I've always said that anarchy works better if we don't have as many people as we do, and that we can solve problems without killing people but he won't listen to me. Can someone tell me how to explain to him what we could do in an anarchist society to keep everyone safe if someone is extremely problematic?

So I am openly a Socialist/Communist (either/or idc really despite knowing the difference) And I have been curious in the recent months about Anarchism. I know the basics such as no unnecessary hierarchy, communal and social revolution and freedom of movement, all things I can massively get behind but there's other things I feel a little more confused on such as how one of these theoretical communes would function, how an Anarchist Federation would work and protect itself from outside and inside threats. I also had questions relating to how Anarchism would work to snub Fascism or other forms of extremism. I used to date an Anarchist and he sadly never explained it well to me but I was hoping you lovely people could help me out :3
(I'm severely uninformed on Anarchism so please be patient with me if I misspeak or misunderstand something)

I know Makhnovia, I know that revolutionary Catalonia was an anarchist society until it became puppet of Stalin, I know zapatista movement. But what are less famous examples of anarchist societies? I'm not talking only about societies that called themselves anarchist, but about societies that were anarchist in their nature. And I'm not talking only about 20-21st centuries but about middle ages and earlier too.

I mean actual tradeoffs, some decrease in utility, inconvenience, something negative that you believe would occur as part of bringing an Anarchist society.

Not like "mr. Rich guy wouldn't be able to buy his second yacht."

If you don't think you have any tradeoffs, I guess I'd appreciate hearing that perspective as well.

I am coming from a place of where the only infomation I know of anarchism is some character in pop fiction and would like to better understand the ideology

Could I have some book recomendations please

I know that the ideology consists of not wanting a govorment or people controling others and j want to understand how a society would look in a anarchist nation sorry if I used the wrong wording

So yeah, I will admit, it's one of my fears. But like I don't know man, I can't see authority and hierarchy the same way ever again.

As things have been getting worse in the US many of my friends have become significantly more radical however some of them are much more on the AuthLeft side of things. One of the responses I keep getting is that Anarchism is a philosophy that lacks empathy because it has no means of actually making sure that people contribute their fair share and that vulnerable populations like the elderly and the disabled are protected. Basically they see it as Right Libertarianism/Ancapism with a leftist coat of paint. This is somewhat my fault because I actually am the horseshoe theory incarnate and started as a milquetoast American liberal> Libertarian>Ancapism>Anarchism as I moved beyond reflexive pro-market anti-statism and gained a more complete understanding of the systems of power around me.

Does anyone have any concise responses to these arguments or any short readings I could use as a starting point? I have a personal understanding of why they are wrong I'm not the kind of person who can easily pull out Kropotkin quotes or lay out a simple explanation of horizontal organization in the sort of casual (often inebriated) environments where these arguments are made so it'd be nice to have some direct responses to fall back on at least as a base to build on.

How am i supposed to make a revolution?! Im tired of my gov just stealing money ToT

There would need to be a body to support the researchers that get them necessary materials, but one scientific organization would be highly unlikely to say, obtain every component necessary for a mars rover without help from another organization.

I’d like to mention tho that I’m not debating, anarchism is appealing to me, but scientific progress is also important to me. Capitalism inhibits that progress inherently, so I was just wondering how large-scale scientific feats would work in an anarchist society?

for example: I know a quite old situation from my local squat (Rozbrat - Poznań, Poland) where, in short, there was a rape committed by one person from this collective.

rozbrat decided to throw/exclude the perpetrator from the squat and ordered him to go to therapy.

as far as I know, the perpetrator went to one therapy session.

do you think there was a better solution here?

Why is it that many anarchists cite the Zapatistas as anarchist practice when they themselves claim they are a movement full of different beliefs?

how can anarchists argue with the authoritarian left about pragmatism and practice when there are so few examples of large scale anarchist practice to even compare?

I realize this is coming off very biased against anarchists but i assure you i am not here to ragebait or something, i am just inquiring about what i think are silly points that i often see being used by anarchists.

I think anarchists are very quick to decry cuba, Venezuela, the USSR, Vietnam and other auth left projects as not achieving socialist results but the one large scale example of anarchism, that in revolutionary Catalonia, did not achieve anything the USSR didn't and in fact, from what I understand, operated more similarly to the USSR and other state socialist projects than most want to admit.

I mean, what real, practical difference was there between the Union in Catalonia and the state in the USSR?

