Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a beautiful sound. This is It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and sometimes
Speaker 1: putting them back together. I'm Robert Evans. I'm here again
Speaker 1: with Dr James Stout. James say, hello, hi people, we
Speaker 1: are in an undisclosed location. Is that going to get
Speaker 1: you in trouble with your immigration stuff? Yes? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well let's just bleep out the rest of that, but
Speaker 1: keep the thing with me asking if it's gonna get
Speaker 1: him in trouble with this immigration officer, that'll be fine.
Speaker 1: This is a podcast that all too often, as Garrison
Speaker 1: and I say, winds up us being like here's a problem, goodbye.
Speaker 1: UM and telling people about problems is important, but it's
Speaker 1: also important to talk about solutions. Now. There's been a
Speaker 1: discourse not just on the Twitter but on the subreddit
Speaker 1: for um it could Happen Here repeatedly over the last
Speaker 1: few months of people talking about like how it anarchists
Speaker 1: handle things like large scale distribution of food, an industrial base?
Speaker 1: You know, how would anarchists? How would an anarchist society
Speaker 1: handle infrastructure in any meaningful capacity? Um And I think
Speaker 1: there's kind of a wide spread idea among some people
Speaker 1: that like, you have to have intense centralization um to
Speaker 1: do that. Um, now, James, you are I wasn't joking
Speaker 1: about the doctor thing. You do have a PhD. In
Speaker 1: Your specific area of specialty is the Spanish Civil War,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, even more specific than that, actually, my
Speaker 1: h My very specific area of a specialty is the
Speaker 1: Second Republics in a period before the Civil War and
Speaker 1: really like the first week of the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 1: But yes, Catalonia specifically like revolutionary Catalonia. And I guess
Speaker 1: my thing is the anti fascist Popular Olympics in six
Speaker 1: but more broadly Catalonia and Catalonia before and in the
Speaker 1: Civil War. Yeah. And one of the things that's interesting
Speaker 1: about this period is you did have one of the
Speaker 1: fairly rare times in history where a significant number of
Speaker 1: people were living in an industrialized Ish nation um with
Speaker 1: with anarchists under anarchist principles. Um. And a number of
Speaker 1: things were done in an anarchist fashion, including the production
Speaker 1: of armored vehicles, the maintenance of large amounts of agriculture,
Speaker 1: you know, power and whatnot. Um. So yeah, how how
Speaker 1: how do how do James? Yeah, how do anarchism? Let
Speaker 1: me tell you. Um, I should start by saying, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not like a big, big theory guy. I'm more
Speaker 1: of a sort of doing things guy, um person. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so if we look at what we had in Catalonia
Speaker 1: right in nineteen thirty six, the Spanish Civil War, if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar, starts on the nineteenth d n six
Speaker 1: with a coup. Right, Um, some of this will sound familiar.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could listen to our podcast about Me and Ma.
Speaker 1: But we have a military uprising against a leftist democratic
Speaker 1: government that has just been elected in nineteen thirty six, Um,
Speaker 1: after two years of a right wing It's called the
Speaker 1: Biennio Negro, like the black by any and the You know,
Speaker 1: you've lived through the Trump Ship, you understand. So we
Speaker 1: have this coup that happens, and in cities across Spain,
Speaker 1: the coup is largely stopped. The differentiating factors we talked
Speaker 1: about this in our podcast is where the people are armed,
Speaker 1: the coup is stopped. Where the people are not armed,
Speaker 1: where the government says, then we weren't released weapons to
Speaker 1: you the coup. The coup succeeds. Right now in Barcelona,
Speaker 1: the coup is stopped almost entirely by the anarchists with
Speaker 1: a little bit of help from the police. Actually, oddly right, um,
Speaker 1: the one classic allies and the police fighting it together.
Speaker 1: I mean it is also a very different kind of
Speaker 1: situation with the I mean yeah, culturally, like, how does
Speaker 1: that happen? How does that happen? Well, in Spain, you
Speaker 1: have various police forces, right, and some of them are
Speaker 1: created by the Second Republic, So they are police that
Speaker 1: exist really to protect the republic from things that would
Speaker 1: attack it. That does not mean that they do not
Speaker 1: attack for workers, right, the Republic was often called the
Speaker 1: Republic of order because they violently put down strikes and
Speaker 1: the anarchists killed them. But in this instance they remained
Speaker 1: loyal gil the cops. Yeah, that's that's a pretty steady thing.
Speaker 1: But in this instance, the Republic was under attack from
Speaker 1: the right, right, from the military, and in some towns
Speaker 1: the police split for the military, but in Barcelona they
Speaker 1: largely did not. Write we have various police guards, police
Speaker 1: groups in Spain, federal and local, but the assault guards
Speaker 1: and the civil guards in Barcelona largely remained with the republic, right,
Speaker 1: And it's important to maybe if we if we step
Speaker 1: back a second to explain the concept of a popular front,
Speaker 1: then we can understand them more easily, right, And we
Speaker 1: do for more detail on this. We talk about a
Speaker 1: decent amount of this in our Behind the Insurrections episodes
Speaker 1: on the Spanish Civil War and the popular fronts, which
Speaker 1: aren't just a Spanish thing. The exist in France, they
Speaker 1: exist in a number of other countries. It's the thing
Speaker 1: that gets tried on several occasions, often successfully, at least
Speaker 1: from an electoral standpoint. Yeah, yeah, it's very successful at
Speaker 1: this time, right. And it's important to understand that the
Speaker 1: e C, which trying to stake his Catlan Republican left,
Speaker 1: had more or less been on popular front since nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one, and a popular front is basically this thing
Speaker 1: we keep talking about, where what if everybody on the
Speaker 1: left could get on the same page about stopping fascism.
