade' but because raw troops are always an undisciplined mob. In practice the democratic 'revolutionary' type of discipline is more reliable than might be expected. In a workers' army discipline is theoretically voluntary. It is based on class-loyalty, whereas the discipline of a bourgeois conscript army is based ultimately on fear. (The Popular Army that replaced the militias was midway between the two types.) In the militias the bullying and abuse that go on in an ordinary army would never have been tolerated for a moment. The normal military punishments existed, but they were only invoked for very serious offences. When a man refused to obey an order you did not immediately get him punished; you first appealed to him in the name of comradeship. Cynical people with no experience of handling men will say instantly that this would never 'work', but as a matter of fact it does 'work' in the long run. The discipline of even the worst drafts of militia visibly improved as time went on. In January the job of keeping a dozen raw recruits up to the mark almost turned my hair grey. In May for a short while I was acting-lieutenant in command of about thirty men, English and Spanish. We had all been under fire for months, and I never had the slightest difficulty in getting an order obeyed or in getting men to volunteer for a dangerous job. 'Revolutionary' discipline depends on political consciousness--on an understanding of why orders must be obeyed; it takes time to diffuse this, but
it also takes time to drill a man into an automaton on the barrack-square. The journalists who sneered at the militia-system seldom remembered that the militias had to hold the line while the Popular Army was training in the rear. And it is a tribute to the strength of 'revolutionary' discipline that the militias stayed in the field-at all.


In short, it would be a mistake to call the Anarchist way of doing things unworkable.

2.You claim that "You are just making assumptions about what would happen in post-revolutionary society just based on hope and dreams." This is undeniably true. Nothing even remotely resembling an Anarchist state has ever appeared and the closest approximations didn't for much longer than one-three years. This is what happens when you dare to dream big. Abolishing coercive power is a difficult, dangerous task but the rewards are far greater than could ever be achieved if you shrug your shoulders and say "se la vie". Everyone dies eventually, why live a long, hopeless life in the dark when you could burn like a candle? Because if you do you'll burn out? Sounds a poor deal to me.

The first time I came in contact with an unsavory depiction of Makhno is in the fictional tale: "Makhno's Boys" written by Isaac Babel. I know it is fictional, but his depiction of the brutalities of both White and Red Guards got him in deep trouble with the Soviet State (eventually leading to his execution) so I don't see any reason to question its honesty. He depicts them as ordinary soldiers (raping women and murdering peasants for supplies). Its possible that Makhno's troops were morally superior to the Reds and Whites in treatment of religious and ethnic minorities, but I don't think its popular for the participants of any civil war to be morally pure.


Oh I don't think ever Anarchist was a saint, some probably joined up because they thought it meant looting with no laws. The evidence seems to show that the majority really beleived in what they were doing (granted Makhno's example probably did more for that than book learned theory).
#14539535
Double post but meh.

Lol at Decky. Yes, let's have a Red Army! Being crushed under the boots of bureaucrats lackeys, the experience of a lifetime every working class man, woman and child wants for Christmas!
#14539538
Well if you rely on anarchist "fighting" "men" to defend you then you can look forwards to being killed by Franco after the anarchists have all ran away ten seconds after combat starts. Most people would rather live.

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Also the red army was loved by all who they defended. The Poles were gagging for their liberation from the Warsaw government in 1939.

