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.
Wikipedia is not an anarchy though. There is specifically a hierarchy in types of accounts.
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.