Bruce
Politics
I got the idea for this post a few nites ago *grins* when i've realised that some people don't really know some basic stuff, and it wouldn't hurt to broaden anyone's horizons a little bit. I know this doesn't really belong to the force academy, but it's a interesting topic. It's a long read, and i'm expecting replies saying how i've got it all wrong, but this is my oppinion which i want to share with you.
Let's go to some basic definitions:
1) Fascism. The word itself comes from the italian 'fascio' which meant a bunch of stick tied together. The meaning behind it that the sticks themselves were weak, but when they were as one they are quite strong. Essentialy, fascism believes if people were all as one, they would be stronger then individuals, so it opresses individualism. A bit of hipocrisy that they don't really care what the leader is like, but the rest are basically sheep, hence fascism is the manipulator's dream.
2)Communism. The basic idea of it is individuals struggling to achieve some 'greater good', producing how much they need, and distributing goods equally, thereby making all people equal in economic or social position. However, the problem with it is that it doesn't turn out that way, but becomes a dictatorship and very bureaucratic, and productivity suffers as a result. The people are supposed to be a part of the decision making-process, but, usually a party takes over and controlls them, and there's a catch anyway, if others agree to do something for example in a syndicate meeting, you'r obliged to do it nommater what you think. The goods aren't distributed usually though, and the planned economy usually isn't planned very smartly either. It's supposed to work as people deciding what to do themselves, and goverment helping them, but it always turns out to be the other way, goverment deciding and people just helping a bit. I'd say the idea is quite good, but the realisation always failed, but, that's just IMHO. The difference between communism and fascism is that the idea of fascism is bad itself, i mean, i consider it bad because the basic idea is repressing individualism, and the idea of communism is preety good, but turns out to be like fascism in practice.
However, something very much alike communism worked really good during a small period of ww2, and you won't really learn anything about it in school. That is called anarcho-socialism, and it worked during the spanish civil war. But let's get back to the 1931 and tell the whole story. After the great crisis in the early thirties, spain was hit badly too. It was a undeveloped country except for one region, catalonia *sorry if i misspelled it*, and that was where the greatest part of their industry was centered. The spanish republic was born in 1931, and the working classes hoped that things would get better, but they didn't, unemployment was still booming, and the republican/social-democratic goverment they had didn't do much about it. In 1933 the right-wingers came to power, and, they started crushing the working class resistance , which had existed for quite a while in spain. There were quite a few rebellions which were brutally crushed and the new goverment fell in 1936, and the new elections were won by a combination of republicans, social-democrats, and stalinists. There were about 30.000 of political prisoners at the time and the new goverment promised to release them. The workers just didn't wait and took things in their hands and released them. But they didn't stop at that, they voted for changes and were going to get them. They took things in their hands and soon virually everyone was on strike, and the new goverment moved against the same working class that elected them.
Then Franco showed up and declared himself to be the local dictator, and the existing goverment wasn't too keen to stop it either. The workers had enough of it, and started organising the defense. They raided the military bases, where solidiers refused to turn their guns agains them, armed themselves and rushed to defend from the fascist attack. Companies and farmland which was abadoned was taken over. The revolution started.
Now, let me explain the way anarchism works. Imagine a big factory. The classic way of organising a facility like that was having bosses and menagers to take care of the production. These guys had a better idea.
Imagine if you broke it down into small groups of workers who did the same job. Now, each group decided what would they do, and how would they do it, and each group had a delegate which was chosen by a democratic method, and was in the position as long as he did the job well. The delegate would represent the group at the meeting of all groups and that way they coordinated their work, also using democratic methods. That was especially useful for organising big farms and such. It turned out that the workers knew more about their jobs then their bosses did, but that olny makes sense. The same way is used for goverment - there is no anarchistic goverment, people decide what to do in their local community, a 'grass-roots' democracy. The goods get produced and distributed evenly and based on need, but productivity did actually increase. Equality and no discrimination on any basis are also important traits of anarchism. Women were given more rights then ever before, even more then they now have in a lot of countries. Abortion, for example, was their business as a lot of things. The army was organised on a volountary basis, and it had a very democratic decision-making process, although the old officers and experts were still kept in the army, but without any authority. However, good things usually don't last very long. The fascists, Franco and his followers, got support from Germany.The offical goverment which was bypassed in that anarchistic revolution, they just acted as if it weren't really there, and it was powerless to stop them, they got help from Stalin. Now, Stalin made sure that goverment obeyed him, and they didn't give weapons to the anarchists, claiming that their way of organising troops was ineffective, so the fascists started winning. The goverment started arming its own forces with the russian weapons, and decided that winning the war was less important then stopping the revolution. They started to destroy collectives and disband militias. Unfortunately, the most powerful force in the country, the anarchistic syndicate didn't do anything yet, and that was their biggest mistake. Franco, with german help menaged to win eventually, and, the rest is history.
So, what do you think about that way of organising society? I just though it might make people think, sorry bout typing all the history, but it's a bit important to understand the context in which it all happened. Bruce