How do you build an anarchist revolution? | Constructing the Revolution 

who's gonna start? you go first?

@@transsexual_computer_faery Already started. You're late.

@@samm9184 good

Two of my favorite people on RU-vid right here. ❤

Andrew, your videos opened my eyes to real human potential. My view was so narrow before, so limited. You and Anark here, have changed me from Reformist to Revolutionary. All power to all the people!

Yeah, it is :) And you don't have to try to do everything yourself, or go from zero to your endgoal in one step, every little bit helps. Also, you're not the vanguard :) For example, if you have a garden that produces food, simply sharing your surplus without asking anything in return is already normalizing anarchist principles. Or set up and take care of a book swap shelf nearby. That won't take more than half an hour a week and it is not a time sensitive task.

I love that "We have nothing to lose but our chains" - I am going to repeat that to myself every day, every morning, so wise x

"We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world." - Howard Zinn and “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller With those quotes of inspiration, we can realize our collective dreams because it doesn't take a grand act, it takes consistent steps forward, with others who have common goals as us.

Do you feel you got that here? I am also frustrated by this and have struggled to get through these videos for that reason. Would love to hear what your takeaways were.

@@NovaAlamak I think Anark is the exception the rule. He gives actual answers to questions instead of just a bunch of vague stuff about "redistributing power" and stuff like that. To be honest

@@NovaAlamak Sorry I accidentally cut of my own reply but as I was saying... It's been quite a long time since I've watched this video so I don't remember that much of what he says in it but I remember being pretty satisfied with how incredibly straight forward and practical the things he said were.

For helping the "Economics" pillar of the equation for revolution, building cooperatives that the community benefit from and support, as well as using People's Councils, I recommend people check out the One Small Town initiative. I think you'll find they have the right heart, structure and bottom-up democratic approach to community building for cooperation, collaboration and co-ownership. Because as we probably should be prepared for the push back from the elite establishment, and defence and intelligence certainly have their place, I imagine a community that has a robust community co-op producing local in abundance, sharing local and doing lots of mutual aid projects will create such a strong community that support these efforts that the governing bodies and corporations who may try to send in their minions to disrupt will find little success because the local success and health, education and living standard of the community will clearly be going up that people won't allow Establishment attacks. Not in all cases, like in countries which already have militarized police or dictatorships, but in many countries and regions in which the police live in the community, the elected representatives live in the community and there may not be any billionaires at all who live and focus on that community being self-reliant. In those communities One Small Town Contributionism can thrive because it invites everybody at no cost and no mandate, and yet benefits the whole community even if people don't join. It also isn't government and isn't corporations. It avoids the negative attitudes people have towards government overreach and corporate greed.

No worries I appreciate your engagement! In fact, engaging with the channel and spreading the videos around is the best thing you can do to help me grow

Hahahaha it is a good clip

Workers Councils > Unions!

unions are a compromise. Enables workers to have real bargaining power with The Bosses, but in reality, the workers should BE The Bosses in the first place--they are the ones familiar with their working conditions, who can be trusted to enact humane policy in their organization to raise funds and accomplish their goals while respecting their labor and lives.

Yup

Take it from somehow who quite literally just yesterday found progressives in my conservative town less than a five minute walk from my house. There are folks, you gotta search for them!

I very much see what you are saying and agree with that concern about getting started with this in your area. I feel too many people, even people I consider friends and socially progressive would shut-down as soon as any of the following words are uttered: "anarchy", "communism", "revolution", "leftism", or "conservatism." Those terms have been so brutally misunderstood and weaponized. I really do believe we need a platform and organizational strategy for community building co-ops and mutual aid that does not have to be labelled with those above terms. Would I LIKE IT if the masses weren't misunderstanding the ideas of anarcho-communism? Yes, of course, but that's not the reality. I don't know about you, but in my area, in Canada, there are around 40% of people who freak out about the idea of 15-minute cities, as if it is going to be some police state with fences and guards not letting people leave 15 minutes from their house without permission, when it's almost the complete opposite of that: It's convenient neighbourhoods where people can walk or bike to their daily tasks for food, medicine, recreation, education, sharing and repairing, and sometimes even work very easily without going to a big box mall in their gas guzzling car. But they still are free to go 45 minutes away in their big truck if they wanted to. So, I find it very hard in my conservative area to believe enough citizens can agree with a plan that calls itself anarchist, or socialist, or central planning or communist. But I CAN believe more people are willing to see an organization established in town, that is purely voluntary and free to join, which is established as both a Worker Co-Operative with co-owning members, sharing the profits and getting mutual aid benefits, that don't just go to the members, but the whole community such as food sharing programs, cleaning the streets or library of things access centres, etc. And that's the route I'm currently looking, and seeing how far One Small Town initiative using Contributionism can go to help my community. What about you? Why not take a look see?

and lives, while you bleed in the streets of the revolution your commandant will be filling his pockets and jumping town

@@DAEDRICDUKE1 What commandant? You seem to be confused on how anarchism works.

