Post #4041003

2026-07-23 16:39 UTC

I guess my question, more directly, is how you think a more loosely and decentrally organized force could stand up to such outside pressure. Historically, such organizations tend to either die off against more vertically organized groups, or adapt some degree of verticality, which happened in Spain, Makhnovschina, even the Zapatistas (which claim neither Marxism nor anarchism, to be clear). Even if your end goal was full horizontalism, do you believe that to be achievable now, against imperialism?

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@PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@anarchist.nexus 2026-07-23 16:57

I guess my question, more directly, is how you think a more loosely and decentrally organized force could stand up to such outside pressure. I do not necessarily agree that a decentrally organized force needs to be a loosely organized force. Historically, such organizations tend to either die off against more vertically organized groups, or adapt some degree of verticality, which happened in Spain, Makhnovschina, even the Zapatistas (which claim neither Marxism nor anarchism, to be clear). Yeah I would actually argue that those organizations’ turns towards verticality, while absolutely understandable in the moment, were part of their downfalls (except the Zapatistas so far, thank goodness). At the same time…I do not necessarily want an anarchist organization to last any longer than it needs to. Anarchy ought to be permanent, but specific organizations ought only exist as long as they’re needed. In particular, military organizations really should put bounds on their existence (e.g. to win and demobilize after specific goals). Even if your end goal was full horizontalism, do you believe that to be achievable now, against imperialism? Absolutely. If anything, IMO, adopting non-horizontal modes of revolutionary organization is like doing revolution on Nightmare difficulty. Because if the resulting revolution successfully repels the imperialists, we’ll have to undo all the various hierarchies that inevitably crop up from within the non-horizontal revolutionary organization. (And btw, allowing hierarchies to develop is something that anarchist groups accidentally do all the time, e.g….the Makhnovschina and CNT-FAI in Spain.)

Open ##4041384