Maybe I'm not well versed enough in this topic to understand, but I'm having trouble following this person's argument. First they define materialism, then they talk about how change for the better doesn't come only once the conditions are perfect, it evolves from a confluence of factors. I get that much. Then they talk about opportunism and how stooping to the lowest common denominator to build a movement leads socialists to fascism how Mussolini rose to power, and compromising their own values voting for the lesser evil (e.g. Hillary Clinton) would lead to fascism. I was confused for the rest of it.

Where I stand on what I think is the discussion is this: I feel that everyone ideologically should never lose sight of what they want, but to achieve it, it requires a proper transition path to help counter knee-jerk reactions and talking points. Coming at people with uncompromising and very specific jargon and dismissing attempts to dumb down things won't get you far... simplifying your plan when explaining it isn't opportunism.

Yeah... I lost whatever respect I had for this lipflapper when he literally told his audience to "show revolutionary bravery" while sitting behind a desk.

I guess these YT "anarchists" just aren't your "first through the door" types.

Do you happen to have a link to him saying that in context? I recall him saying something similar, but I think the context was to have bravery to join a local mutual aid group, even if it's outside your comfort zone (could be wrong, that's just what I can remember).

Nope, don't have the link and I'm not going to spend the enrgy to find it, either... I don't bother with online anarchists - I sure as hell hope the offline kind is less cringy.

And no, it had nothing to do with mutual aid groups... he was exhorting people to knock on doors and "organise" - you know, that thing breadtube lipflappers are always talking about but never actually show themselves doing.

I expect this kind of shit from tankies - they are, by design, it seems - "lead from the back" types. But when anarchists do it it simply demonstrates how hopelessly disconnected they are from the working class they supposedly want to "liberate."

Havent watched the video yet but I like Ayman's video on the topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbkkh6GWn5Y

never trust any white person wearing the himmler spectacles LOL

edit: i only think this applies to white folks/western leftists. the global south is kind of forced into the "campism" and "nationalism" he views as a regression to a right-wing reactionary form of socialism. e.g. see arabs being pro-iran or west africans being pro-russia/china in recent years. But, yeah, valid take when it comes to the type of people on lemmy as a whole for example.

Also, saying the bolsheviks are similar to mussolini is practically horseshoe theory and kind of a bad take.

I'd seen him suggest knocking on your neighbors doors to get to know them so you can build community and organize ICE watch groups. Without more context it's hard to see those suggestions as negative.

“organise” - you know, that thing breadtube lipflappers are always talking about but never actually show themselves doing.

I take it you're unfamiliar with his involvement in Cooperation Tulsa? He's been organizing and getting involved with that group and making videos on it for quite a few years now, which is involved in a lot of really solid community organizing.

Also, saying the bolsheviks are similar to mussolini is practically horseshoe theory and kind of a bad take.

I think it's more stethoscope theory than horseshoe theory.

I take it you’re unfamiliar with his involvement in Cooperation Tulsa?

Okay, I'll eat your humble pie. I'm wrong about that.

This is better. If anarchists wants to be taken seriously by the working class, they're going to have to do more doing and a lot less talking - in fact, I'll advise them to tone down on the talking until they can actually figure out how to actually talk to the working class again. They did know how to do this, once.

can build community and organize ICE watch groups.

The members of the working class that is willing and, more importantly, capable of doing that is already doing so, and they did not need Youtube leftists cajoling them into doing so.

The left has never earned the right to lecture the working class on what to do, and it never will - but the working class has always proven willing to be influenced by those elements of the left that is willing to lead by example.

An equally dogshit theory

Anark has mentioned multiple times that he's barely able to afford rent. Most Anarchists are working class, it is very rare that they are well off.

It's not about money... it's about what it is that you're offering.

It's easy to join, or get people to join, something that already exists. But if there is nothing to start off with, there might be damn good reasons why there isn't. And you need to think twice before telling people to "bootstrap" it into existence.

I responded to this:

If anarchists wants to be taken seriously by the working class, they’re going to have to do more doing and a lot less talking

That suggests that Anarchists are not working class, and are somehow talking 'down' to working class, but they very much are the working class figuring out how to solve their own problems.

It’s not about money… it’s about what it is that you’re offering.

What are you talking about? What do you think makes someone working class or not? If they work for someone else for a wage to live, they are working class.

and are somehow talking ‘down’ to working class,

Did you literally just forget how this conversation started in the first place?

but they very much are the working class figuring out how to solve their own problems.