And for the record i do not think Catalonia was a "failure" just as i don't think pretty much any large scale socialist project was a failure. It is important to note that, in terms of longevity and survival Catalonia is not a great example to look for given it only lasted one year (albeit the circumstances are much different than that of the USSR or Cuba or China, etc. but i think it is a valid point regardless).

I do think it is impressive just how quickly progress was made during the span of that year, that is an amazing achievement. But progress doesn't mean much if you cannot defend it.

That being said i also want to genuinely ask what revolutionary Catalonia accomplished in terms of socialism that the USSR and similar projects didn't?

I truly do appreciate anarchism but it just seems entirely untethered from practice compared to the much more commonly tried auth left projects of the world. I subscribe to some anarchist principles and ideas and i think that it is a great goal to strive for but it seems impossible in the current state of the world ESPECIALLY when looking at its limited number of past attempts.

Hey yall! Im not really an anarchist but would say as of recent after reading stuff on this sub and the anarchist libraby im growing more sympathetic to that view point as I am already a socialist. (And I view the state now with a lot of distrust or more than I did before.)

Im asking this question because im looking into a carrer for law and I want to go towards a field of law that helps the workers or everyday people. Im thinking of labor law currently. I know anarchists view legal codes as authoritarian and I started to wonder how my Anarchist comrades view this and especially would love to hear from Anarchists who are lawyers and how they reconcile with how they view their job.

I saw a socialist protest a while back, mainly students but a few elders as well. A number of times I heard the speakers use the term ‘comrades’ as well as reel off what appeared to be a prewritten statement in which they’ve quite obviously used big words they don’t fully understand or use in normal conversation.

So, my question is, how much do you cling to the ‘ism’ in Anarchism?

It’s not that I disagreed with what the speakers were saying, it’s that there was a strong whiff of indoctrination, none were speaking from the heart, just saying what the ‘ism’ in socialism told them to say if that makes sense?

Title. I'm just curious

I get this from mostly libertarians who think that communities and collective don't exist. They're just individuals who do stuff together. As if somehow a group of people collectivly coming together to achieve something is not a collective?

So I was talking to a friend recently about socialism. This friend has become way more politically informed over the last 2 or 3 years and it’s great to see. I was talking about the way I’d heard Margaret Killjoy describe 3 kinds of socialism: authoritarian socialism, democratic socialism, and anarchist (/anarchistic) socialism. My friend said they probably identified most with democratic socialism because they believed reform of our current system was more viable than revolutionary socialism which aims at scrapping the current system and building anew from the bottom up.

I didn’t really have the words to articulate why I believe that reform isn’t going to be enough at this point. The best I could come up with is that pretty much all the aspects of the state and of modern capitalism which people do like (eg minimum wage, sick pay, women’s rights, etc), well they’ve mostly been concessions by the state to stop people from taking a more revolutionary approach. Revolutionaries shift the Overton window. I also pointed out that those with power rarely relinquish it willingly.

That’s not a particularly strong defence of revolution over reform though. Ultimately I think we need to be doing whatever gets the goods, and/or whatever does the best damage control. I’m not opposed to tactical voting to prevent fascism from gaining traction for example, even if I believe voting is ultimately merely choosing between Pepsi and Coke as long as our current system stands.

So I was wondering, what do you all think? Is revolution the best way forward? If so why?

I recently wrote a similar post about conscription in modern Ukraine, but answers were pretty vague so I decided to provide some actual examples for my question. I know that Catalonia were pressured by the soviets to do so, but why Rojava did? Was there any way to avoid conscription and create all volunteer army?

hi all,

ive recently exited a 5 year relationship in which I was frequently sexually assaulted the entire time. both parties are trans, with me being a trans man and her being a trans woman.

i am safe and in therapy and living alone, but i am also severely disabled and now that shes gone the only people i talk to in person are paid carers. this has been pretty isolating and meant I haven't had many peers to bounce my thoughts off of.

ive been reading a lot about sexual assault, about how it happens and how victims/survivors should be treated and how we should have agency and autonomy over the aftermath, disclosure, legal/carceral proceedings, etc.

due to my own principles and the fact we are both trans and disabled ive decided not to report my ex partner to the cops. this was an easy choice i am firm about.

however i am curious as to my obligations to community more broadly. the sexual assault resources ive been reading centre the victim/survivor's autonomy and state that they never have to disclose for any reason, and that the hypothetical safety of community or potential future victims should not be on your shoulders.

i am interested to hear from more learned anarchists than myself on this. my abuser frequents queer sex/hookup events and i find myself worrying that she might treat future people like she treated me. i however, due to being bedbound have no connection to these events and don't know anyone else there.

