Your book, like Elizabeth Hinton’s “America on Fire,” delves into a decades-long cycle that’s played out in many US cities: Police violence, followed by uprisings, followed by promises for reform and blue ribbon commissions that ultimately produce only “modest change and a photo op.” Did you come out of your reporting with a solid idea of what a better process would look like?
Ellis: I don’t know how you can look at Minneapolis today and say they are better for choosing reform over revolution. The mayor reorganized the public safety department, then there was turnover in the leadership there. The chief who was supposed to lead the transformation of the police force recently resigned in disgrace. Like most police departments in the country, the budget continues to balloon thanks to overtime costs. And at the moment the city is failing to even meet the basics of its court-mandated reforms. By definition this is insanity, right?
I think like anything in local government, having a process for the community to guide designs and offer feedback is important. But I think the starting point has to be a total tear down, not a rebuild. That sounds simplistic, but look at where making changes on the edges has gotten us? Revised training standards and use of force policies have amounted to departments that are effectively the same. The aim needs to be so much higher.
Because when you think about it, you can’t.
If you have a revolution, you’re forming a hierarchy to replace another. The concept of anarchism even in its smallest form is unrealistic.
Those revolutions were winning the fight but once the dust settled it would not have continued, anarchy is a lot like a shadow it can really only exist if there is an -archy to be the an- of. You know?
During both conflicts the anarchists had to from a hierarchy to function to some degree and had they won, they would’ve had to form a bigger one to run a nation
An Anarchist revolution explicitly has no hierarchies, there is no replacement hierarchy.
The anarchist collective in Catalonia compromised over 3.5 million people, and how the people operated within it without hierarchies was well documented in Sam Dolgoff’s book from 1974, The Anarchist Collectives Workers’ Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939, along with Gaston Leval’s 1975 Collectives in the Spanish revolution, if you’d like to investigate the specifics, such as how they organized transportation, universal healthcare, food production, etc.
Even the Anarchist militias had no top-down hierarchy, they instead adopted a bottom-up fighting force, where a squad of volunteers would elect their squad leader (with the ability for them to immediately recall the elected leader outside of battle if they weren’t performing to the satisfaction of the squad). All the squad leaders then elected a commander above them with the same recall ability, and so on up to the general. This is totally unlike any military structure in any centralized state military.
Without trying to offend, this statement shows a clear lack of knowledge on Anarchist political theory. It is a well fleshed out idea that has all of the traits needed for long-term stability. In fact, were Anarchism adopted on a wide scale, it would be very difficult to put that genie back in the bottle, as most people in the world (except the rich or powerful hungry elites) would vastly prefer it over any other societal system tried before.
How do you convince a person who now has access to universal basic housing, food, healthcare, and transportation (where people only need to volunteer about 3 months out of the year to keep those basic needs met for everyone), to instead go back to a system where most give up most of their waking hours to working a job for the benefit of shareholders and CEOs, where most are poor and live at the whims of the rich and powerful, and where whether you potentially live or die is at the whim of Insurance companies, landlords, your boss, etc?
It literally does have hierarchies though that was a controversial thing among them during the time, they realized just by forming goals a hierarchy would form around how to accomplish the goal. Even if the way you organize is bottom to top, that is a hierarchy which leads some anarchists to break away and form their own anarchist factions which give way to the same problem over and over. You just are choosing not to see it as such, the majority holds the power over their superior officers, that is a form of order. It’s not that big of a deal I’m not saying anarchy isn’t real but this is common in anarchist spaces. Any form of organization of any sort, is genuinely forming a hierarchy and stops being anarchism. Anarchists start to suffer from the “no true scotsman” thing.
You realize this is a bit of a contraction? A well fleshed out idea does not equal long term stability unless it does in fact create long term stability. Maybe in theory but as time went on anarchists took positions that placed them above others; police captains, government positions, even if it was just social where one anarchist was seen as smarter than another that is forming a social hierarchy. Saying it is a well fleshed out idea with long term stability is like me saying my well thought out d&d campaign is going to be completed solely because it is well thought out, it’s neglecting the reality that other’s autonomy actually can directly lend to its downfall. Hell even forming a plan is even slight steps away from anarchy, which they understood and constantly debated over.
You genuinely cannot have anarchy, it is only in the face of a differing usually opposing hierarchy can you engage in being an anarchist and practice anarchy.
This is why many anarchists started embracing socialist tendencies, because their anarchist goals ended up forming socialist systems. You can totally form systems with the mindset of reducing a hierarchies power and aiming for anarchist goals but again, it soon becomes not anarchy once the system is formed.
