This is an excellent read, and I find this quote "But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence." very relevant to the current world/politics and how people interpret the facts/news.
Another great quote along these lines, from near the beginning of section IV:
> Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories, and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.
This reminds me in Japanese museums you can see paintings depicting Japan’s involvements in WW2 as a noble effort to liberate Asia. And meanwhile in mainland China everything about how the current party comes to power would inevitably be in rose-colored lenses if you look through the official sources. This makes one skeptical if all these historical war-related events that we still have records of actually happened as described. And as a Chinese I started to doubt how much things recorded in Shiji from 84BC (aka “The Records”, and has been called a "foundational text in Chinese civilization”) was actually true. I guess such is the dilemma of postmodernism.
I read is as a pretake on 1984. The concept of double-think etc.
Basically, people want to believe facts that align with their ideology and reject facts that do not. This keeps people focused and less distracted by doubts.
In 1984 normal person has no access to facts and ideology. In totalitarian society ideology becomes embedded into fabric of society. It forms new equilibrium and replaces social contract.
This is a really subtle and correct point that's I think really difficult to grasp for High School students studying Orwell.
I think this frankly is hard to understand until you're somewhere past 30.
It's hard to understand, when you're young, that basically everyone in the press is lying to you in little ways, even though they're 'mostly telling the truth' - that there is a huge game behind it.
I'm reminded of when E. Germany had to be re-integrated into the West, the problem was that the vocabulary relating to politics and democracy had been erased in the East. Several generations of people grew up without even thinking about various aspects of politics. There literally was no language for the W. Germans to use to re-introduce E. Germans to political dialogue.
You can erase democracy by suppressing language, and therefore by suppressing thought. It doesn't exist if nobody is thinking about it.
The idea is to enforce the rules through the daily rituals, language, constructs that people use - there's no need for facts or ideology then.
The beginning of this I think happens more or less out in the open with certain subjects now in 2020, when we see language and culture shifting - but it shifts slow enough that it's not noticed.
Go ahead and look at episodes of '30 Rock' - a brilliant, first rate, amazing production from literally just 10 years ago --> it's couldn't be made today, or rather, it would have to be 'heavily censored' today because so many of those jokes are just a little to un PC (jokes about women's pay, harassment in the workplace). But today, it wouldn't be 'network censorship' - it would be a kind of 'thought and behaviour censorship' right from the writers room and producers edict. When I look at '30 Rock' from a 2020 communications perspective I'm actually very, very concerned - the level of suppression that has slowly been sinking in is alarming.
1984 grew directly out of Orwells experience in the war. POUM and Andreu Nin Perez and Leon Trotsky's treatment at the hands of Stalin and the ComIntern were very disheartening for him
1984 is very difficult to map directly on to US politics because liberal/neoliberal capture of the universities and mainstream journalism are kindof total the way that American conservatives allege, but also George Blair hoped that figures like Trotsky of the Red Army and Perez of the POUM would win out in the end
Orwell would not have been friends with the pepper Christian homeschooler, the glad-handing inside dealing Mar a Lago member, the little local lord like the area car dealership owner, the conspiracy theorist YouTuber, the Rad Trad anti Vatican II syncretist, those supremely Trumpist figures.
You kindof have to visit with George the man, his actions, and his times to understand his story. But that tends to muck up any chance to put him to use purely for your side.
(He was a socialist though, til the day he died, so he'd be voting Biden were he here in Wisconsin right now : P)
He's certainly not a socialist, but Trump and co. are right that socialists are generally less unhappy with Biden than with Trump, and many of them are sufficiently less unhappy to think it's worth voting for him.
And I think you can infer Orwell's position enough from this essay itself - he is concerned about "the liberal tradition" being the last bulwark against worldwide fascism just one sentence before criticising England's liberal tradition for not being willing to actively stand up to evil because that tradition believes good will win out because good is good. Liberalism is hardly sufficient, but it's necessary.
(Another way of putting this: Orwell is not an accelerationist. You can see from this essay that he's quite concerned with the material conditions of the working class in a realistic way, and the idea that they should get worse so that the people will revolt is neither convincing nor appealing to him.)
They wouldn't, you're right. We will not see the NYSE shuttered in the next 4 years or Amazon's excess of revenue over expenses taxed at 100% and their money bags driven across the country in armored trucks and heaved into Elizabeth Warren's US Treasury as a result of this election.
On the other hand, despite the fact that my tongue was firmly planted in my cheek when I wrote it, such Debbie Wasserman Schultz haters as Nathan J Robinson and Noam Chomsky have adopted the 'Vote for Biden and keep protesting' angle so who's to say how the real socialists are voting this year?
"Real socialists" is definitely not a community with a homogeneous opinion on who to vote for, or even on whether a "real socialist" should vote. The argument on whether socialists should participate in liberal democracy has been one that has been ongoing since essentially the dawn of leftist politics. The theory of two revolutions, the idea that a revolution constructing a liberal democracy was a necessary step towards socialism, was probably the prevailing idea in many of the 19th and early 20th century revolutions (like the revolutions of 1848 and the Russian Revolution of 1905). There were obviously people who did not take this line, but it is not new or conciliatory that some leftists take a similar stance today.
This is why the current news-noise world is awful. If we just look at minor things for now, you can find all sorts of unfounded opinions in every FB thread on Trump or on the virus. People on FB can now link an article that says whatever they want, and it's not good for public discourse.
The tell-tale sign of political "thinking" is that you come across a lot of people who think all the evidence points one way. I always think twice when someone presents every decision as an obvious, here-are-10-reasons-and-no-rebuttals case. Such cases are actually a lot more fragile than here-are-some-pros-and-some-cons cases, where the author falls to one side or the other based on some valuation.
With Trump and the virus, this has gotten out of hand. It won't take you long to find badly supported opinions either way on those topics.
What truly impresses me is Orwell's ability to see through the propaganda and then engage in its meta-details.
It was only after moving to USA I realized some things which I took for granted were basically propaganda and there are "other sides" which I need to consider. I could not have come to that conclusion without youtube and the diversity of thoughts in American society.
I really wonder how Orwell could see through things like this without the Youtube and Internet. Really a fine mind.
