The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1171: The 'Left' Factions of the Spanish Civil War w/ Karl Dahl

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

128 MinutesPG-13Karl Dahl is an author specializing in the Spanish Civil War and historical "fiction."Karl gives a detailed description of the history and factions of the 'left' in Spain before and during the Spanish Civil War.Faction: With the CrusadersKarl's SubstackKarl's MerchPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Financial Services Ireland Limited, trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. And now, this is over the next to them shixta. It's leargoal to the GUE and not great Gereena in Aundon, and leander Gaela to Ghavene-Dairn. In Ergrid, we're dig tour tawwain in one-whunah with funnivin-voon-ha. their own in it. It's a lot of the way to do you have to be able to watchers on as to go ahead and people

cariff in the pasty. There's air of cooctuaghan. Full of nis more in the Ergrid Pongai. If you want to support this show and get the episodes early and add free, head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support. I want to explain something right now. If you support me through Substack or Patreon,

you have access to an RSS feed that you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there. If you support me through Subscrib Star, Gumroad, or on my website directly, I will send you a link where you can download the file, and you can listen to it any way you wish. I really appreciate the support everyone gives me. It keeps the show going. It allows me to basically put out an episode. every day now, and I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to accelerate. I think sometimes you

see that I'm putting out two, even three a day. And yeah, can't do it without you. So thank you for the support. Head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignana show. Carl Dahl is back. More Spanish Civil War on deck. What's going on, man? Doing well. Happy Martin Luther King Day, Jr. And

inauguration day. Spicy day. Yeah. Yeah, it's been interesting so far. But nothing ever happens. Nothing ever happens. Last time we recorded, I just realized this this morning, is we recorded the day

after the election. So we're on a We're on a pattern, man. We're on some kind of schedule here. All right. So I think last time we talked, I mentioned what the hell is his name? Finale. Finale.

Yeah. And well, you were like, okay, well, let's put something together. And so you are here to talk about the other guys. Yeah. So, you know, one thing that people have pointed out, is that I always just, when I speak about the Spanish Civil War, to spite my knowledge on all the various groups and subgroups, I was just called them Lib Tarts. And I do that deliberately. And why do I do that deliberately? Because I am very well versed in these people. I've been around their ideas for a long time. I'm tired of them and I want to dismiss them. However, it's useful to, explore what they actually believed. But I'm also, you know, not going to enshrine them with too much legitimacy.

Although, in fairness, I will say that there are good critiques that you will find from the left. Like one of the things, Pete, that keeps coming up when you and Thomas talk, because you guys are both actually knowledgeable about the subjects that you talk about. you're not doing the, you know, the James Lindsay of the world. You know, you're woke because, you know, because Marx said something ever so slightly similar, or we're going to trick everyone because we're going to, you know, quote Hegel and Marx was a Hegelian and, therefore, you're a communist if you publish something. It's really retarded. And we don't want to be retards. We want to be very well educated in reality, and we don't want people to be to be conned by the fake framing of whether it's a leftist position or it's a, you know, to repeat ourselves, a mainstream, you know, cuxervative or, you know, really liberal sci-op operation.

So we want to know what kind of libtards the various apostles of atheistic materialism were in Spain when we talk about the Spanish Civil War. So this scene here is CNTFAI. You can tell by the red and black, the classic anarchist colors. This is CNTFAI in Barcelona right after they suppressed the military rising. and they began there. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design.

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Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited subject to lending criteria terms and conditions apply Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited trading as Cooper financial services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland their little revolution you'll notice the long 1893 pattern Spanish Mousers and not the later slightly shorter 1916 carbines which are great rifles, by the way. So I'm going to proceed, and we're going to learn a little bit about the ideological roots and some of the standout folks in Spain. Why did Spain, why was Spain so heavily anarchist compared to other parts of the world when they had these various uprisings?

What are some of the tensions between the anarchist and Marxist positions plus the kind of mainstream liberal groups. And we're also going to address some of the kind of foundational concepts that you need to understand when you're looking at leftist critiques and factionalism. What do these things actually mean? I will continue to dismiss them as libtards, but I also want to prove here that I know what I'm talking about. And I highly encourage everyone else to to examine, you know, what your enemies say. So I'm really leaning into two primary sources here in this, in this little talk. If you want to understand like the top level ideas that are coming from here, these are two great books. They're both available in

English. I just grabbed the Spanish version, Spanish edition title for the second book. Um, the Spanish anarchist by Murray Bookchin has the bulk of, of what you need here. There's other material that I sourced for this, especially some of the, the more niche elements of the conversation that we'll get into. Um, and one of the good things about reading bookchin is, is that he's sympathetic. He is. And, um, he, he, he, he, also if you're looking at his name and you're saying, hey, I noticed something you, you were accurately identifying. something, but he's sympathetic. Oh, as someone who came out of, you know, libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism, and a studied agorism, I know exactly who Murray Bukshin is.

Yeah, he's a very intelligent guy. There's a really interesting thing, too, since you're educated on this subject as well, you'll notice that there was a huge lull in anarchist-oriented material until really the very end of the 60s or really it took off in the early 70s when there was kind of a revitalization. And there's a bunch of arguments behind why this pattern happened, but frankly, a lot of it was during the Cold War. The left either went anti-communist, leftist, or Marxist, slash Marxist, Leninist, Maoist, right? And then in the kind of post-60s, and I suspect a lot of it has to do with kind of 1968, you know, post-1968, there was a big shift into people exploring anarchism. And a bunch of it also was

kind of the evolution of what we know about the counterculture in the 60s and 70s, where there's a fair bit of that. But there was a real serious academic interest in anarchism and historical anarchism at this time in re-examining things, not just through the lens of the, you know, communism versus capitalism discussion. I don't know if you have anything to add there. No, no. Okay. Great.

So one of the neat things about the anarchists is that they actually follow through with what they believe. And what you'll find is that if there's an anarchist book that's in English or even other languages, you'll probably be able to find it online for free because they're giving it away. and if you're buying it, it's because you're paying to print it. I raise my hand and acknowledge that I was a person who used to go to an anarchist bookstore when I was an edgy teen, and I was exploring these things. And what I would say is Anarchist Library, Libcom, and, of course, archive.org have a lot of great material. The communist, libertarian, communist and anarchist websites have tons of great material on the topic of the Spanish Civil War and just the general topics of anarchism, communism, etc.

And all the debates. You can find all the stuff online for free. Don't pay money for it. Just go out there and read it. There's a lot of great material. Marx is actually extremely interesting. And he has some very good critiques. peaks. And we're going to talk a little bit about that here. I'll be talking about other books that you guys can check out or just topics to start with. The Spanish Labyrinth by Gerald Brennan is another book that is a sympathetic and very interesting book about the environment of Spain before the war, especially like the 19th century, because really all of all of these things when you're talking about these movements, you have to understand, you know, the causes and conditions, as I always point out. And they both do a really good, good job of exploring that.

Bookchin really leans into one of the main narratives of the, you know, when you look at how did Spain develop this super deep-rooted anarchist, anarchist core. And that legend is around what we'll call Finnelli's mission. So in October 1868, a tall, heavily bearded Italian revolutionary arrived in Barcelona by train. Giuseppe Finnelli was a, we'll look a little more into who he was in just a moment, but all you need to know is that he was financed and directed by Mikhail Bakunin, who was, I'm going to pronounce it that way. I know I'm probably butchering it, but he was the standout representative of the anarchist faction in the International Working Men's Association, which was also known as the first international.

So Finnelli made contact with Spanish radicals that were known to this faction, even though he did not speak Spanish. He spoke French and Italian. And from this contact arose the largest and most consequential anarchist movement in history. So 1868 is a very important year. There's a reason that this happened in 1860s. To date, Spain and Portugal were seen as the most isolated and least contacted parts of Europe in the 19th century. Karl Marx himself stated, there's perhaps no country except Turkey so little known to and so falsely judged by Europe as Spain.

Now, why 1868? So let's look at a super quick timeline as to what happens to create this environment where the prominent anarchists in the world are understanding that they need to reach out to Spain. So French Revolution happens in 1789. France is right next to Spain, right? So while this is a huge deal in world history and American history because of our alliance with France, as it coincides with our own war for independence in the early years of our young nation, this really set a lot of things off because the peninsular war, the war in Spain and Portugal that happened 1807 to 1814 was. really critical in terms of establishing the base for the kind of foment that was taking place in 1868. There was a fair bit of assistance by the liberalizing forces in Madrid, like the bureaucrats and the, we may say, Petit Bougoir, or Bougoir, elements in the government who were Frenchified is one of the terms that they would use. They followed French, you know, styles and fashions and, you know, ideology and everything.

