No Stupid Questions

Taking the definition at its etymological root, all anarchy means is "without rule".

In my head-canon, that doesn't necessarily mean the lack of laws, state, institutions or governance; the implication is that there are no citizens or individuals with permanently elevated authority in the polity of government. Without rulers.

Many, of course, disagree with this mostly on the basis of practicality, but I'd like to think it's another way to describe the concept of "No gods, no kings, no masters, no slaves."

There are many types of theories, but they rarely are literally "no organized public sector". Generally you can more think of it as your municipality being more or less completely sovereign and independent.

The point of anarchism is the rejection of hierarchy. If enough people reject hierarchy, they would all be on board with not filling the power vacuum. That's why establishing anarchism is much more than getting rid of the current despot. It has to be get rid of all those with power over others, get rid of the concept of hierarchy, get rid of wealth accumulation as power concentration, get rid of anyone even trying to rule over others. They would have no support with anyone, because everyone knows power corrupts and we're not taking any chances. Nobody should desire to rule over others, if (1) nobody listens to you, (2) people will fight you, and (3) you, like everybody else, knows it's morally wrong

I'm not saying all of this is practical, but that's the idea. Dismantling hierarchy is difficult, but still not sufficient to establish anarchist society. People would just build a new hierarchy if not convinced that hierarchies in themselves are the issue

The issue is that it's not one problem, it's thousands. Anarchism has countless solutions for countless power vacuums, from regulating the flow of meetings to federating different Zapatista towns.

You yourself are probably engaging in anarchic power vacuum mitigation when your friend group decides when to hang out and what to do; if anyone got too much power or responsibility you would take action to make things fair again.

Generally speaking, power vacuums are dismantled by dissolving the hierarchies that can be dissolved, changing the material conditions so power is decentralized, and building a social structure to hold the remaining power conditional on not being authoritarian. You can probably remember doing these things with your friends (or former friends).

Anarchist theory is either descriptive, like critically analysing the Zapatistas, or it's putative, like sociocracy. So far we have no proven overarching theory of what works for everyone everywhere in every situation, but we do have lots of small anarchist collectives that are benefiting their members and their society in limited scopes.

I think it's important to denote that some people categorize anarchism as a distant dream regime, for convenience of course.

You can see anarchism in action in the punk movement or other community efforts. People building bridges on their own, living in a gridless community, sharing art using their own methods like cassette tapes. That's all anarchism.

I'm not at the heart of anarchism. I'm not occupying an abandoned building to help the poor, for example. But I've read a couple of books on it.

Yes, but you're thinking pragmatically. Like how it would work in the real world.

Anarchy is an ideal theory. It's not a practical or pragmatic one. It is argued for in comparison to other ideal theories.

Pretty much every political theory breaks down when subjected to pragmatic real world problems.

It wouldn't.

Anarchism (and communism) live and die by the idea that ALL people would have a completely unrealistic level of cooperation and selflessness. As fucked up as capitalism is, it can bend when people don't play nice and there's at least a theoretical possibility of anyone gaining power (money) to impact change in the system. Money itself doesn't inherently have preferences or moral opinions on what should be. Anarchism however breaks the moment someone behaves selfishly. It can work fine in small, like-minded communities where people can always leave (or be excluded) to find other systems that better fit their ideals. However, Anarchism on a societal level would demand that there is basically no other type of society available - which would lead to Sen's paradox. The reason we don't have true anarchist (or communist) countries is that they get wiped out by powers that function in sync with people's natural inclinations for self-interest (like capitalism). People like to argue that these attitudes are DUE to capitalism, not inherent in human nature. Even if I were to entertain the idea that that's true, we currently live in this world of self-interest. Unless you can press a reset button on humanity, this is what we are working with. Solutions that rely on the idea that we can just fundamentally change how ALL people in the world currently are, are not solutions. They're idle fantasies. The "argument" that "if the world wasn't shitty, we could have an amazing utopia", is not an argument at all, it's just a tautology with no power of utility.

The way db0 handled their defederation from feddit.org is a great example of how Anarchism fails even on small scale. They espouse ideals about democratic voting and rational discourse, but the moment the organizing body of the instance had opinions on how they think things "should" be, they used propaganda and political theater to get the result they wanted. Anarchist ideals couldn't function in a low stakes online space, it has little hope of functioning where people are driven by actual survival needs (and desire for power). Whatever ideological purity drove the db0 admins to present the "democratic vote" the way they did, will be the exact same drive people tend to fall to on larger scales as well.

Same thing can be seen in the Communist instances: they rely heavily on propaganda and people sticking to the "correct" narrative. Which also brings up the conflict: there has to be an organizing body that has opinions on what is "right" and what is "wrong". This organizing body will be the authority, no matter how people try to use rhetorical slalom to get around it and trick people into thinking the spade isn't a spade.

