Conservative, centrist and nationalist movements have also adopted autarky, generally on a more limited scale, to develop a particular industry, to gain independence from other national entities or to preserve part of an existing social order.
The trend toward "local self-sufficiency" increased[19] after the Black Plague, initially as a reaction to the impact of the epidemic and later as a way for communes and city states to maintain power against the nobility.
Golden Age pirate communities have been dubbed both heavily autarkic societies where[21] "the marauders...lived in small, self-contained democracies" and as an "anti-autarky" due[22] to their dependence on raiding.
The Ming dynasty, during its earlier, more isolationist period, kept a closed economy that prohibited outside trade and focused on centralized distribution of goods produced in localized farms and workshops.
In eastern North Carolina maroon communities, often based in swampy areas, used a combination of agriculture and fishing to forge a "hidden economy" and secure survival.
[25] The relative self-reliance of these maritime African-American populations provided the basis for a strongly abolitionist political culture[26] that made increasingly radical demands after the start of the Civil War.
Mutual aid societies like the Grange and Sovereigns of Industry attempted to set up self-sufficient economies (with varying degrees of success) in an effort to be less dependent on what they saw as an exploitative economic system and to generate more power to push for reforms.
Local and regional farming autarkies in many areas of Africa and Southeast Asia were displaced[30] by European colonial administrations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who sought to push smallholder villages into larger plantations that, while less productive, they could more easily control.
In her survey of anarchism in the late 1800s, Voltairine De Cleyre summarized the autarkic goals of early anarchist socialists and communists as "small, independent, self-resourceful, freely-operating communes".
Some right-wing totalitarian governments have claimed autarky as a goal, developing national industry and imposing high tariffs but have crushed other autarkic movements and often engaged in extensive outside economic activity.
In 1921, Italian fascists attacked existing left-wing autarkic projects at the behest of large landowners, destroying roughly 119 labor chambers, 107 cooperatives and 83 peasant offices that year alone.
[38] Nazi Germany under economics minister Hjalmar Schacht, and later Walther Funk, still pursued major international trade, albeit under a different system, to escape the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, satisfy business elites and prepare for war.
In the latter half of the 20th century economists, especially in wealthier countries, backed the emerging Washington consensus, overwhelmingly endorsing free trade while discouraging autarkic and socialist policies.
In the late 60s activist Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the founders of the Freedom Farms Cooperative, an effort[54] to redistribute economic power and build self-sufficiency in Black communities.
[57] Intercommunalism drew from left-wing autarkic projects like free medical clinics and breakfast programs, "explicitly articulated as attempts to fill a void left by the failure of the federal government to provide resources as basic as food to black communities".
[59] The influential 1983 anarchist book bolo'bolo, by Hans Widmer, advocated the use of autarky among its utopian anti-capitalist communes (known as bolos), asserting "the power of the State is based on food supply.
Despite a key alliance with the United States, supporters consider them largely cut off from international trade, facing multiple enemies, and striving for a society based on communalism, Rojava's government and constitution emphasize economic self-sufficiency[65] directed by neighborhood and village councils.
The movement has aimed[68] to secure land and build self-sufficient cooperatives and workplaces "to democratically transform the political economy of the city" and push back against gentrification.