I'd argue that some analogy of this scenario exists currently, with how some countries like Cuba and Venezuela have semi-autonomous agricultural communities in the countryside
So long as the anarchist society respected the boundaries of the ML state and the ML state respected the sovereignty of the anarchist society I don't see why not.
I think this depends on the rest of the planet and how those two countries/societies arise. We don't really have the luxury of ML and anarchist countries/societies existing outside the context of hegemonic liberalism, so the relations between them are heavily impacted by their relations to global capital.
Rojava isn't particularly anarchist, but it's an okay proxy. They are small, with their conditions heavily dictated by imperialistic and regional power struggles. They are either forced or nearly so to make deals with whatever powers are in their region and not immediately hell-bent on their destruction. They make deals with the US, the Syrian government, with Russia. We can't generalize about political tendencies from this, but we can clearly say that geopolitical context has dominated any question of alliances and relationships to other nations - and that basically all of them have been capitalist due to that context. Ideology is relevant, though. There has not been much in the way of nation-level coordinated support for Rojava by socialists. Part of this is that the fall of the USSR has limited the export of revolution, but another part is active questions of the extent to which Rojava has revolutionary potential, that it's invested in an actual socialist project.
That's also important "it depends" context: when we say anarchist nation/society, to what are we referring? These could take very different forms, some of which may thread perfectly in line with other forms of socialism, some which may not. It's also difficult to predict because of the lack of precedent on a per-tendency basis. Where's the ancom society that needed to interface with China or Vietnam while maintaining its own sovereign territory? We need to build one in order to answer the question. There are too many variables.
But we can be optimistic and proactive in this by building left unity, casting a reasonably wide net while still maintaining some discipline about class conflict, intersectionality, the goal of deconstructing various hierarchies, etc.
If you have an ML state surrounded by capitalists states, you could essentially have autonomous zones internally and maintain stronger control along the borders. I mean there’s really no way around compromising bits of the anarchist ideals in doing this, but you could essentially do your best to study various approaches and spread information among them to propagate successful strategies.
But the Internet age complicated this. The major barrier t capitalist propaganda is no longer physical access. What do you do about the Internet? Do you go full China? Do you allow capitalist Internet but require anti-propaganda education? I personally think education is the most compatible solution, but is also significantly riskier for the ML state and could theoretically give your most aggressive enemies access to interior lines within your state. Not... ideal.
One possible situation is one where they result from the same revolution or liberatory movement and as a result exist within the same borders/country and neither side after the revolution is by far the most dominant/numerous .Because imo in practice, in our current world, a large scale society/country trying to operating on the lines of anarchist theory imo would still form a state ,even by any other name, it would be the case of different sections of a country opperating in different degrees of centralization and political formation within the same borders. One being a DotP workers state while the rest of the country opperating in a more decentralized federation configuration .You would probably have a general constitution and body with representatives from each society to organize foreign policy, internal trade and consumption, military matters and development plans. In such a case both can be shitty and allienating to the other and both can be prioritized as a target for foreign undermining and destabilization of the project but it can work. And maybe external and internal problems and demands push the whole project into existing closer to one of the two formations, depending on the era and conditions
If its the case of different ML and anarchist revolutions or movements succeeding in neighbouring countries then it should be easier to workout and coexist. They c can likely coexist in the same manner ML states coexist with non hostile neighbouring countries , or even friendlier. Idk if under existing imperialism, global hegemony would manage to destabilize, attack or infiltrate one first than the other and even use it against the other thus leading to a different situation. Would the ML country intervene against a bourgeois color revolution taking place in the anarchist one or vice versa , would there be pressure from both sides to have common foreign policy and outlook based on the one that is geopoliticaly and economicaly the strongest?
For the case of small local societies existing within larger revolutions and project of the opposite tendency naturaly we only have had ML large countries and local anarchist communities within them historicaly. Beyond what has been mentioned here semi autonomous (or even fully autonomous since in China or the dprk suprising amonts of decentralization existed) agricultural communities but with no concrete anarchist leaning , semi-anarchist local communes can and have existed small scale after the chinese revolution in some extends and them fizzling out didnt necesserily happen due to sectarian violence or suppression.
Historicaly what actualy stood against something like that happening was that while ML or just non anarchist parties and revolutions grew massive and strong in colonized or other counties most anarchists domesticaly joined and where absorbed(not by force ususaly) into the party and movement and after it succeeded there werent significant local concentrations of anarchists or organized anarchist blocks within the movement to facilitate a project like that or have demand of it establishing. Also that usualy the years just after a successfull revolution have been characterized by huge instabilities, reaction, civil war and imperialism and that stood against there being fruitfull , trusting and stable enviroment to do anything like that
Of course on the case of (large ML project, smaller anarchist local movement ) we have sectarian clashes and mistakes particularly durning and just after the Russian Revolution. But again while the bolsheviks may hold most of the blame (talking as an ML) they were much more nuanced and (both sided im afraid to say) situations than internet discourse promotes and again happened within the utterly chaotic, violent , uncertain and pretty much alien to the mind of any westerner enviroment that was post revolution and civil war Russia (1918-mid 1920s) and that was the first large scale proletarian revolution and project ever
Earlier today I was wondering if a M-L country/society would be able to coexist with an anarchist one. I guess I'm not alone?
