Havnt looked into the actual thinking behind anarchism. Played a lot of 2b2t.org back in my day so thats my reference point. Please enlighten me on your thinking.
less theory, more examples, my personal opinion on the author is mixed but it’s a good text for people new to “wait, anarchy isn’t British empire propaganda about anarchy?” https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works
There will probably many different answers because there are many flavors of anarchism. We all share the same antiauthoritian spirit but we come all from differen starting points.
Talking from my perspective, I cant put my viee on anarchism in better words than this text: To Change Everything - an anarchist appeal by crimethinc
if you’re not sure yet if you might be an anarchist, consider Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!.
A colleague who used to work the late shift with me, and who I now realize was probably an anarchist told me to check out David Graeber’s essay on Bullshit Jobs, which I found to be pretty radicalizing. There’s also a book on the topic by Graeber if you want a longer version with more examples.
Are you looking for a general summary of the principles of anarchism? Or are you looking for a model of how it might look in real life if implemented? Or are you looking for a moral/ethical defense of anarchism vs other forms of governance?
All of the above. I asked my uncensored chatgpt but id like to hear some actual peoples opinions from those who believe
Here’s a super short summary on those points:
- Anarchism is about horizontal power structures, mutuality, and community.
- Horizontal power rejects the idea that a small number of people with very large amounts of power have a right/duty to rule over a much larger group of people. Systems of power, (meaning groups of people and organizations that have influence), should be distributed widely, not concentrated or centralized.
- Mutuality means that the relationships that societies form with each other, both internally and externally, ought to be roughly equal. There are no relationships that fundamentally privilege one person or group above another. The rules apply equally to everybody.
- Community means that the primary consideration to any decision or action is how it affects the group first and foremost. For instance, instead of asking whether or not a certain action would generate profit, or make some specific person happier, the community involved as a whole should get to consider how said action would affect all of them.
- There are many examples of anarchistic societies both past and present. The Amish, Buddhist monasteries, Anabaptist communities, the Rojava autonomous region in Syria, the Zapatistas in Mexico. While none of these groups 100% adhere to fully anarchist principles, they share many of the same principles and structures. Most people wonder how a society could function with no central leadership or power. While there are many things that would have to change greatly to make that work, there isn’t anything about anarchism that inherently makes it impossible. Modern open source projects like the Fediverse we are on right now, operate in a pseudo-anarchistic way.
- There are many ways to argue against Statism and centralized power structures, what you might find compelling will depend largely on your other ethical and moral commitments. But I will say for me, I never heard any arguments that could justify the power of the state. All arguments that seemed to justify state power ultimately could be flipped to argue for other things that obviously are bad, like mob rule. I also found it incredibly interesting that when pressed, most people actually agreed with me that there was no convincing justification for state monopoly on power, but they still rejected anarchism for pragmatic reasons. They didn’t think modern societies could operated like that effectively.
Some of the other commenters here have linked good resources, For me, understanding two key things caused me to move to my political views:
- Capitalism is inherently self-defeating and unethical, which moved me to Socialism.
- The state monopoly on power is unjustifiable, which moved me to Anarchism. The combination of those two conclusions firmly places me in the Anarcho-Socialist camp of political philosophy. The details of how that should look and operate on a practical level are still something I discuss and debate with folks, but we all agree on the general principles.
