I left Detroit for LA in 2002. Was living in hamtramck and D was getting close to it’s lowest point. Woodward was a ghost town after the offices emptied. Most storefronts bordered up. The most beautiful buildings emply and extremely run down. You wouldn’t want to walk down it at night. I decided to move within 2 weeks of someone shooting a gun outside my home because I felt my life was at risk then.

Fast forward to today. Woodward is nearly completely rebuilt from the riverfront to highland Park. Empty storefronts now filled. Book building and Michigan Central fully restored and beautiful again. Population growth for the first time on my life in downtown. Even corktown which was just a slum of old warehouses is now a hot place to move to in the US. There are still major issues here. While some have benefited the wages in the area are too depressed to drive any real growth and the mismanagement of the big 3 automakers still put the entire region at great risk.

I live less than 20 minutes from downtown and would even consider moving there but the school system is still a shamble and the downtown prices are equal to other big cities with more opportunities. I hope for more growth outside of auto in this area cause the overall COL is low. Half of what it cost me to live in LA. You can still move to the region and buy a nice starter home in a safe area close to work for under $300k. Even less if you can do some rehab yourself. it is growing slowly but that is good for this area as it has 60+ years of decline before this very recent recovery. People are hopeful but they are still very skeptical it is permanent.

Do you still have market pricing for goods under syndicalism? I assume yes, since there’s no central government so there can’t be any central planning committee.

How do trade disputes get settled? Heck, how do we stop environmental damage? Suppose the forest-workers union decides to just clearcut all the forests and then stockpile the wood in their warehouses to drive up the prices like a wood cartel? With no central government and no authority, I’m not clear on the means other syndicates have of resolving this.

Lot of arguments that can go on about this. In a market socialist economy there would be market pricing - but there are non-market ideas of economic distribution. Your mileage may vary on how… realistic you regard them for a modern and complex society.

I have anarchist sympathies, but I’m not an anarchist myself - the issues you describe being among my own. Anarcho-syndicalists tend to assume a great degree of cooperation between unions. Syndicalism is not inherently anarchist, though anarcho-syndicalism is a prominent strain of syndicalism. More traditional Democratic Socialist structures are very much compatible with a syndicalist outlook.

The invisible foot of syndicalism-market will squash those bad people.

You’re getting downvoted a bit here since these are very… done-to-death considerations in leftist circles, but for what it’s worth, I think your heart is in the right place. The big points of contention here, I think, would be:

1. Socialism is a very broad term, and many forms of socialism do not require a central authority, at least no more than capitalism does. I suppose I should take a moment to shill for market socialism - the economy does not fundamentally change in its basic functionality under market socialism - it’s just instead of investors getting voting shares and running companies, employees, instead, exclusively receive voting shares and run the companies. As a barebones explanation, of course.

2. Syndicalism is actually meant to circumvent the issue of a revolutionary war, if not in preparation, at least in execution. While syndicalists historically have been big on “Si vis pacem, para bellum”, being prepared for self-defense action against the entrenched power, the most essential piece of syndicalism is that the means of production will already be seized by trade unions before the final blow to capitalism is struck, as what is lacking currently is solidarity for workers to shut down all production until their demands are met (a general strike), not capacity. The workers already hold the power in our society, they only need to realize it, sort of thing.

3. Not to be blasé about the possibility, as there would undoubtedly be turmoil and a non-zero chance of serious bloodshed, but some risks must be accepted to drive society forward. If the American revolutionaries had sat on their hands and said “Taxation without representation is bad, but war would be worse”, that would not have created a better world going forward. Likewise, though war and bloodshed should be avoided if possible, they should not be avoided at all costs. Change is worth turmoil, ultimately; as the alternative is eternal injustice of the current variety - or more likely, said turmoil simply being put off until the next crisis moment, in which case no net lives have actually been saved, but an extra generation has been condemned to the current state of injustices.

4. Those ideas are all very good, but generally associated with social democracy/welfare capitalism, not socialism.

Amarican propaganda is super effective

aw dang man why didn’t you tell anarchists this 100 years ago we’d have saved so much time

Reasonable comments are bad when they’re not fanatical enough