# What if the Spanish Revolution had survived? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 9, 2010, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116 "2010-07-09T17:29:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/41 "2010-07-13T21:19:34Z")
> [@villa](#): > > Congratulations for a non-sequitur there. When people have set them up in the past, especially during the Industrial Revolution, they were subject to assaults from both the groups of thugs hired by capitalists, and the law enforcement forces, also in the control of capitalists. > > Whether they are legal or not now is somewhat irrelevant to that. Why is it irrelevant that such things are completely legal now? There really are plenty of cooperatives and collectives and communes nowadays that operate completely without interference from the cops and goons of the capitalists. If such methods of social organization are dramatically superior to conventional methods, then why do they still operate on the fringes? Because they were subjected to violence in the past? Well, capitalists were subjected to violence in the past, and were despised by the ruling classes of the time. Yet capitalism thrived and eventually supplanted the feudal aristocracy. If anarchism/socialism is to ever succeed in the real world, it will have to arise from the already existing social order, which sadly includes a hostile statist/capitalist power structure. If anarchism is powerless in the face of actually existing archism, then advocating anarchism is just so much mental masturbation. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/42 "2010-07-13T21:38:38Z")
[QUOTE=villa] When people have set them up in the past, especially during the Industrial Revolution, they were subject to assaults from both the groups of thugs hired by capitalists, and the law enforcement forces, also in the control of capitalists. [/QUOTE] What’s stopping you from doing it NOW, though? In the past ‘capitalist states’ (which weren’t all that capitalist) did a LOT of things that aren’t acceptable today. Ok, so that was then and this is now. What’s stopping them today? Where are the thugs and law enforcement forces controlled by the dread capitalists preventing such constructs today? > [@](#): > > Whether they are legal or not now is somewhat irrelevant to that. Why? Seems entirely relevant to the what you were replying to (though less so to the OP, I guess). -XT ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/43 "2010-07-13T22:17:42Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > 1. Could an anarcho-syndicalist Spain have won the World Cup? No way…they would’ve raffled names to get the team. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I included the “maybe” only because I’m thinking that if everything had been done the way the Communists wanted (remember, they were the ones mainly resisting the Revolution and calling for a more “pragmatic” policy), the result might have been victory – and a Stalinist Spain. > > Granted, even that would have been preferable to Franco. Franco is a pussycat compare to Stalin. 1000 years of Franco wold’ve been better than 20 of Stalin. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/44 "2010-07-13T22:21:00Z")
[QUOTE=Ají de Gallina] Franco is a pussycat compare to Stalin. 1000 years of Franco wold’ve been better than 20 of Stalin. [/QUOTE] I don’t know if he was a pussycat, but I definitely agree with you that Stalin was MUCH worse. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/45 "2010-07-13T22:56:36Z")
Ironically, I think the worst consequence of a Republican victory in the Spanish Civil War might have been a Nazi victory in WWII. Hitler ended up conquering most of Europe and he wanted to take Gibraltar and close off the Mediterranean. But Franco and the Nationalists were fellow fascists so he attempted to negotiate passage through Spain rather than invade it. Franco was able to play for time and keep Spain out of the war. If the Republicans had been in power, there would have been no attempts at a peaceful settlement. The Wehrmacht would have run through Spain (and probably Portugal) in 1940. This would have put Germany and Italy in a much stronger position and the United Kingdom in a much weaker one and might have tipped the war in Hitler’s favor. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/46 "2010-07-13T23:30:01Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Ironically, I think the worst consequence of a Republican victory in the Spanish Civil War might have been a Nazi victory in WWII. > > Hitler ended up conquering most of Europe and he wanted to take Gibraltar and close off the Mediterranean. But Franco and the Nationalists were fellow fascists so he attempted to negotiate passage through Spain rather than invade it. Franco was able to play for time and keep Spain out of the war. > > If the Republicans had been in power, there would have been no attempts at a peaceful settlement. The Wehrmacht would have run through Spain (and probably Portugal) in 1940. This would have put Germany and Italy in a much stronger position and the United Kingdom in a much weaker one and might have tipped the war in Hitler’s favor. I’m skeptical – what makes you think that conquering Spain would have put the Axis in a stronger position? It would have been that much more overextended in its resources; and the French Resistance would have been nothing compared to Spanish partisan activity. FWIW, [here](http://www.johnreilly.info/spain.htm) is an alternate-history scenario, by conservative Catholic intellectual John J. Reilly, positing something similar to what you’re thinking. > [@](#): > > . . . Spain would become for the USSR something like what Cuba became in the 1960s and Nicaragua in the 1980s. > > The French would not have been pleased by this turn of events. French governments have traditionally alined themselves with whatever regime ruled Russia in order to counterbalance the powers of Middle Europe. They would have found this harder to do, however, if the Russians acquired a base adjoining