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Originally Posted by PeterKropotkin
Not really, the ottomans were already declining by 1683. The real problem started 1648 with Cossack rebellion in the Ukraine that brought Russia in and then economic system that relied too heavily on serfs based agriculture— didn’t adapt well to issues in the late 17th and early 18th centuries with environmental pressures. So, it saw a terrible decline internally while its neighbors grew. Fredrick the great and the smelled the stench of death in the air for Poland and it was all over...
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My point being, dear Piotrek, that Poles did not help themselves by rescuing one of the three countries that soon thereafter made Poland disappear from the political map of Europe for over a century.
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Originally Posted by PeterKropotkin
Actually, Marxist regimes have a good track record until Capitalists intervene.
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Would you care to provide some examples?... Because from what I know, the communist ideal seems to thrive exclusively in hunting and gathering societies, but once humans put their hands on private property (thanks to the advent of animal husbandry and agriculture), there's no turning back!
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But, I am socialist not a Marxist and anarchy-syndicalist to boot. So, we want a bottom up non hierarchical formation of the economy and government...
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Ah, the buzz word of the day:
heterarchy. Again, that works quite excellently in small scale hunting-gathering societies, or in unusually egalitarian (and also small scale) agricultural societies. Once we get to state societies, though, there's no turning back: history shows that even when states die, their remnants just get absorbed by new state societies.
The only recent example of heterarchy that I can think of is the Zapatista movement - which seems to have fizzled out on its own because it's no match for the Mexican state. I suppose you could try to argue that Bolivian MAS (with its supporting structures of workers' and peasants' unions) is
supposed to have a Zapatista-like bottom up structure, but if you have seen the news recently, it's a complete mess, too.