So are they marxists or anarchists?

I keep hearing about communalism. Is there somewhere I can get a brief summary on it without diving into a huge book?

Because Bookchin made constructing a state and not calling it one a fundamental part of the ideology instead of that simply being its inevitable result.

...

For the most part, the biggest difference between Communalism and Anarchism is the former's embrace of social contract theory (i.e. government).

"Libertarian municipalism is an integral part of the Communalist framework, indeed its praxis, just as Communalism as a systematic body of revolutionary thought is meaningless without libertarian municipalism. The differences between Communalism and authentic or “pure” anarchism, let alone Marxism, are much too great to be spanned by a prefix such as anarcho-,social, neo-, or even libertarian. Any attempt to reduce Communalism to a mere variant of anarchism would be to deny the integrity of both ideas – indeed, to ignore their conflicting concepts of democracy, organization, elections, government, and the like. Gustave Lefrancais, the Paris Communard who may have coined this political term, adamantly declared that he was “a Communalist, not an anarchist.”"- Bookchin
new-compass.net/articles/communalist-project

This pamphlet is good:
communalismpamphlet.net/

Check out the r/Communalists subreddit. Probably the only decent subreddit in existence. Look at the side bar for a short intro

anarchists with tankie characteristics

When I'd made this, I wanted to cover the bare foundations of Communalist political theory, while including a bit of introductory reads on Rojava. To be honest, Ocalan's works are a lot different than Bookchin's, and would require a reading guide all on their own. The problem is further complicated, in that not all of Ocalan's works have been translated into English yet, and are being periodically done so.

Who enforces the rule of law in Rojava?

But isn't the defining characteristic of anarchism, the rejection of the state? And communalism rejects the state.

People's militias, the soon-to-be-abolished Asayish and local councils.

the defining feature of anarchism is the rejection of hierarchy

What is the structure of Communalist government? What about the economy? Give me a quick rundown. I can't stand the writing style of most political theorists, especially Bookchin, it's too verbose and doesn't get to the fucking point.

So how much do communalists draw from Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon?

And why the Zerzan hate?

Next you're going to start making food analogies.

Yes, both Anarchists and Communalist reject the state. However, Anarchists do not see the difference between politics and statecraft. To quote Bookchin:

" Any agenda that tries to restore and amplify the classical meaning of politics and citizenship must clearly indicate what they are not, if only because of the confusion that surrounds the two words. . . . Politics is not statecraft, and citizens are not "constituents" or "taxpayers." Statecraft consists of operations that engage the state: the exercise of its monopoly of violence, its control of the entire regulative apparatus of society in the form of legal and ordinance-making bodies, and its governance of society by means of professional legislators, armies, police forces, and bureaucracies. Statecraft takes on a political patina when so-called "political parties" attempt, in various power plays, to occupy the offices that make state policy and execute it. This kind of "politics" has an almost tedious typicality. A "political party" is normally a structured hierarchy, fleshed out by a membership that functions in a top-down manner. It is a miniature state, and in some countries, such as the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, a party actually constituted the state itself.

The Soviet and Nazi examples of the party qua state were the logical extension of the party into the state. Indeed, every party has its roots in the state, not in the citizenry. The conventional party is hitched to the state like a garment to a mannikin. However varied the garment and its design may be, it is not part of the body politic; it merely drapes it. There is nothing authentically political about this phenomenon: it is meant precisely to contain the body politic, to control it and to manipulate it, not to express its will–or even permit it to develop a will. In no sense is a conventional "political" party derivative of the body politic or constituted by it. Leaving metaphors aside, "political" parties are replications of the state when they are out of power and are often synonymous with the state when they are in power. They are formed to mobilize, to command, to acquire power, and to rule. Thus they are as inorganic as the state itself–an excrescence of society that has no real roots in it, no responsiveness to it beyond the needs of faction, power, and mobilization.

Politics, by contrast, is an organic phenomenon. It is organic in the very real sense that it is the activity of a public body–a community, if you will–just as the process of flowering is an organic activity of a plant. Politics, conceived as an activity, involves rational discourse, public empowerment, the exercise of practical reason, and its realization in a shared, indeed participatory, activity. It is the sphere of societal life beyond the family and the personal needs of the individual that still retains the intimacy, involvement, and sense of responsibility enjoyed in private arenas of life. Groups may form to advance specific political views and programs, but these views and programs are no better than their capacity to answer to the needs of an active public body. . . . "

Democratic Confederalism is a bit of both, tbh.

Quoted from the sidebar of /r/Communalists on Reddit:

"4) Social ecology educes it's political strategy from the ethics of dialectical naturalism. Social ecology's politics hold that society should be organised as directly democratic citizens' assemblies (libertarian municipalism), networked across distance through councils (confederalism). Libertarian municipalism utilises majority vote decision making, and not consensus. Under libertarian municipalism, society is governed along the lines of Arendtian social contract theory. Libertarian municipalism incorporates law (nomos or "good law") as well as constitutionalism in its form of governance. Libertarian municipalism seeks the municipalisation of the economy, wherein production would be brought under the control of the municipal assemblies, and to replace the market economy with a moral economy guided by rational and ecological standards. Communalism rejects nationalism and identity politics, and seeks to challenge the existing society on behalf of our shared common humanity, not on the basis of gender, race, age, and the like. Libertarian municipalism seeks to abolish scarcity as well as work through automation, in order to allow more people to have the time to enjoy their lives and to engage in politics. The revolutionary agent of Communalism is "the People", and Communalism's politics are populist."

Anarchism goes much further than that. The abolishment of hierarchical governance itself.
Hierarchy isn't abolished in Rojava. Though it looks different than in traditional statist societies.

I wouldn't say that they're that different. Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization is not a radical departure from communalist thought by any means, merely an application of communalist thought to a per-enlightenment society and the ME's historical and cultural circumstances.

what said. Power lies in the hands of the citizenry and the institutions that empower them

By this logic anything that coordinates on an international level is a state. A corporation or NGO by this logic is a state. Hogwash

So it's a state

NATO

If it is the PKK you are talking about then they are Marxists. The YPG on the other hand is communalist.