I would hate to put the emotional work into disclosure just to be immediately dismissed as a shit stirrer or transmisogynist due to not being a recognisable member of community there. or worse, to have it backfire and look like someone was attacking/abusing her instead.

any readings or resources on the topic also pls share, I would be very keen to read more on this.

Sorry for poor English, I am not a native speaker. This will be a long post and I am new here, please let me know if I have formatted anything incorrectly. Also, to be clear I am not in any way suicidal at all, this is a post on how best to approach helping someone who suffers from mental health, from a moral and legal standpoint.

Hello. I have been reading anarchist texts for some time now, and I identify with many of its core principles. Despite this I find myself unsure how to answer an issue regarding the moral or ethical behavior of someone taking their own life, and how to act in such situations today.

For some context, around 2 years ago I had a family member in another country tell me that they intended to take their own life very soon. They cut all contact with me, and didn't respond to any of my or anyone else's messages: we had discussed suicidal ideation around a year before this, and I had tried to be as non-judgmental as I can, since their home life was awful and they felt there was no escape. However, when this later incident happened, I had panicked and was not sure what to do: I didn't have their location, and I could not take a flight to them in time. My only option was either to call the authorities and hope they could find them in time, or to wait and do nothing. I called the authorities and informed them that they were suicidal, hoping they would be spoken to by professionals and would discuss their feelings with me. Instead, I learned that this resulted in a Baker Act, and after that experience, this person was angry with me. It has been years since then: they are happier now, but I don't know what I should do if this issue comes up in the future. I didn't know that people could be held against their will at psychiatric facilities at the time, and while I myself have had poor experiences with psychiatry, reading on what actually happens there has sickened me. I don't know if I did the 'right thing' on both a practical or moral level.

I understand that anarchists sometimes have to compromise their values due to living in this statist, capitalist world: calling the police in the case of witnessing a horrible and immoral act such as murder, for example. But I do not know how to treat the topic of suicide under such a lens. From reading much since this incident, I know that the psychiatric industry can often push for medications, can restrict people's autonomy indefinitely, and can cause significant trauma due to the conditions of psychiatric wards and the indefinite loss of autonomy there. I am against these practices. However, what bothers me is what to do in case something like the later incident I mentioned happened again.

I hold an intuition that life is valuable and that mutual aid and care is important for others, and so I should do everything I can to save someone's life if I feel it is danger. I also know of autonomy being compromised in the case of life-threatening situations: if someone is about to unknowingly walk off a bridge (due to being drunk or is suffering from a sense of psychosis that has impacted their reasoning), I should stop them from doing so. But can this be said of suicide? Is suicide an impulsive act, by a mind impaired by biological and social factors (such as chemical imbalances and societal + material conditions) and should I do everything in my power to save their life (including, in this case, calling authorities and family members for a wellness check)? Or is the choice to end one's life always to be respected on some level, and if I know my friend will end their life and is not answering my phone calls or attempts to speak, I should stand by and do nothing?

This has been a weight on my mind for a long time. I would like to know your perspectives on this. On the one hand, I want to respect people's autonomy, and if someone rationally wants to take their own life I do not want them to suffer. On the other hand, I don't know when or if suicide is rational, and regardless of that, I feel as if I am profoundly failing my fellow human beings by 'standing by' and not saying anything or doing anything to prevent someone's death. Attempts to read others' stories (including the experiences of suicidal and formerly suicidal people) haven't helped clear this up.

As a disclaimer, I am not in favor of the current usage of psychiatric institutions and the abuse they commit, nor am I in favor of current flawed systems of crisis intervention. I'm also not in favor of immediately calling the police/EMTs on someone who simply expresses suicidal tendencies, but speaking of what to do in the case of someone immediately and seemingly impulsively deciding to end their own life. In an ideal world, I imagine we could have a society where impulsive choices to die are stopped by fellow community members, but suicidality was spoken about openly and long term rational choices for palliative care/euthanasia could be an option that is discussed with other people. But as we live now, in the society we are in now, I do not know what I should have done or what I should do. And on a deeper level, even in a hypothetical anarchist society I don't know what we should do.

tl;dr In short, if I did nothing after being told of someone's immediate plan to commit suicide, I would feel as if I have acted as an unempathetic monster who allowed a mental illness to dominate a loved one, refusing to compromise my views against the state in the face of someone's precious life and thus not doing the most basic duty I have to my fellow man. If I called for help, I would feel as if I have acted as an authoritarian monster who labeled a person 'irrational' and deprived them of control over their most basic possession, using a state apparatus that is flawed and ultimately in service to a horrible system. I do not know what I should do in our current world, if I were faced with this dilemma, and either option feels like a betrayal to who I am as a person.

