No Stupid Questions

In the absence of other power structures (political, legal, religious, economic, etc) whoever has the means and willingness to do violence will exert their will over others. Unstructured societies always devolve into might makes right.

I think that if humanity can manage to survive long enough, anarchism is inevitable.

It's essentially the adult stage of human society - the point at which humans collectively and consistently, rather than just individually and situationally, can be trusted to generally do the right thing simply because it's the right thing and therefore the most reasonable thing to do.

For the time being and the foreseeable future though, humanity is nowhere even close to that. Through the course of history, human society has managed to advance to about the equivalent of adolescence. There's still a long way to go.

In spite of that, I do identify as an anarchist, but my advocacy is focused on the ideal and the steps humanity as a whole has to take to achieve it. I think it's plainly obvious that it cannot be implemented, since any mechanism by which it might be inplemented would necessarily violate the very principles that define it. It can only be willingly adopted by each and all (or close enough as makes no meaningful difference), and that point will come whenever (if) it comes.

That it's basically the lefty equivalent to a libertarian. Both of those philosophies seem juvenile to me in a "I don't want to, and you can't make me" kind of way. Call me old fashioned, but I like structure as long as it's not totalitarian. I'm happy to pay taxes as long as they're going toward the benefit of society. Granted, that largely hasn't been the case, but I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater either.

Recent events have also highlighted how much my taxes actually were going toward the betterment of society (though still not nearly enough), and that I had taken them for granted until they were recently axed/defunded.

It depends on the definition

ITT: Nobody has any idea what any anarchist philosopher ever said or believed and simply thinks it means no rules

They then strut victoriously, thinking they are smarter than every anarchist philosopher who has ever existed because they know that rules matter in a society, not realizing that no anarchist thinker has ever said "let's just have no rules or organization and just see how it goes based on the vibes"

The end goal of civilization.

Stateless, Egalitarian societies.

Pls no anarcho capitalism. A good breakdown of the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTN64g9lA2g&t=1

I think it's one gun away from a dictatorship.

For power to be safely devolved to the people there need to be resilient structures in place to prevent a bad actor from simply wresting control by force.

Also, I think that while it solves societal issues well for the most personal of personal liberties it fails to properly add in protections from the liberties of others that may be imposed on you... i.e. a spouse trying to escape an abusive relationship will find sparse services to support them.

Lastly, I like trains. Trains don't happen in a reasonable time-frame without a strong centralized government. In the UK a coop recently opened a new train line... I think it took them 30+ years.

coupled with communism it's the real shit

I don’t think practically you could end up with a state of anarchism because it implies that humans can exist in a power vacuum. Something will always fill that vacuum. Now, the question is what is that thing? It can take a lot of forms. The goal should be to make it serve the qualitative needs of most people - food, shelter, well being, safety. People advocating for true anarchy are usually doing so from a naive idealism. Idealism is often good, but sometimes ignores other factors that make the ideal impossible to achieve.

It seems foolish and young to me. Same as libertarian rules or rule by religious doctrine. None of that shit works. Just shiny little playthings to keep people distracted from real and genuine problems that cause an existential threat to all species living on earth.

Technically the whole world runs on pure anarchism. No rules, only those created by local groups. With agreements between some of the groups. Most of it enforced by violence.

Laws only exist because most people believe in them. For the rest they are enforced with violence. I believe that anarchy would result in a similar system. Most people would behave but some would not. To protect everyone eventually some kind of police and laws would form again.

I see it as a guideline for how society could be structured after the elimination of class.

Responsible anarchism is a good ideal to aim for, but in pure form it's utopian. Realistic way to get closer to this ideal is shifting to stateless/borderless societies that center around some alternative entities other than geopolitical nation-states.

Quite literally impossible to implement. Same as true "Libertarianism". Can't actually exist.

Look at it this way. You and your neighbours want no government. No taxes. No laws. No "authority" telling you what to do and how to do it. Great!

What happens when the road needs to be fixed? Do you fix just the road in front of your house? Or do you negotiate with your neighbours for you all to pay a fair share to get the entire road done? Congratulations...you just invented government.

So now the road is getting done, but the people doing the work really don't want to deal with every individual for every particular decision. It's a much better idea to elect one person to do the communicating. Congratulations...you just invented civics and beaurocracy

This person that you all agreed to handle all of this stuff doesn't have time anymore to support himself or his family because he's dealing with your shit, so he demands that each of you pay an amount to keep in able to feed himself while he administrates your "anarchic society." Congratulations...you just invented taxes

Replace "roads" with literally anything else in a community and the end result is the same. Both Libertarians and Anarchists are fucking morons.

I consider myself an anarcho-pragmatist. It would be nice not to have any rulers or an hierarchy. But I also know people well enough to know that unless we defer any decision making to a supercomputer everyone trusts, we're going to need some form of societal structure.

I think it's great. We should fucking try it.

Seriously, though, I think it would be nice but it's going to be impossible unless you can fully get rid of greedy, corrupt, power hungry pieces of shit with zero empathy.

Honestly, I don't really understand what it is. I don't understand socialism, communism, hell I hardly understand capitalism and I'm living in it.

I know the "it's chaos" interpretation isn't really correct though

Nestor Makhno and his Makhnovists weren't perfect but I think its probably the closest we're going to get to seeing a working anarchist society. It seemed like it worked for a short time.

Also note the mutial aid systems that spring up in the wake of some disasters could probably be considered temporary anarchist societies. Rebecca Solenit wrote a book about this but I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet. A Paradise Built in Hell. I hear its good but I can't say that with firsthand knowledge