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You can read about Zapatistas, who ideologically are the closest to anarchist territory in practice. They have quite a bit higher standard of living then the re

You can read about Zapatistas, who ideologically are the closest to anarchist territory in practice. They have quite a bit higher standard of living then the rest of Chiapas, so it seems the experiment is successful. A lot of people don't like liberalism anymore and because they think the only alternative on the left was Marxist-Leninism they slowly go in the direction of fascism. Anarchism is another direction. Anarchist revolution wouldn't have leaders and it in theory wouldn't have to be violent - anarcho-syndycalists postulate that a general strike would be enough. Probably some violence would happen, especially from the state or fascist paramilitary groups but who knows. Anarchist main strategy is prefiguration, so create spaces that are anarchist in nature and grow them from there, show as many people they don't need a state or private property or if you are a communist a money too.

hutzlibu 3y ago
"Zapatistas" If they practice anarchism, it is of a kind where everyone must work and they do seem to have clear power structures as far as I understand. So they sound more socialist than anarchist to me with authoritian tendencies in reality. But it is hard to tell, as they are very closed up and not very open to outsiders. But for context, they do fight for survival in a hostile environment and that probably does not help with nice and clean solutions. Still, there seems to me a big discrepancy between their writings and their actions, so I would be careful with choosing them as a role model. But their slogan I very much like "The world we want is one where many worlds fit".
- TotalCrackpot 3y ago
  I've read they try two find consensus which doesn't seem authoritarian, do you have any sources for that?
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    And what happens if they don't find a consensus? And it has been a while that I tried to find out more about them, but I mainly found it hard to get neutral sources at all. They are very closed up and you cannot just visit them. Or in some ways you can, but you won't get to see the inside structures. How they actually make decisions. At least that's what the people I read reported. (But there is a study I just stumbled on, I will read later, maybe there is sonething more concrete inside: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073805931100143X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073805931...) All in all it sounds more like tribalism. A indigenous culture that is trying to survive with some autonomy in a world of nation states.
    - TotalCrackpot 3y ago
      >And what happens if they don't find a consensus? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Zapatista_Autonomous_Municipalities#Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Zapatista_Autonomous_Mun... They strive to reach consensus, if they cannot find it they make decisions through majority and they are federation composed of popular assemblies of around 300 families each. Zapatistas are indigenous Americans whose culture was almost completely destroyed, but calling them tribalist is unfair I would say, given that e.g they promote sexual equality.
      - hutzlibu 3y ago
        What has tribalism got to do with sexual equality? Tribalism is a vague term, that describes societies that live in tribe like structures. Modern or ancient. But does not say much about how that tribe is structured. Also about consensus: I think allmost all states and societies claim they try to find a consensus.
        TotalCrackpot 3y ago
        According to Wikipedia: "With a negative connotation and in a political context, tribalism can also mean discriminatory behavior or attitudes towards out-groups, based on in-group loyalty." I would describe their organization as federation of general assemblies, not tribalism.
        hutzlibu 3y ago
        Well, I did not use tribalism with a negative connotation. And as far as I understand, their "assemblies" are pretty much reserved to members of their ethnicity/tribe. Thats why it is more tribalist to me, than anarchist, which is usually rather internationalist.
        TotalCrackpot 3y ago
        They seem to have closed borders which is not typically considered anarchists indeed. About assemblies - that's fine, anarchists postulate freedom of association so you don't have to let random people from outside inside your structures, still they seem to be some inspiration to the rest of residents of Chiapas and in practice there is nothing that could stop them from fighting for their self-determination too.
generic92034 3y ago
When it comes to discussing anarchism I think a principle of physics - horror vacui - neatly translates to sociology. When there are no greater powers, there is every incentive to collaborate to create ones, so soon there will be greater powers, ruling the relatively powerless ones again.
- TotalCrackpot 3y ago
  Anarchist thought is centered around fighting against that.
  - generic92034 3y ago
    I just cannot see how they could be successful in preventing power accumulation in the long run. Unless the thesis is that all (as in "each and every") humans by themselves want to prevent power accumulation, so nobody even tries. To me that does not sound very realistic.
    - TotalCrackpot 3y ago
      It's enough for significant majority to strive for that type of society to stabilize this type of structure. Sure, some people don't like anarchist framework, that's why anarchists are propagating their way of thinking. Consider that we are from the beginning of our life indoctrinated into authoritarian structures like nation state, school, workplace and a lot of people go through the motion because they don't think alternative is possible. Probably not unsignificant fraction of slaves too thought that that's how it is. We know that slave owners were justifying slavery as natural, same as a lot of people justify liberalism as such. I would say anarchists want to create a world for anarchists and want to spread anarchists thought, because they think that there is actually nontrival part of humanity that would be to some extend interested in these ideas. Anarchism was very significant movement in the beginnings of XX century before it lost to Marxism-Leninism and these people were interested in these types of organization that prevent power accumulation. Marxism-Leninism damaged every anti-capitalist tendency in the west unfortunately in minds of big part of population, but I think it's still workable to spread the idea, especially considering that anarchists were repressed everywhere where Marxists-Leninists got to power.
mmmmmmtoes 3y ago
There has never been an anarchist "experiment" capable of sufficient coordination to produce modern (for its time) medicine, or the agricultural technology needed to feed current populations, or housing and infrastructure fitting of modern standards, and so on for many other goods and services we consider necessary to life today. Anarchism has almost sort of worked for a handful of small-scale, already-impovershed revolutionary/resistance groups, who can rely heavily on pre-existing infrastructure and some trade with capitalist or state communist industries, but there is little evidence to suggest it would be able to work on a meaningful scale. It also has a tendency (such as in Spain) to be co-opted by wannabe dictators anyway who simply establish oppresive state communist regimes regardless. Soviet-style command economies are already notorious for being unable to match capitalist economies in terms of efficiency, due to the simple fact that it's far easier to use natural pricing (maybe with some interventionism) to reach equilibrium than equations and top-down production quotas. You can make an argument this could change with help from modern data science and machine learning but that's beside the point. With anarchism, you are taking all of the issues of soviet-style economies and making them even worse in that now each individual commune is responsible for coordinating with every other one it relies on. Even if you don't prevent natural currency systems from developing you still lose massive amounts of efficiency and still end up with inequality (due to resource, skill, etc. distributions being inherently different), though this time maybe you get lucky and the ienquality is between communes as opposed to being within them, between classes. Also, there are practically no cases of lasting nonviolent anarchist revolutions. The haves tend to really not like giving up belongings and lifestyles to the have-nots when forced to. That's obviously not an argument against anarchism, though.
- TotalCrackpot 3y ago
  You make interesting assumption that centralization is more efficient then decentralisation but if that was the case then soviet style economy should be more efficient than capitalist market. In capitalism you effectively have a bunch of corporations with internal command economy that trade with each other. In Anarchism hypothetical companies are much smaller so you don't have in efficiencies stemming from these long chains of command with a lot of beaurocracy. Anarchism didn't have opportunity to create bigger project because the tendency is violently repressed by rulers of the current world. It actually eliminates the lot of losses of efficency of current society like economic rents which are proved to be negative to economy, just currently capitalism has relatively extremely strong violence potential and great propaganda machine. This obviously makes Anarchism a very hard and ambitious project but to me its clear that it would be more efficient in creating societies with higher standard of living than what we have currently. Please consider that it can both have markets and currencies AND decentralised planning depending on what is better in specific situation.
momirlan 3y ago
> Anarchist revolution wouldn't have leaders we're talking humans here, right ? there's always a jerk who takes over
- TotalCrackpot 3y ago
  Who was the leader of Catalonia revolution would you say? Sure people from CNT-FAI engaged in agitation etc. but were they actually leaders?
  - momirlan 3y ago
    if the revolution had been successful, i guarantee you there was going to be a leader, maybe after intense and bloody infighting.
  - tgv 3y ago
    Nobody said there would be one leader. That's a pretty communist thing to assume.