So all the anarchists I see distancing themselves from the working class by referring to the working class as "normies" is merely a figment of my imagination? If you are, that would be nice... but then you'd have to explain to me why the only anarchists you find in my country are edgy white liberal kids at elite universities.

What are you talking about?

What did you think the working class really cares about? Explain to me how we keep the electricity on, the water flowing through the pipes, the food shelves stocked (community gardens doesn't even qualify as a start) and the pharmacies in a working condition. Show me the nuts and bolts from which a plan can be built.

Show me the nuts and bolts from which a plan can be built.

I'll give it my best shot.

1936 Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War organized an Anarchist society with over 3 million participants, and they documented much of how exactly they ran it, right down to how they kept the electric trams for public transport going (there is a fantastic book embedded at the bottom of that article, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution by Gaston Leval, which offers more details on other aspects of how they operated that society).

It's a fantastic historical event we can learn from and build upon, and that book should hopefully answer how we'll keep the pipes flowing and the pharmacies running.

As for things average people can do to contribute toward building that sort of future, it's obviously not something that can be done overnight. It'll involve building alternative, decentralized power structures that can, over time, slowly make us less reliant on the state and its powers. Basically, building something new within the shell of the old.

Many people can only contribute a little of their time and energy in-between commitments from their job to keep them and their families alive, but with enough joining in, alternatives can be built. Starting small (short guide toward the bottom of that post) is what most of us can do, and I think Anark's Cooperation Tulsa project is a good example of that in action. After being the seed to get it started, he has seen steady growth and more involvement, even grants/funding from his local county/town government after seeing the work he has done.

Building up radical unions (like the IWW), teaching others how to start tenet unions, starting worker owned cooperatives, converting or building cooperatively owned housing, etc, are all a bit harder to start, and often more risky, but they are very impactful building blocks that serve to give us working class folk breathing room financially, giving us more time into building these alternative systems.

the food shelves stocked (community gardens doesn’t even qualify as a start)

I wouldn't dismiss them. According to studies, smaller scale urban gardening and community gardens are actually capable of up to ten times higher yields compared to industrial farming. You can read more on that in the comments of this post here.

And I agree, ultimately we'll need to have independent food production. That may take ques from how Cuba does urban gardening, and could be combined with quite promising Edenicity apartment complexes with rooftop growing areas combined with converted parking lots (some solid number crunching on the real-world viability of that in the video), which should allow for cities to be mostly food independent, as well as making it viable to produce their own textiles locally.

If you want to see a potential end-point for all this, The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin offers a very grounded and in depth look into how an Anarchist society could function as a target we can aim toward and be hopeful about, which itself is very important.

I’ll give it my best shot.

A for effort - and I'm not being sarcastic. I need you to understand that before I start pointing out all the problems with this approach of yours.

1936 Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War

Sounds absolutely grand. But how did it fail?

When I ask anarchists this, the answer I inevitably get boils down to something along the lines of, "the anarchists were stabbed in the back by tankies and liberals."

That's not an answer - that's a cop-out.

Firstly, the tankie/lib alliance did not stab the anarchists in the back. They stabbed the anarchists in the chest - in fact, the anarchists saw the knife coming from a mile away and was still incapable of preventing it. It's very easy to blame the liberals and the tankies... it's much harder to analyse why anarchism seems so uniquely incapable of resisting (never mind taking the fight to) the political machinations of liberalism. I'd go even further and argue that anarchism's apparent inadequacy in the face of liberal realpolitik is even more evident today than it was in 1936.

This is not a praxis problem - it's a theory problem. Or rather, a lack of theory problem.

Secondly, studying the successes of anarchist Catalonia (or Makhnovist Ukraine, or the Paris Commune, or whatever failed libertarian socialist project you might want to mention) is a dead-end as far as theory goes. Political theory that is built on past successes are next to useless... theory that is built on a sober (and granular) appreciation of failure is not.

The socialist experiments in Rojava and Chiappas proves this - both owe their existence to tankies who went back to the drawing board, critically reviewed the very Marxist-Leninist fuckups they had committed, and dumped Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy overboard (the fact that tankies dislike talking about these two projects proves as much). Should anarchists, perhaps, do the same? The "lame-duck" status of anarchism since the end of WW2 suggests... yes.

