What we, societally, call “democracy” is often a small amount of influence or even manufactured consent within an otherwise fascist hierarchical structure. True democracy is an entire process encompassing ways of being and living. Anarchism is democratic, but not necessarily all democracy is anarchic. For example, the Haudenosaunee famously participated in an anti-authoritarian power structure that does not qualify as anarchy, however, I would definitely qualify it as one of the most democratic structures ever established on the North American continent.

In fact, I’d even argue that the entire point of “lefist unity” should be that political movements are, and must be, hyper local. It’s the #1 thing I think Zapatismo gets right about political theory. Urban centers tend to find ML works and processes the most useful for achieving their liberation whereas rural and pre-industrial economies such as mining communities tend to find the most value in Anarchist, Trotskyist, and Council-Communist lines of thought. It’s just that “leftist unity” has a tendency to not work out that way