this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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The part where people with better material positions consolidate power and influence, and exercise that power over the meek.
Or the part where greedy fucks "make their own decisions" that don't factor in externalities or the impact they have to the common good. Resulting in things like the destruction of our natural environment and ecosystem.
This take is like when people try to shit on communism by describing capitalism
That’s not anarchy, it’s chaos. You’re maybe thinking of warlordism, aka ‘ancap’ or market libertarianism?
Anarchy is a lot of work for its participants. If you aren’t outsourcing management decisions about your life, neighbourhood, region, etc., you have to collaborate in making those decisions. If power is allowed to concentrate, your self-determined governing system collapses and anarchy, by definition, is lost. It’s a life of constant renegotiation.
Rojava is illustrative, as it’s established in a self-conscious anarchic process, and by all reports it’s great in many ways but a lot of daily effort, and is under direct assault currently.
Is a system that requires a highly engaged populace to avoid organically devolving into chaos tenable? Seems even more perilous when considering the inevitable influence of hostile entities trying to encourage that decline.
Don't get me wrong, I have no idea what to do here. I'm just hoping our current decline is slow enough that I can live out the next 20 years or so peacefully and then off myself while I still have the faculties to do so.
I think it's tenable, yes. Dealing with destructive people needs to be at its core.
FWIW people said the same thing about democracy, humanism, etc., because one feature of ideology is that it naturalizes core concepts like authority systems.
The more individualist one's culture, the more difficult it is to imagine a functional anarchy, I think. Trust needs to be a starting place, but some places, like the USA, have a fairly low level of trust, maybe not enough currently to make such a system tenable.
There is no true anarchy because government emerges spontaneously from human interaction. "Anarchists" start to add these structures and fail to realize that what they are creating is just an idyllic state without using the word "state" because they don't like it.
Okay, fine, you got me, we're just creating an idyllic state that is objectively better than capitalism or state communism.
So, you've got me to confess, what's the next step in your master plan?
There is no true democracy, no true totalitarianism… no true scotsman?
No one on the inside of these systems thinks it’s idyllic, I can assure you, once they realize how much work and commitment it requires, and governance does not require privileged classes wielding centralized power to be a government.
You are conflating State with Government. They are synonymous but only similar, not the same. Self-governance requires a great deal of education along the way, and a constant flow of meetings and chores.
The first generation in restructuring both economy and governance makes a lot of mistakes. Propagandists point at this as though it proves non-viability, but that’s just deception.
Rojava also directly dictates the structure of local councils and delineates their power within its confederal structure.
This is not meant as a 'jab' at Rojava, which I deeply admire, but that even libertarian socialist polities do make decisions for other people, even local majorities which may not agree with the confederation's central positions.
Well yes, power is never cleanly distributed and autonomy always hits a boundary, usually one of causing harm to others.
In most situations the possible solutions to a problem cause other problems. Management skill requires minimizing harm, while not crossing red lines. Rules can only be an attempt to be fair.
A functional anarchy needs federation based on rules negotiated with other polities of the same scale or order. Common principles of anarchism such as mutual aid glue things together. Enforcement and expulsion would be part of a much larger collaboration on justice.
Compare how much environmental damage is done by anarchist societies versus governed societies.
It's illegal for us to defend ourselves.
It's impressive how they can both destroy the environment and also not exist.
Putting words in /u/paultimate14@lemmy.world 's mouth, I'm guessing they are referring to Libertarian de-regulation type stuff, where we have seen that Capitalists will always choose to pollute or do other external harms as long as they don't pay the cost. That's not the same as Anarchism, of course, but as someone not well read on either ideology it feels like the outcome would be similar.
"As someone who has no idea what I'm talking about, this is what I would think would happen." Is what you and basically everyone else shitting on anarchism is saying. You are all talking about anarchism like capitalism would still exist, which it wouldnt. "Anarcho"-capitalism is what most of you are talking about and it is almost universally ostracized by the anarchist community.