Out of curiosity, were your prior beliefs about your home country, America, or global civilization? Would you mind sharing a few of them?
> I really wonder how Orwell could see through things
While he certainly had a fine mind and intellectual curiosity, it also seems he required exposure to different cultures, places, and events such as the Spanish civil war. Your own experiences provide similar anecdote, and my own travels certainly reinforce they idea.
There was little to no knowledge of the mechanisms of ideological propaganda on a mass-scale before Orwell's time. 1900-1950 was when the mechanisms of the democratic game were effectively being discovered across Europe. Orwell made them understandable to a wider audience. He's to political ideological movements what Asimov is to robots.
Interesting foreshadowing of many themes in 1984. For example: “There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘science’. There is only ‘German science’, ‘Jewish science’ etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs – and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.”
Science cannot be abstracted from language. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, David Hilbert all operated under the idea that you might one day and you really can't.
The movie Arrival (2016) explores a truly inter cultural exchange and they convincingly envisioned it being very experiential, very tactile and detailed, concrete and lived. A truly intercultural dialogue would be very personal and particular
Abstractions are very useful, but mostly as a shorthand or a design framework for ourselves. That's why we speak English here instead of Esperanto
Orwell wasn’t the only Englishman to write of his time spent fighting in the Spanish Civil War. British soldier Peter Kemp fought on behalf of Franco’s Nationalists (i.e. the side with the fascists) and documented his experience in the autobiographical “Mine Were of Trouble.” Although he had sided with Franco’s quasi-fascists* in Spain, Kemp would later fight the Nazis as a British commando in WW2. After the war, he worked as a foreign correspondent for The Spectator.
*While Franco’s authoritarian conservative coalition include the fascist Falange, it also included monarchists, Catholics, and other social conservatives who Franco balanced against one another while in power.
I‘d guess it’s due to the humanization of anyone ever associated with Franco’s Nationalists, however critically and impermanently.
Even fighting actual Nazis in occupied Europe (which Peter Kemp describes in the autobiographical “No Colours or Crest“) doesn’t rub out the stain for some users, apparently.
Personally I favor open minds and paths to redemption.
You can still be pro-Fascist and not want foreign Fascists invading and bombing your country, given the intrinsic link between Fascism and Nationalism.
"Even fighting actual Nazis in occupied Europe (which Peter Kemp describes in the autobiographical “No Colours or Crest“) doesn’t rub out the stain for some users"
Well, fighting Nazis alone, does not make you a saint. Stalin fought the Nazis, too.
From the skimming of wikipedia, he really does not sound like a nice guy to me.
But still, thanks for the suggestion, I like reading other sides of view.
> Well, fighting Nazis alone, does not make you a saint. Stalin fought the Nazis, too.
Quite so!
I encourage you to check out the book and reserve your opinion on its author:
>Kemp, neither loyal to the House of Bourbon nor Roman Catholic, also hadn’t been personally affected by the “Red Terror” political violence that had incited the conservative uprising. Still, he had been appalled at the bloodshed preceding the July 1936 outbreak of the civil war, explaining to a friend he couldn’t stand by while leftist mobs murdered people “simply because they were priests or nuns” or “because they had a little money or property.” [0]
We know now that while Republicans did massacre and rape civilians, the Nationalists did so too and on a much larger scale. But to someone on the ground in the middle of that chaos, with bullets and propaganda flying everywhere, I imagine the full picture would have been next to impossible to discern. We can only truly see what’s right in front of us.
Left vs. Right is not the right juxtaposition. Rather it should be Authoritarianism vs. Democracy. Authoritarianism denies objective science while Democracy can only exist with it. Authoritarianism doesn't count the votes correctly because it is opposed to democracy in the first place.
> Authoritarianism denies objective science while Democracy can only exist with it.
Does this mean China, which leads the world in published scientific papers, is the model democracy? What about the Soviet Union, which definitely assigned a lot of value to objective science?
I feel these axes are mostly orthogonal. The modern ideals of science and democracy arose at about the same time but they are hardly inseparable.
Yeah, I'm not sure how science is ascribed to either end of the spectrum. Nazi Germany also had some damn good scientist who they looked to to give them dominance on the world stage. I'm guessing he's trying to stamp Trump as an authoritarian given his supposed anti-science views.
> ...China, which leads the world in published scientific papers...
Try to publish in China a scientific paper with real COVID numbers and you will see how democratic the country is.
> ...the Soviet Union, which definitely assigned a lot of value to objective science...
Unless the objective science throw a threw a bad light on the soviet system in which case science was dismissed. Just take a look at the story behind Chernobyl.
You won't find objectivity in a totalitarian system.
Exactly right - a fascist or reactionary government could indeed be driven by objective science and even more so than any democracy today.
Democracy doesn’t really have to rely on objective science. In our form today in fact it rather doesn’t in many ways. And in fact calls many things “science” which aren’t at all.
Republican Spain had quite the Authoritarian cut at the time. The radical left was pretty much willing to purge anyone that was anything to their right, and they were the strongarm of the Republic.
The radical left in Spain (including even the Anarchists who were a significant poltical force at the time) supported the Republican government. The purges that took place on the left, were the purge of the POUM (Trotskyist, the group Orwell fought with) and then the CNT-FAI (anarchist) by the Communist party (Stalin/USSR). Both purged groups were considered to be to the Left of Stalin by all sides in the conflict, the purged groups certainly were definitely less authoritarian.
The incumbents always look more authoritarian than the revolutionaries, who are by definition trying to overthrow some of the institutions that the first guys control.
I think you're correct that with the right interpretation of history, either side could be made to look like the authoritarians.
While the Nolan Chart post-dates Orwell, he definitely understood the non-1-dimensional nature of the thing. (See how the essay doesn't speak highly of Britain or the USSR.)
I don't think he would have liked your replacement of 1 axis with another.
George Orwell’s memoir about his time in Spain during the war (“An Homage to Catalonia”) is a great book. He has a wonderful mind for seeing the politics behind all of the confusion and propaganda from all the factions that formed after the revolution.
I have thought about this a lot this year, especially how the bourgeois liberals, who when faced with a choice between a people’s revolution (only half realized when the fascists began to take over) and a fascist military dictatorship, often sided with the fascists. Those given just enough improvements to their own material conditions no longer saw themselves as exploited by capitalism and largely ignored the working classes.
