Anarchy is a political structure where there’s basically no one in charge, right? But wouldn’t that just create a power vacuum that would filled by organized crime, corporations, etc.? Then, after that power vacuum is filled, we’re right back at square one, and someone is in charge.
Are there any political theorists that have come up with a solution to this problem?
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I view anarchism as a philosophy and lifestyle more than a government or system. Whenever you thwart, resist or defy authority, you are engaging in anarchism. This can’t be a system because it is a negative. It’s a response to power. What you are asking for is egalitarianism, and there are many kinds of egalitarian governance structures that have varying degrees of success. Ostensibly, the US is egalitarian. In practice, not so much.
‘Basically no one in charge’ is not exactly correct. Heirarchies are allowed to exist, but ideally should be as brief and flat as possible.
My best understanding of the end-goal is an intermeshing alliance of small democratic collectives working together to provide for one another. This type of system has existed previously, such as with the various tribes across the Americas which often traded and collaborated with one another. In contrast with previous times, there is vastly more understanding of how the world works now, and thus many more possible projects to strive towards.
There is also no expectation of some supposed utopia from this, as i understand - conflicts are still expected to flair up every now and again. The main aim is for equality and the absence of a single constant power structure which oppresses and dictates the conditions of all, but instead that there is a democratic collaberation defining the conditions for folks involved.
Sounds a lot like a bunch of small states to me.
I love how there’s a question asking how does a movement work, and most answers are from people outside of that movement, with only a superficial understanding of the theory behind it, confidently declaring it can’t.
To answer your question, anarchism doesn’t magically pop into existence. The way it comes into existence, which is prefiguring the existing system into anarchism, requires that the people already created horizontal power structures which forbid this “power vacuum”
The way it comes into existence, which is prefiguring the existing system into anarchism, requires that the people already created horizontal power structures which forbid this “power vacuum”
That’s interesting. Can you pls elaborate on how this works?
the biggest core thing it requires is class solidarity. you have to understand that you, as a human, are ultimately no different from any other human, and so when you see someone in need of help, if you don’t help them, that means other people will make the same decision you did. so you have to help.
once you have that, you have to start organizing the people who help in some way. this is the root of mutual aid. the idea in a mutual aid society is that no one deserves to be poor and that anyone who asks for help is welcome to the help that is provided. when you have this people will naturally contribute in what they can and take from it what they need.
the next thing to understand, coming from a position of class solidarity, is that poverty is enforced. when you start organizing a mutual aid society, society’s enforcers of poverty, the military and the police, will come crashing down on you. so at least some people in your community will need to practice, plan, and organize community self defense
Read up on Spain pre-Franco, which was the only time that an Anarcho-state was seriously attempted. It basically coagulated into an Anarcho-syndicate, but failed miserably at getting many traditional ‘state’ responsibilities covered. When Franco rolled in with the backing of Hitler, Durruti was the only guy that tried to mount a defense, because the “government” couldn’t come to a consensus on whether to defend themselves or not. Durruti had to literally raid government weapons stocks to arm a militia to try and fight back, but that totally failed and then they ended up as a fascist steel production center feeding arms to Nazi germany.
So that’s about how it goes in practice. It’s a style of government that’s good in theory, but it fails when implemented, generally due to ever present outside influences. It’s on the same sort of pedestal as communism really, in that lots of folks look at it on paper and think it sounds great, but reality’s a bitch.
It’s on the same sort of pedestal as communism really, in that lots of folks look at it on paper and think it sounds great, but reality’s a bitch.
I guess the difference is that anarchism doesn’t fail due to internal problems, it fails like you said by outside influences. Whereas most historical examples of communism failed due to internal influences (like corrupt leaders making bad economic decisions)
Yeah – though in all fairness, we haven’t seen too many larger implementations of its principles. Some other guy was whining that I’d missed some regional sub-states/failed revolution attempts for example, but that’s the best he could find to counter my ‘only spain so far has tried it’ note. The sample size is stupid small, so it’s a bit dicey to draw definitive conclusions.