I was right

I think you make a very good point, social cohesion is essential for both organisational effectiveness and happiness. And you don't create that when only meeting in a formal environment. Though I do think you know things that some others don't know :) We all do. So don't be afraid to speak out :) It is just highly unlikely that anyone knows something nobody else knows.

I like that, that's very good. Make social connections, make them fun and see if we can make it part of the fabric of change so revolution doesn't have to be scary, it can actually be naturally attractive and fun. That's why I like the strategy of One Small Town initiative, it is based on cooperation, collaboration and co-ownership for community democratic decision making, using people's councils and a robust Worker Co-Operative Network and mutual aid projects - all designed to help each other out and build self-sustaining prosperous communities. The nice part about it? It isn't government spending, it isn't corporate greed. So it appeals to both wings. It is a organization that is free and voluntary to join and yet even if people don't join they would still see benefit in their community via OST products being most affordable, high quality and locally produced much of the time. They would see cleaner streets, cleaner air, more fun recreational events and they didn't have to break the bank, in fact, they could quit a second job because cost of living could go DOWN for the first time in memory. Benefits would be even better for Members who spend just 3 hours of their week contributing to the community co-op. To me, this is a platform worth looking into, worth trying. Since it is structured bottom-up, anyway, even the organizer and main leader Michael Tellinger cannot control the communities using this strategy as long as they have a trusted Ambassador. And Michael has seen his fair share of corporate and government interference in his work, so he's the last person who would have reason to be the same problem for other people as the government overreach and corporate attack that he's experienced.

Thank you for this well thought out reply! I also think class struggle is very important and building unions, especially radical trade unions is a very powerful way to give workers leverage under the capitalist system. However, I do not think the union is uniquely oriented to seize the means of production in a way that is superior to coordinated militias, councils, and cooperatives. The union is best oriented to carry out strikes, which is a powerful tool and is a very good way to prepare workers in confronting capital, but if we have moved to the stage of the conflict where we are actively seizing the means, militias controlled by councils are fully capable of doing the job. Take, for example, the CNT-FAI in Spain, who seized a great number of workplaces in both the urban centers and rural areas that did not even have unions in them during their uprising. The Zapatistas built their most significant constituency with civil councils that then catalyzed economic integration. It's not necessary to have heavy unionization to seize economic control. The cooperative is powerful because it maximally prefigures socialist property relations within the capitalist economy, whereas the union pressures capital inside the capitalist firm and increases labor leverage. The cooperative is an active engine of funding for the movement, generating revenue in its operation which can be funneled into a variety of projects, whereas the union is a way of protecting wages for those people who are inevitably stuck working in the private industry. Ideally, if I could choose between the two, I would prefer we expand the cooperative sector and put private firms out of business; but insofar as this is both quite challenging and inherently incomplete under capitalism, the union is an indispensable mechanism to extract concessions from capital.

