This can sound reasonable when you think of it in terms of, "most people behaving in a reasonable fashion, most of the time". But anarchists don't want to eliminate hierarchical use of force for most cases, but for all of them.

Any time I've heard anarchists try to explain how they would deal with the subset of people who are just real shitty in various ways, the responses have been either, a) in our utopia, you wouldn't have those problems, because hierarchy causes all of them, or b) increasingly convoluted and implausible-sounding ways to deal with crazy assholes without using force.

That's what having many different communities, each of which can choose its own particular social contract, is for.

> What one sees of anarchists on the street in 2018, is that they not only ostracize, they do much worse.

I'm not sure I would call such people "anarchists" in the sense that, for example, David Friedman is an "anarchist" (at least in books like The Machinery Of Freedom). If "anarchist" just means somebody who claims they should be able to do whatever they want, then that's not the kind of anarchist I'm talking about. I'm talking about someone who understands that, even in the absence of government, there are still huge benefits to be gained from social cooperation, and that people therefore have strong incentives to regulate their own actions to facilitate social cooperation. The only real difference is that, in the absence of government, all such cooperation is voluntary; nobody can be forced to cooperate with someone else if they don't want to. Which, note carefully, means that just taking someone's stuff without their consent, the vandalism and violence you describe, is not voluntary social cooperation. And citizens of a functioning anarchy will resist it, with force if necessary.

I've already said, in response to other posters, that a functioning anarchy of this sort would be very, very difficult to get to from our current state. But that's not a criticism of anarchy; it's a criticism of our current state, and of us humans for letting ourselves get into this state, where we have all kinds of problems with governments violating our rights but we can't just stop having them because nobody really understands how to do voluntary social cooperation without a government.

This is a simplistic characterisation. Anarchists hold individual liberty in the highest regard but also believe in solidarity and mutual aid. You can "basically do what you want" as long as you aren't restricting the individual freedom of others but rather supporting everyone in having access to the same means and rights as you do. Since exploitation of people is so endemic in our society, anarchists work mainly to free themselves and others from oppressive systems. Right now we can't do what we want, so anarchists fight against the social dynamics which are preventing this.

Yes, and when it's bad guys, we call those groups "cartels" and "gangs".

When it's the good guys, we call those "governments". You necessarily need governments (and thus law enforcement and a military of some type) to fend off the bad guys and to maintain order (crime, settle disputes, etc).

As part of all that, be it the good guys or the bad guys, you need a solid leadership structure, or you end up with warring factions causing chaos or accomplishing nothing at all. Who is attracted to leadership positions? "Crappy politicians" and "the Koch brothers".

Anarchism, as described just doesn't work. Even in small anarchistic collectives of a dozen or so people, they inevitably start developing rules and leadership and governance structures.

Rather that abolishing the police and throwing away established systems, I would much rather strive toward iterative reforms of injustices.

Not necessarily. Please see my other top-level comment in this thread.

Anarchy has a lot of definitions and sub types. Anarchy as complete lack of structure is always used to attack and denigrate it by its opponents, but it's not an inherent characteristic of anarchism itself. Anarchy does not have to mean everybody decides and we put everything to a vote.

Anarchy means you can leave whenever you want. Nobody forces you. No one has the monopoly on violence.

Free software is anarchic. It might have strict rules, and a tyrannical maintainer than only merges what he wants, but it's still anarchic because you can fork it.

Most people tend to be in anarchic relationship with each other, because no one can force something upon the other. That's something only the government does.

In fact, making money and profit does not have to be anti-anarchic. It's certainly against anarcho-communism, but that's just a subbranch of a wider social theory.

I think we have the same friends. I've never met a true anarchist. I've found that when pushed enough, they tend to be authoritarians in disguise, and they are only shout "Down with the system!" as a generalization of "Down with the system I don't like!".

And an anarchist would suggest that that's exactly why the problems that we have have manifested today.

Anarchism is something that's hard to have an actual discussion on. The word has too much baggage. Anarchists are viewed as utopians, there's been a lot of inter-faction arguing, and politics are frankly boring. The modern anarchist movement hasn't been able to connect their message to anything that's relevant. As much as I dislike CrimeThinc, they make a really good points in "Your Politics are Boring as Fuck"[1].

Even if you don't think that ridding the world of rulers is a good thing, fundamentally, anarchism's message of truly caring for people still holds value. Groups like Food Not Bombs, Homes not Jails, and many cooperative organizations do a lot of good in the world. You might be surprised to find that even the Black Bloc isn't just a bunch of kids breaking things, though this is endlessly debated every time the G20 comes to town.

