7 ms·

As a former "left-anarchist" I'm familiar with this sort of story. We had similar stories of left-anarchist utopias from (1) pirates (2) partisans in the Spani

As a former "left-anarchist" I'm familiar with this sort of story. We had similar stories of left-anarchist utopias from (1) pirates (2) partisans in the Spanish civil war and (3) various "workers collectives" throughout history. None of them lasted and most collapsed due to internal problems not being crushed by the nation state. What has been shown to work in the long run, is Western democracy.

cel1ne 10y ago
Thanks for the comment, I had exactly the same thought.
drieddust 10y ago
In few years time, we will read about Cheran mafia's ascend to power. These utopian dreams almost always result in oppressed becoming oppressors. This quote sums it up quite nicely. “But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions.” ― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
- redial 10y ago
  Western democracy is the result of the French and American Revolutions.
  - eru 10y ago
    The US is not that important. Arguably the British tradition had a bigger impact---without people's revolutions. (There was the Glorious Revolution..)
    - redial 10y ago
      I'm sorry I don't understand your comment. Not that important for what? The British tradition (which tradition?) had a bigger impact on what? And all I'm saying is that at some point we get bored of calling successful revolutions, well, revolutions, and just accept them as the new normal. But we remember the short lived ones as revolutions because we never got around to give them another name, and thus we associate revolution with failure, when it is not the case at all (one way or the other).
      - quirkafleeg 10y ago
        > I'm sorry I don't understand your comment. Not that important for what? The British tradition (which tradition?) had a bigger impact on what? The American revolution, Constitution and Bill of Rights are all inspired and influenced by, among other things, the Magna Carta, the English revolution and English Bill of Rights. Let's ignore the unexplained impact you claim the American Revolution has had on "Western Democracy" and examine the impact it had on democracy merely within the United States: In 1776 the only people who were entitled to vote were white men who owned property. 100 years and a civil war later, the 15th Amendment was passed in an attempt to give black men the vote. Another half century after that women were given the vote. Almost another half century after that - 200 years after the American Revolution - the Voting Rights Act had to be passed, to finally, properly give black people the vote. To put it another way, New Zealand had universal suffrage when Queen Victoria was on the throne; the USA didn't even fully have it for black people when Barack Obama was born.
        redial 10y ago
        If we follow your example then no one really has a true democracy yet, after all in most countries people under 18 (or 21 or whatever age they use) are not allowed to vote. This might be considered barbaric in the future. You are confusing your ideal of democracy with what was actually a change in the way to look at government: it was a complete rejection of the monarchy and its god mandated right to rule unlike anything that came before. And sure, everything is influenced by what came earlier, after all Thomas Paine, considered by many the intelectual father of both the French and American Revolutions was actually British. What started in 1776 was the beginning of modern democracy, and it inspired many western colonies to break from their colonizers with their own democratic revolutions (not all successful), but it was not perfect, it has evolved a lot since then, and it will continue to do so. I will also argue your point about New Zealand. If your democratic process can be subverted by the whims of a single person using the power of his/her inherited authority on the assumption of being divine, then you don't really have a democracy, no matter how many people are allowed to vote. But again, that is not the point I was making in my response to op. I was just merely pointing out that not all revolutions end in failure.
    - AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
      Are we going to pretend that there wasn't a century or so of struggle between the Crown and Parliament to establish who was really in charge? A struggle that included a decade or more of armed conflict and the beheading of the king?
  - drieddust 10y ago
    Democracy in modern world is a result of Industrialization and it was a ugly,long and slow process. French revolution resulted in revolutionary becoming the aggressors and they were took over by Napoleon so power returned to back to Regency. Revolutions in China, South America, USSR etc also resulted in same. I can't comment on American revolution though, it may have been an exception. [1] http://www.history.com/topics/french-revolution http://www.history.com/topics/french-revolution
    - redial 10y ago
      The Industrial Revolution was a factor in the uptake of democracy, sure. Just as WWI, WWII and the Cold War were. But it all started in 1776 in the US with the Declaration of Independence and in the 1790s with the French Revolution, which was the inspiration for South America to declare independence from Spain and establish their own democracies with different levels of success. The French Revolution didn't last in France, not at first, but the core concepts are the basis of our current democracy largely in part because the American Revolution kept them alive and spread them.
      - drieddust 10y ago
        I think quirkafleeg above answered on American revolution.
        redial 10y ago
        Attempted to.
  - restalis 10y ago
    The "American Revolution" was just a struggle for independence. The "revolution" in the true sense assumes a change in values on multiple levels.