@@Anark Apologies in advance for a very long post. I know what it's like to be overwhelmed by long RU-vid comments that raise points of disagreement that would require an equally lengthy response. If you don't have time to reply I will fully understand and won't blame you in the least. Over the last several decades class struggle has become increasingly rare, and the popular understanding of how to win reforms is through electoralism, protest movements, or supporting NGOs in lobbying efforts. We've lost our understanding that, for the working class, our labor has power. Workplace based class struggle gives us this understanding through direct experience. We can easily get stuck in "trade union consciousness", but it gives us the base understanding that our labor has power, that economic production depends on our labor, that the capitalist class has oppositional interests to our own, etc., and these are insights that can be leveraged towards a revolutionary class consciousness. I don't see democratic self-management of neighborhood projects such as community gardens having this type of potential. Historically, socialism/communism/anarchism were most popular during periods of high levels of working class struggle. I don't think that's a coincidence. Socialist/communist/anarchist ideas spread much more easily in this context. Whenever I've read about historical cases where workers got control of the means of production on any level of significance, it was usually an outgrowth of a mass strike movement. (The exceptions are cases where masses of capitalists abandoned the means of production, as they did, for example, in Argentina 2001 due to economic collapse, or in Spain 1936 due to fleeing regions where the working-class defeated the fascist coup.) Again, I don't think this is a coincidence, but rather an indication of the revolutionary potential of mass strikes. "if we have moved to the stage of the conflict where we are actively seizing the means, militias controlled by councils are fully capable of doing the job. Take, for example, the CNT-FAI in Spain, who seized a great number of workplaces in both the urban centers and rural areas that did not even have unions in them during their uprising." In this type of situation my concern is: how prepared will workers be to collectively self-manage production if they do not have experience collectively self-managing class-struggle? When workers are unionized (in a member-driven, horizontally structured, self-managed union, not the mainstream unions where the bureaucracy dominates and member participation is notoriously low and superficial), workers develop the habit of meeting as a group and develop the skills of making, delegating, and carrying out decisions as a group. You say "the union is best oriented to carry out strikes", but if it's a genuinely self-managed union, it can transition quite smoothly into an organization for the tasks that workers would carry out during a revolution, whether that be self-management of production, forming networks for distribution, sending delegates to a workers council, etc. In a stage where we're seizing the means of production, workers who are in a self-managed union will be able to make the transition to workplace self-management relatively smoothly. For those who are not, it could be a very bumpy transition. If this bumpiness disrupts the production of necessary goods at a time when disruptions are already inevitably high, this is bad news for the revolution. "The Zapatistas built their most significant constituency with civil councils that then catalyzed economic integration. It's not necessary to have heavy unionization to seize economic control." I'd guess that the concern I mentioned above would be much less of an issue in small communities with little to no industrialization. Spain in the 1930s had an extremely active labor movement, many were in the syndicalist CNT, and even the non-syndicalist unions had much less bureaucracy and were much more member driven than what we see today. So a huge percent of workers were not only active in workplace-based class-struggle but had developed the habits and skills of collectively self-managing that struggle. As you point out, there were regions where this was not the case. But on the whole, do you think the Spanish revolution would have gone so far in spreading workers self-management and federalist structures of economic mutual aid (which, afaik, they took further than any revolution or period of mass-expropriation that has ever occurred in any other country) if the Spanish working class did not have this long history of collectively self-managing class struggle? The types of things you mention, such as community gardens and cop watches, also provide people with experience in collective decision making, etc., but I don't think these types of projects can come even close to gaining the levels of participation that organizations for workplace struggle potentially can. Mass strike movements encompassing millions of workers are something we've seen repeatedly in history; although very rare, we know it can and does occur, and we know that the conditions driving workers to strike are ever-present in capitalism. History, however, has never given us a mass movement of millions taking part in neighborhood assemblies to self-manage community projects, and I don't expect it ever will. But if I'm wrong and we did see such a thing, I don't think it would have the revolutionary potential of a mass strike movement, for reasons discussed above. "The cooperative is powerful because it maximally prefigures socialist property relations within the capitalist economy, whereas the union pressures capital inside the capitalist firm and increases labor leverage. The cooperative is an active engine of funding for the movement, generating revenue in its operation which can be funneled into a variety of projects" I agree and this is all good, but I don't think a cooperative movement can have revolutionary potential. To start a co-op you need: - a group of people who want to go into business together - trust each other enough to do so - either have enough money to start a business and be able to risk losing it if the business fails, or... -be able to get a bank loan and willing to risk ruining your credit and losing your home (if you own one) if your business fails This makes starting a co-op out of reach for the vast majority. And if you do start a co-op, it needs to be able to survive in the market, which is unlikely since 2/3 businesses fail within 10 years. Co-ops can never be more than extremely rare in capitalism and by that fact alone cannot have significance within a revolutionary strategy.

