They fought tooth and nail for three years against a regime which was supported by Hitler and Mussolini. Clearly they should have used anarchist magic to defeat a regime that completely dominated the continent.

For a more current example of an anarchist society working in practice, you could also check out the Zapatista movement, an anarchist society which today consists of at least 300,000 people.

I’d suggest you check out an anarchist FAQ’s answer to the question, “Does revolutionary Spain show that libertarian socialism can work in practice?”.

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The people have armed themselves to protect themselves from people like you. They are more free than you can possibly imagine, and that idea terrifies you.

Oh no, they protect themselves, how terrible. Is this the best you got? The US is executing their own people in the street and has one of the largest imprisoned populations in the world, but anarchists have a border and rules that were collectively decided by the residents to protect people?

They’ve literally hosted international conferences this year. I literally cannot with you people.

Please disengage, I’m sick of the bad faith bullshit.

North Korea is an oppressive, totalitarian state, with limited freedoms, so no, I would prefer not to live there, even if everyone there truly was happy, because I believe in freedom.

That is why I oppose liberal ideology, because it enables the wage slavery of the working class for the benefit of the ruling class.

Do you have any actual objections to life under the Zapatistas, or are you just going to continue vagueposting about how it must be bad because you decided it must be?

Anarchy in definition is not organized by any principles. It’s lack of ruling.

That’s not true - it’s lack of rulers, from the greek “an archos”, meaning “without rulers”. In an anarchist society, there are still rules, but the rules are decided by the people who live and work in a place, rather than a king or a politician or a billionaire or a CEO or whoever. There are many ways to determine what those rules are, such as direct democracy and consensus-based decision making. You might want to check out the Q&Anarchy video series to learn what anarchists actually believe and practice.

For the sake of efficiency, [let’s just revert to representative democracy]

Well, if efficiency in decision making is more important than freedom, we may as well just have a dictator, no? With that said, there are anarchist traditions which do propose systems where delegates have limited mandates, you can learn more about that on an anarchist FAQ.

I have explained why representative democracy is a system which inevitably leads to corruption and I have outlined for you a basic framework for one possible bottom-up system of direct democracy/consensus decision making. I’ve stated my case, and I think I explained it quite well. I understand that it’s a lot to take in and it seems difficult to achieve, but I fully believe that this system would work very well. It has worked in the past, and it is working right now.

As I like to say, I can lead you to water, whether you drink is your prerogative. I hope you take time to reflect on it, and change your mind.

Either way, I wish you all the best, much love, solidarity forever!

With all due respect - I don’t really want to argue with a fellow leftist here while there are liberals attacking us all over the place - the CPC was hardly the only force in China fighting against Imperial Japan, the Second United Front also involved various nationalist forces, including the Kuomintang and various warlords. Were it not for Chinese nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiment, the socialists would have been utterly crushed long before the Japanese invasion of China.

Sometimes I struggle with time perception because of PTSD issues - I’ll lose track of whether it’s day/evening/night and whether I’ve slept etc. I accidentally set my watch to 12 hour mode when moving it an hour for daylight savings and it confused the shit out of me. It’s so much clearer to glance at and determine if it’s evening or daytime when there’s no p.m./a.m.

So the system that lasted for less than 3 years before enabling Franco

It fought tooth and nail for three years against a regime which was supported by Hitler and Mussolini. Clearly they should have used anarchist magic to defeat a regime that completely dominated the continent.

America was never invaded. If it had been, it would have folded like a paper bag. Heck, it still hasn’t been invaded, and yet it is fascist anyways, and has been for a long time now.

did Fidesz directly provide the crib notes or did they let you copy paste from r/politics directly?

I wrote literally all of it myself. I haven’t been on Reddit for years. I notice you’d rather disparage me than actually address any of my arguments, and I prefer not to waste my time with people who argue in bad faith, so I will leave this here.

Much love, solidarity forever!