State implies monopoly of violence and even to an extend hierarchical sovereignty Something that's severely lacking in Rojava.

PKK renounced Marxism years ago.

How do you know this? Have you been there?

So basically, a confederation of small totally-not-a-states, each governed by direct democracy, and each totally-not-a-state runs a planned economy with the goal of meeting ecological standards and minimizing labor time, networked with the other totally-not-a-states.

They take from all three to varying degrees. Probably from Kropotkin the most out of all three. Deep ecology is rejected because it seeks merely conservation and places other animals like beetles at the same level of humans, when instead we should recognize humanities ability to be ethical and self aware as well as positively impact other species.

PKK still have MLs in their ranks and some ML tendencies I gather, even if they've moved on as a group

There's a bunch of reports from volunteers and foreign observers that confirm as much

Define a state. Any organization of people or institution of power is not automatically a state

Nope. A state is a tool of class domination. As long as class division exists whatever governmental structure that's put in place will be a state apparatus. The anarchist/Bookchin definition of a state is so steeped in mysticism that it's rendered useless in any practical application.

Oh look, it's the anarchist "everything is a state" hour.

A confederation of poleis, not states. Though commonly translated as "city state", the word "state" did not come to be used for any form of governance until relatively recently in history. A polis, classically, referred to a very specific form of governance, one which differed sharply from other actual states in the Mediterranean. Bookchin stresses an Arendtian (i.e. Aristotelian) conception of governance.

Such as?

*mysticism and semantics

How is there not a monopoly of violence? Who can compete with their militia?

cooperativeeconomy.info/the-economy-of-rojava/
You could also go to the Rojava General and ask there

The militia isn't a single centralized monolithic structure user.

The local members of the councils are also members of the local militias. The monopoly on violence doesn't exist if everyone is armed and even the largest units and militias do not form a significant slice of the total armed population.

This is why it is important to read Bookchin. Because unless you understand the difference between politics and statecraft, you can't understand what is happening in Rojava. The ideology of democratic confederalism is being put into action at the level of the MGRK (i.e. politics), whereas there DOES exist a state in Rojava in the form of the DAA (i.e. the PYD). Understanding the dialectical tension between these two entities is key, as it allows us to judge to the extent that Rojava is a successful revolution by its own Communalist standards.
biehlonbookchin.com/rojavas-communes-and-councils/

Thanks

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I literally have no idea what, precisely, constitutes a State. In fact, this has been bugging me for a long time. When do we know that the State has truly been abolished? What criteria need to be met for an effective institution to not be a state, just not having a monopoly on force?

HPC militias that are solely under the controll of the communes are not a secret. I disagree though with the conception of Rojava not being a state. Imo the power structures are still pretty state like and havent yet developed into an actual stage that is can be called communalism. There is a good chance that this can actually happen if the autonomy agreement with Assad is favourable.

Yeah there are clearly still some lingering Leninist influences in the PKK and its organisation structure is not communalist at all. Not that I expect that off a underground guerilla.

Social Ecology believes in a human centric conception of ecology and as the human as part of nature and not seperate. It holds the city as the primary egalitarian institution that made modern civilisation possible in the first place by dissolving tribalism. Technology is not rejected, in the opposite it consideres it liberatory and not fundamentally anti ecological. Marx held the opinion that technology allows us to seperate humanity from nature, which Bookchin thinks is first impossible and secondly that technology is rather an option to live in "harmony" with the other parts of nature again.

So Zerzan can fuck right off. Dunno how much Bookchin draws on other anarchists and he denounced anarchism(imo foolishly as there is a lot more to anarchism than its modern mutations)

Reductionist to say the least. Hierarchy and domination are not solely issues of class. The marxist conception of class is rendered useless and impractical as evidenced by the failings of the bolsheviks and Communist parties internationally to distinguish between statecraft and politics

see

lmaoooooooo

Statecraft vs politics is a semantic game that has no merit beyond an appeal to an idealised Greek democracy that never existed.

Except that's bullshit. See

t. you

Revisionists

That implies that they're still marxists

Bookchin thought anarchism was just as obsolete as Leninism

More pointedly we have completely different views of hierarchy and our praxis is completely different. We believe that the citizen, not the worker, is the fulfillment of civilization. And that municipal, not trade unions should be the center of society

Please do not slander Rojava by implying it's anarchist, let this experiment stand as democratic confederalist in order to test the merits of our theory

So from this line in that rambling passage Bookchin seems to be saying that the State consists of a monopoly on force combined with legal institutions like legislators, armies, and bureaucracies (the means of enforcement), who act from the top down (and this is the crucial part?) Tell me if I am wrong about this.

So how are, say, ecological laws enforced in Communalism? Does everybody have to get together as part of a mass Environmental Court and vote on whether or not a person violated the law and what punishment they deserve? Does this feature (as opposed to a centralized hierarchical judiciary) make it Not A State?

Implying that party politics based on pure power and the politics that happen inside a community over local issues based on direct democratical involvement are qualitativly the same.

You act as if the distinction between structures of power being vertical or horizontal is ultimately meaningless. Local issues are kept local and decided by the respective assemblies as how to handle it. Justice would not be punitive but restorative.

No, a court in the Communalist sense would be structured similarly along the lines of the Athenian boule, with laws and confederal constitutions being decided by the whole of the communal assemblies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boule_(ancient_Greece)

Rules passed by the community as a whole still hold power. You can still have courts that follow these laws and pass judgement. Although most stuff would be solved by reconciliation commitees. Confederations also can follow rules they decided upon together.

I am not as well read on Bookchin as I would like but I think Bookchin thought that Communalist organising would naturally create a different relation to nature and ecology.

