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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"
Unless you magically invent a completely new protocol that reconciles incentives of all egoistic parties without devolving to violence it's not going to happen.
And millions of years of evolution failed to produce it naturally, so good luck
You you want true anarchy look at the African jungle. Truly no laws, no government, hunt and be hunted.
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.
Uhhh Anarchist Ukraine, Rojava, Chiapas just to name a few Anarchist entities.
Please study the topic you’re engaging in more instead of being factually incorrect.
I mean we have the UN which doesn't have any one nation in charge. Geopolitics tends to be anarchistic.
The UN routinely has councils and vetos given to a select few.
That’s democracy, not anarchy.
I really like low scale anarchy (town level) but high scale would only work with strong scifi-level decentralization tools where public goods can be negotiated and developed without massive centralized bodies.
Alternatively society has to enter a post resource scarcity era - as in star trek replicator level of advancement.
Another way it could work if there was a massive population reduction as very few people in the world left but at that point political systems are the least interesting thing to think about.
Unfortunately due to game theory and real life power curves true global anarchism with current technology is simply impossible.
it wouldnt.
It did. See most Native American tribes. Anarchy is "self-rule" not "pure chaos" as most would like you to think.
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.
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
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.
I think of anarchy like a guiding ideal: flatten hierarchies.
You can't eliminate hierarchies. If you eliminate "official" hierarchies, you lack measures to prevent individuals from exerting their will over other individuals by force, which is just another hierarchy. As long as one person can swing a club at another, you have a naturally emergent hierarchy. Once you've created a group of people to stop people from swinging clubs at other people, you've invented a hierarchy.
The anarchic ideal would be a system of organization to minimize the club-swinging. The proverbial sweet spot between preventing oppression without being oppressive. But it all ultimately comes down to club-swinging, you can't have a purely anarchic system without enabling private power. The best you can do is aim for the flattest possible hierarchy.
This rings 100% true for me in regards to anarchism, communism, capitalism, socialism, feudalism... Pretty much any organisational structure that mankind has or will ever conceive.
People are difficult, irrational and unpredictable. Put a whole bunch of people together on a plot of land, multiply that 1 billion times over and you get the unfathomable clusterfuck that is modern civilization. Not even being defeatist about it, just pointing out the factual reality that the perfect society does not and will never exist, far from it. I am aware I'm rambling on and pointing out the obvious here.
well, at least until aliens invade.
people tend to be remarkable cooperative when faced with an external existential threat. most countries cohere quite well when they are in a state of war.
We got covid, and a lot of countries governments took advantage of it and spread misinformation and active vaccine denial. That's about as close to an alien invasion as we're gonna get, and we kinda failed disastrously at it.
I used to think we'd come together over an external threat too. Now I'm not so sure. In fact, we might even get people denying that it's even happening.
people tend to be remarkable cooperative when faced with an external existential threat.
Counterpoint in the US at least: Covid.
that wasn't an external threat. it was an internal one
This about the external threat.. the uniting against, was always against other humans from near around. Almost against neighbours. There is still a destruction of our planet where we are not united against. And there is even less unitedness for a fight against warmongering countries.
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.