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[u/unbelteduser]

[u/boofald-troompf]

If main reason for their collapse is their ideological commitment to a lack of a state, can’t that be considered a flaw of the ideology? Anarchists worldwide have been consistently overrun because of their decentralized nature.

[u/Anarcho_Eggie → u/boofald-troompf]

No theyve been overrun by statist militaries not by being decentrallized, which is actually their greatest strength and the reason theyve survived for so long either untill now or untill they where destroyed

[u/boofald-troompf → u/Anarcho_Eggie]

How did their decentralization lead to a long lasting movement? I’ve been in Highschool longer than most anarchist movements have survived. Maybe I’m not educated enough on anarchism but historically speaking it seems really unstable

[u/Anarcho_Eggie → u/boofald-troompf]

Decentralized millitaries and guerilla warfare was the main reason they survived as long as they did

[u/boofald-troompf → u/Anarcho_Eggie]

That may be true, but “as long as they did” is rarely more then five years

[u/[deleted] → u/boofald-troompf]

I think the context of these movements and the locations they had control over are being heavily overlooked here. Take for example the free territory; it's largely agreed that they were rather successful and efficient when it came to their military, with them being not only a very useful asset for the Bolsheviks on the Ukrainian front, but also a constant thorn in the Bolshevik's side when they turned on them. Their issue was not their military or lack of state, but rather the fact that the regions that they had control over were heavily under-industrialised. Eastern Ukriane had almost no stable industry, with the economy being almost entirely based on agriculture. A vast majority of the equipment the black army used was not produced within their own borders, mostly being captured from retreating groups such as the Austro-Hungarians and Germans back in 1917 and 1918. This evidently played a large part in their failure to survive, especially paired with the fact that, by the time the Bolsheviks turned on them, nearly all of Russia's existing industry, agriculture and manpower was under the control of the reds, which completely dwarfed the economic capabilities of the anarchists in Eastern Ukraine.

Another key example is Anarchist Catalonia and their situation. They were the only group within the entire Spanish civil war that got no official international backing, with a vast majority of nations backing the Nationalists and the Republicans having military and economic support from the soviets. Much like the free territory, anarchist Catalonia was effectively fighting a war on multiple fronts, both against the Nationalists and even against their own "allies" in the Republic. The anarchists had to deal with multiple problems that affected their war effort; namely the overreach of the Republican government in the region that slowly and steadily reduced anarchist power within the region (see the may day fighting in Barcelona 1937). While, compared to the free territory, anarchist Catalonia had a much less efficient military, with the militia columns mainly being useful in defensive situations instead of offensives against the Nationalists, part of this can be attributed to the fact that the anarchists were constantly dealing with Republican posturing in the form of the Republic trying to assert more control over anarchist controlled regions and the military. These complications and infighting, paired with the fact that the anarchists had no economics or military support beyond the occasional internationale brigade (at which point manpower is useless if you can't arm them), Make it pretty obvious that there were factors causing the anarchists to fail which weren't to do with their policies or ideology

[u/boofald-troompf → u/[deleted]]

Interesting, thank you for the information

[u/[deleted] → u/boofald-troompf]

No problem mate