Once you become dogmatic to orthodoxy, it becomes rigid and stale, fragile to breaking by either an outside force or an internal force manipulating the systems to create a new form of hierarchy. Massive respect to the Zapatistas for finding ways to avoid replicating past mistakes. I’m particular interested in the notion that their revolutionary society is structured as it is as a response to its responsibility to land management and community defense being a little different from what early theorists assumed were the material conditions for a communist utopia as the world has always had both urban population centers and open/rural land that supports the people living in close, and these people must be in coordination and help with each other. I hope other people take inspiration from them, but most of all, realize that the things the Zapatista do are responses to their needs, and that leftism will always be different based on their local needs.

Appalachian utopia will look different from Chiapas utopia will look different from German utopia. But all of us will have solidarity and help each other. We might even look at what each other do and say “hey that looks like that might help us address this problem.” Listening is so important!

That was such an interesting read! I really like the philosophy.

That’s actually what the first Zapatist did, inviting everyone at the table to discuss, hence the saying “mexican army”. That’s also what the makhnovschchina did.