hutzlibu 3y ago

"Zapatistas" If they practice anarchism, it is of a kind where everyone must work and they do seem to have clear power structures as far as I understand. So they sound more socialist than anarchist to me with authoritian tendencies in reality. But it is hard to tell, as they are very closed up and not very open to outsiders. But for context, they do fight for survival in a hostile environment and that probably does not help with nice and clean solutions. Still, there seems to me a big discrepancy between their writings and their actions, so I would be careful with choosing them as a role model. But their slogan I very much like "The world we want is one where many worlds fit".

TotalCrackpot 3y ago
I've read they try two find consensus which doesn't seem authoritarian, do you have any sources for that?
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  And what happens if they don't find a consensus? And it has been a while that I tried to find out more about them, but I mainly found it hard to get neutral sources at all. They are very closed up and you cannot just visit them. Or in some ways you can, but you won't get to see the inside structures. How they actually make decisions. At least that's what the people I read reported. (But there is a study I just stumbled on, I will read later, maybe there is sonething more concrete inside: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073805931100143X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073805931...) All in all it sounds more like tribalism. A indigenous culture that is trying to survive with some autonomy in a world of nation states.
  - TotalCrackpot 3y ago
    >And what happens if they don't find a consensus? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Zapatista_Autonomous_Municipalities#Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Zapatista_Autonomous_Mun... They strive to reach consensus, if they cannot find it they make decisions through majority and they are federation composed of popular assemblies of around 300 families each. Zapatistas are indigenous Americans whose culture was almost completely destroyed, but calling them tribalist is unfair I would say, given that e.g they promote sexual equality.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      What has tribalism got to do with sexual equality? Tribalism is a vague term, that describes societies that live in tribe like structures. Modern or ancient. But does not say much about how that tribe is structured. Also about consensus: I think allmost all states and societies claim they try to find a consensus.
      - TotalCrackpot 3y ago
        According to Wikipedia: "With a negative connotation and in a political context, tribalism can also mean discriminatory behavior or attitudes towards out-groups, based on in-group loyalty." I would describe their organization as federation of general assemblies, not tribalism.
        hutzlibu 3y ago
        Well, I did not use tribalism with a negative connotation. And as far as I understand, their "assemblies" are pretty much reserved to members of their ethnicity/tribe. Thats why it is more tribalist to me, than anarchist, which is usually rather internationalist.
        TotalCrackpot 3y ago
        They seem to have closed borders which is not typically considered anarchists indeed. About assemblies - that's fine, anarchists postulate freedom of association so you don't have to let random people from outside inside your structures, still they seem to be some inspiration to the rest of residents of Chiapas and in practice there is nothing that could stop them from fighting for their self-determination too.

