That’s why I think there’s significant cultural/educational changes needed before such a society (or something similar) could be attained.

That is exactly what I am saying. That is the anarchist revolution. Changing society to be non-hierarchical. It isn’t replacing one government with another. It is transforming people to organize in non-hierarchical ways. The revolution is long and takes time and has been going on since the first anarchists thought their theory. It isn’t fought with swords and guns but with thoughts and ideas. That is the revolution

(or to put it in another way)

The revolution I’m talking about isn’t a coup. It isn’t using weapons to destroy the government. It is teaching people that there is nothing inherently hierarchical about human society and we can live without it. If any government falls because of anarchism it will be because non-hierarchical associations have replaced the government or the government tried to stop anarchists from organizing and the anarchists fought back.

I hope that by clearing up what I mean about revolution. The other questions also get solved.

tribalism seems baked into the human existence

That’s right, it seems baked into human existence because that’s how most humans are raised. I believe humans are capable of moving past that.

I think it works great on a local level in small communities, but we have a globalized world, for better or worse

I don’t see how the ideas fall apart when scaled up. When applying the way you interact with others to interacting with other communities the same rules apply. instead of organizing society between individuals you organize society between collectives. Same basic structures apply.

I apologize you couldn’t find the answer to your question from my comment, and thus thought I was dodging it. I tried to explain it in the way that I see it. In my eyes I answered your question clearly, but I will try to be even clearer on my second try.
(hopefully this doesn’t come off as patronizing)

I would also like to know what were the pedantics that you identified in my comment. If it was the final statement then that was my attempt to bring humor into the argument and wasn’t in any way meant seriously. Perhaps I should have used /j

To get to your question (and hopefully answer it more clearly). An anarchist society forms when anarchists come together to create a society. If someone with guns came to destroy that society the anarchists would defend themselves. If one of the anarchists turns their gun against their comrades the others would respond in kind. If they don’t the person takes power and the system stops being anarchistic.

Or to put it even more simply: In an anarchist society everyone is policing and protecting everyone else.

I think it is best to clarify my terms. Anarchy to me is a structured society built entirely out of free associations. It isn’t lawless. Anarchy has rules. A lawless society will naturally take the shape of the people in that society. If all the people are anarchists, they will create an anarchist society, if they are statists, they will create a state. Society is a collection of people living together there is no reason it has to be hierarchical. The people are the ones who make it like that.

What stops our current society from devolving into that if anarchic revolution were to occur?

An anarchist revolution is the complete transformation of society to use non-hierarchical power structures. If after the revolution the society falls back into hierarchy then that means the people were not willing to let go their addiction to authority.

The link is for an FAQ, technically not a book, since most books are shorter than 3077 pages. However it does contain every question one might have about anarchy and answers it pretty neatly.

I most certainly do not mean men with guns taking whatever they want. That is authoritarian. The revolution is an ongoing process to redefine society as a non-hierarchical. I see it as non-violent: only defending against violence, never inciting it.

Between writing that comment I read through the anarchist FAQ on revolution.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq-full#text-amuse-label-secj7
And I agree with it wholeheartedly.

We as a species are far enough for anarchism to work, people just have to stop believing in authority, and we have to help them.

I also do not think anarchism is a utopia. There is nothing about it that couldn’t work. Non-hierarchical societies have existed, and their dissolution just means people aren’t ready yet.

More specifically, yes. It is collective anarchism, but in this context I think it is obvious enough that I don’t need to clarify it further.

Also I think that any type of anarchism allows for collective anarchism, and by extension could be used to mean collective anarchism.

What’s annoying is that we probably would be a whole lot closer to actual communism and anarchism if the bolsheviks never took power and destroy all the communism that was happening during the Russian revolution.

I do not want an anarchist revolution that forces anarchy onto the entire society. That would not work. The people wouldn’t accept it. I want a system where anarchism can be implemented alongside other systems so everyone, me included, can find their spot, their best way to live. I do not think everyone is an anarchist, and can live in an anarchist system. People have different values and those values impact their politics. I just want a space where anarchy can exist without being destroyed. If a person is fine working 9-5 for 5 days a week for just enough money to pay rent, buy food and maybe sometimes some clothes then that’s fine. I would rather die.

