12mo ago

ELI5 why is anarchy not "the guy with the bigger stick" making the rules?

I'm politically agnostic and have moved from a slightly conservative stance to a vastly more progressive stance (european). i still dont get the more niche things like tankies and anarchists at this point but I would like to, without spending 10 hours reading endless manifests (which do have merit, no doubt, but still).

Can someone explain to me why anarchy isnt the guy (or gal, or gang, or entity) with the bigger stick making the rules?

209 comments

Anarchism understood as a proper model and not just "chaos" is about horizontal and distributed power structures.
The whole idea is that no single person or group has a monopoly on power. Now if you are asking how do anarchist societies prevent people or groups like that from rising up and forming monopolies of power, there are a bunch of different answers. Ultimately it's about collective action and proper structure.
If your organization's rules allow for a single person to rise up and take over, it isn't formed correctly. It's like the Fediverse, no one server or person gets to make the rules for all the other servers or developers.
Everything is federated by the choice of the instances and ultimately the users. If they don't agree with how any instance is being run, they can start their own and run it how they want, federating with who they want assuming it is mutual.
Anybody can fork the project at any time, build it different, start a new instance, run it how they want, etc.
You build into your society, mechanisms that resist monopolies of power. It's like how your body's immune system has layers of protection against all kinds of germs.
Another example, in typical small company the structure is top-down with the owner usually being a single person with universal power over all their employees. They can hire and fire whoever they want whenever they want. They can shut down the company or change how any part of it operates whenever they want. Nothing in that company structure protects the employees from abuse by the owner.
There is no magic bullet to protect against everything, just like how your body despite being healthy and strong can still succumb to cancer, infection, poison, etc. That isn't a reason to just give up on being fit and healthy, because it is about improving your odds and trying to make your life on the average better.
- I was going to engage in some debate with this, but after your last paragraph I no longer find it necessary.
  It illustrates one of the nastier, but also more important of life lessons. No system or even choice is going to be without its own flaws and vulnerabilities, they'll just be different ones from system to system. So, it's less about any one system being "right", or even just "better", but instead "appropriate to the circumstances/environment/goals".
  Once you acknowledge this, it becomes a lot harder to passionately defend any particular system, because you're no longer as eager to ignore its own unique vulnerabilities. I believe deeply in democracy and freedom of information for instance, but I cannot bring myself to ignore that it creates a vulnerability for us that someone like Xi Jinping, with his powerful control over the local information space, simply does not experience.
  Authoritarian systems, on the other hand, have to deal with the very basic fact that there is nothing divine or magical about that man on top, he's as human as the rest of us. So, if you get rid of him, you may be able to take and keep his job. Where in a democracy you'd just have to face re-election within a few years.
  Pros and cons, always, with pretty much everything. Then the next most important consideration imo is simply scale. Some systems work very well within very small scales, say, a small family. But when scaling these systems up, it can change the circumstances enough that their value changes.
  To illustrate this I always like to use littering a banana peel. If just one person litters a banana peel, it is largely harmless. If, however, a million people litter banana peels all in one spot, you can actually create a potential problem where one did not exist before. Scaling the behavior up changes how we need to think about it. This has a lot of ramifications for business in the modern world, where scale is usually desirable. Also feeds into many civil engineering problems.
  
  I think it is important to add that even though no system is perfect and every system has it's pros and cons, that doesn't make them equal. As soon as we define goals, for example equal rights, some systems will be better equipped at achieving those while others might be actively hostile to them.
  
  I don't think you're saying anything contrary but I wanted to make one point clear.
  The democracy we live under is not unique to capitalism. In fact, our current system has less democracy than an anarchist system would. Also capitalism doesn't have any requirement to be democratic. Whereas with anarchism, any dictatorship is directly against the core tenets of the system.
  That being said, (I have not read enough theory to know for sure but) anarchism doesn't necessarily preclude the idea of having managers or even CEO's. It does preclude those positions having total power and control of an enterprise though. Dismantling the hierarchical structure of modern society doesn't mean having someone be a coordinator of a larger group isn't helpful. It just means that job isn't given greater power or more significance than those being coordinated. Our current idea of a CEO is very dictatorial, but that's not how it has to be.
- Oh, I never thought of the Fediverse being anarchic (anarchistic?), that's a nice thought (then again servers are mostly structured hierarchical with admins and mods and users?).
  I'm not sure how well it translates into societies, though. I love the principles of anarchy, I strongly believe that there should be no one ruling over or deciding for other people but I'm not sure this would work in reality since I can just see how the people with the "big stick" (armies) would just invade us while we're endlessly debating what the best course of action is. I know this is a bleak outlook on the world but you can kind of see it happening now where Russia can just count on Europe and the US arguing among themselves (in their respective systems) while the dictatorship is just fucking shit up. I sure hope I'm proven wrong!
  
  bear in mind here that i’m very much not well-versed in anarchist philosophy, but
  servers are mostly structured hierarchical with admins and mods and users
  i think even in systems like direct democracy (afaik a kind of anarchy because people directly vote on everything?) it doesn’t really scale and you end up needing to elect someone to make implementation decisions toward the overall goals of the society
  the key is that it should be very easy to replace that person, and they should have no real “power” other than things that people would mostly come to the same conclusions about anyway - they’re an administrator, a knowledge worker, and their job is procedural
  in the fediverse, we join servers whereby we agree to their rules. moderators and admins are a procedural role that is about interpreting and implementing those rules. we can replace them at any time by changing servers and our loss is minimal - less so on mastodon because of the account transfer feature! thus their power over us is always an individual choice and not something that is forced upon us either explicitly or implicitly
  
  Servers are heirarchic, but heirarchy is optional; the lower level members are free to leave at any time.
  
  It's not a perfect model, but it's decently close. If Lemmy had a way to distribute server ownership to a group of individuals, that would be even closer.
  If I was a whiz at developing, I would love to build that kind of feature.
  I understand your concern of external threats to an anarchistic society, but I would just remind you that plenty of centralized governments/societies have also been conquered by other centralized powers. Being centralized by no means protects you from that threat. I think the more relevant factor is just overall size of the opposing force.
  It doesn't matter how weak hamsters are compared to you. If enough of them attack you endlessly, eventually you will succumb, if for no other reason than pure exhaustion lol.
  However, there are clear examples IRL of far smaller and weaker decentralized forces successfully resisting a much more powerful centralized force. The VietCong vs the USA in Vietnam, the Mujahideen vs the USSR in Afghanistan, the American Revolutionary forces vs England, the French Resistance vs the Nazis, etc.
  I would highly recommend the YouTuber, Anark. He has fantastic content discussing all aspects of anarchism, including defense. He also has links to many other great resources to learn about Anarchism.
- thank you for explaining. This makes it a lot easier to grasp.
  Do you have a source that slowly zooms in on the topic so I can read stuff that helps me get an idea of more concepts regarding this?
  
