Revolutionary Catalonia provides a good example of an anarchist project where large scale industrial infrastructure was maintained and could help form the blueprint for decentralised industry. Much ink has been spilled pointing fingers about who was to blame for the sectarian infighting that ultimately led to its collapse, I think a more important question would be “how do we stop something like that happening next time?” A question that I have no clue how to answer.
Anarchist Ukraine - correct me if I’m wrong, but this is about the Mahknovists right? Despite being largely agrarian, they were able to rebuild destroyed infrastructure an astounding rate in the face of multiple invasions and an ongoing civil war. There are rumours of antisemitism within Mahknovshchina but a lot of them come from USSR aligned sources and are hotly debated by different anarchist groups, I don’t know enough about Ukrainian history to know if the accusations are true.
If capitalism is the natural way for civilisation to organise itself, how come it took until the 1700s to become a widespread ideology? Humans have been around for a hell of a lot longer than that.
Pëtr Kropotkin wrote a lot about possible organisation of anarchist society after the revolution, at this point it’s a meme to recommend reading “the bread book” The Conquest of Bread and I don’t personally recommend starting with it and instead beginning with a pamphlet like Anarchism and Revolution.
The ZAD de Notres-Dame-des-Landes, is a good example of a long running commune that has managed to withstand assault from an external state. But the kinds of large scale anarchism that will do away with the state in its entirety has not yet been attempted.
Communism always needs to be enforced, it doesn’t happen naturally. Capitalism does. That’s why I don’t think communism can exist along with anarchy.
Capitalism also has to be enforced.
What do you think all those counter revolutionary insurgencies like the bay of pigs invasion are?
Or the state crackdowns on communist groups like the red scare?
Capitalism is not a natural state that things can revert to, it is a system that needs to be imposed.
You’re right, I don’t have much knowledge of anarchism’s philosophical framework, but I do know that the definition of the word means that there is no authority.
Anarchism is the absence of involuntary hierarchies such as the state. Authority and authoritarianism is meaningless in drawing a dividing line between ideologies because every socioeconomic framework needs to defend itself from being undermined one way or another. A good place to get started on this matter would be On Authority by Friedrich Engels.
If an anarchist revolution is successful, the dissolution of the state is inevitable.
If a socialist revolution is successful then the eventual dissolution of the state will likely occur in a framework such as Engels’ “withering away of the state”.
Since capitalism cannot sustain itself indefinitely, it is likely that one of these two revolutions will occur (or there will be a backslide into fascism).
Private property will not exist under anarchism, since private property (read the means of production) will be placed into the collective hands of those who need it.
anarchy (which ultimately leads to individualism and capitalism)
Capitalism requires the maintenance of involuntary hierarchies (like that between the owner and worker) and thus is antithetical to anarchism.
I believe anarchy and communism are polar opposites,
The ultimate goal of communism is the dissolution of state, this is something even MLs agree on.
"Engels suggested to Bebel that all chatter about the state be dropped altogether, that the word “state” be eliminated from the programme altogether and the word “community” substituted for it. Engels even declared that the Commune was long a state in the proper sense of the word. Yet Marx even spoke of the “future state in communist society”, i.e., he would seem to recognize the need for the state even under communism.
But such a view would be fundamentally wrong. A closer examination shows that Marx’s and Engels’ views on the state and its withering away were completely identical, and that Marx’s expression quoted above refers to the state in the process of withering away."
If you wouldn’t mind me making an assumption, it appears that you have very little knowledge of anarchism’s philosophical framework. I can give you some reading suggestions if you’d like.
Yes, but the cultural identity will outlive the national one when the state dissolves, it has millenniums of cultural inertia behind it after all. I don’t forsee any future anti-capitalists getting in the way of, for example, Eisteddfod gatherings or couples exchanging love spoons.
I think a key place where we are disagreeing is in the nature of Welsh identity. I don’t view it as a national identity but rather a cultural one. Even once all states have been dissolved, Welsh identity will likely persist through our language and traditions.
I realise that I’m using nationalist in a context that you’re probably unfamiliar with.
When I say Welsh nationalism I’m using this definition - “advocacy of or support for the political independence of a particular nation or people.”
As opposed to the definition you’re likely more familiar with -“identification with one’s own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.”
Now for how I Square these two otherwise inconsistent political goals:
It is a complicated process and I don’t doubt that the Welsh nationalist movement may present some hurdles in the long run to the dissolution of state hierarchy. But the way I see it is like this:
UK parliament controls the entire UK, there’s the senedd in Wales and the Scottish parliament but ultimately they only have the power to make minor adjustments to laws (such as change the speed limit slightly).
As such, any revolution that occurs in Wales has to contend not just with the local bourgeois but also from the bourgeois of the United Kingdom as a whole.
Now two possible tactics exist in this situation:
revolution across the whole UK at once.
Or
Wales separates from the UK and then undergoes revolution.
Of the two of those, I believe the latter outcome is more likely to succeed.
Welsh nationalism as a short-term project, because the structure of the UK gives ultimate control to the houses of parliament (a largely unelected seat of power), if any form of communism, let alone anarchist communism, is to be successfully built in Wales we must first be free from direct interference by our neighbours.
While states still exist, I am a Welsh nationalist because independence from the UK is the only way we can stave off English attempts to undermine the senedd and Welsh democracy as a whole.