The entire first two paragraphs of your statement is exactly what the CCP and USSR attempted to set up but it failed miserably due to efficiency issues, They then consolidated in to sudo fascism. How many attempts do you need to see that people in aggregate cannot form that level of trust in society or social engagement?

I do not believe that’s what the USSR was trying to do, but because I wasn’t there I cannot say for certain. All I can say is that if they did try to do it they failed to stop authoritarians getting to power and that was on them, not on the ideology. If you try to force a bunch of people who do not care about running their own lives and give them the power to run their own lives they will walk up to the first person telling them what to do and mindlessly do it. This is why an anarchist revolution has to be cultural as well as political. People need to want it, otherwise they won’t get it.

A hundred years have past since then. Humanity has gone from an agrarian society to a post-industrial (robots) society. I think the circumstances have changed enough to make any assumptions based on past revolutions inaccurate.

Anarchism does not provide robust power to protect minorities so it does not matter if it does not allow discrimination, it cannot prevent it

The community prevents it. If someone is acting like a dick people come together and deal with it. Together. Anarchism does not provide this power because it is up to the community to decide how it works.

That is why I use anarchist instead. It means all of that while also making it clear that authoritarianism is not ok.

Okay, how to I even begin. I’m going to start with a Thank You! This comment has made me think about a lot of different aspects of my Ideology and I am genuinely grateful that your comment initiated that. Ensuring clearer understanding of my ideology is very important to me.

Let’s start with the easy response. The final statement of my previous comment was very absolute.

if you remove all of the things from capitalism that make it incompatible you will end up with anarchy.

I now see that was a mistake. What I should have said instead was that it would make it more anarchistic, and you have confirmed this by suggesting methods that I believe are anarchistic. All the steps have the purpose of lessening the power structures of current society and if I would have to think about how to transition a capitalist society into an anarchist society I imagine I would come up with similar steps.

Therefor I support this “small capitalism”. I see it as a stepping stone towards anarchism, because it is moving in the right direction. It just doesn’t go far enough. You seem to be okay with money as a concept (and maybe wage slavery unless it falls under “equity of at the lowest levels”), I am not. I think that as long as money is a necessity to live you have the means through witch you can coerce others and remove these freedoms and safeguards put in place so in the end you will have just capitalism. Cruel, unjust and uncaring capitalism.

Removing money does not prevent against this, because anarchism also requires a lot of oversight to prevent collapsing. Money is just another vector of collapse that capitalism has. Also unlike anarchism, capitalism also does not have oversight of society by all members of society. This is the cultural anarchism I am talking about. Anarchists have no representative democracy, No political laziness. Everyone has a voice and you can’t give your voice to someone else. All the individuals are collectively in charge of everything that happens in their commune, and the society is nothing more than a collection of communes.

I also believe both can coexist. Nothing about anarchism prevents collaboration with other political systems. In fact I believe that an anarchist society must have good relations with a neighboring capitalist system to survive, because otherwise the capitalists in the system have nowhere to go and will rebel, the other society functions like an overflow pipe. Also the effect works reversed as well.

Anarchism does not allow for discrimination. All forms of discrimination are antithetical to anarchism.

Also I would like to address the in anarchism capitalism is dissent argument. Is fascism dissent? or theocracy? because from an anarchist point of view all those are coercive unjust power structures, that should be dismantled. They are authoritarian and oppressive. anarchy does not allow capitalism of this. It is the same logic as the paradox of tolerance, but also I do not believe alternative systems should not be allowed to exists. as long as they respect our right to independence and self-determination I have no problem with alternate political systems existing, only if they are unreasonably oppressive (including genocidal).

I could also talk about economics but I think this comment is already long enough.

I thank you for the detailed answer. It is going to take me time to properly think about everything you have said. I will get back to you when I have finished thinking about it. You have definitely given me lots to think about and I thank you for it.

But one thing I will say is that I am talking about cultural anarchism instead of economical one. such a culture needs time to grow and a few months of economic decentralization is a god start anarchism requires a lot more than that.