  There's a lot of classic books on anarchy. I think Peter Kropotato[sic] has a lot of stuff written before the Russian revolution that goes heavily into why capitalism and feudalism both suck.
- I’d like to thank you for taking your time to provide such a thorough answer
  
  Thank you for reading it :)
- I am five years old and I don’t understand anything you just said.

Because no one knows anything whatsoever about actual anarchist political theory.
Largely due to it being heavily suppressed and propagandized against by States, capitalist or 'Communist', and their adherents.
Anarchy as thought of by the wide and vast majority of people is simply a state of chaos and violence with no clear rulers.
What Anarchy actually is is fairly simple.
Root words derive from Greek.
An- Prefix: Without
Archon: Tyrant/Cruel and Ruthless Ruler/Undefiable Authority
Non insane Anarchists are always critics of the state, corporate structures of organizing the work place, most forms of organized religion, oppressive social norms and anything that creates and maintains any kind of hierarchy in society that results in oppression, impoverishment or cruelty to any particular group of people for illegitimate reasons.
Anarchy is essentially very similar in many ways to communism as Marx envisioned it, in that it is an idealized, as yet not perfectly defined goal of a just, egalitarian and democratic society that heavily emphasizes people being adequately represented economically in their daily lives as workers, as opposed to the standard liberal capitalist model where your boss essentially has authoritarian power over you in the workplace.
Both Marxism and Anarchism are highly critical of the profit motive and the ability of a very small number of people to own all or much of the capital (means of production such as factories) of a society, for very lengthy and detailed reasons.
A very common misunderstanding is what is truly meant by 'private property': most people unfamiliar with Marxism or Anarchism believe that Marxists and Anarchists believe that no one should be allowed to singly, individually own /anything/.
This is false. While many different adherents have different precise definitions, generally speaking private possessions are just fine until they get to the point of owning something directly and singly that has a massive impact on the lives of others should you choose to unilateraly use your 'property rights' in a way that is beneficial to you personally, but harmful to a large number of other people.
Further, Marxists and Anarchists both generally agree that 'property rights' as we currently conceive of them really only functionally exist for the rich and powerful, and are enforced via the power of the state.
Anarchism significantly differs from many later Marxist derived theories such as Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism that generally emphasize that in order to actually achieve an ideal, non capitalist society, one must create a massive state structure (or subvert an existing one) and place all power to reorganize a capitalist economy into a class of totalitarian economic organizers and planners, and that during this process the state is entirely justified in basically any means of crushing dissent it deems necessary.
This is of course heinous to Anarchists, who view a totalitarian state as essentially criminal.
What modern Anarchists, who are, again, not insane, usually support are working both within and outside of existing norms and government structures to meaningfully improve peoples lives amd expand their rights:
Mutual Aid: Direct Involvement in you local community to feed the hungry, house the unhoused, provide aid to the sick and displaced.
Advocacy: Doing what you can to promote ideas and views that will be beneficial to the masses, or to protect at risk minorities, both within existing formal societal structures like governments and businesses, and also within society generally.
Many modern Anarchists are also very concerned about the power if states and corporations to abuse the environment and curtail freedom of expression.
Anarchy also has another useful definition in the context of a world of nation-states:
Anarchy is that same common understanding of a world without rules and chaos, but the realization that this simply describes our current world given the history of actions of and between nation states, who often engage in many harmful acts against other nation-states and their populations, and rarely actually follow any rules or norms which are supposed, but i actuality rarely do, govern affairs between states. States will often do whatever they believe they can get away with that will benefit themselves, even if it means massively harming another state or group of people.
Finally, if you want to also be a modern technologically savvy anarchist, aka a cyberpunk, you can realize that the advent of computer and digital technology means there no longer exist any actually valid reasons, in very many cases, to actually pay for software, and that you should be an advocate of open source software.
So, in summary, Anarchy is not a state of chaos, without rules.
It is a very complex and nuanced political theory of advocacy for a more equitable and more just society.
No serious Anarchist believes that the world would be better if everyone was free to rum around and do literally whatever they want on an individual scale.
What exact kind of society do they propose?
Well unfortunately that differs wildly from Anarchist to Anarchist, but again, as with how Marxist socialism is but a /process/ of transforming from a capitalist society into an as of yet not perfectly defined communism, Anarchism is a /process/ and /method of analysis/ of how to transform into a better society for everyone.
- Nice explanation! Thank you. I'm kind of getting the hang of it now. Very glad I asked.
  
  No problem.
- Well, crud. I guess I am much more on the side of anarchists than I thought…
  
  A lot of people are. We have bad press, partly our fault and partly because we’re dangerous to systems of power and those who benefit from them. The cultural idea of power doesn’t mind if everyone swaps places or if things get turned upside down. The framework of thinking persists, everyone in the system understands it. It’s easy. Destroying it though, that means basically everyone has to unlearn a lot. It demands we see the beggar and the ceo as equals influenced by their situation and circumstances.
  But also I think one thing to understand that a lot of people don’t is that there’s folks I’d call optimist anarchists, and folks I’d call pessimist anarchists. Optimist anarchists believe that we as people can build a better world together because people tend to want to help people and abolishing hierarchy is the best way to enable that. Pessimist anarchists believe that power tends to fuck with your head and make you a worse person. To them abolishing hierarchy may not result in a good situation, but rather that allowing hierarchy is too high risk. The optimist may say that a benevolent dictator isn’t as good for society as a benevolent society of equals. The pessimist would say that a benevolent dictator is rare at best and highly unlikely to keep happening.
  
  See, unlike the communist tankies who would at this moment chant 'one of us, one of us'...
  I will encourage you to aim to to good in an imperfect world where circumstances are often either morally gray, or involve complex factors that are non obvious, but very relevant and important, to learn moral and ethical theories and challenge yourself to actually answer 'What is good?'.
  I will encourage you to /never/ believe you have all the answers to everything, that there is always more than can be learned, and that there are very rarely one size fits all answers to unique and specific situations, and to know that admitting a mistake or error, and reflecting on why or how you came to be in error, is not the sign of a fool, but is the sign of a genuine person striving to be consistent froma starting point of incomplete knowledge and experience.
  I will encourage you to challenge your own assumptions, but to be confident when confronted with rhetoric and theories that you yourself can prove are misleading, logically invalid, or outright justify atrocities.
  As can probably be reasonably expected, there is an extremely wide range of Anarchist stances on basically the minutia of theory, as well as on what are and are not defensible or moral stances on specific current events or situations, and there are many Anarchist theoreticians who come from many different cultures and backgrounds, and many who focus much more on how Anarchist theory can or should apply to more specific features of our largely capitalist world.
  I have tried here to outline the most broadly agreed upon ideas that... well again probably only really Communist Tankies would find fault with, they kind of have a whole history of incorporating anarchists into initial Social Revolutions, and then murdering them all after they have control of their newly acquired state.
  They really do not like that Anarchists existed and still exist, they are very convinced, ironically, that they own the ideology that evolved out of Marx, when in truth prominent Anarchists such as Kropotkin and others actually both agreed and disagreed with each other on various issues, and helped form some of both of their views both by antagonism and agreement.
  Anyway, entirely unironically:
  Live Long and Prosper, and, the Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few.
  
