(Posting about its Plague Inc Adjacent strategy games no one but it gaf about ->) It's really crazy tho how basically zombies and Insurgents can fill each others roles so easily in the Inc games. I keep being proven again and again Zombies are a type or Human-representing threat its ok to dehumanize
The gameplay is basically the same!! You can perhaps reach a truce with the insurgents yes but you're punished for it and it's towards the very end of the game. Mechanic wise, fighting a group of Rogue Militia in a suspiciously Muslim-adjacent country who don't want your suspiciously western UN shaped Democracy is the same loop as fighting a horde of zombies in these games.
Hey I was the anon who asked about anarchists during the Spanish Civil War ( Sorry I forgot about the anon thing, it's been awhile since I read your about page 🤦♀️) If you want to answer it privately you can, I know that can be a sensitive topic and you always try to be fair when dealing with anarchists, which isn't always easy!
Thank you for resending! I already had the answer written out after an hour and a half of writing so I'm glad you did. If you want to reply to it, or follow up with another ask, or just dm me, I'm always open o77. That said, here's the original ask:
Generally speaking, I'm of the opinion that the anarchists' role in the defeat of the republic was one of the dominant ones, however I wouldn't go as far as some authors (such as the one I link below) or comrades and say that they and they alone were the cause of the Republic's fall. It is important to look at one's own mistakes with double the attention one gives their opponent's mistakes.
Militarily speaking, the anarchist columns were generally undisciplined and ineffective. They often stockpiled weapons and ammunition far from the front, expecting to have to fight the republic as well. On the front itself, they mostly sat still, letting the fascist side do as they pleased, ignoring orders from the republic, and often from their own parties/organizations.
Economically speaking, and first in the countryside, anarchists were excessive in executions to the point of losing favor among the peasantry, the vouchers that were introduced to replace money were only useful in the villages they were issued in, effectively disconnecting the villages from the towns, creating unnecessary poverty. Though their policies had some successes, these were exceptions to the rule. Their excesses and shortcomings in the countryside ended up turning some of the peasantry in the favor of the communists or the republican government as a whole. Their attempts to push forward their revolution also took away valuable weapons and volunteers from the front, compounding on their ineffectiveness in that regard.
In the industry, it is fair to say, using the figures given by the anarchists themselves, that the potential of Cataluña was completely squandered. Shells were produced but no artillery to fire them with, the few that were seeing the war passed in places without any fighting. Salaries in the factories were equal, but not equal between factories, and the gender wage gap was nevertheless enforced. It was FAI policy to pay women less for the same work. As with everything, the source I mention farther below goes into more detail with everything.
Lastly, the infighting. It seems that the FAI was much more predisposed to it than the CNT, that in multiple occasions held them back, such as when the FAI had planned an assault on the Bank of Spain in Madrid to get the gold for Cataluña, all while fascist troops were marching on Toledo. There are more notable examples; the 1937 revolt in Barcelona against the republic, and the attack carried out on communist and socialist forces by anarchist militias during the final retreat of 1939, on the orders of Casado, who had surrendered Madrid to Franco.
The evidence is damning against the effectiveness of anarchism in Spain. However, the mistakes and shortcomings on the republican side cannot be overlooked or minimized. Contrary to what the massively popular and trotskyist film Tierra y Libertad shows, the formalization of the Republican army and the integration of militias into it wasn't done soon or hastily enough. Militias, often stocked by untrained volunteers who spent more time debating orders than following them, wasted the few weapons and ammunition that did get to the front. This is a shared responsibility between these militias and the Republic that was unable to deal with them. Politically speaking, I have argued before and continue to hold that the entire popular front strategy was a complete misstep on the part of the PCE and of the Comintern. It should have been clear from the experience of 1934 that the Second Republic, as a bourgeois state, could not effectively and consistently be an anti-fascist element. The progressive biennial, as the 1931-33 period is called, was, on the one hand, not swift enough in its land and labor reforms for the day laborers, peasants and workers, and on the other, too swift in its application in a way that antagonized and radicallized the bourgeois and landowner classes. And this is just a cursory overview of the major limitations and faults on the Republican side.
