Isn’t the idea of having an authority at all contrary to the anarchist ideology? Sounds to me like they were more “representative democratic brigades” than anarchistic brigades, since they elected officials that had full control until the next election.
Chemo@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
In the anarchist brigades in the Spanish Civil War soldiers elected their officers democratically. In combat they still had ultimate command authority but afterwards soldiers could replace then if they where disappointed in their decisions.
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
zloubida@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not really. Anarchists generally recognize the authority of specialists (scientists, doctors, …), they just refute them the right to impose their ideas on individual. It’s a little stretch, but officers in an anarchist army would be like specialists, whose authority is not imposed, but freely recognized.
vvilld@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No, the idea of authority is not necessarily contrary to anarchism. You need to first examine the source of that authority’s power, the structures which put them into power, and how that power is enforced.
If it’s coercive in any way, that is, if you are threatened with violence in some way if you do not comply, then it is indeed counter to anarchism. However, that’s not how anarchist brigades in 1930s Spain, the Makhnovshchina, the Korean People’s Association in Manchuria, the anarchist brigades during the Russian Civil War, etc worked. First, membership was pretty much always voluntary. If you didn’t want to follow an order, you didn’t have to and you wouldn’t be executed or tried as deserter or whatever like in most traditional armies. If you didn’t want to follow an order, it was generally accepted that it was your right to refuse.
Second, there weren’t set terms between elections like you might be thinking of within a modern representative democracy. If an elected officer was issuing commands the rest of the soldiers didn’t agree with or like, they could be voted out at any moment, including in the middle of battle. This tended to present problems in the Spanish Civil War where the Soviet Union tried to exert complete control over everyone on the anti-fascist side. They’d send in Soviet officers to lead anarchist battalions. As soon as the Soviet gave an order that the rest didn’t like, they’d vote him out. When the Soviets refused to give up authority, the entire battalion would disband, steal all their supplies, and reform a few miles away as a “new” battalion and elect their own leader.
They also weren’t usually structured like we tend to think of military units with a mass of enlisted and a few detached officers issuing orders. The officers tended to come from the enlisted ranks. The officer position was less of a leader and more of a coordinator. Plans were usually made collaboratively by the whole unit (or those who cared to take part). If the heat of battle when snap decisions needed to be made, the officer tended to be the one who made those decisions, but there was no expectation that anyone who disobeyed would be killed or court-marshalled. People obeyed because they knew the person making the decision, why they were making the decision they made, and that if it was a bad decision they could replace that person.
Acamon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
As far as I understand it, most anarchists are opposed to unjust / unjustified / unnecessary hierarchies. There’s many advantages to having managers, team leaders, captains, etc. because it can be helpful to have someone coordinated actions between a larger group.
What anarchists would seek to avoid would be structures where power starts to consolidate around people beyond what’s needed. It’s good to have a leader for quick decisions in the heat of battle, or other emergency, but that person doesn’t need to decide everything outside of battle, because there’s time to have a more democratic or consensual decision making process. They also don’t need to be given more money, or not be accountable and replaceable by their squad.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The voters have enough guns to challenge their authority.
Chemo@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
I think you made a good point that highlights the change of anarchist ideas over time. I dint think many modern anarchists would be fine with this model nowadays. But anarchists back then came from a time where monarchists still ruled and even the idea of democracy and equality was kind of radical. So they had probably different ideas of authority and freedom.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is not unlike how pirate ships worked