The choice was not that. Well, actually, it was, kind of, but it was not presented like that at the time.
A Russian-style revolution was not the best perspective for the bourgeoisie, who wanted to keep their properties and their heads. The influence of the catholic church on this people was also huge, and the opposition of the republic to the church quite extreme (even violent sometimes). On the other hand, the plan never was to start a military dictatorship, but to restore monarchy. At that time, nobody could predict what Franco would do. Even now, we have no idea what would have happened if there had been no war or the other side had won, so it obviously was not easy to foresee it in 1936.
Unamuno is a good example of this. He was a republican, but initially supported the revolt because he did not agree with some actions of the government, in particular their radical anti-clericalism. But when he saw what was really going on, he fought Franco's side (with words, as was his style) and finished his days under arrest. Wikipedia tells the story, but if someone prefer to watch it, there is a recent film: While at War.
A lot of US companies supported the fascists: Some American businesses supported Franco. The automakers Ford, Studebaker and General Motors sold a total of 12,000 trucks to the Nationalists. The American-owned Vacuum Oil Company in Tangier refused to sell to Republican ships and at the outbreak of the war. The Texas Oil Company rerouted oil tankers headed for the Republic to the Nationalist-controlled port of Tenerife and illegally supplied gasoline on credit to Franco.[70] Despite being fined $20,000, the company continued its credit arrangement until the war ended. The Nationalist spent almost $1 million a month on tires, cars and machine tools from American companies between 1937 and 1938.[71] After the war had ended, José María Doussinague, an undersecretary at the Spanish Foreign Ministry, stated that "without American petroleum and American trucks, and American credit, we could never have won the Civil War
"choice between a people’s revolution (only half realized when the fascists began to take over) and a fascist military dictatorship, often sided with the fascists."
When siding with the people's revolution means, loosing all you property and siding with the fascits means, keeping your property, one could allmost understand it, without declaring all burgeois as hidden fascists.
Losing all your property? As I understand the surplus was socialized and they turned education, transportation, libraries and so on into public, free services.
In real terms this meant you were able to just get your bread from a bakery without paying or otherwise trading directly, if you provided your services for free as well. Turns out that many don’t need greed, nor coercion as a motivation to contribute to their community, if that community is based on freedom and equality.
I think this kind of society is something that is worth thinking about and even a goal worth working towards in some capacity. So much energy and time is lost by working against each other, which is really disheartening.
"I think this kind of society is something that is worth thinking about"
It absolutely is worth thinking about, but not blinded by ideology. I first read about the temporary anarchistic areas in spain praised as a Utopia. And I thought something like, wow, those evil capitalist forces did hide that from me and others.
Reading Orwells Catalonia set things straight a bit. And Orwell was a socialist. But not one blinded by ideology. He wrote about, what he saw. Not what he wished to be seeing.
Allmost all anarchistic literature I read, were very much on the wishful fairy tale side of things, when it came to real world events, like spain.
Anarchism can be without violence? Yeah well, how do you remove people from their property in reality? You come with guns and ask them nicely to fck off? Yeah, that works, but is not really nonviolent.
I agree with what you’re saying. Political philosophy is and should be just a tool, to analyze ideas.
Your portrayal of Anarchism seems a bit one sided however. There are many areas that can benefit from building on anarchic relationships to some degree, such as free software, foundational research, public service etc. And even on a micro level, in teams, communities that uphold the notion of equality and fluent leadership.
So a pacifist implementation is rather about building and maintaining alternative relationships than abolishing existing ones by force.
I merely said most books about anarchism are more based on fairy tales and "wouldn't it be nice" than reality.
And yes, unfortunately most anarchist I discussed in person with, just also uphold the same fairy stories from the books I read before.
You can change that, by recommending me a book that does better.
But since we can't, you know, really trade 'wheat' for 'borrowed books' we can introduce some kind of monetary system - like 'social credit' or 'dollars'.
Then we someone can 'make wheat' and 'books' exchange them for money.
And it would be really fair if someone who made 'more wheat' got 'more money' from the wheat they 'traded for money'!
And then, when everyone is contributing by providing services for one another (using money as a medium of exchange because it's useful) we'll finally have real socialism!
Once liberalism collapses, there isn't much of a choice between the two. If you accept the premise that liberalism has failed and that re-establishing it is impossible, then as a bourgeois you have two choices.
Either you do accept the socialization of your property, and live the life of an ordinary person, which is morally by far the best thing to do, or:
In an attempt to maintain your capital, you decide that you'd rather see fascism with you in a privileged position.
As far as anyone is concerned, if you decide that fascism is good for you because it helps you maintain your privilege, you are a fascist.
No one has ever said that all bourgeois are hidden fascists, but history tells us that, when (if) liberalism collapses, most bourgeois follow their class interests and support fascism, instead of trying to maintain liberalism and becoming neutral when that fails.
Why is this? Because the issues that historically led to the collapse of liberalism can always be linked back to economic issues. Therefore, trying to install a system that provides democracy, peace, and equality for all if/when liberalism collapses will necessarily require the revision of the economics that led to such an issue. This is why, in this event, there really isn't much of an alternative between severely limiting the private ownership of capital and fascism.
"If you accept the premise that liberalism has failed and that re-establishing it is impossible ... Either you do accept the socialization of your property, and live the life of an ordinary person, which is morally by far the best thing to do"
Life is seldom made of binary choices like you imply.
And what you think is "morally by far the best thing to do" really does not have to match others morals.
My morals are, I do not judge absolute morals, like you. I judge only concrete situations.
And since so far a egalitarian society is only a theory that failed multiple times in reality, I do not believe in supporting such a theory with all my energy and posession. Which would be "accept the socialization of your property, and live the life of an ordinary person, which is morally by far the best thing to do".
In other words, if I would have to take the choice between fascism and socialism I would rather try to gather what I have and go away.
>Life is seldom made of binary choices like you imply. And what you think is "morally by far the best thing to do" really does not have to match others morals.
If there is another choice, then none of what I said applies. That being said, history has been such that there often has been no such other choice.
>My morals are, I do not judge absolute morals, like you. I judge only concrete situations.