The contextual cards were also simply stacked against the republic. All across Europe, anywhere that didn't find itself under a socialist government saw a meteoric rise of fascistic forces in lockstep with an almost systematic failure of the political leftwing: social-democrat parties, which in the interwar period all developed a radicallized left wing that approached the positions of communists, could not work through these divides to exert any kind of opposition, and often it seemed like the less radical wing of social-democracy was not very interested in opposition outside the halls of parliament. Communist parties, meanwhile, struggled to garner support outside the immediate leadup to the decisive conflicts, on top of the confused popular front strategy. The liberal democracies of the time, with regards to Spain, all showed tacit support for the insurrectionist side in the civil war. You can easily find sources that detail how the non-intervention agreement only gave a carte blanche for the very extensive material and military support sent by Germany and Italy, while slowing down the efforts of the USSR, and later on Mexico under pressure from the PCM, the only 2 countries that supported the Republic in any official capacity.
Perhaps Spain is seen as the one time in 1930s Europe that the rise of fascist movements could have been stopped because the coup d'etat failed and devolved into a civil war. However, I believe that it is because it evolved into a civil war that the Republic could not have won under reasonable "what ifs". The potential of anti-fascist forces at this time lie not in military capacity, as not even the USSR was ready to face any kind of involved open conflict in 1936, it lie in preventing the attempts of fascist movements at taking power, and it lie in the potential to recruit hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to their ranks. I don't find it useful to dwell excessively on the failures of anarchism as a communist, beyond as a historical argument against the merits of anarchism today. Anarchism grew roots in Spain before marxism did in the days of the first International, it had always been a political force in the country and it still is, so it seems quite useless and masturbatory to me to imagine a reality in which anarchists had not been a factor in the civil war. If they hadn't been, enough would have changed about Spanish political history that the 30s would be quite different. Some day I'd like to investigate on the apparent Spanish propensity to anarchist and adjacent ideologies (the cantonalist revolts of the 1st Republic come to mind), but I don't have an answer to that question yet.
As for sources, there is a good english language one: Spain: The Unfinished Revolution, by Arthur H. Landis. I've pasted at the end of the post some of the quotes from his book that go over the anarchists' work in the civil war, if you're interested. I also recommend just reading the book, and the quotes I've pasted below are from these pages.
Before these, a quick overview of acronyms and initialisms:
FAI: Iberian Anarchist Federation. During the war, they were organized with the
CNT: National Labor Confederation. An anarcho-syndicallist union
POUM: Unified Worker's Marxist Party. A trotkyist-slanted party that created some militias. Orwell notoriously fought with them, leaving a bad impression on his co-combatants. There is proof it was also effectively infiltrated by the MI6
PCE: Communist Party of Spain. Created as a section of the Communist international in 1921.
On July 24, the F.A.I. sponsored Committee of Militias organized the first volunteer column to leave for Aragón. It numbered 3000 men and was under the command of Bunenaventura Durruti. The ruophoria was such that to the F.A.I. the taking of Zaragoza at that moment was looked upon as but a military "paseo" [cakewalk]. They even envisioned a march to the Asturias [sic.] for a link with the C.N.T. in Oviedo and Santander; upon which a firm base for the extension of F.A.I. power to the rest of Spain would then be complete.
[...]
Other than the personal courage of Durruti and many of his men, the F.A.I. conception of organization seriously reduced the efficiency of the column. And slogans pertaining to the advantages of "disciplined indiscipline" were no help. Indeed, Anarchist excesses in almost every area provided no recruits for the attack on Zaragoza and created a situation in which hatred against themselves was generated among the populace of the villages.
Franz Borkenau who spent precisely this period with the Anarchist columns in Aragón writes that: "The policy of the Durruti column was really unpleasant. It seems that amidst the general enthusiasm of the peasants for the Republican cause that they have found the strange secret of how to make themselves hated. They had to leave the village of Pina for no other reason but the silent resistance of the peasants, which they were unable to overcome. It seems that they had been ruthless, both in requisitions for the militia and in executions of both real and pretended "fascists", that they very nearly provoked a rebellion. Neither had the executions yet stopped. They are, it is said, a more or less regular feature of the activities of Durruti's men...".
