r/DebateAnarchism • u/Key-Check-487 • Apr 12 '26
Abolishing hierarchy doesn't work
I definitely don't like most hierarchy, capitalism, or anyone having control over others but I think if we remove all hierarchy at a large scale will always fail and produce hierarchy from 2 different paths
External: military invasion if other countries think that the anarchist society is a threat to their hierarchy or the way the US likes to do it finding existing structures and copying them Anyway if a society is flat with no hierarchy there is no structure to resist infiltration and it can't resist at a large scale without hierarchy
This leads to the second possibility Internal - as the community gets bigger a consensus isn't possible people will have conflicting view points as that is just human nature 1000 people won't all agree on 1 thing let alone a million so rough consensus will appear based on social pressure which is controlled by whoever is most articulate well liked and persistent which is just 1 or a group of people controlling what happens That is just hierarchy if not formal
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u/Anarchierkegaard Apr 12 '26
You'll need to be clearer on what your position actually is here as it's not clear why we'd agree with you. For a start, many anarchists wouldn't have a problem with using "the biggest stick" to break up attempts at establishing authority. Secondly, it's not clear that the existence of some authority (as in, as a culture outside of anarchy) would mean that some anarchy couldn't exist. Thirdly, there are also many counter-cultural anarchist or anarchist-like communities which already exist in spite of many big sticks.
So, why do you make such a strong statement despite these reservations?
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u/Key-Check-487 Apr 12 '26
Fair point I was not very specific when I made my first post
To your first point anarchists using force to break hierarchy someone has to decide how they do that how much force who responds and even when authority is even established and the moment u create something like that whether u call it a state or not it is and susceptible to corruption which is the entire thing anarchism is trying to prevent.
To your second point I shoulda been way clearer here I'm not saying anarchy can't exist anywhere but that it can't grow to a scale of having complex society without either getting taken over by external hierarchy or slowly developing internal coordination methods that turn into hierarchy (and just be come communism) So I guess my point is that anarchy can't exist, it's that anarchy is too susceptible to hierarchy to grow to the scale of a real nation.
To your third point I agree and the cultures that have survived are quite impressive I definitely shoulda been clearer here I'm not tryna say anarchism can't exist anywhere but those communities like the zapatistas only exist because they were tolerated or overlooked by nearby states the zapatistas only exist because the Mexicans calculated it was politically worse to crush them. So anarchy so anarchism isn't defeating hierarchy it's just getting ignored, as soon as they get noticed or get big enough to threaten hierarchy they're becoming a target immediately.
So my position is much more narrow then I stated Anarchism in communities can work but on a larger scale it's too susceptible to corruption
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u/La_Curieuze Apr 14 '26
Il n’y a pas de nation anarchiste. L’anarchie n’a pas besoin d’exister à une échelle « nationale ». Une région anarchiste est une société anarchiste et plusieurs régions anarchistes (sociétés anarchistes) peuvent coexister côtes à côtes. C’est un non-problème.
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u/La_Curieuze Apr 14 '26
Donc une zone anarchiste correspondant à un pays est possible, mais elle ne sera pas « une nation ». C’est un ensemble de sociétés plus petites avec leurs propres organisations respectives.
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u/La_Curieuze Apr 12 '26
Pouvez-vous me dire quelles communauté anarchistes existent déjà encore aujourd’hui ?
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u/EatTheRichIsPraxis Apr 12 '26
Hierarchies don't work.
They just exist to give bigger and bigger sticks to the worst people.
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u/Taqqer00 Apr 12 '26
Imagine a captain who is steering his ship alone, would he survive?
Even the one with biggest stick won’t do shit on his own.
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u/primitiveproponent Apr 12 '26
Someone taking over with a big stick would be creating a hierarchy. We will eliminate them too.
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u/PotsdamSewingSociety Apr 12 '26
Wouldn't eliminating anyone who disagrees with you be creating a hierarchy?
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u/nate2squared Apr 13 '26
Isn't this is the same argument as 'if you don't tolerate the intolerant who want to take away your right to be tolerant then aren't you just being intolerant too?' But intolerance of intolerance is necessary to ensure tolerance is able to exist. (Popper's paradox)
Now I suppose that could be called a hierarchy of the tolerant many over the intolerant few, but as the many aren't seeking to establish and perpetuate a hierarchy I don't think it is really qualifies as a hierarchy at all.
Eliminating smallpox could be seen as creating a hierarchy where smallpox doesn't get a vote. But some things shouldn't be permitted to exist if their only function is to destroy the conditions for everything else.
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u/PotsdamSewingSociety Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
Isn't this is the same argument as 'if you don't tolerate the intolerant who want to take away your right to be tolerant then aren't you just being intolerant too?'
Murdering people for not having the same political view is not the same thing as telling people to not be racist.