French territory. The advantage to a Russian alliance, after all, is that Russians are too far away to be a menace themselves. There was no way the French could have thrown their support to Germany. It would have been politically impossible, and it would have been strategic suicide. However, the proximity of Soviet Spain would have made France much more reluctant to engage in any major war, anywhere. It is not just that Spain could eventually become a military threat. The Communist Party in France would have been so emboldened by their southern colleagues’ success that would have started looking for revolutionary opportunities. A lost war, or even a stalemated war, would do just nicely. Knowing this, the French government would have been much less likely to declare war on Germany in 1939 after the invasion of Poland. Indeed, it might not have been possible to do so, since the Hitler-Stalin Pact was in effect, and the French Left would have made quite a fuss about entering the war, even if they hoped to benefit from the outcome. > > Thus, one result of a Loyalist victory could have been that Hitler would not, at the outset, have had to fight a war on two fronts. If the French did not declare war, the British could not have, either. Where would they have put their army? In his pre-war alliance negotiations with Mussolini, Hitler seemed to be contemplating a general war for 1942 or 1943. He would have been able to pick a fight in the West at his leisure, probably much better prepared than he was in 1939. In this war, the desperate French might have accepted an alliance with Soviet Spain, provided Stalin relented. Certainly Spain would have been a reasonable base for the French to retreat to, after losing Paris. Even if Soviet Spain had chosen Franco’s policy and attempted neutrality, it is unlikely that Hitler would have accepted it. He could not have. His goal in World War II was the conquest of Russia, something he could not have accomplished with a Soviet ally in his rear. The conquest of Spain could have been part of his initial western campaign, or it might have waited a year or two, but it would have been inevitable. > > A Nazi campaign would have had several things working against it. For one thing, the supply lines were long enough to create formidable logistical problems, never the strong suit of the Nazi military. Assuming the English were still in the war, Hitler, like Napoleon, would have found just how accessible Spain is from the sea. On the other hand, the Spanish Soviet government would have been unlikely to be very popular by this time, assuming it had continued with the process of Stalinization. If the Germans concluded their campaign by taking Gibraltar, whose British base was (and is) a long-standing affront to Spanish pride, the Germans could have been accepted as liberators. The loss of Gibraltar could have cost the British effective control of the Mediterranean. The resupplying, not just of Egypt, but of India and Australia, would have become immensely more difficult. > > In sum, then, a Loyalist victory in the Spanish Civil War could have lost the Allies the Second World War. I, for one, find this conclusion paradoxical. Also by Reilly: A [review](http://www.johnreilly.info/tlc.htm) of _The Last Crusade,_ by Warren H. Carroll, which views the Civil War from a (believe it or not) pro-Carlist perspective. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/47 "2010-07-13T23:35:39Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > Franco is a pussycat compare to Stalin. > 1000 years of Franco wold’ve been better than 20 of Stalin. I’m not talking about Stalin, I’m talking about a Spanish Stalinist regime, which would have been preferable to Franco’s. In Chile, Allende, for all his faults, was still preferable to Pinochet; and Castro has been better for Cuba than any fascist in his position would have been. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/48 "2010-07-14T00:49:05Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] I’m skeptical – what makes you think that conquering Spain would have put the Axis in a stronger position? It would have been that much more overextended in its resources; and the French Resistance would have been nothing compared to Spanish partisan activity. [/QUOTE] Spanish partisan activity would have been nothing because by the time WWII kicked off Spain was spent and would have been even more so had the Republicans won because of what that would have entailed fighting wise. As for why Germany would have been in a much better position, it would have controlled one of the major gateways to the Med and to Africa. They could have much easier staged out of Spain for their forays into Africa. And they weren’t overextended until they invaded Russia…certainly not in 1940’s when they most likely would have invaded and conquered Spain (which would have had zero chance of stopping a full on Nazi invasion at the height of their power). In fact, it might have delayed Germany’s invasion of Russia which might have actually been an added side benefit for Hitler et al. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/49 "2010-07-14T01:04:09Z")
