>>63943314
I'd add though, that Orwell's problem with the communists was in part because he thought they weren't radical enough, and that they betrayed the revolution for a fake-sham of a revolution that preserved private property. The communists -- following orders from Moscow -- had shifted their policy after the rise of Hitler to what they called the "popular front." The basic idea was to form a communist-led alliance of parties including non-communist socialists (social democrats), and whatever other "patriotic" anti-fascist forces participating in a parliamentary republic (under threat from the fascists) would agree to it. They changed their language from the issue being "socialism vs. capitalism" to "democracy vs. fascism." This is actually how they talked.

This makes a certain sort of sense. The communists in Germany refused to cooperate with the socialists and they were destroyed piecemeal by the Nazis. But then in Spain, you had this conflict between the communists (Stalinists) who had changed their policy, and more radical anarchists and Trotskyists who wanted to accelerate the social revolution in an anti-capitalist direction, and this escalated into bloody infighting and they lost (again).