I agree with alot of what you said, especially how what society you are raised in effects how people are. For example things like selfishness are assumed to be "human nature" but are actually products of the capitalist system, under feudalism competition in a capitalist sense was unheard of. (feudalism was based on "god given rights" to lords monarchs etc). People are capable of both selfishness and selflesness. You can see acts of selflesness in society today for example when so many people gave money to tsunami victims in thailand shaming our own governments who gave retalively very little.

However i do not believe that the zapatista's are impletementing anarchy, i fully support them as a nation liberation force for indigenous rights and against neo liberalism, but the zapatista's are essentially a guerilla army with a centralised leadership with very little internal democracy. And it is them that control chiapas not the people.

anarchist was originally an insult but taken up by those calling themselves anti authoritarians. Anarchy is very similar to what Marx orignally meant as communism with the result being a stateless society (nothing to do with china, north korea,soviety union post 1929, and even cuba) however a few differences remain. Anarchists have be known to support autonomous zones without seeking to spread the revolution, also they have been known to say that anarchy has been established and there is no need to overthrow the state such as what happened in spain 1936. These practices usually result in the state killing everybody involved basically (eg paris commune). Also the idea that people can go straight from a capitalist state to anarchy seems misguided.Rather a workers state based on workers and communitiy councils planning production would be better directly after a revolution. This state could be organised to stop a counter revolution from within and foreign invasion. The people could take part in all of the adminstration of the state (no beaucracies!)
everybody should be elected as delegates, and if they do not represent there community or workerplace they can be automatically recalled (e.g paris commune again).

I do not see anything wrong with leaders as long as they represent the people, wouldn't viewers of this website consider themselves leaders of workers and other oppressed groups in comparison to people with racist, sexist or homophobic views.Some people are better speakers and some people are better theorists etc. Your ability should not effect your access to a comfortable standard of living or anything like that. As Marx said "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", every situation throws up people who are willing to take a process forward (revolution) and those that aren't. Shit this is alot longer than a intended

...thats anarchy mate.

ian bone might have something to say about that methinks!
he has spent years self-promoting himself into a "leading role" has he not?

The idea that there needs to be an 'in-between' structure in the move from capitalism to an anarchist society (note that important link - individual autonomy within a community) is where communism goes horribly wrong. You simply replace one authoritarian state with a 'dictatorship of the people' which means individuals in power over others, with all the inevitable corruption and inequality that that fosters.
Autonomy, community, love, sharing, self-determination, consideration for others, responsibility for my actions, freedom and scary and complete facing of truths - all this is what I understand and love about anarchy.

I do not think workers states have to result in buecratic dictorships, the paris commune was democratic with elected delegates and was a state of sorts,which Failed because it did not spread the revolution to other regions outside of paris. A state stops being a state in a class society sense when it's role is not the suppression of the majority.The problem with autonomous communities is that they leave the capitalist system intact outside of the region, every revolution has to start somewhere but the state must be overthrown before it destory's the resistant community.The buecratic dictorships of north korea, china and cuba were all founded on centralised guerilla armies with no democratic structures in the societies such as community and workers councils.There is nothing to say that the soviet union would have turned out as bad as it did. Initially it was democratic with workers councils (soviets), free education, free cresh's and food,homosexuality legalised, abortion legalised, men could take there wife's last names etc. Conditions such as the failure of the german revolution, the civil war, the economic backwardness of the country all provided the conditions on which stalin and his friends could rise to supreme rulers. I don't think the outcome was inevitable just a combination of material conditions and mistakes.

The Soviet Union Versus Socialism
Noam Chomsky

When the world's two great propaganda systems agree on some doctrine, it requires some intellectual effort to escape its shackles. One such doctrine is that the society created by Lenin and Trotsky and molded further by Stalin and his successors has some relation to socialism in some meaningful or historically accurate sense of this concept. In fact, if there is a relation, it is the relation of contradiction.

It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist -- surely any serious Marxist -- should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of socialist ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of socialism.

As for the world's second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions, to ensure that the necessity to rent oneself to the owners and managers of these institutions will be regarded as virtually a natural law, the only alternative to the 'socialist' dungeon.

The Soviet leadership thus portrays itself as socialist to protect its right to wield the club, and Western ideologists adopt the same pretense in order to forestall the threat of a more free and just society. This joint attack on socialism has been highly effective in undermining it in the modern period.