  Haha I've had the same exact realization while learning about what it actually is!
- Wow, that was a very interesting and informative read, thank you!
  
  Thanks for the compliment! =)

People tend to think of anarchism as a power vacuum. As soon as a charismatic person comes in they'll start gaining more and more following. But that's not really how it works. Anarchy is about filling that vacuum with everyone. If a decision needs to be made you bring in everyone the situation effects to make it. You start at the level of a household to neighborhood to watershed to biosphere. A charismatic wanabe tyrant will be frustrated every step they take towards getting more power.
Anarchists develop structures and agreements that discourage concentration of power. They enable people to guide their own lives and improve their communities. When violence occurs, when agreements are broken the community decided what is too be done.
All that assumes you're already there. One of the primary differences between anarchists and MLMs (Marxist Leninist Maoists) isn't necessarily their longest term goals, it's the means by which they reach them. MLMs believe that they must use the state, capitalism, and by extension coercive control in order to reach those goals. That brings the risk of capture and co-option of those structures. They've also accomplished incredible feats of human uplift so I wouldn't say their position is without merit.
Anarchists see the revolution coming about through a unity of means and ends. They create a better society by building it while the old one still stands. Their groups are horizontally organized. They create organizations to replace food production and distribution; and devlop strategies for housing distribution (squatting).
- Anarchists develop structures and agreements that discourage concentration of power
  MLMs believe that they must use the state, capitalism, and by extension coercive control
  Are these not different words for the same fundamental concepts?
  I fail to see how "the state" and "capitalism" aren't just a more developed form of "structures" and "agreements". And if the community decides punishment is an appropriate response to breaking an "agreement", how is that any different from "coercive control"?
  And if you're community gets large enough (say even like a couple hundred people), how are any decisions gonna get made even remotely efficiently?
  Feel like you're a hop skip and a jump from a representative democracy. And as soon as bartering becomes too inconvenient, I'm sure a new "agreement" still be made to use some proxy as a form of current and boom now you've got capitalism too.
  
  I think "more developed" is not great here. It's assuming because it's the most common currently and supplanted more anarchist methods that it is better. States and capitalism have benefits that anarchy does not. You can not engage in an anarchist invasion. You can not extract value from a country using colonialism in an anarchist society. This enables capitalist and state control to expand and eventually control the land that anarchist, chieftain led, and other pre state communities once controlled [1]. Capitalism and the state conquered and coerced until it held an almost universal control [2] but that doesn't mean it's better to live under.
  One of the agreements I have in mind is trading what a farm's workers need: insurance in case of bad harvest, tools, infrastructure, education, labor, etc for what a city or town needs: food [3]. The "punishment" for breaking such an agreement is not violence. The result is the end of the agreement. That is not coercive control because the other can go to someone else for the same need.
  It probably wouldn't be efficient at large scales [4]. That's why you make small decisions among those the decision effects. A group might elect a recallable representative for their watershed council and the meeting notes would be distributed to everyone who wanted to read them. However, most decisions about a workplace or neighborhood could probably work by assembly [5]. It is a kind representative democracy but the purpose of anarchy is not ideological purity. The point is creating a society that eliminates as much oppression as possible and enables the most freedom possible.
  Bartering, as large scale economic system, is a myth. Gift economies, slavery, stateless communism, and more were far more common. Barter between communities existed but it was the minority of economic activity. The economy I suggest has more in common with Anarcho Communism. To borrow a phrase, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need."
  The exceptions are legion but they don't exactly control a lot of land. The San are an example.
  Worshipping Power does a good job examining the transition if you're interested in reading more.
  Each of those line items could be spread across a miriad of organizations and communities.
  The current system is only efficient at funneling money to the top so I'm not that worried.
  These are just possibilities but I think it's a workable structure that I would describe as non-heirarchical.
  
  See Democratic Confederalism. https://youtu.be/BKRHyF78j2I?si=5tHIXPtGNI0jW5Jq
- Isn't that just a liberal social Democratic system for people afraid of the words social and liberal?
  Anarchists creating structures and agreements isn't anarchy anymore, its... well... government.
  
  Anarchy is liberal in the sense that it pursues individual's freedom not only from oppression but also to act in ways that enrich themselves. It does not require total chaos as it's detractors have tried to characterize it since the term was coined.
  Anarchy is social in the sense it accepts human beings are almost always better off in groups and that society's goals should be for the betterment of all.
  It is democratic in the sense that people come together to make decisions; although, consensus is perhaps a better descriptor. Democracy has an association with first past the post voting and decisions that bind those represented.
  It is not a liberal social democracy as that tends to be used to describe a capitalist society with strong social programs, a beauracracy, and police state. They also tend to be supported by colonialism abroad or petrochemical extraction but I suppose that's not necessarily a requirement. I would agree that such a society is not anarchist.
  Structure is not heirarchy. A collective farm is a structure just as much as a factory farm. An agreement where a farm exchanges food for labor, infrastructure, medicine, education, and tools from a city does not preclude anarchy. Either side breaking that agreement when the other begins acting in bad faith is not oppression or a police state.
  
  I'm not very political or versed in the science about them, but does anarchy exclude guidelines and collaboration? I'd have thought it would enhance those things.
  If there isn't anything enforcing rules and laws, a government would be informational, making guidelines based on what people found to work best. Like a giant kickstarter paired with Wikipedia.
  Many guidelines will be followed. Like, boil your chicken before eating it. Good to know, and most will do it. Some won't, for whatever reason.
  Think village assembly, fund-raisers, donations.
  I might be completely off here. In my mind, people work great together, until there are rules to exploit. The best of us always comes out despite enforcing structures.
- Thank you very much for elaborating. I learned a lot. :)
- Like true Libertarianism, this assumes that people will be perfect, altruistic and cooperative.
  They won't be. Eventually (quickly) someone will become a cult of personality or a bully and seize power.
  See: America 2016/2024.
  
  Libertarians just want the person with more money above the ones with less. It's a very hierarchical system in favour for assholes (people stealing or inherit a lot of money).
  