Borkenau then writes of the inactivity that developed; of the divisive, irresponsible and totally mendacious charges of the P.O.U.M. that the "Madrid Government was handicapping the operations." Of the real reasons for the failure to capture Zaragoza, he says: "It is quite obvious that nothing of the sort will happen not because of treason in high quarters (the Poumist charge), but from sheer inefficiency and incompetence all along the line."
Would that it had been only incompetence that prevented the fall of Zaragoza: for there was treason. But not from the embattled Madrid Government. The Anarchist cadres, plus those of the P.O.U.M., being by far the majority of the troops in Aragón were responsible for this new inactivity -- a situation which allowed the enemy to do as he pleased on other fronts with no threat to his rear.
[...]
Other than the seemingly sudden F.A.I. realization of its own inadequacies in terms of offensive action against a small but disciplined enemy — inadequacies that could easily have been overcome — they were now faced with another moment of truth.
In direct proportion to the growing enthusiasm for the generally correct policies of the Socialists and Communists of the Center Front, and the P.S.U.C./U.G.T. in Catalonia and Aragon, Anarchist strength was waning. They could recoup a certain amount of popularity, perhaps, by capturing Zaragoza. But they might also be seriously weakened in the process — and at the expense of strengthening their enemy, i.e., the Government of the Spanish Republic.
Ergo, hold the line Do nothing. And wait! But wait for what?
Anarchist private documents and books written after the war give some indication of this problem, and of the grave responsibility of the F.A.I. in what can be described as nothing short of treason to the Spanish people and the Government of the Popular Front.
Referring to the situation, Santillan states candidly that, “We can no longer conceal the fact that while at the front itself, we had but 30,000 rifles (and perhaps as many as 24 batteries, 100 heavy guns) in the rear, in the power of the organizations, we had an additional 60,000 rifles with more ammunition than was ever in the proximity of the enemy.”
From this same fountain of information — the most authoritative in this case — we read that the F.A.I./C.N.T. had decided that their principal cadres were not to go to the front to organize and direct the fight. Rather, they were to be held in the rear, conserved, as it were, for use against the other parties after the war had been won.
“If the leaders of the Libertarian organizations,” wrote Santillan, “had ever seriously resolved to send all their armament, their war material and their best men to the front — the war would easily have been over in a few months.”
[...]
And finally the explanation of treason — if such can be explained — in the following words, “To understand what was done in March of 1939, in Madrid and Levante (when the Anarchist troops of Mera attacked the Communists and Socialists at the request of the Casado-Besteiro Junta and opened the front to Franco), we must return to what was done in Catalonia in March of 1938 (when the Aragon front was broken with little or no Anarchist resistance), if not to May and June of 1937 (the rising in Barcelona against the Government). We had to free ourselves of any responsibility within the government; though the F.A.I. alone could not cause rebellion against the government, since that was not in harmony with the C.N.T.”
Onto the rear:
In each village thereafter Anarchist power was incorporated into a committee of the above organization [Comité de Nueva Estructuración Social de Aragón, Rioja y Navarra]. These "committees" took over the lands, the goods, and the animals of the peasantry — even from the poor. The peasants were then forced to work for a salary — "equal for everybody," and all submitted to the vigilance of the armed groups of the F.A.I.
In most cases money was done away with. The committees issued vouchers to be used only in the villages where issues. In this way the interlocking economy of town and village was destroyed — a forced return to a primitive economy, in which each village was thrust back upon its own resources. All silver and hard money was given over to the F.A.I. committee in exchange. Little of this "loot," for it can only be defined as that, was ever seen again.
Juan Peiró, one of the outstanding leaders of the C.N.T., and F.A.I., refers to the disillusion and resultant apathy of the peasantry as a result of these acts. “Does anyone believe,” he writes, “that through acts of violence an interest in or a desire for socialization can be awakened in the minds of our peasantry? Or perhaps by terrorizing it in this fashion it can be won over to the revolutionary spirit prevailing in the towns and cities?”