Okay, so according to wikipedia:

Okay, so the institutions are the local assemblies (Athenian Boules, here) who are democratically appointed to run the affairs of that particular area.

Like, how would this be different from the US House of Representatives, but more local? I just don't see what's revolutionary about this theory aside from dude localism lmao it will fix the environment I swear

totally the same lmao

Or maybe you misunderstood what you read in that wiki article? Because a group of citizens chose by lot for a year to run the basic every day administration of the city is not a house of representatives deciding on laws that are then executed by a state apperatus.

Originally they were Maoists, but they are in the Communalists current day which is considered apart from Marxism and Anarchism.

Assuming that people actually want power, they're still going to campaign to get elected to the assembly, presumably.

So instead of just deciding on laws, they also enforce the laws, right? Isn't this just centralizing all the State apparatuses into one assembly? Or would you also elect a law enforcement force, a judiciary, and so on? I can see how this can be better than representative democracy with its large unelected state apparatus, but it still begs the question of why isn't it a State, imo

No, you'd asked about law creation and enforcement.

The main institution of Communalism is the municipal assembly, which is networked across distances through councils. The councils are composed of people who have no decision making power themselves, and are only delegates. All policy is decided by the assemblies as a while according to majority vote, while the highers levels exist only for the administration of those policies created by the assemblies. So for example, you would have the assemblies decide on a policy of building a road, but the engineering and construction of it would be administered by the higher levels.

Muh special snowflake of anarcho-collectivism because of muh hippie shit

what the difference between communalism and mutualism?

communalism and distributism?

The court does not decide on the laws, it's merely a place which legal disputes get handled. In rojava, most cases don't even make it to the courts because they're handled by the communes much of the time. The institutions need not be identical to athens anyways.

Its okay for communalists to have markets as long as theyndo not callmthe markets

t. butthurt bob black fanboy

Actual decisions would be made by the citizens assembly. The only posts you could probably try to get elected for would be professional parts of the administration, judges(I think that should be handled differently), and representative people towards the different levels of the federation.

You have no theory

Isnt distributism only christian radical social democracy?

ebin

distributism is distributing the means of production as widely as possible.
down with corporations up with guilds.

Planning doesnt lead to societal prodiction

Plannimg in rojava is a necessity due to the state of war, they better decide how to avoid its contradictions if they want to survive in the post-war period

But not unilaterally

Werent guilds historically shitty hierachical structures? Why not good old syndicates instead. Also destributing the means of production instead of destroying propperty itself will never be stable in the long term.

Also the rejection of power, which is the big mistake.

Rojava will go towards cooperatives in a market economy after the war. There is no other way in the dominating capitalist system.

Read cooperativeeconomy.info/the-economy-of-rojava/
truly ebin

opendemocracy.net/5050/rahila-gupta/rojava-revolution-on-hoof

I hate bookchinites!!!

I'm not a distributist but they claim that guilds kept things at a local level and were only broken up through the state.

Under Communalism the economy is municipalized, meaning that industrial production and productive enterprise are brought under the control of the municipal assemblies. In Communalism, cooperatives only manage these productive enterprises. Communalism's conception of a "cooperative" is very different than cooperatives as commonly understood within the context of capitalism, or market socialism.

No?

See

Its an illusion that they will manage to destroy private property and operate a completely municipalised economy under a world wide capitalist system. They also simply lack the capital necessary for the decentralisation of the economy. Creating a locally guided economy of cooperatives that partially supply the citizenship for free and partially sell their goods on the open market for capital is still good given the circumstances. Socialism in one country will never work.

WHY IS BOOKCHIN KNEELING AT HIS DESK IT DRIVES ME MAD!

If you knew anything about people of Russian descent, you would know that he is actually squatting.

Bookshit was a manlet.

He is an old man, it is bad for his knees! Look at all that room at the top of the image, pull up a chair Murray you madman.

Wow rude

Private property is enshrined in the constitution, though its subservient to the councils. Everything is initially owned locally, and businesses cannot be sold, nor is there a stock market.

That's exactly what it's moving towards though.

What is this supposed to mean? Besides the latter part is already happening.

Except the whole point is that it is supposed to work, can work, and does work even in one region.

Wtf I hate communalism now.

They need to get independent economically so their economy can be guided by local concerns. Otherwise they would have to bow completely to the whims of the international market so they can aquire the capital for the goods they need, making the communalisation of the economy a total joke.

To make that relative economic independence possible they need capital to buy machinery, their own refinery, and other stuff needed for basic industry.

Economic independence in the modern world is a myth.

You can have both a communalist system and foreign trade. I don't see why one excludes the other.

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But anarchism also has confederation, right? Is communalism's majoritarian decision making and willingness to coerce outvoted parties the key difference?

liberals

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Define coercion

Forcing people to do things, I guess. For example, Bookchin said that communes should not be allowed to secede from the confederation. Would anarchists agree?

kurdish nationalists

Where does he say this? Communes are more or less interdependent on one another, and part of the communalist program is recognition of this fact. Communalists are not afraid to use force, that much is true

From The Next Revolution (Chapter 1, endnote 8)

'the anarcho-communist notion of a very loose “federation of autonomous communes” is replaced with a confederation from which its components, functioning in a democratic manner through citizens’ assemblies, may withdraw only with the approval of the confederation as a whole.'

That's just consistent majority rule

Not "theyre not allowed out"

If the confederation is relying on that municipality in some manner then it trying to escape is just holding something hostage to maintain some upper hand over everyone else

So you agree with that policy as an ancom?

Yeah, because I'm ancom and not some retarded IWONTDOWHATYOUTELLMEPUNKROCK snowflake brand anarkid

The only alternative to minority rule is majority rule

they are cointelpro

Well, Bookchin seemed to think that this differentiated him from ancoms. If ancoms support it too then I'm once again inclined to think that communalism is anarchistic.

You are cancer. Suck a dick.