It is nearly impossible to talk to non-anarchists about anarchism I have found because it feels like yall can only look at one part of the picture at a time, and have then forget what you were just looking at when you change focus. Genuinely just read theory and learn about actual experiments into anarchism. I recommend "At the Cafe" by Malatesta, and the documentary "Living in Utopia" on Zoe Baker's youtube channel. Those are what took me from being a communist to an anarcho-communist. "Conquest of Bread" by Kropotkin is also a great start. But I genuinely feel like it is impossible to argue with non-anarchists about anarchists unless they actually understand what anarchism is and the logic behind it. Something that can't be properly outlined in a meme or comment thread.
Chief, I only suggested what I thought the other person meant. I didn't make any statements of my own on the subject in question.
I am actually reading Kropotkin just now and I've perused the FAQ that is often posted here, but I'm happy for your other recommendations. I'm not sure of my specific leftist identity yet, but that's something I'm working on.
Almost everyone in the world has lived under capitalism their whole lives, and the only other major economic philosophy we westerners really learn about in school is feudalism. It's only natural that they (we) don't immediately grasp other systems of living. Thinking about Anarchism or Communism or Socialism etc as an alternative in the abstract is one thing, but it's not strange to me that that it's easier for the student to think about one piece of society at a time. By default I think that would be by comparison to the familiar system.
I wrote too much again - a common problem for me.
Anyway, just chiming in to empathize but suggest patience for the 99% of humans that haven't put as much thought into economic and political systems as you have.
Have a good one, or don't. I don't claim any authority over you! Lol.
I apologize for coming off as a agitated. Its hard to read a lot of these comments and not come away feeling that way. I am super happy to hear you are reading and educating yourself, and apologize for interpreting your comment the way I did. It is hard to keep track of who says what and that is where my confusion began.
I agree that socialism/communism is already a leap for people to understand as it breaks away from everything they have ever known, and anarchism is even worse in that regard. My frustration comes from the lack of good faith from most people when arguing in the first place. I can be patient with ignorance. I have a much harder time being patient with arrogance (which ironically ends up making me respond arrogantly). Like I said in another comment, it often feels like arguing with anti-vaccers or MAGAs because they both argue in bad faith and from a place of ignorance. Pair that with seeing it every day in almost every comment thread related to anarchism and it becomes very hard to not become bitter.
This is all to say I appreciate your response and I am sorry for the way I reacted to your comment. You are here in good faith and I let the negativity assume you weren't.
Totally get it! I didn't and don't take any offense, just sort of got caught in the crossfire this time. I don't have many opportunities to talk to sealions, or maybe I am just bad at detecting them. I have no doubt that that would get frustrating.
I know I'm ignorant on this and many other topics, but I'm slowly chipping away at some of the edges. I've seen a lot that feels right in Aism, Sism, and Cism, but they can't ALL be right about everything! I think I would most benefit from a more formal process of thinking about the kind of world I want to see and which ideas might bridge that gap but it's hard to find the time alongside actually living on this stupid rock.
Cheers! LLAP
Be sure those societies are reduced to almost no people, usually in lands that are deficient in natural resources in the first place.
Just look up for a counter-example. The Earth's atmosphere is full of space junk now because for decades no regulatory body had the balls to tell private companies not to leave their shit up there.
Your issue is once again with capitalism, not anarchism
Dude is effectively arguing that capitalism is a natural phenomenon that emerged from human interaction. Itd be funny if it weren’t so sad
Another failure of the education system to put on the board lol
There is a regulatory body; if you try to defend everyone from these private companies, then the police will arrest you. The regulation protects them from us, but not vice versa.
Ironically, space junk doesn't happen in a vacuum. 😜
While I agree with you completely, isn't that also what we currently have and all of it is being done for the purpose of profit chasing which wouldn't exist in a society without a government imposed system of value?
Profit chasing would not only exist, but would be allowed to run rampant and unchecked without government oversight.
Governing structures are a naturally emergent phenomenon of not only humanity, but all life.