There is, by now, slightly more than an eighty-year gap between anarchist Catalonia and the present time - that's an eighty-year period where anarchists have failed to make any real headway against the post-war liberal consensus. This is not something that is going to be fixed by wishfully hoping that enough people will be "joining in." What stopped people from "joining in" during the sixties? The seventies? The eighties?

My answer to that would be... the same thing that's stopping them from "joining in" now - and that is, the lack of a proper theoretical framework that allows not just anarchists but also the working class to easily problematise the liberal consensus. The lack of this framework is on display literally in the very first source you posted - any self-described "libertarian socialist" that frames the concept of democracy as some kind of "problem" that requires solving will (justifiably) raise a lot of red flags with the working class. It seems that "killing the liberal inside your own head" is something that a lot of anarchists preach... but do not necessarily practice.

Sounds absolutely grand. But how did it fail?

There's a really fantastic 6-part documentary that goes over the conflict in great detail, but to give the short version:

It failed for a multitude of reasons, but when I did my own deep dive on this, I didn't find Anarchism itself as one of those reasons. I found that the specific time it took place, as well as the previous industrial capacity of Spain itself, were likely two of the biggest contributors.

The civil war occurred during a period when there were powerful states on the world stage, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, who were ready and willing to supply needed logistics and manpower to other right-wing states. It also happened when both of those states were not yet embroiled in their own world war, giving them the opportunity to send more resources and aid than they would've have been able to justify a handful of years later.

On the other hand, the Anarchists (and Liberals) of Spain had no allies on the world stage willing to help them besides some meager aid from Mexico (who lacked the ability to send airplanes or tanks), and a few secret shipments of aid from France.

The only other nation willing to get stuck in was the USSR, and they obviously only wanted to supply the marxist-leninist faction in Spain to ensure they would have control at the end of the war.

So if you consider the scenario from the Anarchist perspective, what could be done? They were fully aware that the Lenininsts would likely betray them due to what happened in the Russian Revolution, but they were also the only faction that could convince the USSR to ship desperately needed tanks, planes, artillery, firearms, medical supplies, etc, in the numbers needed.

So they had to decide; Do we attack the Leninists at the start of the war before they are equipped? That would cut off all future logistical aid and create a second front in all of the cities, probably ceasing production of the supplies they can build, supplies which are already needed to sustain the conflict with the fascists, and it would probably get the liberal government to denounce the Anarchists as well, resulting in them vs. literally everyone. It would be speed-running defeat.

Instead, they went the path they did, likely hoping for a future opportunity to come out on-top after the fascists had been defeated, instead of guaranteed defeat immediately.

The Anarchists knew this was an uneasy alliance, they knew they would be betrayed at some point, and they saw the liberal government shuffling its feet whenever they asked it for help. There was even discussion among the Anarchists on robbing the gold reserves of the Spanish national bank and buying supplies themselves, instead of relying on the liberal government to do so, but they ultimately decided not to to avoid more internal conflict after the liberal gov seemed to be following through on buying some weapons for the Anarchists. That unfortunately backfired when the government shortly after went back on their word, and instead gave all the gold to the USSR.

Even knowing that the Marxists would betray them, I don't think they expected that to happen while the fascists were nowhere close to being defeated, as starting internal conflict would only ensure their collective defeat, but... The Marxists did it anyway, which was unexpected, and it did hasten their defeat.

The other issue was that Spain simply hadn't developed enough military industrial capacity before the war to avoid being so reliant on foreign logistics. As General Pershing supposedly once said, "Infantry win battles, logistics win wars." That's ultimately why the allies were able to defeat the Axis in WWII as well, since the combined industrial and logistical capacity of the allies (especially with the introduction of the US's industrial capacity), simply become overwhelming.

Any system or ideology in the same circumstances as the Anarchists in Spain is not going to have good odds of succeeding.

In comparison, the Russian Revolution happened when the neighboring countries who could've stepped in to take advantage of the conflict were already militarily depleted from WWI, so the right-wing White army was pretty much on their own, which made it much easier for the combined Anarchist/Marxist armies to defeat them. The Anarchists at that time were pretty blind-sided by the betrayal of the Leninists, since leftist back-stabbing was fairly unprecedented at that time.

Continuing in another comment.

Part 2:

Secondly, studying the successes of anarchist Catalonia (or Makhnovist Ukraine, or the Paris Commune, or whatever failed libertarian socialist project you might want to mention) is a dead-end as far as theory goes. Political theory that is built on past successes are next to useless… theory that is built on a sober (and granular) appreciation of failure is not.

