this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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I think a big issue here is that you're operating under the assumption that humanity as a whole is incredibly selfish, uncaring, and unable to operate cooperatively without a centralized force that is able to adequately threaten people to cooperate against their natural instincts. If that is your base assumption, then you will have to conclude that Anarchism isn't viable because it doesn't have enough threats or sticks to keep people from reverting to some base-level of antagonism, laziness, or self interest.
Where on the other end, due to the evidence I've seen of how humans organized in egalitarian societies as the norm until around 8000 years ago (from compelling evidence put forward in David Graeber's and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything), as well as the success of the Anarchist Society in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil war, I believe that humans would demonstrate their true nature is cooperation and egalitarianism if finally provided a society that does not actively incentivize our worst traits like our current one does.
Most people in the US are barely able to afford basic food, housing, and transportation. They are working harder now than they did in the 1970's without any meaningful wage growth since that period, despite their actual productive capacity increasing tremendously since that time.
You really think most would choose to continue struggling with bills, or to be two paychecks away from homelessness vs. a society where all of your basic material concerns are guaranteed as a human right?
And you realize those people can choose to do whatever they want with the those 9 months of free time? They can still choose to become doctors, or engineers, or scientists, or to create the things that give meaning to their lives? They just won't have the threat of homelessness weighing above their heads if they don't instead choose to work for someone else to make them richer.
All the more reason to question the utility of capitalism, if only a minority are able to achieve the fruits of all the time spent doing things we'd rather not be doing, if every hour is so to be considered.
If you truly believe that, then our entire worldviews are completely incompatible. I don't mean this as an insult, but from my perspective your judgements on why people work so hard are quite detached from reality.
No, man, I'm assuming that humanity as a whole operates as it has since the beginning of recorded history - with limited resources, including limited time, energy, motivation, and perspective. Unless your proposal for anarchism is radically transhumanist, you aren't going to get rid of that issue. This isn't a question about "What if people don't care about each other???"; this entire scenario presumes that the polities in question are functioning along anarchist lines. The question that is being brought here is, "Do you really expect people to value those they don't know over those they personally know and care about, themselves included?"
And if your answer is 'yes', I invite you to talk to some parents sometime.
Other than my own extreme issues with The Dawn of Everything, which would lead to a much broader discussion...
Anarchist Catalonia is a prime example of what I mean in multiple ways.
First off, it was not shy about enforcement. In the least.
Second, it was commonly observed that regionalism of the sort described was a problem that caused severe issues for them.
Third, many of its structures were oriented around war necessity; I don't know if you would find the same willingness of people to submit to seizure and arbitrary justice if literal warfare was not a stone's throw away.
... have you ever actually lived in the USA?
That's true. Wages have been largely stagnant, in terms of buying power and relative income distribution, since the 1970s. But in the 1970s, most people weren't barely able to afford subsistence-level living. In the 1970s, most people struggled because, as in the modern day, they want more. And as I said, they are not incorrect in wanting this, and it is good that they want this, but it is an issue you have to think about when considering a complete reorganization of society.
That's not even vaguely relevant to the question I proposed. The issue of whether they prefer a socialist system or a capitalist one is not relevant. The issue being disputed is the idea that provision for one's basic needs is enough to stop one from desiring more, with you saying, and I quote:
A-fucking-gain, I'm not at all disputing whether people prefer a socialist system to a capitalist one, assuming they weren't pig-brained morons. That's not the issue being disputed here. The issue being disputed here is the notion that people will no longer want more, more comfort, more success, more free time as in the core example used that you responded to, in an anarchist system.
I'm not a fucking capitalist. I largely tend towards democratic socialism. My issue being raised here is fundamentally one of conflict resolution, not economic orientation.
Man, I've fucking lived on flour and water for days at a time. My area of specialization is an era when people worked more hours for fewer material gains and in much more endangered scenarios.
People work more because they want more, because it's normalized to want more. Housing crisis aside, people by and large spend their money on things that are not strictly needed, but nonetheless, they desire - and should be entitled to. At no point do I dispute they're being exploited - my point is only that it is not their needs being unfulfilled which drive most people; it is a desire for more than their basic needs, which would not go away if they stopped being exploited.
You think most people wouldn't become homeless if they spent less time working?
That is not the argument I was making. People can still desire more even under an Anarchist society, the difference is that anything more they want they either have to make themselves, make it collectively under a worker cooperative, or trade with another person with something they acquired by their own means or as the fruit of a cooperative effort.
You can still create computers, build fancy chairs, make a cooperative factory to produce a desired good, etc, but you just wouldn't be able to hang food, housing, and healthcare over somebody else to effectively force them to do that stuff for you. Under an anarchist society, you could only convince someone to work with you on something if they felt it was a democratic endeavor where they had an equal say and an equal reward as you or anyone else who helps you gets.
That ensures that no one can effectively exploit anyone else, or create a power imbalance with a hierarchy. Everyone gets access to the same baseline for a happy life, and 9 months our of the year to do with as they please, whether that be to improve their house, make jewelry, paint, write, or spend time with their friends or family, they can personally decide what they want to spend that time doing, instead of laboring all year for just those basics.
I did specify 'housing crisis aside', but yes. 40% of Americans own their own paid off home; most renting households still spend around 33% of income on rent. 67% of income, then, is spent on things other than not becoming homeless - do you want to speculate on what amount of that is actually necessary?
But I never disputed any of that. The entire point originally raised was that people would still desire to do less work even if they had their needs fulfilled.
How does that follow? Some endeavors are more profitable than others. Hierarchies can be set up even without material differences (which, as we've established, certainly are not eradicated). Exploitation is often predicated not on material differences, but social manipulation, and result in material differences.
