this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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How does the world currently prevent that? It doesn't, the largest states do as they wish to the smaller ones, and internally the states do what they wish to the citizens. Under anarchism you would defend your community and your communities would defend each other. You can see this in action in places like the Chiapas were communities defend themselves from the state and cartels.
Anarchism is not a world devoid of rules, in fact it's all about rules. Except these are rules mutually-agreed upon by members of the community rather than dictated by politicians with no interest in the well-being of the community.
How do you protect against rapists and murderers? How do you today, do you ring the cops and wait 30 minutes? Under anarchism the community would ensure its own defence, you and your neighbours and everyone else would be empowered to protect yourselves, and you would want to because its your community. At present you must wait for the bastards to show up and maybe do something to help, if not make the situation actively worse.
Why would you want to produce unsafe foods and medicines, there is no profit motive to cut-corners and you are only hurting yourselves.
The expectation is communities would produce resources for themselves, and co-operate with neighbouring communities to share what's needed.
How do you protect yourselves against the 1% today? You don't.
Under anarchism, you actively fight them.
So by that sentiment the world is as it should exist under anarchism. The strongest groups overpowered the lesser groups amd this is where it sits.
Thats the thing. We walked out of the forest under this "system" and kingships, gangs, fiefdoms, and religious conclaves was all we got out of it. What makes you think, particularly in the current climate, that humanity has changed at all enough to not do the exact same thing again.
No, that’s not anarchism, it’s kleptocracy, by definition.
Anarchism means more rules, more intimate regulation of public works, not less. For power to spread out, you have to work to prevent its concentration, or you are just catalyzing a transitional moment in history.
What makes me think we can overcome the sociopathy is that culture has progressed along with our knowledge of the mind, and that the spirit of liberty never dies. A minority are authoritarian, even if it’s a large minority. We do have to counteract the immense amount of propaganda and ideology, however.
Ok, so how do these "more rules" come into existence without some centralized body?
Who gets to decide that? It might seem romantic to say that "everybody does", but how would that go practically?
Like who, comes up with those? Who will explain those rules to others? And most importantly, who will make sure others follow them properly?
Because if everyone gets to decide that on their own if they want to follow a rule or not, then you might as well have no rules since everyone will just do whatever they want.
Rules are decided on at community-level. That could mean a village comes together to collectively decide on rules for their community, which the entire village can participate in. Once everyone is happy with the rules, and with the methods of enforcement chosen, the entire village will be familiar with them, and can then explain those rules to others. They may also federate with other villages and agree to follow a larger set of rules or standards.
You can see a form of this style of society in practice in Rojava (there's also this video for an even more in-depth look at how different aspects of Rojava function).
Brain damage is the answer
I don't think that's fair, though it is funny. Lumpen feels like a dedicated Anarchism propogandist to me.
(I don't attach any positive or negative connotation to "propogandist" here)
Well, you could say ‘advocate’ instead, as propagandist is pejorative in common usage, this is a forum not a private journal.
I suppose that's fair. Thanks.
I'm not sure anarchism could work as well on paper as it would in real life. I think close examples are when a country loses it's hierarchical structure and the void is typically filled with extremists or the most violent and well armed individuals who than instate a new hierarchy. The people have a chance to establish an anarchist society, but are never able to or incapable of doing so.
If you look at governing systems like these as organisms. Anarchism is too weak to defend against stronger power struggles and will always be consumed from within and without by a larger status quo, just because human nature is to establish systems and group together. Eventually that grows so much conflicts on ideals on how the opposing systems should operate arise, one sees the other as counter to their ways and conflict eventually ensues.
Even in Anarchism there are different ideals on how it should be achieved. With those nuance differences that would eventually come to some immovable beliefs that would cause larger systems to develop to overpower differences.
A lot of people don't want to govern themselves or be involved in the complexity of making community decisions. They'd rather have someone else do that and eventually that someone else becomes a leader and that path leads to a hierarchy.
I think the age of simplicity that Anarchism brings is left in the past of our evolutionary progress of organized systems. Great idea, but proven it will never hold because it's more of a transitional state that will eventually grow into complexity it's principles can't answer anymore.
Anarchism is the next step in that path. Instead of rigid systems that are immutable, anarchism is a fluidic organisational system that can adapt and respond based on the needs at the time. It's biology vs circuity. One is etched into plastic forever unchanging, the other grows new branches and drops old as needed.
Simply by being here on the Fediverse you are showing a preference for this dynamic interconnected system over a rigid top-down controlled one.
Yeah I think this is the core problem that most people discussing anarchism, for and against, miss.
Outsourcing governance to authority is less work, on the surface. Of course, that then creates endless other problems, but the connection of these issues to outsourcing governance is not obvious.