You’ve had multiple examples of things pointed out to you that meet that standard. It just doesn’t look like anything to you.

Liberalism embraces fascism. Liberalism becomes fascism.

You are a fascist.

Liberals can’t help falling over themselves to claim anarchism always fails despite the fact that anarchism resisted fascism more effectively than liberal nations and despite the fact that liberalism inevitably leads to fascism.

Liberalism is collapsing into fascism right now. It always has, and it always will. It is inevitable.

If we want to resist the rise of fascism, it would be good to learn from an example which was more successful at doing so than every other nation in mainland Europe, no?

That’s a really great question, thank you for asking.

I will begin, in the classic anarchist tradition, of pointing out that I do not have all of the answers - this always sounds like a bit of a cop-out, but don’t worry, I’ll answer your question directly in a moment, and it’s really important to communicate this because it’s super important: anarchism isn’t some blueprint for a society that we follow by rote and dogmatically implement, but rather a base layer of ideas we can use. As per an anarchist FAQ

Anarchists have always been reticent about spelling out their vision of the future in too much detail for it would be contrary to anarchist principles to be dogmatic about the precise forms the new society must take. Free people will create their own alternative institutions in response to conditions specific to their area as well as their needs, desires and hopes and it would be presumptuous of us to attempt to set forth universal policies in advance.

Also, I’ll point out that my objection is to representative democracy, i.e. the current system, where voters are mere passive spectators of occasional, staged, and highly rehearsed debates among candidates pre-selected by the corporate elite, who pay for campaign expenses. The public is expected to choose simply on the basis of political ads and news sound bites. Once the choice is made, cumbersome and ineffective recall procedures insure that elected representatives can act more or less as they (or rather, their wealthy sponsors) please. My objection is not with people representing the opinions of others, as long as representatives have very limited power, a limited mandate, and as long as that power can be withdrawn and representatives recalled in a quick and easy way.

Anyways, with that out of the way, I will approach your question by explaining one possible system out of infinitely many which are possible.

Anarchists believe in structuring things from a bottom-up approach, so let’s start at the bottom - each neighborhood could have a participatory community which makes decisions for that neighborhood around practical, everyday decisions that directly affect shared living. For example, maintenance of shared areas, the use of community buildings/rooms, improvements to the neighborhood, etc.

Of course, neighborhoods do not exist in a vacuum - neighborhoods would want to work together to share resources and to collaborate to achieve greater goals, so confederations of neighborhoods could be formed. Each neighborhood could select one or more delegates to attend confederation meetings and speak on the behalf of the neighborhood, but not make decisions on behalf of them. Instead, each delegate would attend the confederation meeting, and meet with their neighborhood to bring them news of what was discussed at the delegation meeting. Then, in the neighborhood meetings, each neighborhood would come to their own decisions around what should happen at the confederation level, and a delegate - not necessarily the same person as before - would take those decisions, questions, concerns and discussion points back to the confederation, where either a consensus would be reached, or further discussion - which could again, be brought back to the neighborhood to share. In fact, rotating the role of delegate would be a really good idea, so that multiple people can get a better idea of the issues in the wider community and understanding of how the bottom-up power structure functions.

The cool thing about anarchism is that we can experiment on these ideas and try out different things in a very responsive, small scale way, since the lower levels of participatory communities are small, even bad ideas have very limited harm if/when implemented, and other communities can learn from the failures of others.

I hope this makes sense, and I hope you see how this would differ from representative democracy. The main difference is where the power lies - under anarchism, the power to make decisions always remains with the people as a whole, rather than being concentrated into the hands of a very select few.

If you are interested in learning more, have any doubts about problems with the ideas I have outlined, or some other approaches which could be taken, I would strongly encourage you to have a read of an Anarchist FAQ’s section about what an anarchist society would look like - I can pretty much guarantee that any question you have is answered somewhere in there, it’s nothing if not comprehensive!

So while dismissing themmis the easy way out, and it is okay to take the easy way sometimes, it still isn’t the best way.