Peter Kropotkin provides a good counter-argument to the idea that everyone would skimp out on doing needed work if all their basic needs were met in The Conquest of Bread, under Chapter 12: Objections.
My point is not that needed work would not be done. My point is that people will still desire to do less work, which means your original objection to my scenario, that the workers would not desire that extra hour of free time once they had 'enough' time off, is not realistic.
Perhaps reread Chapter 9 of The Conquest Of Bread.
To reiterate, your argument was that people in an anarchist society will, as a whole, not take on an ounce of extra work even if it means helping not poisoning their neighboring towns.
My argument was that there are social and material benefits to taking on that extra work of cleaning their waste water, and I believe most people would not feel good poisoning their neighbors unless they were extremely uneducated or sociopathic.
You believe that the only solution to that scenario is to have a hierarchical government with a big stick to force that group to clean their waste water.
I believe that most places under an Anarchist society would, on the whole, not need the stick. There may be some infrequent specific scenarios where even under Anarchism, that a settlement acts as you suggest. In those cases, especially if the harm was severe or could not be mitigated, the community(s) effected down river may opt to resort to other means to resolve that conflict, such as social shaming, or potentially even sabotage. Then that population would have to decide between the extra time and work that defense against them would require, or just clean the damn water.
I don't see how it conflicts with what I've been suggesting?
No, my argument is that when an anarchist commune makes an anti-social decision based on very reasonable and universal human desires, you have no means of conflict resolution which can stop any intransigent community from acting selfishly at the expense of other communities without going back to the question of "Enforcement".
Fuck's sake, most of us poison our neighbors every fucking day we buy something we don't fucking need. You feel good about that? Do you think about it, even?
... my point here isn't to guilt you, fuck's sake, I do it too. My point is that these are not rare problems we are discussing. People are very good at closing their eyes, or focusing on their little corner of the world, or offering innumerable justifications for their own behavior or why the burden should fall on someone else.
If a community refuses to stop polluting, your only options are some form of enforcement, or letting it happen. Your only response here is "It wouldn't happen often enough to consider", which is utopian to the point of absurdity.
Oh, social shaming has a good record on that, does it?
And sabotage? What happens when someone gets fucking shot for sneaking around in the middle of the night - and don't fucking tell me "All anarchists will be completely calm and extremely disciplined gun owners who would never shoot anyone unless they were 100% sure that their life was immediately at risk :)" What if the sabotage creates much more damage than expected? What if the sabotage itself kills people? What if no one admits to the sabotage? Is the sabotage lawful by the downriver community's decision? What's the next step then?
It's not enough for a society to be able to operate day-to-day. A society must be able to operate in crisis, or it will be replaced by a society which can - no matter how much more ugly it is, day-to-day.
Considering how people tend to band closer together when they feel under attack by 'outsiders', even to their own material detriment? And especially within an ideology, or rather a very specific interpretation of anarchism, that rejects the notion that outsiders have the right to tell them what to do?
By insisting on no violence, you set the stage for mass violence. Endemic warfare. These are the exact fucking conditions that arise in pre-modern societies; these are the exact fucking conditions which predominant in international affairs.
I've responded that it could absolutely happen, I think you're bringing up a real issue that would need to be faced, but my point of view is that it probably wouldn't happen super frequently, which is to say, I don't think Anarchism should be dismissed as a viable way to structure society due to not having specifically a centralized way to wield a big stick against non-cooperative or harmful communities.
I am not a Utopian. Anarchism won't solve all our problems, and conflict will still arise. I just think it's the best option we currently have, and will at least reduce many of the problems we face, hopefully making it easier to tackle the problems that are left and cannot be solved with Anarchism.
As @Dippy@beehaw.org elsewhere in the comments here, a regulatory body could be created, which the different communities could then join. This doesn't entirely solve the issue if the troublesome community refuses to join or adhere to those regulations, but that body could at least collectively give the troublesome community some consequences for continued pollution.
It's something they could try, I didn't say it would be super effective. Against the type of populace of Johnsville, it likely wouldn't work.
If we're assuming that no other community wants to help Tableville, that Johnsville refuses to listen to the regulatory body, that the pollution is severe enough to make Tableville's way of life downstream nonviable, and they refuse to move elsewhere, then yes; Tableville's community may decide to opt for sabotage, which could escalate to armed conflict, such as guerrilla warfare if Tablesville is much smaller.
My point is in response to the idea of Tableville being so against additional work that doesn't benefit them directly, they'll avoid it even if it's obviously hurting people. If it really just comes down to not wanting to take on more work, then it follows they'd want to avoid the extra work of fighting Tableville, especially if Tableville is telling them that they are being left no other choice than violence (to be clear, I don't think Johnsville would actually weigh the potential hours needed to clean the water vs fighting in a meeting, that would be kind've absurd. I mean if they did get to that point, holy shit that place is fucked).
Would the same not also happen under a centralized government trying to force them to abide by waste water regulations? What if they saw that as an outsider force trying to impose upon them, and thus decided to militarily fight against it? This would put them in a similar situation to Slave owning states before the confederacy formed. If there were other communities who also didn't want to clean their waste water, they could join together and rebel against that centralized authority trying to clean up all the poop water.
If instead the regulating power is an overwhelming force that would result in sure destruction, only then might they simply relent without conflict. Which, I mean yeah that solves Tableville's problem, but under a centralized government we now have to hope that it does not corrupt at some point, which is what Anarchism is trying to avoid, as it assumes all centralized power structures will at some point become corrupt.
I mentioned before that even struggling people acquire luxuries to make the grind bearable. I didn't say they wouldn't still want luxuries on top of having their basic need met. I agree with Kropotkin's POV.