To all full-grown hexbears, NO DUNKING IN MY THREAD…ONLY TEACH, criminal scum who violate my Soviet will be banned three days and called a doo doo head…you have been warned
I have a question that I hope some of you will entertain. This is not meant as a criticism, but rather a sincere curiosity on my part. While there are numerous examples of how things can or could function in socialist societies, I am curious about anarchist societies. There appear to be various instances where there is no common answer, even within anarchist circles (as far as I know). Please note that I am not an anarchist (yet), so I would love to be enlightened.
How does healthcare look under anarchism, especially on an industrial large scale? How do you decide what gets build like lets say you need more energy how do you take care of that.I understand that this might seem like an abstract question, but when looking at socialist societies, there are examples of how things ‘could’ be done. However, I have no idea how things like that might look in an anarchist commune of California, for example.
Are there any reading materials on concrete ways how anarchist societies could function in modern times? I am aware that we have anarchist comrades, and I would love to learn more about it. Basically I think Anarchism sounds really cool but I have a hard time wrapping my head about how a functioning anarchist society would/could look and operate. Like are there books about bureaucracy under Anarchism ?
I’m an anarchist, but not well versed on theory (yet), so take what I say with a grain of salt.
there appear to be various instances where there is bo common answer [on how things should function], even within anarchist circles
Anarchism is a large group of similar ideas, randing from individualists, to collectivists/communists, to egoists, to syndicalists, to nihilists, and more. Ancaps are not anarchists, however (you cannot oppose all unjust hierarchies while deep-throating a capitalist’s boot). Anarchist movements are based on core ideals about hierarchy, the state, power, and anti-capitalism, there is a large diversity of thought within it.
Anarchists in the circles I’m in usually in propose using federations based on consensus-based direct democracy, and creating bottom-up horizontal structures, and using delegation to organize on a larger scale, such as “state-wide” regional, “national” or global. Note that when I say “state-wide” or “national” there will be no nations or states under anarchism, but I’m moreso loosely talking about geographic and demographic scales.
Some past societies include: CNT/FAI, Ukrainian Free Territories, and KPA Manchuria. Some current ones include Rojava and the Zapatistas.
Graeber and Wengrow go into detail about some anarchist-like societes that existed in the americas before they were genocided by colonists in their book “The Dawn of Everything”, which is the only book I’ve (partially) read on the topic at the moment.
There are tiny regions/communes that practice anarchist ideas, at a small scale within capitalist states. Jackson Rising, community responses to Hurricane Katrina, Stop Cop City/forest defender encampments, and the paris commune had/have anarchist principles at their core.
How does healthcare look under anarchism, especially on an industrial scale?
I’ve not read theory on this, but I know Margaret Killjoy talks about this in her podcast “Live Like the World is Dying”, though I haven’t listened to the episode
Although I haven’t read theory on it, I’d assume the general argument relies on the fact that there are plenty of people who understand how drugs are manufactured, and how those supply chains work, and plenty of others capable of designing new supply chains. Through delegation and federation, knowledgable delegates can work with other federations to organize the supply chains to manufacture and distribute the medication. If a component is lacking, people would need to organize within their federation, or with other communities to get it done, rather than having a state give the directive to do XYZ to fix the problem.
are there any reading materials on concrete ways on how anarchist societies could function in modern times?
Zoe Baker and Anark are both authors/youtubers who have videos on anarchist organization, and both have extensive reading lists with old and new books on organization among many other topics. A lot of those books can be found for free on the anarchist library in various formats :)
I wish I could give a better explanation and more examples, but my ADHD brainworms get mad at me when I read, watch video essays or listen to podcasts.
Sorry for not linking, I’m on my phone
Are you ok with fiction? Ursula K LeGuin’s The Dispossessed is a fictional account of an anarchist society. It’s also a very very good book as I know more than one person who is neither an anarchist nor a communist and they loved it, since LeGuin is such a gifted writer.
If its good I dont care if its fiction. Thanks for the recommendation. I know of LeGuin didnt know the book featured anarchism.
