A lot of people get stuck arguing over anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, council communism, communization theory, and all of these earlier revolutionary traditions as if one of them has to be the final answer. I do not think that is the most useful way to look at them. At their best, all of them are attempts to move away from domination and toward a liberatory society. The problem is that each one tends to stop at a particular part of the problem. Anarcho-syndicalism focuses heavily on the workplace and unions. Council communism centers workers’ councils. Communization theory often emphasizes immediately abolishing capitalist social relations. Anarcho-communism goes further toward a stateless, classless society, but can still be vague about the durable political institutions needed to coordinate large populations and territories.

The issue is not that these traditions had nothing to offer. They had a lot to offer. The issue is that liberation cannot be reduced to the workplace, the factory council, the commune, or the moment of rupture. Human beings live in neighborhoods, cities, watersheds, families, schools, care networks, transportation systems, and ecological systems. A liberatory society has to govern all of that democratically. It has to answer how people make decisions together, how communities coordinate across distance, how public goods are managed, how conflicts are resolved, and how power is prevented from concentrating again.

That is why I think these traditions, when pushed far enough, start recreating the same basic structure whether they intend to or not. They end up needing local assemblies. They need recallable delegates. They need councils between communities. They need ways to coordinate regions without creating a new centralized state. They need democratic control of production and public resources. They need institutions that are directly accountable to the people using them. Once you start building all of that, you are moving toward communalism, libertarian municipalism, and democratic confederalism.

Anarcho-syndicalism gets closest when unions become more than workplace organizations and start taking responsibility for social life. But if the workplace remains the main political unit, it leaves out everyone who is not defined primarily by employment. Children, elders, disabled people, caregivers, unemployed people, and whole neighborhoods still need political power. That is why the municipality has to matter. The community is broader than the workplace.

Council communism has a similar strength and limit. Workers’ councils are far more democratic than party rule or state bureaucracy, but a society cannot be governed only through workplaces. A factory council should not decide what an entire neighborhood needs just because it controls production. Economic democracy is necessary, but it has to sit inside a larger political democracy of communities.

Communization theory is valuable because it understands that capitalism is not just a set of owners that can be replaced. Capitalist social relations themselves have to be overcome. But if the theory becomes too focused on the immediate abolition of capitalist categories without a clear institutional structure for what comes after, it risks treating liberation as an event rather than a durable social order. A society still needs ways to make decisions, coordinate resources, resolve conflict, and defend freedom after the rupture.

Anarcho-communism probably comes closest because it already imagines common ownership, mutual aid, decentralization, and a stateless society. But even then, the practical question remains: how do thousands or millions of communes coordinate without either isolation or a new center of authority? The answer usually becomes some form of confederation, delegated coordination, and local democratic assemblies. Again, that starts looking very familiar.

So I do not think the point is to say all these traditions were useless or completely wrong. I think they were stages in a larger conversation about liberation. They discovered important parts of the answer. But if you keep asking the question, “How do we remove domination without losing the ability to organize society?”, you keep moving toward the same basic principles.

Power has to be rooted locally.

People have to govern themselves directly.

Economic life has to be democratic.

Communities have to coordinate without surrendering themselves to a centralized state.

Delegates have to be mandated and recallable.

Public institutions have to remain under popular control.

Ecology has to be part of the structure, not an afterthought.

That is the direction.

To me, this is why communalism, libertarian municipalism, and democratic confederalism feel less like random competing ideologies and more like the political shape you arrive at when you keep following liberation all the way through. The names matter, but the deeper point is that every serious liberatory tradition eventually runs into the same institutional questions.

If you keep trying to abolish domination, you eventually have to build democracy.

If you keep trying to decentralize power, you eventually have to confederate.

If you keep trying to socialize the economy, you eventually have to give communities and workers real control over it.

If you keep trying to create freedom, you eventually have to create institutions that make freedom durable.

That is why all roads, when they are actually traveling toward liberation instead of stopping halfway, start converging on the same kind of society.