Modern Anarchist thought does take those failures into account, and does not aim to replicate them 1-to-1. But those same failures also brought with it some great successes, such as showing us that our theories on how an Anarchist society is actually run, like giving the working class ownership and control of their workplaces to self manage really does work. Some areas even abolished money, and that also seemed to work.

Proving that those things do work is a massive step in convincing others that this isn't just a bunch of pie in the sky ideas, and it's why I still point to that event.

The socialist experiments in Rojava and Chiappas proves this - both owe their existence to tankies who went back to the drawing board, critically reviewed the very Marxist-Leninist fuckups they had committed, and dumped Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy overboard (the fact that tankies dislike talking about these two projects proves as much). Should anarchists, perhaps, do the same?

Rojava is the main focus at the end of the 'Accidental Anarchist' documentary I linked to in my first source, which it praises and points out as a success of Anarchist ideas in practice. The PKK's leader did toss out marxist-leninism, but only after reading Murray Bookchin's books while in prison. Murray Bookchin is an Anarchist, and virtually all of the changes Abdullah Öcalan made to their political theory was to adopt many Anarchist positions.

However, Rojava is unfortunately now suffering from the same issues that the Spanish Anarchists did.

With the US no longer offering it logistical support, it has struggled to defend itself against the multi-pronged assaults from the new, more unified Syrian government, as well as larger assaults from Turkey. It has lost a significant amount of territory, and is slowly being forced to integrate into the new Syrian government, giving up much of their autonomy.

The main issue that Libertarian socialism/Anarchism has faced historically, is Anarchist revolutions have not occurred in areas that could support themselves logistically without outside help (Except Russia, where had Makhno been able to defeat the Marxists, they may have been able to survive long term).

Left Libertarian states are seen as enemies by all other ideologies and economic systems, as they threaten the established hierarchies in both Authoritarian Marxist-Leninist countries, as well as Capitalist power in liberal democracies.

What stopped people from “joining in” during the sixties? The seventies? The eighties?

Extreme suppression of Anarchists by state governments in most areas, as well as economic reforms making people complacent. As an example, the Red Scare in the US resulted in the Anarchist movement being set back decades as anarchist union members (the IWW), and regular anarchist were rounded up and imprisoned or deported to Russia.

The US in particular was on the verge of a socialist revolution during the great depression, which was only avoided by FDR's economic reforms and worker protections, which allowed non-radical unions to gain significant bargaining power and better economic conditions, resulting in the 'golden age' of the US, and thus most became content with the status quo.

Unfortunately, as our current situation shows, those liberal reforms are always temporary, since it appears inevitable that capitalism auto-corrupts liberal democracies until they are once again brought back to a point where people are desperate enough to try an alternative. We're seeing fascism rear its ugly head once again as one of those alternatives which promises a better life, just as Hitler and Mussolini once did.

The lack of this framework is on display literally in the very first source you posted - any self-described “libertarian socialist” that frames the concept of democracy as some kind of “problem” that requires solving will (justifiably) raise a lot of red flags with the working class.

What source mentioned that? I didn't see that in the Accidental Anarchist documentary (the first source, unless you mean Anark?)

It seems that “killing the liberal inside your own head” is something that a lot of anarchists preach… but do not necessarily practice.

Could you elaborate what you mean by that?

I apologise, but I'm going to have to narrow this down a bit - I'm typing this in-between power failures. You know... third-world problems.

I didn’t find Anarchism itself as one of those reasons.

Of course you didn't... anarchism itself is perfect and cannot have deap-seated theoretical flaws and contradictions that lead to failed praxis that their enemies can take advantage of. Right?

Right?

Are you telling me that the FAI ignoring the CNT's attempts to create a banking system that would allow the agricultural collectives monetary independence from Spain's liberal-controlled financial institutions didn't come back to bite anarchist Catalonia in the ass?

According to Bolloten, Payne and Esenwein from "The Spanish Civil War - Revolution and Counterrevolution"

"Nor is it any wonder that when the workers in some of the collectivized plants asked Jose Tarradellas, the
left Republican councillor of finance in the regional government, for financial assistance, he attempted, according to his own testimony, “to use their predicament to capture control of the collectives."

"Outside Catalonia, finance minister Juan Negrin, a centralist and a strong advocate of nationalization, also hoped to exploit the economic dislocation. “When the war broke out,” he told Louis Fischer, “working-men’s committees, often Anarchist, took over the factories. . . Now they have no money. They are coming to me for running expenses and for raw materials. We will take advantage of their plight to gain control of the factories.”