I guess you could argue that things like Durruti’s struggle to get support qualifies as an internal problem – like a government/large group, making decisions on consensus, is much more difficult to motivate in any particular direction even when existentially threatened by an outside force. But ultimately, without that outside force, the CNT likely would’ve continued to meet the basic needs of people in the country in line with the anarchist principles it was based on. Bit of a mixed bag.
- The sample size is stupid small, so it’s a bit dicey to draw definitive conclusions.
This is the part that always gets me when leftists do infighting. Like, guys, we’ve only been doing this socialism thing for like 125 years and there’s only been a handful of projects that even successfully overthrew the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie themselves took 200-300 years to overthrow feudalism and had many failures and committed awful atrocities along the way.
Let’s learn from our mistakes and stop being so puritanical with our ideologies. None of us have any idea what socialism will look like when it is finally successful, the most we can do is just keep working to put power in the hands of the people, whatever form that takes.
Uhhh Anarchist Ukraine, Rojava, Chiapas just to name a few Anarchist entities.
Please study the topic you’re engaging in more instead of being factually incorrect.
Afaik, Ukraine was a failed attempt to setup an Anarchist government. Rojava and Chiapas are not realistically established enough to qualify as a case study so much, they’re also not countries, but general regions/states within countries. As sub-regions protected within and by a state, they benefit from the state while putting on airs of being anti-state: much like a parents-basement dwelling neckbeard sort, who rants online against capitalism, while enjoying the benefits provided by their parents participating in that system, and who’s lifestyle is wholly dependent on the system they oppose. Anarchist principles often function ‘ok’ for smaller communities, but they struggle/fail once attempted as a full government of a country – Spains the only example I know of in that regard.
Spains attempt lasted ‘roughly’ 30 years, with the movement starting in the 1870s, the CNT coming in sometime around 1905 or so, and Franco fucking it all up around 1936-1939, give or take?
I worked in an anarchist bookstore for a few years after uni, where I read books about anarchist history, and the Spanish attempt. That’s what I base my comments on. And, yea, Rojava and Chiapas are so ‘new’ that no one had bothered to write about them at that time. So really, they don’t seem like examples worth mentioning, other than to be a little shite online.
Unless you magically invent a completely new protocol that reconciles incentives of all egoistic parties without devolving to violence it’s not going to happen.
And millions of years of evolution failed to produce it naturally, so good luck
We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting. By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs.
I think it’s important to denote that some people categorize anarchism as a distant dream regime, for convenience of course.
You can see anarchism in action in the punk movement or other community efforts. People building bridges on their own, living in a gridless community, sharing art using their own methods like cassette tapes. That’s all anarchism.
I’m not at the heart of anarchism. I’m not occupying an abandoned building to help the poor, for example. But I’ve read a couple of books on it.
I really like low scale anarchy (town level) but high scale would only work with strong scifi-level decentralization tools where public goods can be negotiated and developed without massive centralized bodies.
Alternatively society has to enter a post resource scarcity era - as in star trek replicator level of advancement.
Another way it could work if there was a massive population reduction as very few people in the world left but at that point political systems are the least interesting thing to think about.
Unfortunately due to game theory and real life power curves true global anarchism with current technology is simply impossible.
I mean we have the UN which doesn’t have any one nation in charge. Geopolitics tends to be anarchistic.
The UN is not a society. There are many groups without a leader. But when talking about anarchism, people usually mean anarchist society.
That’s like saying FAANG is anarchism, because they talk among themselves without there being a leader.
That’s democracy, not anarchy.
Why not both?
Indeed. Democracy does not exclude anarchy and in the case of the UN it’s a voluntary union, each member is free to not participate and ignore the decisions made by rest of the union. People often criticize the UN as having little authority - that’s because it’s anarchistic in nature.