  It is true libertarianism in the older socialist sense. It assumes most people will act in their own self interest. It assumes that most people are at their core social. It asserts that the structures of capitalist control: isolation, bigotry, corporate media and more have convinced people to act in destructive ways that neverless enable their survival. Capitalism also enables unempathetic narcissistic people to gain unjustified control over all of our lives.
  Power vacuums demand to be filled. Anarchism leaves no openings. When early states began encroaching into stateless societies they had an easy time with patriarchal and other heirarchical societies. Bureaucracies and tyrants were easily subsumed by dethroning a leader and implanting a friendly local. Anarchist societies were another story. They were not habituated to authority, they fought tooth and nail to maintain their anarchy. I don't have access to my books right now but in a couple days I'll drop an excerpt from Worshiping Power that goes into detail on a couple of examples.
- A charismatic wanabe tyrant will be frustrated every step they take towards getting more power.
  To be fair, this goes for everyone, not just a tyrant.
- I see the concept but unfortunately it runs against human nature: humans have an inherent need to follow someone and the emergence of cliques among people result in power struggles for the benefit of their own group.
  
  This is proven incorrect. While many societies throughout history have been heirarchical, many were egalitarian and rejected heirarchy. Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, Worshipping Power, and The Dawn of Everything all talk about various early societies many of which reject authoritarian structures. One still existing group of egalitarian societies in Africa is called the San, by all accounts they've been around for millenia. I'm not aware of a long lasting egalitarian industrial society but the idea that human beings are incapable of living free from some authority is simply untrue.

A lot of political theory is written in the societal equivalent of an airless room with a frictionless floor. It doesn't take into account how humans work within the system, especially bad actors.
- Which is why the only systems that have ever worked are mixed systems that account for human nature.
  A 100% democratic system would have problems because nobody would have any experience or expertise, so people would govern based on ignorance. A 100% communist system doesn't work because we don't have a fair system to allocate resources, and as soon as someone becomes in charge of allocating resources, they allocate more for themselves. Even 100% authoritarian systems don't work because a dictator has to sleep sometime. There may be a figurehead / leader in an authoritarian system, but unless that person delegates some power and control, they'll be killed and replaced pretty quickly.
  
  Historically the dictator one hasn't worked well is because every last one has been an actual troglodyte, making moronic decisions after moronic decision. At this point I'm fairly sure only the people with a room temperature IQ want to be dictators. Like I'm sure they would get deposed if they gave out that power but that just hasn't happened much.

What most of the replies are missing is that there are several different conceptions of what anarchy and anarchism is, even between so-called anarchists.
Anarchy, when boiled down to most basic component, is the rejection of hierarchy. What constitutes a hierarchy is also a big matter of debate. Every political system is about the guy with the bigger stick making the rules. The difference is who holds the stick (and why). Anarchy is the rejection of the stick. I think it is a disservice to look at anarchy through the same terms as those political systems, because anarchy is not a political system. Anarchy is the rejection of political systems. Anarchy is about the possibility of change. The possibility of freedom.
I can assure you that any so-called anarchists who claim to have a plan for how society will function after the revolution are lying to both you and themselves. There will be no anarchist society after the revolution. A revolution is a fight over the stick. Somebody will be holding it when the dust clears. Anarchy, in truth, is not about the future. It is about the now. It's about the real, existing struggle for a better present instead of the dream of a better future.
It's important to recognize our place in the world. I live in America. My country, right now, is committing genocide. Everybody in this country is responsible for that genocide. Anarchy is about doing something to stop the genocide because I want no responsibility in what is happening. Anarchy is about doing something about the police murdering innocent people on a daily basis because there can be no justification for what is happening. It's about providing food for people who can't feed themselves because people don't have to starve. Anarchy is about doing all of those things even when faced with legal consequences. Anarchy is about protecting people from the guy with the stick. That's why it's not a political system.
Because if it is true that for anarchists there is no difference between theory and action, as soon as the idea of social justice lights up in us, illuminates our brain even for a split second, it will never be able to extinguish itself again. Because no matter what we think we will feel guilty, will feel we are accomplices, accomplices to a process of discrimination, repression, genocide, death, a process we will never be able to feel detached from again. How could we define ourselves revolutionaries and anarchists otherwise? What freedom would we be supporting if we were to give our complicity to the assassins in power?
You see how different and critical the situation is for whoever succeeds, through deep analysis of reality or simply by chance or misfortune, in letting an idea as clear as the idea of justice penetrate their brain? There are many such ideas. For example, the idea of freedom is similar. Anyone who thinks about what freedom actually is even for a moment will never again be able to content themselves by simply doing something to slightly extend the freedom of the situations they are living in. From that moment on they will feel guilty and will try to do something to alleviate their sense of suffering. They will fear they have done wrong by not having done anything till now, and from that moment on their lives will change completely.
(Alfredo M. Bonanno, The Anarchist Tension)
- To build on this, it would be accurate to say that Anarchy is the principle upon which the technologies of Anarchism are built. Rather than a political system, which inherently function through obligation of participation or subjugation, the technologies of anarchism are participatory. That is to say anarchism provides methodologies of engagement between individuals and groups to achieve outcomes without obligation or subjugation which are imposed by the system, replacing those attributes of hierarchy instead with consent, participation, and consensus which are fundamentally voluntary and opt-in in nature.
  Another way to say this is that Political Systems are means by which a group forces rules upon individuals, while Anarchism is a set of methods by which individuals can perform actions as groups.
- Very good read! Thank you for elaborating.

Every now and then Lemmy has an actual discussion like this that gives me hope that it can become more than just an idiotic link aggregator. Thanks!
- Thanks for the feedback. I enjoy it as well.

That's what it turns into. Anarchy is only a stable form of government on paper. Like a lot of things, it falls apart when executed in the real world. Mostly because there will always be people who are jerks.
- The entire point of anarchy is that there is no government lol
  
  No hierarchal form of government, but rather a coalition of every single person that lives in the society. Things are definitely still governed. It isn't chaos.
  
