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The Zapatista Exo-Introspective
Foreword
  This writing is a fairly lengthy one I wrote haphazardly into a chat a while back, and have slightly polished it to make it more presentable and more grammatically correct. Please excuse any grammatical errors, inconsistency, or awkward writing and transitions. I might take more time to fix this up more, but it is nearing its complete stage at this point. Good luck to any who read onwards, and I hope it inspires you onwards. This writing was formerly titled "On the Failures and Successes of the Left", by the way, but I felt that too lengthy and a fairly poor title to actually use, so I came up with The Zapatista Exo-Introspective; essentially, this writing is a look inwards into my own personal philosophy and life, my own community and bioregion, using the lens of various socialist movements throughout the years, with the Zapatistas taking front and centre. Hopefully you enjoy.

  I would argue that the best form of communist movement, as per Marx, would be a workers' revolution establishing a government run by the workers, in which as per council communist theory, it would manage and organise society whilst still being totally at the whims of the working class and being made up of the working class. The party politics of the Soviet era was a mistake which led them down a path of transforming into bourgeoisie elements of society. Even if they did make progress towards socialism and arguably communism, they did so in a very reformist way which ultimately upheld the global state of capitalism by simply reframing capitalism under a new aesthetic, the aesthetic of a workers' movement, of communism. In doing so, they functionally killed the communist movement. The greatest mistake of Lenin, from the perspective of the workers, would likely be the consolidation and destruction of workers' councils and labour unions. They were the most honest form of organisation and functioned perfectly well, perhaps even better than the Communist Party's government, which made them a concern of Lenin that they would split away or dissent in some way. Strategically, it was a brilliant idea, but it marked the end of any of Marx's ideas being applied to the Soviet Union. Afterwards, it became pure Leninism, then Stalinism, ultimately simply variations of Blanquism, and it rapidly descended into worsening and worsening states of being. But, of course, the Soviet Union is not the only left-wing movement in history. There are many others, with failures and successes.

  I believe the ultimate failure of the non-Soviet communist and socialist territories, such as Revolutionary Catalonia or the Paris Commune, are... well, they're hard to sum up because it's very diverse, but we can compare them to successes - specifically, the Zapatistas.

  The Zapatistas have consistently had a strong militant force to defend the people; the other movements struggled to expand and sometimes failed to provide a sufficient militant force to defend, although the Black Army was perhaps one of the best things Makhno could have done for the Ukrainian territories. Partially as a product of the militancy, the Zapatistas have been consistently skeptical of the outer world, which has aided them well, while the unions of Revolutionary Spain let the fascists of Nationalist Spain seep into their frameworks, the Black Army trusted the Soviet Union far too much, and so on. Mind you, the Zapatistas are not isolationist; from my understanding, they are explicitly internationalist, and (I could be wrong on this, but) consistently have been trying to include more and more land within their territories, albeit due to the limitations of the constant conflict with the state and the cartels, expansion became difficult and they eventually stayed defending the land they could liberate and an eventual modern reformation of the territories to become more confederated and resilient (but this is difficult to say for sure, since the stream of information is very slow); arguably, their major fault is that they were unwilling to be more aggressive in their liberation of their indigenous lands, but as a counterargument, they stopped expanding out of pure necessity, that the conflict between them and the cartels was far too great. That, of course, is admirable on its own, to have such an understanding of their conditions.

  The Zapatistas ensured that resources could keep flowing and that society would continue improving, which other movements arguably inevitably failed to do. Catalonia was good about upkeeping what they had, but ultimately things like disease and starvation were rampant as they struggled to keep a good flow of supplies. The Ukrainian territories were very good about ensuring people were well-off for their times, aggressively distributing land equally across the territories to ensure local communities could feed themselves, and generally ensuring that resources flowed and were shared equally as they could be. The Zapatistas themselves have ensured that the indigenous communities have been improved more and more over the years, providing them resources the capitalist Mexican state failed to provide their communities; the Zapatistas inspired local indigenous farming practices to be revived, returning the lands to the people equally; they ensured that all communities would have running water through creating themselves wells in communities; they maintained the highest quality of free and universal healthcare, increased vaccination rates by 9.4% in comparison to pro-government territories; alcohol and other drugs were banned as per a collective decision (considering it "not good for one's health, and just wastes money", as per Nayely, a representative of the Zapatistas); maternal deaths have simply ceased to occur in places where there were very high rates of death in childbirth; democratic education institutions were established in local communities which would collectively decide on curriculum, without a grading system to hold them back. Ultimately, they have had to close off these public services to people outside of their territories, but they continue to be provided for all the communities, showing a commitment to not just persist the current resource flow, but improve and expand upon it, improving their communities and, in a way, "industrialising" as Marx considered to be necessary, while still beautifully preserving the rural and indigenous aspects of their society (“reconciliation of town and country”).

