WEBVTT - Anarchist Infrastructure and Military Organization 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:10.080 Oh yeah, that's a beautiful sound. This is It Could 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:13.560 Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and sometimes 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:16.960 putting them back together. I'm Robert Evans. I'm here again 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:22.600 with Dr James Stout. James say, hello, hi people, we 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:27.920 are in an undisclosed location. Is that going to get 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:30.720 you in trouble with your immigration stuff? Yes? Yeah, okay, 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:32.239 well let's just bleep out the rest of that, but 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:34.360 keep the thing with me asking if it's gonna get 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:37.680 him in trouble with this immigration officer, that'll be fine. 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:40.519 This is a podcast that all too often, as Garrison 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:43.360 and I say, winds up us being like here's a problem, goodbye. 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:46.040 UM and telling people about problems is important, but it's 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:48.920 also important to talk about solutions. Now. There's been a 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:51.240 discourse not just on the Twitter but on the subreddit 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:54.520 for um it could Happen Here repeatedly over the last 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:57.360 few months of people talking about like how it anarchists 0:00:57.520 --> 0:01:01.200 handle things like large scale distribution of food, an industrial base? 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:04.280 You know, how would anarchists? How would an anarchist society 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:08.000 handle infrastructure in any meaningful capacity? Um And I think 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:10.560 there's kind of a wide spread idea among some people 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:14.039 that like, you have to have intense centralization um to 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:17.240 do that. Um, now, James, you are I wasn't joking 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:19.200 about the doctor thing. You do have a PhD. In 0:01:19.240 --> 0:01:22.920 Your specific area of specialty is the Spanish Civil War, 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:27.520 that's right. Yeah, even more specific than that, actually, my 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:32.039 h My very specific area of a specialty is the 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.039 Second Republics in a period before the Civil War and 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:36.880 really like the first week of the Spanish Civil War. 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:43.200 But yes, Catalonia specifically like revolutionary Catalonia. And I guess 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:46.520 my thing is the anti fascist Popular Olympics in six 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:50.240 but more broadly Catalonia and Catalonia before and in the 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:53.080 Civil War. Yeah. And one of the things that's interesting 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:55.800 about this period is you did have one of the 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:58.680 fairly rare times in history where a significant number of 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:04.320 people were living in an industrialized Ish nation um with 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:08.040 with anarchists under anarchist principles. Um. And a number of 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:11.080 things were done in an anarchist fashion, including the production 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:14.400 of armored vehicles, the maintenance of large amounts of agriculture, 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:17.919 you know, power and whatnot. Um. So yeah, how how 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:21.600 how do how do James? Yeah, how do anarchism? Let 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.000 me tell you. Um, I should start by saying, like, 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:26.680 I'm not like a big, big theory guy. I'm more 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:30.400 of a sort of doing things guy, um person. But yeah, 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:33.799 so if we look at what we had in Catalonia 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:36.040 right in nineteen thirty six, the Spanish Civil War, if 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.280 you're not familiar, starts on the nineteenth d n six 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:42.400 with a coup. Right, Um, some of this will sound familiar. 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:44.280 Maybe you could listen to our podcast about Me and Ma. 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:49.799 But we have a military uprising against a leftist democratic 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:53.760 government that has just been elected in nineteen thirty six, Um, 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:56.360 after two years of a right wing It's called the 0:02:56.400 --> 0:02:59.360 Biennio Negro, like the black by any and the You know, 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:03.440 you've lived through the Trump Ship, you understand. So we 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:08.800 have this coup that happens, and in cities across Spain, 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:13.000 the coup is largely stopped. The differentiating factors we talked 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:16.560 about this in our podcast is where the people are armed, 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:19.440 the coup is stopped. Where the people are not armed, 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:21.280 where the government says, then we weren't released weapons to 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:25.040 you the coup. The coup succeeds. Right now in Barcelona, 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:28.600 the coup is stopped almost entirely by the anarchists with 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:31.400 a little bit of help from the police. Actually, oddly right, um, 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:37.360 the one classic allies and the police fighting it together. 