  Anarchy is to government what 0 is to math.
- The jerks won't be invited to the anarchistic society because they won't be interested in maintaining the social contract. Enjoy exile, jerks!
- That. And usually the stick is a very metaphoric one. As long as mechanisms of power exist, someone will have some kind of upper hand in any and all situations with other people.
  For instance, if you're rich, you can throw more money at a situation and buy good results. If you have a big army, you can threaten someone into doing something for you and they know you have the manpower to back the threat up with actual force. And if you have a lot of connections, you can get stuff done via good will.
  Ultimately, you need a government that, as a unit, has the authority to say "WE are the top dogs and there is nothing you can do about it." Ideally that system is malleable enough by its subjects to always act for the betterment of its subjects, and to hold its members to account.
  In the absence of a formal government, that position is filled up by someone else. Either whomever shouts the loudest, has the most friend in the best places, has the biggest pile of money, has the biggest group of bullies, or some combination of those. In fact, that is how most kings' dynasties in history probably got established.
  Just like nature abhors a vacuum, society abhors a power vacuum, and the moment you get rid of a king and do nothing to follow up on his removal, someone else is gonna take the throne and the crown and make himself king.
  And before you start the republic spiel or the representative democracy spiel, a republic and a house of representatives are basically a royal court with more checks and balances, where the people on the outside as a whole get a say in who's in that court. It's basically regularly emptying and refilling thrones and having rules on how to do so.
- I agree. Additional question: do we need these „jerks“?

Organized labor is the biggest stick. If workers organize themselves based on an anarchist basis, they can potentially wield this stick very gracefully to ward off or even preclude the entities that would dominate and exploit them.
The end goal is basically the same as Marxism: a stateless, classless society. It's a fair question as to whether the anarchist route that forgoes an interim worker state is viable.
- What if the workers disagree with each other? I've had the same question as OP for a long time with no answer.
  
  So most of the time I talk to self proclaimed anarchist they're actually Anarcommunists which can be broadly described as "From each their ability, to each their need." If a conflict such as workers disagreeing arises, as it's been described to me, a representative community council would arbitrate the disagreement and everyone would see to it's enforcement. Personally I find it rather naive because it excludes resolving disputes between communities and focuses on incorporating communities together to settle disputes. Which is fine so long as the communities are willing to incorporate each other's welfare into their considerations.
  
  Disagreements are bound to happen. Ideally, this hypothetical anarchist society would need to have a system in which to air grievances ethically and then a public forum to determine the viability of integrating the new idea or revising an old idea that folks find objectionable. Rooting out bad actors would be the challenge, not the good faith compromises required to get everyone on the same page.
  If you think that all sounds like a lot of work for every single disagreement, I would counter that point by saying this hypothetical anarchist society isn't interested in creating wealth out of thin air, nuclear proliferation or the military industrial complex, or real estate scams.
  
  As members of the same class, workers interests should be more or less aligned and disagreements should be mostly minor. Differences can be settled by compromise or people can withdraw from the organization if not.
- Huh? Organized labor can only exist when laws protect them. Otherwise companies will always find scabs, and eventually, willing long term workers.
  If organized labor is the law, then they are government all over again.
  Not saying positing labor as a governmental body is a bad idea.
  
  For most of the history of capitalism, and in many cases still to this day, organized labor and various labor actions have been illegal, but it still happens.
  
  What are laws other than agreed upon tenets to live one's life by? We write them down and have a big grandiose way of announcing new legislation currently, all anarchists would do is make sure that those are baked into the social contract. Anarchists and Marxists would be the first group of people to enshrine worker protections into their society.

Anarchy, in it's purest sense, is to a system what darkness is to light. Darkness is the absence of light, not a thing in-and-of itself. Anarchy is the lack of an establishment or system, rather than a system in itself.
What this means, in practical application, is that most anarchists are simply opposed to whatever system exists currently. Human nature dictates that SOME system will exist as long as we do, so true anarchy can only exist when there are no longer humans around to perceive it.
In historical context, this almost always means that when anarchy "takes over," what it creates is a "systemic void" which - like any vacuum - quickly gets filled. Usually by the guy with the biggest stick.
- I think this is a common misconception about anarchies - that there's no social control of any kind. If you look at actual real world anarchies like Freetown Christiania in Copenhagen they don't believe in a complete absence of organisation. Far from it - they develop community-based committees which have no actual power in themselves but are used to develop concensus on issues that affect the whole community. So rather than abolishing all rules they're all about human collaboration and concensus.
  For instance when hard drugs became a problem in Christiana the residents got together and banned hard drugs. It's not a law as such but everyone's in agreement that if you try to sell hard drugs you'll be ejected.
  It's not a perfect place and it's hard to say that their brand of anarchy works well as a system of government. It seems to have been a mixed experience for many people who've lived there. But it's definitely been an interesting social experiment.
  There are plenty of documentaries on youtube if you're interested.
  
  they develop community-based committees which have no actual power in themselves but are used to develop concensus on issues that affect the whole community. So rather than abolishing all rules they're all about human collaboration and concensus.
  So it's a democracy.
- Nah that's the stereotypical view, where anarchy = chaos. For some reason it also needs to find a dumpster and put fire on it, and ffs I never understood that reference.
  Anarchists don't agree with any of those analogies

My impression from talking to and reading stuff by anarchists is that the idea is for culture to serve in the place of sticks and rules. As for the mechanics of how this works, what such a culture would need to achieve to succeed and how it could do so, frankly most of them seem to take it on faith that this will be the easy part and naturally fall into place as soon as their oppressors are no longer mucking things up.
Which is a shame because I think it could be totally plausible and worth seeking, if you worked through the game theory and sustainability-over-time issues, despite being a monumental challenge and being about something as crudely understood as collective psychology. Human society is a system, and systems can be designed lots of different ways. It could be possible to have a culture that is powerful or clever enough to allow for a large population to function without a controlling state beating people into line.
Not directly related to this comment but I also want to mention and recommend the book The Disposessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, really thoughtful novel about anarchism.
- Thank you for contributing! I will check out the book.

I'm not an expert, nor do I claim to be even moderately smart about things, but I would think anarchy devolves to other labels once there's a bigger stick being used.
Edit: it might be a dictatorship, or a monarchy if the stick is jewel encrusted
- This is correct. If society becomes a place where a few people are running everything by force it is not anarchy, even if technically there are no written down laws. A lot of anarchist philosophy is about how to achieve and maintain anarchy without it devolving back into hierarchical power structures. There are a lot of different ideas that have spawned their own subgenre of anarchy. I personally think some checks and balances combination of unions and community councils is the most likely to succeed. This is anarcho-syndicalism.
- Yes, anarchy is an interrim state in which no power mechanic has yet taken hold. But naturally it will, in one way or another.
  
  That is a misconception. Anarchism is a equal distribution of power among all participants. This will not change "naturally". It can be changed by either efforts from within to establish a single individual or group as a ruler over the rest, or by outside forces. Neither I would classify as happening just naturally.
  
  Not necessarily. Anarchy doesn't imply chaos or complete absence of societal structures.
  It mostly means no central ruling group/class or individual holds the monopoly on violence and government.
  i'm also not super educated on this but this much i know

Because that's called despotism, which anarchists historically oppose.
- Thanks. I have been reading and listening to a lot of stuff from other comments by now. Really cool discussion imo.

