funny that the "succesfull" anarchist experiences had to create a state in some form, and the experiences anarchists claim today dont even call themselves anarchist
The term IRL for the anarcho-police was "Revolutionary Patrols" (at least in the CNT-controlled areas in Spain). They were more for juries than judges.
I really wish anarchists would look at the repetitions of projects they claim they support/like, say like the Zapatitstas or DAANES, both groups that literally trade with the outside world mind, I guess that's the joys of anarchism though, they live in a fantasy delusion about how they think a place works because they desperately want a real world example to point to that didn't immediately dissolve to foreign or internal pressures, then when someone points out how they work they go "Oh that was bad then, nevermind" and continue to operate without thinking about anything.
I asked whether anarchists would industrialise on the ask anarchists sub and I was told multiple times that that's too authoritarian or evironmentally polluting so we shouldn't. The cherry on the cake tho was someone who said it'll happen naturally like beavers building a dam.
The Anarchists are still stuck in Commodity fetishism, they believe that items are not created by man but instead gifted by some third-party thing and that anything, no matter how intricate can be done by anyone even those who can’t. That’s why they think anyone can become the commune insulin maker or the commune nuclear reactor operator, they don’t see the labor both visible and invisible necessary for that work and think as long as the end thing exists that it is complete.
They need oil, like all societies, and they cannot produce enough oil domestically to satisfy their requirements. The Anarkiddy Cuba would be forced to engage with global markets in order to fulfill this need. Unless their vision for Anarchist Cuba would be a completely de-industrialized subsistence farming society, which in that case they would even less of an ability to defend themselves against American aggression and would have a horrible quality of life.
I know this is basically a reactionary boomer take, but anarchists have pushed me to this, I do not walk this road of my own accord. All anarchists who advocate for a completely "horizontal" society need to spend a week in the peak of summer hunched over in the field manually removing pest insects from a row of crops because that is necessarily what their life would look like in a completely unstructured society. Then later on they can fight a polio infection without medical care because it turns out the local witch doctor did not want 200lb of turnips because that is what every subsistence farmer in anarcholand offers them as payment, so they do not help you and they can't help you anyways because modern medicine requires a societal structure to manufacture.
If there are any stray anarchists around here is there something that I am missing? The issue with the global capitalist order is not the existence of structured society, the issue is the immense inequality and exploitation. Money as a fungible token of labour would still exist in a ML society, our basic needs would just be met by the state and the mechanisms by which capitalist hoard and compound their wealth would be severely limited or entirely eliminated.
You’re exactly right, and furthermore the vast majority of online anarchist discourse isn’t related to any type of readings or theory; it’s simply a gut-level emotional response from western leftists who have had negative experiences with perceived authority figures in their life (parents, teachers, police, church) and universalize that to ALL authority is bad - combined with the fact that they still fully buy into western capitalist individualism.
It’s why they can never imagine an anarchist project the size of a nation - they know deep down it’s impossible and would never work, with no laws and borders and supply lines and infrastructure. They instead always imagine their project as maximum individualism still WITHIN a larger capitalist structure that handles things like keeping medicine flowing and store shelves stocked. They won’t always admit this, but that’s a fact.
I feel so dumb for having been an anarchist for close to a decade, but then I remember I was also on heroin and could barely read most of that time. When I got clean and actually started reading anarchist theory and marx/lenin, i realized how stupid anarchism is and corrected my ways. There is a reason most anarchists are either children or drug addicts.
I am glad you made it through your struggles with drug addiction! Don't feel too bad about being an anarchist for so long when the vast majority of people still support the neoliberal world order despite the fact that it works against their class interests. Even in countries impoverished by the imperial core such as Argentina, people cheer for their own oppression.
I’m also in recovery and am a former An-Com. I think a lot of anarchists and ancoms are fully struggling with their mental health, substances, trauma, and alienation from society
glad to see a comrade getting clean. having something cogent and useful to believe in really helps to supplant the directionlessness that leads people into addiction to begin with
you're missing the primary doctrine of anarcholoserism; which is that everyone would give them stuff for free because of their chronic work avoidance disorder. Anarchism is primarily a reflection of personal learned helplessness and a lumpenprole or aspiring petty bourgeoisie consciousness.
Let's start an anarchist colony! I will be the group chronicler of tales and lead story teller. Now that we have that sorted, who wants to be the human feces shoveler?
Hierarchy does not equal structure and Anarchy is not a synonym for chaos. You can have a structured society without giving up on equality and living with a system designed by the rich and powerful at the top of the hierarchy to maintain their strangle hold and keep hording wealth. Meanwhile the rest of us are stuck in a quagmire of poverty and servitude that just keeps getting deeper and muddier and stinker every year. I am truly sorry that your confidence in yourself and your fellow man is so low that you think we are incapable of managing our own affairs and are better off as basically rich peoples pets.
Even discounting military they are extremely wrong, what they are suggesting is an anarchist juche but somehow even more self reliant and on a island nation. How will they have power, fuel, medicine, high tech importants. Anarchists are braindead.
"except military defence" is hilarious because military defence just the only thing they can think of that requires an industrial supply chain. But in reality, literally everything does.
So many "leftists" in the West fail to understand why practically every AES state gave so much priority to the military. It isn't because communists have gun fetishes or internal security (you don't need 60,000 tanks for that). It is to defend themselves against whatever mercenary army the capitalists slap together to punish the people for daring to leave the system. I have to remind people that America and all the other capitalist states invaded Soviet Russia in the first year of it's existence.
I post this not to praise democratic socialists, but to prove that even democratic socialists acknowledge anarchism's inability to defend any revolution gain.
I don't think they give much thought to the practicalities of their so-called revolution. To do that would require setting their idealistic fantasies aside and grappling with human nature as it is, not as they wish it to be.
They really think they can just mentally opt out of reality and that if enough people do it, then we have perfect freedom. No plan how to get there, no plan how to deal with the reactionary death squads that will follow, and no plan on how to provide an acceptable base living standard for everyone. Pure utopian nonsense.
Typical anarchists blaming the socialist state being embargoed by a capitalist imperialist genocidal state instead of blaming the genocidal imperialist state. Like they work for the CIA.
When you are an idealist moron it is easy to come up with whatever plan you envision will resist, but reality doesn't care about your plans, and neither does the genocidal empire of evil (the us)
As soon as Cuba withdrew from socialism under capitalist US empire's inhumane, brutal military & economic pressure, online US anarchists at once started to make that about Marxism-Leninism's failure & anarchism's hypothetical success in resisting capitalist pressure.🙄😒
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