@LuckyBlackCat First off, no apologies needed. I appreciate that you are engaging in such a way with the material and in such good faith! Going to truncate your quoted paragraphs because I'm hoping to not have our comments swell too big. _"Over the last several decades class struggle has become increasingly rare, and the popular understanding of how to win reforms is through electoralism, protest movements, or supporting NGOs in lobbying efforts. We've ..."_ First, let me say that planning protests and growing community gardens certainly isn't going to compete with the primacy and importance of radical trade unions! I will establish now early in the responses: I am not diminishing revolutionary trade unionism. I consider myself an anarcho-syndicalist. What I am advocating instead is an all of the above, branching approach to the things in the video. This is why I have called these "the four pillars." They are all necessary components to the project at hand. And given that economic class _remains_ one of the key driving forces of capitalism, nothing will possibly diminish the importance of worker agitation. _"Historically, socialism/communism/anarchism were most popular during periods of high levels of working class struggle. I don't think that's a coincidence. Socialist/communist/anarchist ideas spread much more easily in this context. Whenever I've read about ..."_ I agree with you. These are not coincidences. Revolutionary trade unionism and workplace agitation are acts of prefiguration within capitalism by which the working class asserts the power that will drive the coming world. These institutions can thus come to represent the social revolution and embody it in their procession forward. Mass strikes are the masses rising up and seizing the administration of things for themselves. Also, just a minor note: you said that the exceptions in Spain were from capitalists fleeing the areas, but that is not entirely true. Many stayed and nonetheless gave over the means at gunpoint and even, to my astonishment, willingly in some cases. Although we can't be certain how much of this was reported correctly, this is discussed in "Anarchism and Workers' Self-Management in Revolutionary Spain" by Frank Mintz. _"In this type of situation my concern is: how prepared will workers be to collectively self-manage production if they do not have experience collectively self-managing class-struggle? When workers are unionized (in a member-driven, horizontally structured, self-managed union, not the mainstream unions where the bureaucracy dominates and member participation is notoriously low and superficial), workers develop the habit of meeting as a group and develop the skills of making, delegating, and carrying out decisions as a group..."_ Here we have met the crux of the discussion. I agree with you wholeheartedly that having workers prepared to truly manage the society they are given is integral to success. In fact, this concern is what animates the theory I lay out. But I contend that cooperatives + trade unions, conjoined with militias, councils, and intelligence, far better embody the education of the masses upon management of a new society than just revolutionary trade unionism. Trade unionism teaches the worker an incomplete picture, as the USSR and China both discovered and this incomplete picture was therefore one of the vectors by which bourgeois influence returned again, in the form of the administrator, the technician, and the manager. Because the union often does not contain these positions (for good reason largely), it can be a challenging transition. There are particular and needed skills that are circulated among the technician, the administrator, and the manager which were previously alienated from the workers through corporate hierarchy. The cooperative, on the other hand, teaches the workers how to carry out and delegate _all_ tasks in the workplace. Further, through the confederation of councils, militias, and intelligence, they are simultaneously taught how to interweave this management with the management of the complete functions of society, not abruptly after revolutionary juncture, but in a natural, organic way before revolt. The council, the militia, and intelligence cannot just be tacked on to the trade union as a vehicle. They are not afterthoughts. We are inheriting a complex and multi-faceted society that must be seen as more than a narrowly economic creature. The entire framework of our social relations must undergo transformation in every arena available. This will require different vehicles and each of them must be interwoven together. _"History, however, has never given us a mass movement of millions taking part in neighborhood assemblies to self-manage community projects, and I don't expect it ever will. But if I'm wrong and we did see such a thing, I don't think it would have the revolutionary potential of a mass strike movement, for reasons discussed above."_ As for why you have not seen it in the past, I just feel like it has to be said: all proletarian revolutions, save those that are currently alive in Chiapas, Rojava, and some other small projects, have failed. The two big examples that currently exist both heavily utilize council systems and cooperatives. Our tactics must change to meet the needs of the present and, insofar as we can see the evidence of the present, the needs are much more complex than revolutionary trade unionism or even just worker agitation. In fact, I would say that the reason all of these past revolutions ultimately failed, was because of their economic reductionism and overfocus on human-as-worker instead of human-as-social-being. Also, just let it be said, the forces of capital and the state have made trade unionism _very_ challenging, although not impossible. Manufacturing has declined and the economy has transitioned more to service work, has created vast suburbs of atomized individuals, and a complex system of bullshit jobs. Because of this, job training is now quite brief and the penalties for mass firings are much less than in the past, encouraging that response when smaller strike waves take place. This gives capital a very robust reserve army of labor and a variety of ways to shut down unionization. I make clear, once again, that this does not diminish the need of the union, nor of its potential to overcome such hurdles. But we must avoid fetishizing the past as a guide to the future. Ultimately, if management of society is our litmus test, a confederation of councils, cooperatives + revolutionary trade unions, militias, and intelligence pods, is much more representative of the system we must manage, than just trade union confederations. The trade union, as I have said, is a body of siege against capital, an incomplete prefiguration made under the circumstances of pre-seizure, but a highly necessary one, as cooperative confederations will not likely even reach a majority of economic share before revolution is made and thus workers within the private/public sector will need to be organized thusly. In fact, I agree with your assessment as to what makes co-ops challenging to start. However, I disagree with your statement that they can never be more than "extremely rare." They have a lower death rate than corporations and they are more productive. What they need is a higher birth rate and a more radical focus. Lastly, let me re-emphasize, one of the reasons I call myself an anarcho-syndicalist despite these doubts about the penultimate importance of revolutionary trade unions, is that revolutionary trade unionism is still an important part of this picture! In fact, I see the arguments you made and which anarcho-syndicalists have made about the trade union as a "revolutionary school" as indicative of a much more robust response: create catalyst groups that are prepared to have diverse interactions with their communities and to build the multi-faceted bodies that will be the necessary to properly function as a revolutionary school for that community. Where each can be built, let them, and then confederate their strength.