Because the moment anarchy starts making rules, it’s no longer anarchy.
- Anarchy is not the absence of rules but the absence of authority.
  
  And without authority to back up the rules- the rules are easily dismissed without consequence. And easily dismissed rules with no consequence is anarchy.
  Therefore- rules negate anarchy.
- That sounds like anarchy is the societal equivalent of a radioactive element. It is what it is, until some random amount of time when some shit kicks off and it becomes something else.
  
  Yes, and those who has grown a community or company will understand this. The emergence of power structures isn't a matter of if, but when.
  
  Which is a property of all things

In a "pure", transformed anarchistic society the large majority of people would subscribe to the idea of classless, stateless society where people act on their own responsibility or through voluntary associations and seek to reduce or even end violence and oppression. In such society only the minority would be willing to wield the big sticks of oppression.
Also in such society, the majority would obviously rise up against such attempts at pure fascism. Even though the basic ideology of anarchism is rooted in pacifism and non-violence, it doesn't mean anarchistic societies would simply give up the their ideology, roll on their back and surrender when faced with violence.
Also, I personally believe, that the way to the transformation from our current society to anarchism is only possible through means of revolution - and revolutions are very seldomly non-violent.
I know you didn't want to read long manifestos, but this is probably worth a read: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state
The real answer is of course far more nuanced than this post, but I tried to keep it short and readable
- Thank you very much! I will give it a read! Brilliantly put btw.

The current status quo is the guy with the bigger stick making the rules. You're asking how that would be different under an anarchistic society? Anarchy works best with small to medium groups of like minded individuals. The idea is that nobody in your village has authority over anyone else, and that you've struck a social contract to help each other out with each other's individual skills ie. the guy who's really good at baking bakes bread for the village, the person who's really good at building tables builds tables for the village etc. Of course, if a violent antisocial person wanted to, they could threaten that balance, hence why it's a good idea for anarchistic societies to of course still protect themselves.
- Sounds like a great place :)
- Is this distinct from commune ism

This is a great question and there are a lot of good answers from people much better read than me, but I'd like to throw in that anarchy is the fact of life. Nobody has authority over anyone else unless that authority is given to them by the person. Authority over someone requires consent from the person (I'm talking about between 2 adults, not like authority over your kids). Yes, pointing a gun at someone's head is an excellent way to get their consent to have authority over them. So in any form of government, the power lies in those who give consent for the government to have authority and validity a.k.a. "the people". Normally this consent is extracted unwillingly through either threats of violence or some kind of hypnosis. It would be cool though to live in a society where citizens willingly and well-informedly (is that a word? I don't give you authority to tell me which are words and which aren't) give authority to a government to manage society so people can focus on living well in a sustainable, equitable, and peaceful system.
- I kinda get where you're coming from... but just as an easy example...
  well-informedly isn't a word.
  I have now told you what is and isn't a word, dispote you explicitly not consenting to me doing so. What happens now?
  In this case? It isn't a big deal. You can tell me to pound sand or ignore me or try to get into a flame war with me over it, but your lack of given consent doesn't inherently prevent me from doing anything to you so I wouldn't agree that its just the way things are naturally.
  There are cases where it is much more important. If what you stated were true, there would be no concept of rape because nobody could do that to you without your consent, and if you have consent, it's not rape. Same with murder... the closest thing would be assisted suicide. I'd also argue that the Palestinians haven't consented to what is happening there. In each of these scenarios, one entity refused to consent, but it didn't impact the other perpetrator from continuing because the victim didn't have enough strength or weaponry or whatever (a bigger stick).
  I honestly don't see how you can have a society without both a mechanism to determine what the shared rules are, someone with a big enough stick to enforce those shared rules. Obviously, the tricky part then becomes ensuring that the enforcers only use their stick when its appropriate. Otherwise, you just end up with authoritarianism.
  
  Thanks for that great response. The truth is that I completely forgot to mention the other side of the equation: those who violate the principle of consent are wrong, which brings us to the really tricky bit
  a mechanism to determine what the shared rules are, someone with a big enough stick to enforce those shared rules.
  I don't have an answer ¯(ツ)_/¯
  
  I think that in an anarchic society, the stick is wielded by every individual and you enforce the rules through a large number of small sticks rather than a central authority with one big stick.
- I think you worded that pretty great. Thanks a lot! :)
- You're just redefining the word to make it meaningless.
  You could argue that everything is actually anarchy because there are no "god given" or evolutionary required hierarchies. You could argue that everything is authoritarian because as soon as two people come in contact there's a hierarchy established and one person has power over the other. You could argue that everything is democratic or communist, because in any system that doesn't result in everyone killing everyone else, people make agreements with each-other.
  The actual definition of anarchy is really based on how it appears and functions. If nobody is functioning as a leader and there's no obvious hierarchy, it could be described as anarchy.

My take on anarchism is that it's valuable as a criticism of any form of social organization, but not valuable as its own form of organization. I would never vote for an anarchist or join an anarchist movement because I don't want to put criticism first. Something must exist before it can be criticized. But anarchists offer truly great insight into out social structures

I mean are you looking for theory or actual anarchist practice?
Because in practice the best anarchism has done is war communism but less organized, less democratic, and less efficient than the communists, and the worst they've done is basically a military dictatorship that accidentally empowered kulaks to do pogroms, and if you ask modern anarchists the takeaways from these programs and what to do better in the future, 9/10 times(being generous) they'll just repeat a "stabbed in the back by tankies" narrative which shows they really haven't learned from their history.
- Oh wow. Now we’re getting into interesting waters. I probably need to read a lot.
  
  To add a disclaimer, I am specifically talking about the largest and more stable projects, anarchosyndicalism during the Spanish civil war and the free ukrainian state during the Russian Revolution

I hope we get more discussions like this on Lemmy. Awesome!
- Same here! :)

Philosophize This has just started a podcast series on Anarchy that I'm finding informative. The podcasts are short and all have transcripts. The first episode is here: https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/anarchism-part-one.
The second part just came out this past week.

Anarchy means nobody is in charge. As soon as somebody with a big stick says they’re in charge it stops being anarchy.
- Kind of incredible that they asked for a simple answer and you're the only one providing one in a sea of false information and extremely elaborate replies...
  "Anarchy is an utopia where there's no one in a position of authority because no one feels the need/pulsion to be in power, what you're describing is outside these parameters so it isn't anarchy." would have been my version of what you said.
  
  As an anarchist, I don’t think anarchy is a utopia, but the natural state of humanity.