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#14539542
Oh Decky, your always good for a chuckle. Tell me all about how the Commies did in the Spanish Civil War, I'd dying to hear how sitting on all the guns and ammo, starting shit behind the lines and then getting blasted to bits by Franco is a "winning strategy". I guess you guys aren't so good when you haven't got infinite plebs to throw into machine gun fire like WWII.
#14539544
Well in the eastern front there were people who were willing to fight, not anarchists good for nothing but running. The Reds did the best we could but in the end there were so many rightists fighting for the fascists and so many anarchists running away from the fascists that the brave socialist heroes actually bothering to fight fell under the tide of filth.
#14539556
A masterwork Decky! Had you really been around in Late Thirties Soviet Russia , you could give up that construction stuff and be a propagandist. So many former people, incorrectly remembered events and lies about Comrade Stalin to erase from history, so little time...
#14539660
Anyone who thinks that without soviet suppor, resistance in SCW could have even lasted for six months is delusional at best. Not to mention the hardship that USSR had to face with all the embargo in place by the liberal democracies directly helping the fascist forces of Italy and Germany.
#14539832
Decky wrote:Also the red army was loved by all who they defended. The Poles were gagging for their liberation from the Warsaw government in 1939.
Yeah, ask the Polish women about the love they got from the Red Army, whether they wanted it or not:

Wikipedia wrote:Poland 1939–1941
Main articles: Soviet invasion of Poland, Katyn massacre and Polish prisoners of war in the Soviet Union (after 1939)

In September 1939, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland and occupied it in accordance with the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviets later forcefully occupied the Baltic States and parts of Romania, including Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.
One of the mass graves at Katyn where the NKVD massacred thousands of Polish Officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war.[43]

German historian Thomas Urban[44] writes that the Soviet policy towards the people who fell under their control in occupied areas was harsh, showing strong elements of ethnic cleansing.[45] The NKVD task forces followed the Red Army to remove 'hostile elements' from the conquered territories in what was known as the 'revolution by hanging'.[46] Polish historian, Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz, has noted parallels between the Nazi Einsatzgruppen and these Soviet units.[47] Many civilians tried to escape from the Soviet NKVD round-ups; those who failed were taken into custody and afterwards deported to Siberia and vanished into the Gulags.[46]

Torture was used on a wide scale in various prisons, especially those in small towns. Prisoners were scalded with boiling water in Bobrka; in Przemyslany, people had their noses, ears, and fingers cut off and eyes put out; in Czortkow, female inmates had their breasts cut off; and in Drohobycz, victims were bound together with barbed wire.[48] Similar atrocities occurred in Sambor, Stanislawow, Stryj, and Zloczow.[48] According to historian, Prof. Jan T. Gross:

We cannot escape the conclusion: Soviet state security organs tortured their prisoners not only to extract confessions but also to put them to death. Not that the NKVD had sadists in its ranks who had run amok; rather, this was a wide and systematic procedure. — Jan T. Gross[48]

According to sociologist, Prof. Tadeusz Piotrowski, during the years 1939–41, nearly 1.5 million inhabitants of the Soviet-controlled areas of former eastern Poland were deported, of whom 63.1% were Poles or other nationalities and 7.4% were Jews. Only a small number of these deportees survived the war and returned.[49] According to American professor Carroll Quigley, at least one third of the 320,000 Polish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army in 1939 were murdered.[50]

It's estimated that around 35 thousand Polish prisoners were killed either in prisons or on prison trail to the Soviet Union in few days after 22 June 1941 (prisons: Brygidki, Zolochiv, Dubno, Drohobych, and so on).[51][52][53][54]
1944–1945

In Poland, Nazi atrocities ended by late 1944, but they were replaced by Soviet oppression with the advance of Red Army forces. Soviet soldiers often engaged in plunder, rape and other crimes against the Poles, causing the population to fear and hate the regime.[55][56][57][58]

Soldiers of Poland's Home Army (Armia Krajowa) were persecuted and imprisoned by Russian forces as a matter of course.[59] Most victims were deported to the gulags in the Donetsk region.[60] In 1945 alone the number of members of the Polish Underground State deported to Siberia and various labor camps in the Soviet Union reached 50,000.[61][62] Units of the Red Army carried out campaigns against Polish partisans and civilians. During the Augustów chase in 1945, more than 2,000 Poles were captured and about 600 of them are presumed to have died in Soviet custody. For more information about postwar resistance in Poland see the Cursed soldiers.[63]

