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.
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
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
Hereโs 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 isnโt 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 didnโt 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.
For example, a thief steals a loaf of bread and the owner of the store can gather a mob to lynch a thief. Anarchy has the great potential to administer unproportional justice.
You shouldnโt come into an anarchist community and start answering questions about anarchism when you clearly havenโt done your homework.
But hey, since OP is interested in how anarchy would work, letโs go over how such a society would respond to the scenario that youโve painted. Vigilante justice is never impossible in any society, but that doesnโt mean it would be tolerated. The requirement to have disputes arbitrated by a neutral third party is pretty universal. What differentiates anarchy is that arbiters are freely chosen by (possibly delegated) mutual agreement, instead of the state forcibly inserting itself into every dispute as the supreme arbiter.
Letโs say the thief was a member of a commune. Since the thief is dead, their dispute with the baker and the lynch mob can be claimed by their next of kin, or closest equivalent. Either way, weโll say that the dispute gets delegated to the commune as a whole, which collectively handles security and dispute resolution for its members.
The baker has a contract with a company (probably organized as a workers cooperative) that offers security and dispute resolution services. For simplicity, letโs say that the members of the lynch mob also use this companyโs services.
The commune and the company might have different sets of rules that their members agree to, but itโs reasonable to assume that they both recognize:
- The thief should not have stolen the bread, as it was a product of the bakerโs labor and was not being offered for free. While the commune functions primarily via gift economy, they defer to local norms in these situations.
- The baker would be entitled to restitution for both the stolen bread and the costs necessary to secure that restitution
- Killing the thief to stop them from stealing in the moment would have been a wildly disproportionate response
- This was not merely done as an act of immediate defense, but an act of retribution
- The baker made no attempt to resolve this dispute through a neutral third party
- The members of the lynch mob all acted as accomplices to the murder
From there itโs just a matter of negotiating what restitution is owed to whom. Perhaps the commune and the company canโt come to an agreement on what exactly is owed, so they agree to defer to a neutral arbiter of their own. They may both be members of a local federation of dispute resolution bodies, which would simplify handling this.
There are plenty of good primers out there, but one I like and find accessible is โAnarchism: A Very Short Introductionโ by Colin Ward
if youโre not sure yet if you might be an anarchist, consider Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!.