One may take note of another device used effectively by State capitalist ideologists in their service to existing power and privilege. The ritual denunciation of the so-called 'socialist' States is replete with distortions and often outright lies. Nothing is easier than to denounce the official enemy and to attribute to it any crime: there is no need to be burdened by the demands of evidence or logic as one marches in the parade. Critics of Western violence and atrocities often try to set the record straight, recognizing the criminal atrocities and repression that exist while exposing the tales that are concocted in the service of Western violence. With predictable regularity, these steps are at once interpreted as apologetics for the empire of evil and its minions. Thus the crucial Right to Lie in the Service of the State is preserved, and the critique of State violence and atrocities is undermined.

It is also worth noting the great appeal of Leninist doctrine to the modern intelligentsia in periods of conflict and upheaval. This doctrine affords the 'radical intellectuals' the right to hold State power and to impose the harsh rule of the 'Red Bureaucracy,' the 'new class,' in the terms of Bakunin's prescient analysis a century ago. As in the Bonapartist State denounced by Marx, they become the 'State priests,' and "parasitical excrescence upon civil society" that rules it with an iron hand.

In periods when there is little challenge to State capitalist institutions, the same fundamental commitments lead the 'new class' to serve as State managers and ideologists, "beating the people with the people's stick," in Bakunin's words. It is small wonder that intellectuals find the transition from 'revolutionary Communism' to 'celebration of the West' such an easy one, replaying a script that has evolved from tragedy to farce over the past half century. In essence, all that has changed is the assessment of where power lies. Lenin¹s dictum that "socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people," who must of course trust the benevolence of their leaders, expresses the perversion of 'socialism' to the needs of the State priests, and allows us to comprehend the rapid transition between positions that superficially seem diametric opposites, but in fact are quite close.

The terminology of political and social discourse is vague and imprecise, and constantly debased by the contributions of ideologists of one or another stripe. Still, these terms have at least some residue of meaning. Since its origins, socialism has meant the liberation of working people from exploitation. As the Marxist theoretician Anton Pannekoek observed, "this goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie," but can only be "realized by the workers themselves being master over production." Mastery over production by the producers is the essence of socialism, and means to achieve this end have regularly been devised in periods of revolutionary struggle, against the bitter opposition of the traditional ruling classes and the 'revolutionary intellectuals' guided by the common principles of Leninism and Western managerialism, as adapted to changing circumstances. But the essential element of the socialist ideal remains: to convert the means of production into the property of freely associated producers and thus the social property of people who have liberated themselves from exploitation by their master, as a fundamental step towards a broader realm of human freedom.

The Leninist intelligentsia have a different agenda. They fit Marx's description of the 'conspirators' who "pre-empt the developing revolutionary process" and distort it to their ends of domination; "Hence their deepest disdain for the more theoretical enlightenment of the workers about their class interests," which include the overthrow of the Red Bureaucracy and the creation of mechanisms of democratic control over production and social life. For the Leninist, the masses must be strictly disciplined, while the socialist will struggle to achieve a social order in which discipline "will become superfluous" as the freely associated producers "work for their own accord" (Marx). Libertarian socialism, furthermore, does not limit its aims to democratic control by producers over production, but seeks to abolish all forms of domination and hierarchy in every aspect of social and personal life, an unending struggle, since progress in achieving a more just society will lead to new insight and understanding of forms of oppression that may be concealed in traditional practice and consciousness.

The Leninist antagonism to the most essential features of socialism was evident from the very start. In revolutionary Russia, Soviets and factory committees developed as instruments of struggle and liberation, with many flaws, but with a rich potential. Lenin and Trotsky, upon assuming power, immediately devoted themselves to destroying the liberatory potential of these instruments, establishing the rule of the Party, in practice its Central Committee and its Maximal Leaders -- exactly as Trotsky had predicted years earlier, as Rosa Luxembourg and other left Marxists warned at the time, and as the anarchists had always understood. Not only the masses, but even the Party must be subject to "vigilant control from above," so Trotsky held as he made the transition from revolutionary intellectual to State priest. Before seizing State power, the Bolshevik leadership adopted much of the rhetoric of people who were engaged in the revolutionary struggle from below, but their true commitments were quite different. This was evident before and became crystal clear as they assumed State power in October 1917.

A historian sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, E.H. Carr, writes that "the spontaneous inclination of the workers to organize factory committees and to intervene in the management of the factories was inevitably encourage by a revolution with led the workers to believe that the productive machinery of the country belonged to them and could be operated by them at their own discretion and to their own advantage" (my emphasis). For the workers, as one anarchist delegate said, "The Factory committees were cells of the future... They, not the State, should now administer."