Imagine what Bezos and Musk would do without any sort of government restriction at all? Historically speaking, those people under "anarchy" become warlords, chiefs, kings. In its simplist form, the power is held by those who are the best at violence. That is what biases almost every culture towards patriarchy in the first place. Eventually more cunning ambitious people emerge and find ways to form alliances and engage in politics. This has happened throughout all of human history and pre-dates concepts like nationalism or statehood. An example would be that the Congo was colonized by King Leopold personally, not the kingdom of Belgium.
If we dissolved every state in the world today, the world would instantly re-form into new states: X, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon. Palantir might be their own state. Then you have the defense contractors.
So in my estimation if we are going to have states, those states should recognize their power comes from the people in a democratic process, not money or land. The state should be used to regulate out greed: the most successful states are the ones that remove profit incentives through regulation. The problem with pretty much every state is that we allowed money to centralize decades ago, to the point where that money can use its power to take control of the state. Eventually this leads to revolution, though whether it's a matter of days or decades is up for debate.
The system of value is imposed by the people, otnthe government. The government is an attempt to model that system of values.
Yes, but if you're bowling with the bumpers up and can't hit the pins, removing the bumpers will not help. And instead of having to go through the government beaurocracy they could just do it directly.
Profit chasing would absolutrly exist in a system without restriction and would be 1000x worse because there is a chunk of the human population that completely lacks empathy and the ability to think rationally into the future beyond instant reward "now".
Profit chasing would absolutely not exist in an anti-capitalist system, because there would be no profit.
Is there no personal property? Do workers now not control the fruits of their own labor?
Personal property and profit are not the same thing.
Inherently, no. But accumulation of personal property can be a result of profit; profit is simply the difference between expenses and revenue, whether expressed in monetary terms or in material goods.
So long as people are allowed to dispose of the fruits of their own labor as they desire, profit remains a possibility. Which means any society must either how to deal with profit, or how to stop people from disposing of the fruits of their labor as they desire.
Oh it will be totally better then. Corrupt assholes can cut out the dollar sign middle man and just offer exploitation opportunities in exchange for not dying of starvation or disease directly instead.
And who is going to protect the corrupt arseholes from us? At the moment it's the entire system we live under, that they control.
We cannot do any worse by destroying that system and directly fighting the corrupt arseholes.
Yes, but what you're describing is Anarcho-capitalism, or Right-wing Libertarianism, not Anarchism. Anarchists do have restrictions, and there would be no profit incentive, as money could be entirely eliminated if they wished, and instead operate on a Gift economy. This concept is wonderfully explored in Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed, if you'd like to see how such a system could operate in practice.
Money is only a quantification of wealth; most pre-modern societies are not even monetized, but have massive wealth inequality all the same. In order to eliminate profit, you must eliminate wealth; to eliminate wealth, you must eliminate personal property, not just private property.
As your own link notes, gift economies do not eliminate the accumulation of wealth or the desire to do so; accumulating wealth becomes a means of building social capital, which translates into power.
Accumulation of material wealth is only really possible with a hierarchy (as there is only so much an individual can realistically accumulate without underlings), and that hierarchy usually requires a power imbalance to form. A society with decentralized power as cornerstone makes it much harder (though not impossible) for those types of imbalances to happen.
Personal property is classified as what an individual person or family can actively use themselves. If you begin hoarding more than you or your family can realistically use, the excess is no longer considered personal property, but private property, which may get you ejected from that community if you actively hoard under an Anarchist society.
Private property is how imbalances of power can explode from a small local problem to a bigger one.
Quoting someone who explained the difference between private and personal property:
Personal property absolutely does not have to be eliminated, and does not contribute to profit incentive, hierarchies, or power imbalances. Only Private Property does that.
... fucking what.
Accumulation of material wealth is extremely easy without hierarchy.
So any jewelry, since it is not, realistically, used, will get you ejected from the anarchist society?
I ask this facetiously, not seriously, because my point is that the definition very quickly becomes murky.
No disagreement there, but I'm discussing precisely the issue of local problems. We are regarding each anarchist commune as its own entity; thus, we must regard each of these entities as being either capable or incapable of solving the fundamental problems with arise with a society.