Speaker 1: That's the basic idea is like, you've got your Libs,
Speaker 1: you've got your commies, you've got your anarchists, you've got
Speaker 1: other weird junks of the left, and everybody agrees, let's
Speaker 1: all work together to deal with this specific right wing
Speaker 1: threat right now? Yes, yeah, exactly, Like we can put
Speaker 1: our differences aside and move forward. Um, so that's what
Speaker 1: you have in the Second Republic is explicitly called the
Speaker 1: popular Front right, and so that is why the police
Speaker 1: in Barcelona split with the anarchist Now, what happens in
Speaker 1: Barcelona is that the military march into town from outside
Speaker 1: of town and just pretty much get get the the
Speaker 1: ship pushed back in by the anarchist right. All around town,
Speaker 1: gunfights breakout. In one instance, um the anarchists are able
Speaker 1: to persuade the soldiers manning a machine gun that their
Speaker 1: class solidarity is more important than their obedience to their officers,
Speaker 1: and then they turn the machine gun on their offices
Speaker 1: and kill their officers instead. Unbelievably, this exceptionally fucking cool. Right.
Speaker 1: The Spanish Civil War has all these amazing stories like that,
Speaker 1: but that that's one of my favorites. Right, doesn't happen often,
Speaker 1: it's great when it does. So what we have by
Speaker 1: the end of the first week of the Spanish Civil
Speaker 1: War is a situation where in Catalonia the city is
Speaker 1: in the hands of the anarchists. Says this meeting that
Speaker 1: happens between the President of Catalonia and the anarchists. It
Speaker 1: may or may not be apocryphal or the exact words
Speaker 1: may not be Apocypal doesn't really matter. What happens is
Speaker 1: that the anarchists go to the president of Catalonia and
Speaker 1: they he says to them, you're in control of the city.
Speaker 1: The city's in your hands. I've been he actually the president.
Speaker 1: He was liberal, but he'd been a lawyer for the
Speaker 1: anarchist when they kept getting fired. Um, he said, if
Speaker 1: you want me to be another foot soldier in the fire,
Speaker 1: will'll quit my job. I'll just be another fight. But
Speaker 1: if I can be useful to you as a politician,
Speaker 1: I will as well. Right, So it's a submission, admission
Speaker 1: from elected bogeour politician that like, the city belongs to you, now,
Speaker 1: to the people, and it's up to you what we
Speaker 1: do next. Right. What they did was they founded this.
Speaker 1: They didn't actually sort of go right, it's all anarchists
Speaker 1: right to salient anarchist groups of the CNT and the
Speaker 1: f AI, the Anarchists Federation of Iberia and the National
Speaker 1: Confederation of Labor. He didn't they didn't sort of be like, okay,
Speaker 1: you were an anarchist control. They found out the People's
Speaker 1: Committee of Anti Fascist Militias and they said this is
Speaker 1: an anti fascist Catalonia, right. And then they began to
Speaker 1: control the industries according to the principles of anarcho syndicalism, right,
Speaker 1: which is the idea that the way to move towards
Speaker 1: a more libertarian society under moving from industrial capitalism is
Speaker 1: through industrial unions, right. And they were extremely effective. I
Speaker 1: see this discourse a lot on Twitter or on Reddit
Speaker 1: or in places where where um, I don't want to
Speaker 1: just like dismiss people as tankies, but where we're because
Speaker 1: like you know, maybe there's people can can listen and
Speaker 1: we can talk and we can understand each other. But
Speaker 1: where people go on the Internet to talk about politics
Speaker 1: and say that like it's impossible for anarchists to do
Speaker 1: supply chain, it's impossible for anarchists to do logistics, right,
Speaker 1: And sometimes I think they think of anarchism as like
Speaker 1: like only able to work in groups of five people
Speaker 1: or something. There's this broad spread attitude in part because
Speaker 1: of like some social attitudes among a lot of American anarchists,
Speaker 1: certainly American anarchists who are very online that like anarchism
Speaker 1: is when you live on a farm with four of
Speaker 1: your friends, right, like that that it's very pastoral it's
Speaker 1: anti industrial, and a decent amount of American anarchists are.
Speaker 1: It's not uncommon to find people who are like an
Speaker 1: archo primitivist or whatever. Um. But it is important to
Speaker 1: note that there's a very long anarchist tradition as we're
Speaker 1: talking about now that's deeply industrial. Yes, and like the
Speaker 1: anarchist a right, the anarchist symbol that we all see
Speaker 1: that comes from America. Right. The industrial workers of the
Speaker 1: world come from the United States. The raised fist popular
Speaker 1: salute comes from the IWW goes to Spain. Right, we
Speaker 1: have this long tradition. But yeah, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of American anarchists because it's easier to live and work
Speaker 1: cooperatively in a small group somewhat detached. But what we
Speaker 1: have in Catalonia that we don't have here is the
Speaker 1: majority of the working class committed to an archo syndicolism. Right.