But the State priests knew better, and moved at once to destroy the factory committees and to reduce the Soviets to organs of their rule. On November 3, Lenin announced in a "Draft Decree on Workers' Control" that delegates elected to exercise such control were to be "answerable to the State for the maintenance of the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property." As the year ended, Lenin noted that "we passed from workers' control to the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy," which was to "replace, absorb and supersede the machinery of workers' control" (Carr). "The very idea of socialism is embodied in the concept of workers' control," one Menshevik trade unionist lamented; the Bolshevik leadership expressed the same lament in action, by demolishing the very idea of socialism.

Soon Lenin was to decree that the leadership must assume "dictatorial powers" over the workers, who must accept "unquestioning submission to a single will" and "in the interests of socialism," must "unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process." As Lenin and Trotsky proceeded with the militarization of labour, the transformation of the society into a labour army submitted to their single will, Lenin explained that subordination of the worker to "individual authority" is "the system which more than any other assures the best utilization of human resources" -- or as Robert McNamara expressed the same idea, "vital decision-making...must remain at the top...the real threat to democracy comes not from overmanagement, but from undermanagement"; "if it is not reason that rules man, then man falls short of his potential," and management is nothing other than the rule of reason, which keeps us free. At the same time, 'factionalism' -- i.e., any modicum of free expression and organization -- was destroyed "in the interests of socialism," as the term was redefined for their purposes by Lenin and Trotsky, who proceeded to create the basic proto-fascist structures converted by Stalin into one of the horrors of the modern age.1

Failure to understand the intense hostility to socialism on the part of the Leninist intelligentsia (with roots in Marx, no doubt), and corresponding misunderstanding of the Leninist model, has had a devastating impact on the struggle for a more decent society and a livable world in the West, and not only there. It is necessary to find a way to save the socialist ideal from its enemies in both of the world's major centres of power, from those who will always seek to be the State priests and social managers, destroying freedom in the name of liberation.



1 On the early destruction of socialism by Lenin and Trotsky, see Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1978, and Peter Rachleff, Radical America, Nov. 1974, among much other work.
Noam Chomsky

Firstly, Chiapas is not exactly the nicest place to live right now. Gang problems overwhelm the state, and practically everyone is under the poverty line.
You also defend anarchy with its brief movement in the Ukraine. As you could guess from its aforementioned brevity, this movement was fairly unsuccessful. Almost all of the anarchists were killed by the then-prominent communist party under Lenin.
Also, let's take a look at Somalia. The UN has been saying since 2007 that this anarchist country is probably the worst-off in the world. I could go into great detail explaining to you how awful the place is, but I'm sure you can imagine the theft, genocide, and crime that make Somalia practically uninhabitable. Or, you could Google it. There are ample articles and quite descriptive photographs that may give you insight on the horrors that make this East African state.
Now, I can understand the appeal of an anarchist government- no laws, no property, no social hierarchy (–or so the theory implies). But, honestly, let's be a little bit realistic. The people who rule our country are the ones with the ability and the intelligence. In an anarchist society, the head honchos would be the biggest and the strongest, the fastest and the meanest. These hotshots are the same ones who took your lunch money in high school, who took your girlfriend, and who are going to shoot you if you piss them off. Which you will.
It would be undoubtedly lovely to not have to pay a $25 fine that will go straight to blowing up civilians in Iraq every time you don't buckle your seat belt, but I'd take organized, strategic war over mass chaos and insanity anyday. And I'm a DEVOUT pacifist.

Firstly, Chiapas is not exactly the nicest place to live right now. Gang problems overwhelm the state, and practically everyone is under the poverty line.
You also defend anarchy with its brief movement in the Ukraine. As you could guess from its aforementioned brevity, this movement was fairly unsuccessful. Almost all of the anarchists were killed by the then-prominent communist party under Lenin.
Also, let's take a look at Somalia. The UN has been saying since 2007 that this anarchist country is probably the worst-off in the world. I could go into great detail explaining to you how awful the place is, but I'm sure you can imagine the theft, genocide, and crime that make Somalia practically uninhabitable. Or, you could Google it. There are ample articles and quite descriptive photographs that may give you insight on the horrors that make this East African state.
Now, I can understand the appeal of an anarchist government- no laws, no property, no social hierarchy (–or so the theory implies). But, honestly, let's be a little bit realistic. The people who rule our country are the ones with the ability and the intelligence. In an anarchist society, the head honchos would be the biggest and the strongest, the fastest and the meanest. These hotshots are the same ones who took your lunch money in high school, who took your girlfriend, and who are going to shoot you if you piss them off. Which you will.
It would be undoubtedly lovely to not have to pay a fine that will go straight to the bigshots and jerks of a government you don't even like every time you don't buckle your seat belt, but I'd take organized, strategic war over mass chaos and insanity anyday. And I'm a DEVOUT pacifist.