I'd argue that some analogy of this scenario exists currently, with how some countries like Cuba and Venezuela have semi-autonomous agricultural communities in the countryside
So long as the anarchist society respected the boundaries of the ML state and the ML state respected the sovereignty of the anarchist society I don't see why not.
I think this depends on the rest of the planet and how those two countries/societies arise. We don't really have the luxury of ML and anarchist countries/societies existing outside the context of hegemonic liberalism, so the relations between them are heavily impacted by their relations to global capital.
Rojava isn't particularly anarchist, but it's an okay proxy. They are small, with their conditions heavily dictated by imperialistic and regional power struggles. They are either forced or nearly so to make deals with whatever powers are in their region and not immediately hell-bent on their destruction. They make deals with the US, the Syrian government, with Russia. We can't generalize about political tendencies from this, but we can clearly say that geopolitical context has dominated any question of alliances and relationships to other nations - and that basically all of them have been capitalist due to that context. Ideology is relevant, though. There has not been much in the way of nation-level coordinated support for Rojava by socialists. Part of this is that the fall of the USSR has limited the export of revolution, but another part is active questions of the extent to which Rojava has revolutionary potential, that it's invested in an actual socialist project.
That's also important "it depends" context: when we say anarchist nation/society, to what are we referring? These could take very different forms, some of which may thread perfectly in line with other forms of socialism, some which may not. It's also difficult to predict because of the lack of precedent on a per-tendency basis. Where's the ancom society that needed to interface with China or Vietnam while maintaining its own sovereign territory? We need to build one in order to answer the question. There are too many variables.
But we can be optimistic and proactive in this by building left unity, casting a reasonably wide net while still maintaining some discipline about class conflict, intersectionality, the goal of deconstructing various hierarchies, etc.
KPAM interfaced with CPC controlled regions during it's existence, and got on just fine.
True, though the CPC wasn't controlling a nation at that point.
If you have an ML state surrounded by capitalists states, you could essentially have autonomous zones internally and maintain stronger control along the borders. I mean there’s really no way around compromising bits of the anarchist ideals in doing this, but you could essentially do your best to study various approaches and spread information among them to propagate successful strategies.
But the Internet age complicated this. The major barrier t capitalist propaganda is no longer physical access. What do you do about the Internet? Do you go full China? Do you allow capitalist Internet but require anti-propaganda education? I personally think education is the most compatible solution, but is also significantly riskier for the ML state and could theoretically give your most aggressive enemies access to interior lines within your state. Not... ideal.
There are many possible situations
One possible situation is one where they result from the same revolution or liberatory movement and as a result exist within the same borders/country and neither side after the revolution is by far the most dominant/numerous .Because imo in practice, in our current world, a large scale society/country trying to operating on the lines of anarchist theory imo would still form a state ,even by any other name, it would be the case of different sections of a country opperating in different degrees of centralization and political formation within the same borders. One being a DotP workers state while the rest of the country opperating in a more decentralized federation configuration .You would probably have a general constitution and body with representatives from each society to organize foreign policy, internal trade and consumption, military matters and development plans. In such a case both can be shitty and allienating to the other and both can be prioritized as a target for foreign undermining and destabilization of the project but it can work. And maybe external and internal problems and demands push the whole project into existing closer to one of the two formations, depending on the era and conditions
If its the case of different ML and anarchist revolutions or movements succeeding in neighbouring countries then it should be easier to workout and coexist. They c can likely coexist in the same manner ML states coexist with non hostile neighbouring countries , or even friendlier. Idk if under existing imperialism, global hegemony would manage to destabilize, attack or infiltrate one first than the other and even use it against the other thus leading to a different situation. Would the ML country intervene against a bourgeois color revolution taking place in the anarchist one or vice versa , would there be pressure from both sides to have common foreign policy and outlook based on the one that is geopoliticaly and economicaly the strongest?
For the case of small local societies existing within larger revolutions and project of the opposite tendency naturaly we only have had ML large countries and local anarchist communities within them historicaly. Beyond what has been mentioned here semi autonomous (or even fully autonomous since in China or the dprk suprising amonts of decentralization existed) agricultural communities but with no concrete anarchist leaning , semi-anarchist local communes can and have existed small scale after the chinese revolution in some extends and them fizzling out didnt necesserily happen due to sectarian violence or suppression.
Historicaly what actualy stood against something like that happening was that while ML or just non anarchist parties and revolutions grew massive and strong in colonized or other counties most anarchists domesticaly joined and where absorbed(not by force ususaly) into the party and movement and after it succeeded there werent significant local concentrations of anarchists or organized anarchist blocks within the movement to facilitate a project like that or have demand of it establishing. Also that usualy the years just after a successfull revolution have been characterized by huge instabilities, reaction, civil war and imperialism and that stood against there being fruitfull , trusting and stable enviroment to do anything like that
Of course on the case of (large ML project, smaller anarchist local movement ) we have sectarian clashes and mistakes particularly durning and just after the Russian Revolution. But again while the bolsheviks may hold most of the blame (talking as an ML) they were much more nuanced and (both sided im afraid to say) situations than internet discourse promotes and again happened within the utterly chaotic, violent , uncertain and pretty much alien to the mind of any westerner enviroment that was post revolution and civil war Russia (1918-mid 1920s) and that was the first large scale proletarian revolution and project ever
Thanks for the thoughtful discussions y'all. :unity: