Sorry for the long delay, but I've been out of it with the flu for the last week and a half or so.
>Why the assumption that an outside threat can only be successfully dealt
>with by imposing some kind of permanent hierarchy?
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>Charles: These are very important questions you raise.
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>I assume what you ask because a military must be run based on a hierarchy
and you need a military to defend against the capitalist counter
revolutionary armies. There must be a military as long as there are
capitalist militaries. When the workers in the remaining capitalist
countries overthrow "their" capitalists, school is out for everybody.
>
>A military based on a hierarchy will defeat a military based on rank and
file democracy ,certainly in the field ( I suppose the officers might be
elected; but even that demands some professionalism and expertise. Military
science is a science. "Rank and file" is a military metaphor , by the way).
In actual pitched battle, orders must be given and followed rapidly, and
so group decisionmaking is at a disadvantage over individual
decisionmaking. I guess we might say war is the antithesis of democracy.
The crucial point here is whether or not PERMANENT hierarchy is necessary. Even anarchists realize the need for authority, but they reject arbitrary and permanent authority. That is, the anarchists will have a general, but the general would be elected and subject to removal by the troops (as opposed to only the national leader or a higher ranking officer). The authority of officers would flow from respect of the troops and their willingness to follow their chosen superiors.
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>The only historical example I know of where anarchists had a strong
>influence, the Spanish Civil War, does not explicitly support either the
>assumption that anarchists can't fight effectively or that anarchist
>economies are susceptible to breakdown.
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>CB: With great respect for the heroic fighters in Spain, I must say the
war was lost. Sadly, winning or losing is the test of effective fighting in
war.
This depends. Belgium had no chance of defeating Nazi Germany, just as Granada had not hope of successfully staving off the US invasion in the '80's, irrespective of how their armies were organized.
To say the fascists won because the Republican side didn't organize its militias effectively ignores a host of other factors. Besides, the type of organization changed as the war progressed. At the outbreak of the conflict, many of the militias were very egalitarian, but became hierarchical (permanently so) as the Communists took control of the government and removed the anarchist and Trotskyist elements.
They still lost. I'm not trying to claim that the Communists fought less hard, or that the change in organization caused the defeat. I think the more likely answer is the fascists received more and better quality foreign assistance, and the power struggle within the Republican gov't weakened its resistance. Military organization, whatever form it took, probably had little to do with the defeat of the anti-fascists in Spain.
Brett