this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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"Simple majority is not democratic" raises the question of what is democratic, especially since numerous anarchist polities have had processes which are passed by majority consensus. The idea that majority consensus is insufficient necessarily privileges a conservative or passive outlook, as it presumes that most people desiring a course of action is insufficient reason to change the status quo.
Call me an authoritarian if you like, but people are fucking blinkered when it comes to their own, personal interests. The same way that every conservative knows a 'good' member of the LGBT community, or every tax-and-spend liberal starts to balk when a 1% property tax increase is proposed on their nice suburban home.
Not only that, but people make much more trouble than can be easily solved, even if they don't mean to. It's easier to start a fire than put it out. People spread rumors out of ignorance, out of ideological delusions, or just out of fun - if Johnsonville upriver genuinely believes water with 500ppm of whatever toxin they produce is harmless and, like most people, refuses to change their opinion based on evidence; should Tablesville downriver suffer with no more than a stern word in response?
People make their best decisions as abstracts and generalities. "We need more X, we need less Y." People should decide goals; specialists courses of action, and oftentimes it takes several layers of specialists for the necessary precision for any given set of rules. And then the rules must be enforced evenly, upon all communities, even those who would rather continue spewing gunk downstream to save themselves an hour or two or work per day.
Christ, you don't want me making automobile engine regulations, and you don't want most car mechanics deciding what goes in the history books. For that matter, you don't really want me deciding what goes in the history books for anything except a very narrow subset of history; even very educated people can be very, very uneducated about matters even slightly outside of their specialization.
(actually, as I was never anything more than an undergrad, you probably don't want me deciding what goes into history books at all, in a specialist capacity, but you get my point, I'm sure)
This is what civilization enables. This is what modern democratic states enable, even if they still have a long fucking way to go.
The idea that small communes can enforce the same without systems of enforcement dependent on the monopoly of the community or confederation on violence I find strongly questionable.
My argument against anarchism is not so much against anarchist polities, which, historically, as libertarian socialist polities, have enforced monopoly of violence, just one with more decentralized and democratic processes than is usual; so much as it is against the idea of an ideal no-enforcement everyone-gets-along anarchy that sometimes is passed around under the justification that human society is shit because of capitalism.
Human society is shit. Capitalism is shit. Capitalism makes human society worse. But human society is not shit because of capitalism. Human society is shit because we have a limited number of tools and hours in the day with which to address all the problems of the world.
I wouldn't call you an authoritarian. I would say you fall closer to the cynical/pessimistic anarchist. At least anarchist adjacent. I am aware anarchists have and do make decisions through majority, but I argue it is different. This system relies almost solely on majority rule, anarchism uses simple majority as a tool. Worse so because this system uses majority rule to determine who gets to have power, while anarchism uses majority rule to make individual decisions. And I definitely agree some anarchists can sometimes be utopian.
Ido think it is naive to think that there would be no need for some form of enforcement of certain rules, but I do believe that that is last resort and would not make up the norm. And that enforcement would be in situations like the one you outline, where one community infringes on the freedom and safety of another. No anarchist believes in the freedom to harm others. So a community harming another through polluted water would be breaking that rule, social contract, whatever. But it would be handled through negotiations, conflict resolution, professionals in deescalation, etc and only force as a last resort or serious emergency.
I also recognize most if not all anarchist experiments end up looking or functioning as libertarian socialist societies. Considering anarchists would and still do also call themselves libertarian socialists, I do not think most anarchists are opposed to that. There are the more extreme anatchists that would disagree, and I can empathize with them even if I don't entirely agree with them.
I also at no point said that specialists should be the ones making certain decisions. I don't think most anarchists would argue against that. Part of the issue I feel we have in society rn is that people who have no business being involved in a certain field are also the ones who have power over that field. Such as politicians and the education system, or politicians and pretty much anything. Or another example being literally anyone about someone else's body and identity.
Sorry this is long and fairly unorganized.
The thing is, you can just as easily argue that even now, force is a last resort and doesn't make up the norm. I think any of us calling ourselves leftists would agree that it's far more common than it should be, but the vast majority of conflicts in modern society are resolved without ever resorting to the state's explicit monopoly on force, or resorting to violating that monopoly.
I generally regard the two as synonymous except when dealing with specific assertions that are utopian, such as the idea that an anarchist society does not have people making decisions for other individuals. As here.
But at that point people are quite explicitly making decisions for the lives of others.
No worries, I didn't find it either. Quality discussion is quality discussion. If I got bored with it, I'd bounce, don't worry :p