1: http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/selected/asfuck.php

Anarchy, or anarchism?

In my private lexicon, "anarchy" is simply a state of social disorder. "Anarchism" on the other hand, is any of a number of political views that reject hierarchy, violence and masters (so anarcho-capitalism is capitalism, not anarchism). The maintenance of order in a society without using hierarchies or violence ironically requires a lot of organisation and "rules".

People have to opt-in to those rules, at least in the sense that you can live with them for now. Yes, there will always be people who reject all rules, and refuse to cooperate with others. They get shunned, which sounds awful; but nearly all anarchist societies are embedded in some hierarchical state, so opting out isn't that awful.

I have trouble imagining an anarchist society that encompasses an entire state or territory. I'm told that Iraqi Kurds have established something like that, but I have no experience of it, and don't know how it works. I've only known anarchism working in relatively small groups, with a surrounding non-anarchist society to absorb and deal with the opt-outs.

Anarchism, as the term is used in this context, is absolutely not about opposing all organized social structures. It's specifically about opposing coercive structures. The goal is typically organization through bottom-up, cooperative means rather than via an authority enforcing structure from the top down.

If you're interested, here's a piece from Bookchin responding to this exact point: https://libcom.org/library/anarchy-organization-murray-bookc...

AKA "Government".

Anarchy is about order without a state. Not chaos. It will take work, and probably incremental evolution rather than revolution, to get to that state. The goal is to become more free. Living under the boot of oppression -- whether from the government itself or a mafia-like criminal gang -- is not freedom.

Th'at's not anarchy, that's libertarianism: maximal individual freedom at the expense of others. Coincidentally the system propelled by all big tech moguls, and half of the us political scene.

Anarchy is not the absence of rules, it is the absence of hierarchy. Contrary to what we have been fed since we were born, we don't need a hierarchy to function. Anarchy is the understanding that no human is above any other, and that we cannot live alone so we're just going to live together, agree together on rules, democratically (some say the only true democracy where everyone can express themselves on all topics and decisions are taken based on this) and with the collective wellness and joy as the compass.

If that sounds difficult to implement, I agree! I'm an anarchist because I think the principles so succinctly put are a good pole star for my personal life. At the scale of society I see Marxism as just as important. How to square the two? I don't know

How to make a political program out of anarchism? I don't know, but I think it'll be possible with the right philosophical and scientific mindset. I think it would be a mindset quite radically different from how we currently approach the world.

There are some immediate problems to ponder. For example, my fist is an unmediated relation between individuals. Does the idea of free individual preclude it? You can't base your politics only on what you think ought to be, but also how it ought to change when there is a violation of that preferred condition. Clearly there are times when a good anarchist (whatever that is) will throw a punch, and how ought an anarchist society deal with that?

I like The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin as a thoughtful examination of society that tries to grapple with such small and dirty questions. As well as bigger questions of course.

In that quote, I don't see a solution, or a goal, but an orientation. It frames the world in a way that asks you to focus on certain possibilities that might seem remote, but have existed and will exist so long as humanity exists. That's why I'm an anarchist and why I like and agree with this piece.

Yes, this is a fair point, and is probably the main reason anarchic societies have not been more common historically. It also doesn't help that pretty much all humans on the planet have now been conditioned for at least some centuries now, if not longer, that a society has to have a government to function, so they can't even conceive the alternative.

It's not about being human, it's about being in large groups where horizontal, consensus-driven decision making becomes infeasible. We've known this since The Tyranny of Structurelessness came out (and formal research into Dunbar's number only solidified this basic intuition), anarchists just didn't get the memo.

we're talking humans here, right ? there's always a jerk who takes over

???

> Anarchy is the state of a society being freely constituted without authorities or a governing body.

Fwiw, Anarchists use the analogy of nations having anarchist relationships with other nations.

Even the "ideal" he is putting forth isn't really anarchy. Because anarchy means absolute freedom and the minute you don't allow someone something, freedom isn't absolute. And the minute you get two people living as some sort of unit, you have compromise.

Cooperation is good, systems of cooperation are better. Government is a solution to the problem of individual trust. In a completely anarchistic system, I can't trust you and you can't trust me. Either of us are allowed to break our bond at any time. We need an impartial third party to manage our interactions so that if one of us decides to screw the other, that person is appropriately admonished. Something to govern interactions of citizens, if you will. So whatever system you've set up to govern the interactions of your citizens is de facto a government. Even if you don't explicitly call it that.

Anarchism has been the default way of running the show for most of our species's existence. Civilization is only 10 thousand years old. Seems to me like it's population density rather than numbers that anarchism has trouble with