Where do you fall politically?
I’m hoping this doesn’t start a fight, I’m just curious what the political orientation is of this community. I grew up in a liberal (in the American sense) family, and I identify now as a socialist, though a lot of the liberalism I grew up in has stuck with me, like interest in LGBTQ and women’s rights, environmentalism, etc. Wondering where people here land?
I’m an anarchocommunist.
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.
As I said before, only while states exist.
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.
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:
Or
Of the two of those, I believe the latter outcome is more likely to succeed.
Sorry for the huge wall of text.
Sorry for the huge wall of text.
It’s fine, I prefer detailed responses.
And I understand the difference between left wing and right wing nationalism, but it’s kind of weird to be for the identity of Wales and against all governments, given national identities heavily rely on governments to exist.
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).
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.
ZAD de Notres-Dame-des-Landes
I’m surprised you didn’t cite Catalonia or Zapatistas or Anarchist Ukraine? Guess you don’t like those?
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.
The Zapatistas are not anarchists and have never claimed to be. While they do have some similarities to historical anarchist projects it would do them a disservice to lump them into an ideology with which they don’t identify.
Fair enough on the Zapatistias, I just hear about them a lot from anarchists as a workable example of anarchosocialism.
And yeah I actually don’t know a lot about anarchist Catalonia, just that it’s basically the biggest example of anarchism on a society-wide level. Was actually goading you for more information lol.
Mahknovists
Yes, them. Also don’t know much about them. I know far more about the Menshevik territories in Georgia and Russia, which were democratic socialist and not anarchist, and even more forgotten about.
Was actually goading you for more information lol.
Give me a bit and I’ll track down some sources on them. Check back in, like, an hour or so and I’ll have a list edited on this comment.
Revolutionary Catalonia
Here’s a first-hand account from someone who was a child at the time.
Murray Bookchin on the Spanish revolution.
Write up on the Mujeres Libres, a group of women anarchists.
George Orwell was a snitch who did a lot of work to undermine British anarchists, but he did witness the Spanish civil war first-hand here’s a link to what he wrote about his experiences
Gonna a take a while longer for more on Makhnovshchina. So I’ll edit again when I’ve found sources.
You’re welcome.
I’m a little taken aback that this thread didn’t rapidly degrade into the shit flinging that political discussion is doomed to become online.
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