...Anarchism

Would a true Anarchist society necessarily lead to.. well.. anarchy?

Anarchism, n., The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished.

To start this off, I'll give you a bit of background to my own thoughts on an ideal social/political/economic system:

There are countless examples of mistreatment, domination, opportunism, oppression, ethical corruption and deceitfulness which are facilitated by capitalism. Sweatshops, oil wars, rampant pollution, rainforest destruction and the exploitation of less fortunate societies for appropriation of their resources/wealth are all made more attractive under the capitalist banner. Capitalism has its advantages.. for a fortunate percentage of the population - it is clearly a flawed system. But is there a better one?

I consider myself somewhat as a second-year undergraduate student within the Anarcho-Socialist school of thought. I have done enough reading and acquired enough knowledge to form coherent social and political arguments within the school's framework and have been significantly influenced by others' lifestyle choices and philosophies (they perhaps studied at similar, but competing campuses) which I have subsequently incorporated into my own personal philosophy - Goldman, Thoreau and Chomsky, included. Yet, like most second-year students, I have not got all the facts, cannot foresee which direction the course is going to take me, and therefore I am left guessing at which path I will ultimately choose post-graduation. I still have much to learn and many more thought-experiments to conduct before I reach that point.

After having burst onto the scene with Individualist Anarchist¹ convictions, I gradually shifted the bar to include the Social (or Collectivist) Anarchist² philosophy within my social template after acknowledging that humans tend to work best and most efficiently towards their goals in groups or collectives. Following further thought-experiments, I sensed that this updated blueprint was quite probably still too narrow to incorporate important present-day considerations such as world (and national) population numbers, resource distribution (especially food and water; resulting in the need for domestic and international trade) and existing inhibitive infrastructure coupled with loss of viable natural landscapes. These considerations, along with the recognition of deeply ingrained human traits such as culture and the prevalence of religion, have led me to now couple my existing views with elements of the Socialist school of thought allowing, for instance, some form of national market economy to assist with distribution of wealth and labour.

And this, so far, is where I have arrived in my ponderings on a more egalitarian and hence ideal social/political/economic system than the current (and inherently unjust) capitalist ideology, which has become increasingly prevalent over the past few hundred years. Mine is by no means a complete theory, and it is one under constant reassessment.

But, back to the question at hand. Could a society living under an anarchist ideology avoid disorder and chaos? To answer this, we should first take some examples into consideration.

There have been several attempts at anarchist states in the past. Most of the larger scale modern anarchist communities arose and fell during the inter-war period between 1918 and 1940. These societies, such as the Free Territory of the Ukraine and the Shinmin autonomous region in Korea, managed to maintain order for several years without a state, and functioned on the principles of anarchist theory. Their populations consisted primarily of peasants, farmers and workers. They were ultimately defeated through military force from opposing (generally communist) groups.

Currently, there are a number of anarchist communes surviving, including autonomous housing establishments in several countries. One of the most well known communities is the 85-acre Freetown Christiania (or Fristaden Christiania) in the Danish capital of Copenhagen, which began in 1971 as a squatted abandoned military compound. Although a level of tension remains between Freetown residents and local authorities, the residents are given unique status under the Christiania Law of 1989, which transfers parts of the area's supervision from the municipality of Copenhagen to the state.

These communities maintain their own living standards and to a large degree their own laws: Freetown residents, for instance, decided to outlaw hard drugs after finding it had a detrimental effect on the well-being of their commune. The various anarchist groups maintain an ethos of respect, equality and acceptance within their own community. These more modern collectives, however, are situated within city boundaries and are not connected with traditional means of production such as farming, but instead rely on selling products such as artwork and running cafes and markets.

It appears that such groups have been incredibly successful in maintaining order without a governing body. Despite this, I can't help but feel that these are isolated cases of community solidarity brought about through a common goal of opposition to an external force - in this case, oppressive or undesirable government rule. What happens when this external pressure is removed, or the group size increases dramatically? I suspect that when a group exceeds a certain population threshold, and anonymity becomes a closer fit to the rule than an exception, then solidarity becomes weakened and individuals will begin to align themselves with people with which they share a closer affiliation. This eventually would lead to the population fracturing into a number of tight-knit local groups based around commonalities, and this could in turn cause animosity towards external groups for, say, following a different and objectionable set of local laws. The internal stresses would begin to outweigh the external ones. If this trend continued, it seems only reasonable that a population-wide body mediating the conflicts between groups should be enabled. And so on and so on until, voila... Government!

Is this the likely outcome of a large-scale modern anarchist experiment? It is one possibility, but it certainly does not have to be. The early 20th century experiments confirmed that significant numbers of people could work together for the common good, without external governance. But is that enough to prove anarchism's viability across an entire nation? I don't believe it is, and unfortunately we have not seen an experiment large enough in scale to provide an answer either way.³

I am hopeful.

What are your thoughts?

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¹ Individualist anarchists put emphasis on the individual and their will over any deterministic factors within society such as tradition, groups, religion, culture, etc., its essence is portrayed in a famous quote by the 19th century individualist anarchist, Benjamin R. Tucker: "If the individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny."

² Broadly, social anarchists emphasise the communitarian and cooperative aspects of anarchist theory and practice, whereby the focus is shifted away from the individual and instead towards small self-governing communes working in unity. One branch of social anarchy, anarchist communism, suggests that such communes would collectively own the means of production, be organised through direct democracy, and relate to other communes through federation. The monetary system would be abolished and a resource-based economy of sorts would replace it. The theory is that the members of such a society would spontaneously perform all necessary labour because they would recognise the benefits of communal enterprise and mutual aid.

³ We have seen recently the Arab Spring uprisings, fuelled by dissatisfaction with oppressive regimes. These have been grassroots campaigns against the rule of government. While a form of anarchy in itself, this form of protest has the longer-term view to seeing a centralised, possibly socialist-type government come into power. So although we are again seeing solidarity against oppression, there are no goals of an ultimate anarchist state and so no shorter-term goals of business-as-usual under an anarchist framework. As a result of the lack of desire for self-governance, we have seen a significant amount of unrest and instability, although cases of self-governance have necessarily and spontaneously arisen. These protests are therefore inapplicable to the question of practicality of a large-scale anarchist state.