And if there's a shortage of hammers, does personal property no longer remain personal? Is personal property purely conditional in an anarchist society, based on the desires of one's neighbors? What defines a shortage? If someone 'hoards' a personal hammer that they use only a few times a year, when the community could use a hammer for the second floor of the school so the janitor doesn't have to go up and down the stairs every time he needs to make a repair, is that a shortage? What criteria are used to determine these things? Or is it simply a matter of those who are liked by the community are treated well, and those who are not extroverted are punished arbitrarily?
Even if you own it and use it yourself, your usage deprives others of its use. How big is a house permitted to be? How fine? Since we are regarding housing as potentially personal property, do you not see how someone who simply owns and uses a fine house can accumulate favors, goodwill, connections, and even material goods in excess of someone who does not own or use a fine house?
I think those are all pretty fair and classic examples of private property, and have no objection.
But if we are to keep to that definition strictly, then profit, hierarchy, and power imbalances are all still possible.
How does that figure? Do you think people are only motivated to profit if they can own a factory someday? Most people who spend their time clawing desperately at their fellow man for a few extra bucks not only will never own private property in that sense, but generally do not even dream of owning private property in that sense. They want a better house than they have, more comforts than they have, more free time than they have, more respect than they have. And people leverage personal property for hierarchies and power imbalances all the damn time - from tales of personal jealousy in fucking Bronze Age folklore about villages smaller and with less range of wealth than most modern apartment buildings, to who does or does not have the Good Shoes today.
To accumulate wealth as an individual, you need other people who can help you gather or take that wealth/resources, or do so on your behalf.
Jewelry is not an essential good to society, it's just a bauble. Someone having a personal jewelry collection doesn't deprive anyone else of any essential need. It would be an issue if they forcibly took someone else's jewelry, but if they traded for it, or made it themselves, it's just personal property, and they could reasonably collect as much of it as they want, as it is unlikely they would be able to realistically gather enough to cause a problem in society from a shortage of precious metals for some societal need.
You as an individual don't realistically need 100 or 1000 hammers. That would be hoarding. And you most certainly couldn't individual own a large factory that made hammers (but you could collectively own it in a worker cooperative).
But a few personal hammers that you use for your own projects are your personal property, even in a hammer shortage. If you allow personal property to be confiscated for societal need, it's little different from Marxist-Leninism.
You are as deserving of a place to live as anyone else. You are not deserving of multiple places to potentially live if someone else is without a home. You can't take someone else's home that they personally use, and they can't take a home that you personally use.
If we assume that everyone who currently lives in their existing home gets to keep it, then the style or size of a house would be determined by the people willing to build them. You could build your own house as you wish, as long as large as you can realistically construct on your own, or if you can convince a group of friends to help you build a bigger one (they may want collective ownership if they help, or they may do it as a favor to you). Otherwise you might participate in a building group that makes housing for people, like how this group in Spain operates.
That's the exact opposite of the entire point of commodity money.
Okay. Do you not see how controlling a large amount of wealth in the form of jewelry can give a person influence even in a society without formal units of account for monetary expressions of value?
But then you admit that personal property is not defined by its lack of deprivation of society of needed commodities, which drives us right back to square one.
My point there is linked to my point below about the size and quality of the house, not the number of houses owned. I presumed, in the discussion, that we were discussing a single, actively-used house.
But in that case we're back at the issue of early 'big men' chiefdom style societies, where the accumulation of valuable goods is itself perpetuated by the ownership of those goods, rather than the usage of those goods or one's labor. If John Jacobs is living in a little shack on the side of the river, and Malcolm Red is living in a palace a stone's throw away, how is it moral for Malcolm to continue in that state of affairs?
It may be able to be used as a bargaining chip, but overall it would be much less valued under a society where gaining tokens of exchange isn't tied to access to a decent life. Right now, jewelry is valued because it can then be converted to monetary units. Those units are valuable because so many are still clamoring for them to get access to those basics.