And they wanted to liberalize Spain. There was an element of this at play when they essentially placed a, New King in the throne, creating a war that involved the Spanish and the French and the British to retake the country of Spain from French dominion because Napoleon's brother was made king. There was a constitution that was instituted in 1812 with liberalizing. elements that essentially got tossed out when there was a restoration with Spanish victory, but it still left an imprint that was always referred back to for the rest of the century. The first Karlist war took place in 1833 to 1840, and this is, again, traditionalists fighting against the central force, the central government's liberals. So the Fueros, which is the old,

rights and privileges, particularly relevant in the northern parts of the country. And home rule were abolished tactically where it would be least disruptive and would help the central government the most through the rest of the century. So first in Navarre, via the Compromise Act of 1841, after the Carls were defeated. So the idea was, You know, this is one of those things that you and I have talked about, Pete. There's the traditional Spanish rights to kind of self-government in their own provinces and districts. But this allows rebellion against the central government. And so this was abolished in Navarre, which was, again, one of the Carlist homelands,

although they were also huge in Bass Country also and a fair bit in Catalonia. So there was the Second Carlist War, 1846 to 1849, because they were not happy with this arrangement. They wanted a full restoration of their rights as well as to defend against the early liberalizing influences from the government. This coincides with Europe's revolutions of 1848, which really change everything in terms of propagating all of these liberalizing ideas around the world, especially in the West. And also another thing that happens is when these revolutions fail all around the world, whether it's Germany, whether it's France. And when I say Germany, you know what I mean? It's in the German principalities in various areas. So all these people have to go to different areas to hide out.

And a bunch end up in Spain and other parts of the world. And here. And here. I mean, they fought, they came here. They became mercenaries in a lot of places. They fought in our civil war. I have, it's funny. I had a bunch of German answers.

ancestors come here in the 1840s. And at one point, I was like, I got to look at these dates again because I'm a little nervous. And I was happy to see 1841 and 1842. I was like, a few. Because it certainly wouldn't comport what I know of them, you know, in the businesses that they were in, they were just, they wanted to get away from that kind of stuff, obviously. But they weren't revolutionaries themselves. Few, wipe the brow.

But yeah, so it was a huge spread of all these ideas that were associated with that. We'll talk about what some of those ideas are shortly. Again, this is a super high-level survey. So really another critical foundational element, especially coming after the revolutions of 1848. I'm talking an extreme shorthand here. I definitely encourage people to read more material about this. Check out Pete and Thomas's shows about Marx. You'll get a lot of information about that.

This is total shorthand. The first international, which is the International Working Man's Association, is founded in 1864. And what this is is a group of international radicals, but mostly from just a couple of countries in Europe who start saying, we need to not only network internationally, but we need to start establishing ties with one another to actually do things. And we need to kind of determine what our ideology is going to be. And immediately different factions start forming. We'll talk about that shortly. One of the factions here reaches out to Spain because in 1868,

Queen Isabel the second was overthrown in what is described as the glorious revolution, which ushers in the Sisenio Demosocratico, which is a democratic or revolutionary, depending on who you talk to, six-year period. So the... Ready for huge savings? Well, mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th, because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is. back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Lidl items all reduced to clear. From home essentials

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Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items, all reduced to cost. clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. Sesseno Dementoracro was a huge shift in Spain because it was the very first time that a system was developed, which lasted for the next... several decades that was really critical in forming kind of the political nullification of a lot of the revolutionary energy while also definitely moving the needle in terms of liberalizing influences

through the formal government. It was a very open period with the least formal repression of ideas and organizations, political organizations, radical organizations, in this initial period. Now, what happened was the conservative and liberal parties worked out a system, the largest establishment parties developed what they called the peaceful turn, El Terno Pacifico, It was informal, but it was agreed upon where they would determine in advance the results of a general election. So when you have a kind of constitutional monarchy, you have the monarchy, which is the symbol of order and continuity, but then you have the cortes, which is where the various political parties do their business and actually run the government. And they worked out this system where

they would just alternate being in power with one another. So this had a, again, like I said, a kind of de-radicalizing effect where it pushes the extremes to the edges. And really, fundamentally what it would look like is if you go to, let's say, um, any site or Wikipedia and you look at who the prime minister of Spain was, you'll notice there were just a handful of generals and politicians that were just switching off. And there were several people who were prime minister five or six times in this period going all the way into the 20th century. Can I ask you a question about the cartoon that's up there?

Yes. The guy up top has an interesting physiognomy. I honestly, I'm not 100% sure. I can't remember who he was, but he was essentially a, he was a little worm. I don't think he has that physiognomy because I believe that he was a genuinely, well, now that I think of it, him being an actual Spanish politician wouldn't necessarily do anything. But it was a, here's our solution. And Moray and Moray and Mora, you know, these are, these are, these are, of liberals and conservatives switching off between each other, but also speaking from, you know, saying the exact same thing and running the system.

And that this is the big solution by Mr. political operator. But I'll check that out. That's an interesting observation. So into this environment comes Giuseppe Finale. He was a Neapolitan, Italian Republican. So remember, Italy was not unified until later in the 19th century. So he was from Napoli. And he was a veteran of the 1848 Revolution in Italy.

He was a veteran of Garibaldi's Sicilian campaign of 1860. Remember, Garibaldi was seen as a great unifier. of the nation of Italy. Finelli was a member of an organization called Young Italy, which was one of the primary Italian nationalist organizations, that Finelli was a honcho of. Mazini is another name that you will recognize associated with young Italy. If you ever dive into it, it's really interesting because, again,

they're unifying the country, but there's all these various political channels. So he also participated in a Polish uprising in 1863 just as a radical revolutionary. And again, who was Poland fighting against? Consider a third Italian war of independence against Austria in 1866. So remember, Italy and Austria-Hungarian Empire, if you look at anything in the 18th and 19th century, You'll see that a lot of Italy was under the boot of the Austrians, and they had a lot of influence through the rest of the peninsula because of that. A lot of commercial sway and finances. I'm far from an expert.

I need to stop talking about it right now because I'll start saying dumb things right away. But that's where a lot of the struggle was in Italy. And Finnelli was a veteran of this. And again, he had been a revolutionary for several decades at this point in time. He was elected to Italian Parliament in November 1865. And this is kind of, it's going to sound quaint now, but as an Italian parliamentarian, he could travel by train for free in multiple nations, not just Italy. So he could travel all over Italy for free.

There were some arrangement where he could go through France, essentially, for free. And so he became, this gave him a huge leg up for spreading the word. He tied in with Buchanan at some point meeting him in a summit in Italy in the 1860s and possibly having corresponded with him for a while before that. Because again, here's this Republican, political leader who's fighting against the kind of regressive elements, you know, in his thinking, in Italy, and especially against the Austrians, to try to free his country and radicalizing continuously through this process. And ideas, we're getting more and more and more radical in Europe at the time. So he ties in with Buchanan through the IWA International Working Men's Association

and is charged with proselyizing their libertarian vision in Spain. So again, he spoke only French and Italian, but all the records and testimonies of Spanish anarchists who met him said that You know, they were able to figure out through his passion, like almost like an electric rod. The spirit of what he was saying was communicating with them. Well, what would you, how would you define libertarian here? Because, you know, libertarian nowadays pretty much means globalist, free market globalist. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good point. So libertarian originally meant essentially anarchism with personal freedom versus collective anarchism,

especially as it relates to people voluntarily organizing themselves, as well as having a little more. there's more of an allowance for personal property to a certain degree. And we'll get into where some of these arguments were coming from. But that was the basic idea. It's not centralized. It's not based on, you know, a temporary state as Marx advocated. And it's not necessary. there's a lot of arguments when it comes down to it with anarchists about, which is why there's so many kind of versions of them. We'll talk a little bit about where those ideas come from. But broadly, that's the basic idea is that it's it springs forth from an individual person. It isn't it isn't theoretical. It isn't philosophical. It isn't historical and scientific. It's an individual spirit longing to be free. Gotcha. So this is a really critical, you know, point to make, which is that the International Working Men's Association, which again, established in 1864 and ended, depending on, you know, de facto and de jure 1872 or 1876. And so again, this is a post-1848 international Congress of the broad left. broad coalition of mutualists, anarchists, socialists, secularists, Republicans, and various radical leftists. So founded 28 September 1864 in London by an international group, which was largely British because it was in London, but there were French, a big French faction, Irish, Polish, Italian, and German.

delegates. And one of those delegates from Germany was then obscure journalist Emigre Karl Marx. He was very obscure in 1864. He volunteered to draft documents and help put together the formal plan. And this is really important because he became automatically extremely influential. Everyone was like, oh, he's, he's excited to put together, you know, all the boring details that other people, other people wanted to talk to each other about like abstractions. And, and Carl Mark says, I'll put together the formal program. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive by design. They move you.