Bookchin identifies communalism as a strain within anarchism, but he wanted to separate himself from the other tendencies within anarchism

It's cuz he was tired of dealing with edgelord Bob Black and his incessant whining about how ancom things can't be anarchist

Not according to the quotation here

'The differences between Communalism and authentic or “pure” anarchism, let alone Marxism, are much too great to be spanned by a prefix such as anarcho-,social, neo-, or even libertarian. Any attempt to reduce Communalism to a mere variant of anarchism would be to deny the integrity of both ideas'

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Basically, it's more correct to say that anarchism has communalist components but is not communalism in it's entirety

im a leftcom, i just like pirates

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i didnt come here to be insulted

He rejected anarchism later, didn't he? Hence the different attitude shown in , which was written in 2002.

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So majority rule isn't compatible with anarcho-communism after all?

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Not if you're actually an anarchist. Ancoms support organization but if it's not free and equal, which would necessitate it being voluntary in all circumstances, then it's not anarchistic.

Never said that. Self-defense is not that the same as making individuals comply to the will of the majority.

Within the framework of interdependence and mutualism, it is self defense.

...

Social Contract and libertarian ethics, OK? Praise Bookchin

Someone cannot accumulate power in an anarchy, that's the point; and someone should have the right to use their own labor to accumulate as much stuff as they want to.
A spook I never agreed to that's used as justification to subdue my will and interests to some spooky collective.
Which seemingly doesn't include leaving people alone who want to live their life like they want to.

Only because force i.e. coercion prevents such a thing
Dank meme, much ebin
Hey if you want to isolate yourself from everyone else be my guest. Nobodies going to force you to participate in the institutions of empowerment.

Yes, force in self-defense, which can hardly be called coercion.
You even know this is a non-response.
It shouldn't be just two choices of isolation or possible subjugation. But even then that's not going to be a choice likely to even be given. Wherever community assemblies reign I will be under their "authority" and be forced to obey their rules, otherwise there would be no implicit threat of force for noncompliance; otherwise Communalism would be no different than ancomism.

Neither is spook posting m8
You don't have to isolate yourself from other people either, but if you're going to live in a community you're going to have to live by the rules the community establishes. Find a different community if you don't like it. You imply that these rules will be somehow overly authoritarian when the social contract and the ethics established would prevent such authoritarianism. If rules in general are "authoritarian" to you then frankly why should anyone care what you want, since you obviously don't care about what anyone else wants

It genuinely is a spook, not even in the memey sense.
You're missing the crucial difference between Communalism is Anarchism, in that Communalism believes it is legitimate to use coercion to enforce organization and that a tyranny of the majority is allowable. Ancient Athens is often used to draw comparisons with Communalism, but Athens being a direct democracy where all citizens were equal didn't stop them for democratically murdering Socrates.
Then why is coercion needed at all if any decisions or rules the assemblies create won't be overly authoritarian?
Not rules but laws, whcih are rules enforced through force and violence. Force and violence should simply not be options, except in self-defense, in a free society. No matter how little it is used, not only does it have any secure or consistent philosophical foundation, it's also a tempting tool that's scope will invariably expand.

It's not a substantive argument against social contracts/political ethics
Ancient athens had a lot of bad things about it as well. Communalists don't seek to emulate the patriarchal or slave owning aspects of it, nor do they seek to implement a death penalty
My point exactly
Is capturing a murderer or a rapist self defense? If yes then I don't see a problem. Communalism is quite explicit with it's ethics and how they should be applied to society so I don't know what you mean by it not having a consistent philosophical foundation. The last part is just a fallacy

It is a spook because I'm suppose to obey it before my self-interests, which is obviously absurd.
Where does it get its moral justification for having authority over individuals, for having the legitimacy to use force? The same questions that can be asked of any statelike entity. Is it because the will of the majority makes it legitimate? If a single individual doesn't have the right to tell me what to do or use non-defensive force against me, or a dozen, or a hundred, then why does the majority? What if when it's not just an individual against the majority but a sizable minority?
A basic fact of all entities is that it wants to grow and will if it can. Once you create a state it will grow, and by it growing it will increase the scope of its unique powers. It's irrelevant the motives or ethics behind its creation, otherwise the USSR would've really been for the workers and tried to work for Communism, or the French Republic would've really tried to create and protect liberty, equality, and fraternity, or the USA would've really protected the rights and liberties of its citizens.

This views the individual as the most basic social unit when it is not the individual but the collective/community. To say that it's not in your self interest to not rape or murder is to paint yourself not so much as a human but as a rabid animal, and it's certainly not in the self interest of the community to let you do those things.
It's the simple realization that the community is the most basic social unit, that people need a community to survive and thrive, and that ultimately nature and evolution bends towards an increasing complimentaryism/mutualism/interdependence. The "sizeable minority" can go make it's own community away from there then, or join a different community more to their liking. Such association has existed in organic societies i.e. pre-hierarchic and domination based societies for millions of years, and there's really not much that we can do to improve on their own internal communal morality/communal ethic.
I've not described a state, politics of communalist society being intrinsically different from the statecraft of republics. Power itself is not something that cannot exist. It can either exists in institutions that liberate and empower people or institutions that dominate and exploit them, communalism creating the former

The individual is the only thing that exists. You see the world in terms of entities composed of individuals without actually seeing the individuals.
The idea behind the Social Contract is much more than that. It's called a contract because it expects certain obligations from the individuals under it.
None of that justifies coercion or even necessitates it.
It has a monopoly on violence and will enforce its decisions with force if it needs to; in all meaningful ways it is a state.
True, which is why it should be limited as much as possible, not increased and significantly empowered in the form of a quasi-state.
That's a false dichotomy that assumes the institutions have to exist. There's also the idea that an institution based upon coercion could possibly be used for liberation or empowerment. Who is it liberating or empowering? Certainly not the individuals who disagree and whose compliance the institutions are designed and created to take.