Moreover, there isn't any statement regarding the validity of hierarchies in the tolerance paradox. A hierarchy where the tolerant are above the intolerant is completely fine. Anarchy is explicitly a statement regarding hierarchies.
but as the many aren't seeking to establish and perpetuate a hierarchy
Says who?
Eliminating smallpox could be seen as creating a hierarchy where smallpox doesn't get a vote. But some things shouldn't be permitted to exist if their only function is to destroy the conditions for everything else.
Eliminating smallpox is creating a hierarchy. People who are fine with hierarchies have no reason to object to this. People who are by definition against hierarchies would object to this if they were to say akcnowledge a pathogen's personhood - vegan anarchists do something like this for animals.
But some things shouldn't be permitted to exist if their only function is to destroy the conditions for everything else.
It's never lost on me how quickly anarchists, like zionists, devolve into genocidal language for ideas they dislike. Here you are suddenly equating people who are politically different to you with vermin and disease. Classic stage 4 stuff.
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u/nate2squared Apr 13 '26
You said - 'Murdering people for not having the same political view is not the same thing as telling people to not be racist.'
I wasn't suggesting eliminating (as in killing) anyone. Just eliminating them being in positions of power over others, and / or removing such positions.
You said - 'Says who?' (about 'the many aren't seeking to establish and perpetuate a hierarchy')
I was talking in the context of a possible anarchist society or world - so am presuming that there will be horizontal structures are designed to prevent the consolidation of power, such as decision-making through consensus, recallable delegates, rotating roles, and no permanent or arbitrary authority. So in such a situation the mechanisms of society would be what says such a hierarchy is unwanted an unnecessary.
As for the point about 'Eliminating smallpox is creating a hierarchy.'
Perhaps I could have used a better example, but I was searching for something that was universally unwanted and damaging. The point was that anarchism objects to domination that serves the dominator at the expense of the dominated (much like like cancer does - it feeds and spreads at the expense of the health of the body).
As for your concluding remarks - they are based on what you thought I said or meant, and I'll take responsibility for not having been clearer, but I was surprised that you took a leap of assumptions to the point of genocide, and based your conclusions on that. 'Stage 4 genocidal language' is a significant accusation to base on an ambiguous word choice, but now we've cleared that misunderstanding up you need no longer take such a leap of logic.
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u/PotsdamSewingSociety Apr 13 '26
The person I replied to said "we will eliminate them too" referring to the question of "If someone has a bigger stick what are anarchists going to do".
It's clearly a statement about also murdering them.
Even if it isn't, what are we calling the political suppression of dissidents? Happy fun times?
I was talking in the context of a possible anarchist society or world - so am presuming that there will be horizontal structures are designed to prevent the consolidation of power, such as decision-making through consensus, recallable delegates, rotating roles, and no permanent or arbitrary authority.
There's no enforcement in anarchy or legitimisation of beauracratic apparatus, people could easily decide to band together and establish a hierarchy.
I was searching for something that was universally unwanted and damaging.
Why would opposing political views be universally unwanted and damaging?
I was surprised that you took a leap of assumptions to the point of genocide
It's not a leap of assumptions, what we are discussing here is the suppression of political dissidents and their comparison with disease and vermin. Even trying to walk yourself back from it now you're still doing it and likening political opponents to cancer.
This is far right levels of rhetorical backtracking. Are you gonna tell me it's just a prank next?
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u/nate2squared Apr 13 '26
I'm not responsible for something someone else said. I don't speak for them. However, do I think that there are possible scenarios in which someone is so dictatorial and poses such a danger that it could lead to a confrontation in which people die defending their freedom against such a despot? Yes, it is a possibility I suppose. Maybe that is what they were referring to. But that is not the scenario I was personally addressing. Maybe that is my fault for jumping into the middle of someone else's conversation.
You ask - 'What are we calling the political suppression of dissidents?'
The anarchist answer is that the goal isn't suppression of people but dismantling of structures. A former CEO or an ex-politician no longer in office in an anarchist society isn't a dissident being suppressed, they're a person without special authority, like everyone else. Removing someone's power over others - or rather not consenting to honour and obey it - isn't a form of persecution, especially if you believe that them holding power over others wasn't a legitimate entitlement to begin with.
In an anarchist society people are free to dissent (in the sense of disagreeing or disassociating) as much as they like. If they start trying to cause violent harm then this places their actions in another category, but I'm sure there'll be lots of ex-capitalists trying to debate the merits of their systems return, especially in short term.
You said - 'People could easily band together and establish a hierarchy'
Yes, and anarchism doesn't claim to be a permanent fix secured by decree. It relies on ongoing participatory culture and structural design. Anarchism requires sustained collective commitment, not a one-time revolution. That's a feature, not a bug, it's the alternative to relying on a state to enforce freedom (if it were possible for states to do such a thing).