@@Anark Brilliantly correct response.

@@Anark I actually agree with your main argument that we'd be better off (much better off) if we have experience self-managing not just unions but also neighborhood assemblies, self-defense organizations, etc., and if we have an already existing organizational foundation in all these things. I think our main disagreement is that I don't think these types of organizations have much potential for growth outside of a revolutionary context or other extraordinary circumstances, but that, by contrast, class struggle does have that potential. Perhaps I'm wrong about that. I'd prefer be wrong. My fear is that, if I'm right that these types of organizations don't have much potential for growth, then as anarchists / people who desire revolution, it would be misuse of our scarce time and energy to give these projects our attention (unless the revolution is already kicking off). Tho, of course, if I'm wrong then it would be a mistake *not* to give these projects our attention. When you mentioned Rojava, I realize I was wrong to say there has never been a "mass movement of millions taking part in neighborhood assemblies to self-manage community projects". But this was due to my failure to specify what I meant. I should have wrote that history has never given us a movement like this outside of a situation of extreme upheavel (state collapse, revolution, etc.). In Rojava, when the civil war caused the the state to do a mass exodus from the region, this created conditions that are ripe for a community council movement (and militia movement) to emerge. For the statement I made, I was talking about the potential for the growth of such a movement during normal conditions of stability. "we must avoid fetishizing the past as a guide to the future." True. And you're right to point out the additional barriers the labor movement is facing today. In terms of the threat of mass firings, etc., being one of these barriers, in the late 19th century and early 20th century workers had even fewer legal protections yet the labor movement was much stronger. My guess is that other factors you mention, such as de-industrialization, are playing a bigger role. (Then again, other countries are in the process of industrializing. What are their labor movements like? I'm not sure.) The dominance of class-collaborating business unions is another thing to consider. The mystery of why the labor movement is in such a sorry state is something I wonder about. Is it something that can be revived through more people putting their time/energy into it and perhaps improving our strategy? Or is this a fool's errand as the potential for growth is now too stifled by modern material conditions? Maybe nothing has revolutionary potential, lol. :( "Our tactics must change to meet the needs of the present and, insofar as we can see the evidence of the present, the needs are much more complex than revolutionary trade unionism or even just worker agitation." This is true. I tend to prefer class-struggle as being a means for achieving these needs as I believe it is more ripe with revolutionary potential, thus achieving short-term goals while furthering our long-term goals. This can also be neighborhood class-struggle against landlords, as well as using mass strikes to win political demands (like more public housing, etc.). I worry that many anarchists projects which are about meeting peoples needs end up becoming pretty indistinguishable from charity work. Which is good in itself but I doubt whether it has potential to further the long-term goal of revolution. Do you agree? And if so, how can we avoid this pitfall?

Under rated comment. Your reference to Thomas Paine is spot on.

@@samm9184 Thanks! I was surprised by how much detail Paine put in such a short publication, so I felt like pointing him out. I know anarchists are not fond of coming up with "blueprints" for future societies and to some extent, I totally get that, but it also seems silly to try to get someone to risk their life and livelihood to bring about a society you can't describe in anything but the most vague terms.

I am glad the material was compelling for you!

Praxis.

Fuck.

Anark lol

Wild idea just came to my mind, we could set up a randomizer with a list of potential auditors to elect it, send the instructions to the intelligence group and then automatically destroys any evidence of the choice it made. And do this every time we make an audit.

@@crisdelbarrio This is a brilliant Idea, I would like to explore it further. Let me know?

@@samm9184 I truly don't know where to start but hit me up in Twitter if you like dude, we could maybe talk about it @criseldelbarrio

Glad you enjoyed it!

Fantastic! I will update the description to include this link.

