Posed similar questions about communism in the past. I’m just trying to understand, I ask because I know there is a reasonable contingent of anarchists here. If you have any literature to recommend I’d love to hear about it. My current understanding is, destruction of current system of government (violently or otherwise) followed by abolition of all law. Following this, small communities of like minded individuals form and cooperate to solve food, safety, water and shelter concerns.
Anarchism is a bit of a fantasy once it encounters reality, like most political ideologies. The most viable attempt at an anarcho-government was in spain before Franco. It failed in terms of running a functional country, with the short lived experiment being unable to even decide whether to arm the few defenders against Franco’s authoritarian capture of the country – Durruti had to basically raid/steal weapons for his troops to mount any kind of resistance.
So literature I’d recommend is basically spanish history.
It’s more of a philosophy than a system of governance. A government that follows anarchist ideals would not incarcerate people much, but would do a lot to make sure private individuals can’t attain much power over each other. It would be focused on preventing a tiered class system from forming and making sure people aren’t critically dependent on a single employer.
Seems possible if we were creating new colonies on other worlds or something. I feel like you’d really have to start fresh with a group thats all on the same page. I don’t see how it could be implemented in current state capitalist countries. But, like I said, thats how I feel not necessarily the reality of the situation.
As I understand it, anarchism is less about eliminating laws and more about eliminating hierarchy. It’s bottom-up governance that requires lots of participation from everyone involved. You and your peers can establish laws for your neighborhood/town/etc., but everyone affected by that law needs to directly participate in its writing and there must be broad consensus before it is enacted. Law enforcement must be communal; you cannot outsource it to a police force, lest the police become oppressive.
When I think of anarchism I sometimes think of colonial New England: small towns that are largely autonomous, where communal decisions are made at town hall meetings and the locals manage themselves. It’s not a perfect analogy since there were higher levels of government, but day-to-day governance was very grass-roots.
There also are Zapatistas who are currently anarchists (they don’t describe themselves as such though)
That makes sense, funny you bring up colonial New England making communal decisions. Makes me think about the witch trials right away lol. Guess there wouldn’t really be checks/balances stopping that kind of thing, youd just move to a different place if you didnt like it?
If we learned anything from 2025 it’s that checks and balances only work when a critical mass of people agree to them. One of the US’s major political parties has abandoned rule of law and sent ICE on a modern day witch hunt against immigrants and perceived enemies. If you don’t like it, time to move. An anarchist would say this situation is a great example of why we shouldn’t outsource governance to entities that have power over us.
Thats a pretty fantastic point.
I was part of a protest camp with around 5000 people that was organized according to anarchist ideals, for one week.
We organized in groups of ~10 people who each selected one delegate to attend a daily “village” plenum.
There were 5 villages, and each plenum would select a speaker to coordinate with the other villages.Everyone in a plenum had the same right to speak, and every decision had to be reached unanimously.
The decisions were non-binding since there was no way to enforce them.
Sometimes it got frustrating when a delegate was clearly intoxicated or rambled incoherently and there was no one with authority to stop them speaking.
But in general, it worked really well as a tool to have everyone’s voice heard, inform everyone about news, and coordinate daily life, schedules, protest marches, and chores in the camp.Until an outside threat appeared.
Police threatened to storm the camp and the plenum couldn’t reach a consensus to refrain from using molotov cocktails against them (in a tent city with children and disabled people sleeping inside).
The group advocating for violence (“black block”) stopped attending the meetings.
The remaining delegates split over the question whether the black block could be evicted from the camp, and most people stopped attending after that.The police raid never happened.
Yep. Anarchy sounds great on a small scale, but cannot work on a larger scale (country level and above). Any complex enough task requires delegation, and at least a semblance of hierarchy, providing a level of authority to certain people within a group.
