Comment on They cannot see the things that will hurt them
bearboiblake@pawb.social 2 days agoFor 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.
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
The Zaptistas have their ideological base not purely in western anarchism and Marxism. Liberation theology and catholic religion plays a big role in practice. They also emphasize a mystical connection to the land (people of maize), so their ideology is adjacent to blood & soil nationalism in some ways. They also leverage lots of traditional power structures like family clans, tribal loyalties, and such.
They have been successful in a way as they are still around and actually have local government structures in place that seem to work. However the EZLN hasn’t succeeded in providing stability and security to the region. Economically it’s still one of poorest regions in Mexico.
The limited success of the Zapatistas is more a sign of the weakness and failures of the central government of Mexico. They have managed to build a somewhat functioning local government and militia providing security in a remote poor rural area.
Similarly to the Machnov anarchists in Ukraine, Catalan anarcho-syndicalists, they leverage ethnic nationalism for cohesion.
What the Zapatistas have achieved is admirable, but their model doesn’t transfer to highly developed multi ethnic multi cultural highly urbanized countries with disintegrating social bonds.
Western contemporary anarchists are mostly fringe and usually not well connected with traditional structures like family, ethnicity, nation, religion.