Speaker 1: So people return to work and work very effectively when
Speaker 1: they're not also volunteering also fighting in something like a
Speaker 1: Druti column. Right. Um. These anarchist malicious with which we
Speaker 1: can also talk about because I think they're very interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: So for instance, one example, the elect the site is
Speaker 1: the Hispania Sweet factory, right, Spain, Swiss. It's just an
Speaker 1: automobile manufacturer. It's like the GM factory. Within three days
Speaker 1: after the revolution. And bear in mind that most of
Speaker 1: them have been out shooting at soldiers for most of
Speaker 1: that time. Right. Big thing that they had to deal
Speaker 1: with was the soldiers often us the churches. They would
Speaker 1: burn the churches, so like it was an extremely vicious
Speaker 1: urban battle. They were They had converted their facility to
Speaker 1: go from producing automobiles for rich people at the time
Speaker 1: right now everyone had a car, to producing technicals armored cars, right.
Speaker 1: And you can see them if you google ce anti technicals,
Speaker 1: the anti Arca because he's amazing, like Hodgepodge technicals that
Speaker 1: they had well did these things on and they were
Speaker 1: able to turn those around and produce weapons for the front.
Speaker 1: Another good example to see as Castle pistols, right. So
Speaker 1: as Castle is a famous anarchist leader, um and as
Speaker 1: Casso was killed in the first day of the revolution
Speaker 1: when they were fighting the Coupe. There weren't there wasn't
Speaker 1: much weapons manufacturing in Catalonia, right, And we're very familiar
Speaker 1: with that from our work on the Emma and what
Speaker 1: they did was they set up a factory in Tarrassa
Speaker 1: to make weapons. They made copies of ruby pistols actually,
Speaker 1: but then they named them after as Cassa, so you
Speaker 1: can still buy them. I sure you can google them,
Speaker 1: you can find them. But these they set up a
Speaker 1: weapons factory, right, and then under anarcho syndicates principles and
Speaker 1: the principles of sort of unions controlling this production system,
Speaker 1: unions controlling the supply chain system, which let's be honest,
Speaker 1: they do largely anywhere, right, Like it's not Tim Apple
Speaker 1: who buys a circuit board for your phone, it's someone else.
Speaker 1: This is a slightly more globalized system with Apple phones.
Speaker 1: But um, the the unions were able to set up
Speaker 1: and change their production right, not just keep doing what
Speaker 1: they were doing, but also pivot without the need for
Speaker 1: people exercising authority over each other. Important understanding because you asked,
Speaker 1: like how how would anarchists contendue industrial production? And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: have you ever had a job that it had you
Speaker 1: work in a factory or an assembly line or in
Speaker 1: some sort of other industrial way. Have you ever been
Speaker 1: a contractor and had a boss who sucked? Would it
Speaker 1: have worked better if that boss hadn't been there. That's
Speaker 1: the basic that's like the like it's entirely possible for
Speaker 1: large groups of people to coordinate in a way that
Speaker 1: is not a capitalist system where you're all accountable to
Speaker 1: a shareholder, right, Like, there's there's a number of different
Speaker 1: ways to do that. But there's a long tradition and
Speaker 1: in fact, some corporations that are still around to day
Speaker 1: and quite large. You can look up the mon Dragon
Speaker 1: Corporation in Spain that have a lot of anarchist principles
Speaker 1: in their organizing. Um, not that like it's an anarchist
Speaker 1: company or whatever, but like there's significant, like significant amounts
Speaker 1: of anarchist theory and why that operates the way it
Speaker 1: does and has been significantly successful. Um. There's some other
Speaker 1: examples in I think it's Brazil. Um there's a large
Speaker 1: like steel corporation and whatnot. Um, But yeah, like there's
Speaker 1: there's it's not there's nothing about anarchism that means you
Speaker 1: can't have a factory producing armored cars. It just means
Speaker 1: you're not producing armored cars for the profit of the
Speaker 1: Blockheed Martin Corporation or whatever. Yeah, you're producing armor cars
Speaker 1: because you are fighting in a conflict that you hope
Speaker 1: will liberate other people, right, and that is arguably a
Speaker 1: more important motivation. And then wage labor, and certainly they
Speaker 1: in some cases increased productivity, but they were able to
Speaker 1: sustain all the functions of an industrial society. And Catalonia
Speaker 1: was very industrialized, much more so than the rest of Spain, right,
Speaker 1: and that's perhaps why anarchism was so so important there.
