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It’s generally the lack of parallel institutions run by workers which sabotage such attempts. Revolutions are generally not powerful enough to do anything but take out the current power; this pretty invariably means the second-most powerful group takes over the role of the overthrown power, or the near-seconds squabble amongst themselves over it. Since dictatorships and other authoritarian regimes tend to systemically crush every alternate power base they can get away with crushing, that generally leaves only those they cannot crush - most often religion in societies which have not experienced a deep secularization, the military, and economic powers in just about every society (in the SovUnion at the end of its life, for example, this was the bureaucracy; whereas we are more familiar with it being capitalists and other private economic actors). So ‘theocracy’, ‘junta’, or ‘something amenable to the economic elite’ are most often the results.

A libertarian socialist society will emerge when low-hierarchy institutions have considerable support and deeply established roots during a time of upheaval - such as Rojava taking advantage of pre-existing Kurdish revolutionary institutions which were largely socialist or socialist-sympathetic to lay the foundation of the autonomous administration, once both the Syrian government and Islamist forces had exhausted themselves in the area.

Building parallel institutions now sets up the stage for tomorrow's victories.

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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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Pragmatic Leftist Theory

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