Just think about it. Building a simple carriage? That’s something you can do with 2-3 other people, no hierarchy needed. A modern car? Even to just assemble one you need 6-10 people doing the physical work and 2-3 “leaders” who coordinate these people, to do so effectively. And to build a rocket that can actually reach space? You need hundreds of people working in lockstep from design to manufacturing and to final assembly. With redundancies and checks and whatnot all planned for. Try to built a rocket without any hierarchy and you’ll just never reach the goal.
Anarchy is something people should strive for, but it’s not something we can achieve truly. It’s more a guiding principle rather than a concrete goal.
You can have delegation without hierarchy or authority, if everyone profits from the work equally.
Then the planner and manager of the project are just another specialist. The others trust them to know their shit, just like they trust the mechanics or builders.
If there’s a disagreement over what’s to be done by whom, this can be resolved in discussion.
Again, this works well if everyone has an equal stake in the success of the project, can freely leave, and isn’t just working on it due to threat of homelessness.Anarchy is something that governs lots of aspects in life today.
For example, the IT team I work in is managed without authority. There is a team leader of course, but he doesn’t tell the team what to do at all. We decide that unanimously based on what there is to be done and who is best at which tasks. There is an authoritarian structure around it from the company of course, but our team leader isolates us from it. We document our own working hours, discuss scheduling and vacation days among the team. I’ve never gotten a “do this” or “you can’t take that day off” order from anyone in 2 years.
Again, this works because we are all motivated and aligned with the company’s goals (and the working conditions are great due to a strong Union).Just because the authority isn’t used it doesn’t mean it isn’t present. You can have a hierarchy with authority assigned to higher-ups, and still work in a flat structure a la anarchy on average days. Authority ideally is only utilised when it has to be. In a work environment, for e.g. an IT team, that authority would be used when shit hits the fan and something mission-critical needs fixing and there can be absolutely zero miscommunication, so everyone does their tasks to their best abilities, but the team lead still takes charge.
Check out The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin. It’s an easy read, I had no trouble with it in high school. It doesn’t need to be violent at all. Very much a “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” kind of book. People focus a lot on “Why should that person have what I have, when I worked so hard?” when the real question is “Why should that person go without what all of us have, when it’s completely unnecessary?”
I’ll look into it, thanks!
I can also recommend Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloos.
Thanks!
Anarchism is essential education, but highly impractical. It works on a fictional premise of good faith actors internally, while not maximizing power for threats externally. Because neither of these conditions are met, Anarchism remains relegated to ephemeral pop-ups and subsequent collapses. I wish it didn’t have to be so, it is a noble system.
Except it takes “faith in good faith actors” to want to invest some with power.
No it doesn’t. Plenty of people do it out of fear or even laziness.
I don’t know but there would probably be trains.
That’s Autism, not anarchism
The co-occurrence is surprisingly high
It’s a spectrum.
Not an anarchist, but the common thread among those I’ve talked to is the elimination of hierarchical structures (whether government or otherwise).
Other types of organization are fine, as long as there are no asymmetric institutional relationships.
I’d be interested to figure out what type of organization are compatible.
https://anarwiki.org/wiki/List_of_Anarchist_Societies
This might be of interest.
I love that list of examples, because they’re either not anarchist, or are very limited communes that function because of (and under the laws of) the larger democratic governments around them. Or they don’t exist anymore
Yes, that’s generally the caveat.
Anarchism works really well in groups where everyone knows everyone else personally, the community is protected from outside attacks by a non-anarchist superstructure, and everyone is free to leave if they don’t like it.
You can have an anarchist commune, village or town, but not an anarchist nation-state surrounded by other nation-states.I’d even claim that small homogeneous communities naturally gravitate towards anarchism (without outside force), but large communities naturally gravitate towards authoritarianism.
Democracy in its ideal form combines the two: A state with well-defined, legitimized, limited authority handling the big stuff, giving the maximum amount of freedom possible to local communities for handling their own stuff the way they want to.
Thats pretty cool, thanks!