I merely see that individuals need other people to survive and thrive, and that ultimately the individual is only as strong as the community is
The implicit agreement not to rape or murder one another is a social contract, and people are obligated not to rape or murder one another. This also extends itself to such notions as from each according to his ability to each according to his need
It necessitates the need to stop you if you threaten the wellbeing of others i.e. the community through your actions, such as hoarding food or coercing individuals yourself etc.
This completely removes any meaning from the word monopoly. A single community has no more a monopoly on violence then any of the other multitudes of communities. Comparing the two is entirely laughable and incoherent.
Power is not so much limited as it is dispersed to the multitude of the citizenry. You can keep insisiting that it's a state but the qualitative differences are numerous
You've given no reason why institutions should not exist, nor how organizations like the CNT or the Black Army were not in themselves institutions. You keep using that word coercion without sufficiently explaining how it's not coercion to pursue a revolutionary program against those within the instiutions of domination. To them it most certainly is coercion, and frankly any revolutionary program is coercion against the ruling class and institutions of domination.

Yes, I agree, that's why I'm an ancom. I don't agree with using violence to make these communities function easier.
The Social Contract extends much further than that. It's been used to justify everything from taxation, prisons, conscription, to noise-disturbance laws.
As far as I know, we're not talking about a purely defensive institution. We're talking about one that organizes and directs people. A community assembly that decides what is done, how, when, etc.
Yes, and other states exist alongside each other and people can leave one to go to another. Within these communities their is a government or quasi-government that has this monopoly, otherwise it has no power.
Except this power cannot be legitimately exercised by the citizens unless through the degrees of the majority.
I've been under the impression by institutions you mean coercive ones that wield power. They shouldn't exist because they are coercive entities that wield power. The CNT and Black Army were voluntary organizations.
Because it is a fight against coercion. I don't want the politicians and the bourgeois to do anything for me, I want them to stop coercing me, and through violence I am simply defending myself. Once people are free then violence and force should simply not be an option unless it is a response to violence and force.

Self-defense requires violence
The Social Contract has many different variants, the communalist version which does not necessitate things like taxation, imprisonment, or conscription.
As does any other organization by it's very nature. Now you're making the absurd argument that organization is "statism".
You really can't see the difference between a town and a state, a neighborhood and a state? A community within a decentralized confederation of municipalities is no more a monopoly then a single sports team within a league a monopoly on said sport. Pure sophistry.
And to have it be any other way would be tyranny of the minority.
More sophistry. The CNT most definitely coerced people through the use of labor camps, executions as well as literally having an armed force under them. The Black Army, being an army, by it's very nature is coercive and wields power through violence. Again, it's literally impossible for power not to exist.
By this logic I can easily make the argument that the community does not want you to coerce it, and by use of violence is defending itself from you.

Yes, but organization doesn't.
Well, if it's just a concept about "be decent to each other, don't fuck with people", then I'm perfectly fine with it.
Yes, but the difference, as far as I know, between ancom organization and Communalist institutions is that Communalist institutions have nothing against forcing a disagreeing minority within the institution to comply to the majority's demands.
What matters is how it functions, not its size.
What matters is a monopoly of violence within these communities. Other communities existing with similar structures doesn't matter.
I want there to be no tyranny at all. No use of power over anyone.
Assuming labor camps and executions happened, I would say those are a reflection of the CNT abandoning anarchist principles, not living to them. The idea of the CNT is what I support, not what they actually did. Same with the Black Army, which as far as I know, simply defended and freed the people under them. These organizations abandoning their principles isn't proof that power can't exist, just that it's highly attractive and hard to fight against, but it's not about making it non-existent, since of course one individual still has a large amount of power, it's about making it as minor as possible, especially by not including states or statelike entities that are the most powerful and most dangerous entities to ever exist.
That logic would only work if I actually was coercing against the other individuals in some way. Simply not wanting to comply with their orders and plans isn't coercion.

American special forces

We really need an Individualist Anarchist flag, Ancoms think they own this place.

a little bit of both

How can they enforce law when they are mostly in Manbij or near Raqqa frontlines and the centre of PYD administration is in Amuda?

Political organizations that hope to survive will need to defend themselves, so yes it does necessitate violence.
We might differ on what that means though.
How it functions is as a directly democratic communal structure which enforces rules decided by the community and within the boundaries of the social contract. This is not at all the same as a hierarchical structure by which the few be it bureaucrats, military men and technocrats enforce their will upon the majority. To say that there is a monopoly of violence or power when anyone when nobody within the community is barred from participating in either the assemblies or militias, essentially not restricting access as a monopoly does, is ridiculous.
Violence as used in self defense is using power over someone. Power cannot not exist. To say that all power is tyranny is to reduce the word tyranny to meaningless dimensions.
This is to disown the two groups that actually accomplished anything of merit within the anarchist movement, the Black Army which did indeed execute enemy officers quite regularly. The territories liberated still had enforced rules, one of them being that parties could only observe but not vote within the assembly structures formed. I'm fine with calling the Black Army a communalist organization though if you feel the need to abandon their legacy.
This brings into question what you're so worried about them doing. Are you polluting the environment, thereby harming the community? Should the community simply allow you to harm them? If it's not coercion but simply mindless violence is that any better? The simple fear of a group using power against you is one that is impossible to dissipate, since all it require is a few men or women with guns anyways

That is le ebin anarcho-nihilist flag or pirate flag. We don't need more shitposting flags tbh

Anarcho-nihilism would function if it weren't for those deep cover ancap fags ruining it.

As for those arguing that anarchism is against all authority, see the following Mikhail Bakunin quote:

If anarchists rejected all authority, then it really would be a dumb ideology fit only for punks and antifas. That, however, meaninglessly denigrates what anarchism has historically been and equates it with chaos like a liberal. Other than the "annil" shitposters (who I must stress, are not anarchists), you don't see anarchists here say that all Marxism is North Korea or 1984. Is it too much to ask that basic level of decency in return?

If gulags really were necessary to protect the self-management of workers and localized council democracy, then they were justified. It's unfortunate and it's questionable whether they really were, but it was a solution to a real problem.