People can start to build small grassroots communities with these ideals. Please do, and once they gain enough power (money) in the system we are currently living in, perhaps they can impact policy changes etc. that are more humanitarian. That would be wonderful. But always be aware that the ideals are fragile and break under any corruption. Capitalism works with corruption, which is why it's extremely effective at being the might that makes right.

I love how there's a question asking how does a movement work, and most answers are from people outside of that movement, with only a superficial understanding of the theory behind it, confidently declaring it can't.

To answer your question, anarchism doesn't magically pop into existence. The way it comes into existence, which is prefiguring the existing system into anarchism, requires that the people already created horizontal power structures which forbid this "power vacuum"

saving this. It's a good question. I've heard plenty of thoughts on how it should work on a small scale, but nothing about the larger scale.

Read up on Spain pre-Franco, which was the only time that an Anarcho-state was seriously attempted. It basically coagulated into an Anarcho-syndicate, but failed miserably at getting many traditional 'state' responsibilities covered. When Franco rolled in with the backing of Hitler, Durruti was the only guy that tried to mount a defense, because the "government" couldn't come to a consensus on whether to defend themselves or not. Durruti had to literally raid government weapons stocks to arm a militia to try and fight back, but that totally failed and then they ended up as a fascist steel production center feeding arms to Nazi germany.

So that's about how it goes in practice. It's a style of government that's good in theory, but it fails when implemented, generally due to ever present outside influences. It's on the same sort of pedestal as communism really, in that lots of folks look at it on paper and think it sounds great, but reality's a bitch.

Anarchy means "without rule", so it describes a society where you were banned from 169

Anarchy is a political structure where there’s basically no one in charge, right?

That's a very literal interpretation of the word. As I understand it, anarchy is more like a class of ideas, rather than any concrete idea. Two people who both call themselves anarchists can have very, very different ideas about how society should run.

So the answer is: it depends what kind of anarchy you're talking about. Your question is asking how a broad category would work but it's so broad that I don't think you can give a concrete answer. You'll need to be more specific.

My prediction is that it works for 5 minutes... then a neighboring state is gonna invade and annex it

You'd need some organizing to defend yourself... like a military... counter-espionage...

Oopsie... you've accidentally invented the state...

To be honest, I've read a lot of fictional representations of 'anarchist' or 'libertarian' societies and they all fall apart if you look at them too closely.

"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" is a science fiction classic and a fun read, but the 'free' society it envisions depends on everything being controlled by a single giant computer. It's set on Luna 200 years after the Moon became the prison of choice for all Earth nations. No prison gangs for 'reasons.'

When we say "in charge", it can mean two very different things : either in charge for anything (like a leader), either in charge of a specific thing (like a worker). Most anarchist theories aim at getting rid of the former, arguing that only the latter produces anything directly. So there would/could be people in charge, but for specific tasks : that could be handling a single repair, managing a field of crops, or organizing the shipment of food across a region (depending on the anarchist system, some may or may not make sense). Those people would be chosen by various systems, mostly direct "democracy", where assemblies of most people mandates them. The main difference between mandating and voting is that mandating is limited to a predefined task to accomplish. Also, in most anarchist systems, it has to be short and/or revocable, though that could be applied to voting too. A common point is also federation : most system advocate for little communities where you can establish rules as close as possible to what people desire. And then those communities can federate together for purposes that require or work best at large scale. This principle of little communities getting together for bigger problems is what has been established in anarchist Ukraine and autonomous Chiapas, though in two different ways.

So, there is no necessary power vacuum, as in the lack of power does not imply chaos which would imply need for power.

Now, of course there is the risk of power-hungry people aiming at recreating power : but I'd say if you managed to get rid of a state, you have the militant basis and strength required to get rid of mafias or other states, right? And if need be, anarchist armies existed with anarchist principles : elected officers, self-discipline, etc.

It could only truly happen if everyone was enlightened to the point where crime and prejudices cease to exist. Where corruption doesn't exist.

'Basically no one in charge' is not exactly correct. Heirarchies are allowed to exist, but ideally should be as brief and flat as possible.

My best understanding of the end-goal is an intermeshing alliance of small democratic collectives working together to provide for one another. This type of system has existed previously, such as with the various tribes across the Americas which often traded and collaborated with one another. In contrast with previous times, there is vastly more understanding of how the world works now, and thus many more possible projects to strive towards.

There is also no expectation of some supposed utopia from this, as i understand - conflicts are still expected to flair up every now and again. The main aim is for equality and the absence of a single constant power structure which oppresses and dictates the conditions of all, but instead that there is a democratic collaberation defining the conditions for folks involved.

My feeling is they don't?

Best working descriptions, with difficulties encountered are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovshchina

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neozapatismo