If your morals are such that you would prefer fascism to any kind of socialism, then I do judge, and I think most do. If they aren't such, then the rest of my comment applies.
>And since so far a egalitarian society is only a theory that failed multiple times in reality, I do not believe in supporting such a theory with all my energy and posession. Which would be "accept the socialization of your property, and live the life of an ordinary person, which is morally by far the best thing to do".
No one, not even Karl Marx believed in an egalitarian society. What socialists do believe is that private property is an issue that will inevitably lead to the fall of liberalism, and that it must be heavily reformed, along with the removal of the class system. All socialist societies had some inequality in them, and no one complained about it, because everyone can agree that those more capable or who work harder should receive more.
>In other words, if I would have to take the choice between fascism and socialism I would rather try to gather what I have and go away.
That is an understandable choice, and I don't think anyone would object. Of course, getting your capital and other kinds of private property would be much harder as the fascists would certainly not let you do so.
"If your morals are such that you would prefer fascism to any kind of socialism"
Ok, so if you would have the choice between Pol Pots socialism and Franco's Fascicm. You would choose Pol Pot?
"No one, not even Karl Marx believed in an egalitarian society. "
Then you have not met many socialists. I did and many of them do in fact believe in a literal egalitarian society. And it is news to me, that Marx did not.(but I read not much of Marx) Sources?
"Of course, getting your capital and other kinds of private property would be much harder as the fascists would certainly not let you do so. "
And about that: I am pretty much aware of what fascists do. Which is why I was involved in antifascist actions of different kind.
I was just trying to get you socialists see a different point of view. That the view "for the people or against it" is not really a helpful one for most other people, who do not believe in fixed classes of people.
>Ok, so if you would have the choice between Pol Pots socialism and Franco's Fascicm. You would choose Pol Pot?
Pol Pot's regime wasn't socialist, which is why literally no socialist organizations supported its political mission. Only the CCP did, for the purpose of screwing over the USSR by waging war against Vietnam, and even they did not support their ideology.
You will never have to choose between Pol Pot and fascism, because, just like what happened in reality, socialists will be willing to fight with you against Pol Pot. Pol Pot was as much a socialist as Hitler was, that is, in name only. This is of course evident because he claimed to want complete egalitarianism, which is completely absurd to any socialist, among many other reasons, such as eugenics, etc...
Note the "any". To prefer fasicsm to any and all socialisms is not equivalent to the choice you laid out, anyways.
>Then you have not met many socialists. I did and many of them do in fact believe in a literal egalitarian society
I've met around a few hundred socialists, actually, and none of them believed in a literal egalitarian society. Everyone agrees that it is indeed a very bad idea. If one did, then they probably are not an educated socialist and have only gotten their political ideas from aesthetics.
As for Marx repudiating the claim for equality:
"But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal."
- Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875, Section 1
Marx later makes a prediction that eventually, production will be so great that, after multiple generations of socialism, production will be so great that it will no longer be useful to have some idea of one receiving what they produce, because that is more than what any would want, leading to instead a speculative different mode of production, what he called the highest stage of communism, where it would instead be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", this is the stage where all material needs are met and that work becomes a want moreso than a need. Even then, however, there would not be equality, as some need and want less than others. Arguably advanced capitalist societies are not too far from this, as we do see more and more people choosing work for its fulfillment and usefulness instead of purely for their material gain, and as the general propensity to consume has to be artificially increased by various means since for a lot of people their general needs are met. Of course if this was to ever materialize, we are still very, very far from such a situation.
"I've met around a few hundred socialists, actually, and none of them believed in a literal egalitarian society. "
Then you kind of should improve on your communication skills. I never heard of a big socialists group who do not want egalitarism to be true egalitarism in the end.
And to quote Wikipedia about Pol Pot:
"Pursuing complete egalitarianism, money was abolished and all citizens were made to wear the same black clothing."
They were socialist who took the egalitarian aspect very literal and radical. EVERYONE should work the fields. ANYONE who opposed this, was a enemy of egalitarian and revolution. With the known outcome.
Negating this by declaring them not socialist I call sophism again. But never mind: what about the cultural revolution in china? China had lots of support from western socialists.
And to me it seems the great cultur revolution was just Pol Pot light.
Just what happened anywhere, where socialist ideas of egalitarian were implemented by force: those who do not liked to be made equal, usual a lot of people, had to be put in gulags or shot directly.
And it was a interesting quote from Marx. I was not aware of his position. "one will be richer than another" But anyway: he does not solve it.
Because this is what we have today: people work harder than other people and become richer. And build something up. (not everyone stole or inherited stolen money).
And do not want to give up on it all of a sudden for egalitarian - so they would oppose the socialist revolution - and would end up in a gulag.
I've literally never heard of a socialist calling for total egalitarianism. It's really completely absurd. You should bring sources for socialist theorists who clamour for total egalitarianism.
The Chinese cultural revolution was a lot of very bad things, but it wasn't in order to make everyone the same either, not at all.
I know that Pol Pot wasn't a communist because he himself said that he wasn't one. I haven't heard of himself saying he was of some other socialist legacy either, so I don't think this is sophism.
Marx does formulate a framework where everything mentioned is fully consistent, that being said I don't have the time to give you a full introduction on Marxian economics. You could look up Richard D. Wolff if you want to see where these ideas come from, though. But the objection you make is misguided, because for Marx wealth only comes from labour, the instant you make wealth from something that is not labour then that wealth is not rightfully yours. This makes the whole thing where workers are inherently unequal in ability, but at the same time someone making wealth purely from ownership is a totally different kind of inequality that is not a reflection of their superior abilities, as we all know that you do not need superior ability to make vastly outsized earnings through pure ownership.
Basically, if you want to be making some kind of takedown of socialist ideology, and there is for sure lots to be critiqued, I'd suggest reading the works beforehand so you don't say enormities like "I've never heard of big socialists group who do not want total egalitarianism in the end".
"that being said I don't have the time to give you a full introduction on Marxian economics"
Thanks, but not interested anyway. Read enough of him to dismiss it. And we seem to be in 2 different realities anyway.