Seems pretty cut and dried to me how anarcho-communist orthodoxy gave the liberals an easy way to co-opt and destroy the collectives... and that's just one glaring example I found with little trouble.

I found that the specific time it took place, as well as the previous industrial capacity of Spain itself, were likely two of the biggest contributors.

Yes. The conditions was difficult. The conditions will always be difficult and/or next-to impossible. That is not something that will ever change no matter where or when the socialist experiment takes place.

Therefore, glaring mistakes based on bad theory is something that should be avoided by dumping the bad theory, don't you think?

The fascinating thing to me about anarcho-communists is that they fetishise the idea of a "moneyless society" to an even greater degree than even the most hardened Marxists - it's really hard to die on a hill nobody else even wants.

Again... tankies can do this. They proved it in Mexico and northern Syria. Can anarchists? I'm not seeing it - at least not in any anarchist discourse I've seen or particpated in on reddit, youtube or lemmy over the last decade. In fact, doing so seems to be the furthest thing from their minds.

“Infantry win battles, logistics win wars.”

We can talk about the logistics of war and peace all day long - it's a subject the revolution romanticisers completely ignore - but that's an entirely different discussion.

What source mentioned that?

It's literally there in the description - "Disillusioned by the systematic corruption of power after the Iraq War, ex-diplomat Carne Ross examines anarchism as an alternative solution to democracy. Anarchism offers a solution to the brutalities of Capitalism and the dishonesties of Democracy."

If you are going to allow liberalism - a fundamentally anti-democratic ideology - to dictate the meaning of the term democracy to you can you truly tell me you've "killed the liberal inside your own head"? If you do that, why not just allow tankies - who peddle a fundamentally anti-socialist ideology - to dictate what the term socialism means to you as well?

The working class is not going to negotiate on ideas like democracy - there's a good reason why liberalism co-opted it and turned it into an oligarchy-sustaining farce instead of simply repressing it.

Extreme suppression of Anarchists by state governments in most areas,

Face it... the CIA spent most of the (so-called) "Cold War" repressing third-world nationalism - not anarchism. And state repression cannot be blamed for the huge gulf which exists between anarchist narratives about the status quo and the wider working class.

The working class is not going to cross that gulf - anarchists are going to have to do so. And they better bring narratives that actually mean something to the working class, which anarchism has not been able to manage for a very, very long time now.

It's a choice between going back to the drawing board, or continue going nowhere slowly.

which was only avoided by FDR’s economic reforms

So, you're telling me the libs know how to beat the socialists? And the socialists have no way of beating their methods?

Sounds to me like that requires new modes of thinking because the old ones don't really address the machinations of liberalism, doesn't it?

Of course you didn’t…

I'm not a zealot, and Anarchism does not hold to the idea that everyone 100 years ago had everything perfectly figured out like ML's do, it's constantly changing and adapting as we learn what does and does not work.

Are you telling me that the FAI ignoring the CNT’s attempts to create a banking system [...]

That isn't a position I argued in favor of. The anarchists did get bit in the ass by the liberal government who still had control of the purse strings that would've given them more access to global trade. The 6-part documentary goes over that very situation, and even interviews the asshat who denied the Anarchists money for control.

The internal banking system doesn't really relate to that, though, the issue was that the internationally accepted currency wasn't under Anarchist control. So the lesson learned from that conflict is that the liberals will fuck them over just as the tankies will, but again, the specific war needs combined with the political situation of that period did not realistically allow for the Anarchists to just swiftly take those rivals out of the game.

Also, I mentioned how the CNT discussed taking control of the gold reserves by stealing it, the reasons they didn't, and how they later regretted not doing it, which is another mistake to learn from.

That is not something that will ever change no matter where or when the socialist experiment takes place.

That's just... Not how war works, though. You don't think if the US had a successful Anarchist revolution in the 30's, that it wouldn't be in a far better position in every possible way compared to a successful revolution in say, Belgium right before WWII? The North America is geographically isolated by an ocean that makes it very difficult to invade, had access to plentiful resources, and had large industry that would make arming themselves quick and easy in comparison to Spain.