  The Zapatistas also succeeded at creating the conditions for peaceful expansion and the practically unanimous support of the people they were liberating (or rather, for inspiring their own self-liberation). This isn't necessarily something other revolutions of this kind struggled with persay, but clearly defecting forces were frequent in a way that hasn't really happened in the Zapatistas. Due to the nature of their revolution being inherently about the people rather than about an ideology or set of ideas, it provided this popular support where they were quite literally capable of overthrowing the local Mexican government and the people cheered without even knowing beforehand it was going to happen. The Zapatista revolution is based, at its core, from the demands made by the indigenous peoples of 'Mexico' (the tail of the turtle, perhaps?), meaning they gained support incredibly rapidly because they explicitly formed to meet those demands, seeing that the state would not fulfill those demands and seeing the necessity of the indigenous people to, essentially, take control of their own lives, to create a government which, for all intents and purposes, is guided solely by the local indigenous people. They succeeded. The ultimate movement, I believe, is not a movement centred around ideology, but rather around practicality, yet without sacrificing their demands nor their ethics, understanding their material conditions and desires and acting upon them; Neozapatismo and the Zapatista movement proves this is not only possible, but successful, to the extent that they functionally can no longer be destroyed without overwhelming force from the cartels or a neoliberal state. And even if their territories were wiped off the map, the people would survive, and the ideas would carry on in the people. They have created a somewhat immortal movement, and a very practical one at that. I would say I personally align with Neozapatismo more than any other set of ideas. Council Communism and Libertarian Marxism are, to me, simply a focal lens, an ideological outlet to re-perspectivise my own ideas of how my local community could experience the same.

  I think I've made my point that the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities have been perhaps the best movement to be created, an incredibly resilient and properly revolutionary movement which is capable of preserving itself without sacrificing its values, defend their territories with minimal losses against both an entire state and several cartels, rapidly improve on communities, creating in a sense the "industrialisation" necessary in Marx's theories for communism to be created without sacrificing their indigenous practices, equality, democracy, or rurality, and so on. Just altogether an impressive and motivating movement which should be looked to as a prime example of communist/leftist (Neozapatismo specifically, they have their own thing, which I truly think is one of the best set of ideas and practices amongst all the theory and practice I've learned over the years) revolution.

  Ah yes, I would also like to say that I truly do admire the combination of more modern 'industrial' things like modern healthcare and vaccines, and the kind of indigenous agrarian idyll they've created. It really is, in many ways, the realistic ideal movement of today, and I truly think more people should learn about it and be educated on it. The primary problem with that is, firstly, the lack of information, secondly, the anti-communist and pro-neoliberal propaganda of capitalist society which inherently puts them in a negative light, and thirdly, the straight denseness some writings such as my own have around it. Any ideological analysis or large writing falls flat to properly represent Neozapatismo. It is not something written about, but rather created through material conditions and change. I simply fear it would not be as functional in places like the northern section of Turtle Island, wherein neoliberal control is so great that revolution feels impossible. But at the end of day, all great things feel impossible before they happen. The discovery of the sun being the centre of the solar system, of things beyond the solar system, of the earth being a globe, of physics itself, always seemed impossible to the people there. The end of monarchy seemed impossible to the subjects of the monarch. And yet, revolution remains supreme, turning the impossible into the immediate conditions of today in a way the people desire, improving conditions in a real way that reform has never managed to recreate.