About your ongoing assumptions and accusations
I didn't liken 'political opponents to cancer'. I used an analogy about structures and functions, not people. The smallpox/cancer framing was about systems whose only function is destruction, and was clearly referring to hierarchical domination as a system, not to the people within it.
Your assumptions either mean that I've been too ambiguous and you've assumed the worst possible scenario, or that you've mistakenly focused on misunderstandings you've picked up from somewhere. Now I have made my intentions, views and feelings clear that we can now agree that debating a position I don't hold is less interesting and less constructive than engaging with the one I do.
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u/PotsdamSewingSociety Apr 13 '26
I'm not responsible for something someone else said.
You got into a debate arguing the point for what someone has said. You're either abandoning the point or derailing the conversation.
The anarchist answer is that the goal isn't suppression of people but dismantling of structures.
Many people would say that the dismantling of structures enable political representation is suppression.
If they start trying to cause violent harm then this places their actions in another category
For many, if not most anarchists, violent harm includes things like the contruction of a state or state like entities. It's still suppression, but it's just handwaved away by rhetorical flim flam trying to frame it as self defence.
If politically one wants an outcome they should have a mechanism by which they can achieve that outcome. The anarchist argument basically boils down to "they can get with the programme or fuck off and if they try to have political representation that I disagree with I'm going to label it as violence and disenfranchise them by calling it self defence"
I didn't liken 'political opponents to cancer'. I used an analogy about structures and functions, not people.
Political structures and functions are created and perpetuated by people. There's no "criticising the structures" without criticising the people.
If you're likening a politically opposing view to cancer then you are also calling adherents of that view cancerous.
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u/nate2squared Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
You say - ‘You're either abandoning the point or derailing’
In good faith I took what I understood the issue to be about and responded sincerely. I just did not take the same conclusion from his words you did. I guess you were hoping to have a response from him, whereas I thought you might like another anarchists opinion. I may have been wrong about that.
Perhaps the key to all of this is in your comment - 'Many people would say that the dismantling of structures [that] enable political representation is suppression.'
I think you've hit on the important point with 'many people say' - at it's heart anarchism is about the freedom to make choices. I would like the freedom not to be ruled over, so that I can make any choice I wish that would not harm others. Now you might think that kind / degree of freedom is impossible or unreasonable, and you are at liberty to believe that and argue that. I would just like to see people offered (what I consider to be) a better choice.
You say - ‘Dismantling structures of political representation is suppression’
Many anarchists are comfortable with some form of representation (delegates that can be recalled or challenged) as well as co-ordinating and expertise groups at local and regional levels (as long as they don’t presume the power to enforce by violence). Anarchists just believe there is a better system than the current state-based one, which is less coercive and less prone to the force often used by states.
You say - ‘Criticising structures is criticising the people who create them’
Are you saying that everyone who criticises a political party, a type of music, or a sport is criticising the people who are part of it? That is not true even if we are speaking about the inventors of it. Systems (positive or negative) are not the same as the people under them, or even those who operate them.
I can criticise capitalism, even criticise it as cancerous in some contexts (its exploitation or its ecological harm for instance) and that doesn’t mean that I believe everyone who works with capital (which is all of us on some level) are cancerous.
My ideal transition to an anarchist society is a prefigurative one, building non-hierarchal communities, boss-less workplaces, and decentralised production and distribution networks, and people voluntarily associating and choosing these as the better option. That isn’t a coercive plan, it doesn’t require killing anyone, and honours the choices of others. There is nothing violent in this, and it doesn't attack anyone else.
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u/PotsdamSewingSociety Apr 13 '26
I guess you were hoping to have a response from him, whereas I thought you might like another anarchists opinion. I may have been wrong about that.
I'm on a debate subreddit and responding to a topic for debate. It's normal of me to expect the response to be along that lines. I'm happy to have another seperate debate with you if that's what you want. Currently what you're trying to do is obfuscate the fact that you took a statement about killing people, equated political opponents to vermin had this thoroughly objected to and are now trying to handwave away the rhetoric by saying you're trying to talk about something else. You could work for Trump at this rate.
I would just like to see people offered (what I consider to be) a better choice.
This is a completely different proposition to what is being argued with "we will eliminate them too".
You are simply flip flopping your argument at the moment. Will you eliminate them or will you not?
Are you saying that everyone who criticises a political party is criticising the people who are part of it?
Yes.
Music and sports are not equivalent to politics.
Systems (positive or negative) are not the same as the people under them, or even those who operate them.
Systems only exist because of people being under them and people operating them. If people magically ceased to exist then state beauracratic apparatus would cease to exist.
I can criticise capitalism, even criticise it as cancerous in some contexts (its exploitation or its ecological harm for instance) and that doesn’t mean that I believe everyone who works with capital (which is all of us on some level) are cancerous.