Well you're here now! Spread the word and share around the videos. That's how the channel grows :-D

better late than never comrade

One of us. One of us.

Read "An Anarchist Programme" by Malatesta (theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-an-anarchist-programme) After that, read either "Anarchy" by Malatesta (theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-anarchy) and/or "Anarchism and the Black Revolution" by Ervin (theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-anarchism-and-the-black-revolution)

Read Thomas Sowell so you won’t waste your time with this leftist nonsense.

@@bobsmith-ji2uh Found the chud

@@bobsmith-ji2uh you love your chains too much

@@moqif2060 I don’t know what that means.

Stay wary of spooks my friend 👻

Thank you!

It is possible that I will do extra installments of this series at a later date. For the next video or two, it will be theory, however. Union organizing is good! I support the praxis. I just question its potential to fully prefigure the future society without a confederation of civil council bodies and worker self-directed enterprises. As for the intelligence structure; it's built to compartmentalize and streamline important components. The handlers will do analysis to some degree (in fact, much of what they are encountering will be given to analysts in reports), however there will probably be more analysts than either assets or handlers, because compiling information from disparate sources and then sorting it based on relevance is very resource intensive. I'm sure there will be some crossover and, as an anarchist, far be it from me to tell you what works in your circumstances. The core features that should not be removed are: compartmentalization of the asset, auditing, and delegation. As for how the auditing takes place? Sure, elect several auditors. I agree with you, it would probably be better!

@@Anark I will start working on expanding scripts for the last 2 sections I helped contribute to as separate vids. If folks want to know about tactics, as you well know, Im a walking encyclopedia of that info.

Given that the decisions are being made by consensus, there shouldn't have to be a mechanism for "enforcement." But then again, it depends on what you mean by enforcement; as in, the ability to violently enforce? Or just the ability to set some rules and then have people follow them?

@@Anark I guess im talking about both more or less.Malatesta describes the state as a mechanism by which a few people or the majority prescribe laws for others they then enforce by the use of collective force.

@@illiac123 So what you're saying is that because consensus doesn't always lead to a conclusion, we should therefore stop trying to organise based on consensus? Don't make perfect the enemy of good, that never ends well.

tht's over a year ago i changed my mind@@bramvanduijn8086

This is an interesting question for sure. There are multiple conversations that could be had on the subject of Bolivia in particular. As for Venezuela (though with its own particular dynamics) the critique Daniel produced of authoritarian leftism in his 4 part breakdown can structurally answer that question easily. Regardless of the electoral success of bolvia, even in the face of a coup, I suspect that Daniel would categorize the project as essentially as a social democratic project. Not an actual revolution.

@@samm9184 like I know it’s not revolutionary in anarchist sense, but like the election process is pretty decent in Bolivia it’s just getting to that point, which they struggled for through organizing and direct action. So seems like they used mass Militancy in order to ensure democracy which then resulted in a party that aims on changing economic system drastically, seems revolutionary just not through anarchist eyes. So I’m kinda asking this question knowing the answer is no in the eyes of anarchist theory, but in reality could there be other paths to liberation for those cultures and movement not birthed out of the European mindset?

@@samm9184 because of the ecological, anti-imperialist, and indigenous aspects of their movement it makes it seems like even if it’s not their goal they could actually go along the pathway they’ve chosen and end up with communism just as well as a popular anarchist movement here could move towards communism. Another example for this sentiment would be Thomas Sankara.

@@samm9184 for context I consider myself a anarchist because I see that as the only true potential for a genuine revolution here, but I don’t see that having to be the answer for the indigenous peoples of the world if their movement is strongly connected to their values which are often non-hierarchal and ecological in nature.

@@AdrianFlores-rt9ry I think a very informative and productive conversation that could be had on the subject of ecological and indigenous led movements would be to see a conversation between the bolivian socialists and the zapatistas. To be honest I will concede that the bolivian project is libaratory but I also think context matters for particular tactics/approaches to liberation and while the success of the bolivian socialists is to be admired I remain cynical in the ability of any state based movement to achieve actual communism. Inevitably through either hierarchy internally or external state based pressures such movements either die or become soc-dems inadvertantly perpetuating the very status quo international capitalist order they initially rebelled against.

Alternatively, you can sabotage their control over intelligence by normalizing free sharing of information. Lots of authority comes from creating ignorance in the greater populace by convincing someone that they're allowed into the in-group if they keep silent about what they know. Or even more insidious, that it's just something that will cause conflict. A banal and very common example is the culture of not talking about your wages.

Valid.