In an anarchist society, that is a community without hierarchies and rulers, threats are handled by the community. So one person with a big stick would have to fight everyone else to establish their dominance.
- My point was that the "stick" could just be charisma. Our problem as a society seems to be gullibility (for the majority) and a blind trust in power figures. I always have to think of "negan" in twd as a figure taking hold in a chaotic situation. Someone explained that anarchism isnt "chaos" but my ability to grasp it isnt that deep yet.
  
  I tend to think that twd is fiction, and the people who negan piss off, who want to kill negan, only need to get lucky once, while negan needs to keep succeeding over and over (I've never seen the walking dead tho I'm just kind of going based on vibes).

I don't see a good lemmy community to learn more about anarchy. Am i missing something? I know about sources online, but it would be nice to read what actual people have to discuss.
- I found these communities for you, did you check them already?
  !anarchism@lemmy.ml, !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com, !anarchism@slrpnk.net
  
  Great! No, they didn't pop up when i used the search function of lemmy, only some tiny or dead ones
- Same! Please lmk if you find something!
  
  I'm not sure how to link for lemmy, but you can try:
  https://kbin.social/m/anarchism
  https://kbin.social/m/anarchism@lemmy.ml
  https://kbin.social/m/anarchism@slrpnk.net
  https://kbin.social/m/anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
  https://kbin.social/m/leftism@lemmy.world
  https://kbin.social/m/anarchism101@lemmy.ca
- There’s !anarchism@lemmy.ml and !abc@slrpnk.net
  
  Thank you!

There's a whole lot of different takes here already, so I'm just going to plug this very excellent book: Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life and bounce.
- Thank you very much for contributing! :) I‘ve read to almost all of the answers so far and they’re more than I could have hoped for. Very happy that this discussion works so well.

It is, a lot of people just have pseudo mystical beliefs about how people will act when there is no state. They like to imagine everything bad about humans is capitalism/the state/insert Boogeyman, not that the state and laws exist because we tried the alternative and no system at all always does work out to might makes right. A warlord always moves in to fill the power vacuum.
Some people are bastards and any system you create has to be created with the explicit assumptions that people are bastards. Some people just want to believe no one is a bastard or that there are not enough bastards to hurt the reasonable people. I think those people are wildly optimistic, and removing power structures does not remove the temptation to exert power or the ability, only one specific means.
- I agree in principle. Yet I think there is no one alternative but a lot and I dont think we have really tried them, especially not given the technological advances we are making. While not sold on anything yet, I'm definitely not a fan of the status quo.
  I'm also not saying capitalism is inherently bad but the current state of it is so severely corrupt that nobody should defend it imo.
  
  Agreed. Capital, states, etc all have issues in the same way. I just think the state can work for the people and I'm not convinced of the alternative. Both libertarians and anarchosyndicalists have some wild basically religious ideas about how everyone will basically just work together and not dick each other over because of... Social norms, I guess? I just have a hard time believing it.

Answering the following question might help in clearing up misconceptions: what is anarchism to you ?
From there we can discuss whether or not your definition is correct, and address your question.
- I was reading through this: https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionA.html#seca2 but I'm overwhelmed with the amount of content and just wanted to understand if other people have an "easier to grasp the basics" stance I could ask of them.
  I would so much love a "lateral society" where you are not better or worse than the person next to you (open source was recently cited as anarcho communism example) but are encouraged to contribute what you can to public benefit.
  But watching examples of decapitated states devolving in to warlord rule makes me think the idea does not really work.
  Example: we have this problem with 3E in open source, where some people just aren't educated enough on history and vile human behavior to put countermeasures in place and succumb to warlordism again (big company taking control in this case).
  
  Yeah that's a long read and the webpage as it is designed itself isn't inviting, @Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml posted a great comment which might be an easier introduction. I'll just select and copy paste paragraphs from your link that are relevant to understanding anarchism, but I do recommend allocating the time to read the whole thing if you're interested in learning more :
  anarchists consider it essential to create a society based on three principles: liberty, equality and solidarity.
  Liberty is essential for the full flowering of human intelligence, creativity, and dignity. To be dominated by another is to be denied the chance to think and act for oneself [...] Thus the society that maximises the growth of individuality will necessarily be based on voluntary association, not coercion and authority.
  Equality is essential for genuine liberty to exist. There can be no real freedom in a class-stratified, hierarchical society riddled with gross inequalities of power, wealth, and privilege. For in such a society only a few -- those at the top of the hierarchy -- are relatively free, while the rest are semi-slaves. Hence without equality, liberty becomes a mockery -- at best the "freedom" to choose one's master (boss), as under capitalism.
  Solidarity means mutual aid: working voluntarily and co-operatively with others who share the same goals and interests. [...] without liberty and equality, society becomes a pyramid of competing classes based on the domination of the lower by the higher strata. In such a society, as we know from our own, it's "dominate or be dominated," "dog eat dog," and "everyone for themselves."
  Anarchists do not believe that everyone should be able to "do whatever they like," because some actions invariably involve the denial of the liberty of others.
  Anarchists desire a decentralised society, based on free association. [...] Only by a rational decentralisation of power, both structurally and territorially, can individual liberty be fostered and encouraged. [...] anarchists favour organisations which minimise authority, keeping power at the base, in the hands of those who are affected by any decisions reached.
  Addiitonally, this is a recommended read : Ruth Kinna - Anarchism: A Beginner's Guide - https://files.libcom.org/files/Anarchism%20-%20A%20Beginners%20Guide%20-%20Kinna,%20Ruth.pdf
  Some youtube recommendations : Zoe Baker (@anarchozoe) ; Anark (@Anark) ; Red Planet (@RedPlanetShow) ; AudibleAnarchist (@AudibleAnarchist1)
  
  Just waking up so don't have the brain power to give an in depth answer (Lettuceeatlettuce's reply is god E: good obviously, not god lol.. In anarchism there are no gods no masters!), but one thing jumped out at me:
  But watching examples of decapitated states devolving in to warlord rule makes me think the idea does not really work.
  The problem with looking at examples of anarchism (or communism for that matter) within a wider capitalist world is that capitalism despises competition and will do anything in its power to destroy it. So capitalist states intervene, either directly by installing a well funded and armed opposition to the anti-capitalists, or they indirectly create war in the region so neighbouring countries can destroy the project, or they impose sanctions making it impossible for the project to survive, and so on... The other option is that the "leader" (which shouldn't exist) can't help but be tempted by the power capitalism can offer (only) those at the top, and they turn on their own project, making it state capitalist themselves, leading to its demise (like the USSR). But that is because we've been socialised under capitalism for so long it's hard to unlearn, not because greed and selfishness are "human nature".
  Remove capitalism entirely, and re-educate people with our natural instincts of cooperation and community, and things would turn out very differently..
  