Anyway:
"I've never heard of big socialists group who do not want total egalitarianism in the end".
you may insert a radical
Obviously there are also many soft version of socialism. Here in germany they are regulary part of the government. But not really socialist. When referring from the very radical leftwing socialists. And I thought those are the types we are speaking about, when refering to revolutionary spain. And of this group, the ones I met, were mainly literal egalitarian. Sometimes even without the concept of personal property etc., mostly with. But negating the concept of rich people was the unifying idea.
So if you insist to never met a socialist like that, than I just keep on not taking you serious.
I've been asking you for four comments to mention a single socialist theorician that wants total egalitarianism in the end. Why don't you just provide one name?
As for dismissing Marian economics, you may do it if you want, but I personally think it's better to consider it then deciding whether or not it is correct. I'm not an economist, so I'll defer to the PhDs and renowned economics professor that seem to think that there is value in there as a complement to other exonomic theories.
>Thanks, but not interested anyway. Read enough of him to dismiss it.
I wonder how some economists, even Nobel prize winners, do not consider this to be the case. Even if they think Marx is wrong, they do not dismiss him because they think he is not worth consideration, but because (they say) he was wrong. Popper took the same approach.
I think a lot of socialists and communists ignore the 1980’s of Eastern Europe and Russia too much. Generation after generation of people were indoctrinated with these philosophies. And yet, as soon as liberalism became an option for them, they immediately traded in their party card for it. No guns needed.
We ran the experiment and in the end it declared itself a failure.
Now the thing to be done is to work out all the wrong ways liberalism has gone and rinse away the communist influence on parts of it over the 20th century.
There is no such thing as 'socialization of your property' - this concept exists only as intellectual fantasies. There is only confiscating by a new, probably more ruthless and murderous regime.
We have entire century and a several dozen national experiment to debunk this rubbish, we know what the outcomes really are; 'Socialism' is literally the 'collapse of liberalism', we can see some of that right now with orthodox impugnment of our academic systems by certain groups to the point wherein literally the more traditional Liberals have had to come out and take full page ads in major newspapers to plead their cause for rationality and reason.
Have you actually read the book we are talking about? In the real world, the CNT/FAI did not take ownership of the private property, it put it under the property of those that used said property.
In any case, the collapse of liberalism is inevitable. Liberalism requires capitalism which requires infinite sustained growth. Infinite growth cannot be sustained, therefore eventually capitalism will collapse. There are, of course, a dozen other ways in which liberal capitalism is an unstable system which must collapse, and most of those reasons can be eventually boiled down to misalignment of the incentives of those with economic and political power, and of the rest of us. So any durable alternative will inevitably have to bridge this divide, and this will mean going after the class system.
When that happens, you have a few alternatives that open up. I'd rather not go for a death cult.
By the way, the reason why academia is full of socialists is not because of some perversion, or subversion, or anything of the sort, it is because the first people to ever apply the scientific method to the analysis of society came to the conclusion that liberal capitalism is incredibly problematic and that it is existential that it should be changed (on historic timescales). Indeed, you can Google the "fathers of social science" and you might be surprised on the political views of those three.
When we look at Facebook and other social networks, isn't it a settled issue that moderators are needed? Who moderates in a socialised society?
From the point of view of a bourgeois, fascism can also be a service to society because socialism is a future that will lead to chaos - not only to the collapse of liberalism but the collapse of civilization.
Anarchistic society is one thing, but 'Animal Farm' another. If socialism means re-establishing the same structures with different names, why should a bourgeois person with good intentions give up their privileges with which they can do something for the greater good?
Who moderates in a socialized society? In so far as law enforcement and general government is needed, exactly the same as in liberal society, you vote for people to form a government and do so.
No one seriously believes that socialism would lead to a collapse of civilization, and no one seriously believes that fascism will lead to anything but death and despair for anyone that isn't highly privileged. What it would lead, is for a collapse of your privilege as a bourgeois, and all the rest is rationalization in order to make yourself feel better about contributing to the death of (hundreds of, in the case of what the NSDAP wanted) millions so that you can conserver your privilege.
> No one seriously believes that socialism would lead to a collapse of civilization
I think lots of people who believe in capitalist ideology (probably not most of the visible preachers of that ideology, who have narrower self-interested motives, but many of the true believers) do indeed believe that.
I think they are wrong, but I don't think dismissing their honest if grossly misguided belief is helpful.
I think this is a good point. I was definitely not correct in saying that no one believes that.
That being said, in the context of specifically the <1% that is the solid capitalist class, I think most don't believe this deep down, though some delude themselves into thinking so.
I hope you're not drawing a parallel between Russian revolutionaries, later soviets and CNT/FAI, these ideologies have exactly one thing in common: their stated end goal. The means to reach them are vastly different, and indeed the soviets had their own anarchist factions eliminated after the revolution.
Property also refers to such property that requires workers to be productive (farm land, factories), not personal property (e.g. a house you live in). The fascists might not have cared about your property being under worker control, but they sure cared about the output being under their control, so I don't see too much of an advantage.
> I hope you're not drawing a parallel between Russian revolutionaries, later soviets and CNT/FAI.
The differences are huge, but I don't think that was very relevant at the time. I do not think it was easy to understand, for example by an old catholic woman of the Spain of 1936, that the libertarian communism of Bakunin and Kropotkin those atheist were talking about had nothing to do with the communist revolution of Russia she had read about in the news some years ago. Even many people part of these movements did not have their differences clear at all, or were too pragmatic for that, and were just fighting fascism.
"I hope you're not drawing a parallel between Russian revolutionaries, later soviets and CNT/FAI, these ideologies have exactly one thing in common: their stated end goal"
The idea that the factories and farms should belong to the workers and that the workers should take the factories by force, is not a parallel and shared goal?
No, it is not. As the shared end-goal of marxism and anarchism is the egalitarian stateless society.
I was talking about the concrete steps before that. Like those that happened in spain. Communalisation of farmland and factories with guns in hand. This action was done side by side from anarchists in spain as well in russia. The fact that the marxists later stabbed the anarchists in the back, does not change that.
"The means of productions should be owned by the workers" is a direct corollary of "we should have a stateless and classless society"
Unless you can explain to me how you can have private ownership of factories and peasants working on land that isn't their own without having a class system, which is itself a contradiction in terms.