It’s actually especially excellent because it’s very even handed and ambiguous on certain fronts. There are lots of ways you can interpret the society (which I wont spoil) and many of their norms are things which to the average reader have a good chance of appearing repugnant, brutish, or inhumane.
It feels truly like a different sort of society that might actually exist and is deeply sympathetic without being naively utopian.
You gotta start reading about modes of production and shit I’m sorry. Debt the first 5,000 years isn’t good enough, but it has some stuff about how ancient indigenous people of Brazil & Australia lived
Would you say that is a good book to start with if Im kind of clueless about Anarchism. I have only surface level knowledge.
Read Origin of the family, private property and the state by Engels!
IDK I’m just saying read history not “anarchist theory” if you WANT ANARCHY read abt the development of bureaucracies before capitalism to manage capital and shit. Desert and all that other stuff read is really lackluster (to put it very generously). Read Braudel & Samir Amin type shit. Not just like, speculative anthropology
Graeber is an anarchist, he wrote that book bc he went to a Mike Hudson conference he did to get people into early monetary theory. It’s alright, there are better books on that stuff.
I recommend reading about the development of anarchist and communism in the 1800s but I’m not great on that just the early 1900s, I’ve been reading about the 2nd international and pre marx socialist goofballs etc.
As for bureaucracy under anarchism, that’s a contentious topic.
For anarcho-communists, it’s probably going to be very similar to the examples that a communist will give you.
For syndicalists, the level of organisation or coordination would occur between “workplaces” (I can’t use the term factory here for obvious reasons and “unions” can blur some lines that are less than ideal because a syndicalist understanding of their ideal system is not a “unions sitting on top of the political economy/unions sitting at the side” sort of deal like we see today.) There should be larger all-sector unions which represent each industry in a syndicalist society that would coordinate and collaborate with other all-sector unions, so let’s say that there’s new medical technology which is being implemented in hospitals but it places significant demand on electricity or telecommunications - the all-sector healthcare union would need to communicate this increased demand with the all-sector energy union or all-sector telecommunications union to coordinate building more infrastructure or increasing energy production etc.
For anarcho-primitivists - it’s basically going to be tribal. As for healthcare, guess I’ll die 🤷
This gets contentious because it’s not really considered to be orthodox anarchism but some of the more comprehensive theory on anarchist/anarchist-adjacent bureaucracy is found in Murray Bookchin’s Libertarian Municipalism and, by extension, Abdullah Ocalan’s Democratic Confederalism (which is what the YPJ and PKK are striving to achieve in Rojava in Syria currently.)
I think the reason why you can ask 10 anarchists what bureaucracy will look like under anarchism and you’ll get 11 answers is because in terms of ideology, anarchism is very heterogeneous.
Okay, I think I understand that anarchism is very heterogeneous. It does throw me off a bit, though. For example, I heard Anarchist A say billionaires should be put into re-education camps, while Anarchist B says we don’t do that; that’s not anarchism. How do anarchists find common ground on issues when there is such a diversity of thought ? Would they split into different communes that would basically operate under different laws and rules ? Extreme example an Anprim and a Syndicalist dont share much common ground or do they ?
Anprims share little common ground with other anarchists, especially in regards to their conclusions or their prescriptions for society (if that makes sense). Like, they might agree with say 75-90% of what another anarchist holds as their political beliefs but what the anprim believes needs to happen as a solution will be wildly different to the other person’s program.
There’s virtually no common ground between what a syndicalist society would look like and what an anprim society would look like. The commonalities would mostly be negative, in the sense that there would be the absence of capitalism etc., than positive, in the sense of what would be present, in their respective societies.
How do anarchists find common ground on issues where there is such diversity of thought?
This is probably worse than a non-answer but how those conflicts are negotiated is itself another arena for diversity of thought.
For someone who is a platformist, for example, they might expect to see rigorous debate within anarchist society about what to do with the billionaires but that once a majority has been reached on what needs to happen that the dissenting factions need to fall in line.
A different type of anarchist might find the plurality of communes as a viable option.
It gets super complex and often there’s no clear terms for how diversity of thought should be meditated except when it comes to different anarchist tendencies that have a very explicit political structure like with platformism or libertarian municipalism.