I recommend https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-possibilities
Violence is in fact unique among forms of human action in that it holds out the possibility of affecting the actions of others about whom one understands nothing. Any other way one might wish to affect another’s actions, one must at least have some idea who they think they are, what they want, what they think is going on. Interpretation is required, and that requires a certain degree of imaginative identification. Hit someone over the head hard enough, all this becomes irrelevant. Obviously, two parties locked in an equal contest of violence would usually do well to get inside each other’s heads, but when access to violence becomes extremely unequal, the need vanishes. This is typically the case in situations of structural violence: of systemic inequality that is ultimately backed up by the threat of force. Structural violence always seems to create extremely lopsided structures of imagination.
As I understand anarchism, the idea is a society where human culture becomes powerful enough to overcome and replace this sort of violently imposed top-down structure.
My current understanding is, destruction of current system of government (violently or otherwise) followed by abolition of all law. Following this, small communities of like minded individuals form and cooperate to solve food, safety, water and shelter concerns.
I think your main mistake is to get this backwards; the mere destruction of government and law doesn’t by itself effect the formation of anarchism. You need a culture with enough utility and resilience to replace it and endure without falling back on the crutch of structural violence.
The book I linked goes into some detail considering what that might take, focusing on the example of the nearly-anarchist society of 1990 Madagascar, where technically they were under the rule of a formal government, but in practice almost all governance was independent from it and driven by their unique culture. To summarize a little from memory, ambitious people basically aspired to be liches, with living supporters conducting regular rituals involving their tombs and bodies to avoid getting cursed, because having a prominent place in a reputable tomb after death was the only path to be considered an important person. But the main way to get such a position was to provide for people enough that they would become able and socially obligated to maintain your place in the tomb. There’s clear social utility there; achievement materially depends on positive contribution.
If it is the case that the concepts and relationships that define society and how we behave are essentially feats of imagination, then it should be possible for this force of imagination to itself be the basis for holding things together, rather than forcing it into artificial molds defined by violent hierarchies. What’s needed for that to happen is to sufficiently develop cultural imagination as a technology that it can build systems that stand up to the pressures they need to bear, that currently get handled through destructive shortcuts that treat people as things.
I really appreciate your explanation and literature thank you!!!
anarchism isn’t a system. it’s a guiding principle.
Anarchism generally holds that nobody is superior to another. Society then functions because everyone recognises good ideas and will just cooperate to do them, and because everyone will be thusly motivated, nobody will want anything they can’t receive.
Modern western society is already founded on the belief that nobody is inherently superior to anyone else. Now of course in practice this has not always been the case, and there still exist a lot of people who really don’t believe this is true. But the ethos is still there, and most people would tell you they believe in it.
To continue that, and to your second point, one of the biggest flaws in any system we create is that humans are not perfectly logical and rational actors. You can’t count on everyone always doing the right thing, even if they could all agree what “right” even means.
Yeah, the holes are pretty damned obvious. Anarchism really only exists in the complete absence of stressors.
everyone recognises good ideas
It is like communism, it would work perfectly well if everyone was smart and reasonable and had the same goal.
Not very well. At least not for large communities, or ones that want to live modern lives in the developed world.
Yes it’s quite possible to have small communities where everyone knows each other, then you can enforce rules through consensus and social pressure.
But it would be impossible to have large societies or to live in a modern developed world with no hierarchical structures.
There’s a lot of unsaid assumptions going on here. If you’re talking about turning our society completely without any preparation, I’d agree. If you’re talking about having similar levels of healthcare or I strongly disagree
Thats kind of what I’d assume but I’ve never talked about it with someone knowledgeable.
That’s about correct. You miss the final stage: rise of a group of leaders, who quickly manipulate the other members, take over power and (in the absence of law) create a dictatorship.
“Small communities of like minded individuals form and cooperate to solve food, safety, water and shelter concerns” - you literally described government. At its core, that is exactly what a government is.
Do “anarchists” hear themselves? I don’t know if OP is an anarchist, but this is why I don’t take them seriously. Their ‘ideal society’ always leads back to what is—in its most fundamental form—a government.