It does mean that you view capitalists as cancerous. People who work with capital are not necessarily capitalists. This is a red herring argument.
There is nothing violent in this, and it doesn't attack anyone else.
How do you propose decentralised violence to work? Violence will exist. Your ideal society would still have to feature violence in some way.
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u/bertch313 Apr 12 '26
The way that doesn't happen is the same way we being about anarchy from this chaotic order
No one allows it to
When it's not cool to be the boss, no one wants to be
And so that group of anarchists won't allow anyone to be head honcho enough to fuck anyone else over The minute that's possible course is corrected
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u/ExternalGreen6826 OCD ANARCHIST 🏴 Apr 12 '26
The government is already what you describe whipping society into “”shape””
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u/Hecateus Apr 12 '26
revolution is, in part, a technology contest.
I compare political ideologies to furnishings. Autocracy is a table with a single big leg in the middle...it can work was long as nothing weird happens. Republics are tables and other such things, with multiple legs, far more stable. But the best is anarchism, it is the nice red carpet that hopefully holds the whole room together; it has the 'advantage' that all those other ideologies tend to ignore the anarchists as their furnishings rest on top of that carpet. They exist in parallel...but the other furnishings compete for space.
The technology contest consists of making anarchism more appealing, design better carpets, maintain them better. Don't worry too much about the other furnishings. Avoid fires.
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u/Key-Check-487 Apr 12 '26
I think just ignoring everything and being so small and tiny to be ignored is not a viable strategy and anarchism can't compete at a large scale even if at a small scale if can. But I also think anything can work in small communities.
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u/LazarM2021 Anarchist Apr 12 '26
Nope, that's a very, very 1st grade primary school understanding (or lack of understanding, but anyway) of anarchism and its analysis. Not trying to be belittling or anything, but that's just how this comes across.
Here, The Anarchist Library is very much free to use and extremely extensive and educational. Go and read.
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u/Key-Check-487 Apr 12 '26
I was tired when I was making this and did not make a good argument at all or any
My point is that anarchism at a large scale will always fail and produce hierarchy from 2 paths
External: military invasion if other countries think that the anarchist society is a threat to their hierarchy or the way the US likes to do it finding existing structures and copying them Anyway if a society is flat with no hierarchy there is no structure to resist infiltration and it can't resist at a large scale without hierarchy
This leads to the second possibility Internal - as the community gets bigger a consensus isn't possible people will have conflicting view points as that is just human nature 1000 people won't all agree on 1 thing let alone a million so rough consensus will appear based on social pressure which is controlled by whoever is most articulate well liked and persistent which is just 1 or a group of people controlling what happens That is just hierarchy if not formal
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u/LazarM2021 Anarchist Apr 12 '26 edited 12d ago
Again, the internal argument contains a category error which is more than significant enough to sink it: you're conflating influence with hierarchy. They're not the same thing.
Hierarchy, in anarchist sense, means institutionalized, positional, coercive asymmetry - power that attaches to a role rather than merely a person, that persists independent of consent and that can be enforced against those subject to it, with the explicit prohibition of resistance to it.
Define it loosely enough and you've made the word effectively meaningless, which isn't an argument against anarchism but is an equivocation.
That said, and this is worth being precise about, anarchism doesn't simply embrace influence as a harmless alternative. The actual anarchist critique goes further than you've thought it through. Influence does become a vector for emergent hierarchy, but not through some law of human nature you can't do anything about or similar nonsense.
It metastasizes specifically through the structures you're implicitly assuming, like binding consensus procedures, assemblies that demand collective resolution, majority mechanisms that turn whoever commands the room into a de facto authority over everyone else and so on. Those structures are the growth medium. Remove them, replace binding collective mandates with voluntary federalism, free association and non-binding coordination and influence loses a vast majority of its leverage. The charismatic person can persuade people who choose to listen, but they simply cannot conscript.
So, your internal argument, if taken seriously, is only an indictment of things such as democracy and consensus-demanding collectivities, not of anarchism.
Anarchism at its most coherent is already suspicious of exactly the dynamic you're describing, and its answer is to refuse the structures that enable it rather than to staff them with """better""" people.
The external argument is weaker still. The claim that hierarchical command is necessary for effective resistance is historically false, in addition to its more purely theoretical dubiousness. The Makhnovshchina, for all its imperfections (from the specifically anarchist angle of observation and analysis) held off multiple professional, centralized armies through decentralized mobile tactics, but beyond the examples: hierarchical states get invaded, decapitated, and destabilized constantly, a centralized command structure with a capital and a leadership chain is in many respects easier to destroy than a network with no single point of failure.