Convincing a person isn’t really relevant to what I’m saying. My whole point is revolutions always start off strong and once the need to handle a system appears, it’s not seamless typically kinda dangerous and often extremely prone to issues because being well thought out is only just that, it doesn’t suddenly become functional and reliable. When the founding fathers formed America after their revolution this was understood and they tried to make a system that was flexible so as their system formed they could adjust as needed. When the anarchists began accruing power, you see plenty of them fall back into a system hierarchy because that’s really just how organization works especially when you’re talking about millions of people, then they understand they’re drifting from anarchy and they shatter into smaller and smaller groups while the more effective ones with a hierarchy will full steam ahead accomplish their goals and leave the rest in the dust.
I remember learning about this in school, a big reason why the anarchists lost is because they started to collapse from infighting and feeling conflicted about what it meant to be an anarchist and what was required to run a system.
Spanish anarchists specifically really relied on the concepts of situational leadership which directly contributed to their defeat and fascist and communist groups were able to make decisions while anarchist groups were stuck in a crisis of decision making. Power vacuums are inevitable and will always lead to the direct downfall of anarchist movements once they acquire a degree of power. People will say superior outside fascist forces or communist forces but the reverse to that is inferior, slow moving anarchist forces that failed at the one thing that wins wars and battles – logistics. It’s much easier to unite anarchists when they share a common threat.
At the end of the day anarchy in all forms in all goals is directly made to destroy a state or hierarchy and abolish a power structure. Once they do, a power vacuum forms and whichever in-group holds the most power or can organize the fastest will overtake the general anarchist movement and no longer be anarchist. Anarchy is like an ouroborous by nature.
I’m sorry, but to suggest that the most egalitarian way to fight fascists was the cause for Anarchists leaving is… A bit absurd. What source informed you this was common?
Again, this is showing a severe lack of knowledge of what Anarchism is. Where did you come across those ideas?
Anarchists embraced socialism/communism from the very beginning. That has been their goal for over a hundred years. I’d advise reading about Mikhail Bakunin and the First International.
Could you provide the sources for that? I have not come across any source that says the Anarchist militias were slow to respond or ineffective with the meager supplies they had, where did you learn this?
In Ukraine, they were crushed not due to a power vacuum, but because their allies the Bolsheviks betrayed them completely and utterly after the White Army was on the run. This was an unprecedented event in history, it was not generally expected at that time that the Communists would become violent toward people who shared supposedly similar goals. It was not due to a power vacuum, there was no threat that emerged from the already Anarchist controlled areas.
The same in Spain, they were not destroyed from within, but from ML’s betraying them sooner than expected, and ultimately by overwhelming logistical firepower from Fascists.
If we were to follow your own logic; the reason France, Poland, and all the other nations that fell to the Nazi’s in WWII must’ve mainly been due to them being capitalist liberal democracies (when in reality, it was mainly due to modern military strategies by Germany combined with their logistical ability).
Look I learned this in school I don’t run around collecting sources for what is essentially a blip in human history. I understand what you’re saying but in general this is the huge flaw in not just anarchist movements but liberal movements entirely, purity tests.
I think my favorite description heard of it is the concept of a circular firing squad. Once an individual or faction starts making moves others don’t consider anarchist/libertarian/liberal enough they begin infighting and fracturing. And once that cooperation stutters even a little the machine starts to struggle.
Yes to a degree. It’s long been argued that fascism’s greatest strength is the speed at which decisions can be made, they will rip through everything to put their man in charge. The Nazis military structure literally leans into this and relied heavily on Nazi high command to orchestra its movements. They had an over-centralization, which directly led to them losing some fights. On the flip side of that anarchist movements have a lack of centralization that can often paralyze decision making in a crisis. Democracies tend to be in between with decentralized representation in the form of elections and some degree of centralization with their military structures. But democracies also had the unfortunate benefit of being well-established. Obviously this is a super watered down version but you want a like 60 page essay on an analysis of centralized vs decentralized command structures I’m sure people have already written about this.
It did take me a bit to find but I think “the CNT in the Spanish revolution” by Jose Peirats was one I’ve seen countlessly cited. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jose-peirats-the-cnt-in-the-spanish-revolution-volume-1#toc14
It’s pretty fucking exhausting to read but it basically just outlines the consistent battle between how local groups fought against larger regional influence and often at times just neglected calls for higher degrees of organization in favor of their own autonomy. If I had to sum it up it’s just showing repeatedly how often they had to form an assembly that resulted in representatives asking for people to come together time and time again, often without a degree of success that was needed for victory. And sometimes lending itself to further infighting cause once they start doing or saying things people didn’t agree with, their hype and motivation wanes which kills collectivism.
I’m also pretty sure Orwell has written about this detailing the lack of supplies that are tied directly to a failure of logistics although I’m not sure he touches upon that exactly, I think he just talks about their lack of supplies and the situation they found themselves in.
It’s very easy to try and paint it that they were simply overpowered which is true but part of them being overpowered was their own weakness to establish a central command necessary for wartime decision making. They also refused outside help in fear it would kneecap their revolution. Logistics wins wars that’s history 101, anarchism does not lend well to large scale logistics.