Anarchy, hierarchy and heterarchy are all different forms of social organization. You probably know what a hierarchy is. A heterarchy is a fanning out of organization and decision-making capabilities - think of how wikipedia editors work, or, I would argue, how the Senate and House of Representatives (are supposed to) work. Anarchy is just another organizational form, not a bunch of people throwing molotov cocktails or anything like that. At the core, anarchists seek to minimize the degree to which another group can oppress them by concentrating decision making among the small groups of people who will actually be effected by those decisions.
If you want to read a (fictional) example of how anarchy might work on a large scale, the scifi book The Disposessed by Ursula K Le Guin is superb (even if you are a strident anti-anarchist, it’s just such a good story).
Just finished reading The Dispossessed and was going to comment similarly. It was fantastic read and surprisingly modern considering it was written in the 60s. Some of her contemporaries don’t have the same sort of timeless readability as Le Guin.
The key anarchist takeaways from The Dispossessed are the use of syndicates in lieu of corporate or government structures, no private ownership or equity, and the absence of law, elections, and criminal punishment. Committees exist for public discussion, but the outcome of that discussion is non-binding (although one may find themselves an outcast). Le Guin presents anarchy like libertarianism mixed with socialism: you are free to do as you please, but you are obligated to recognize your role in the social organism.
Le Guin also recognizes that anarchist thought is in some ways extremely foreign to all of our modes of thought, philosophy, and language. So she devises a world where the anarchists invent a new language to correct and remove “egoist” ideas. The society she develops revolted against a hyper-consumerist society, referred to as “propertarians,” and this drives much of the plot and dialogue: what does it mean to not be an egoist while still being human?; what is the limit of personal possession before becoming a propertarian?; what happens when your personal freedom and needs are trampled on by the social organism?; and how long can a non-hierarchical society last when it inevitably creates systems that begin to self-organize into hierarchies and bureaucracies?
The protagonist realizes that any revolution must remain perpetually in a state of revolution lest the people settle into inviolable customs that then calcify into law.
So she devises a world where the anarchists invent a new language to correct and remove “egoist” ideas.
And here’s the problem with anarchism: It requires fundamentally changing the human species.
No disagreement here. I wasn’t necessarily advocating the idea, but it was interesting to explore it and “try it on” for a while when reading the book. I think there is some value in attempting to steer society in better directions, but disagree with rewriting history or purging culture to do so.
think of how wikipedia editors work
Wikipedia is not an anarchy though. There is specifically a hierarchy in types of accounts.
At the core, anarchists seek to minimize the degree to which another group can oppress them by concentrating decision making among the small groups of people who will actually be effected by those decisions.
Right, but small groups of people are severely limited in the level of civilization they can maintain. You can’t develop antibiotics without massively investing value into specific people and groups, who will then (shock) be more valuable. That will create a natural stratification unless those people are all saints.
Anarchism falls apart when faced with outside stressors like scarcity or competition. It only works if quite literally every single person buys into it fully.
Anarchy doesn’t mean no government. It means a non-hierarchical government. For example, parts of the US government are essentially anarchic already, like the various committees and subcommittees in the House/Senate that operate largely independent of each other, make their own decisions, and then present those decisions to other groups or implement them in other ways. The House/Senate in the US themselves are heterarchic, in that each senator/representative is (theoretically) on par with every other, they’re all peers, and decision-making is equally shared. The executive branch – or better yet, the military – is hierarchic in the most traditional sense. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing. You can arrange almost any other large organization this way if you want. Anarchists would argue that a big pharmaceutical company, university, etc. would benefit from less hierarchical structure to make them open to a greater range of ideas and operational strategies. Hierarchies are great for accumulating capital and resources to the top, though, which is why they’re so prominent in business.
The examples you’re naming are all carefully controlled, very narrow-aspect groups that are generally protected from their surroundings.
