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Having read the proposals he made after his defeat, his "Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists" [1] I disagree. He just talks about democra

by Iv 7y ago

Having read the proposals he made after his defeat, his "Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists" [1] I disagree. He just talks about democracy, indeed talking mostly about representative democracy, but the system he proposes has no voting of any sort. Actually, reading it reminded me of another such book I had read a while ago. Qaddafi's Green Book, where he lays down his ideal system, the Jamahiriya. On paper, it is pretty cool: every matters of state are decided by local assemblies that can call for a higher level assembly when deemed necessary. But devil is in the detail. The Guide has a final say, in a bit of an unspecified way, exactly how Maknho stays pretty vague on the whole decision process. I am sure that if Qaddafi had been defeated in his youth, many anarchists would be musing about this system in the way we do Makhno's. [1] http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/newplatform/org_plat.htm http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/newplatform/org_plat.ht... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Book_(Muammar_Gaddafi) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Book_(Muammar_Gaddaf...

int_19h 7y ago
Note that I was referring to the actual practices in the Free Territory, not Makhno's theorizing. The local councils did run things in most communities. Qaddafi's green book is just a rehash of the council democracy. But yes, it can certainly be implemented differently - just as you can have a multi-party representative democracy on paper that is a totalitarian dictatorship in practice, as in e.g. DPRK. I think better examples of functional democracy along these lines can be seen in the Zapatista-controlled areas in Mexico, and especially in Rojava/AANES. Rojava is interesting because they have an actual written social contract that captures the details of the electoral system, which is not very typical for such forms of governance: https://www.scribd.com/document/441234886/Social-Contract-of-the-Democratic-Federation-of-Northern-Syria https://www.scribd.com/document/441234886/Social-Contract-of...

by Iv 7y ago

int_19h 7y ago

Note that I was referring to the actual practices in the Free Territory, not Makhno's theorizing. The local councils did run things in most communities. Qaddafi's green book is just a rehash of the council democracy. But yes, it can certainly be implemented differently - just as you can have a multi-party representative democracy on paper that is a totalitarian dictatorship in practice, as in e.g. DPRK. I think better examples of functional democracy along these lines can be seen in the Zapatista-controlled areas in Mexico, and especially in Rojava/AANES. Rojava is interesting because they have an actual written social contract that captures the details of the electoral system, which is not very typical for such forms of governance: https://www.scribd.com/document/441234886/Social-Contract-of-the-Democratic-Federation-of-Northern-Syria https://www.scribd.com/document/441234886/Social-Contract-of...