Your teacher was not an infallible source of knowledge, and clearly was not as well versed as they should’ve been when teaching this subject.
As you mentioned, Nazi Germany was defeated much quicker due to its centralized, all powerful leadership making incredibly bad military decisions repeatedly over the course of WWII. No one could say no to Hitler or his staff, even if people lower in chain actually fighting near the front lines had a clearer view of the situation.
They did have military centralization, in the form of the voluntary bottom-up command structure that you previously declared wasn’t Anarchist.
Individual platoons and squads having autonomy results in the exact opposite of what you describe, as they can make decisions on the fly based on what is actually happening in real-time in front of them (while still coordinating with the larger bottom-up militia).
This is proven out even today in the Ukraine war, where Russia continues to suffer incredible losses due to their extremely strict top-down command structure, where lower level units can’t do virtually anything without approval or orders from much farther up in the chain, which takes forever and doesn’t allow them to respond adequately to emerging threats. Ukraine on the other hand has been willing to update their command structure from the outdated Soviet style, instead adopting the modern squad level independent decision making that the US adopted decades ago, which has made them far more effective in their ability to defend against the invasion.
They didn’t want to join the Republican army for good reasons. Being under their command with no option to refuse bad orders or to recall bad commanders, especially in an Army that was quickly taken over by tankie Stalinist leaders who would likely try to use the Anarchists as shock troops to cull their numbers and leave the Stalinists more poised to betray them (which they ended up doing anyway, even as the Fascists were winning).
They repeatedly asked the Republican for supplies and help, but only ever received meager supplies and worn out old weapons, the scraps, essentially. The Anarchists put in a call for the Republican government to purchase more weapons for them, and suspected they never would and even seriously considered robbing the Republican bank to finally buy their own supplies, but decided to simply wait for the Republican government to do something so as not to disrupt their alliance, which ended up being the wrong decision, as the government later just gave virtually all of their gold reserves to the USSR in exchange for low quality weapons at extortionist prices, and once again the Anarchists got fuck all from it.
Yes, that’s true, but the Anarchists lack of logistics and supplies had nothing to do with Anarchism itself, but purely due to literally no outside force being willing to help supply them. The Allies and USSR in WWII would’ve been fucked if the US hadn’t have been constantly supplying them with its massive, unbombable factories churning out supplies to keep the Allies supplied, regardless of their political system.
This literally also applies to you. Did you read what I sent? It literally outlines the consistent lack of centralized power by anarchists. You can’t just decide they had central power when that’s literally the exact opposite of anarchism, you have said that yourself in this thread.
You have said this was explicitly not why Nazi Germany lost. I had to tell you it was. Again, you are not an infallible source and have just proved it again.
Literally a contradiction. You keep saying the same things and I think in your mind you have built up what it means and have decided this is true about anarchy and it is correct and it cannot be wrong, you’re not being honest and challenging your view. This is not a centralized command structure this is genuinely 100% entirely the opposite of such and I have directly outlined and provided a source that says exactly that.
Because democracy like I said. The west especially after the Americans joined the fighting was fluid and relied on forces that worked together but their command structure wasn’t as centralized
Example - Roosevelt was the president and definitely had overall decision making process however unlike Germany he relied on Eisenhower to run the European theater and MacArthur in the Pacific theater. And below them they each had their own subordinates who had the power to make decisions without the need for higher up approval which continues down the line to a point where smaller platoons and companies could orchestrate themselves but did not hold a level of authority to be totally autonomous and so it was a fluid top down structure. Unlike Germany who specifically relied on high command to tell them what to do. And also unlike anarchists who, as you said, was bottom up. Ukraine is most similar to America’s structure where Zelensky has the most decision making power but the men below him have a ton too and that structure continues until you get to smaller platoons who don’t really have that level of decision making because it becomes less effective if they are not coordinated properly which is exactly what the anarchists struggled with.
I agree. But they also were not as united as you’re saying. You are treating it essentially as a hive mind and not appreciating how individualistic people and factions are.
Yes and they also completely failed to work together at times as detailed in what I linked. There are times when members outright refused direction from national leadership. The logistical consequences from lack of a ACTUAL centralized power(not what you keep asserting which is not centralized power) resulted in shortages because they could not agree where weapons went, which fronts and groups received priority and overall who controlled the general military production.
Overall none of this is hard to understand you can literally see this unfold in a group project. If you do not communicate who does what, two people are gonna show up with written essays, two will be prepared to present and nobody made the actual presentation. That’s essentially what happened here.
Again you are not infallible either, and I do take a degree of offense on you saying my teacher wasn’t also. Of course he wasn’t. But he wasn’t wrong. Read what I linked, it outlines everything. Read Orwell’s writings he talks about it. Historians from today will literally tell you the same. Just because you don’t agree or decide not to see it doesn’t make it true.