Posed similar questions about communism in the past. I’m just trying to understand, I ask because I know there is a reasonable contingent of anarchists here. If you have any literature to recommend I’d love to hear about it. My current understanding is, destruction of current system of government (violently or otherwise) followed by abolition of all law. Following this, small communities of like minded individuals form and cooperate to solve food, safety, water and shelter concerns.
Big disagree. That’s the mainstream/normie concept of anarchism, but that’s not what anarchist theory actually suggests anarchism should be, when organising society along anarchist lines. I believe that commited anarchists generally put more thought into how they should re-arrange society than just “we’ll live like animals.” (The idea of “wilderness” suggests you’re thinking of something like anarcho-primitivism. My own home or homestead isn’t a wilderness, for instance, it’s just a very small settlement.)
First thing you have to understand is that anarchism is basically a precursor-idea to communism. They share the intention of giving common people en-masse autonomy over the running of their society. A few implications of this:
A) If implemented, they would both require workers to seize means of production. Unless…
B) Our first difference arises - socialists seek to govern through various means, e.g trade unions and/or the most educated in society, whereas anarchists don’t seek to govern at all since they have dismantled or collectively opted out of the elective framework. Which is a profoundly democratic thing to do.
C) no “imperialism,” or more simply put, war waging. Two ways of looking at this: if anarchism OR Communism was implemented worldwide, there would likely be no nation-state distinctions. Also, if everyone is behaving anarchically, there would be no state and army apparatus to serve under.
Second thing to consider is all of those “plot holes” that the normie idea of anarchy - which I like to attribute to how they live in the walking dead or another post apocalyptic world - raises.
A) how do people access, for example, medical services? Either they don’t (APrimitiv again) or ALL the doctors and nurses need to stick to their jobs as they commit to this new anarchist world. They can achieve this as long as they themselves organise co-operation between, e.g, medicine producers, the ambulance drivers, surgical blade and clean fabrics factories.
So the goal of anarchism is autonomy, but it usually isn’t the case that anarchists want to do away with all things we live with in today’s society. Hospitals provide an example of when anarchists might behave more… “Socialist,” where the route to a doctor’s autonomy would be the doctors seizing control of a hospital and running it as a council or a series of co-habiting but independent wards in the same building.
That brings us to what’s actually the biggest plot hole of anarchism, the question of efficiency in organisation. You can see that the former conclusion, that doctors form a hospital council, is going to be more efficient then ordering in supplies only for their own ward.
B) the plot-hole of wanton Violence - how to prevent it?
To preface: In our current, statist society, we often associate anarchy with criminals. Mainly because career criminals live the most detached from state structure of any humans, thus are seemingly the most successful at actually being anarchists.
We see these people constantly utilising random acts of violence as they compete with state-subjects for access to resources and services which the state has a monopoly on. Commonly this is the State’s currency.
Career criminals are always unproductive people. People see their lack of access to resources or production-means and presume it will be the case for all anarchists - in which case, wanton violence would be common.
So we’ve already addressed 2 solutions; first, people should access and utilise production means themselves. Secondly, they should co-operate, in order to maximise prosperity and hence avert acts of violence from resource competition.
But how else? How do we deal with criminals who attack people for
you could “legalise crime,” but then why should anyone partake in your particular rules of anarchy, and why shouldn’t they just attack you?
you can “just kill em!” But that leaves you open to vengeance from their friends and family.
clearly the best way would be to prosecute them in some way - but we abolished the state, and with it, the punitive system, the legal system, the judicial system.
so, collaboratively, we have to work out punishments that nearby anarchists agree with… Oh wait! That sounds similar to socialism!
As an exercise to the reader I’ll allow you to try and imagine anarcho capitalist society playing out. Picture yourself trying to build a corporate empire if you want. What happens at the end of this simulation?
Well, either you get everything stolen from you because a state doesn’t exist to protect your wealth, or you start implementing adequate protective measures.
But at that point, you have become your own state - you have a monopoly on violence, to protect people working in your organisation and the value they have produced for you. To me that’s the definition of a state - monopoly on violence and decision making power.
The same is still true if you share your big industrial enterprise among your buddies, or even your workers! We know from modern states that they don’t need to serve one person at the top.
My point here is just that anarchism and capitalism are not compatible. Capitalism really does rely on the state’s monopoly on violence, in order to keep Microsoft and Apple from firing nukes at each other.
So if anarchism is decidedly not capitalist, for capitalism is decidedly not anarchist (not long-term, anyway, LOL), what does that make anarchism? It’s either communist, socialist or economically-centrist. I’d argue it can be either of those.