“The gravity of the mischief that is being done compels me to speak clearly. Many revolutionaries from different parts of Catalonia after conquering their respective towns have tried to conquer the countryside, the peasantry. Have they tried to achieve this by informing the peasantry that the hour of its emancipation from the social exploitation to which it has been subjected year after year has arrived? No! Or have they tried to accomplish this by carrying to the countryside, to the consciousness of the peasant, the spirit and the moral standards of the revolution? No, they have not done that either. When they have gone into the countryside, carrying with them the torch of the revolution, the first thing they have done has been to take away from the peasant all means of self-defense ... and having achieved this, they have robbed him even of his shirt.”
[...]
For, paradoxically, though Catalonia was the heartland of F.A.I. control, its influence did not extend to the Catalan peasantry. Gerald Brenan, reflecting upon this phenomenon, writes that, “The Anarchists stood for a system of collectivization of agricultural workers which was well suited to conditions in Andalucía But the greater part of Andalucía fell at once into Nationalist hands, and when the Anarchists of the large industrial towns attempted to impose collectivization upon Catalan peasants and Valencian rice growers, the met with strong opposition. The peasants, looking around for someone who would defend them against this unwanted "revolution," found their champion in the Communists."
On the other hand there can be no doubt that in many areas, towns and villages, the idea of Libertarian Communism was met with enthusiasm and support. And under the guidance of concerned and honest leadership, actually worked and worked well. The valley of the Llobregat would be an example of this limited success. The point is, however, that these were the exception and not the norm.
[...]
Witness the rest of Spain in which the greater part of the land had also been drawn into the collective system — but not with the program of “Libertarian Communism,” and not as a result of a village meeting in which armed men dictated the form and procedure whereby the villagers would rearrange their lives. The Spanish peasantry of Castile and Estremadura, and indeed all of loyal Spain — inclusive of the Anarchists of those zones — had been generally free to decide their own procedures in open discussion and in democratic assembly. And in the end, though the villages tilled the land collectively, their clothes remained their own, as did their chickens and animals and household articles, and the money shared as a result of harvests sold, was the money of the Spanish Republic and not a stamped voucher issued by strangers from a city fifty kilometers away.
[...]
The agriculture of both Catalonia and Aragon, beneath the dictates of the F.A.I., suffered to the point of ruin. Surface areas of regions under tillage fell between 20 to 30 percent within the first year. Agricultural products diminished proportionately so that a zone which in the past had been completely self-supporting, was now forced to import foodstuffs to live. Simultaneously with this the corresponding and interrelated economy of the areas — concomitant with the provisioning of the cities — was almost totally destroyed.
[...]
Within two weeks of the total application of Libertarian Communism in Aragon, collectivized businesses became vacuums of empty stores and warehouses, creating a serious supply problem. The textile industry, the produce industry and in general, all light industry in Catalonia, also collectivized by the Anarchists, refused to accept the vouchers and other paper money given out by the "Committees" in Aragón. They demanded be paid in the coin of the Republic.
[...]
The Anarchists forgot, or never knew, the simple, elemental reality, that production is the decisive aspect of any active economy; if you do not produce there is nothing to distribute. They put down the problems of production, concentrating solely, in their demagoguery, upon their programs for “equal distribution.” In fact this highly touted “equality” didn’t apply either, since salaries differed from one factory to another. The workers collected according to the fortunes and the reserves of their particular factory, and were continually subjected to the caprices of the omnipotent Committees. When the reserves were spent the F.A.I. then went to the State to ask that it subsidize the payrolls.
This process of applied egalitarianism went to such extremes that actors and entertainers collected the same as the cleaning woman in the theater. And if this sounds inspiring to “Women’s Liberation,” know this: equality stopped with the differentiation between the sexes. The F.A.I. maintained the principle that the wages of woman workers would continue to be inferior to those of men, though they did the same work.
[...]
The industrial might of Catalonia, with a metalurgical and chemical indsutry equal to that of some of the most advanced countries, was sufficient to have provided all the small arms — rifles, machine guns, mortars and cartridges, plus all manner of artillery shells, that the Republic needed.
The Anarchists, who for the first critical year of the war, controlled this industry, and in effect sabotaged its potential for the war, will forever share the guilt along with the capitulationists and the defeatists, for the final Franco victory.