The attitude of Soviet servicemen towards ethnic Poles was better than towards the Germans, but not entirely. The scale of rape of Polish women in 1945 led to a pandemic of sexually transmitted diseases. Although the total number of victims remains a matter of guessing, the Polish state archives and statistics of the Ministry of Health indicate that it might have exceeded 100,000.[64] In Kraków, the Soviet entry into the city was accompanied by mass rapes of Polish women and girls, as well as the plunder of private property by Red Army soldiers.[65] This behavior reached such a scale that even Polish communists installed by the Soviet Union composed a letter of protest to Joseph Stalin himself, while church masses were held in expectation of a Soviet withdrawal.[65]


And that, boys and girls, is why the Polish people loved the Soviets and still love them to this very day.

#14539847
Well surprise surprise you're parroting Nazi propaganda. The Katyn masacre was done by the Nazis. Trots, fascists and liberals (same thing really) just like the blame it on the Soviet Union. I have this on the authority of the Stalin Society in London; a wise bunch of sages who know their shit.
#14539862
fuser wrote:Anyone who thinks that without soviet suppor, resistance in SCW could have even lasted for six months is delusional at best. Not to mention the hardship that USSR had to face with all the embargo in place by the liberal democracies directly helping the fascist forces of Italy and Germany.

In terms of sheer numbers, sure. They needed all the support they could get (and they still lost). But I hardly see how that proves anything about the viability of anarchist militias in and of itself.
#14540041
That even at their best they needed dirty Soviet Communists to keep them alive? This is something that nearly every anarchist analysis of history claims was actually a detraction (and then they praise Makhno which is like a Communist praising Pol Pot).
#14540059
While I'm sure there's some anarchists who might argue that, it seems to me a more straightforward analysis would be that an uprising in a small region in Spain up against the might of all the imperialist powers combined would have an uphill battle regardless of their ideology, and could use all the help they can get. What this does not explain is what inherent limitations the anarchist militias had compared to the Soviets, other than their numbers.
#14540072
By having a military without hierarchy you'd be basically handicapping yourself when it comes to strategy.
Officers get picked among those who are best suited for the job and get a birds eye view of the field and get to pick which strategy is best suited to get the job done.
Whereas militias just react to incoming fire.
Also discipline is important. It takes a lot of training to override your survival mechanism.
Orwell's account might paint a romantic picture, but he's a writer not a military strategist.
We can take liberties with the economy to make it more suited to societies needs but we can't take the same liberties when peoples lives are at stake.
#14540081
Frollein wrote:And that, boys and girls, is why the Polish people loved the Soviets and still love them to this very day.



This one does...lol.

I never understood the butthurt. Any non-Russian revolutionary would shoot officers and other servants of a proto-fascist state, as well as reverse imperialist territory changes and conduct related population shifts to remove the base for any nationalist antagonism.

It's all part of the class war, not Russian oppression.

I certainly don't feel very victimized over Pilsudski-adoring state thugs being shot or losing East Slav/Rus/Soviet territories conquered in 1921 or part of the old commonwealth. We got German and Rusyn lands in return for it anyway, and having the Polish identity be defined by anti-communism and keeping red peasants out of Europe in a battle nobody remembers, is stupid.
#14540198
Of course they only targeted the enemies of the communist utopia and only raped reactionaries. Far be it from me to suggest that they terrorized the civilian population just because they had the upper hand. I can't for the life of me understand the hostile stance of Poland towards Russia today. It surely has nothing to do with centuries of history of which the last 50 years were just the cherry on top.
#14540332
Tim, doesn't the fact that Anarchists have lost in every case have something to do with their ideology and at the very least, the efficacy of their military strategy? You might be right in saying that every Makhnovite who committed a crime wasn't a true Makhnovite, but its the same argument communists make.

I have to agree with Frollein, the Polish war was abominable and the thought that it was only about creating socialism is ridiculous.

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