[Peace-discuss] A different world is possible

[E.Wayne Johnson]

Are you talking about changing the world or an Alternative Universe or a "Xin Tian Di" (new heaven and new earth)?
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: John W. 
  To: C. G. Estabrook 
  Cc: peace discuss 
  Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 1:25 PM
  Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] A different world is possible


  So it took decades to bring into being one impoverished "anarchist" village in Spain, which was then brutally crushed by the fascists et al.?  What then would you say is the probabability of the possibility of a "different world"?

   

  On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 10:43 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:

   
    From <http://www.truthout.org/remembering-fascism-learning-from-past58724>:


    ...a collection of primary documents about collectivization [was] published in 1937 by the CNT, the anarcho-syndicalist union that is celebrating its centenary this year. One contribution has resonated in my mind ever since, by peasants of the village of Membrilla. I would like to quote parts of it:

    "In [the] miserable huts [of Membrilla] live the poor inhabitants of a poor province; eight thousand people, but the streets are not paved, the town has no newspaper, no cinema, neither a café nor a library.... Food, clothing and tools were distributed equitably to the whole population. Money was abolished, work collectivized, all goods passed to the community, consumption was socialized. It was, however, not a socialization of wealth but of poverty.... The whole population lived as in a large family; functionaries, delegates, the secretary of the syndicates, the members of the municipal council, all elected, acted as heads of a family. But they were controlled, because special privilege or corruption would not be tolerated. Membrilla is perhaps the poorest village of Spain, but it is the most just."

    These words, by some of the most impoverished peasants in the country, capture with rare eloquence the achievements and promise of the anarchist revolution. The achievements did not, of course, spring up from nothing. They were the outcome of many decades of struggle, experiment, brutal repression - and learning. The concept of how a just society should be organized was in the minds of the population when the opportunity arose. The experiment in creating a world of freedom and justice was crushed all too soon by the combined forces of fascism, Stalinism and liberal democracy. Global power centers understood very well that they must unite to destroy this dangerous threat to subordination and discipline before turning to the secondary task of dividing up the spoils.


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