It seems good enough for you because it reinforces your previous beliefs. Keep calling yourself a leftist while you ignore material understanding of history and reality.
From the citation you quoted:
Orwell was also able to refute, from firsthand observation, many of the other absurdities that were appearing in the liberal press about the Aragon front, for example, the statement by Ralph Bates in the New Republic that the POUM troops were “playing football with the Fascists in no man’s land.”
It’s a well-known historical fact that the Aragón front was mostly limp and that there was no pushing by either side for the longest time. From “González-Ruibal, A. (2020). The Archaeology of the Spanish Civil War (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429260131”:
In the winter of 1938, the fate of the war was being decided in the southern part of Aragón, in the province of Teruel which, as we saw, was the scenario of one of the largest battles of the Spanish Civil War. While the Battle of Teruel was raging, most of the Aragón frontline, however, remained calm— perhaps precisely because of that. This was the case in the lands of the
province of Zaragoza that had experienced the ravages of war during the summer of 1937. In the previous chapter, we saw how the Popular Army managed to stop the Nationalist units in Mediana de Aragón that came to the rescue of Belchite. After September 1937 the front did not move and the soldiers of both armies dug in and waited.
Orwell continues to be an unreliable source. It’s incredible to me that you still quote him as an authority figure when he’s patently lying.
On that very source, the author performs archaeological excavations and, what do you know, what he finds the most from Republicans are Soviet munitions and Polish grenades!
Our work in the area began with an advanced Republican post that had a large amount of ammunition on the surface. The excavation revealed a dugout for a machine gun, which yielded a rather homogeneous assemblage: one hundred Soviet 7.62 mm shell casings and a stack of empty ammunition boxes. In all likelihood, this was the position of a Maxim machine gun. […] first, Republicans appear by surprise and attack with grenades. The sentinel is forced to crouch while the attackers cut the barbed wire with pliers. After the explosions come the shots. The Breda
replies to the Mosin’s fire. But the Republicans keep coming closer and closer. They throw grenades, they advance. The sentinel throws his Lafittes, which explode at a close range, but he is unable to stop the attackers, who fall upon him and shoot from the top of the parapet. How does the story end? We do not know. But several Mosin shell casings around the foxhole and the trench indicate that Republicans made it that far.
I’m not a leftist. I’m an anarchist. One that is drifting further and further from “the left” as discussions like these happen.
I haven’t quoted Orwell once. My source is a footnote that has Orwell’s quotes among others. My main one for the claim you made are from D.T. Cattell.
Are you really claiming that the front being slow is the same as them playing football? Or do you actually believe that the POUM was playing football with the fascists? because that is the only way your claim that Orwell is unreliable by refuting this makes sense.
I think the fact that the Communists were intentionally withholding supplies makes the claim that they were supplying anarchists complicated enough to warrant my reply, even if it was a bit too absolutist.
None of this matters. Our disagreement is ideological, both of our minds are made up and neither of us is budging, so why are we doing this. Especially when the subject is a civil war nearly a century ago.
It doesn’t matter weather or not the USSR supplied anarchists. The Communists were (same as in the own russian revolution) suppressing the anarchists and stopping them from achieving their goals. They made decisions that actively hurt the collectivized society in Aragon.
That’s a lot of text to type “I’m moving the goalposts from my original statement that the USSR didn’t supply the anarchists because the Spanish Republican government (not communist) applied certain restrictions to anarchist weapon deliveries that I refuse to quantitatively source”.
Our disagreement is not ideological, i’m not arguing for you to stop being an anarchist neither you for me to stop being a Marxist-Leninist. We’re arguing about demonstrable historical events that can be studied in the literature. You’re a comrade to me, which is precisely why I expect quality sourcing with MATERIAL, NUMERICAL evidence when discussing topics such as “a communist blockade of weaponry towards the anarchists”. I wouldn’t ask for such sources from a lib because I know they don’t do the reading, I just expect better from comrades.
After taking a walk and taking time for some reflection. Yeah. You’re right. I don’t really know what I’m talking about and am taking a “vibes-based” approach. However for me that’s preferable to giving vanguardists any credit for anything.
Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War. By Gerald Howson, John Murray, 1998. Reviewed by Dave Murray
The biggest myth to bite the dust, is that the Soviet Union under Stalin materially aided the republican side. He has tracked down documentary proof that the vast bulk of military material supplied to the republicans by Stalin was of poor quality, that the republic was charged at or above market price and that by falsifying the currency exchange rates employed in these deals, the Soviet Union defrauded the republic of at least $51m (at 1936 prices). Helpfully, Stalin arranged for the Spanish government to ship its gold reserves (in 1936 the fifth largest in the world at $518m) to the Soviet Union and, guess what, by the end of the civil war most of it had been transferred to the Soviet government as payment for arms procurement or in return for credits at the Soviet Bank in Paris. That Stalin was one of the executioners of the Spanish revolution is no surprise to us Trots, but Howson has done us a favour in furnishing us with cold hard facts.
Now I can’t find an actual open copy of the book (nor am I spending that much effort looking for it) so I can’t really give you anything more.
Give. Me. A. Material. Numeric. Source.
Until you do that, your analysis is exclusively vibes-based, and should be rejected.
That is my source. It’s good enough for me. The fact that Chomsky (a well respected academic*) published that is good enough for me.
*: There are ties to Epstein, but for me that doesn’t invalidate his academic opinion.
It seems good enough for you because it reinforces your previous beliefs. Keep calling yourself a leftist while you ignore material understanding of history and reality.
From the citation you quoted:
It’s a well-known historical fact that the Aragón front was mostly limp and that there was no pushing by either side for the longest time. From “González-Ruibal, A. (2020). The Archaeology of the Spanish Civil War (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429260131”:
Orwell continues to be an unreliable source. It’s incredible to me that you still quote him as an authority figure when he’s patently lying.
On that very source, the author performs archaeological excavations and, what do you know, what he finds the most from Republicans are Soviet munitions and Polish grenades!
That’s a lot of text to type “I’m moving the goalposts from my original statement that the USSR didn’t supply the anarchists because the Spanish Republican government (not communist) applied certain restrictions to anarchist weapon deliveries that I refuse to quantitatively source”.
Our disagreement is not ideological, i’m not arguing for you to stop being an anarchist neither you for me to stop being a Marxist-Leninist. We’re arguing about demonstrable historical events that can be studied in the literature. You’re a comrade to me, which is precisely why I expect quality sourcing with MATERIAL, NUMERICAL evidence when discussing topics such as “a communist blockade of weaponry towards the anarchists”. I wouldn’t ask for such sources from a lib because I know they don’t do the reading, I just expect better from comrades.
After taking a walk and taking time for some reflection. Yeah. You’re right. I don’t really know what I’m talking about and am taking a “vibes-based” approach. However for me that’s preferable to giving vanguardists any credit for anything.
That being said I did find this: https://socialismtoday.org/archive/38/spain38.html
Now I can’t find an actual open copy of the book (nor am I spending that much effort looking for it) so I can’t really give you anything more.
Thanks for the positive response and the source, I’m gonna sleep now but I hope to reply tomorrow. Good night comrade