I’ve long considered myself an anarchist and while I’m not very well read, I’m also not a baby anarchist. I haven’t read too many books on theory, instead I mostly learn from podcasts and discussions with peers. For whatever reason, I struggle to find the mental energy to get through books. I’m vaguely familiar with communalism but I’m still struggling with conflicting information.
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Is communalism compatible with anarchism? I’ve come across people who identify as both as well as communalists who view their philosophy and goals as distinct from anarchism.
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Is communalism statist or anti-statist? I’ve heard it described as anti-statist, yet depictions of it (when distinguished from anarchism) sound to me like they aim to establish a highly decentralized and directly democratic confederation of states.
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How do anarchists and communalists in this community feel about the others’ praxis? I’m intrigued by both, including especifismo and libertarian municipalism.
They were asking specifically about communalism, not communism.
Well caught. It started of as an autocorrect error and then I lost sight.
Anarchy rejects formal structures “all power corrupts”.
Communalism accepts some formal structures "we need power to create something democratic … ". I don’t think communalism scales very well. It becomes someone’s communism as the numbers increase.
There are some communalism set-up in the west of England, I think it’s more of an off grid thing, but they’re long lived. Maybe they’re collapsed now.
Perhaps you’re referring to theory I haven’t read, but does anarchism really reject structure itself? Certainly hierarchical structures are rejected, but organisation requires structure, even if it’s a flat one.
I haven’t know anarchy any other way, so I’m a little confused about the distinction. Granted, there are many flavours of anarchy and I don’t know them well, but I thought they all accepted structure itself while rejecting the hierarchical.
Like you say, there’s lot of schools of thought around this. I think most everyone acknowledges that you have to have some level of organization in order for society to function. The question is, at what scale?
Some would say anarchy can exist alongside a state. Anarchy is how a community meets its needs when the state doesn’t, filling in the gaps between the broader pillars. The idea is that anarchy can “grow past” the state by outperforming larger institutions that don’t benefit from the same entrenchment in local community. I see this as a useful perspective to approach mutual aid from, for instance.
Others view the state and larger systems as an inherent threat to communities’ ability to organize themselves. As authoritarians seek greater power, they seek to undermine communities’ self-determination so power can be consolidated under the state. This is where historical tension between anarchists and state communists has arisen. People in this camp aren’t rejecting organization altogether, but view larger systems as having inherently corrupting incentives.
I tend toward the former personally, but know a lot of folks of the latter variety and see a lot of value in it too. I think it’ll always be a balancing act between local, community-driven structure and broader, country-scale structure.
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What definition are you referring to?
We are talking about Anarchy/Anarchism as a political theory, and what you say is plainly wrong in that context
Sure, they is also a propagandized layman’s understanding of “anarchy” = chaos, but this is not what we are talking about in this community.
I understood it as
rejection of hierarchical authority and coercive order.
I was not referring to chaos but the rejection of defined order because it is coercive.