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:39.800 I mean it is also a very different kind of 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:44.680 situation with the I mean yeah, culturally, like, how does 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:47.160 that happen? How does that happen? Well, in Spain, you 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:50.120 have various police forces, right, and some of them are 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:54.080 created by the Second Republic, So they are police that 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:58.720 exist really to protect the republic from things that would 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.000 attack it. That does not mean that they do not 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:03.240 attack for workers, right, the Republic was often called the 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:06.080 Republic of order because they violently put down strikes and 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:10.800 the anarchists killed them. But in this instance they remained 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:15.520 loyal gil the cops. Yeah, that's that's a pretty steady thing. 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:20.240 But in this instance, the Republic was under attack from 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:23.359 the right, right, from the military, and in some towns 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:27.680 the police split for the military, but in Barcelona they 0:04:27.839 --> 0:04:31.560 largely did not. Write we have various police guards, police 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:38.120 groups in Spain, federal and local, but the assault guards 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:44.240 and the civil guards in Barcelona largely remained with the republic, right, 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:46.840 And it's important to maybe if we if we step 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:49.080 back a second to explain the concept of a popular front, 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:51.640 then we can understand them more easily, right, And we 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:53.960 do for more detail on this. We talk about a 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:56.520 decent amount of this in our Behind the Insurrections episodes 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:58.719 on the Spanish Civil War and the popular fronts, which 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.120 aren't just a Spanish thing. The exist in France, they 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:02.800 exist in a number of other countries. It's the thing 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:06.520 that gets tried on several occasions, often successfully, at least 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.920 from an electoral standpoint. Yeah, yeah, it's very successful at 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:12.880 this time, right. And it's important to understand that the 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:16.000 e C, which trying to stake his Catlan Republican left, 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.520 had more or less been on popular front since nineteen 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:21.680 thirty one, and a popular front is basically this thing 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:23.640 we keep talking about, where what if everybody on the 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:26.160 left could get on the same page about stopping fascism. 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:28.920 That's the basic idea is like, you've got your Libs, 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:31.520 you've got your commies, you've got your anarchists, you've got 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:34.599 other weird junks of the left, and everybody agrees, let's 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:37.479 all work together to deal with this specific right wing 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.160 threat right now? Yes, yeah, exactly, Like we can put 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:43.800 our differences aside and move forward. Um, so that's what 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:46.160 you have in the Second Republic is explicitly called the 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:49.320 popular Front right, and so that is why the police 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:52.320 in Barcelona split with the anarchist Now, what happens in 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:55.520 Barcelona is that the military march into town from outside 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:59.640 of town and just pretty much get get the the 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:03.520 ship pushed back in by the anarchist right. All around town, 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:07.960 gunfights breakout. In one instance, um the anarchists are able 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:10.719 to persuade the soldiers manning a machine gun that their 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:13.880 class solidarity is more important than their obedience to their officers, 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:15.760 and then they turn the machine gun on their offices 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:21.640 and kill their officers instead. Unbelievably, this exceptionally fucking cool. Right. 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:24.760 The Spanish Civil War has all these amazing stories like that, 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:28.119 but that that's one of my favorites. Right, doesn't happen often, 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:32.040 it's great when it does. So what we have by 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:34.640 the end of the first week of the Spanish Civil 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:39.640 War is a situation where in Catalonia the city is 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:41.560 in the hands of the anarchists. Says this meeting that 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:44.520 happens between the President of Catalonia and the anarchists. It 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.039 may or may not be apocryphal or the exact words 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:50.279 may not be Apocypal doesn't really matter. What happens is 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:53.880 that the anarchists go to the president of Catalonia and 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:58.400 they he says to them, you're in control of the city. 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:01.480 The city's in your hands. I've been he actually the president. 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:03.200 He was liberal, but he'd been a lawyer for the 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:07.240 anarchist when they kept getting fired. Um, he said, if 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:09.280 you want me to be another foot soldier in the fire, 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:11.760 will'll quit my job. I'll just be another fight. But 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:13.320 if I can be useful to you as a politician, 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:16.120 I will as well. Right, So it's a submission, admission 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:19.600 from elected bogeour politician that like, the city belongs to you, now, 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:22.880 to the people, and it's up to you what we 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:25.280 do next. Right. What they did was they founded this. 