I'd much rather have a small taint on an otherwise free society than have the full-on steaming turd of total state control over the individual. Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Makhno, and Durruti are all with me on that. It doesn't change anything if you beat the people with a stick like capitalists and call it the Peoples' Stick.

See, this is another difference between communalism and anarchism.
Communalists are not rabid individualists, and realize that all human societies have been based upon clear restorative laws and collective solutions, whereas the indivudalist radib liberalism of Anarchism sees the individual as fundementally independent and society and social organization as inherently bad.
Communalists only reject the hierarchal, not the collectivist part of society.

Lies. Read Bakunin.
The classical anarchism of Bakunin, Stirner, Proudhon, and Kropotkin (despite their many differences) is, in fact, a negation of the liberal concept of the individual, something to which communalists and Marxists are still chained. That modern lifestylist "anarchists" are, to all effect, edgy liberals does not change that. In many ways, Bookchin is closer to anarchism than them. He doesn't have the theory to be a real anarchist, though.

Stay a pleb, friend.

Doesn't really work when you consider the existence of sociopaths

Do you mean that he simply lacks theory or lacks a theory congruent with anarchism?

Life stylists have indeed hit the very core of anarchism, thus why even the CNT were apprehensive about calling themselves anarchists.
You post a nice quote but there is little substance to it.
What rights do the collective have in regards to the individual? How is collective welfare and cooperation guaranteed? How are people supposed to coordinate their affairs? On these subjects classical anarchism stays frightfully silent, and in many ways demonstrates how it, like Marxism, conflates hierarchal statism with civic politics. A good example of this is how Goldman, Berkman and other anarchists lambasted and alienated Nestor Makhno once they met him in Paris. Nestor's project that was way more similar to communalism than any sort of anarchist branch was founded on pragmatism, and unknowingly, upon thousands of years of civic society and assembly democracies that arose out of cities, rather than the ahistorical individualist "union of egoist" or similar organizations that anarchists proposed.

Both

Both

The essence of why sociopaths and psychopaths are diseased is that they reject the freedom of others and therefore their own. They must be stopped at all costs, preferably through non-coercive methods if at all possible.
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-are-prisons-necessary

He lacks a theoretical conception of the individual ready to replace liberalism's heart. Marx's critique of Max Stirner's egoism is the German Ideology can be summed up as "it's unreasonable to expect a post-revolutionary consciousness among the masses under pre-revolutionary conditions where individuals are restrained by material conditions". He's not wrong, but for there to even be a revolution, there must be an idea for people to believe in, some alternative mode of organization. Every social revolution has implemented a new order on the basis of either things being so bad under the current one that anything would be better (for example: French, Leninist ones) or a new system is so much better looking that the current one is unbearable (for example: American, anti-Leninist ones). Because Bookchin does not escape the fundamental flaws of liberal's core conception, it runs the risk of recreating flaws such as private property with the justification of solving inexistent problems. Luckily, however, it appears that Bookchin's anarchism did leave a mark and what is proposed is, in practice, very similar to the models of social anarchists. The main flaw that I see with it is that the advocacy of participating in existing structures of local government goes unopposed because the liberal theory of the individual is not challenged and replaced. The setup of local governments (parliamentary politics, yuck) is still reminiscent of larger state structures - it alienates those governed from those who govern, instilling an absolute authority (even if it's for a period of time). It is an absolute necessity with representative organization that it be delegative, that is, that the representative be immediately recallable by those governed. In other words, make a soviet.

Have you ever read the Conquest Of Bread? It talks a lot about how anarchist organization, that democratic form of which you speak, is something which "happens" naturally and how it is the job of the anarchist revolutionary to protect its genesis by influencing material circumstances. It is the Das Kapital of anarchism, and definitively answers your point. There is a real difference between individualist (Stirner) and social (Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin) - namely that the spontaneous organization of social anarchists (Bakunin advocated workers' councils before Marx did) is the concept of the union of egoists taken to its logical conclusion, even if the various luminaries never met one another.

Pirates are instructive in understanding how anarchist communism arises out of self-interested individuals confederating in the absence of the state.
workplacedemocracy.com/tag/the-invisible-hook/

It is in the interest of each and every individual that they organize to provide each other with mutual aid to ensure the "universal well being of all" which Kropotkin advocates so much in the Conquest Of Bread. We don't even think about this, we just do it because it makes sense. You're right, it's pragmatic. It's also highly compatible with anarchism.

Local government must be built up, I agree, but it must take the spontaneous, state-free form of labor exchanges, squats, unions, workers' cooperatives, and mutual aid societies (which are making a resurgence under the name of "self-help").

Should have wrote "every revolution, social or political"

I have read Conquest of Bread , thank you very much, but to say that such free societies that form in the absence of a state are not coercive, is misunderstood.

Both the parochial tribal societies that may arise, are largely based on kinship, desicions ate usually taken by elders and a complex system of taboos and often times draconian moral systems dominate them.
Even the civic societies, such as the pirate ship, are coercive and dominated by majority rule. Pirate ships and cities certainly had punitive measures and concrete and formalised procedures of conducting the business, again undermining the anarchist notion that the society in which power and coercion has existed or indeed, can exist.
Most of the historical examples are communalist in nature, and anarchists would certainly take great issue with the majority of non-hierarchical revolutions that history has provided.

Not sure where you're getting the idea that he has the same conception of an individual as liberalism does. Bookchin quite clearly looks at individuals, and life in general, within the framework of interdependence and mutualism. From the the essay "Being a Bookchinite":

Indeed, worker's coops must be destroyed and the economy municipalized, lest we arrive right back at the disorganised tradegy-of-the-commons economy of market capitalism.