Speaker 1: And and yeah, very it doesn't require the arbitrary exercise
Speaker 1: of authority for that to happen. And like you said,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of examples of that. I think both of
Speaker 1: us really enjoyed David Graeber's book. But this idea that
Speaker 1: we move from one phase of society to another and
Speaker 1: that necessitates a different form of political organization just isn't
Speaker 1: borne out by the historical record. And I think Catalonia
Speaker 1: is a really good exam put of that. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: a further example of that is, in a pretty similar
Speaker 1: time frame you're talking earlier, but not but maybe like
Speaker 1: less than twenty years earlier, you have Nest mack No
Speaker 1: and mock Nova in Ukraine, this kind of independent, autonomous
Speaker 1: anarchist society that is extremely successful in war that the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union does not exist without mock No fighting the
Speaker 1: whites um as as successfully as he didn't stopping in
Speaker 1: advance on on Moscow. And that's a rural that were
Speaker 1: not industrialized, and in fact their anarchism was very much
Speaker 1: based in kind of the traditional methods of organizing rural
Speaker 1: societies in Ukraine. Um, And you have that a lot
Speaker 1: in other like you have a lot there are a
Speaker 1: lot of areas in which anarchism is common in rural
Speaker 1: areas and it's more of like a state socialism in
Speaker 1: industrialized areas. But you can have you also have this
Speaker 1: deep history of industrialized anarchism and there's Uh, it shows
Speaker 1: that there's a capability for anarchist principles to function with infrastructure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you want to look for rural anarchism, you
Speaker 1: can look in southern Spain, right, there's if you want
Speaker 1: to look at a small case study of the anarchists
Speaker 1: of Cassas just is a great example of that, right
Speaker 1: people can find I'm sure it's free online, it's a
Speaker 1: pdf now. Um. But yes, it doesn't have to just
Speaker 1: exist in urban or a rural society or between the two. Right,
Speaker 1: Like whether Druti column went south Okay, the Drury column
Speaker 1: is an anarchist column. There are a number of other
Speaker 1: anarchist columns, but this one is the sort of the
Speaker 1: pre eminent one, the one that was most successful because
Speaker 1: they tended not to get bogged down as much in
Speaker 1: fighting in rural environments where they were not skilled, but
Speaker 1: they were extremely skilled, much more so than the military,
Speaker 1: and fighting in urban environments, right, So they were very successful.
Speaker 1: They went to Zaragotha and then fought there. While they
Speaker 1: were there, they were collectivizing the farms, right, And I'm
Speaker 1: sure some of that collectivization was forced. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be like everything was rainbows and unicorns, but it's
Speaker 1: a war. There's no side in a war whose handstake lane, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's not minimizing or ignoring it. It's just stating that,
Speaker 1: like you, you have to sometimes talk about the broad
Speaker 1: strokes of what's going on with without pretending to whitewash
Speaker 1: the fact that I'm certain ugly things happen there as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and like yeah, as you say, ugly things
Speaker 1: happen in war. And I think if you if you
Speaker 1: want that not to happen, maybe, I don't know, you
Speaker 1: live on the Internet. But like um, the dirt Econum
Speaker 1: then goes to Madrid, right in the seat of Madrid,
Speaker 1: which was the also the first conflict with International brigades,
Speaker 1: the first battle International Brigades fourteen. It was a very
Speaker 1: successful battle for the republic. It was a bottle that
Speaker 1: allowed the republic. If we look at the two battles
Speaker 1: that allow the republic to exist, right, it's conflict in Barcelona,
Speaker 1: the battle for Barcelona, the first days of the Civil War,
Speaker 1: and it's a battle in Madrid right now. Madrid is
Speaker 1: not as much of an anarchist city, is a city
Speaker 1: with anarchism, but it's also more salient other socialism. Um.
Speaker 1: So when the Drooty column arrives right and takes part
Speaker 1: in the combat there, because they have been success because
Speaker 1: they're very good urban warfare. And a lot of the
Speaker 1: people in the Druty column didn't want Dorouty to go,
Speaker 1: but he decided it was important to go as part
Speaker 1: of this popular front right to fight this this huge
Speaker 1: push of Spain's most professional soldiers. Right and that's where
Speaker 1: Doruty you can read, I know somebody's working on an
Speaker 1: unlike a graphic novel about him. Yeah yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you should give them your money if you have some
Speaker 1: but able path. His book about Druty is very good.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing book because you turn over the line
Speaker 1: of notes and he's like, oh, yeah, this book has
Speaker 1: taken me a long time to write because I was
Speaker 1: involved in a resistance against Franco and spent twenty five
Speaker 1: years in jail, solitary confinement. But what a chad. But
Speaker 1: so you can read about Druty there, and Druty dies
Speaker 1: in the Battle for Madrid. But it's also kind of
Speaker 1: important to look at Spain is effective anaka Spain is
Speaker 1: effective in fighting fascism. Um. What stops it being effective?
Speaker 1: To my mind, it is not anarchist principles military organization.
Speaker 1: The other thing that was that was impressive about the
Speaker 1: Ruty column was that they had embedded army loyal army
Speaker 1: officers and they listened to them and they learned from them,
Speaker 1: and they said, Okay, we don't good at some stuff,
Speaker 1: not good other stuff we would learn other anarchists didn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't tend to do as well. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a common misconception because anarchists are very much against hierarchy, um,
Speaker 1: which doesn't mean being against professionalism or competence, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's the idea that like the hierarchy, for example, that
Speaker 1: led several million young boys to get machine gun in
Speaker 1: World War One because the people who were in charge
Speaker 1: of them had not learned how machine guns function. Um,
Speaker 1: was a problem. But if you've got someone who has
Speaker 1: been training their entire life as a soldier and understands
Speaker 1: very effectively how artillery functions and how machine guns function,
Speaker 1: and because they have professionalized in that, it's not against
Speaker 1: anarchist principles to listen to that person in a gunfight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, expertise,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not. Yeah, there's not in battle with liberty,
Speaker 1: right and so yeah, they were very willing to listen
Speaker 1: to that. And in the same way they would be
Speaker 1: in a like. Again, these people have worked in factories, right.
