Anarchism today?

Anarchist communism is a society based on self management. Each workplace co-ordinates labour and production themselves democratically. This is either done directly through general assemblies, or where workplaces are too large through a delegate system. In which decisions are made by smaller groups and recallable mandated delegates from said smaller groups meet to vote on decisions according to the mandates they have been given.

Anyways, i think you'll have to be more specific with your question. What problems or obstacles do you think their are to a hypothetcial post-revolutionary anarchist society.

An example of a transformation to an anarchist society
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Go14T0kLss
(most relevant part is 4 mins onwards)

That video is great. Love hearing from these veterans who actually lived in an anarchist type society. Most have been an amazing feeling to be part of that.

In a manner of speaking yes, though it would be easier to say that we simply don't think economics should be seperated from politics.
The idea that politics is seperate from the rest of our lives is generally the central ideological rationale of the state, which rules that politics should be a seperate sphere left to specialists (whether they are politicians or party/union full timers) who will sort out our problems for us.

Most anarchists would generally think that the sphere of production (aka work) is what most shapes society. Hence today it is our social relations in the workplace that play the largest role in shaping the rest of capitalist society. Likewise a 1000 years ago, it was the way in which peasants worked for large landowners that shaped feudal society.

No. 'Work' will undoubtedly take on a meaning different to the current definition of 'work' as alienated wage-labour. 'Activity' might be a better description. The separation of enacting and the decision to conduct these activities will not exist (this is a defining feature of anarchism).

In that sense you might say that anarchism is the abolition of both work and politics, as these only make sense under capitalism.

I take it by "political beliefs" you mean your convictions which compel you to act. I would say that the expression of these convictions would only be limited by their popularity (hence enactment), with the usual caveat of not impeding the liberty of others. This is how it usually works in anarchist groups currently.

Personally, I think there is some obligation by anarchists to support unpopular but reasonable ideas and that this support should take the form of access to avenues of expression (such as printing presses and forums). Not much beyond that, though.

sounds like a magazine

this is pretty much the heart of it.
great avatar, btw.

are the two mutually exclusive?

Most 'work' is and has always been social. To exist we need certain basic requirements, to get these we need to devote time and energy, most human throughout history have organised this collectively. Social needs require 'work' as much as physical ones.

As Anarchist Federation (London) says in the pamphlet The Italian Factory Councils and the Anarchists:
Factory councils themselves are only revolutionary in a revolutionary situation. In
a non-revolutionary situation within present capitalist society, any factory council
would be under pressure to act as a mediator between the workers and the
employing class, and so be subject to cooption and recuperation. In a
revolutionary situation factory councils have to imply their own withering away as
workers’ councils into a new society where work as labour will disappear.
As well as this, it is not enough to develop a coordination of councils if at the
same time it is not linked up to the dismantling of the State apparatus. Another
necessity is the development of neighbourhood councils in tandem with those in
the workplaces. In these early decades of the 21st century, social life (at least in
Europe and North America) has changed considerably. Such a linkage would
involve all those sections of the proletariat that would otherwise be
disenfranchised if new forms of social organisation were only confined to the
workplace. In this way workers on short term contacts, the unemployed, the
retired, young people, those doing unwaged work (carers, housewives,
househusbands) could be fruitfully associated with a movement of social change.
These sections of the proletariat would definitely enrich such a movement and on
the political, economic and social level would contribute greatly to a successful
outcome. The development of such forces would also have a key role in the
distribution of products produced by the workplaces, because without selforganised
distribution networks, such production would have no sense. Neither
should the workers of the land be ignored. It is true that large occupations of the
land occurred in southern Italy at the same time as the factory councils and in
fact the well known Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri regarded these as more
radical and important than the factory occupations. In Britain this would primarily
involve agricultural workers. In other parts of the world, including parts of Europe,
if numerically the peasantry has considerably diminished since 1920, its
qualitative importance still remains. An urban proletariat cannot be triumphant
without the help of its rural equivalent, as the history of previous revolutions has
shown.

Why should we want to live of the land in a small rural community. Have you moved from being a leninist to a primitivist?

Work is the means by which we will act socially to provide for our needs. Large scale manufacturing, production, distribution and services will still be required. These can be organised from the ground up and in the common interest to provide us with all that we need for comfortable lives and with meaningful work.

Well you got one

If you require more detailed answers ask more detailed questions, with specific points.

outlaw, I could write a reply to your questions. However, previous replies to you I have written you have always just ignored or called me a Nazi, or a middle-class cunt. So I'm not sure if I should bother in this case. I did think I should say, though, that these are extremely basic questions you are asking, which people generally figure out the answers to before they start calling themselves anarchists, and telling people to organise anarchist marches and anarchist communes. It would probably be worth you doing some basic reading about a political idea, before you start labelling yourself it.

On work, I would recommend the following text:
http://libcom.org/library/work-free-society-anarchist-federation

ffs. I know grammar is middle class and you're keepin it real, but that's just gibberish.

Maybe it's a coined term meanng 'fraudulent sodomy'

Unlikely to be any single, exact way. People are heterogeneous, no reason for their society to be uniform at the bottom.

Not living a boring rural existence, for one.

Cheeseburgers every day.

Those others or their mates.

Meaning is defined by people. If someone finds meaning in doing some work, then it's meaningful.

I sure hope that they won't be printing ridiculous amounts of "best-selling" dung, only to wonder how the hell they're going to get people to buy them so they'll fit the bill retroactively.

Is this a typo?
Seriously, THE OUTLAW, the reason you arent getting the definitive set-in-stone answers that you want is because people realise we dont have all the answers, nor should we presume to. Youre asking about the organisation of production and distribution in a communist society. To prescribe how that would be done is not the task or remit of the people on this forum, its up to the people who would be producing and distributing the stuff that we need to decide how best to organise themselves. Yes we have ideas: I certainly have ideas about how a railway could run, and run much better, in a communist society, but it wouldnt be up to me to just tell everybody else who worked there how to organise the running of the place.

anarchist book of answers

Section I - What would an anarchist society look like?

I actually think the OP has been extremely reasonable throughout this thread (in his own special way) and tbh deserves a decent answer rather than mindless trolling.

I couldn't disagree more, tbh. I for one have no clue how things will work in some futuristic society a century from now, and if I did try to answer those questions I'd just be guessing. I much prefer notch8's response:

As for 'anarchism today', I think that anarchism in the here and now involves workers organising themselves to fight for their interests - I don't think we'll have a revolution today or tomorrow or anytime soon (not before the 6th at any rate ), but anarchism can still be applied to our daily lives.

Couldn't agree more.

~J.

Here are a couple of links to pamphlets on how the economy might work The economics of freedom

Workers councils
As why I have not written what I think, it is simple really, other people have taken a lot of time and put in a lot of effort to produce clear, readable, detailed and concise accounts which I think are useful starting points for discussion. Whilst neither pamphlet is perfect and I have criticisms of both, I also recognise that don't have all the answers and my thoughts are not as clear on some issues.