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leg up so the first thing he drafted was the address and the provisional rules of the International Working Men's Association. So they developed parameters out of the gate initially for trade unions and defined what we see as like progressive government policy on education and labor regulations. So there was a pragmatic element of what they were doing, and then there was like a more philosophical considerations taking place plus an awful lot of politics

taking place internally. How would they relate to the rest of the world? So there was a split almost immediately the fractures

started showing, but it wasn't a formal split between the statists, which was essentially the Marxists, who believed in a

working with the state as well as, you know, post-revolution, there being an element of a state before they achieve, you know, a utopian anarchist scheme. And the anarchists who are like, we have to be principled and we're only going to fight for what we want, which is the annihilation of the state and no replacement of the state with another state. So that formal split really happened in 1870, and then there was a full schism by 1872. The symbol at right is the Spanish anarchist leaning chapter of the International Workingmen's Association, which they called the Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA.

Its initials were F-R-E-A-I-T. the very first Congress in Spain was in Barcelona again with that nucleus of people who had engaged with Finnelli

and so going into this IWA the Spanish representatives of with the IWA their formal people were almost entirely anarchists at this point. When Finnelli went around the country and some others went around the country as well, but

their anarchist message really resonated with real radicals. And again, remember, this is a period where the more state-oriented and progressive, you know, slow evolution type liberals and socialists are seeing working in that system as being the way that they're going to get what they want, whereas the IWA is outside the system, and the anarchists are the biggest faction by far in Spain. So how quickly did they grow? Again, 1869, 1870, there's this formal organization. And then by 1873, there were 29,000 formal dues paying members in Spain. There were never more than 200 members of this organization in Madrid, which is the seat of government of Spain.

So there were anarchist factions in Madrid, but Madrid was primarily non-anarchist in terms of what the program was for how people were seeing the future. This is also considered this Spanish group that's associated with the IWA is considered the predecessor to the CNT, which is the largest anarchist organization and political party and labor union in Spanish history. So you've got AIDS, aka the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy. So we were talking about Finnelli, right? And how influential he was and how much his message resonated with the Spanish. Finnelli was just a member of an 18-man nucleus of anarchists that were a faction within the IWA headed by Bakunin, and they sent many, many representatives to Spain because of the

revolutionary foment taking place there, and because they wanted to head off the Marxist tendency within the IWA at the past. So it was not only to get buy-in, in Spain, but it was also to recruit formally people in Spain who would want to engage with the IWA, as well as they knew with contacts that they had, you know, through these established networks that had been developing, especially since 1848, between Spain and France in particular, but just the the general international socialist and leftist bent as it was maturing. And so this was their opportunity. So they actually sent quite a few people into Spain. And this is a photograph here, probably taken to Madrid with Giuseppe Finnelli right here, Fernando Garido,

Aristide Re, Elie Reclos, and Giuseppe Finnelli, like I said, and then Jose Maria Orense. So these are a couple of Spanish representatives who become very important to this organization and the Spanish group associated with the IWA. So there were, among the travelers, there were several, oops, sorry, there were several Italians, and a Russian Leon Meshnikov, and Elias Reclos was a Frenchman. So it's a very interesting group of people, but they, Reclos, understood. some Spanish, he'd been in contact with some Iberian dissidents for some time. And this is really interesting when you look at some of the records. Recluse wrote a history of their trip at the time, which I believe is not available in English. I wasn't able to find a copy of it. I've seen translations of it. I think it's only in French

in Spanish, although I could be conflating it with something else. But it's very interesting because they talk about these other folks, whereas most of what you hear when you read about this trip is just about Finnelli's mission. So as Finnelli was working with this core group of people in Barcelona and Madrid and a few other places, these other guys were spreading all over Spain, and they were even participating in some of the actual uprisings that were taking place, particularly in the south of the country around Andalutia. So recluse had been a member of the International Revolutionary Brotherhood, which was this kind of foundational group that Bacunin was associated with since 1865.

So his book is called Recluse Impressions. of a trip through Spain. And so he was the one who identified these other foreign radicals and revolutionaries that were that were part of this conversation. And it's interesting because apparently hardcore Spanish anarchists get annoyed by the focus on Finnelli. It could be just, you know, you know what these spurts are like. I know more than you do. So they like to get passionate about it. So I thought I'd share that.

So now let's talk a little bit about the history of the internationals, because when we talk about the internationals, they're really, really important in Marxism and anarchism. And this will kind of help with the continuity of, you know, we're talking about the 19th century, but a lot of it is because of the results that end up later on in history in the 20th century. The first international was kind of the label given to the International Workingmen's Association. As I pointed out, created 1864. In 1872, it really split formally into competing anarchist and state socialist internationals. And then it was essentially dissolved because of that faction. Factional split. 1889. You catch them in the corner of your eyes.

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Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. Was an attempt to get it back together again. The second International saw the anarchists rematerialize as some people were trying to reconcile these groups with one another for various reasons, but the infighting was such that the anarchists were officially excluded in the 1893 Zurich Congress. The 1896 London Congress saw anarchists such as Erika Malatesta, who's a name that if you're familiar with anarchist history, will sound familiar. He challenged their expulsion at the London Congress, which was a failure.

And so essentially at this point, the Marxists were essentially running the show, although there were still non-Marx. socialist, state socialist groups still participating in the Second International. Nationalist sentiments, which arose during World War I, essentially saw the end of the second international. And then 1919, the communist international was spun up. Again, this one was expressly Marxist. And not only that, but was an organ of the Soviet. Union proper. So it was more like Marxist-Leninist, which is something that I won't spend a ton of time on. But I know that you and you and Thomas have talked about it. So that's it. That's another, again, listen to those shows, folks. So, you know, it sounds petty, but it's worth talking

about the kinds of things that were going on in the IWA Congresses before the Spanish mission in 1868, 1869. So the Geneva Congress of 1866 saw something that we will all be familiar with, which was the formal announcement that one of their primary goals would be to establish a universal eight-hour workday, which they were very successful at. this idea really came through the IWA. So when you see it around the world, you know, that's a thing that they accomplished. I'm not going to do the James Lindsay thing here. I think that that's a perfectly reasonable expectation. As a fan of the bundle of sticks approach with the axe head sticking out of the top, I think it's perfectly reasonable to take, you know, these kinds of

ideas and, you know, adopt them in a pro-social fashion. Take that, Vivek. So then in 1867, in LaSan, which is in Switzerland, very pretty area, in French-speaking Switzerland, there was the goal of a free, compulsory secular education, which, again, was largely based on the Prussian model, but we saw this spread around the world. Consider at the time, like in Spain, the free education that was available was from the church. It was not compulsory either, so people could just bail whenever. And this was, again, instituted specifically explicitly as a secular, compulsory state-run thing because that would put the Lib Tards in charge, right? Like, obviously, you, you educate the people, you know, you control their ideas. Totally, totally in line with a Marxist

position and effort, but there were plenty of other people that agreed with it, including the United States government. And then another one that's kind of interesting, the very first time that they made a state, stated a goal that was for collective ownership of anything was state-slash-collective ownership of transportation companies. It was the first formal support for the principle of collective ownership. So in 1868, in Brussels, serious conflicts arose regarding methods and goals. And so when you look at all the different versions of socialism and anarchism and communism,

it's all about like methods and goals. And so there was a statement for global solidarity and a formal anti-war stance. Again, and this arose in the context of pending conflict between France and Germany. It's 1868, right? So what kind of debates took place? So the formal statement about this anti-war stance is explicitly, and I quote, The Congress of the International Workingmen's Association assembled at Brussels records its most emphatic protest against war.