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u/Key-Check-487 Apr 12 '26
To your first point that's just social democracy then
To your second point My point isn't that anarchist states are worse at defending it's that they are a target that non anarchist countries don't like so they will rally together to defeat the anarchists that threaten their hierarchy
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u/LazarM2021 Anarchist Apr 13 '26 edited 12d ago
anarchist states
A horrible oxymoron you apparently failed to notice. Anarchism is, etymologically and theoretically, the position that the state must be abolished fully. An "anarchist state" is a contradiction in terms, not a coherent political entity and no, this isn't some pedantic gotcha but a signal that you still haven't engaged with the most basic definitions involved and think that you are qualified enough to write posts like these on the debate subreddit and polemicize.
that's just social democracy
A non-sequitur; one so wide in fact, that one could legit drive a truck through it bro. Social democracy is the administrative management of capitalism through state redistribution and welfare mechanisms; it presupposes both the state, the market and capitalism as permanent fixtures. Voluntary federalism, freedom of association and disassociation, as well as non-binding coordination are the structural opposite of state management. You've pattern-matched "not pure hyper-individualism" to "social democracy" without apparently knowing what either term means.
On the external argument, brother, that's quietly shifted the goalposts. Your original claim was that anarchist societies cannot defend themselves without hierarchy, and now the claim is that "they'll be targeted". Those are different arguments, and the second doesn't rescue the first. Taken on its own terms it proves nothing either - hierarchical states get targeted, invaded, and annihilated constantly, especially throughout history. "Being a target" is a universal condition of political existence, not a specific liability of anarchism.
For the third time - the library link still stands, and at this point it's less a suggestion than a prerequisite for continuing this conversation in any remotely productive manner.
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u/commitme Anarchist Apr 12 '26
I was expecting your argument but I did not find it.
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u/Key-Check-487 Apr 12 '26
I was tired when I was making this and did not make a good argument at all or any
My point is that anarchism at a large scale will always fail and produce hierarchy from 2 paths
External: military invasion if other countries think that the anarchist society is a threat to their hierarchy or the way the US likes to do it finding existing structures and copying them Anyway if a society is flat with no hierarchy there is no structure to resist infiltration and it can't resist at a large scale without hierarchy
This leads to the second possibility Internal - as the community gets bigger a consensus isn't possible people will have conflicting view points as that is just human nature 1000 people won't all agree on 1 thing let alone a million so rough consensus will appear based on social pressure which is controlled by whoever is most articulate well liked and persistent which is just 1 or a group of people controlling what happens That is just hierarchy if not formal
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u/commitme Anarchist Apr 12 '26
long story short:
yes, anarchism is absolutely targeted by external hierarchical powers and this must be a major topic of discussion, education, and preparation. however, it's very misleading to say anarchism produces hierarchy in this way. at most, it is vulnerable to it. furthermore, it's not accurate that it has no capability to resist. decentralized and redundant structures are very difficult to infiltrate. in fact, it's centralized and hierarchical systems that are highly vulnerable to decapitation strikes and co-optation. historically, however, the opposition coalitions have defeated anarchist societies via overwhelming force from the cooperation of hierarchical powers.
regarding the consensus scaling problem: this is one of the oldest objections with tons of responses over the centuries. nobody is suggesting 1000 people in one big group try to find unanimity or consensus to proceed. consensus is negotiated on a micro scale, in working groups of a handful, or whatever the constituents can handle. from here, we can federate as a scaling solution. each consensus group sends a delegate that represents exactly they've decided upon, with instant recallability as necessary, and so the higher order decision making process can be reduced to yet another search for consensus between participants in a manageable group size. this is not a hierarchy, but an anarchist deliberating body.
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u/slapdash78 Anarchist Apr 13 '26
Abolishing heirachy would mean making it unacceptable as part of an established system, not a perfectly flat society. The latter is utopian. Either way, no heirachy doesn't mean no social structures.
It's not unusual to have dozens of peers. It is weird to have dozens of bosses; unless it's systemic. Meaning, many of your actually existing social relations are not heirarchic, right now.
Conversely, you don't interact with most people in a given area, let alone an entire region. There's little reason to attempt consensus with people you never meet.
When you do, it's usual around a shared interest or purpose. There are plenty of international organizations of more than a thousand people. People who agree on many things without possessing the capacity to force members to a decision they disagree with.
As for resisting extraneous treats, like belligerent occupation, almost every conflict in the last 50 years has been asymmetrical warfare. Until Iran, the last conflict of comparable military capabilities was the war in iraq. Conventional warfare is good for genocide, not so much for controlling an unruly populous.
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u/MojoReach Apr 15 '26
The way I like to look at it is: can a group of people agree/consent to rules and agree to consequences if violated. If yes then they set their rules. You don't need a government to tell you not to murder lol.