Furthermore, Bookchin sees municipal participation in politics first and foremost taking the form of soviet like institutions, with participation in say Mayoral elections having the purpose of empowering these institutions

Herein lies the problem of how he fails to overcome liberalism: he fails to analyze why this happens. As labor becomes embodied in capital, who commands this refined capital in effect commands dead labor resurrect and therefore creates a power inequality which makes primitive communism impossible. It's impossible to undo this, and undesirable anyways, seeing as it's incredibly liberating to have dead labor reduce the amount of living labor which an individual must contribute to meet their needs. To extend this Marxist analysis into social anarchism, to recreate the political freedom which existed under prior social conditions, we must acknowledge that the freedom of the individual consists, in contradictory fashion, in both the material providence of the collective and the idealist independence of the individual from this collective. That is, humans are naturally not free in the realm of ideals by being chained to prior-existing collectives which provide them with a degree of material freedom, as opposed to being the abstract "lone individuals" of Rousseau, Locke, and Smith confederating under a social contract, idealistically free at the start but socio-materially restrained. What relevance does this distinction have? Well, it implies the need to destroy existing collective institutions and recreate their useful functions by creating new, spontaneously-organized institutions with this view in mind, that they should be voluntary and ultra-democratic if nothing else and should hold capital in common so as to prevent power inequalities from reemerging. This does have potential to be developed into an ecological analysis parallel to Bookchin's, that these associations of individuals interested in being free (sound familiar?) should rationally confederate in planning matters relevant to the ecosystem in order to preserve it. In fact, it might even be possible to unite the two and rehabilitate Marxian economics in full. Already, one of my biggest reasons for being on the far left is environmentalism because I don't want to die an ignominious death from it and see humanity eradicate itself, but I don't see how environmental struggle can measure up to class struggle in effectiveness. I'm more receptive to his ideas now, though. It seems like an ecologically-focused libertarian Marxism, which is cool. Just make some fixes to his conception of the individual and its relation to the rest of society, a couple pieces of it which might seem irrelevant to you right now change, and it's otherwise the same.

On a semi-related note, from reading those quotes, I can see that he really does understand Marx and Das Kapital's ecological element, which I very much appreciate - while the mode of production may be removed from a direct connection between humanity and natural dynamics, its own maintenance depends on the sustainability of the latter, as it is the supply of natural resources which can be converted into more dead labor which underlies the potential for humanity to improve upon or at least sustain a higher level of living afforded by technology. Already, he seems like more of an authentic Marxist than Lenin.

So he supports electing people to existing offices in order to defend the creation of more democratic ones? From reading about him in various articles about Rojava (and they were sympathetic to him), I got the mistaken idea that he simply advocated localized electoralism, to become more democratic after a revolution. That's a pretty based idea, I might have to look more into his writings. The starting book is "The Next Revolution", right?

Literally devoted two entire books to the development of hierarchy and domination, via "The Ecology of Freedom" and "From Urbanization to Cities"
I don't see how this is a criticism of bookchin's view of organic society, and the necessity of a synthesis between first nature (organic societies) with second nature (cultural society). The default form of human association is non-hierarchical, democratic and of a libertarian/communal ethic. It's only with the emergence of second nature that this was no longer the case.
"The Next Revolution" is the starting book, but in order to truly understand his view of people you need to read his anthropological works, the main ones being the two mentioned at the top of my post. Bookchin advocates a program of "dual power", which entails the eventually disintegration of state structures as the communalist institutions gain more power. If the position of Mayor would even exist in a communalist society, it would be for administrative purposes and not policy purposes, an example of this being DFSNS.

But by what mechanism does he posit the emergence of the second nature? The argument of Marxists and anarcho-communists (which include ansyns) can be summed up in the word "capital". I'm skeptical of other explanations, but open to them.
I will read those works regardless though, thanks for mentioning them.
So it's basically the executive committee of a soviet under a different name? I can get behind that. Just one question, though, how do you plan to hold an elected representative accountable if the more democratic institution of the dual power relationship doesn't already have hegemony? If the people disagree with what a representative does and act upon it, can't the representative call upon the full repressive power of the larger state to back him up? It's a question worth asking, seeing as reactionaries are trying to outlaw protest (let alone strike activity and union militancy, already outlawed in practice if not in name).
Just figured out that this is a new name for Rojava. Interesting.

Pics related put it better then I ever could.
Anytime famrade. Here's a link to Ecology of Freedom libcom.org/files/Murray_Bookchin_The_Ecology_of_Freedom_1982.pdf
I suppose that's not an unfair comparison. To successfully elect a candidate would require an already substantial base within the area anyways, but I believe your real question is "how would the institutions survive state repression?", and for that I think the PYD sets the best example. They organized in secret for many years before seizing the "revolutionary moment" to establish their DemCon project. If state repression doesn't ensue, then it's simply a matter of deligitimizing the representative as much as possible to ensure their replacement with the next person the party chooses to serve.

Well, I'm not really sure of what to think of what he wrote, I need to sleep anyways. It's certainly interesting that he posits social roles themselves (what Marxists would chalk up to superstructure and therefore semi-irrelevance) as being a primary influence on the development of a hierarchical base which would last into later society.

I'm starting to think that communalists are definitely closer to libertarian Marxists like Pannekoek and Luxemberg than they are to anarchists. They share a common metaphysical conception of the world in terms of dialectics and think of things in terms of base and superstructure. History is materially determined, but rather than the material influence of the mode of production and class, it is the relation to the environment and its usage by humanity which defines development and forms of organization.

I'll think about it more and do the reading.

Commies

I've always seen communalism as a sort of melding of a synthesis of Anarchism and Marxism, resulting in something ultimately distinct from both. I definitely prefer bookchin's Dialectical Naturalism to Dialectical Materialism.

Distributism is more like statist Christian mutualism as far as I can tell.

That's quitters' talk.

I know you're just being ebin, but Best Korea is completely dependent on China and to a lesser extent Russia

I dunno, it gets pretty close sometimes.

Juche wouldn't survive without sucking on China's welfare teat.