The communalisation of farmland and factories by the CNT/FAI and by the CPSU were also completely different. The CPSU communalized them into the state, while the CNT/FAI generally put them into direct control of the workers, generally by putting them into the control of pre-existing unions.
"The communalisation of farmland and factories by the CNT/FAI and by the CPSU were also completely different."
for the former owners of that farmland and factories, it did not really matter - for them it was lost, uncompensated property. Which is why they supported fascism, when they were pushed towards it.
This isn't a sophism. Just because the difference isn't material for this particular case does not have mean that they have much in common beyond their end goal, which is of course the only commonality I've seen raised.
I agree that the bourgeois supported fascism because they judged that it was better for them to continue owning their factories in a fascists society, no matter how many genocides that meant. That makes them fascists. In the situation there were in, the solution was either a radical reconception of the economic system, or fascism. If you think that fascism is the best option, that makes you a fascist.
"In the situation there were in, the solution was either a radical reconception of the economic system, or fascism. If you think that fascism is the best option, that makes you a fascist. "
So you like also tautologism. Because from the point of view of the burgeois, socialism means in the end total collapse, starvation, apocalypse. And fascism the known lesser evil.
So rephrasing your sentence would be "If you think that socialism is the best option, that makes you a apocalypse fanatic"
And to make a last disclaimer before I leave that conversation: I am neither a burgeois, nor a socialist, nor a fascist.
From their point of view, socialism could lead to anything they want it to lead, fascism is known to be much, much worse. Socialist societies even in their very crude stages in the 20th centuries led to outcomes that were average or slightly above average, while fascists openly admitted that they would cause cataclysmic war and attempt to kill hundreds of millions of people. One can delude themselves in order to justify pursuing their interests at the expense of the vast majority, that doesn't make it true. And this is known to be true.
If you lie to yourself to convince yourself to support fascism, you are a fascist.
Finally, I think you might like to investigate what tautologies and sophism are, because so far you've called for both when they obviously aren't true. Restating the situation to draw it into a before then non-accepted and crucial consequence is not redundant to the conversation.
"Socialist societies even in their very crude stages in the 20th centuries led to outcomes that were average or slightly above average, while fascists openly admitted that they would cause cataclysmic war and attempt to kill hundreds of millions of people"
Yeah well, this is probably the main difference between fascism and socialism in general. Fascists are at least more honest (in this regard) and mostly call a empire a empire and conquest a conquest. And a war a war.
Socialists never call their socialist state a empire with conquest desires. And they are against war, sure, they just want the worldwide proletary revolution by force. Which just means world war.
And this I call sophism. Misleading, disguising real meaning of things. Welcome to 1984. Ministry of Peace, etc.
You would be well served reading about the socialist states of the 20th century. There is literally none that conserved the doctrine of worldwide proletarian revolution. The closest was Trotsky in the USSR, but he never came close to power. It was all "socialism in one country". Therefore the accusation that they are openly imperialist states angling for world conquest is simply counterfactual, literally all socialist states decided that they were happy trying out socialism in their own territory and didn't pursue a worldwide socialist revolution.
Much less one under their own control, as they were historically mostly fine with leaving other socialist state do their affairs alone.
Not only that, but forceful revolution wasn't even something that was promoted unless absolutely necessary. For example, Marx, when corresponding with British communists, spoke about the possibility to install socialism through electoral means. This is obviously not possible everywhere, as in general if you called yourself a socialist in many "democratic" countries you'd be beat or killed, even if you wanted to do via democratic means.
It's easy to accuse everyone else of arguing a good faith when you don't even know what you are arguing against. If you want to make a cogent argument against socialism, and that is certainly possible, I'd suggest actually knowing what you are arguing against, because so far you've mostly been arguing against a strawman.
Did the one you come from attempt to invade the entire world? What are your theories for the fact that the majority of people that lived the transition as adults think it was worse than what came before? What are your theories on why, despite being economic juggernauts, the application of neoliberal economic principles regressed them to barely above the global average? And what are you theories for the >10 million excess deaths in those countries in the decade or so after 1991?
> I have thought about this a lot this year, especially how the bourgeois liberals, who when faced with a choice between a people’s revolution (only half realized when the fascists began to take over) and a fascist military dictatorship, often sided with the fascists.
No need to refer to a third source, you seem to be paraphrasing a quote from the above submission here: "One feature of the Nazi conquest of France was the astonishing defections among the intelligentsia, including some of the left-wing political intelligentsia. The intelligentsia are the people who squeal loudest against Fascism, and yet a respectable proportion of them collapse into defeatism when the pinch comes. They are far-sighted enough to see the odds against them, and moreoever they can be bribed – for it is evident that the Nazis think it worth while to bribe intellectuals."
>No need to refer to a third source, you seem to be paraphrasing a quote from the above submission here: "One feature of the Nazi conquest of France was the astonishing defections among the intelligentsia, including some of the left-wing political intelligentsia.
Correct; not all of the Vichy government was actually pro-Germany/pro-Nazi per se.[1]
I'm not sure it was defeatism, per se, for a lot of those involved. I'd describe it as "Welp, the Nazis are obviously the masters of Europe and will probably defeat Britain soon. We fought them and lost. Given that, here is my chance to get insert pet theory here implemented during the formation of a new French society and government". Vichy was basically what life would be like if the Klan, neo-Nazis, the Upper West Side of Manhattan/San Francisco, BLM, antifa, /r/politics, and /r/worldnews all got together to form their own country.
[1] But when they were pro-Nazi they were really pro-Nazi. My "favorite" example of this is that the Vichy government was so enthusiastic about sending French Jews to their deaths in Germany that the occupying German forces had to ask Vichy to slow down! Vichy consistently went above and beyond what Berlin requested it do in terms of anti-Semitic laws.
> I have thought about this a lot this year, especially how the bourgeois liberals, who when faced with a choice between a people’s revolution (only half realized when the fascists began to take over) and a fascist military dictatorship often sided with the fascists.
Is that really your takeaway from Homage to Catalonia?