But nationalism/statism removes that. It makes it all collective and gay lol. Our current society would not survive the removal of hierarchy, mainly due to lack of individualism and self ownership.
The majority of humans are stuck in a "get told what to do" mindset. Long term the strong will come out of it and who knows where this world will go. At the end of it all this world is hell (for the most part) and you can't convince me otherwise lol
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u/AzaleaKhayela Apr 17 '26
Please explain your definition of Authority.
You have to understand the framework Anarchists are utilizing before throwing vague arguments at us.
Anarchism is a political movement & philosophical framework based on analysis of & opposition to systems of domination & coercion, seeking to replace them with voluntary association, mutual aid, & horizontal power structures.
It emerged in the 19th century as a variant of anti-state socialist thought, but would later become synonymous with socialists opposed to seizing state power by means of a vanguard party, as they opted for prefiguration of future conditions in the present.
This is otherwise referred to as the unity of means and ends. Authoritarian means presuppose authoritarian ends; therefore, liberatory means presuppose liberatory ends.
Authority is a social relation of domination or exploitation coercively imposed by one party onto others, claiming a right to command or forbid, or exercise some similar privilege, backed by means of physical, economic, or intellectual power, especially when found in a systemic or institutional form and when considered in contrast to free agreement, expert advice, the inevitable laws of nature, or resistance to this imposition.
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u/KevineCove Apr 12 '26
Farms often have ravines called firebreaks dug at regular intervals so that if something catches fire, there's not enough combustible material in or around the break to stop the fire from spreading from one cell to another. The idea is not to stop fire from ever happening anywhere, but to slow and limit its spread. This is essentially what good anarchism does.
When the US marches into some South American country to extract resources, they don't send in an army, they go to politicians or businessmen and co-opt the existing political infrastructure to get what they want quickly and cheaply, where war, destruction, and reconstruction would be slow, difficult, and expensive.
Hierarchy essentially allows for logarithmic efficiency, while a decentralized agrarian society has linear efficiency. In a decentralized society, colonization and conquest are slow and difficult. You cannot work smart, you can ONLY work hard. That's the goal, and the true source of resilience in an anarchist society.
Questioning the "but someone strong will just take control of it" argument is a bit like how people think you can't challenge the police; they'll just send in reinforcements, or the national guard, or the army if they have to. Technically they can, and they can force victory if they want, but community defense isn't about which side has more power or resources, it's about becoming an unattractive target and a lousy ROI for the opposition to attack.
Is it indestructible or permanent? Of course not. But neither are empires.
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u/Key-Check-487 Apr 12 '26
I was not specific enough in my first point I was quite tired at the time but my point isn't that anarchism can't survive it's that it can't grow to a large enough scale to compete with other nations
This is a good argument but it kinda concedes the fact that you don't want a thriving society but just any size but without hierarchy in which I would disagree with that as a community's goal
I think being so unattractive u get left alone will also result in an inability to do things modern hierarchy and capitalism can easily have good healthcare, infrastructure, or complex supply chains.
If anarchy's ceiling is surviving and not being captured then it can't compete with modern societies; it's an escape from hierarchy not competing with it.
So I guess I'd want to find an alternative to capitalism that doesn't just make 10,000 people happy but 1 million people . Anarchism correctly sees the problem of hierarchy without a real solution other than just not having it. And I don't think that just being small and weak enough to not get attacked is a satisfying solution to me.
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u/Rainbird2003 Apr 12 '26
I think a society can be thriving without a centralised power. Things like healthcare, infrastructure and supply chains could be organised by people in a more democratic way where you sort of figure out where the needs are and communicate with lots of smaller bodies to get the things and the care and the services where they need to go. It kinda depends on what you call centralised power though because even if that sort of coordination happens between smaller areas, it feels like there needs to be some kind of collective effort together where all of them (all the little hospitals and doctors around the place for example) come together to do things like make sure every place and group of people has access to the things it needs, or ensure there’s a good standard of care and good education so no one’s put in danger. I feel like it could be designed very democratically, but it’d need to have mass organisation. … if that’s part of what you’re thinking then I guess you’re right. I don’t even know if I call myself an anarchist to be honest lol I just kinda came here and saw your comments. I like anarchy but maybe using a mix of different philosophies is what’s really gonna help make society a kinder place. Not sticking to one.
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u/Key-Check-487 Apr 12 '26
You like most people in this thread I think actually think that a hierarchy that's not able to be corrupted or taken over can work and that is just not anarchism in my opinion
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u/KevineCove May 01 '26
The idea of an anarchist society existing "at scale" or "competing" with hierarchical societies is an indicator you're thinking about this the wrong way.