You're not getting my point. There is a difference between violence used in self-defense, which all individuals have a right to, even unders statism, and violence used to organize and direct, which is the exclusive and integral right and attribute of the state.
It's structure is irrelevant. The only important question to ask is "Does it organize the individuals apart of it by violence?".
Hypothetically in all western democracies any individual can become a cop or a military officer or a politician. The monopoly comes from being the only entity that can legitimately initiate violence against someone else; just because anyone can become a cop and be able to exercise that right in the service of the state doesn't mean it's not a monopoly.
No, it's preventing someone from using power over you. I am not forcing them to do anything, just preventing them from doing something to me.
Not necessarily disowning them, just critiquing them in how they strayed from their principles. It's not as if their success is because of that abandoning.
Humans can be dangerous and irrational, especially towards people who don't fit into their picture of "normality". People already support cages, slavery, and psychological torture for "criminals" now, including the criminals who did nothing except inhale or inject the wrong substance. These people would still exist in a stateless society, but without the mechanism of the state they are significantly less powerful and dangerous. You can bring up how the Social Contract might prevent them from these things, but that is assuming people are going to care about a philosophical idea when they're in a moral panic.
That's true, but a group of people don't have the resources of a state.

You're conflating two, ultimately entirely different meanings of authority; one is the statist sense of "I have the legitimate right(authority) to tell you what to do and you" and the "I have an expertise that you should rightfully consider, but no right to make you follow it". Bakunin isn't talking about authority in the statist sense, he's talking about professional knowledge and expertise. He even says that just because they are experts doesn't mean he'll blindly obey them or that they have any actual authority to make him do what they say.

I don't reject collectivism either. I just recognize that the individual is ultimately the only thing that exists and that a society should be structured around the freedom of individuals, and these free individuals together can create something greater and live better than any single individual could. Essentially, any anarchist society that could not also be called a Union of Egoists is not truly anarchist.

The point is that there is no fundamental distinction between the two other than in degree and whether subjecting to it is voluntary or not. Every historical state has grounded its total legitimacy in some form of "I have expertise, and you need to follow it". Whether it's the divine right to rule of monarchists or the representation of the whole of the proletariat of Marxists or, perhaps its purest form, the unabashed technocracy of neoliberal capitalists, all absolute authority finds way to justify itself where there are no grounds for this.
True, to an extent. The union of egoists is indeed the most radical and free form of democracy (eliminating the problem of majority rule present in other forms and being feasible unlike pure consensus democracy), but there are instances - such as that of nuclear weapons - in which it is necessary to really trust a certain authority with real power of decision making for the benefit of individuals. That's not to say that we can't try to reduce illegitimate hierarchy and authority, but it's ridiculous to hold things to an absolute standard or otherwise ignore them.

While that is partially true, statist authority has a very unique attribute, which is that an individual has a moral obligation to obey. Warlords and bandits never talk about authority, because no one believes they have any, not even the bandit; you have no moral obligation to obey to their demands, you just have a reasonable desire to keep yourself alive and unharmed. Whereas kings, priests, governments, etc. do talk about authority and to a great length, because they cannot depend on pure violence to force everyone under them to obey. That's why they turn to authority, so that people will semi-voluntarily comply because they believe they have a moral obligation to; for the vast minority who doesn't believe in the ruler's authority, then fear keeps them obedient, but the system cannot function purely on fear. That is the crucial difference between statist authority and expert authority.
This isn't really a question of authority or hierarchy, since they aren't organizing or directing society. It's not a question of how I or others should live our lives. Unless I think they're going to extinct humanity, I don't have any concern with how the experts or majority decide what to do with nukes.

This again brings up the problem of communities as entities defending themselves from individuals. Individuals are not forced to participate or be apart of a community, but to say that communities should all bow to the interests of a single individual against the interests of the multitude of individuals i.e. a community is absurd, and the logic of self defense applies just as much in this case.
It's structure is not at all irrelevant. To say the structure is irrelevant is to say that organization is irrelevant. Does it defend itself from individuals who would harm it? Yes. Does this make it a state? No of course not. That's like saying a book club kicking out a member from it becomes a state in that instant. Absolutely absurd.
This is a false comparison considering that the things you mentioned take the role of professions, and by default exclude people from participation by that fact alone. In this society, law enforcement or political participation is not a profession, and in a sense everyone would be a "politician" or "cop" by default.
This is just a silly semantics game at this point. Using power against someone using power against you is still using power. To prevent someone from doing something, whether it be to you or otherwise, is forcing that person to stop said action.
The problem is you're criticizing the things that enabled them to actually achieve anything i.e. the exertion of power. You might as well abandon them in that case.
This is very un-anthropological look at people. It assumes that people by default support slavery or cruelty when it's merely the context of the society they live in that results in such sentiments 99.9% of the time, the exception being sociopaths. Sociopaths would not have an outlet to express power over others anyways because of the inherently uncorrupitable nature of a directly democratic and localized society, at least not in any organized fashion. People can still pick up a gun and kill someone of course.
Then you can see the absurdity of conflating a community, essentially a group of a few dozen to a few hundred or thousand people, to that of a state

They're clearly puppets of the US empire. I know this for certain because one time John McCain went there.

What if I happen to live in the same neighborhood or city? Will I never be a citizen and expected to obey the degrees the assembly makes?
Is it not in the interests of the majority to make the minority their slave? Isn't this minority slave rebelling forcing his interests above the interests of the majority?
So you're saying the only legitimate use of force by a Communalist institution is in defense? How exactly is this different that an anarchist commune?
Let me rephrase it: I want to eliminate power over other people, to do this I will eliminate the initiation of force; once no one initiates force any longer then power over other people will effectively be eliminated.
Labor camps and executions is not what made them successful.
That's true, but it doesn't change the fact that people are willing to accept these things.
The point being a state has a large number of people who will comply with the desires of the state even if it's not their personal desires; that's where the real power of the state comes from. Once you create an institution with this sort of power, you've effectively given it the power of a state.

they're terrorists