The lesson that I take is the silliness of thinking that your political perspective has absolute validity. All of the leftist factions resisting fascism in Spain were doing something heroic. Meanwhile, in the USSR, other leftists were acting as tyrants. The USSR used its influence in Spain to declare various factions illegal (including POUM, the faction that Orwell was aligned with). The Soviets insisted on the absolute validity of their perspective and started persecuting anyone who was skeptical of Stalin in the midst of a civil war against fascists.
> Those given just enough improvements to their own material conditions no longer saw themselves as exploited by capitalism and largely ignored the working classes.
Yeah, it's almost as if human beings care about concrete, meaningful changes that affect their lives and not some all-encompassing, abstract class struggle.
edit - It's interesting that, in the linked article, Orwell says that Franco's victory was not due to disunity but rather the fact that the fascists were well-supplied (by the Italians and Germans) whereas the republicans had much less assistance.
>in the USSR, other leftists were acting as tyrants.
Russia had two revolutions back-to-back in 1917, only 8 months between them. First was fighting tyrants, second was becoming tyrant.
First there was February Revolution that overthrew autocracy and provisional government and Russian Republic were formed. Bolsheviks had <24% of the votes and seats. moderate socialists, national parties, cadets had the rest.
Then there was October Revolution aka Bolshevik Coup where faction of communists led by Lenin and Bogdanov took over, killed everyone other kind of socialist and supporter of provisional government and formed autocracy.
Both the The French Revolution and the Russian revolution are examples of "Revolutions devour their own Children". I think the lesson is that when you fight dictators, you must have a plan for after, and watch the most radical factions. Mensheviks and social democrats were discussing elections and worker assemblies wile Lenin and others were planning to kill them.
Revolutions are not won by the side who is morally right. They are won by the side who are most effective at fighting, and who are the most ruthless. And almost no revolutions have ever had just two sides.
This is the main argument for incrementalism in my view. I see a lot of people arguing for radical change, and no matter how much I might agree with their values and how pure their intentions are, I cannot help but note that I do not think they would end up as the winners of any revolution.
> I cannot help but note that I do not think they would end up as the winners of any revolution.
This. In our current fascist versus antifa moment I hear leftists scorn anyone who wants less than a revolution. I ask them "Who hoards the guns and is really, really eager to use them?"
>All of the leftist factions resisting fascism in Spain were doing something heroic.
Not really. It was not a war between democracy and fascism, it was a war between communism and fascism. The war started when a communist militia killed the democratically elected José Calvo Sotelo after a communist deputy publicly threatened him in the parliament.
I'm pretty sure that by definition a revenge killing didn't start anything. The fascists had been planning their coup ever since the election they had lost.
The people who overthrew a democratically elected government were the ones who were fighting democracy. That government isn't the one that killed your monarchist martyr.
A revenge killing for the assassination of a policeman by the Falange [0], which itself was a revenge killing (with a mistaken target) for the shooting of another man, who was shot dead in funeral procession for yet another man who died under unclear circumstances in a spiraling cycle of violence.
They did not want to start the war, because they were sure they were going to lose it (they were vastly outnumbered). But they felt forced to do it after that.
I am german. I know people who lived through Hitler and still have no understanding about it all.
If you believe that the spanish civil war was merely "a war between communism and fascism" than I add you to that category of people. I mean, have you ever heard of feudalism, for example?
Well, I have it and I have read the entire story many times. Many family members died thanks to the communists, the house of my grandfather was burn to ashes because he didn't agree with the socialists. My family never liked the fascists too and fascism has nothing to do with capitalism. Fascism was all about corporativism. And yes, I know what feudalism was and has nothing to do also with socialism, capitalism.
This is by no means the main takeaway from Homage to Catalonia, but it’s an interesting corollary to today’s liberals who seek preservation of a system which hurts the working class.
Look at the how effective the US Democratic Party was at preventing even modest reforms from the left vs how much they have capitulated to Trump over the past four years.
That's what most people, and especially leftists, don't get. If you look at it objectively, any ideology that offers an utopia is inevitably detrimental in the long run, be it Third Reich or Communist International. When the ends are utopic, they justify whatever means needed to get there, including killing millions of people. Fascism and communism are basically two sides of the same coin, with similar casualty counts. Both rely on total control of the populace and productive capacity. Both rely on total suppression of freedom of speech or dissent. Both won't think twice before lining up dissenters along a wall and executing them.
At the risk of spending my whole day just replying to comments with relevant quotes from the OP: "When one thinks of the cruelty, squalor, and futility of war – and in this particular case of the intrigues, the persecutions, the lies and the misunderstandings – there is always the temptation to say: ‘One side is as bad as the other. I am neutral’. In practice, however, one cannot be neutral, and there is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction. The hatred which the Spanish Republic excited in millionaires, dukes, cardinals, play-boys, Blimps, and what-not would in itself be enough to show one how the land lay. In essence it was a class war. If it had been won, the cause of the common people everywhere would have been strengthened. It was lost, and the dividend-drawers all over the world rubbed their hands. That was the real issue; all else was froth on its surface."
This is basically correct, imaginary worlds are so captivating for some people that the ends justify the means. They forget that it actually matters whether you attempt to reach utopia via the gulag, and you get a lot of excuses while it's being done.
Wouldn't say people on the right are free from utopian thinking though, on that side it's more a blindness to the market potentially doing bad things.
>Yeah, it's almost as if human beings care about concrete, meaningful changes that affect their lives and not some all-encompassing, abstract class struggle.
The plantation owner worries only about the bottom line and the suburbanite is upset that the homeless are visible not that they exist. When these positions become virtues and problems are dismissed as abstractions, the society dies.
The notion that suffering is caused by the subjugation of one class at the hands of another is an abstraction. That doesn't mean it's wrong -- it is almost certainly right with respect to a given time and place -- but to pursue that abstraction as if it has absolute validity (as if it is all-encompassing) is what I'm criticizing.
It is indeed as physics is an abstraction of reality. And both are conspicuously accurate far more often than not.
"An adjustment to suffering that requires powerful people to loose some power" means exactly the same thing as "an adjustment to suffering that requires a powerful class to loose some power."
Often attempted adjustments are categorized as blind ideology and, by implication, chaos. For the erudite it's called "abstract ideology", for the less so it's simply labeled "communism". The effect is the same: portray reform as destruction and create comfort for the beneficiaries of society in the status quo.