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:28.680 They didn't actually sort of go right, it's all anarchists 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:31.960 right to salient anarchist groups of the CNT and the 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:37.000 f AI, the Anarchists Federation of Iberia and the National 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.840 Confederation of Labor. He didn't they didn't sort of be like, okay, 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:43.080 you were an anarchist control. They found out the People's 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:46.280 Committee of Anti Fascist Militias and they said this is 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:52.280 an anti fascist Catalonia, right. And then they began to 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:57.920 control the industries according to the principles of anarcho syndicalism, right, 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:01.240 which is the idea that the way to move towards 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:05.040 a more libertarian society under moving from industrial capitalism is 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:09.200 through industrial unions, right. And they were extremely effective. I 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:12.720 see this discourse a lot on Twitter or on Reddit 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:17.680 or in places where where um, I don't want to 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:20.560 just like dismiss people as tankies, but where we're because 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:23.200 like you know, maybe there's people can can listen and 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:24.880 we can talk and we can understand each other. But 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:27.720 where people go on the Internet to talk about politics 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:30.400 and say that like it's impossible for anarchists to do 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:34.000 supply chain, it's impossible for anarchists to do logistics, right, 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:36.840 And sometimes I think they think of anarchism as like 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:41.320 like only able to work in groups of five people 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:44.480 or something. There's this broad spread attitude in part because 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:47.920 of like some social attitudes among a lot of American anarchists, 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:51.400 certainly American anarchists who are very online that like anarchism 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:53.040 is when you live on a farm with four of 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:56.120 your friends, right, like that that it's very pastoral it's 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:59.439 anti industrial, and a decent amount of American anarchists are. 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:01.800 It's not uncommon to find people who are like an 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:04.760 archo primitivist or whatever. Um. But it is important to 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.240 note that there's a very long anarchist tradition as we're 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:10.360 talking about now that's deeply industrial. Yes, and like the 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:12.600 anarchist a right, the anarchist symbol that we all see 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:15.680 that comes from America. Right. The industrial workers of the 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:18.840 world come from the United States. The raised fist popular 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:22.600 salute comes from the IWW goes to Spain. Right, we 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:24.240 have this long tradition. But yeah, I think a lot 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:26.880 of American anarchists because it's easier to live and work 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:30.080 cooperatively in a small group somewhat detached. But what we 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:31.880 have in Catalonia that we don't have here is the 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:35.760 majority of the working class committed to an archo syndicolism. Right. 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:38.720 So people return to work and work very effectively when 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:42.080 they're not also volunteering also fighting in something like a 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:45.719 Druti column. Right. Um. These anarchist malicious with which we 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:48.760 can also talk about because I think they're very interesting. Um. 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:50.839 So for instance, one example, the elect the site is 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:54.520 the Hispania Sweet factory, right, Spain, Swiss. It's just an 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:59.119 automobile manufacturer. It's like the GM factory. Within three days 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:01.160 after the revolution. And bear in mind that most of 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:03.840 them have been out shooting at soldiers for most of 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:06.520 that time. Right. Big thing that they had to deal 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:09.640 with was the soldiers often us the churches. They would 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:14.959 burn the churches, so like it was an extremely vicious 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:19.720 urban battle. They were They had converted their facility to 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.640 go from producing automobiles for rich people at the time 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:28.040 right now everyone had a car, to producing technicals armored cars, right. 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:30.839 And you can see them if you google ce anti technicals, 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:35.920 the anti Arca because he's amazing, like Hodgepodge technicals that 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:38.520 they had well did these things on and they were 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:42.160 able to turn those around and produce weapons for the front. 