    - redial 10y ago
      The intelectual pilar of the American Revolution was a manuscript called Common Sense by Thomas Paine where the changes in values where outlined. Calling it just a struggle for independence says nothing about why they were struggling to be independent.
yarou 10y ago
Can you point to an example of a Western democracy today?
- Noseshine 10y ago
  Even when every single person complains, the result of democracy is not to make each and every person happy. Case in point: You can change things, even radically, in the western democracies. All it takes is to create a new party (the law and the constitutions place only very broad limits) - the you can get elected. The point that new parties have not actually been elected is not a sign that democracy doesn't work, it is a sign that people in summary don't actually think any of them would be an improvement. Just because you don't like some of the outcome doesn't mean it's not a democracy.
  - chriswarbo 10y ago
    > The point that new parties have not actually been elected is not a sign that democracy doesn't work, it is a sign that people in summary don't actually think any of them would be an improvement. Whilst this is true, it also matters how the people's will is summarised, and (perhaps even more importantly) how that summing method affects the behaviour of the people. The obvious example being that first-past-the-post systems have a tendency to get ~2 dominant parties (e.g. US and UK), whilst proportional systems tend to get more parties or coalitions (e.g. Germany and Scotland). Hence, in a first-past-the-post system, the fact that new parties don't tend to get elected is a sign that people don't think those parties offer enough of an improvement to convince a majority of voters to sacrifice their influence on the race between the big 2. It's like a giant prisoner's dilemma, where it's possible for every individual to think that some new party is a big improvement, but for nobody to vote for that party as they don't trust others to cooperate. Although there are second-order effects, e.g. it may be worth chasing a seat in parliament even if there's no hope of forming a government; or getting second-order effects from an issue/protest vote (e.g. voting UKIP to influence whichever majority party wins to focus on immigration)
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  Switzerland, 800 years and kickin' high
redial 10y ago
That is a very skewed view of history. The Roman Empire lasted around 400 years. The British Empire controlled the world for almost 300 years (and the monarchy is still in place after almost 1000 years), and those are only two examples. The US was founded in 1776, The French Revolution, that gave birth to the modern Western Democracy concept happened around 1790, that is at most 240 years, and it only became predominant after WWI, so around 100 years. Although in my opinion superior (or maybe i'm just biased), western democracy is not assured to work in the long run, many countries after adopting it have gone back to monarchies or dictatorships. And after all, all forms of government that preceded it have been replaced.
- foota 10y ago
  Many? Examples?
  - redial 10y ago
    Cuba, Chile, Argentina. They all had democracies, and then collapsed into dictatorships. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable could also name some African or Middle Eastern countries.
    - AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
      When did Cuba have a functional democracy?
    - appleflaxen 10y ago
      iran
      - CapitalistCartr 10y ago
        Iran got that because the CIA did it forcibly.
        saiya-jin 10y ago
Razengan 10y ago
> What has been shown to work in the long run, is Western democracy. How "long" has "Western democracy" been around for? In any case, I don't think it matters which -cracy/-archy/-ism it is. What ulitimately works is that the people be allowed to do what they want to do. ...within universal moral standards (:Murder is Bad.) As long as people are allowed to buy what they want, watch, read and play what they want, build what they want, go where they want, work where they want — if they have enough money — and say what they want and have relationships with whomever they want, then on the whole they will be complacent if not content or happy. They won't care what type of government it is or who is running it. Take a contemporary issue for example. Do you think you can even vote out the NSA and dismantle all domestic surveillance mechanisms at this point in America? But the majority of people don't care because they're more or less content. I reside in a third-world country that isn't exactly a bastion of Western Democracy, yet the people here more-or-less live their daily lives out as one might in a Western country, so they don't really pay their government much mind. In the end, what works is consumerism.
dghf 10y ago
> most collapsed due to internal problems not being crushed by the nation state Weren't the Spanish anarchists betrayed by their Republican and Stalinist allies?
amelius 10y ago
> What has been shown to work in the long run, is Western democracy. Western democracy works?
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Arguably it does, though that depends strongly on what you accept its intended results to be.
carapace 10y ago
But I don't think these folks are "leftists"? > "its autonomy as an indigenous Purepecha community is recognised and underwritten by the Mexican government." My guess would be that this is a whole culture.
epitomix 10y ago
I think you are missing the bigger picture. This is a story of a town dealing with the problems that arise in a failed state. The Mexican state and federal governments have failed to provide the basic services that they are responsible for, most importantly security.