D. Santillán boasts that at the end of the three months they were producing approximately 4,000 shells per month. This is at less than 150 per day; less than the total potential of any medium sized machine shop. He also boasts of 1,000 kilos of T.N.T. being produced per day, after one year, and 600,000 fuses for shells and grenades during that year. And this was done, he writes, with approximately 150,000 workers in the war industry. If his production figures reveal nothing more than the total waste of manpower here, one will have some idea of the tragedy of the Spanish Republic Where were the rifles and the small arms So desperately needed? There is no mention anywhere of this kind of production in Catalonia Any applied statistics will show that the zone was capable of producing these weapons in the tens, if not in the hundreds of thousands. But this was not done, so that in the end, when Catalonia fell, Alvarez del Vayo could say that the remnants of the Peoples Army in its retreat across the French frontier, had but 30,000 rifles to defend itself against a Franco Army — in Catalonia alone — of over 350,000 men inclusive of five complete Italian divisions.
Absolving themselves of any guilt in the matter by simply hiding the facts from the world — and they had plenty of help in this — they then, in what can only be described as an act of supreme arrogance, denounced the Central Government of the Popular Front for not issuing Soviet arms to their units in Aragón this, while the Madrid militia battalions were bleeding to death before the guns of the Army of Africa and the bombs of the Condor Legion; while Málaga fell, and while the Fascist onslaught in the valley of the Jarama and before Guadalajara was being desperately contained. “It is obvious,” they announced pontifically, and ignoring any vestige of reality, “that these arms are being given only to Communist led units to enhance the prestige and power of the P.C.E.”
Very interesting how the comintern is never linked with the theoretical origins of left and right deviation in the international communist movement, most relevantly the vast consequences of the popular front strategy and their assessments of deepening bourgeois-democratic revolutions as a middle step
Small appendix: It's more accurate to say the comintern played a part in the development of these deviations, rather than say it was the origin. The origin of these deviations has more to do with petit-bourgeois influence on the worker's movement.
The Comintern suffered from two main theoretical pitfalls that significantly hampered the efforts of CPs (Communist Parties) across the world, especially Europe.
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TYPES OF REVOLUTION
In its VI Congress of 1928, either from a lack of proper information, incompetent analysis from the CPs or from the Comintern itself, a number of countries (Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, the Balkan countries, etc.) were defined as "having numerous survivals of semi-feudal relationships in agriculture, possessing, to a certain extent, the material pre-requisites for socialist construction, and in which the bourgeois-democratic reforms have not yet been completed". By haphazardly applying the lessons of the February and October revolutions (bourgeois-democratic and proletarian revolutions respectively) to these other countries supposedly not yet fully consolidated as parts of the imperialist pyramid, the national liberation theory for colonies prioritizing alliances with national-revolutionary bourgeoisies was transplanted to fit into these capitalist (and some already fully imperialist, such as Portugal and Spain) countries.
The strategy of social alliances that characterized the united front strategy from the III Congress was morphed into one of political alliances with certain parts of the bourgeoisie. Instead of properly characterizing the bourgeoisie in these countries as being broadly split between a liberal and a socialdemocratic end, it was instead seen as being split between a reactionary and a progressive bourgeoisie. The latter was to be allied with, to finish the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions in these countries to enable the possibility of a proletarian revolution. It was thought that if the CPs participated in these bourgeois-democratic revolutions, they'd gain hegemony within the working class as soon as the progressive bourgeoisie halted all "progressive" goals upon reaching power, in a situation similar to the bolshevik experience of the February Revolution.
In countries such as Spain, which encompassed multiple nations, this progressive bourgeoisie was identified with the bourgeoisies of those stateless nations, further degrading the capacity of the CPs to lead the revolutionary organization of the working class, although it became more relevant way after the Comintern's dissolution.
This laid the foundations for the popular front strategy, evidenced by the fact that some CPs began to create popular fronts on the basis of the programme of the VI Congress, before popular fronts were officially adopted in the VII Congress, in 1935.