If there is a point to my example it is that society is a patchwork of ideologies, there is no “pure capitalist” society just as there is no “pure anarchistic” society. So to say one ideology does not work as totalitarian society is different then saying it does not work at all.
Fair point
The UN routinely has councils and vetos given to a select few.
The point of anarchism is the rejection of hierarchy. If enough people reject hierarchy, they would all be on board with not filling the power vacuum. That’s why establishing anarchism is much more than getting rid of the current despot. It has to be get rid of all those with power over others, get rid of the concept of hierarchy, get rid of wealth accumulation as power concentration, get rid of anyone even trying to rule over others. They would have no support with anyone, because everyone knows power corrupts and we’re not taking any chances. Nobody should desire to rule over others, if (1) nobody listens to you, (2) people will fight you, and (3) you, like everybody else, knows it’s morally wrong
I’m not saying all of this is practical, but that’s the idea. Dismantling hierarchy is difficult, but still not sufficient to establish anarchist society. People would just build a new hierarchy if not convinced that hierarchies in themselves are the issue
Yes, but you’re thinking pragmatically. Like how it would work in the real world.
Anarchy is an ideal theory. It’s not a practical or pragmatic one. It is argued for in comparison to other ideal theories.
Pretty much every political theory breaks down when subjected to pragmatic real world problems.
I think of anarchy like a guiding ideal: flatten hierarchies.
You can’t eliminate hierarchies. If you eliminate “official” hierarchies, you lack measures to prevent individuals from exerting their will over other individuals by force, which is just another hierarchy. As long as one person can swing a club at another, you have a naturally emergent hierarchy. Once you’ve created a group of people to stop people from swinging clubs at other people, you’ve invented a hierarchy.
The anarchic ideal would be a system of organization to minimize the club-swinging. The proverbial sweet spot between preventing oppression without being oppressive. But it all ultimately comes down to club-swinging, you can’t have a purely anarchic system without enabling private power. The best you can do is aim for the flattest possible hierarchy.
This rings 100% true for me in regards to anarchism, communism, capitalism, socialism, feudalism… Pretty much any organisational structure that mankind has or will ever conceive.
People are difficult, irrational and unpredictable. Put a whole bunch of people together on a plot of land, multiply that 1 billion times over and you get the unfathomable clusterfuck that is modern civilization. Not even being defeatist about it, just pointing out the factual reality that the perfect society does not and will never exist, far from it. I am aware I’m rambling on and pointing out the obvious here.
well, at least until aliens invade.
people tend to be remarkable cooperative when faced with an external existential threat. most countries cohere quite well when they are in a state of war.
We got covid, and a lot of countries governments took advantage of it and spread misinformation and active vaccine denial. That’s about as close to an alien invasion as we’re gonna get, and we kinda failed disastrously at it.
I used to think we’d come together over an external threat too. Now I’m not so sure. In fact, we might even get people denying that it’s even happening.
people tend to be remarkable cooperative when faced with an external existential threat.
Counterpoint in the US at least: Covid.
that wasn’t an external threat. it was an internal one
This about the external threat… the uniting against, was always against other humans from near around. Almost against neighbours. There is still a destruction of our planet where we are not united against. And there is even less unitedness for a fight against warmongering countries.
The issue is that it’s not one problem, it’s thousands. Anarchism has countless solutions for countless power vacuums, from regulating the flow of meetings to federating different Zapatista towns.
You yourself are probably engaging in anarchic power vacuum mitigation when your friend group decides when to hang out and what to do; if anyone got too much power or responsibility you would take action to make things fair again.
Generally speaking, power vacuums are dismantled by dissolving the hierarchies that can be dissolved, changing the material conditions so power is decentralized, and building a social structure to hold the remaining power conditional on not being authoritarian. You can probably remember doing these things with your friends (or former friends).