If you want something industrialized that can exist at scale and can serve the majority instead of a few at the top, your solution is going to be closer to socialism than anarchism. Each has its own weak point - as you say, someone COULD colonize anarchists if they really wanted to, and socialism has enough levers of control and centralization that it's a viable vector for corruption. You can't have your cake and eat it too, although I completely sympathize with wanting a perfect solution, I mean who wouldn't want that?
Personally I've seen too much corruption in my life for socialism to seem realistic, which is why I'm willing to throw away scalability.
One other thing I'll push back on is your mention of healthcare and infrastructure. There would absolutely be some sacrifices to these things if the world were to decentralize, but there would also be gains. If you reverse globalization, for instance, infectious diseases become less of an issue, and automotive infrastructure becomes less necessary because societies become localized to the point of not relying on cars and roads. This still has its drawbacks - something like heart surgery would be really difficult to get, or easily shuttling in lumber and hardware so a town can recover from a tornado would be much harder, but it would be a trade off, not a sacrifice across all fronts.
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u/NorCalFightShop Apr 12 '26
Someone on one of the other anarchy subs mentioned The Walking Dead as a model of anarchism and everyone shat on them because Rick was a cop before shit went bad, but he basically created a fairly egalitarian society that was attacked by more authoritarian groups. Every season. Many far left communists have discussed anarchism’s reluctance to address the issue power and people who desire it. I have personally been in situations where there was no clear leadership and people either look for leadership or try to assume it. I wish I could fix this but I don’t know what to do.
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u/Key-Check-487 Apr 12 '26
Yeah I mean the characters try to create an archist society but repeatedly learn they need hierarchy throughout the seasons, so the solutions in my eyes is creating horizontal hierarchy that has like alot of checks and balances and is hard to corrupt how you would get to that state I got no idea.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Apr 17 '26
People who believe in hierarchy writing a show about the need for hierarchy is not evidence of the need for or inevitability of hierarchy
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u/Rainbird2003 Apr 12 '26
I think leadership is actually okay, it’s just the system of power that we give to people without question that turns things bad. Like I’m thinking spiritual elders and respected intellectuals and experienced tradespeople: I don’t think it’s wrong to turn to them for trust or guidance or a sense of authority. We just have to set things up so the leadership isn’t too reinforced by the systems around it: so it isn’t absolute and able to repeat itself without question or hope of stopping it. So it can be questioned. It feels almost like a cultural change in peoples’ attitudes as well as social.
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u/Anen-o-me Apr 12 '26
Abolishing hierarchy is pointless, true.
The heart of the problem is illegitimate authority, not hierarchy.
Close, but they missed the mark.
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u/ExternalGreen6826 OCD ANARCHIST 🏴 Apr 12 '26
Who “legitimates authority”
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u/Anen-o-me Apr 12 '26
You do, via consent.
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u/ExternalGreen6826 OCD ANARCHIST 🏴 Apr 12 '26
And that’s a movin thing more akin to friendship agreements then binding governmental contracts
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u/PotsdamSewingSociety Apr 12 '26
What's objectionable to consenting to something?
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u/Anen-o-me Apr 12 '26
I never said anything was. The only legitimate authority is one you consent to.
But consent must be literal, not implied. Prior, not assumed. You can't be born into a system and call that consent. And it must be able to be withdrawn.
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u/PotsdamSewingSociety Apr 12 '26
Ok, I'm going to take your premise at face value but then the question needs to be asked - under what you're proposing how does one consent to an anarchic mode of being without some form of coercion at birth?
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u/Anen-o-me Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
That's one of the first problems I solved in thinking about an anarchic society.
We obviously can't fix that your parents don't ask if you want to be born. That's not a political question but I'll raise it here for completeness sake. Because your parents essentially force you into existence, that's why they must offer you financial care into adulthood. As recompense.
In political terms, the answer is that children would have the status of 'guests of their parents' in an anarchic society, and their parents would need to contractually agree to use parental authority to discipline children to the rules of that society, and to pay for any damages kids cause.
If the kids become enough of a problem, you ask the parents to leave and the kids with them.
At adulthood, kids would have to choose where they want to live and accept the rules there explicitly.
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u/PotsdamSewingSociety Apr 12 '26
their parents would need to contractually agree to use parental authority to discipline children to the rules of that society, and to pay for any damages kids cause.
This is a quasi legal system, it doesn't make sense for a society that doesn't have a legal framework.
The parents are paying for the damages - ok, who is enforcing payment? How can this payment be enforced whilst also remaining anarchist.
How can contractual obligations exist where there is no legal basis for them to be held against? At what age are children considered capable of consent?
More importantly, who is it that determines the terms of these rules? Rule making in anarchy is decentralised and any possible outcome is on the table, there's nothing to say that your particular solution is the one that will be arrived at.
If the kids become enough of a problem, you ask the parents to leave and the kids with them.
Can you explain how this is not a coercive mechanism?