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THE POPULAR FRONT STRATEGY
The popular front as a strategy was, as said before, adopted officially by the VII and final Congress of the Comintern. The united front strategy from the III Congress placed the priority on a class unity, the unity of the working class under a single Communist Party. In the wake of fascist triumphs across Europe and what seemed like an inability from the CPs to oppose fascists, they restructured the priorities of the International. Instead of a proletarian revolution, to be carried out by a CP and the working class it unites plus the convenient social alliances, the priority became the defeat of organized fascism through any means, including the collaboration with social-democracy, the parties of the II International. This time, class unity was transplanted to refer to the alliance between the working class and its ultimately counter-revolutionary foes. The social-democratic parties that hadn't yet capitulated to fascism like the SPD did, were differentiated with what the International referred to as "social-fascists". I won't waste too many lines explaining the evident historical failure of the popular front strategy in every single context it was applied to. The CP of Spain, had it maintained the united front strategy and had it properly applied the lessons of the 1934 revolution, would have probably been able to sieze power by the time of the reactionary coup of 1936.
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THE EFFECTS
The legacy (or rather, damage) of those analyses is not confined to their historical movement and were reinforced after the change in the USSR's course after Stalin's death and his demonization. The USSR had been, for better or for worse, a referent for CPs worldwide, and the change in course left many CPs even more isolated, especially those in the global south, many of which still claimed Stalin's legacy because of the internationalism crucial to the development of these CPs that stopped after his death. Having identified certain countries as needing a finished bourgeoisie-democratic revolutions before enabling the possibility of a proletarian revolution, and having muddled the waters as to what class unity meant, the infiltration of petit-bourgeois and worker-aristocratic tendencies into the worker's movement was massively facilitated.
The so-called "national pathways" to socialism became a common justification, born out of the mischaracterization of the stage of capitalist development in the VI Congress of the CI, for many deviations. Politically, it always lead to the collaboration between the CP and reformist powers in their bourgeois governments (aided by the memory of popular-frontism), such as in the case of Italy's and Spain's CP, an abdication of the historical call to the organization of the proletarian revolution. Organizationally, it often metastazised in the degradation of discipline in the party and the repudiation of the workplace as the territorial basis of party organization (one which had admittedly low implementation in the times of the CI, but which, however, is a direct manifestation of recognizing the working class as the prime revolutionary class of our time, and did not lead to outright reformist drift). Curiously enough, these "national pathways", against the supposedly dogmatic and irrelevant leninist principles, always arrived at the same place; integration into bourgeois governments and the eventual complete dissolution of explicit revolutionary goals and strategy.
The mischaracterization of the national question in the countries with a "medium development of capitalism" eventually evolved into the wholesale attribution of a progressive character to separatist movements in Europe, related with the rhethoric of the national pathways to socialism. Meaning that the nationalist and separatist movements of Europe, with no other program than a mere reconfiguration of the borders along which the capitalist and working classes are divided, were seen as movements whose support was a necessary step towards socialism. Movements such as ETA (that had an explicitly marxist component during a certain period) and the IRA.
These errors are not solely culpable and I don't think it's useful to wallow about them or wonder what could have been had they not been committed. After all, "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness". These errors became opportunities for the worker aristocracy, as the right hand man of the bourgeoisie in the worker's movement, to promote their petit-bourgeois aspirational ideological deviations. These deviations were not only political, they also manifested in terms of organizational structure of the CPs, either in advance to or in lockstep with the political deviations.
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ORGANIZATIONAL REFLECTIONS
It's most visible in the questions related to the bolshevization of the Party; in regards to to the basic organization of the Party and the requisites for membership.
For some context, the Comintern established the factory or company cell as the basic structure of the Party in its III Congress (1921), because it's what's most articulated for political activity in the setting of the development of the mode of production itself, the main contradiction and the source of the class struggle. This wasn't really applied or even discussed in most parties until the meeting of the Comintern's CC of January 1924 (and the organization conferences of 1925 and 1926), where they identify the KPD's disregard of the factory cell, hence its distancing from the workers, as one of the main factors contributing to the defeat of the 1923 Hamburg uprising. This analysis is also proof that the common criticism that the cell structure is wholly based on the Tsarist empire's conditions is false, and that it was arrived at from the experiences of many more CPs.
By 1929, the KPD had 14'6% of its militants in factory cells, 45% in street cells, and 40% in radios (immediately superior structure to the cell) without a cell. There was a similar situation, for instance, in the French and Czechoslovakian CPs. This was due to many reasons, among which was a failure to understand the figure of a militant (more on that later) and resistance to the bolshevization process. Amadeo Bordiga, representing a minority in the Italian CP (PCI) and in a historical echo, argued that the cell structure was only appropriate for the Russian context, and that Italy needed its own (national) path.