If monetary tokens could only be used for things beyond the basics, they may still have value, but you could no longer be able to exploit people nearly as hard with them.
No. Personal property is defined as something that an individual or family uses. Private property is any excess resource or tool that an individual or family cannot use themselves.
A literal palace probably couldn't be reasonably justified as personal property, but for simplicity's sake, most people who already own their home would be able to keep it, even if it's large. However, it's likely that the palace or mansion owners would then need to maintain those themselves if they wished for it to be just their own personal property, and they would likely find it very difficult to get others to maintain it for them without sharing it in some way.
John Jacobs and the Palace owner (if they eventually found it unmaintainable on their own) would both be able to join a building collective to contribute to the construction of a more reasonable a home they could then own. They would also have access to the guaranteed basic housing available to anyone (assuming enough had been constructed by that point).
It would be less valued, you say? In a society where transferring value for labor is no longer able to be performed by money, and so the only other options are social connections or barter?
That's not even getting into questions like loaning jewelry out, social influence, etc etc etc.
Again, most people in the modern world are not short of basics, but of things they want. It doesn't sap their ambition one bit. Only reduces their desperation.
Giving people their needs keeps them from murder, not manslaughter.
This is literally what you said:
Then private property is no longer easily identifiable by its effects on others, now private property is 'excess' personal property, and the question of 'excess' is returned to use; and use, as we have established, can be highly irregular but still regarded as valid. Which means we return to square one - under what circumstances can one differentiate between personal and movable private property beyond "simply a matter of those who are liked by the community are treated well, and those who are not extroverted are punished arbitrarily?"
Yes, that's how clientistic systems begin in early state societies and feudal societies. It's not pretty.
That's not at all an answer to the question that I was asked. I reiterate:
"If John Jacobs is living in a little shack on the side of the river, and Malcolm Red is living in a palace a stone’s throw away, how is it moral for Malcolm to continue in that state of affairs?"
Profit does not have to be money, it can be power or hoarding of other things.
The entire point of Socialist Anarchism is to prevent the centralization of power or the hoarding of private property. Eliminating money, and thus profit incentive, is simply another tool to prevent centralization of power or the incentive to accumulate resources.
Yes.
Too many anarchists (and Libertarians) are all "Your Laws are telling me what to do any taking away my free will an autonomy."
Like no, the laws exist to stop idiots from doing stupid shit and harming others. Essentially ALL laws. The harm is not necesarily physical. It could be money, time, emotional, etc.
Essentially, at some point in time, se dumbass did something stupid, and it harmed someone else, and we, society, collectively came together and said "No, this is harmful, its not allowed, we trusted people to be good to eachother, they failed, now there is a law that "forces trust" with consequences for failing to keep that trust.
The real problem people have is that in many cases, the enforcement mechanism is not being used/is not working.
I would disagree with the "ALL" laws. Regulatory capture is a thing. There's plenty of bad laws that exist to do things like keep new small businesses from entering into industries to compete, or to help the wealthy maintain power. I just view those as symptoms of the greater imbalance of society.
Laws are tools, and can be created and used for both evil and good.
I mean, I would love to know what laws are harmful to new small businesses that don't also a amount to laws for "Don't exploit your workers".
The way tax laws are structured, big businesses generally pay much less taxes compared to smaller businesses. Non-compete laws are very much in favor of big business, as it prevents ex-workers from forming competitive smaller businesses in the same field.
Citizens United massively favors the interests of big businesses who can out-bribe smaller businesses, which allows bigger businesses to become monopolies to crush smaller businesses from out-competing them.
That feels like a way more solvable problem than removing laws.
Do not confuse Anarchists with Right-wing libertarianism, only the latter is an advocate for complete deregulation and chaos.
That is what Anarchists do. Just instead of having a bunch of representatives who are corporate captured make those rules for them, A community will directly decide on those rules themselves, collectively.
Which is 99% of the time due to capitalism, as the rules are selectively enforced against the poor, and often never enforced at all against the rich and powerful.