this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2026
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I just want to say that my own experience of local politics is that you definitely get knaves and thieves even in the smallest places. Without a focus on ideological education you can get small groups of absolute tyrants and when they work together they run rings around people who can't dedicate enormous amounts of time specifically to understand what social and political games they're playing and combatting them.
This isn't just a bourgeois democracy thing either. Even in China the reputation of local level governance is absolutely awful compared with the reputation national governance has. Local has the reputation of being filled with corrupt dickheads and small tyrants. The way some of my Chinese friends describe it sometimes resembles the HOA behaviour the americans complain about.
I think there is a great deal of ideological education necessary to make sure that local things work out right. Maybe absolutely tiny tiny groups of under 50 people this gets better? Idk. I'm not sure participation at that scale can be efficient in a society of millions though.
You know, in these hypotheticals. I guess I did kinds glaze over that you somehow have to get everyone on the same page. My brain just goes "well of course in an anarchist commune we'd all be anarchists" and while sure, imagine it, you have to get there somehow. I also realize most of you are MLs so I get it doesnt always jive but thats okay with me at least.
Yeah a huge part of the problem is ultimately how we get everyone ideologically educated into the same spot. In the process of achieving that there is the additional issue of what you do with the people who are resistant to it, or what you do with those who outright oppose it. This is the kind of problem the ancoms in Nicaragua ran into, or the Spanish anarchists in Revolutionary Catalonia having totally-not-prison-camps filled with fascists. These are real material problems that we will run into and it's these issues that make the anti-authoritarian anarchists a problem, because they will become reactionary opponents when they see you running prisons. I'm totally cool with the anarchists that understand authority is necessary and that anarchism isn't anti-authoritarianism.
I know it's kind of a cliche to bring up Engels' On-Authority but it's so fucking important that people realise some degree of use of authority is totally necessary even if you don't completely agree with marxists. There's no anarchist project that hasn't run into the problem and when they do they need to do something. A short excerpt:
Also Parenti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-PHYj1vb-w
It is necessary to understand that these elements of state authority are constructed in reaction to something, for a purpose. It is an unpleasant solution to an unpleasant problem.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: