I tried explaining my problems with tankies without calling them tankies. In fact, I used their own terminology to describe my disagreement with them. It, uh… well it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
George Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war on the side of the Marxists. His army was betrayed by the Marxist-Leninists. After that experience, he wrote 1984, in which a totalitarian government uses “newspeak” to suppress dissent by suppressing the very ideas that people are capable of communicating. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Marxist-Leninists describe their disagreements in terms that turn criticism of them into gibberish. I think it’s exactly what Orwell was writing about based on his experiences.
Can you expand on that?
During the Spanish civil war, Catalonia was governed by the Marxists and the Anarchists. They dismantled the state and gave control of the government over to the trade unions. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the middle of a war, and they were making progress every month. Until they were betrayed by the Marxist-Leninists.
So they failed to maintain control?
Western leftism is plagued by a culture of purity. Only upholding failed projects, because they never actually had to contend with the messy realities of governance.
Agree ,
One if the only large-scale “communist” societies that worked, and it was promptly destroyed by authoritarians.
Stalin: It’s going to be at least another hundred years before I can do communism
Catalonia: Yeah so it’s been a few weeks and we’re already doing communism. Come visit and shoot a Nazi!
Stalin: Fuck fuck fuck they’re making me look bad. Uhhhhhhh destroy Catalonia!
They were Anarcho-Syndicalist and tbh we have never forgotten them. The collapse of the CNT was one of the greatest tragedies in human history.