It invites all the sections of the association in their respective countries and also all working class societies and all workers' groups of whatever kind to take the most vigorous action to prevent a war between the peoples, which today could not be considered anything else than a civil war. No more brother wars, right? Seeing that, since it would be waged between the producers, it would only be a struggle between brothers and citizens. The Congress urges the workers to cease work should war break out in their respective countries.

So, a big challenge, right? And this is the first time we see this sentiment publicly stated in the world. We hear a lot more of it in World War I, really as part of the second international as well. So what are some of these other debates that start taking place here? It's really factionalism and the kind of ideological disputes. So Pierre Joseph Prudon, it was kind of a founding father of anarchism and just kind of socialism in leftism in the 19th century. He had had this goal of mutual exchange banks, which are, you know, it's a liberalizing concept to free people from. the ownership of banks by capitalists, but the Marxists disdained it, as they stated, that it possessed a commercial spirit, and it wasn't sufficiently anti-capitalist, right? The idea was, like, by moving away from the current banking system and having a mutual exchange bank, you could leverage with labor. You can negotiate with labor and not just capital. And the Marxists were like, well, that's negotiating. with capitalists instead of just defeating them. So we oppose it. However, rather than this, you know, this argument being something that they would state formally as a goal or say it wasn't

a goal as they essentially said, ah, we'll talk about it in the next Congress because we, we want to resolve this with ourselves. The next one, which is going to sound really quaint, is about machinery, right? So the laborers, you know, a lot of them saw, machinery and mechanization is bad because it takes work away from workers. However, it was also seen as necessary to create the desired material conditions, you know, from the Marxist perspective, particularly, that would allow, you know, basically, you know, super cheap, easy, you know, post-scarcity life, right? Because a lot of people were thinking, it, you know, let's not think about how things are exactly right now. Let's think into the future, where are we going? Machinery isn't a bad thing if it leads to this world without want. And so there was a whole argument about, well, machinery is good theoretically because of this, but it should be in a collective ownership, et cetera. Again, none of these were settled,

but we're starting to see these arguments that you will recognize if you really know anything about the history of labor relations and the ideological arguments there. And then finally, the other argument that really broke out at Brussels was around ownership of land and agricultural production, because, again, getting back to Prudon, they had seen a lot of failures in France of collectivization, and the fact that generally, you know, tragedy, the commons is a real thing. But then it comes down to it can't be compulsory. So it's volunteer. Is it done individually? Is it done collectively, et cetera? Who owns the land?

Who's responsible for it, et cetera? So again, maturing these ideas and all these different socialistisms are starting to, refine and define themselves at this point in time. Again, right when these guys go to go to Spain. So I mentioned Pierre Joseph Prudon. He lived from 1809 to 1865. He's seen as the father of anarchism by a great many people. He was already heavily networked in Spain at this point during the 1860s. Is that because he was a member of, is that because of, is that because he was a member of French parliament. Yes, exactly. Member of French parliament. And again, remember, the liberal bent in Spain was very Frenchified. They were very tied into the French government.

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Again, these people are in government, but they're seeing this as a goal, right? which we a lot of times see as like a Marxian type thinking, but it was it was all over the place. It's this a progressive, you know, goal that they would get, you know, however they could get it, whether it was, you know, procedurally and slowly or arrived at via revolution if the conditions are right for it. And Prudon. I always thought it was, I always thought it was funny that he, you know, you get left right from the French parliament. Yeah. The liberals, the more liberals were on the left.

And Friedrich Bosteat, the current, you know, the current crop of people who call themselves libertarians, they would trace their lineage back to Bosteat. And he sat next to Prudon on the same, on the same side. Exactly. which is that's why sometimes every once in a while I use intemperate words to talk about libertarians

because but I will say this I will say this I think thinking evolves over time and it really comes down to who you think your enemies are

when I look at people and I determine whether they're my enemy or not I look at whether they're a friend or an enemy, right? Not based on what they believe or what, you know, whatever, as much as do they see me as an enemy. And Prudon was, he was a product of his time, you know, post-French Revolution, France, he described the liberty he pursued as the synthesis of community and individualism, which sounds pretty good, right? Like, I think that's the

balance that everyone really has to consider when you look at these things. But he also stated that property is theft. So what his key works, there's what is property or an inquiry into the principle of right and government, very quaint phrasing for a title. And he also wrote another very influential work called the System of Economic Contradictions, or the philosophy of poverty. Now, his, he dealt a lot with feelings and philosophy and looking at the way things were. Carl Marx wrote a response. He, he had been kind of, Prudon was very influential in, in the left, especially, you know, 1848, all these times. When, when Marx is coming up. And Marx is a product of his time. Another thing that was taking place in the 19th century,

18th and 19th century is there's kind of a split between science and philosophy and making your argument scientific became really important. And Marx, one of the key things to understand about Marxist, he always felt that his approach was scientific and not philosophical. And he wrote a response to the philosophy of poverty, titled The Poverty of Philosophy. And in that, he basically says there will be all these problems with anarchism and the Prudonian element, you know, and not so many words, but I'm just going to put it that way. Because it's non-scientific and the problem with philosophy is that it doesn't, it isn't as logical and it doesn't have this, you know, this method being applied to it to prove the accuracy of its statements. There are these, there are these ideas that are felt, but does that make it something that can actually exist in the real world, which I think is a fair, a fair critique. Remember that Marx was, trained in like a Hegelian model, which again, I'm not an expert on Hegel. There's way better

people to think of than Hegel. I have to sit down and read Hegel. I've determined that this is going to be one of the things I'm working on this year. Because there's a basic concept that Hegel outlined, which is thesis, antithesis, and then you establish a synthesis. And that's kind of how ideas and things progress over time. And that's, it's, it's a major, a major, a major, uh, understatement to say that that's the way thinking progresses, but at the same time, like, it's a, it's a fair point. Like, you have these two things that are in opposition with one another and to make progress, you have to come up with the synthesis of them, kind of like the ideologies that we're talking about here. And so Marx felt that you have to come at these

arguments in a very logical, systematic way to prove them and do proofs of statement, which is what you see in Marx's work, whereas Prudon tends to be more like, this is a fact and therefore, rather than arguing through, you know, the nitpicky elements of it and worrying about super detailed argumentation. So one of the really interesting things is that there's a really good chance that Marx's early contention with Prudone was rooted in the fact that Marx was very, domineering and totalitarian, like, personally. It started out in a softer version of that because he was less established. But if he didn't like someone, he would just, he would dismiss them ideologically. And there's a fellow named Carl Grun, who had been in circles that Marx was a part of

in Germany, Marx bitterly disliked him. And Carl Grun had been translating Prudon's work into German. And so, Grun was kind of an early, he was influential in these circles that Marx traveled in in Germany. And a lot of the kind of philosophical arguments that Marx came out of, it landed upon, I should say, came out of him disliking these people and arguing with them about it. So like, for example, Groon argued in a very Prudonian way that humans are material beings, again, not spiritual, not metaphysical, but material beings, which is something that Marx would agree with. who are by nature social, they need the community of others to survive. And so he called for a philosophy of action. He felt that spiritual alienation of humanity took place in religion. And that's a pretty typical strange spin that atheists would make,

which is that religion spiritually alienates humanity. You know, okay, so you do away with it. What are you going to replace that spiritual element with, oh, with, you know, society coming together. He says there, you know, I always love the argument that, oh, you know, humans are material, but they're also social. Okay, square that circle. Exactly. Why is that? And, you know, they make their arguments about it, but it, all it does is it, it always just proves that they, that they chose the side. And remember also in the 19th century that atheism was the side that you would take if you were the scientific cool guy, if you were a cool liberal, right? And so they just automatically say, oh, well, the church is false. I'll talk a little bit more about,

some other arguments there in a second. But that was where this position came from. They would just say, oh, well, it was false and it was manmade because, you know, atheism is obviously correct. And so they just frame it based on that and just are dismissive of all spiritual elements whatsoever. And the fact that people have these experiences, they just dismiss it. So this Grunfellow saw parallel and complementary development of socialist theory in France and the revolution of critical philosophy in Germany. Whereas Marx, who's using... Ready for huge savings?