EDIT: You just might have triggered a massive change in how I perceive politics. Thank You!

I did not claim that anarchist societies did not have internal problems, I said that anarchist societies have ended because of external problems. Internal problems exists but they aren’t fatal. The USSR and CCP were not anarchist. The economy may have functioned anarchically for a couple of months but the people were not anarchists and the ones that took power were vanguardists (because they usurped the previous state and used it to repress the population).

Also I am interested to know how anarchy, the system that is inherently based on dissent, does not allow dissent. Anarchy is only dissent. There isn’t a single anarchist ideology. Anarchy is a way of thought that rejects the idea of conformity and it being a “single party system” is an insane thing to suggest.

The last thing I want to do is cause harm. I belie this society is possible but I do not want it implemented unless I know it can survive in a humane way. This is ideology it is the long term goals that we set for ourselves so we have something to strive for. This change should only happen if the people are ready for it. If they believe it. I think that any society that humans can imagine can exists as long as all the individuals in that society want it to.

My worldview does not cause less harm than any of the current ones. All of the points that you but forward come from the lack of faith in the system, or more accurately the people that make up the system. My ideology is based on the fact that people can be good, kind and selfless and the only thing stopping entire society from being those things is because our natural kindness gets destroyed by the current culture. I understand that this might be a naive thing to think but the world is currently ending (because of the “less harmful ideologies”) so being naive and hopeful is the best thing I can do.

I am an anarchist because It is a society build on human interaction, kindness, friendliness, acceptance and tolerance. That is what my anarchy is. people existing for the sake of their friends and neighbors. If you can show me another ideology that has all of that I am eager to listen. because those things are antithetical to capitalism, and if you remove all of the things from capitalism that make it incompatible you will end up with anarchy.

I am not against hierarchies if they are justified. The hierarchies that are democratic and non-coercive are acceptable.

Power should not be consolidated, it should be distributed among the population. Any sort of consolidation of power opens the door for people to create systems and hierarchies that maintain power unjustly.

I think that if a society is capable of working in a smaller scale it can be scaled up. Especially with the technology that we have today.

I don’t think that anarchism is unsustainable. all attempts to create anarchist societies have ended because of outside factors (invasions). I don’t see these as shortcomings of anarchism but instead as shortcomings of other systems to tolerate alternate political systems. Also if an anarchist society descends into fascism (red or otherwise) then that is because the people didn’t do enough to oppose it.

I also apologize if some of these statements are short. You can’t unbind ctrl+w to close the window on firefox and I use it to delete the last word so I accidentally deleted my previous two attempts to answer this comment.

Also I appreciate this conversation as it requires me to think through my ideology.

The governing core is the society. If they say no then that society changes. That is how the system works. The people decide how to live their life and if they don’t want to live a certain way they change. As long as the people stay skeptical of all authority the system works. If they don’t it collapses into a class based society.

You don’t need perfect reprogramming. You just need a couple of people who want to live this way and let them live.

Anarchism works. The systems that I am describing have been successfully implemented and work.

What are you trying to say here?

the most dependable members become a governing core.

Yes, and that governing core does not have complete authority over the village, They are trusted members of the community and if they abuse their powers they get removed.

This is exactly the kind of order you want. The people that have put the most effort into the community naturally want what’s best for that community, and if they are trusted that means they are more likely to be kind and nice people and not greedy.

what happens when village A decides their neighbours B don’t deserve all of their land?

The best option is for village A to send a delegation to B and voice their concerns. After which village B decides what to do.

Just like people do not need to be governed, groups (in this conversation villages) do not as well. They should have enough common sense to do things peacefully because if they become hostile all the other groups band together to oppose them. The same dynamics are at play.

There is an entity for keeping order. Its called a community. Everyone protects everyone because everyone knows everyone because everyone needs everyone. If you step out of line people won’t protect you.

Stateless societies existed for millennia before all the states came along and enslaved them. They had order because strong personal relationships maintain order without leaders.

there should be an instances button at the bottom of the page that shows it.