cel1ne 10y ago

Thanks for the comment, I had exactly the same thought.

drieddust 10y ago

In few years time, we will read about Cheran mafia's ascend to power. These utopian dreams almost always result in oppressed becoming oppressors. This quote sums it up quite nicely. “But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions.” ― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

redial 10y ago
Western democracy is the result of the French and American Revolutions.
- eru 10y ago
  The US is not that important. Arguably the British tradition had a bigger impact---without people's revolutions. (There was the Glorious Revolution..)
  - redial 10y ago
    I'm sorry I don't understand your comment. Not that important for what? The British tradition (which tradition?) had a bigger impact on what? And all I'm saying is that at some point we get bored of calling successful revolutions, well, revolutions, and just accept them as the new normal. But we remember the short lived ones as revolutions because we never got around to give them another name, and thus we associate revolution with failure, when it is not the case at all (one way or the other).
    - quirkafleeg 10y ago
      > I'm sorry I don't understand your comment. Not that important for what? The British tradition (which tradition?) had a bigger impact on what? The American revolution, Constitution and Bill of Rights are all inspired and influenced by, among other things, the Magna Carta, the English revolution and English Bill of Rights. Let's ignore the unexplained impact you claim the American Revolution has had on "Western Democracy" and examine the impact it had on democracy merely within the United States: In 1776 the only people who were entitled to vote were white men who owned property. 100 years and a civil war later, the 15th Amendment was passed in an attempt to give black men the vote. Another half century after that women were given the vote. Almost another half century after that - 200 years after the American Revolution - the Voting Rights Act had to be passed, to finally, properly give black people the vote. To put it another way, New Zealand had universal suffrage when Queen Victoria was on the throne; the USA didn't even fully have it for black people when Barack Obama was born.
      - redial 10y ago
        If we follow your example then no one really has a true democracy yet, after all in most countries people under 18 (or 21 or whatever age they use) are not allowed to vote. This might be considered barbaric in the future. You are confusing your ideal of democracy with what was actually a change in the way to look at government: it was a complete rejection of the monarchy and its god mandated right to rule unlike anything that came before. And sure, everything is influenced by what came earlier, after all Thomas Paine, considered by many the intelectual father of both the French and American Revolutions was actually British. What started in 1776 was the beginning of modern democracy, and it inspired many western colonies to break from their colonizers with their own democratic revolutions (not all successful), but it was not perfect, it has evolved a lot since then, and it will continue to do so. I will also argue your point about New Zealand. If your democratic process can be subverted by the whims of a single person using the power of his/her inherited authority on the assumption of being divine, then you don't really have a democracy, no matter how many people are allowed to vote. But again, that is not the point I was making in my response to op. I was just merely pointing out that not all revolutions end in failure.
  - AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
    Are we going to pretend that there wasn't a century or so of struggle between the Crown and Parliament to establish who was really in charge? A struggle that included a decade or more of armed conflict and the beheading of the king?
- drieddust 10y ago
  Democracy in modern world is a result of Industrialization and it was a ugly,long and slow process. French revolution resulted in revolutionary becoming the aggressors and they were took over by Napoleon so power returned to back to Regency. Revolutions in China, South America, USSR etc also resulted in same. I can't comment on American revolution though, it may have been an exception. [1] http://www.history.com/topics/french-revolution http://www.history.com/topics/french-revolution
  - redial 10y ago
    The Industrial Revolution was a factor in the uptake of democracy, sure. Just as WWI, WWII and the Cold War were. But it all started in 1776 in the US with the Declaration of Independence and in the 1790s with the French Revolution, which was the inspiration for South America to declare independence from Spain and establish their own democracies with different levels of success. The French Revolution didn't last in France, not at first, but the core concepts are the basis of our current democracy largely in part because the American Revolution kept them alive and spread them.
    - drieddust 10y ago
      I think quirkafleeg above answered on American revolution.
      - redial 10y ago
        Attempted to.
- restalis 10y ago
  The "American Revolution" was just a struggle for independence. The "revolution" in the true sense assumes a change in values on multiple levels.
  - redial 10y ago
    The intelectual pilar of the American Revolution was a manuscript called Common Sense by Thomas Paine where the changes in values where outlined. Calling it just a struggle for independence says nothing about why they were struggling to be independent.

yarou 10y ago

Can you point to an example of a Western democracy today?