Speaker 1: They understand that if you don't know how to use
Speaker 1: a lathe, and you exert your liberty to use a lathe,
Speaker 1: and your hand's gonna end up in a lathe. When
Speaker 1: I when I go to a doctor and say, i'm am,
Speaker 1: I have gotten this horrible infected wound, what do I
Speaker 1: do about it? I am not yielding to a hierarchy,
Speaker 1: I am I am accepting their expertise. You know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think sometimes people I think your listeners are much
Speaker 1: better informed than this generally, But people confuse anarchism with
Speaker 1: a predilegtion for chaos and violence, and it isn't that right,
Speaker 1: It's just it's a desire to to be more free
Speaker 1: and to not be controlled and I have a boot
Speaker 1: on your neck. And but to to wind up that thought,
Speaker 1: like the reason that Spain that the Republican Spain starts
Speaker 1: to lose is not because there are anarchists. And you
Speaker 1: will definitely see this discourse on the internet. Many people
Speaker 1: will tell me that I'm mistaken about this. It's my
Speaker 1: fucking degree, but um yeah, I would argue that it's
Speaker 1: because the Western world that did quote unquote democracy to
Speaker 1: the end of them, right, Yeah, this is like there's
Speaker 1: there's this. We talked about this a bit in the
Speaker 1: episodes we did on it. But like there's this whole
Speaker 1: argument that I'm sure you'll get into more between like
Speaker 1: the socialists, the communists, you know, in the anarchists, but
Speaker 1: a huge part of it, probably most of it is
Speaker 1: that like the fascists are getting guns from other fascists
Speaker 1: and tanks and aircraft often flown by professional fascist pilots
Speaker 1: who are training for what's going to become World War two,
Speaker 1: whereas Republican Spain has some old bulk action rifles that
Speaker 1: got smuggled in through France. Yeah, and some mosens. It
Speaker 1: was sold by America to Russia, from Russia to Mexico
Speaker 1: and then from Mexico back to Spain. Right like um
Speaker 1: and and yeah, these old males as all Well talks
Speaker 1: about that are rusted and they can't open the boat
Speaker 1: after they fire them and they reload their ammunition and
Speaker 1: its ship. But yeah, and on the other side, right,
Speaker 1: like the coup doesn't work if how does the Army
Speaker 1: of Africa get from Africa to Spain. It doesn't swim, right,
Speaker 1: How do these generals get from Africa to Spain air
Speaker 1: lifted by other fascist nations? Right, we don't see that, right. Actually,
Speaker 1: France wanted to sell planes to the Republic and the
Speaker 1: early days of the war that Britain pretty much put
Speaker 1: the Kai bosh on it. And there's an interesting parallel
Speaker 1: with what you're seeing in Ukraine right now, because in
Speaker 1: Ukraine you have a republican government um in a military
Speaker 1: that has a fairly wide selection. Jake Camerhand just posted
Speaker 1: like a vegan extremist who's fighting on the front lines
Speaker 1: of the because it's like, yeah, there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of different ideological tendencies fighting on behalf of the broadly
Speaker 1: Ukrainian side there, including some very nasty ones. Um, but
Speaker 1: you're kind of seeing what happens when a fascist power
Speaker 1: invades a country like that to stop a republic, and
Speaker 1: democratic powers send them the most advanced weapons on the planet, right,
Speaker 1: which is all it would have taken to roll back
Speaker 1: fascism in Spain, and then pressed. You know, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of German Italian exiles fighting in Spain, right
Speaker 1: because the Second Republic had relatively liberal, silent policies and
Speaker 1: they knew the only way to stop fashion in Italy
Speaker 1: in Germany with the rule at bank in Spain and
Speaker 1: keep going right. I often have this, and I've had
Speaker 1: this as we've reported on men or this weird thought
Speaker 1: of like I'll be reading about the Spanish Civil War
Speaker 1: in my office and I'll look at my gun collection.
Speaker 1: Although if I took every if I had, if I
Speaker 1: could go back in time with everything I have in
Speaker 1: my house, all of the m O and guns. There
Speaker 1: are a couple of battles that might have been turned
Speaker 1: around by just that because while for one thing, because
Speaker 1: modern semi automatic arms are much more effective than bolt
Speaker 1: action rifles. But just like the level of armament that
Speaker 1: those people had was um not there were eighteenth century
Speaker 1: armies better equipped for combat. Yeah, I mean you see
Speaker 1: people with muzzle loaders and stuff in the Spanish Civil War, right.
Speaker 1: And then the only place taken term for arms is
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, right. And they don't just get arms,
Speaker 1: they also get these generals, right, who are quote unquote
Speaker 1: advising that they're not they commanding units. Uh. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of Soviet politicking at play, right, and as much
Speaker 1: as anything. And you can read like um, Peter Carroll's
Speaker 1: book on the Abraham Lincoln Brigades or a brigade uh
Speaker 1: Battalian sorry they want to st brigade. That will give
Speaker 1: you a better idea of like exactly how this strict
Speaker 1: authoritarian communist control really sacked the spirit out of the republic.
Speaker 1: And you can see this in May of seven, right,
Speaker 1: which is what jor Well writes about in his book,
Speaker 1: right the May day when we see a conflict between
Speaker 1: the non Stylinist communist, they weren't Trotskyist. To pume right,
Speaker 1: very often portrayed Trotsky Trusky himself, like you can see
Speaker 1: the letters that he wrote to them where he had
Speaker 1: thrown disagreements with them if you care to look. Um.