0:10:42.760 --> 0:10:45.319 Another good example to see as Castle pistols, right. So 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:48.840 as Castle is a famous anarchist leader, um and as 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:51.600 Casso was killed in the first day of the revolution 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:55.040 when they were fighting the Coupe. There weren't there wasn't 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:58.720 much weapons manufacturing in Catalonia, right, And we're very familiar 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:01.400 with that from our work on the Emma and what 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:04.600 they did was they set up a factory in Tarrassa 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:08.640 to make weapons. They made copies of ruby pistols actually, 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:10.640 but then they named them after as Cassa, so you 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:12.319 can still buy them. I sure you can google them, 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:15.640 you can find them. But these they set up a 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:18.959 weapons factory, right, and then under anarcho syndicates principles and 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.199 the principles of sort of unions controlling this production system, 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:25.840 unions controlling the supply chain system, which let's be honest, 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:29.000 they do largely anywhere, right, Like it's not Tim Apple 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:32.120 who buys a circuit board for your phone, it's someone else. 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:35.880 This is a slightly more globalized system with Apple phones. 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:40.520 But um, the the unions were able to set up 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:43.360 and change their production right, not just keep doing what 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:47.080 they were doing, but also pivot without the need for 0:11:47.160 --> 0:12:02.200 people exercising authority over each other. Important understanding because you asked, 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.840 like how how would anarchists contendue industrial production? And it's like, well, 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:08.320 have you ever had a job that it had you 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:10.360 work in a factory or an assembly line or in 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:12.600 some sort of other industrial way. Have you ever been 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:15.920 a contractor and had a boss who sucked? Would it 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:18.079 have worked better if that boss hadn't been there. That's 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:21.400 the basic that's like the like it's entirely possible for 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:23.800 large groups of people to coordinate in a way that 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:26.079 is not a capitalist system where you're all accountable to 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:29.000 a shareholder, right, Like, there's there's a number of different 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:31.400 ways to do that. But there's a long tradition and 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:33.800 in fact, some corporations that are still around to day 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:35.800 and quite large. You can look up the mon Dragon 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:38.400 Corporation in Spain that have a lot of anarchist principles 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:41.439 in their organizing. Um, not that like it's an anarchist 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:45.760 company or whatever, but like there's significant, like significant amounts 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:48.400 of anarchist theory and why that operates the way it 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:52.280 does and has been significantly successful. Um. There's some other 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:56.120 examples in I think it's Brazil. Um there's a large 0:12:56.120 --> 0:13:00.120 like steel corporation and whatnot. Um, But yeah, like there's 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:04.200 there's it's not there's nothing about anarchism that means you 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:07.800 can't have a factory producing armored cars. It just means 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:10.800 you're not producing armored cars for the profit of the 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:14.920 Blockheed Martin Corporation or whatever. Yeah, you're producing armor cars 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.520 because you are fighting in a conflict that you hope 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:20.880 will liberate other people, right, and that is arguably a 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:24.120 more important motivation. And then wage labor, and certainly they 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:26.840 in some cases increased productivity, but they were able to 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:30.679 sustain all the functions of an industrial society. And Catalonia 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:33.720 was very industrialized, much more so than the rest of Spain, right, 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:37.080 and that's perhaps why anarchism was so so important there. 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:41.319 And and yeah, very it doesn't require the arbitrary exercise 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:43.320 of authority for that to happen. And like you said, 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:46.400 there's plenty of examples of that. I think both of 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:49.440 us really enjoyed David Graeber's book. But this idea that 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:52.720 we move from one phase of society to another and 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.920 that necessitates a different form of political organization just isn't 0:13:55.920 --> 0:13:59.119 borne out by the historical record. And I think Catalonia 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:01.160 is a really good exam put of that. Yeah, And 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:03.880 a further example of that is, in a pretty similar 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:07.560 time frame you're talking earlier, but not but maybe like 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:10.120 less than twenty years earlier, you have Nest mack No 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:14.959 and mock Nova in Ukraine, this kind of independent, autonomous 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:18.680 anarchist society that is extremely successful in war that the 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:22.720 Soviet Union does not exist without mock No fighting the 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:26.400 whites um as as successfully as he didn't stopping in 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:30.480 advance on on Moscow. And that's a rural that were 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:33.880 not industrialized, and in fact their anarchism was very much 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:37.160 based in kind of the traditional methods of organizing rural 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:40.760 societies in Ukraine. Um, And you have that a lot 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:42.440 in other like you have a lot there are a 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:44.800 lot of areas in which anarchism is common in rural 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:47.560 areas and it's more of like a state socialism in 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:50.480 industrialized areas. But you can have you also have this 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:55.160 deep history of industrialized anarchism and there's Uh, it shows 0:14:55.160 --> 0:15:00.680 that there's a capability for anarchist principles to function with infrastructure. Yeah. 