class-struggle-anarchism:

commissarchrisman:

Tbh if you think anarchist militia units without a centralised command structure is going to be able to defeat a modern state military then colour me sceptical my friend

Anarchist militia units have command structures, at least the few which have existed on a large scale and had any success fighting a militarised enemy had. The Iron Column in Spain for example – you had groups of ten people organising minor day to day stuff for themselves, ten of those groups made a centuria which elected a delegate, thirty of those is a column led by a War Committee made up of those delegates which makes decisions. You still have a relatively small group  making the big calls, the difference is that the group isn’t set in stone and afforded automatic privileges based on rank, it’s accountable etc. With this command structure the Iron Column liberated whole towns from the fascists, drove them back into the mountains, held multiple bases, published two newspapers…it worked well

Besides, it’s pretty obvious that the issue with defeating a modern state military isn’t going to be command structure, it’s the massive, probably insurmountable gap in the technology and weapons available – if you’re putting all your hopes in a ‘once and for all’ classic military victory of ordinary working class folk with whatever they can lay their hands on against modern armies, with non conscripted professional soldiers, total surveillance at their fingertips and decades of counter insurgency training…I think it’s a fantasy.

We’ll obviously still have to fight but it will be scrappy, outright military victories will be few and temporary – the way I see it we win by stretching them farther than they can go, make them have to fight on multiple fronts internationally, while new recruits dry up and their economy crashes, they can’t keep up financially, can’t pay the soldiers, political system plunges into chaos, mass defections, fuel supply is sabotaged, borders break down – we’ll force their world to grind to a halt, implode, and collapse into oblivion rather than simply facing it down on the battlefield like they did in the Russian Civil war or whatever. Not that any of this seems too likely in the near future or anything, but we need to be realistic about how it could actually happen.