Where and when an revolution takes place, and the logistical and military ability of nearby rivals at that time, are huge impacts on its chances of success. A large part of why the 1775 US revolution had any chance of succeeding is due to Britain already being very much occupied with fighting the French, meaning they couldn't bring the entire weight of their military and logistical might against the colonies. The US also had military aid from a friendly power will vast resources at its disposal (France). How on earth can you say things like that don't matter? If those fortunate events and allies weren't there, the US revolution probably would've failed, regardless of its ideology.

it’s really hard to die on a hill nobody else even wants.

I mentioned it as something some of them tried. There is no tenant that Anarchism must abolish money, but it's at least on the table if the people agree to try it via consensus. If a community wants markets and money, they can stick with it if they want. It is not a hive-mind.

It’s literally there in the description

Are you dismissing that entire documentary because the person who wrote the description did a poor job of specifying what they meant by democracy? If anything, anarchism is the natural evolution of democracy; it's basically just going an one extra step beyond democracy where communities can decide for themselves what is best for their own situational, instead of voting for someone else to decide for them.

Here's that same documentary with a description below that simply reads "This is the BBC documentary about Carne's life and ideas", if that helps, I guess? I only linked to the peertube upload as I try to avoid linking to Youtube when possible.

Face it… the CIA spent most of the (so-called) “Cold War”

The first red scare happened pre-WWII, before the Cold War, before the CIA or even the OSS existed. That was when they cracked down on Anarchism hard.

I’m not a zealot,

This would go a whole lot easier if you were. Liberals aren't zealots either... have you ever tried arguing with one, though? I wouldn't recommend it - they cling to their privilege (whether real or perceived) harder than most fascists.

That isn’t a position I argued in favor of.

That doesn't matter - it happened whether we think it was dumb or not.

You don’t think if the US had a successful Anarchist revolution in the 30’s, that it wouldn’t be in a far better position in every possible way

Absolutely not. An anarchist insurgency in 30s US of A would have ended up very much like the Spartacist uprising in Germany did - and that would happen even if it had somebody like ole' Smedley Butler to lead it. It would have started off in a logistically worse position than the Spanish anarchists were... even if it managed to take over an entire state it would still be child's play for the US government to isolate it economically. And even if they managed to seize a sizable gold reserve (which the Spanish anarchists failed to do) there'd be absolutely no chance of even buying anything with it from any foreign military-industrial complex thanks to the US Navy. And there'd be no question of which side the liberals would be on here, giving the anarchists absolutely no chance of playing allies off against enemies and vice versa. The fact that the liberals of Spain did not immediately take hands with Franco makes the Spanish situation somewhat unique - a situation which would absolutely not have happened in the US at any point in it's history, including today.

How on earth can you say things like that don’t matter?

That's not what I said. When an insurgency becomes allied to a military-industrial complex it's only because said insurgency is a useful catspaw to said military-industrial complex. Iran does not support the resistance in Gaza and Lebanon because it actually gives a damn about the people in those two places. The French supported the US colonists because they were a useful weapon against the British, not because they gave a damn about those colonists.

Think about your scenario - an anarchist insurgency in 30s US, or even today, for that matter. Would anybody need this insurgency as a tool of disruption against the US? If the answer is yes... then there's potential. If not...

Do not be fooled by the events of 1917 Russia - an insurgent element managing to seize a large industrial complex under those conditions in those times in that manner is probably a once-in-a-millenium event.

but it’s at least on the table if the people agree to try it via consensus.

When there's a war going on, no... they can't. War is not the time for pie-in-the-sky economic experiments run by people whose ideology dictates that they refuse to understand how economies work. I'd say that it's a pretty bad idea in peacetime as well - just ask the Ukrainians about that - but that might just be me.

Are you dismissing that entire documentary because the person who wrote the description

No, I'm dismissing the documentary because I saw it years ago and it contains absolutely nothing I do not already know.

did a poor job of specifying what they meant by democracy?

The fact that they did not feel the need to specify what they meant with the term is telling in itself - ie, they used the term in the exact same way any liberal does.

instead of voting for someone else to decide for them.

So you, also, only view democracy through a liberal lens, I take it?

The first red scare happened pre-WWII, before the Cold War,

I know. During the (so-called) "Cold War," the CIA weren't fighting anarchism in Latin America. It wasn't fighting anarchism in Oceania, in Africa, the middle-east or even the place they deported Emma Goldman to. They barely spent any resources repressing it in Europe.

The reason? They didn't have to.

Something is seriously wrong with this picture... and it can't all be explained away by state-led crackdowns during the 10s, 20s and 30s.