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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSpain's communist model village - MUST READ
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/marinaleda-spanish-communist-village-utopia<snip>
When people refer to la crisis in Spain they mean the eurozone crisis, an economic crisis; but the term means more than that. It is a systemic crisis, a political ecology crack'd from side to side: a crisis of seemingly endemic corruption across the country's elites, including politicians, bankers, royals and bureaucrats, and a crisis of faith in the democratic settlement established after the death of Franco in 1975. A poll conducted by the (state-run) centre for sociological research in December 2012 found that 67.5% of Spaniards said they were unhappy with the way their democracy worked. It's this disdain for the Spanish state in general, rather than merely the effects of the economic crisis, that brought 8 million indignados on to the streets in the spring and summer of 2011, and informed their rallying cry "Democracia Real Ya" (real democracy now).
Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, mayor of Marinaleda, attending a protest in Seville. Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, mayor of Marinaleda, attending a protest in Seville. Photograph: Dave Stelfox
But in one village in Andalusia's wild heart, there lies stability and order. Like Asterix's village impossibly holding out against the Romans, in this tiny pueblo a great empire has met its match, in a ragtag army of boisterous upstarts yearning for liberty. The bout seems almost laughably unfair Marinaleda's population is 2,700, Spain's is 47 million and yet the empire has lost, time and time again.
Sánchez Gordillo's philosophy, outlined in his 1980 book Andaluces, Levantaos and in countless speeches and interviews since, is one which is unique to him, though grounded firmly in the historic struggles and uprisings of the peasant pueblos of Andalusia, and their remarkably deep-seated tendency towards anarchism. These communities are striking for being against all authority. "I have never belonged to the communist party of the hammer and sickle, but I am a communist or communitarian," Sánchez Gordillo said in an interview in 2011, adding that his political beliefs were drawn from those of Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Marx, Lenin and Che.
In August 2012 he achieved a new level of notoriety for a string of actions that began, in 40C heat, with the occupation of military land, the seizure of an aristocrat's palace, and a three-week march across the south in which he called on his fellow mayors not to repay their debts. Its peak saw Sánchez Gordillo lead a series of expropriations from supermarkets, along with fellow members of the left-communist trade union SOC-SAT. They marched into supermarkets and took bread, rice, olive oil and other basic supplies, and donated them to food banks for Andalusians who could not feed themselves. For this he became a superstar, appearing not only on the cover of Spanish newspapers, but in the world's media, as "the Robin Hood mayor", "the Don Quixote of the Spanish crisis", or "Spain's William Wallace", depending on which newspaper you read.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)Although I guess at that point we are really just arguing semantics.
Anyway, it seems like a good system.
malaise
(269,049 posts)Looks more like Democratic Socialism to me
DireStrike
(6,452 posts)On the far left it is common to use "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably, as Marx did.
There is a debate among anti-capitalists about whether you can build socialism in one country. Marxist-leninists (who you may know as Stalinists) say you can, and the Soviet Union was doing this. Pretty much everybody else says you can't; communism is a classless stateless society (a village is not a "society" and usually post-scarcity and global, or near global economic governance is implied. The revolution must be global to work given the way capitalism works and is hostile to communism.
The Anarchists would say this is a good start. Spain was of course home to the pride of the Anarchist movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Spain
hunter
(38,317 posts)There is much to be learned.
catnhatnh
(8,976 posts)...Thanks Mal!
leftstreet
(36,108 posts)Not your OP of course, the article
And it's not 'communism'
The new Marinaleda co-operative selected crops that would need the greatest amount of human labour, to create as much work as possible. In addition to the ubiquitous olives and the oil-processing factory, they planted peppers of various kinds, artichokes, fava beans, green beans, broccoli: crops that could be processed, canned, and jarred, to justify the creation of a processing factory that provided a secondary industry back in the village, and thus more employment.
Why stop there? Why not blindfold half the workers before they plant the artichokes and green beans, then bring in a 2nd shift to find everything and dig it up for a 3rd graveyard shift to replant? You could create massive 'jobs' this way!
You don't shun technology, you seize it
Meh, this sounds more like a cult than anything else. Wish them all well though