generic92034 3y ago

When it comes to discussing anarchism I think a principle of physics - horror vacui - neatly translates to sociology. When there are no greater powers, there is every incentive to collaborate to create ones, so soon there will be greater powers, ruling the relatively powerless ones again.

TotalCrackpot 3y ago
Anarchist thought is centered around fighting against that.
- generic92034 3y ago
  I just cannot see how they could be successful in preventing power accumulation in the long run. Unless the thesis is that all (as in "each and every") humans by themselves want to prevent power accumulation, so nobody even tries. To me that does not sound very realistic.
  - TotalCrackpot 3y ago
    It's enough for significant majority to strive for that type of society to stabilize this type of structure. Sure, some people don't like anarchist framework, that's why anarchists are propagating their way of thinking. Consider that we are from the beginning of our life indoctrinated into authoritarian structures like nation state, school, workplace and a lot of people go through the motion because they don't think alternative is possible. Probably not unsignificant fraction of slaves too thought that that's how it is. We know that slave owners were justifying slavery as natural, same as a lot of people justify liberalism as such. I would say anarchists want to create a world for anarchists and want to spread anarchists thought, because they think that there is actually nontrival part of humanity that would be to some extend interested in these ideas. Anarchism was very significant movement in the beginnings of XX century before it lost to Marxism-Leninism and these people were interested in these types of organization that prevent power accumulation. Marxism-Leninism damaged every anti-capitalist tendency in the west unfortunately in minds of big part of population, but I think it's still workable to spread the idea, especially considering that anarchists were repressed everywhere where Marxists-Leninists got to power.

mmmmmmtoes 3y ago

There has never been an anarchist "experiment" capable of sufficient coordination to produce modern (for its time) medicine, or the agricultural technology needed to feed current populations, or housing and infrastructure fitting of modern standards, and so on for many other goods and services we consider necessary to life today. Anarchism has almost sort of worked for a handful of small-scale, already-impovershed revolutionary/resistance groups, who can rely heavily on pre-existing infrastructure and some trade with capitalist or state communist industries, but there is little evidence to suggest it would be able to work on a meaningful scale. It also has a tendency (such as in Spain) to be co-opted by wannabe dictators anyway who simply establish oppresive state communist regimes regardless. Soviet-style command economies are already notorious for being unable to match capitalist economies in terms of efficiency, due to the simple fact that it's far easier to use natural pricing (maybe with some interventionism) to reach equilibrium than equations and top-down production quotas. You can make an argument this could change with help from modern data science and machine learning but that's beside the point. With anarchism, you are taking all of the issues of soviet-style economies and making them even worse in that now each individual commune is responsible for coordinating with every other one it relies on. Even if you don't prevent natural currency systems from developing you still lose massive amounts of efficiency and still end up with inequality (due to resource, skill, etc. distributions being inherently different), though this time maybe you get lucky and the ienquality is between communes as opposed to being within them, between classes. Also, there are practically no cases of lasting nonviolent anarchist revolutions. The haves tend to really not like giving up belongings and lifestyles to the have-nots when forced to. That's obviously not an argument against anarchism, though.

TotalCrackpot 3y ago
You make interesting assumption that centralization is more efficient then decentralisation but if that was the case then soviet style economy should be more efficient than capitalist market. In capitalism you effectively have a bunch of corporations with internal command economy that trade with each other. In Anarchism hypothetical companies are much smaller so you don't have in efficiencies stemming from these long chains of command with a lot of beaurocracy. Anarchism didn't have opportunity to create bigger project because the tendency is violently repressed by rulers of the current world. It actually eliminates the lot of losses of efficency of current society like economic rents which are proved to be negative to economy, just currently capitalism has relatively extremely strong violence potential and great propaganda machine. This obviously makes Anarchism a very hard and ambitious project but to me its clear that it would be more efficient in creating societies with higher standard of living than what we have currently. Please consider that it can both have markets and currencies AND decentralised planning depending on what is better in specific situation.

momirlan 3y ago

> Anarchist revolution wouldn't have leaders we're talking humans here, right ? there's always a jerk who takes over

TotalCrackpot 3y ago
Who was the leader of Catalonia revolution would you say? Sure people from CNT-FAI engaged in agitation etc. but were they actually leaders?
- momirlan 3y ago
  if the revolution had been successful, i guarantee you there was going to be a leader, maybe after intense and bloody infighting.
- tgv 3y ago
  Nobody said there would be one leader. That's a pretty communist thing to assume.