It’s the best way for me. I’m guessing you don’t have experience with PTSD, but if I get into an argument with someone about a topic which is triggering, for the next day or so, I won’t be able to sleep, I’ll have hallucinations of terrifying things which aren’t there, panic attacks that come out of nowhere, cold sweats, flashbacks… I could go on. I don’t care if someone might possibly have one good idea amongst all of their bad ones if that is the cost.

But one of the ways it was accomplished in spain was that those who didn’t share those ideals could leave.

Yes, of course, that is absolutely a foundation stone of anarchism: voluntary association. Everyone must always be free to associate, or not, as they see fit.

But to do it for the whole of society would require getting rid of a significant amount of the capitalist.

True capitalists who actually own capital are vanishingly few compared to the working class. They’re a rounding error. We do not need to get them on side to succeed. They can go off and do their own thing if they want to, have a real Atlas Shrugged society in a mountain. In reality, they need us, so once there is a critical mass, they will either join our society, or learn to work for themselves, rather than by exploiting others.

If you’re talking about self-serving behavior, I understand what you mean, but anarchism is actually completely compatible with self-serving behavior. In fact, one of the major traditions of anarchism, egoist anarchism is entirely centered around that concept.

Finally, the “drive for power and influence” isn’t in our nature, but it is rather a response to environmental conditions. Do you see an elephant at the circus and assume that juggling balls must be in an elephant’s nature? If we change the system of incentives which govern our society, human behaviors will change and adapt to match.

Ifeally we find a way to elevate leaders who aren’t in it for the power and influence.

This can never, ever work. Even if you find people who aren’t in it for that, they will almost definitely always be corrupted. Power corrupts. That is one of the founding principles of anarchism.

To add to the very good comment you already received, I would also point you towards an anarchist FAQ’s answer to the question, “Won’t there be a danger of a “tyranny of the majority” under libertarian socialism?”. I will share a few choice paragraphs from there, but I encourage you to check it out yourself as it goes into a lot of detail:

Participation and self-management is the only way that majorities can come to see the point of minority ideas and for seeing the importance of protecting minority freedoms. This means that any attempt to restrict participation in the name of minority rights actually enforces the herd mentality, undermining minority and individual freedom rather than protecting it.

In the current system, voters are mere passive spectators of occasional, staged, and highly rehearsed debates among candidates pre-selected by the corporate elite, who pay for campaign expenses. The public is expected to choose simply on the basis of political ads and news sound bites. Once the choice is made, cumbersome and ineffective recall procedures insure that elected representatives can act more or less as they (or rather, their wealthy sponsors) please.

By contrast, in a libertarian society decisions are made following public discussion in community assemblies open to all. After decisions have been reached, outvoted minorities – even minorities of one – still have ample opportunity to present reasoned and persuasive counter-arguments to try to change the decision. This process of debate, disagreement, challenge, and counter-challenge, which goes on even after the defeated minority has temporarily acquiesced in the decision of the majority, is virtually absent in the representative system, where “tyranny of the majority” is truly a problem. In addition, minorities can secede from an association if the decision reached by it are truly offensive to them.

Somalia wasn’t organized according to any anarchist principles, it was just a total chaotic, disordered mess.

Mexico itself is under a lot of pressure due to the cartels, some of which are armed and supported by the United States to act as a destabilizing force.

But the Zapatistas are not hiding from the threat. How can a territory with borders containing hundreds of thousands of individuals hide? They are taking the threat seriously, of course, and have heightened security, but aren’t hiding.

By contrast, Stalin would have probably executed a few thousand innocent people to respond to such a situation.

my issue was with how you were wording things

Yes, the word “good” is so inscrutable and mysterious, whatever could it mean.

The other guy making that argument literally self-identified as a narcissist, by the way.

but we were in agreement.

“You are in Zapatista territory in rebellion. Here the people command and the government obeys.”

Speak for yourself, because that sounds fucking awesome, to me.