(Not trying to be combative, part of a list I am making of socialist projects) what anarcho communist adjacent projects have raised people’s material conditions the most? Where can I find metrics?
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Curious about this same data. Also not being combative, a thought I had was:
If there's an apparent lacking of metrics, the nature of anarcho communist organizing and what they would view as necessary to account for material concerns, and track improvements / deficiencies - can that be explored?
It's hard to find metrics on these sorts of things because most of these projects didn't really have organizations running around getting these statistics during their existence. They were usually a bit to per-occupied with defending themselves from governments or counter-revolutionaries.
I was right, it is hard to find this stuff. I found a detailed history on the Makhnovist movement, as well as some sources on the impact of the Zapatista movement, though I'm not sure these will have what you are looking for.
Most of the more famous ones, such as the CNT-FAI, or the Makhnovshchina, spent their entire existence in a state of war and didn't last long enough to gather any concrete data. I think you might be able to find data on the Zapatista's, but I wasn't able to find any quickly.
I'm not an anarchist and it's maaaaybe a little bit of a stretch, but I don't think it's totally nuts to count Zapata's Plan of Ayala/land redistribution in Morelos? Tough to find metrics but found a bit here (~p297): https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1914501/FULLTEXT01.pdf
During the Spanish civil irrc there were beginnings of some ancom stuff but a lot of it hasn't been able to try or test it due to the fact that throughout history authoritarianists had the edge when it came to power built
Plus that fascists ignored Authoritarian communism to to focus any ancom movements that tried 59 Star up mainly due to fact They didn't want the Communists & anarchists to work together (& the fascist admired the Communists views)on authority. but again this all from memory and I could be wrong
i feel like nacho communist projects end up being small scale by design and therefore difficult to make large scale data models from? happy to be wrong tho
That said, as I understand the ad copy; they have the highest wages in the region and it is the easiest to do business there without needing to know a guy or do outright bribery.
The Commune of Paris, but it did not last long. Although they passed lots of ahead of their time "laws", like women participating in politics and being paid equally, free school for everyone, work time reduction... The lot.
This isn't a direct answer to your question, but I have links to REALLY good scans of the Georgian anarchist newspaper Stalin was replying to in 'Anarchism Or Socialism'. Seems to never have been translated.
Currently existing or historic? There's lots of existing projects throughout central America that I would characterize as anarchistic in all but name but they don't want that label, which is fine but makes categorizing more complex
part of the reason it’s so hard to find is that ancom societies more or less died with ww2. places like zapatista and rojava end up being quite minarchist as a result
my assessment of ww2 is that while stopping the nazis and imperial japan was a net good, it also reinforced the necessity of the state by its own virtue. it is also likely why ML-based revolutions held such success, they weren’t fighting the world-politics paradigm merely the economic one
Here’s the thing though. Forty % of this country doesn’t vote. Politicians claim mandates on 30%. The system is the problem, not just here but globally. Anarchism is legion, but the prevailing media narrative is that it is chaos.
What model are you referring to? One with differentiable goods or commodities? Does your model include numeric representations of shared value, or does every player have their own prioritized list?
Oh oh! book recommendation time!! BBP service to the people program. This worked so well USA school breakfast program only exists to subvert the successful BBP free school breakfast program.
wouldn't the DAANES be one? I would think that's the largest libsoc/ancom project currently out there. Seems to be working out pretty well for them too(even though there are def problems)
i think i would also recommend this book for understanding how political economy works in rojava as well - it's also fairly self-critical about the limitations of the movement there
I think it's kind of an interesting question. Because the primary anarchist projects I'm aware of, Revolutionary Catalonia, Malhnovist Ukraine, Zapatistas, and Rojava all were born out of various civil wars, so data on quality of life is a little tricky to come by.
I think the best evidence of improved material conditions would be comparing Zapatista-controlled areas of Chiapas to the rest of chiapas, since it removes a lot of the confounding factors, but I don't have that data, unfortunately.
Don’t have the numbers but the ejido system in Mexico was pushed by the original zapatistas in the Mexican revolution and that did big changes even if the same vanguard party that made it killed it slowly which is why I dislike vanguard parties
Wait! I found a study with health statistics under Zapatista Municipalities. Unfortunately is in spanish, but from what I read, death by birth decreased to zero or near zero due to autonomous hospitals in Las Tazas y Amador Hernandez (Zapatista regions). https://publicaciones.xoc.uam.mx/Recurso.php
I have found some sources about the Zapatista movement, claiming health and education have improved, to a degree that neighboring non-Zapatista populations prefer using Zapatista schools and hospitals. Unfortunately, I cannot find the metrics of these claims and they are all in spanish.
tbh the USSR itself is a pretty impressive one, having gone from a majority illiterate population to the world's highest postsecondary degree attainment within one human lifespan
of course they're not anarchist but the general example of how powerful such changes were and are when operating from a socialist perspective is still a pretty strong one
Anarchist Catalan, Makhnovia in Ukraine, and the Zapatistas are the biggest examples of libertarian socialism put into practice, and even then the first two were actively under siege the entirety of their existence
Makhnovshchina, it was a 3-4 year period between 1917 and 1921, I’m sure you already knew of it. The Zapatistas of the Mexican Chiapas region are ancom adjacent, but identify more with their indigenous teachings (afaik). None of this is definite, I’m not great with history unfort.
there are some notable anarchist adjacent projects, but within contemporary anarchist projects the focus is mainly on prefiguration (building mutual aid networks people can fall back on in moments of crisis or in the absence of state and private services). i always point to the CIPO-RFM as a great
example, they've done some great things in oaxaca even in the face of state repression, i highly recommend reading up on them. besides that, there are a vast number of anarchist mutual aid projects and trade union movements that have made a big impact on local communities and worker rights
the thing about anarchocommunism emphasizes aspects of social reproduction that are transversal to the accumulation of power and control in their organization of socialism. was project OGAS anarchocommunist? it was killed by Soviet bureaucrats. They invented the Internet first. What is the Internet?
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If there's an apparent lacking of metrics, the nature of anarcho communist organizing and what they would view as necessary to account for material concerns, and track improvements / deficiencies - can that be explored?
https://portside.org/2019-02-18/spark-hope-ongoing-lessons-zapatista-revolution-25-years
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/1333f258cb674abdbc7aaf03138c5c85
I might try to find some books on these movements, because I really don't know enough about them and it's hard to find anything online.
just fyi: communists are the NUMBER ONE KILL PRIORITY for fascists for a reason. it's because we win.
Resources:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-pirate-anarchy
https://libcom.org/article/pirate-utopias-under-banner-death-1640-1820
https://archive.org/details/pirate-utopias-hakim-bey
How successful it has been, it's hard to say considering their starting point was an intentionally underdeveloped marginalized region.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gaston-leval-collectives-in-the-spanish-revolution#toc36
https://www.ebooks.com/en-us/book/1105279/the-black-panther-party/west-cornel-hilliard-david-the-dr-huey-p-newton-fo
It would make for an interesting read, though! The EZLN from what I've heard has been fairly successful. Not so sure about the other two.
https://publicaciones.xoc.uam.mx/Busqueda.php?Terminos=Heredia%20Cuevas,%20Joel&TipoMaterial=1&Indice=2
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