Conversely, both laissez faire-ism and Ayn Rand's thesis are both very much ideologies but they are not called that by those who approve of them. I know of no possible definition of "ideology" that does not also apply to the both the American and French revolution as well as the motivation of every soldier in every army and indeed to the ethics driving every action that is not self absorbed.
Blindly following some policy like "burn all X" or "policy Y always results in maximum wealth" is disastrous. But I'd say that that differs significantly from an ideology like "all human beings are entitled to X".
I don't agree that everything is abstraction. You can't argue with starvation.
The comparison of class struggle to physics is astonishing. Physicists predicted the existence of black holes and then found them later in nature. Meanwhile, Marx thought the revolution was going to happen in his lifetime.
> Any attempted adjustment is always categorized as blind ideology and, by implication, chaos. For the erudite it's called "abstract ideology", for the less so it's simply labeled "communism". The effect is the same: portray reform as destruction and create comfort for the beneficiaries of society in the status quo.
Who said anything about "any attempted adjustment"? There are infinite ways you can "make adjustments" to attempt to make people's lives better in a given situation. We do it the time.
> Conversly, both laissez faire-ism and Ayn Rand's thesis are both very much ideologies but they are not called that by those who approve of them. I know of no possible definition of "ideology" that does not also apply to the both the American and French revolution as well as the motivation of every soldier in every army and indeed to the ethics driving every action that is not self absorbed.
My opinion is that, in a given situation, Ayn Rand may be right. In another situation, Marx may be right. What I don't understand is the claim that either of them is always right.
If I had to choose a policy "to reduce suffering," I'd go with Henry George today but I'll probably change my mind later. Mainly I'm just glad it's not up to me because I'm probably wrong. I'm a bit horrified by people who are sure they're right about "how to end suffering" or "how to rationally order society".
A large part of the revolutionaries were anarcho-syndicalists. So a very different thing that directly opposes totalitarian regimes. These types of movements were rather common in europe and have been brutally oppressed by both authoritarian socialists in Russia and China and fascists in Italy, Spain and Germany.
Orwell‘s works are an expression of that. He was opposed of authoritarian socialism, fascism and so on, but supported democratic and libertarian socialist movements.
The following part from [0] seems relevant a bit too:
In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her films that glorified the Nazis.
Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerised Germans; it was her 'Triumph of the Will' that reputedly cast Hitler's spell. I asked her about propaganda in societies that imagined themselves superior. She replied that the "messages" in her films were dependent not on "orders from above" but on a "submissive void" in the German population. "Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?" I asked.
"Everyone," she replied, "and of course the intelligentsia."
> If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources. A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be that body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘science’. There is only ‘German science’, ‘Jewish science’ etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs – and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.
"The only propaganda line open to the Nazis and Fascists was to represent themselves as Christian patriots saving Spain from a Russian dictatorship. This involved pretending that life in Government Spain was just one long massacre (vide the Catholic Herald or the Daily Mail – but these were child’s play compared with the continental Fascist press), and it involved immensely exaggerating the scale of Russian intervention. Out of the huge pyramid of lies which the Catholic and reactionary press all over the world built up, let me take just one point – the presence in Spain of a Russian army. Devout Franco partisans all believed in this; estimates of its strength went as high as half a million. Now, there was no Russian army in Spain. "
.....
"Well, their testimony made no impression at all upon the Franco propagandists, not one of whom had set foot in Government Spain. Simultaneously these people refused utterly to admit the fact of German or Italian intervention, at the same time as the Germany and Italian press were openly boasting about the exploits of their ‘legionaries’. I have chosen to mention only one point, but in fact the whole of Fascist propaganda about the war was on this level.
This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. "
while this is most interesting in terms of the topics of orwell's works, it is quite a partisan view of the war.
the reality in Spain was not as simple as foreigners thought, namely "fascism" vs "democracy". in fact, the coup was done by a coalition of many different right wing factions, and amongst them there were right wing republicans and traditional absolutists, not just falangists (spanish catholic fascists). also, they were not the first, as the left already tried a coup just a few years earlier against the right wing government, but failed.
the social and political factors that lead to the war are very, very complicated AND interesting; they can be even more revealing than the history of the Weimar republic and its consequences.
here is a very interesting, neutral and historical insight in what happened in Spain in an informational format:
Orwell was there. His "Homage to Catalonia" is a very sober look at factionism, complexities and absurdities of the conflict. Not a very partisan look at all if you ask me.
danoloan knows that Orwell was there; the article mentions Homage to Catalonia. His point, which I agree with, is that he is (somewhat, but noticeably) softer on the Republican side than on the Franco side than in Homage. After reading that book the only way to come away with being substantially more sympathetic to the Republican side than Franco's is because Orwell, the protagonist, fights for the former. It's clear that Orwell believes that had the Republicans won, there would inevitably have been another war between POUM, Communists, socialists, and anarchists. In particular, it seems to me that he substantially softens here the odds of a Soviet victory in said struggle versus what he writes in Homage.
Is it because by 1942 the USSR was ally to the West's life-or-death struggle against fascism? I don't know.
`I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various 'party lines'. Yet in a way, horrible as all this was, it was unimportant. It concerned secondary issues – namely, the struggle for power between the Comintern and the Spanish left-wing parties, and the efforts of the Russian Government to prevent revolution in Spain.`
My gran grandfather died 15 years ago. And there is no week without he screams in his dreams about his sisters and mother being raped by the "bolsheviks."
Then once all his family were killed, he escaped, went to the port, and decided to work as a maritime merchant.
It wasn't a war between "left" or right as we have with partisan politics. But it was war between:
a) Foreign and revolutionary ideologies
b) Foreign and adversarial powers;
c) No rules
Several countries later fall to the communist regime and USRR influence, causing misery and death.
This was not your neighbor discussing or putting signs from your opposite candidate. It was war, with blood, rape, and destruction.
Because we live and more "prosperous" and civil we can't really understand how evil people can and derive pleasure from being able to be evil without any limits (order) or restrictions (moral).
Note: The embassy of Spain once offered him a travel to Spain because he was one of the oldest on the local community.
He declined because his Spain was "dead" and he wanted to keep the things still alive in his mind.