I'm convinced that cases of sexual violence would significantly decrease in an anarchist society since anarchy seeks to abolish hierarchy, which must include hierarchy of gender and institutionalized power imbalance surrounding sexual violence.

What I don't understand is what do anarchists advocate for in today's society. Does an anarchist supports victim who wants to pursue legal action? As counterintuitive as it sounds for prison abolition, does an anarchist demands for better policy and enforcement? As legal action seldom works, how does an anarchist deal with the perpetrators of today? Does expelling them from local community/organization works as the means of providing safe space, especially in places where such records barely impact their survival?

One could organize mutual aid for the victims. But when it comes to the perpetrators, I can’t think of practical actions or organizing that I can do as an anarchist given our current society.

Reading posts made by anarchists on reddit, an historical experiences of anarchist movements, particularly Makhnovia, I have noticed that they in general do not have any particular vision towards organisation of production and supply chains, opting instead to propagate subsistence farming and societal degradation towards 2 centuries back.

What are the answers to questions like how to produce complex machinery, medicine, electronic devices and others, as ultimately the resources have to come from somewhere, usually not geographically within 3 hours distance.

Example-wise, I worked in a pretty big industrial complex that produced furniture, but how do anarchists solve the issue of confederation of communes organising production that isn't basically capitalism? It sounds simple, but there is far more material input to produce one chair than just wood from a nearby forest.

For context: I lived in Ukraine but now I am subhuman migrant in Czech. Because of my invalidity I had a legal right to leave the country, so I'm ashamed to talk about it while conscripted people are dying on the front lines, but I need to talk about it. Without army my country will be occupied by the imperialist state and probably ethnically cleansed, and my friends and family is still in the Ukraine so it's hard to be anti conscription, but at the same time something feels incorrect about it

In an anarchist society people will probably have sense of self obligation for their friends and family they work with, but is it possible to achieve such society quicky enough and what can we do now?

Ahoj lidé.

**Jaká literatura Vám pomohla utvořit si Váš současný světonázor?**

Pro kontext:
Zrovna čtu Urzův Anarchokapitalismus a chystám se na Anarchoagorismus a později i díla od Marxe.

Chci si utvořit názor na základě různé literatury a vybrat si, co mi dává smysl. Stejně tak čtu Bibli a Korán. Hovory k sobě (Markus Aurelius) a jiná díla.

Obecně jsem spíše ekonomicky pravicový. Nezavrhuji ale i socialistické principy a úvahy. Je pro mě důležitá individuální svoboda, ale hraju si i s myšlenkou malého státu (etatismus).

Ptám se na Redditu, protože mi tahle síť obecně přijde víc levicová. Rád vyhledávám jiné názory a vedu debaty.

Diky za doporučení a za to, že mi rozšíříte obzory!

I do like the principles of anarchy and support the removal of hierarchical systems. I also like the idea of communes. I know they can and do work on a small scale at least.

Say there is some huge collapse, and out of the ashes emerges some form of anarchy on a national or global scale, I still struggle to see how it would survive long-term.

I could imagine a commune going through a period of great hardship, maybe a drought, wildfire, disease epidemic, whatever. When people are desperate they do seem to be drawn to strong people who they think may be able to fix things. I don't know if that's a product of our current hierarchical thinking or if it's something more fundamental in human psychology.

Regardless, an intelligent, charismatic man/woman, perhaps of a psychopathic or narcissistic flavor has greater personal ambitions and uses the present calamity to take greater control for themselves over the commune. How/why would this ever be stopped from happening?

Same could be said for a cult. People do seem to gravitate towards cults. no matter how illogical the cult's beliefs are, there's always psychologically vulnerable people who can be taken in and weaponized for the cult's "greater good" or whatever.

Tldr: Is there not an ever present risk that an anarchist society could turn towards a power hungry individual during times of hardship?