  Counter measures against warlordism would be crucial for effective anarchism for sure!
  I think the easiest approach to anarchism is searching for Chomsky talking about it.

One thing to keep in mind is that any kind of government is at risk of being the the group with the bigger stick. A dictatorship only works because the group that supports the dictator keeps them in power. A democracy can still treat some of its citizens terribly, and the structure of the government makes is harder to oppose than "the guy with the bigger stick".
- I agree.

https://youtu.be/fibDNwF8bjs?si=bIMz9kq2831lWgbD
Relevant wkuk
- Oh wow. Its not a bad question how to run a giant plant though in an anarchist system.
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://piped.video/fibDNwF8bjs?si=bIMz9kq2831lWgbD
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Saving this for later, as I want to hear responses as well.

It basically is that. People WANT organization and rules, that's how humans evolved. By working together you become much more efficient. This is why countries form and why nearly any inhabited land has A government. Of course there is always one willing to be leader.
Even with the countries themselves, globalisation has prevented rogue states from doing whatever they want and a clear world order has formed.
Other than civil wars there are no real representations of anarchy, let alone "peaceful" or "utopian".

Anarchy is generally assumes that people will naturally cooperate without arbitrary distinctions. In practice most anarchists are mostly anti centralization. The smaller the political entities are the better (singular persons if you take it to the extremes).

I've got the perfect podcast for you Philosophize this. This topic is covered in the last two episodes.
- well then link it! :) thanks in advance
  
  I actually came here to comment the same thing. For any philosophy question, be it a person, or an ideology 'Philosophize This' is one of my first stops every time. Stephen West (i thonk thats hos name) explains things so well, and respectfully no matter who he's talking about.
  And i've only caught one of his episodes on Anarchism, but it was packed full of really useful information for an initial basis for understanding.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/262vW4junObOATj8j9KAxO?si=4ij18zgzTHq4b1qYrZCijQ
From Spotify if you use it
- That was fun to listen to! Thank you very much!

The world itself is anarchistic. Each counties has its rules but international politics have no governing body (the UN doesn't really rule over every state, just serve to mediate discussion). The country with the biggest stick would probably be the US, but they haven't conquered Canada or Mexico, let alone everyone else. Other players like Russia or China have influence too.
While the US does have a lot of soft power in influencing nations, they certainly aren't making the rules for other countries and puppeting them.
- While the US does have a lot of soft power in influencing nations, they certainly aren’t making the rules for other countries and puppeting them.
  South America would probably disagree.
  
  That was true in the 60s, but now most south American governments are ostensibly anti-american but need to be in okay terms with america so that they can trade internationally
- While the US does have a lot of soft power in influencing nations, they certainly aren't making the rules for other countries and puppeting them.
  This is a very rosy eyed statement. The "soft" power is the visible part, just the tip of the iceberg.

I feel this is relevant:
...proponents of communism have postulated that within the new society of pure communism and the social conditions therein, a New Man and New Woman would develop with qualities reflecting surrounding circumstances of post-scarcity and unprecedented scientific developmen ... Among the major traits of a new Soviet man was selfless collectivism. The selfless new man was willing to sacrifice his life for good causes ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewSovietman#Selflessness
Of course, arguably the soviet project failed to this new man, so much so that 'homo Sovieticus' is now a pejorative:
Homo Sovieticus (cod Latin for 'Soviet Man') is a pejorative term coined to describe the average conformist individual in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. Popularized by Soviet writer Aleksandr Zinovyev, it gained negative connotations and represented the perceived outcome of Soviet policies. ... Homo Sovieticus (cod Latin for 'Soviet Man') is a pejorative term coined to describe the average conformist individual in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. ... Characteristics of Homo Sovieticus included indifference to work results, lack of initiative, indifference to common property, chauvinism, obedience to government, and a tendency to drink heavily. ... traits like indifference, theft, lack of initiative, and submission to authority ... Some argued that the disappointment of intellectuals in the Soviet project had negative consequences, contributing to elitism and an anti-populist stance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomoSovieticus
- Although this is definitely interesting, I dont see yet how it is relevant to anarchy. Feel free to elaborate.
  
  In theory, if everyone has become selfless, there is no need for a man with a stick to create the rules or ensure compliance. No one will want to use a stick to push through rules which are to their advantage. People will simply cooperate with each other or help each other willingly where necessary.
  Think of a group of friends or adult family, where people help each other and cooperate willingly, because they love each other. Hopefully you don't need to threaten your partner to do their share of the household tasks. You do it because you want your relationship to succeed and want to support each other.
  The USSR tried to create this new man with a stick, propaganda and indoctrination during the dictatorship of the proletariat phase. They never achieved fully realized communism, where everyone willing works to the best of their ability and helps their commune succeed and the commune of communes that is a truly communist society succeed.
  Smaller anarchist communes and experiments will try to do this organically. Everyone chooses to try to do their best and help the rest of the commune. It sounds pie in the sky, but it's not unlike what volunteer groups do. People believe in a common cause, and freely volunteer their time, because they believe in their shared goal, and enjoy working together.
- The USSR was ML, which is definitely not anarchist. They even crushed anarchist experiments like Makhnovia and the Kronstadt rebellion. Most anarchists I've encountered very justifiably hate the USSR.

the guy with the bigger stick making the rules
aka a monarchy
- Also just what we have currently in capitalism.

I would just like to point out that it's not possible to be politically agnostic. Besides political stances or ideologies not being religions, everyone has some point of view on at least some issues, be they societal, financial, etc.

Generally, it's envisioned as being a lot like now, but with no classes, and people making and remaking the rules on the fly rather than having set laws and set authorities. No laws, no government, but not no rules.
- This sounds like a much faster and more flexible system. Might be volatile but I cant say.
  
  Full disclosure, I'm not convinced personally; I need more evidence it can work.

That's why anarchy isn't stable, it's a state between governments but eventually some kind of rule will emerge, and you're correct in that "bigger stick" is likely to be the first.

The short of it is "power to the people".

We have a better word for that. Dictatorship.

Anarchy in our reality is basically just warlordism. But when people talk about being an anarchist, they usually mean something like anarcho-syndicalism or anarcho-capitalism.
I’m not an anarchist so I’m not going to do well explaining it but usually, the “anarchy” part is a step towards a larger transformational goal. No one is an “anarchist” in the sense of wanting society to collapse. The “anarcho-“ part is them saying a layer of power (like the nation state, for instance) is unnecessary.

Imaginary utopias remain imaginary. Anarchy is whomever is willing to brutalize others the most rules until someone worse comes along.
- Eh no... It's kind of ridiculous that you went from the first phrase that made sense and could have been the basis for a very simple explanation of what anarchy is to then describing something that has nothing to do with anarchy as being anarchy.

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