Anarchist theory is either descriptive, like critically analysing the Zapatistas, or it’s putative, like sociocracy. So far we have no proven overarching theory of what works for everyone everywhere in every situation, but we do have lots of small anarchist collectives that are benefiting their members and their society in limited scopes.
Love the post. I would argue the latter (single overarching model concept) is antithetical to anarchist theory
This is the best answer. Anarchist societies do not work in practice. They work in theory.
I love the people who say anarchism / communism are utopian and would never work in practice without negative externalities- and then go bootlicking for representative democracy and capitalism
would anarchy work better in addition to some other system that does not rely on hierarchy?
What system does not rely on any hierarchy? That is supposed to be Anarchism
maybe something that has semi hierarchy, that can be dismantled on a whim if needed? Have the best from both worlds. Like, anarchy + democrady -> voting system, but politican can be removed at any time by anyone, meaning that they have to actually do good job to keep representing people. Cant even try pleasing everyone and do nothing as that wont help either. Abusers get dealt with in same way as abusers get dealt with in regular anarchy. Though all this relys on humans being even semi rational and decent, which kind of makes it utopistic idea. But it would still work likely better than current only rich get to rule system. And besides, what is the worst that would happen? People vote against their own interests, get apathetic and do nothing?
At worst, nothing at all gets done as no one is in charge of anything, which would still be better situation than current one as at least things wont get worse and if there is some ongoing crisis going on that has to be dealt with, if people still cant get the head out of their arses to deal with it, they have decided to let it happen. Just as we have right now decided to let climate change happen by just pretending to do meaningful things to stop it while in truth just focusing to protect the wealth of the rich.
Every day we have less and less to lose. Any system seems better than what we currently have, though i wonder if soviet union got started with that sentiment. But something has to change because way things currently are are intolerable and by the time that transforms into physical need(like hunger) its too late already because everything is too broken already due to planet not supporting enough life to sustain meaningful civilization.
All layers of decentralization add complexity and inefficiency. Anarchism relies on every human being fully educated on Anarchist theory (never going to happen).
Anarchism is more of a “good samaritan” ideology which can work as a band-aid for people to help each other within a bad system, but it has never become a fully functioning system itself.
we need something else than just democracy, or at least something that would also protect the integrity of democracy from corruption. If we had something like that and it would function reliably well people who want change would at least have something to rally behind instead of just wanting change into “something” that isnt ever really specified and thus wont ever gain any traction.
It’s more that they don’t scale well. What works well in a small group of friends will fall apart long before you scale it up even to just a national level, much less all of humanity.
The Zapatistas show that region-scale anarchy can work and remain stable. You need more careful and explicit structures to do things at scale, but the same goes for nation-states, just look at the average state’s legal and regulatory codes. Compared to trying not to break the law in a nation-state, participating in local anarchist organizing committees is child’s play.
We’ve only had the opportunity to apply this at a scale larger than the smallest 30-or-so nations, but in theory systems like sociocracy can nest exponentially, meaning there are applications that are already halfway to a world government.
I am not sure if I would call it Anarchism if it has explicit structures
Maybe you’re using some formal or narrow definition of “structure” but in my experience there are lots of things I would call structures in anarchist theory and practice, from meeting templates to the mental flowcharts of emergency medicine.
I guess we could just choose not to scale? We could go back to the city state model they had in Europe during middle ages and in antiquity.
The only issue is how you would defend yourself militarily. Case in point: there is a reason why these city states eventually became part of the Roman Empire. A city state versus the Roman empire? It’s not a fair fight at all.
To prevent something like this you would need, like, a super NATO full of thousands of nation states, but corporation at that level maybe difficult (NATO is already proving difficult to maintain as is). You could also have a state for the purpose of only having the military, but that could easily slide into a military dictatorship. So it’s tricky.
insert alt-right fantasy about how great ancient Europe was /s
Jokes aside, the cities model worked because that was the scale a society was able to grow to. Transport was very difficult as was communication. And even in the ancient cities there was a power hierarchy with councils of elders and stuff.
