...And another thing, despite putting a massive level of value on individual freedom as a movement, anarchic societies are inevitably very close-knit culturally to a degree that harms anyone who doesn't gel with that culture. Keep yourself socially acceptable to the majority, or find yourself shunned and completely, utterly alone. Truly alone. See Ted Kaczynski's assessment of the "over-socialized left", from the perspective of a truly anarchic society, he's correct, and that's a huge problem. You're stuck with whatever bigotry the community develops.
Anarchism, to me, is the thing people did before someone decided to do otherwise. It doesn't matter that it's how most human beings "naturally" congregate, because the fact is that the very moment someone decides to start consolidating power, they seem to do so successfully. Every state began with someone with a clear goal gathering other people with the same goal- and often, then gathering people who don't share that goal through force. (People are power.) Clearly Anarchic societies failed to prevent that process from occurring, they are not hardened against violent, coordinated groups. Saying that "the majority of societies were essentially anarchist" fails to notice that far, far, FAR more people have existed within "stateful" societies. More individual anarchist "structures" vs. many more people consolidated within stateful structures is just down to the nature of both. To defend the anarchic nature of a group permanently, you'd need to get the people who actually cared enough to defend it all together and arm them as a militia. Even as an "as-needed" militia, you now have a power structure and it will grow from there. Without that coordination, someone else will step in and take power for themselves. It only takes a few greedy people.
Anarchism is my political ideology. I’m having a hard time explaining how I see it but if you’re new to the concept I recommend reading Anarchy Works to get started.
I also wonder how many other anarchists we have here. Cheers! You got one here!
For what it's worth, I've been having a private anarchist bent for a little while, now. Plenty of people seem to recognize that socialism seems nice other than the power structures it creates, and anarchism is the natural next step along that line of thinking. But... healthcare. And food. Food and health care. For this to ever work on a major scale we all need to re-learn how our ancestors lived self-sufficiently, which few people (even among anarchists) seem willing to do, and medically advanced healthcare, I'm not sure anyone is willing to give that up. I would have straight-up died at birth if Boston Medical Center didn't exist. Even if I think charitably of the level of healthcare an anarchist society could provide, I can't imagine it involving me being alive. There's a huge level of self-sacrifice there.
For that matter, good luck solving our destruction of this planet. Most major climate-destroying activity is occurring because groups that aren't as well-off as the preeminent first-world countries are (rightfully, I'd say) looking to fast-track their way to higher standards of living the same way that western Europe and the United States did. On one hand, sure, in an egalitarian society it'd be "easier" to teach them the right way of moving forward. But who's gonna bother doing that? I just can't imagine enough people ever really grasping the idea of collective action.
...And of course there's the Anarchist Library's apparent love of Ted Kaczynski's jackass patriarchal, ableist rants against the "over-socialized left".
I just wrote a comment on my own thoughts, and essentially, I think anarchism "works" until a sufficiently willful person shows up. There's a reason the majority of human beings have existed under states of some kind, anarchist societies failed to prevent states from arising.
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