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28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. What is essentially critical philosophy, but claims that it's science, right? And so a lot of it is just like really nitpicky and silly, and it really comes down to people arguing with each other for whatever their reasons are. So this is,

Marx is coming into this world of these other ideas through the IWA, these really influential French people who are very powerful in terms of like they're standing at the time and he's a young guy coming into this. seeing what's happened in France. And so how does he argue against philosophy? Because the philosophers are the ones who are most influential in this group. And he says, philosophy gives undue priority to ideology over material substructure. I think there's something fair there.

But at the same time, this is just a root between the two because he's talking about, like, you have to be really scientific, even if what he's really doing is just advocating his own philosophy and claiming it's scientific and not philosophical. So I apologize for that long digression, but it's really important to understand because it's really the core argument between the anarchists. And in this case, I'm just embodying them in Karl Marx on the left. and Mikhail Bakunin on the right. Mikhail Bakunin being really the inheritor of Prudon's standing because Prudone died in 1865

and so Mikhail Bakunin, who was a Russian anarchist, became the leading international voice for that orientation. And what I come down to is Carl Marx believed that materialism and process, like these historical processes,

were scientific. And they could be proven scientifically, and then therefore he could make his predictions because he's a man of science and logic. And he's looking at the material conditions that everything is are rooted in and how they develop. So he was a historical materialist. That's, you know, the, the basic way of describing him. He saw societies as developing through material development and class conflict with specific preconditions required to make that progress. He had the same goal, supposedly, of a stateless system. However, But CUNin argued that Marx was a statist and an authoritarian, both in his theory, you know, which is rooted in the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, where there has to be some sort of state, you know, as an interim, where the proletariat makes its assertions and develops the system of, you know, socialism, state socialism. And then, communism over time where they will eventually arrive at the same desired goal as the anarchists,

whereas the anarchists saw that as something that would deteriorate into totalitarianism. And who's that Jewish linguist? I can't think of his name all of a sudden, the anarchist that everyone knows about the Libthard. Oh, Chomsky? Chomsky, thank you. And Nome Chomskyy stated that Bacunin's prediction that Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat would deteriorate into totalitarianism is totalitarianism is the only or one of the few accurate predictions in the social sciences that ever took place. So he calls Mikhail Bacquhounen a social scientist, even though he was just a really a passionate, idealistic revolutionary. And Karl Marx would turn over in his grave, which I hope he does constantly, to see someone make this statement that Chomsky made. Thank you.

So I want to also point out a couple of things about Bakunin. One of the things is when you look for material to read about Bakunin, there's not tons of it. He has lots of incomplete little writings. Well, I think there, some people may assume he is part of a certain tribe, but he certainly wasn't. He was actually Russian, like his dad was a Russian diplomat. Yes. They lived nowhere near the pale. I mean, they were, they lived right near Moscow, and they had servants.

And, yeah, I mean, this is a guy who, he's a Russian who actually came from. And now this is he'll go Vos Nationahamsher. is leargoal gilor gaihe and not great gree in on doon and leander gala to gian nalphada gauntah gawattah gawattah gawattah deyote daren in ergaret in vunehae to winnahae. There's ozherad you all the tallyachsh, gnaw and people tariff in one tachy. There's a year of cooctoagin.

Full am nis more in Ergird Pongahee. From some considerable means. Yeah, he was a Russian nobility. and he was one of the things I remember constantly reading about, but not seeing a lot of proof of it when I was a young man and I wasn't quite as wise to the wink-winks in this area. I'd be reading material about anarchism and about Bakunin and Jewish writers who would describe him as an anti-Semite. And really what he was talking about a lot of the time is Carl Marx, who will also sometimes see described as an anti-Semite, even though he was the grandson of a long line of rabbis. And then his father wasn't a rabbi. his father supposedly was baptized and but raised Karl Marx primarily, you know, non-religiously.

But CUNin, you know, when you look at your, your series that you're doing with Dr. Johnson right now, about 200 years together, Bikunin was coming out of Russia, you know, in the 19th century, seeing the way that Jews behaved commercially and so on, and was commenting on it. And that makes him an anti-Semite, right? That's really where that criticism of Bikunin is, is that his anti-Semitism was based on real things that he saw taking place. And if you're concerned is the peasantry, and righteousness, you're not going to defend the Jews of the pale. It's just, there's no scenario that would happen. You know, you're allowed to celebrate certain behavior. If you criticize it, that's when it becomes a problem. Exactly, exactly. Whereas Carl Marx, you know, I don't have prepared statements on this topic, but his,

his critiques of, of, of Jews that are. described as anti-Semitic are more about the religious practices and organizations, as well as a lot of the kind of the commercial behaviors. Again, fair critiques as a Jewish person himself. But, you know, it's, I think they make too much of Buchanan's supposed anti-Semitism. it's just people that Jews don't like are anti-Semites is where that comes from. But I don't like Mikhail Bakunin. He was one of his most famous statements from his posthumously published God in the State, which is basically a fragment of a book that was kind of put together from a bunch of his writings.

He was a really disheveled man, as you can see on the right. he would sit down and scribble things out on whatever he could, whatever he could find to write on and other people would put them together for him. He was very passionate and reactive like that. He stated, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. And then, you know, here's another one that'll sound familiar. You know, Saul Olinsky said essentially the same thing, saying that this was, the belief of the Jews. But this is Bakunin, the supposed anti-Semite saying this. But here steps in Satan,

the eternal rebel, the first free thinker in the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience. He emancipates him. He stamps upon his brow, the seal of liberty and humanity in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge. However, So this is a classic Libtar position, right? Anti-clearical, anti-religious position. However, he also was very critical of the revolutionaries themselves and really the concept of power. And I think this will resonate. You'll understand what he's saying about Marx and Marxists is true.

but it's also a something that we should examine within ourselves. Have we internalized this thinking too much like with, you know, libertarian priors? A quote, if you took the most ardent revolutionary vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the czar himself. So he had this extremely revolutionary, framing, but he was constantly critiquing the danger of the revolutionary state in particular. So this is the push-pull between these two men in particular, not just the ideologies, but a lot of it came down to the men, disliking each other. Marx was pushing for the international, the IWA, to develop a single platform.

And he wanted to require the establishment of workers' parties in each country that would follow the same program. The really communist international, that's what he wanted all along, whereas this organization was originally supposed to be just everyone spreading their ideas and the best idea would win. right? So that is what's driving pecunin and his people to make contact in Spain. It was to spread the ideas in Spain, but also to get strength in this international organization for the anarchist idiom. So that's a lot of, that's a lot of background. And what I want to do is I want to point out where you get a lot of these, the factionalism and all the different sub-isms and the modifiers, the adjectives that are applied to various ideologies from the left. And this is just real basic. So obviously, you have the three key strategies that are big differentiators between these different groups.

And you'll see that in these arguments that are taking place and where people kind of bucket themselves or they apply these modifiers to themselves. So obviously you have the revolutionary, and I have this on the far left side for good reasons, you have the revolutionary leftist strategy, which is that you don't legitimize the regime by participating in the formal political process. So you organize solely to develop alternative and ideological institutions that are under your control outside of the existing system. You advocate violence against both the state and your political enemies, which also includes like clergy and so on. And they use inflammatory rhetoric. The pragmatic strategy is that you engage in collaboration with the government if it achieves your goals, but you're generally revolutionary. You organize to both develop alternative institutions as well as to mobilize politically, like legally in the system. You seek the appearance of legitimacy, and internally, these people are conflicted about

the use of state power against other radicals. Like they want to suppress the other radicals that oppose them, but they also understand that that could be used against them. They have inconsistent rhetoric. And then there's the reformist tendency or strategy in leftism. They primarily work toward their goals through the legal political processes, whether they do everything legally, when I say legal political processes, I just mean the formal state. It's like the Democrats now. They violate the law all the time, but it's done through this state. They organize to engage primarily with the legal political process. They condemn violence, right, but accept the use of force against radicals. So they talk all the time about, you know, peaceful, legitimate, you know, authority and or legitimate process. and democracy and all that bullshit, but they accept the use of force against their enemies. And they use careful rhetoric. So I point that out because when you look at all these different parties, you'll notice a lot of

the argument is about, not about what their goals are, but about how they get there. And so after this mission to Spain and the IWA starts grouping together these Spaniards and figure out where they're going to have a Congress, where their headquarters is going to be, kind of what their program is going to be. they end up focusing on Barcelona. And it's because Barcelona embraced this program, you know, fully. And so they, their first Workers Congress was 1870 in Barcelona, and it was seen as a victory of collectivist anarchism and apoliticism over. overstate socialism as it relates to Spanish participation in the international. So essentially, the IWA Congress in Spain is not working with the Spanish government. It's excluding altogether the Marxian and the collaborationist groups in Madrid,

And they're just not interested in it. And because this message has come through to them. So why anarchism and not Marxism, right? So the way that these ideas spread was through, and engagement with the IWA was spread through these anarchist-oriented groups. And there's this really interesting concept from Anselmo Lorenzo and some other folks. Anselmo Lorenzo is the man pictured here. He's seen as a godfather and really like a historian of Spanish anarchism.