Speaker 1: But we see this conflict, the shooting war right between
Speaker 1: the anarchist and the non Styalinist communists Unerstanis communists. And
Speaker 1: what comes out of that is this idea among people
Speaker 1: on the libertarian left, for its broad spectrum of libertarian
Speaker 1: leftism that we saw in Spain, that it's not really
Speaker 1: worth fighting for the republic or for the facts, because
Speaker 1: either way we're just going to have the boot on
Speaker 1: our neck. Right the secret police, I say, well, like
Speaker 1: the secret police spent far, far, far more time going
Speaker 1: after anarchists in the Republican Army than they did after spies.
Speaker 1: Oh no, really, the authoritarian left spent more of their
Speaker 1: time fighting anarchists than the fat wild crazy is it?
Speaker 1: And it's never happened again. We learned from it, We
Speaker 1: moved on, we've become better people. Yeah, yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1: We were find now we've fixed it. For a lot
Speaker 1: of the people fighting for the republic right, what are
Speaker 1: you fighting for? And I think that's important that like
Speaker 1: we remember that even in times when things are bad, right,
Speaker 1: you have to think about what things should be like
Speaker 1: you have to try and model that in what you're
Speaker 1: doing now on an economic level, when you're talking about
Speaker 1: like they come in they collectivize these farms. There's like anarchists,
Speaker 1: like the anarchists in large chunks and like in Catalonian particular,
Speaker 1: are kind of running what at the time as a
Speaker 1: fairly modern industrial economy. How does that? How does that work? Like?
Speaker 1: Do do you have any kind of like overall state,
Speaker 1: like during the period of time where you know they
Speaker 1: had reasonable control and also weren't completely overwhelmed with the fighting,
Speaker 1: How did it function? Yeah, you kind of have a state, right,
Speaker 1: you have this sort of people's committee, anti factious, militious,
Speaker 1: but uh not really because things things are somewhat chaotic
Speaker 1: rights on the state as we would maybe understand it now.
Speaker 1: So what we have instead is is anarcho syndicalism. Right,
Speaker 1: these unions going to other unions and organizing among themselves. Right,
Speaker 1: Like you know the steel workers need X from the miners, right,
Speaker 1: the miners and then the the tube makers need extra.
Speaker 1: The steel workers and the gun company need X from
Speaker 1: the from the tubemakers, right, and so organizing along industrial
Speaker 1: union levels allows things to continue, right, allows the trains
Speaker 1: and trams to continue, allows them to continue manufacturing unitions. Right.
Speaker 1: So it's it's an eco syndicalism, it is. It's a
Speaker 1: type of libertarian leftism. And then we see these collective
Speaker 1: or sort of cooperative I should say, farming arrangements, right,
Speaker 1: where again people people are farming, people are sort of
Speaker 1: joining together their industrial small holdings and then delivering those,
Speaker 1: contributing those to the city, to the war effort. And
Speaker 1: there's something, as you see in Ukraine, right, relatively special
Speaker 1: that happens in these times of conflict where people are
Speaker 1: i think more willing to just step aside from the
Speaker 1: am and I think that's always been that was a
Speaker 1: thing for the Spanish working class for a long time.
Speaker 1: But to step aside from the accumulation of stuff, right,
Speaker 1: from the accumulation of individual goods and wealth, and to
Speaker 1: say like, yeah, well let's all get stuck in together.
Speaker 1: And I think that helped to allow that to happen,
Speaker 1: helped to allow it to continue. But yeah, these organizations
Speaker 1: between unions and collectives worked right, they functioned. You can't
Speaker 1: argue that they didn't work at the Republican Army didn't
Speaker 1: starve in a week or run out of fuel and things. Right,
Speaker 1: These these anarchist columns were able to travel from Barcelona
Speaker 1: to the Agostina and from the Agossa back to Madrid
Speaker 1: like that. That doesn't happen if you're incapable of organizing. Right.
Speaker 1: So in the factories, these people had already been organizing together, right.
Speaker 1: They were on strike often right there. They knew how
Speaker 1: to They had an existing system for organizing things because
Speaker 1: they already organized to pay strike funds. They already organized
Speaker 1: to look after other unique other parts of the C
Speaker 1: and T when they were out right, they organized to
Speaker 1: have policy statements on various things. So they had these
Speaker 1: existing means to organize. They just didn't have authorities that
Speaker 1: told people what to do. They knew how to work
Speaker 1: together to decide what to do. Yeah. I had this
Speaker 1: beautiful moment during the uprisings where I was in a
Speaker 1: city um and I was hanging out with members of
Speaker 1: a medical collective and the building that they were in
Speaker 1: there was a couple of thousand square feet of they
Speaker 1: were producing by assembly line Kim White's for clearing mace
Speaker 1: out of your eyes. Um. They were producing like I
Speaker 1: fax medical kits. They had racks of body armor that
Speaker 1: had been donated or purchased with donated funds UM. And
Speaker 1: it was all it was a substantial amount of equipment
Speaker 1: that was being and and respirators and stuff that was
Speaker 1: being organized as symbol put together, UM distributed, putting people's hands,
Speaker 1: put in the hands of people who are going out
Speaker 1: and utilizing it on a regular basis. UM. And it
Speaker 1: was being done like with within the principles of kind
Speaker 1: of like like a number of things can be organized
Speaker 1: that way. It's it is it is handling the collection,
Speaker 1: the distribution um of of of equipment and the collection
Speaker 1: disbursement of funds like for potentially like thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of people. Um, that's perfectly doable under anarchist principles. And
Speaker 1: anarchists have done that kind of thing a number of
Speaker 1: times in the world. Yeah, Like if you look at
Speaker 1: the example of the soup kitchens right at pro tearing
Speaker 1: dine as a restaurants they called them right in in Barcelona,
Speaker 1: a Madrid, they took over the writs right and sourced
Speaker 1: food from rural anarchists to to feed people, right, rather
Speaker 1: than saying like, oh, you know you have to buy feared,
Speaker 1: you have to buy feod, you have to buy food.