Loriot, from the French CP, argued that the radios should have political sovereignty, because factory/company cells had no capacity for political education, completely disregarding the role of political practice in education and misunderstanding the roles of a cell defined by the Comintern.
The Czechoslovak CP (KSČ), originally formed from mostly social-democratic parties (first a majority of the Czechoslovak Social-Democratic Party (ČSDSD) in 1920, then the left wing of the Slovak Social-Democratic Party (SDSS) and the social-democrats of Subcarpathia in 1921, the last two being briefly joined into the "Marxist Left in Slovakia and the Transcarpathian Ukraine"), was extremely reticent of giving up the social-democratic conception of separating political (electoral) work and economic, immediate work between the party and the union respectively. This was one of the causes for the crisis and eventual rupture of the party between 1927 and 1929. By 1930, of the party's 57% worker membership, 14% (of the total) were in factory cells.
As a continuity of the previously discussed political mistakes of the Comintern, the Italian CP during the end of and after WW2 moved away from the bolshevik Party model and towards a mass model, the Partito Nuovo, justified in 1944 with the idea of the Single Working Class Party (union of all "proletarian" parties, that is, communist and social-democratic), itself developed from the popular front strategy. This was paired with a political shift, away from the socialist revolution and towards the construction of a democracy, without class character. This is a legacy of the Comintern's VI Congress, discussed above. The factory cell was also questioned, stressing in 1957 that the factory cell militants should also be active in their corresponding street cells, to be eventually broadened and removed. The PCI also disregarded the search for communist hegemony or even relevancy in the unions, alleging that there was no longer a worker aristocracy to influence the unions towards bourgeois positions.
The Spanish CP cheapened the militancy figure, in a clear move away from a revolutionary vanguard and towards a struggle within a spanish democracy, following the national reconciliation policy, itself a logical conclusion of the assessment of Spain as a country with a bad enough capitalist development to not be able to have a proletarian revolution. I could go into detail about the timeline, but I don't think it's necessary. The eurocommunist and similar deviations in the late 20th century of the West European CPs was a destination which, in retrospect, was firmly in the straight path forward for those two political mistakes of the Comintern.
Outside Europe, Browder's decision to dissolve the CPUSA in 1944, justified by the dissolution of the Comintern, the Tehran conference, and based on the National Unity policy as a continuation of the Popular Front. Eventually, it was this distancing from the Comintern and destruction of the CPUSA that allowed for opportunist, worker-aristocratic deviations such as patriotic socialism to flourish. This had a devastating effect not only on the USA, but also in Latin America. Some of these effects were name changes and the abandonment of factory cells, such as in the Mexican CP (PCM).
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Overall, this has been the effect of the influence of petit-bourgeois, worker-aristocratic and generally left and right deviations in the development of the Third International's Communist Parties. The opposition to these mistakes, their direct and secondary effects is essential for each country's Communist Party, capitalized, to come about again, on the basis of proletarian internationalism and the proven —directly and by failure of alternatives— bolshevik organization of the CP.
still thinking about that word processor's marketing tumblr blog editing an image of them shaking hands with the Catholic Church, worldwide sponsor of misogyny and child abuse
“Spanish antifascists. Go on until defeating fascism, the Russian people are with you” — J. Stalin
During the Spanish Civil War, in the defense of Madrid, posters featuring figures like Lenin or Republican presidents were hung in the streets and the Puerta del Sol to boost the morale of Republican and antifascist civilians. Radio Ventas was a branch of the Spanish Communist Party in the Ventas neighborhood of Madrid, responsible for establishing and financing propaganda in the city center.
While countries like France and the United Kingdom maintained a policy of “non-intervention” in the Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union under Stalin became the largest military supplier to the Second Republic. This helped the PCE (Communist Party of Spain) gain political and social influence within the Republican ranks as the war progressed. On the other hand, the rebel forces were supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, leaving a huge debt to the country after General Francisco Franco consolidated a fascist government that lasted almost four decades.
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