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Originally Posted by chezlaw
Didn't the Spanish civil war demonstrate one serious problem with Anarchy - how does it stop itself getting crushed by governments of various stripes?...
No, not at all. The organizing structures used by the CNT/FAI were robust... and they are still just as robust today. This is basically LOL sample size of one.
The same general (and bogus) thing can be said regarding Haiti and slave revolutions. After their revolution, Haiti was forced by international embargo to pay massive reparations to the former slave owners... forcing the area into an abject poverty that persists to this very day. That wasn't (and isn't) a 'problem' in abolitionism.
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...It didn't last long enough to hope to demonstrate anything else.
The Social Revolution in Spain didn't magically spring into existence, like Athena popping outta Zeus's nose or something, the day that coup that ended up being led by Franco was announced.
The article quoted in the OP references the late Murray Bookchin. Bookchin was a historian, one of his books is:
The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years, 1868-1936 (
full text). This is a telling of the first 68 years of a 71 year story.
The last three years, 1936-1939, of this story, with the scope, scale, and overwhelming success of the Social Revolution... up to 8 million people living significantly better than they were before, despite the exigencies of fighting a war against Europe's allied fascists... clearly demonstrates at least one thing: Proof of Concept. Or, as the OP said...
Re: "Another World is Possible"