In addition to the reasons XT already mentioned, conquest of Spain and Portugal probably would have given Germany control of the Azores, the Madiera, and the Canarys as well as Iberia itself. This would have been a major advantage in the Battle of the Atlantic, which was a close thing. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/50 "2010-07-14T06:27:40Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I’m not talking about Stalin, I’m talking about a Spanish Stalinist regime, which would have been preferable to Franco’s. Why on earth do you assume that? A Spanish Stalinist regime would have taken orders from the Soviet Union, and done its best to turn Spain into a copy of Stalin’s Soviet Union. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/51 "2010-07-14T06:45:29Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I’m not talking about Stalin, I’m talking about a Spanish Stalinist regime, which would have been preferable to Franco’s. In Chile, Allende, for all his faults, was still preferable to Pinochet; and Castro has been better for Cuba than any fascist in his position would have been. Chile was a democracy prior to Pinochet and Allende had been elected – he would either have been voted out or left when his term was up. So I don’t see how that relates to the thread. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/52 "2010-07-14T13:46:46Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Chile was a democracy prior to Pinochet and Allende had been elected – he would either have been voted out or left when his term was up. So I don’t see how that relates to the thread. No, and he wasn’t a Stalinist, either, I’m just using him to put the matter in perspetive: Even Marxist regimes are better than Fascist regimes. That’s not even **debatable,** for Og’s sake! ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/53 "2010-07-14T14:42:33Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > No, and he wasn’t a Stalinist, either, I’m just using him to put the matter in perspetive: Even Marxist regimes are better than Fascist regimes. That’s not even **debatable,** for Og’s sake! Brainglutton, I know you love Leftism, no matter how insane, but you are showing your madness here a little too obviously. When people claim something isn’t debatable, it’s their own absolute conviction which is wrong.\*. You can’t accurately define either, and you remain quite ignorant of history whenever it suits you. So stop making these wild assertions into the air based on your ridiculous absolute faith in Leftism of whatever stripe! Of course, that’s not even getting tinto the basic fact that Fscism and Marxism are more or less two different ways of achieving the same goal. “Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state,” and that both grew from the French Revolution and Rosseau, one by way of Marx and (more importantly) Lenin, and the other by way of William James and Mussolini. For ym part, I’d have to say that Franco’s Spain, and much more Mussolini’s Italy, were all _vastly_ better than Lenin’s Russia or Mao’s China - much less Stalin’s U.S.S.R. That would not hold true for all fascist regimes - but you are attempting to put their morality, or some abstract “good” I doubt you even believe in, on display as some kind of moral absolute. And you are utterly, absurdly wrong, and it’s incredibly hilarious to see you flail away like a puppy chewing a bone too large for him. \*Unless the matter is a universal assumption which rests on no prior condition, in which case it’s not debateble - but only because true debate itself is impossible, not because it cannot be argued. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/54 "2010-07-14T15:12:23Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > I guess my education is lacking, so please enlighten me. Can you give examples? I already gave examples such as the Diggers. [QUOTE=Lemur866] Why is it irrelevant that such things are completely legal now? There really are plenty of cooperatives and collectives and communes nowadays that operate completely without interference from the cops and goons of the capitalists. If such methods of social organization are dramatically superior to conventional methods, then why do they still operate on the fringes? Because they were subjected to violence in the past? Well, capitalists were subjected to violence in the past, and were despised by the ruling classes of the time. Yet capitalism thrived and eventually supplanted the feudal aristocracy. [/QUOTE] It’s irrelevant because I wasn’t saying these methods of social organization are dramatically superior. I was responding to a claim that they were doomed to fail, and historically had always failed. My point was not that the world should become an anarcho-socialist commune, but rather that capitalism and capitalists (or proto-capitalists) of the past viewed such worker controlled economic and social ventures as significant enough a threat to often violently close them down. Why do that if they are doomed to fail on their own? ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/55 "2010-07-14T16:02:56Z")
> [@villa](#): > > I already gave examples such as the Diggers. I read through the [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diggers) on them. They don’t seem to be an example of a communal or cooperative business put down by a capitalist state with violence and the law. They were attacked by the local feudal lords (not capitalists) when they expropriated the commons (thus breaking basic property law). ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/56 "2010-07-14T16:23:29Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > No, and he wasn’t a Stalinist, either, I’m just using him to put the matter in perspetive: Even Marxist regimes are better than Fascist regimes. That’s not even **debatable,** for Og’s sake! You’ve got it backwards - Pinochet was a bastard and a thug, but he was vastly preferable to Allende, who was absolutely cratering his country’s economy. By the time of the coup, Chile’s economy was on a freight train ride to disaster. Had Allende stayed in power (he wouldn’t have - there was widespread opposition to him by the time of the coup), Chile would have wound up another as another dreary Marxist hellhole like North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, or the other countries where that misguided philosophy has held its grip on power. Instead, it’s one of the more wealthy countries in South America, with a higher GDP per capita than any of its neighbors, and about 10X higher than Cuba’s. Both Marxism and Fascism are statist political philosophies that share a lot of features. But in general, fascism at least retains a semblance of a market-based economy under its command. Marxism destroys it outright. At least until the black markets develop. Marxism is responsible for more deaths and human misery than any other political philosophy in history. How you can say it’s ‘obviously’ superior to anything else is beyond me. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/57 "2010-07-14T16:38:57Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > I read through the [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diggers) on them. They don’t seem to be an example of a communal or cooperative business put down by a capitalist state with violence and the law. They were attacked by the local feudal lords (not capitalists) when they expropriated the commons (thus breaking basic property law). In 1649, Britain was hardly a true feudal society. It’s fair to describe the landowners, who controlled the means of production, as being proto-capitalists. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/58 "2010-07-14T16:41:25Z")
> [@villa](#): > > I already gave examples such as the Diggers. > > It’s irrelevant because I wasn’t saying these methods of social organization are dramatically superior. I was responding to a claim that they were doomed to fail, and historically had always failed. My point was not that the world should become an anarcho-socialist commune, but rather that capitalism and capitalists (or proto-capitalists) of the past viewed such worker controlled economic and social ventures as significant enough a threat to often violently close them down. Why do that if they are doomed to fail on their own? Well, they aren’t doomed to fail quickly. See: Soviet Russia, Maoist China, and so on. And I’m not arguing that anarcho-socialism is doomed to failure, I’m just arguing that historically it has always failed, and suggesting that there might be reasons for that. I’m willing to entertain the notion that implacable resistance from the bloodsucking capitalists and their running dog lackeys is a big reason for that historical failure. But if so, if you advocate for anarcho-socialism, you have to take into account the hostility of the capitalists and plan to do something about it rather than just whine about it. And if your plan is to just shoot them all, under the belief that since you’re morally superior you have the right to enforce your beliefs through violence, then don’t be suprised when your opponents believe the same and shoot back. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/59 "2010-07-14T16:46:16Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > You’ve got it backwards - Pinochet was a bastard and a thug, but he was vastly preferable to Allende, who was absolutely cratering his country’s economy. By the time of the coup, Chile’s economy was on a freight train ride to disaster. Had Allende stayed in power (he wouldn’t have - there was widespread opposition to him by the time of the coup), Chile would have wound up another as another dreary Marxist hellhole like North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, or the other countries where that misguided philosophy has held its grip on power. Instead, it’s one of the more wealthy countries in South America, with a higher GDP per capita than any of its neighbors, and about 10X higher than Cuba’s. Preferable for whom? Certainly not for the tens of thousands tortured and murdered. And its absolutely ridiculous to compare anything with Cuba’s GDP. There is no way of knowing how Cuba would have turned out without the embargo. Maybe if the so called Democratic powers hadn’t abandoned Socialist regimes such as those in Chile, Spain, Nicaragua, Cuba etc, those leftist governments wouldn’t have been driven to the Soviet block for support. I think it was Desmond Tutu who was asked about Soviet backing for the ANC, and responded “when you are in a deep dark prison, and a hand comes in to pull you out, you don’t look whose hand it is.” Especially when those criticizing you for being in bed with the Soviets are taking part in keeping you in repressed circumstances. This argument comes out every time someone wants to justify brutal fascist regimes like those of Franco or Pinochet. “At least they stopped the Stalinists taking over…” Well maybe the only damned reason the Stalinist stood a chance of taking over is the rich, allegedly Democratic nations of the world were more than happy to stand by and watch brutal oppression, and even support it as long as the pay backs were good enough, thus driving any progressive forces in the oppressed country into the arms of Moscow. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116/60 "2010-07-14T16:50:00Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Well, they aren’t doomed to fail quickly. See: Soviet Russia, Maoist China, and so on. If you see Soviet Russia and Maoist China as anarcho-socialist communes, then I suggest you take either a history or political philosophy course. Or both. > [@Lemur866](#): > > And I’m not arguing that anarcho-socialism is doomed to failure, I’m just arguing that historically it has always failed, and suggesting that there might be reasons for that. I’m willing to entertain the notion that implacable resistance from the bloodsucking capitalists and their running dog lackeys is a big reason for that historical failure. And hence my initial response wasn’t to you. It was to a Franco apologist. > [@Lemur866](#): > > But if so, if you advocate for anarcho-socialism, you have to take into account the hostility of the capitalists and plan to do something about it rather than just whine about it. And if your plan is to just shoot them all, under the belief that since you’re morally superior you have the right to enforce your beliefs through violence, then don’t be suprised when your opponents believe the same and shoot back. Where have I advocated for anarcho-socialism in this thread? All I have said is where communal/socialist worker controlled groups emerged, capitalists took great pains to crush them, both by using the law and by using violence. If I say that where Sufi groups have emerged in many Islamic countries, the Islamic authorities have persecuted them, does that mean I am advocating for Sufism? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-spanish-revolution-had-survived/546116.md?page=4)