Noseshine 10y ago
Even when every single person complains, the result of democracy is not to make each and every person happy. Case in point: You can change things, even radically, in the western democracies. All it takes is to create a new party (the law and the constitutions place only very broad limits) - the you can get elected. The point that new parties have not actually been elected is not a sign that democracy doesn't work, it is a sign that people in summary don't actually think any of them would be an improvement. Just because you don't like some of the outcome doesn't mean it's not a democracy.
- chriswarbo 10y ago
  > The point that new parties have not actually been elected is not a sign that democracy doesn't work, it is a sign that people in summary don't actually think any of them would be an improvement. Whilst this is true, it also matters how the people's will is summarised, and (perhaps even more importantly) how that summing method affects the behaviour of the people. The obvious example being that first-past-the-post systems have a tendency to get ~2 dominant parties (e.g. US and UK), whilst proportional systems tend to get more parties or coalitions (e.g. Germany and Scotland). Hence, in a first-past-the-post system, the fact that new parties don't tend to get elected is a sign that people don't think those parties offer enough of an improvement to convince a majority of voters to sacrifice their influence on the race between the big 2. It's like a giant prisoner's dilemma, where it's possible for every individual to think that some new party is a big improvement, but for nobody to vote for that party as they don't trust others to cooperate. Although there are second-order effects, e.g. it may be worth chasing a seat in parliament even if there's no hope of forming a government; or getting second-order effects from an issue/protest vote (e.g. voting UKIP to influence whichever majority party wins to focus on immigration)
saiya-jin 10y ago
Switzerland, 800 years and kickin' high

redial 10y ago

That is a very skewed view of history. The Roman Empire lasted around 400 years. The British Empire controlled the world for almost 300 years (and the monarchy is still in place after almost 1000 years), and those are only two examples. The US was founded in 1776, The French Revolution, that gave birth to the modern Western Democracy concept happened around 1790, that is at most 240 years, and it only became predominant after WWI, so around 100 years. Although in my opinion superior (or maybe i'm just biased), western democracy is not assured to work in the long run, many countries after adopting it have gone back to monarchies or dictatorships. And after all, all forms of government that preceded it have been replaced.

foota 10y ago
Many? Examples?
- redial 10y ago
  Cuba, Chile, Argentina. They all had democracies, and then collapsed into dictatorships. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable could also name some African or Middle Eastern countries.
  - AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
    When did Cuba have a functional democracy?
  - appleflaxen 10y ago
    iran
    - CapitalistCartr 10y ago
      Iran got that because the CIA did it forcibly.
      - saiya-jin 10y ago

Razengan 10y ago

> What has been shown to work in the long run, is Western democracy. How "long" has "Western democracy" been around for? In any case, I don't think it matters which -cracy/-archy/-ism it is. What ulitimately works is that the people be allowed to do what they want to do. ...within universal moral standards (:Murder is Bad.) As long as people are allowed to buy what they want, watch, read and play what they want, build what they want, go where they want, work where they want — if they have enough money — and say what they want and have relationships with whomever they want, then on the whole they will be complacent if not content or happy. They won't care what type of government it is or who is running it. Take a contemporary issue for example. Do you think you can even vote out the NSA and dismantle all domestic surveillance mechanisms at this point in America? But the majority of people don't care because they're more or less content. I reside in a third-world country that isn't exactly a bastion of Western Democracy, yet the people here more-or-less live their daily lives out as one might in a Western country, so they don't really pay their government much mind. In the end, what works is consumerism.

dghf 10y ago

> most collapsed due to internal problems not being crushed by the nation state Weren't the Spanish anarchists betrayed by their Republican and Stalinist allies?

amelius 10y ago

> What has been shown to work in the long run, is Western democracy. Western democracy works?

dredmorbius 10y ago
Arguably it does, though that depends strongly on what you accept its intended results to be.

carapace 10y ago

But I don't think these folks are "leftists"? > "its autonomy as an indigenous Purepecha community is recognised and underwritten by the Mexican government." My guess would be that this is a whole culture.

epitomix 10y ago

I think you are missing the bigger picture. This is a story of a town dealing with the problems that arise in a failed state. The Mexican state and federal governments have failed to provide the basic services that they are responsible for, most importantly security.