He and a collaborator named Tomas Gonzalez Morago, who owned an engraving shop and publishing, house, which was interestingly in Madrid, but they were sending material all over the country of Spain in Spanish, whether it's their works, whether it's works coming from Bakunin and other people. A lot of it was actually Spanish anarchist material. They arrived at this idea, whereas they would say, let's explain our own history and our own beliefs. And Gonzalez-Morago and Salmo Lorenzo stated that anarchism and Karlism were expressions of the same Spanish feeling. Again, it's not this scientific process. It's this feeling in the Spanish that they felt in common.

And while they were enemies, because they were split on that really around the church is the biggest split between them. They felt in their way of trying to argue and get people to come over to their side is that they're saying, we hate political farces like the Carlists. We have a longing for a richer and deeper social life that you still see in some parts of, you know, Spain, especially Carlos Spain, you still see this in the towns. You still see this all over the place. But we want to see social, moral reform just like them, except for the anarchists who are focused in the cities and under Lucia, where they feel like that the people on the bottom of the totem pole get a raw deal, theirs is a totally different mission, and they feel that they're the

church is suppressing these people while the carolists embrace the church as supporting them. I've talked about this a lot. You have noblesse oblige of Christian feudalism in the north. And in the southern areas and in the cities, you don't have that. They felt that liberalism and state socialism were strengthening the bourgeoisie and the central government to the detriment of the working classes. So, um, Gonzá, um, Gonzalez Morago, who was, again, the publisher who was spreading a lot of this information. He was a delegate from the Spanish IWA group. He was expelled from the International in 1873, executed by the organization's general counsel.

And because it was, he was an anarchist. And so this absolutely cemented the Spanish orientation with the international anarchist groups and not associated with the Marxist groups. The Marxist groups did really well with these state socialist and liberal groups that were in Madrid, but not as a part of their organization. and the real revolutionary foment ended up with these anarchists. All right. That makes a ton of sense. I mean, it actually really does. And that's why I wanted to walk through this.

It's a little, there's a lot of stuff and there's a lot of details, but this stuff really has to be understood. And like I said, the two books that I recommended at the beginning, the Spanish anarchists, The Heroic Years by Book Chin, a great book. And he's a really good writer, too. He makes a really sympathetic case, and he's really sympathetic with the Spanish, even framing his presentation on the Carlists in a really sympathetic way. Like, this resonates with him, or at least he states that it resonates with him, which is really interesting to think about. He became, he became part of that, that kind of wing of American anarchists that essentially became less political and more like

focusing on localism and environmentalism as, as he got older. And it's, agorism. Yes, agorism, yeah. And so it's an interesting, it's an interesting position. and I think that the overlap with, that I think a lot of people who describe themselves as libertarians, you know about this overlap. A lot of them don't. So it's, it's interesting.

It's interesting. And people, people should read. People should not watch TV nearly as much as they do, probably shit posts less, which is why you don't see me posting a whole lot, because I'm reading so much right now. But it's like,

this stuff is all very interesting and it helps you to have an informed position on these things. And then also step back and compare it to your own situation, especially as it relates to when you're organizing, you know, what are the kinds of things in factionalism that you see? So what was the influence of the mission to Spain beyond what I've talked about in Spain? when we step back and we come and look at the impact to the actual IWA Congresses after the Spanish mission. So the first one after the Spanish mission was the Basel Congress, 1869, which had its first delegates from Spain. And they were both Caudillon anarchists, Raphael Farga I Peletheir and Gaspar Centignon. And then also the very first delegate from America came to the Basel Congress of 1869. Andrew Cameron from the National Labor Union.

The National Labor Union evolved into the Knights of Labor and then also the American Federation of Labor, AFL from AFL-CIO. The Hague Congress of 1872. So this is after the Paris Commune, which is really important. The Paris Commune is a whole thing that we should probably dive into sometime, And I'd be happy to put something together for that.

But in the German-French War, 1870, the socialists and anarchists of Paris barricade the city and defend it against the French while also fighting against the, excuse me, defended against the Germans, and then also end up fighting with the state. And this is a huge thing. because the kind of slow evolution socialists and Marx, and everyone has to respond to this, and they have to have their own hot take on what took place. And you have your argument for, this is how things should evolve, but also here's this really important thing that worked for a short period of time

and then failed. And so you have to react to it. You have to have your own take. And so this is where everyone has to, their hot takes on the Paris commune, including Marx. And his take is really interesting because he can see that kind of balancing of his own framing. But what happens at the Hague Congress? But CUNin and Guillaume, you know, the two most notable anarchists who are big supporters

of the Paris commune are expelled from the AWA. And the anarchist wing of the IWA is reconvened. at Saint-E-E-A-Switre, Switzerland, and declares itself to be the true heir to the international. The Spanish F-R-E-A-I-T, their own delegate, they formed the largest national chapter of the anarchists at the IWA. There were dozens upon dozens of them, and they were on fire.

They were ready. They were ready for revolution. So what's taking place in Spain during this critical time, the split of the IWA. So 1873 to 1876, I call it a swing and a miss. So despite the bourbon restoration, El Torno Pacifico, the peaceful term that I was talking about before, where there's the two major establishment parties, conservative and liberal, had this system. where they said, we're going to determine, we're going to easily manage these general elections, we're going to switch back and forth with one another. It had a powerful moderating effect upon the like legitimate Spanish political life for the remainder of the 19th century. In 1873, the first Spanish Republic was proclaimed and it fell that same year. The president was, Caudillon Federalist Republican and anarchist, Fronsec P.E. Margul.

And we're going to look a little more about who he was. Again, basically an anarchist was put in charge as president of the first Spanish Republic. Because that's where the energy was at the time. It sounds wild, but it's very important to understand this stuff. The Bourbon Restoration took place in 1874. Again, constitutional monarchy is implemented. This tempers the restoration, but it also moderates the extremists by giving them an outlet in this constitutional monarchy. And that whole deal, that Torno Pacifico, the peaceful turn, peacefully switching back and forth between establishment, conservative, and establishment liberal parties where they have alternating periods of power, you know, as facemen, as facefags, the radical parties are implicitly suppressed through this process, if not explicitly

done so. The Fueros and Home Rule are abolished in Basque country now. So again, remember, two decades before. It was maybe three decades before. It was abolished in Navarre, and now it's abolished in Basque country. This is a liberal victory. The liberals always saw home rule as being a, like, a tool of the Carlists,

the traditionalists, the monarchists, and Catholics. against the central liberal government. So this is a big deal. It's not a republic, but it's probably even more moderating than the republic would have been. And then Mikhail Bakunin dies in 1876.

So let's talk a little bit about Franzic P.E. Margol, the first president of a Spanish-Rexamargal, of a Spanish Republic, which only lasted for less than a year. So he was Catalan. He was a Republican politician for a good 50 years, 47 years. He was a theorist and a publisher. He was constantly writing, majorly influential, despite his politicism, as they would describe it.

He was participating in the political process, but he was fundamentally an anarchist ideologically. He owned several newspapers and journals. Here's an interesting one. La raison, the reason, was published

in Basque Country and distributed in the rest of the country. Part of the reason the Fueros were cracked down on at the time was because it allowed some level of home rule where people could publish in Basque country. until that was shut down by the liberals in the central government in the 1870s.