Speaker 1: You come here and anyone can eat if you're hungry, right,
Speaker 1: and yeah, you see people doing that. Look at the
Speaker 1: unit that we we spoke about Miama, right, the Crenny
Speaker 1: generation c Army. They those guys they didn't have like
Speaker 1: you know, no one was wearing rank, right, No one
Speaker 1: was a general or a captain or or a sergeant. Right.
Speaker 1: They talked and to our point before about expertise. Some
Speaker 1: people we found out are the person we were talking to, Zara,
Speaker 1: who was who was killed. Um was seen as a
Speaker 1: commander by people because of what they wrote about him
Speaker 1: after he died. But he never talked about himself that one. No.
Speaker 1: In fact, he told us right that if some people
Speaker 1: knew more, they've been in the fight for longer, they
Speaker 1: knew the terrain, and then we'd listen to them and
Speaker 1: they have a bit more weight in that conversation. But
Speaker 1: we all just decide together what we what we want
Speaker 1: to do um and that that works, right, because those
Speaker 1: guys were very well respected right among the the anti
Speaker 1: coup forces in Mihama because of their willingness to fight,
Speaker 1: their effectiveness, and those guys have a good battlefield record
Speaker 1: against the government troops. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, And like
Speaker 1: it wasn't just again like it's not just five guys fighting, right,
Speaker 1: it's also they were able and and in Miama we
Speaker 1: still see this with like the underground and they called
Speaker 1: the Development Committeels and the people who are they were
Speaker 1: the people who did the shield walls and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And people will be familiar with the George
Speaker 1: Floyd uprising for them, they went underground and they're developing
Speaker 1: ways to make weapons now, right, So they're the people
Speaker 1: you'll see making three D printed guns. So the people
Speaker 1: you'll see making improvised explosive devices, fertilized bombs, working out
Speaker 1: how to make handmade to two rifles we've seen right,
Speaker 1: Like and again they don't they don't need someone in
Speaker 1: charge for that, right And in times of difficulty, we
Speaker 1: revert to taking care of one another and getting things done.
Speaker 1: We we don't contrary to I think what what we
Speaker 1: led to believe, sort of revert to we don't need
Speaker 1: like a strong leader, dear leader. We we we are
Speaker 1: capable of looking after one another outside of authority in
Speaker 1: the state. Yeah. And it also stands the point that
Speaker 1: like accepting the authority of someone with expertise in certain situations,
Speaker 1: like the fundamental way in which effective military is organized
Speaker 1: tends to involve the existence of an n c O corps.
Speaker 1: Right you, Every military that is good at fighting has
Speaker 1: an in c O corp. Part of why Russia has
Speaker 1: acquitted itself so unbelievably poorly in the fighting in Ukraine
Speaker 1: is that that that does not functionally exist in the
Speaker 1: Russian military. Um. It is absolutely the basic idea of
Speaker 1: an n c O corp is that with among fighting units,
Speaker 1: there should be dudes whose job and I say dudes
Speaker 1: in the non gendered sense, there should be people whose
Speaker 1: job is to make the functioning of that fighting unit
Speaker 1: be their whole life, and they stay at that job
Speaker 1: for a long time. They don't just like move up
Speaker 1: and ship. They're just they're there to keep that unit
Speaker 1: function n UM. And from the perspective of like someone
Speaker 1: who is an anarchist, I mean as an anarchist who's
Speaker 1: been shot at a number of times. When I'm hanging
Speaker 1: out and there's like some grizzled ass fucking veteran in
Speaker 1: the unit I'm embedded with. I'm gonna do whatever that
Speaker 1: fucker says, right, absolutely, because you're crazy, not too, because
Speaker 1: that's just good sense. It's the same thing as like
Speaker 1: if you're in deep bush or whatever with somebody who
Speaker 1: knows wilderness survival and they tell you don't eat that plant,
Speaker 1: or they tell you, you know, this is a bad
Speaker 1: place to camp for this reason or whatever. You listen
Speaker 1: to them, like that's again, and you know, factories function
Speaker 1: the same way. Having been on building sites, they function
Speaker 1: the same way. Somebody tells you don't do that, it's
Speaker 1: a bad idea, and they clearly have been doing it
Speaker 1: more than you. You listen to them. That's not accepting
Speaker 1: that you have a boss. That's accepting that you have
Speaker 1: people who are more experienced and competent in certain things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you took but ineffective armies sometimes have it.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's in the office of coal, right,
Speaker 1: it's people who are in charge but maybe ought not
Speaker 1: to be. But it's because of the status with that
Speaker 1: wealth or something else. Right it And you see like
Speaker 1: very effective fighting in the anarchist units right with men
Speaker 1: and women and actually people who would were non binary
Speaker 1: as well, like people who would call non binary didn't
Speaker 1: call themselves out then. Um, but um, we see that
Speaker 1: because they were willing to elect officers, right, but then
Speaker 1: listen to them. And it wasn't it was listened to
Speaker 1: not obey, right. But but that was an extremely effective
Speaker 1: way of doing things. Yeah. I was having a conversation
Speaker 1: with a buddy of mine who was a marine and
Speaker 1: saw some very heavy combat in Iraq years ago about
Speaker 1: like the way in which certain anarchist units had worked
Speaker 1: over time, and talked about the fact that they elected
Speaker 1: their leaders, and he was like, well, we didn't do
Speaker 1: that obviously, but there were people you knew you shouldn't
Speaker 1: listen to and people you did, and you understood who
Speaker 1: you wanted calling the shots when bullets were flying, right, Like,
Speaker 1: regardless of what the actual hierarchy was. It's just like
Speaker 1: you know in the U. S. Military of a platoon
Speaker 1: leader who was an officer who's been to college, and
Speaker 1: you have a platoon sergeant, and they do somewhat different things.