If your idea of not scaling up involves a super NATO of thousands of nation states, you should probably go back to the drawing board.
Yeah, I wasnt trying to present it as feasible
Military? Who would act militarily against a community? How do you figure slums survive? People could act “militarily” against them. Yet they survive and thrive.
…that is not what they said at all
it wouldnt.
It did. See most Native American tribes. Anarchy is “self-rule” not “pure chaos” as most would like you to think.
So having a chief and leader is anarchy?? ok bud
I am pretty certain from your response you do not understand their hierarchy or their culture. But please tell me more about what you know if anarchy.
It didnt. Thats why they continued to live in tribes. Anarachy by definition is tribal. It will not work beyond a small group of like minded people. And as soon as that group is threatened by any other centrally organized group they will fall.
I never said it would or wouldn’t work. I said what it was.
You you want true anarchy look at the African jungle. Truly no laws, no government, hunt and be hunted.
People always say dumb shit without realizing that there is a chance out there that not everyone is a selfish asshole
No there isn’t. In group big enough you WILL encounter selfish assholes. This is statistical certainty.
Every time some Marxist leftie talks about utopian system, they just say “I wish everyone get along and never killed, raped, or steal from others.”
Thats not how world works. You live surrounded untrustworthy people, some of which are murderers thieves and pedophiles, and the only reason they won’t abuse you is because we managed to work out framework in which there are authorities that will put those people in prisons.
If your wonderful utopian idea can’t reproduce that, it’s shit and won’t ever work
Taking the definition at its etymological root, all anarchy means is “without rule”.
In my head-canon, that doesn’t necessarily mean the lack of laws, state, institutions or governance; the implication is that there are no citizens or individuals with permanently elevated authority in the polity of government. Without rulers.
Many, of course, disagree with this mostly on the basis of practicality, but I’d like to think it’s another way to describe the concept of “No gods, no kings, no masters, no slaves.”
But then there’s the issue of who enforces the rules
Democracy is supposed to be that, but the citizenry doesn’t participate like they should so it devolves to where things are now.
Because the citizenry are disempowered, they have delegated their social obligations to institutions to handle it for them and thus hold no stake in what happens.
They view the result of politics as something that happens to them rather than something they influence, and frankly they’re right. We elect representatives who maybe hold one or two values we want, yet constantly act out of our own interests.
The only true democracy that can last is a direct democracy where everyone votes on the issues they want too.
The “archy” is definitely related to the idea of a top-level leadership/executive group that is set apart from the rest. Anarchy removes that executive privilege and parasitism.
For any society to function, there must be rules. Anarchy, in most forms, the community is the legislature and judiciary.
I guess you mean “without rule” as in “without people ruling” and not as “without norms”, and it is indeed correct. There is a word for “without norms”, which is anomie (at least in french).
Also, i’d argue that states and governance inherently require permanently elevated authority, but if you meant more general meaning for those, like state as organization of masses of people and governance as common decisions for those masses, then i see your point.
The “political class” of an anarchical state as I’ve described would be rotationary.
We in the United States have “Jury Duty”, where the average citizen is required by law to be selected to be part of a “jury of peers” on legal cases if the defendant exercises their right to a trial by jury.
Jurors can be struck down (relieved of their duty) for many reasons in the jury selection phase by attorneys, the judge, or submitting documentation on why they can’t perform their duty.
A corollary compulsory service or duty could be applied to the positions in the three branches of government we have in our current constitutional structure.
We would effectively shift from being a constitutional federal republic (on paper; in practice, the current form of government is a plutocracy) to a constitutional aleatory republic. We would have representative governance, but they’d be subject to review, competency approval, and votes of confidence.
One could also imagine ranked-choice voting and mandatory direct referendums regarding crucial policy decisions. Lobbyists must present their legal proposals to jurist-representatives and the general public, mitigating the efficacy of monetary influence in political speech and advertising.
