Consensually, through voluntary agreement, or by yourself, without coercive interference.
I’m sure that sounds like a cop-out to a lot of people, but it’s based on a principle of humility: we can’t possibly know what solutions people will pursue, negotiate, and adapt to the ever-evolving problems we face in the world.
Some anarchists have invested a lot of work in figuring out how we might organize ourselves if free—federations of councils and the like—and that work is valuable. Some people might adopt some of those solutions some of the time. But it’s not for me or anyone else to prejudge or insist upon any particular solution.
We’ll do it together, in free cooperation, by talking to each other, persuading each other, inducing each other, or by leaving each other alone.
I think this makes a lot of people very uncomfortable, because a lot of people dislike ambiguity—not in the interpersonal sense that might elude an autistic person, but rather an ambiguity of outcomes.
We can’t possible know how everyone would do this or that under anarchism, because conditions and people are constantly evolving. What might make sense to some people in some place and time might not work for someone else, or might evolve as conditions evolve, or might change as people negotiate and compromise with each other.
The allure of systematic and predictable answers is deeply attractive to a lot of people, from ancaps with their natural law deontology to the high modernists who bulldozed cities to make orderly grids of highways to the techbros who think they can engineer their way to eternal perfection. Lots of people want one singular, predictable, replicable Answer and are horrified at the thought of not knowing the results of a social negotiation.
And so is the interminable inefficiency of reaching solutions by talking to each other. I have frequently encountered people repulsed by the idea of having meetings, of talking to and negotiating with other people with equal agency, of having to do the boring and tedious work of anarchist direct democracy.
And there’s an element of truth to that! Reaching decisions through conversation and consensus building can indeed be difficult, tedious, boring, and without certainty of resolution.
But the costs of the alternative—aside from the pain and horror of state violence—are immense. The police, the surveillance, the rules and courts that adjudicate them, the military and the industry that arms them, the prisons and border fences, the internment camps and tax collectors and intelligence agencies—these are vast and crushing burdens on society. They are immensely costly and deeply inefficient.
Of course states fail and collapse all the time! How could they not? Control is very expensive and deeply inefficient.
@HeavenlyPossum I have no background in any of this, so excuse my dumb questions: isn't there a prisoner's dilemma-like element here? Aren't you at the mercy of any single person (or group) who decides they hate all your bothersome negotiating and simply takes up arms to force their will? If they decide they're the state now, aren't you (and your society) powerless, since you cannot coerce/force them to stop? It all seems to collapse upon contact with any disagreeable person(s).
Why would anyone be powerless to stop them? Coercion is not a synonym for violence; it is a subset of violence. Anarchism is not pacifism and anyone is justified in defending themselves from aggression.
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