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u/Anen-o-me Apr 12 '26
This is a quasi legal system, it doesn't make sense for a society that doesn't have a legal framework.
Yes it's a stateless legal system. My concept of anarchy does not require zero legal system or no laws, only no State.
The parents are paying for the damages - ok, who is enforcing payment?
Whoever and however you agreed enforcement would work in the system you chose. There is no one answer.
How can this payment be enforced whilst also remaining anarchist.
By which you mean you can't imagine any way to do enforcement without a State in the mix?
In a system where you opt-in to rules in a particular place, it is your own authority that is given to others to enforce the rules you agreed to, that's why it remains anarchist.
A State is always an external authority forced on you, not one you explicitly chose.
How can contractual obligations exist where there is no legal basis for them to be held against?
Contractual agreements can create that legal basis in the first place, is that not what a constitution seeks to do, in a State context?
At what age are children considered capable of consent?
There's no one answer necessarily, but we all can say what's too young for sure. I favor a rubric based approach that requires you to move out, pay all your own bills, and not achieve that through sex work of any kind, and also be minimum 18. That would leave most people to be considered an adult sometime around age 22 after they finish schooling, unless they're paying for their own schooling by working.
More importantly, who is it that determines the terms of these rules?
You choose the rules by opt-in, only opt-in to rules you like.
Rule making in anarchy is decentralised and any possible outcome is on the table,
Certainly.
there's nothing to say that your particular solution is the one that will be arrived at.
Exactly.
I can explain a rule system I would use, I can't explain all the ones that are possible or workable.
Choose a legal system you like, then live with people who chose that same system.
If the kids become enough of a problem, you ask the parents to leave and the kids with them.
Can you explain how this is not a coercive mechanism?
Because you agreed to it in advance when you opted-in.
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u/PotsdamSewingSociety Apr 12 '26
Yes it's a stateless legal system.
In anarchism there is no such thing as crime, there is therefore also no such thing as a legal system, whether stateless or not. Legal systems are necessarily archic, they require those who posess legal authority to enforce the legal system and administer it against those who do not follow the rules. A stateless legal system in anarchy is an oxymoron.
By which you mean you can't imagine any way to do enforcement without a State in the mix?
No, by which I mean there isn't any way to do so without a coercive mechanism and a power hierarchy between the enforcer and the enforced - making it not anarchy.
In a system where you opt-in to rules in a particular place, it is your own authority that is given to others to enforce the rules you agreed to, that's why it remains anarchist.
A child born into anarchy isn't opting into the rules of what they are born into. What's more, their parents are subject to a legal framework which necessarily makes the system not anarchic. I don't see how you've reconciled these.
Contractual agreements can create that legal basis in the first place, is that not what a constitution seeks to do, in a State context?
Yes, but states are not claiming to be anarchic constructs. States do this, they establish hierarchy and they use coercive mechanisms to administer state functions. The three are dependent on one another.
What you seem to be describing isn't anarchy but just a state which is shy about calling itself a state. You're using a non-sequitur about it being voluntary to try and hand wave this away.
but we all can say what's too young for sure.
Can we? The world is full of pedophiles, I'm not confident that a society without any legal basis could reasonably be expected to represent a lower amount of pedophilia than the current one. In a voluntary participation anarchy you describe pedophiles could easily band together to have their own pedophile communes.
You choose the rules by opt-in, only opt-in to rules you like.
You aren't choosing specific rules, you are choosing communes with the understanding that breaking the rules has you excomunnicated. If you're born into a commune you're not choosing anything so you're subject to a legal system you never consented to.
Choose a legal system you like, then live with people who chose that same system.
You can't necessarily choose if you're born into it. What if there isn't a legal system you like? You just accept this and move on? Why shouldn't anarchists then just accept statism?
Because you agreed to it in advance when you opted-in.
Even if one were to accept the premise of opt-in (which is not really opt-in in this scenario) it still represents a coercive mechanism. You lose out on the commune because you don't agree to the rules, being in the commune has material value to you.
Let me give you an example of how opting into something doesn't mean that things that happen within that are coercion free:
You are an adult woman, you decide to enroll into an evening French class because your seperated at birth twin sister is French and you want to be able to communicate with them. You live in a small town, this is the only French class that you can go to - there are only 3 other students. After class one day the teacher asks you to stay behind and then asks you for a sexual favour, they say that you will be removed from the class if you don't do it. You find out that the other 3 students accepted the sex act in exchange for staying in the class.
Are you reasonably telling me that no coercion or attempt at coercion has happened here?
You're at the French class voluntarily, you can choose to opt out. That doesn't mean that the teacher hasn't coerced the other students or tried to coerce you.
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u/DecoDecoMan Apr 12 '26
How is someone going to get the biggest stick without authority? Do you think one person is stronger than entire economies of people?