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:02.600 And if you want to look for rural anarchism, you 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:04.920 can look in southern Spain, right, there's if you want 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.000 to look at a small case study of the anarchists 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:09.880 of Cassas just is a great example of that, right 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:11.800 people can find I'm sure it's free online, it's a 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:15.720 pdf now. Um. But yes, it doesn't have to just 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:18.760 exist in urban or a rural society or between the two. Right, 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:24.240 Like whether Druti column went south Okay, the Drury column 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:26.680 is an anarchist column. There are a number of other 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:30.000 anarchist columns, but this one is the sort of the 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:32.640 pre eminent one, the one that was most successful because 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:35.480 they tended not to get bogged down as much in 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:38.760 fighting in rural environments where they were not skilled, but 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:41.480 they were extremely skilled, much more so than the military, 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:44.440 and fighting in urban environments, right, So they were very successful. 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:48.560 They went to Zaragotha and then fought there. While they 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:51.080 were there, they were collectivizing the farms, right, And I'm 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:53.720 sure some of that collectivization was forced. I don't want 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:57.400 to be like everything was rainbows and unicorns, but it's 0:15:57.400 --> 0:16:00.560 a war. There's no side in a war whose handstake lane, right, 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:03.560 Like that's not minimizing or ignoring it. It's just stating that, 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:05.800 like you, you have to sometimes talk about the broad 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:08.960 strokes of what's going on with without pretending to whitewash 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:11.400 the fact that I'm certain ugly things happen there as well. 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:14.240 Yeah yeah, and like yeah, as you say, ugly things 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:16.240 happen in war. And I think if you if you 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.440 want that not to happen, maybe, I don't know, you 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:24.240 live on the Internet. But like um, the dirt Econum 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:26.520 then goes to Madrid, right in the seat of Madrid, 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:29.240 which was the also the first conflict with International brigades, 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:32.040 the first battle International Brigades fourteen. It was a very 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:34.200 successful battle for the republic. It was a bottle that 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:36.960 allowed the republic. If we look at the two battles 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:41.880 that allow the republic to exist, right, it's conflict in Barcelona, 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:44.360 the battle for Barcelona, the first days of the Civil War, 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:47.280 and it's a battle in Madrid right now. Madrid is 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:49.720 not as much of an anarchist city, is a city 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:54.320 with anarchism, but it's also more salient other socialism. Um. 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:57.680 So when the Drooty column arrives right and takes part 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:00.400 in the combat there, because they have been success because 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.440 they're very good urban warfare. And a lot of the 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:06.320 people in the Druty column didn't want Dorouty to go, 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:08.160 but he decided it was important to go as part 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:11.199 of this popular front right to fight this this huge 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:16.320 push of Spain's most professional soldiers. Right and that's where 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:19.240 Doruty you can read, I know somebody's working on an 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:23.679 unlike a graphic novel about him. Yeah yeah, yeah, and 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:25.399 you should give them your money if you have some 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:29.080 but able path. His book about Druty is very good. 0:17:29.720 --> 0:17:31.480 It's an amazing book because you turn over the line 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:33.000 of notes and he's like, oh, yeah, this book has 0:17:33.000 --> 0:17:35.080 taken me a long time to write because I was 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:37.680 involved in a resistance against Franco and spent twenty five 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:43.719 years in jail, solitary confinement. But what a chad. But 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:46.400 so you can read about Druty there, and Druty dies 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:49.560 in the Battle for Madrid. But it's also kind of 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:54.080 important to look at Spain is effective anaka Spain is 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:58.840 effective in fighting fascism. Um. What stops it being effective? 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:03.399 To my mind, it is not anarchist principles military organization. 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:06.200 The other thing that was that was impressive about the 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.000 Ruty column was that they had embedded army loyal army 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.480 officers and they listened to them and they learned from them, 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:14.320 and they said, Okay, we don't good at some stuff, 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:16.600 not good other stuff we would learn other anarchists didn't. 