I can sketch you a big problem with turning, say, a university anarchist. Yes, in theory, you can get a greater range of ideas, but in practice the stressors will tear it apart due to human nature. There is always a limited amount of funding, so how do people work out who gets what? Unlike with food or shelter, it’s ALWAYS useful to have more funding. Why should I get more than you? Well, obviously because my history department is much more important to literally everything than your maths department.
So now what happens? Do we only cooperate with those who wish to cooperate? Sure, lets split up. Of course, from the remaining funding, my area of medieval history is much more relevant than that guys’ area of ancient history, and if we can’t cooperate we shouldn’t…
You can, of course, run a department, or a specific niche in an anarchist way. A specific research group, or a knowledge-sharing system would benefit, but that’s because those specific groups don’t really experience any pressures.
Do “anarchists” hear themselves? I don’t know if OP is an anarchist, but this is why I don’t take them seriously. Their ‘ideal society’ always leads back to what is—in its most fundamental form—a government.
Not really (I’m not an anarchist, if that matters)
A government is an institution created to hold power between people and to act on their behalf (executive power) it is also a regulatory system (law, rules justice… the legislative and judiciary powers). That would be common with most ‘local’ entities. Albeit at a much smaller scale. More on that important nuance next.
A government is also an autonomous organism, a thing in itself, autonomous, with its own objectives. An administration or multiple ones, offices, bureaus, services, departments. It also a lot of people working for it. Things that are not found in local/smaller orgs. It’s so autonomous that it tends to grow beyond its original limits when left uncontrolled . It grows in order to sustain itself and in order to weakens/get rid of whatever it considers a threat to its own existence (any other form of power, say local vs national or federal). It will grow as much as it can even at the cost of the interest of the very people who devised it to begin with.
That’s why most democracies were supposed to have devised safe-guards against such excess. But the threat is always there. Suffice to watch the present US government to realize it doesn’t work as it should: the US executive is eating away the very fabric of country ‘democratic’ roots and values, and getting rid of all safe-guards by all means (corruption, threats,…). BTW, something remotely similar but less dramatic and much slower is happening in the EU: we’re witnessing a lot less democratic control happening, in exchange for a lot more bureaucratic control (even against ourselves and our own will, us the citizen).
Such a derive would hardly be possible with a local for of power (aka limited and surrounded by many other powers like it). A,d individuals in each one of those power would still weight enough to keep it under control (by sheer egoism) and even if, for some really odd reason, all individuals in one of such power would agree to abuse it at the exact same time and to go in the exact same direction (which would already be very impressive, in itself) all other powers existing around that one would suffice to put it (and its too confident members) back in its place, if not effortlessly at least it would be done.
As I understand it, the anarchist idea of small/local powers lies in the co-existence of many of them that would be as different and autonomous from one another as possible. Which is kinda neat but it’s also something that not many in the wide anarchist spectrum (from the far left to the most right extremists, so to speak) seem to be willing to accept. I mean, they’re all fine with the theoretical idea of having many independent smaller groups co-existing one next to the others but most of them only seem willing to tolerate the existence of like minded other groups… which, to me, is the main reason why I can’t imagine anarchism getting that far ever: they too want the world to be a perfect image of themselves. Which makes them behave very much like any of the more traditional/structured form of organizations.
No, I’m not an anarchist or a communist. When I say small communities I mean less than 100 people with no clear hierarchical structure.
Noooo it’s easy to mistake but pretend everything is exactly as if there was a government but there actually is not a government 😉
Anarchy doesn’t mean no government. It means a non-hierarchical government. Parts of the US government are essentially anarchic already, like the various committees and subcommittees in the House/Senate that operate largely independent of each other, make their own decisions, and then present those decisions to other groups or implement them in other ways. The House/Senate in the US themselves are heterarchic, in that each senator/representative is (theoretically) on par with every other, they’re all peers, and decision-making is equally shared. The executive branch – or better yet, the military – is hierarchic in the most traditional sense. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing.
Quite literally how everyone in the comments sounds.