Speaker 1: But every reasonable person and who has interfaced with those
Speaker 1: units will agree that like it, a good platoon leader
Speaker 1: even though they're an officer and a higher rank. It's
Speaker 1: going to listen to whatever the fucking platoon sergeant says
Speaker 1: because they've been doing their job a lot long. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're a fool and you're arrogant if you don't write,
Speaker 1: and that arrogance will find you out in a difficult
Speaker 1: situation pretty quickly. So yeah, I think it's important to
Speaker 1: look to look at those anarchists militaries, right, and then
Speaker 1: there are lots and lots of accounts of the of
Speaker 1: the anarchists and the Spanish Civil War. Julian Casanova's book
Speaker 1: is It is one of my favorites that people want
Speaker 1: to read one and married book Jinn of course has
Speaker 1: written the Spanish Anarchists as well. So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of books you can read about and some of
Speaker 1: them micro case studies are really fun, right if you
Speaker 1: want to look at like what is it like to
Speaker 1: live on an anarchist farm in nineteen thirty six in
Speaker 1: rural Catalonian Yale or something like that, like, and I
Speaker 1: would encourage people to read them with an open mind,
Speaker 1: and I understand that like the world was different than
Speaker 1: than it is today, But to look at those historical
Speaker 1: examples and realize that like what people were doing them
Speaker 1: was fundamentally the same. Right. They were trying to take
Speaker 1: care of each other and make the world better for
Speaker 1: their children, and they didn't want the boot on their neck,
Speaker 1: and they were all prepared to work together to do that,
Speaker 1: and that that was an extremely functional way. And what
Speaker 1: didn't work for them was being controlled by people from
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union who maybe didn't understand their struggle because
Speaker 1: they often volt it wasn't worth fighting anymore. And that's
Speaker 1: true for communists to actually right, Like if you look
Speaker 1: at the American communists who went and fought, and they
Speaker 1: were overwhelmingly Communists who went and fought for the for
Speaker 1: the International Brigades. The International Brigades were not the Republic's
Speaker 1: army per se, they were the comm Interns army. And
Speaker 1: if there is one group of people who was hated
Speaker 1: more than anyone else, it was Commissars right, these people
Speaker 1: who were sort of there to enforce his very strict
Speaker 1: interpretation of what they saw as Marxist Leninism. So even
Speaker 1: those people right who were communists might have had a
Speaker 1: more slightly more libertarian understanding, didn't really take their well
Speaker 1: to being bossed around and lost a lot of theirs
Speaker 1: what they were fighting for because of that. Right, Cecil
Speaker 1: LB's book is another really good book about that. If
Speaker 1: you want to read that, well, I think that's going
Speaker 1: to bring us to an end. Here, James, you have
Speaker 1: a book about the Spanish Civil War that you should
Speaker 1: probably plug here. Yeah. Yeah. It's called The Popular Front
Speaker 1: and the Learner Olympics. It's about the anti for Olympics
Speaker 1: that were held as an alternative to the Barcelona Olympic.
Speaker 1: Tics explains how the Popular Front used sport to build
Speaker 1: an anti fascist identity in Catalonia, and it used sport
Speaker 1: to bring together anti fascists from around the world. The
Speaker 1: Popular Olympics actually happened on the nineteenth of July, which
Speaker 1: is the same day to civil war startists, and it
Speaker 1: never they never occurred, but many of the people who
Speaker 1: went to take part in the Olympics decided to stay
Speaker 1: and fight. And so that's what my books about. It's
Speaker 1: quite expensive, and you can I understand the people can't
Speaker 1: afford it. That's fine. I keep saying I'm working on
Speaker 1: another book, but I'm not working very hard or very fast. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: look it up, and someone's probably bootlegged it. Actually, the
Speaker 1: book is often free at universities and other libraries, so
Speaker 1: you have to go to your library and I'll see
Speaker 1: I'm to get it. And uh where else can people
Speaker 1: find you? On the internet at James Stout on Twitter,
Speaker 1: same thing on Patreon. Those are my two main things.
Speaker 1: You can find my writing a muck rack to google
Speaker 1: my name. Yeah, and again help us, Daniel, please bleep
Speaker 1: that out for the sake of James immigration cases. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, that's good. That's that's an episode. It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.