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:19.240 It didn't tend to do as well. Yeah, this is 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:24.320 a common misconception because anarchists are very much against hierarchy, um, 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:29.760 which doesn't mean being against professionalism or competence, right, Like, 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:32.359 it's the idea that like the hierarchy, for example, that 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:34.800 led several million young boys to get machine gun in 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:36.840 World War One because the people who were in charge 0:18:36.840 --> 0:18:40.120 of them had not learned how machine guns function. Um, 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:42.760 was a problem. But if you've got someone who has 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:45.200 been training their entire life as a soldier and understands 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:49.080 very effectively how artillery functions and how machine guns function, 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:53.280 and because they have professionalized in that, it's not against 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:57.640 anarchist principles to listen to that person in a gunfight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, expertise, 0:18:57.680 --> 0:19:00.919 it's not it's not. Yeah, there's not in battle with liberty, 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:03.440 right and so yeah, they were very willing to listen 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:04.840 to that. And in the same way they would be 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:07.560 in a like. Again, these people have worked in factories, right. 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:09.040 They understand that if you don't know how to use 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:12.280 a lathe, and you exert your liberty to use a lathe, 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:14.080 and your hand's gonna end up in a lathe. When 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:16.479 I when I go to a doctor and say, i'm am, 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:19.439 I have gotten this horrible infected wound, what do I 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:22.080 do about it? I am not yielding to a hierarchy, 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:26.440 I am I am accepting their expertise. You know. Yeah, yeah, 0:19:26.480 --> 0:19:29.240 I think sometimes people I think your listeners are much 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:31.720 better informed than this generally, But people confuse anarchism with 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:34.160 a predilegtion for chaos and violence, and it isn't that right, 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:37.640 It's just it's a desire to to be more free 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:39.120 and to not be controlled and I have a boot 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:42.000 on your neck. And but to to wind up that thought, 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:46.800 like the reason that Spain that the Republican Spain starts 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:49.240 to lose is not because there are anarchists. And you 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:51.600 will definitely see this discourse on the internet. Many people 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:54.560 will tell me that I'm mistaken about this. It's my 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:59.359 fucking degree, but um yeah, I would argue that it's 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:02.520 because the Western world that did quote unquote democracy to 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:04.640 the end of them, right, Yeah, this is like there's 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:06.520 there's this. We talked about this a bit in the 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:08.600 episodes we did on it. But like there's this whole 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:10.760 argument that I'm sure you'll get into more between like 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:13.960 the socialists, the communists, you know, in the anarchists, but 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:17.399 a huge part of it, probably most of it is 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:21.840 that like the fascists are getting guns from other fascists 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:26.840 and tanks and aircraft often flown by professional fascist pilots 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:30.000 who are training for what's going to become World War two, 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:33.600 whereas Republican Spain has some old bulk action rifles that 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:36.879 got smuggled in through France. Yeah, and some mosens. It 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:39.199 was sold by America to Russia, from Russia to Mexico 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:42.920 and then from Mexico back to Spain. Right like um 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:45.000 and and yeah, these old males as all Well talks 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:46.920 about that are rusted and they can't open the boat 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:49.080 after they fire them and they reload their ammunition and 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:52.439 its ship. But yeah, and on the other side, right, 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:54.600 like the coup doesn't work if how does the Army 0:20:54.640 --> 0:20:57.679 of Africa get from Africa to Spain. It doesn't swim, right, 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:00.719 How do these generals get from Africa to Spain air 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:05.520 lifted by other fascist nations? Right, we don't see that, right. Actually, 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:09.199 France wanted to sell planes to the Republic and the 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:11.959 early days of the war that Britain pretty much put 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:15.800 the Kai bosh on it. And there's an interesting parallel 0:21:15.840 --> 0:21:17.439 with what you're seeing in Ukraine right now, because in 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:21.240 Ukraine you have a republican government um in a military 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:24.639 that has a fairly wide selection. Jake Camerhand just posted 0:21:24.680 --> 0:21:27.000 like a vegan extremist who's fighting on the front lines 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:28.600 of the because it's like, yeah, there's a whole bunch 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:32.640 of different ideological tendencies fighting on behalf of the broadly 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:36.560 Ukrainian side there, including some very nasty ones. Um, but 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:39.639 you're kind of seeing what happens when a fascist power 0:21:40.119 --> 0:21:43.760