And then he published the discussion, La Dyscution. He was the principal translator of Prudon's works. And he published his own book called Reaction and Revolution, which is seminal Spanish leftist, material and anarchist material in 1854. I describe it as Hegelian, Prudonian. It's reaction and revolution. It's this whole thesis, antithesis, synthesis, synthesis approach. So it's really influential. It's very interesting. I highly recommend it. It's not super long. You can find it in English online, and it's worth reading to understand this mindset because you're like, but wait, I thought the anarchists

didn't want to be part of the state. He was a faceman in the establishment political process sharing these ideas. Another concept that's really important to understand in Spain and France, another element of Prudonism, Prudonian thought, is fundamentally Spanish, Pete. You will totally get this. federalism was the form of the first Spanish Republic, which lasted only 11 months. It consists of largely autonomous territories, a multi-state nation. Which existed de facto. Exactly. For centuries.

For centuries. It was the Spanish way of doing things. So this was baked into their thinking. It was baked into this counter. that it's this push pull of Madrid with these other groups. And again, the first Spanish Republic was quashed and replaced with a system that the Madridians preferred,

which was less autonomy. So there's a contemporary historian whose work is interesting. I'm going to buy his book, on Largo Caballero. It's called the Spanish Lenin. It's only available in Spanish. It's not available online. I couldn't even find an e-version of it,

which facilitates my retarded Spanish reading because I can paste it into a translator and then look up the Spanish words, you know, and do that whole back and forth. I'm going to have to grind it out. But anyway, he's interesting. And he notes that related to federalism, the Federalists reasoned in reverse that the Afrentados, which is the Frenchified Madrid liberals, and moderates who made the state the cornerstone of their modernizing project,

did so to the detriment of the sovereign nation because they considered the nation would only reach the fullness of its existence. If the unitary and centralist state, and again, when you say the unitary and central estate, I'm going to preface the dash, which he fills in, this is the existing, like, creaking, groaning, cobweb-covered superstate in Spain that had grown up during the Spanish Empire and become decrepit and corrupt. So it's the existing tax structure. The Quintos del Rey, Kintoste, St. Ostele-Rae is an old rule, which is that 20% of all the loot, the treasure finds, or the mining going to the king, that 20%, 20 to the king, the forces of order, the government ministries, and the monarchy, if all of that was conveniently scrapped, thus proposing a kind of nation without a state. So again, the idea for the first Spanish Republic was a very weak central state that would essentially be unable to deal with the problems of the whole nation, baked into the cake, as you say, de facto what they had for centuries, a millennia. And it was seen as kind of the natural way of, doing things in Spain, which was its greatest weakness, right?

So what happens? What happens with Spanish anarchism during this period? The 1870s to the 90s, it's kind of a radical bomb-throwing period for anarchists all over the world, including in America, although in America, the anarchists were a problem well into the 20th century. an anarchist, not American anarchists. I'm looking at you Italians. I'm just kidding. Not really. So what happens? Because there's the moderating influence of that Torno Pacifico with the central government, with the official institutions, etc. Well, what are they doing? They are living their beliefs. They are developing parallel institutions. So, Here's some examples.

Francisco Ferrer is a hugely influential Spanish anarchists and Spanish educator and organizer. Very influential in Spanish history. He develops the modern schools, which are schools not run by the church. So they're secular schools. And he has money because people love this system and they're donating money to him, very wealthy liberals are supporting him. So he develops a network of schools and a publishing house that spreads their ideas all over Spain and people start implementing these things because they have resources to do it and kind of the fragmented like exploration of these

liberal ideas is taking place all over the country. And then additionally, they're developing these federations of workers associations and labor councils, which is essentially a form of syndicalism, which I'll explain here shortly in its own slide. They're forming their own leadership class. So through these processes, developing their own schools, developing their own libraries, developing their own kind of parallel institutions, their labor parties and councils, they're becoming very influential. in their communities, and they are developing their own leadership class, people coming from the working class and peasant backgrounds. It's less these sympathizers that are coming from the nobility and the and the, like, bourgeois classes. It's their own class of leaders and thinkers that are very revolutionary fundamentally and possessed, imbued with massive amounts of class consciousness and frankly seething resentment. But they're building this instead of being like, let's rush to revolution. It's let's establish our own thing. And it's not to step out and live free of the existing institutions so much as it's to have their own institutions with which they can actually challenge those.

existing institutions when the time is right. So the Federation of Workers' Associations and Labor councils called itself variably the Federation of Workers' societies of the Spanish region. They adopt the strictures of predecessors and these ideas that are flowing from the IWA and the international and all these anarchist thinkers. and really become really strong through the 70s and into the 1880s. And they begin to ride a wave of general strikes all around the country, Valencia, Seville, Saragotha, and other anarchist strongholds.

In Andalus, town after town would be going on strike and demanding communist liberty. Communismo Libertario. So like a collective, a communal libertarianism. There were minor insurrections all over the place. And the movement in the countryside continued for several years, did not come into an end until 1905, when famine in the South, because of the weather, literally starved them into submission. So the agitation has spread all over the place going into the 20th century. These ideas are deeply rooted and it's multi-generational at this point. Syndicalism, remember when I was talking about how strategies and tactics of how you get things is one of the key differentiators of like leftist thinking and all these little dash-isms,

anarcho syndicalism. More pragmatism. Yes, exactly. Anarchosindicalism was a revolutionary movement that was also fairly pragmatic that had a goal of transferring the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution to workers' unions. And so that was always their goal. This was a hugely Prudonian concept.

And then laid in life here, of Jacques Sorrell, or Georges Sorel, excuse me, who was a French social philosopher who vacillated all over the place. He's a really interesting guy. Thomas has talked about him on your show a bit. I think it was on your show. Maybe it was one of those things. We did a couple, we did a couple episodes on him. He very inspired the radical right, or the, not the radical right, but the socialist right in the early 20th century. The socialist right. And this is the reason I'm showing Sorrell and talking about this way is because if you think

about it, it's a very interesting idea. The Fallen Gay were, you know, the Spanish phalanx, the quote-unquote fascist group in Spain. What they were really doing as they were saying, let's take the ideas for organization and what motivates people, you know, among the poor and the working class in particular. And let's use that for our own purposes because we do acknowledge that we have social problems. And Sorrell, it's really interesting because there were people who described, just in sum, describe his position as really not changing, but like redirecting his thinking his,

his thinking and his orientation as like a revision of Marxism that like breaks the link between revolution and the working class and replacing it with like the national community, which was, which again, Sorrell passed away, I think in the, in the 20s, but,

in the 20s, yeah, yeah, but this idea and the way he described it really, really, uh, made the, a lot of the radical right groups sit up and take notice because they

said, oh my gosh, look at how powerful these things are. this form of organization, as well as the fact that it really does mobilize this group that has been radicalized. And we can use to our own ends, you know, to support our nation, rather than it being this international, an anti-national effort that would be directed towards, destroying the nation itself. So the strategy was, one, you unionize workers and you advance your demands through strikes and other forms of direct action. But then there's an inherent dilemma to that, which is that workers become de-radicalized as they get reforms over time, right? Like, you get

better pay. And the, this is something that's huge in the, uh, within the, uh, within the, the CNT and that CNT FAI kind of sub-faction. And even in the Spanish Civil War, the CNT is a less radical, but anarchist, but also used to working with the central government and used to working with business owners and negotiating and getting things for their people. but that can de-radicalize them. And in fact, when you have that whole argument around putting the revolution on hold for the purposes of focusing on the war and getting along, collaborating with the second Spanish Republic and the Marxists and the Soviets

so that you can get arms, that's counter-revolutionary. to the anarchists. And so it's this whole push poll that becomes a big thing. But the point is that this method allowed them to build massive organizations that were incredibly powerful in getting their, in getting their way, as well as mobilizing them for the war that was to come. So to wrap things up here, I just want to show this model, and I think it's useful to consider this and Sorrell. IWW is trash. The international workers of the World War trash.

There's a monument not too far from where I grew up to them now, which disgusts me, because the people that are honored there were rightfully dealt with by American patriots after World War I in some group violence that they were trying to instill because they love their, they love international Bolshevism, but the organizational method is very interesting. And this is very similar to the model utilized by the CNT, the Spanish CNT, to mobilize and organize. It's a little more centralized form of syndicalism. but is still considered under the blanket of a voluntarist type of organization in the kind of anarchist and socialist milieu. So the idea is that you have this structure of these councils, these work councils and representatives engaging with one another,

and the cities have their own councils that are broken up by these shop unions, and they have delegates that go to other cities and to other. unions and they go out to the individual, they're organized at the like office level and, you know, the specific industry that are people in, people are in and everything like that. And this whole structure allows them to organize and be able to communicate with vast sweeps of the culture. And that is really an incredible model. And again, Again, I'm not saying we should become syndicalists or anything like that, but I say it's an incredible model for organizing people in like a pragmatic way that Sorrell saw and the more radical right saw after the left had been using it as something to consider. And when you are in the position we're in, which is that, you know, we've been essentially denationalized and, you know, de-racialized. We need to reconsider the ways of organizing.

And you at least have to be open to exploring things that have been successful in the past and taking what's useful. Bruce Lee style and discarding what isn't. And the anarchists, despite the poverty of their, of their philosophy, were very good at doing this. And this is some of the methods that they use. So that concludes my TED talk. Thanks for your time. And I have some articles. about this topic out of my substack. I don't have articles about this specific piece, but I think I'll do some threads and probably a support article with some links to the various works that I cited, because they're all available out there for free, online. And so I'll get that up with a link to this recording when it's in the clear for non-subscribers to,

to Pete's podcast, but thanks a lot, Pete, appreciate it, and I'm glad we're able to do this. Oh, not a problem at all. This was great. It's always, you always want to know what the conditions are that allow something like this to arise. Yeah. And, yeah, the conditions were ripe, and it was just one of those things, you know, I have a tendency to look at what happened in the 19th century and how so many things were happening in so many different countries. Some might say, oh, well, all of this was planned internationally. No, a lot of this stuff was happening organically at the same time. Totally.

And I think that has a lot to do with the spirit of the age. And I think you have to look at that. You have to drop your materialism and start looking at that from a metaphysical standpoint. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. And that's why I dove into the IWA because it wasn't just about the ideas, right? The ideas were there. The natural inclination of the Spanish corresponded, I should say of the revolutionary Spanish specifically correlated to the anarchists. but part of it was this struggle for the argument, the international argument against the Marxists. And frankly, the anarchists lost the argument.

Or, again, because of the nature of their beliefs, they kind of had to remove themselves from the way that the Marxists were playing. And the Marxists took over the international socialist movement, even though it was wide open at the time. So, yeah, it was the spirit of the age, absolutely. And it can be hard to talk about, too, because I was talking to someone who's a mutual of ours on Twitter recently, and he's in the UK. and he was saying that he isn't as radically anti-international brigades as I was. He has some sympathies to them. And I stated essentially that I understand that, given that, again, the conditions on the ground were different for them than they were, than they are for,

in America, but they're also different than they are in Spain. And you really have to be, you have to be open to reading these things and reading things that offend you to, to understand where, where people are coming from so that you can understand your enemy. And if we listen to the, I mean, none of us are listening to James Lindsay. No one who's going to be listening to this thinks that guy's worth of shit. But those voices, these retarded, like, let's ignore the reality of what we're actually talking about and let's make claims that are totally a historical and not based on fact whatsoever to control the argument and control the debate. Like, we need to, we need to not only call those people out and ignore them, we need to share real information and we need to

engage with the material. And ours is the winning argument. Like you were saying before, you pretty much have to become our guys to survive. And I think, you know, we're in a very interesting time right now. No one knows what's going to happen with the Trump administration. you know, he was sworn in today. He made some very, very strong statements about what, you know, his priorities are going to be. And I just don't think that you're going to be able to reconcile this James Lindsay and, you know, Rufo kind of moderate 90s leftism with what's being, what has to be done. and the mission ahead and the threats and who the enemies are. They're not going to be able to reconcile it, but you can reconcile it with like our beliefs and our positions. Yeah, you can't.

The atmosphere and the ideology, the strict ideology that allows subversion as such as we've seen is not going to, it's an ideology, you can't change. Yep. so it's not going to be able to initiate any change. And it's not going, I remember one time he said, classical liberalism hasn't even begun to,

you know, begun to fight kind of thing. And it's like, all I see is like real classical liberalism has never been tried. Exactly. Yeah. And it just doesn't, it's not, it's not understanding the spirit of the age. Classical liberalism. is is the enemy

sorry yeah I am I experienced us on on Twitter five six days ago I posted up from 1938 was a speech Hitler gave and he described what he what socialism meant to him

and I just asked a couple people I said you know what do you disagree with in the statement nobody would answer the question yeah they would go into like I mean it was like someone wrote like a paper or copied and pasted a paper. It's talking about how Hitler was a socialist.

He did this, this, this, this is. I'm like, answer the question. What do you just agree with in the statement? Well, there's this, this, I'm like, are you so locked into your worldview of socialism? This is my meaning of socialism. This is my, this is how I define it.

Yeah. There's no other possible. way of defining it. So when you, when I see something that goes up against the grain, I have to answer with my, no, what do you disagree with in this statement? Oh, you can't answer? Fuck you're not my, you're not on my team. Exactly. Exactly. I think the most important thing for us to think about is when you, you have to look at what you actually want. want. What outcome do you want? Like, outside, step outside of ideology. I feel like I've become post-ideological, although I could also, there's also ideologies that people could say that

I have, and they are the ones that are essentially third positionist, although I also understand the argument that there's no such thing given America 2025, right? A totally fair argument, which is why I ultimately say I'm post-ideological and that I step back and I look at it like this. What outcomes do I want and who do I want them for? It's like things that happen to people and what people do I care about? What people do I don't care about? I don't have any hostility towards people in foreign countries, but it's not my job to lift them up. And in our country, I care more about, you know, good people and the people in my family, for example, or people that are like me and want the same outcomes that I want than other people who I'm not interested in sucking up to.

And so it's like, if you look at it from that perspective, outside of ideology, who gives a shit? I mean, it's so easy to see, like you were saying, that socialism in contexts means different things. And he specifically used that word because it, one, meant something in German, and it also stole that argument away from his enemies. It stole the, this is socialism. This is caring about society and like social, you know, the social good. It became his. He owned it at that point because he said, no, that's nonsense. I can reconcile these things and neutralize my opponents because it isn't what you say it is.

It's what I say it is. And that resonated with people. He didn't say it that way. He just said, this is what socialism is to us. And that's incredibly powerful. Yeah. Yeah, people have a tendency to look at ideology and think that that's exactly how it's going to be. It's going to be right down the, you know, we get it implemented.

This is exactly how it's going to work. Nope. That's not how it works at all. It's not how it works. Yeah, you created it, you created it in the lab. and you haven't introduced it to human beings yet. Once you introduce it to human beings, you're going to find,

you're going to find out that if it works, it's not going to be exactly how you want it, and you're going to have to start with the tradeoffs as much as that's going to be painful. I was reading, I've been reading something over the past couple days about Derruti, who was the, basically the anarchist militant,

like military leader, during the Spanish Civil War, and all these arguments about the collaboration of the CNT-like councils with these other groups and Derutie's position and whether or not we have, you know, real, real transcripts of this really important speech that was broadcast on radio in, you know, in Barcelona and all this. all these things. And it's so funny because they veer between the practical and the ideological so much and the way people talk about these things that it's just another form of obfuscation that takes place or people, or it's really rooted in an argument that people are having now. Like there's anarchist groups, there's a C&T political party in Spain right now and all these other groups that like call them like traitors and betrayers of the anarchist, you know, ideology and the people. It's it's all this classic, this classic argumentation that, you know, is totally familiar to people who've studied this stuff. and it just comes down as so petty and pointless that the last thing we should be doing is engaging in that stuff. You know, call out your enemies when they claim to be on your side and aren't. But other than that, just like move forward.

Stop worrying about ideology. Start thinking about results. Yeah. Yeah. And if your enemy takes out another, you know, it does something that neutralizes, doesn't have to be death. but neutralizes another one of your other enemies. Okay. That's something to be celebrated.

Yep. I had someone on Twitter this morning who was like just mad because it's like, well, we can't celebrate that person because it's not on our side. We can't celebrate what happened because that's not a, well, fuck you. Oh, that's ridiculous. Yeah. But you don't want to, you don't want to win. You just want to be right.

There are people who want to win and there are people who want to be right. I'm not really interested in the people who want to be right. I am, yeah, I'm very tired of engaging with those people because it's, it's just a waste of time. All right. I will link up to everything here, Carl doll. com, your Twitter, and I also have a link for your merch. Thank you. It will be in the show notes.

Yes, sir. And until we find another subject on this to podcast on, because, it's endless. It's endless. It's endless. Absolutely. Our call. Thank you.

Thanks, Pete.