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this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Do anarchists think anarchy will result in a system with no classes?
Yes, because anarchism is against all hierarchies and the class system is a form of hierarchy. Instead, decisions should me made collectively, for example in councils open for everyone
@lugal @danc4498 Anarchism is against specifically unjust hierarchies, it can permit certain ones to exist within individual communities should the community find it justified, but still strongly favours not having any where possible.
There are a group of anarchists who would still believe in the idea of an adult > child hierarchy as they struggle to imagine an alternative world without it.
Parents have natural bootmaker authority and if you want to be a good parent then you realise that the kids also have it: They, or maybe better put their genome, know how they need to be raised, and try to teach you, as well as (with increasing age) seek out the exact bootmakers that seem sensible. Worst thing you can do as a parent is to think that learning is a one-way street.
I honestly hate the concept of "bootmaker authority", because it's exactly the same wrong conflation that Engels makes. Not every inequality is a form of authority. Expertise is not authority, it is expertise.
Authority is the socially-recognised power to dominate. Getting a bootmaker to advise on or perform bootmaking tasks is not domination. The bootmaker can't hold you at gunpoint and command you to wear a certain kind of boot, nobody would allow that. There aren't bootmaking cops.
Like what exactly does the bootmaker's "authority" entail in this theory? Giving consent does not confer authority. Authority operates regardless of consent, that's what makes it bad.
Knowledge is power, thus with a knowledge gap we have a power gap. As a bootmaker's apprentice, my capacity to judge whether or not I'm getting taught proper technique is limited, I can alleviate that disparity by consulting more than one bootmaker, but ultimately that gap won't vanish until I, myself, have mastered the craft.
...unnatural authority. Natural authority aka the bootmaker's does not require social recognition. The bootmaker knows more than the apprentice no matter what society thinks, the imbalance is not socially caused.
If you don't want to call it authority, fine, but saying "as bad as Engels" is going too far IMO. While bootmaker's authority does not rely on (wider) social recognition it is still a thing that happens in a social relationship, and not in the relationship of a worker to their alarm clock or whatnot. Though arguably in the modern world that line is also blurring, see technological paternalism, OTOH it's just a reification of the relationship between the producer and consumer of a technology. It's an unavoidable (unless you're a primitivist) side-effect of increased division of labour in a technologically advancing society.
Heck I'm myself on the page of "the state is a people, a territory, and organisation", simply because the classical anarchist definition drifted miles and miles from the dictionary and the lived experience of people in liberal democracies, when you say "abolish the state" they hear "abolish garbage collection". We can re-do terminology once in a while, it's a good idea.
I need you to define the word "authority" in that case. I've given my definition, so what is yours and how does it differ, please? Because I already addressed the fact that an imbalance doesn't create a hierarchy, and your description of imbalance does not fit my definition of authority.
Power imbalance doesn't automatically create the conditions for domination. For that you would need both expertise and monopoly.
And the solution to a misunderstanding isn't to concede the definition of the word "state" but to educate. The state is any entity that has a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in a region. That applies regardless of the system of government that rules it.
Your definition isn't a definition, it's just a collection of categories that gives no useful information.
We don't need to be dominated in order to clean up our garbage. And the state is often really bad at collecting garbage, so just teach people that.
Authority is a power imbalance in a social relationship. It does not, in itself, imply domination or monopoly or expertise it happens each time two people are not on eye level regarding something, cannot, for whatever reason, relate to each other as complete equals. If you find yourself having it and are keen on proper praxis then you take on the responsibility to lift the other up as you are capable to do. I think for that reason alone I think it's important to recognise it as authority, so that we are careful when using it, which, in the end, is unavoidable.
Garbage collection is a non-issue over here, it just works. Couple of neighbouring municipalities own the company and it's run on an at-cost basis with decent wages. If, suddenly, an anarchist revolution were to happen I'm quite sure the general arrangement would carry over.
...and I took that as an example precisely because (over here) it just works, it's a baby you wouldn't want to throw out with the bathwater. I'm reasonably sure that wherever you're living, you can think of such an example.
Anarchism thus becomes meaningless as anyone who defends certain hierarchies obviously does so because they believe they are just. Literally everyone on earth is against "unjust hierarchies" at least in their own personal evaluation of said hierarchies. People who support capitalism do so because they believe the exploitative systems it engenders are justifiable and will usually immediately tell you what those justifications are. Sure, you and I might not agree with their argument, but that's not the point. To say your ideology is to oppose "unjust hierarchies" is to not say anything at all, because even the capitalist, hell, even the fascist would probably agree that they oppose "unjust hierarchies" because in their minds the hierarchies they promote are indeed justified by whatever twisted logic they have in their head.
Telling me you oppose "unjust hierarchies" thus tells me nothing about what you actually believe, it does not tell me anything at all. It is as vague as saying "I oppose bad things." It's a meaningless statement on its own without clarifying what is meant by "bad" in this case. Similarly, "I oppose unjust hierarchies" is meaningless statement without clarifying what qualifies "just" and "unjust," and once you tell me that, it would make more sense you label you based on your answer to that question. Anarchism thus becomes a meaningless word that tells me nothing about you. For example, you might tell me one unjust hierarchy you want to abolish is prison. It would make more sense for me to call you a prison abolitionist than an anarchist since that term at least carries meaning, and there are plenty of prison abolitionists who don't identify as anarchist.
Isn't anarchy just against imposed hierarchy? Most anarchists I've met are okay with heirarchies that form naturally, and believe those hierarchies to be enough for society to function, hence why they call themselves anarchists, not minarchists.
I have never heard the term minarchist. Many anarchists say, we need structures against the building of hierarchies, like avoiding knowledge hierarchies by doing skillshares.
Natural authorities are a different topic. I think Kropotkin was an example of a leader who was accepted because everyone agreed with him. Once he said something people didn't like, they rejected him as a leader. You can call this a hierarchy if you like. I wouldn't because he couldn't coerce his followers but this is pure terminology.
So, do the anarchists not think that capitalism will just prevail and bring along with it the classes of the haves and have nots? Anarchy won’t solve the problem of wealth inequality, will it? I have genuinely never understood this aspect of anarchism.
The system where someone monopolizes a essential good and leverages that to gain power is called anarcho-capitalism and is a whole different thing. In anarchy, ownership on that level does not exist. Neither a company nor a person can own a factory, or a farm, or the power grid. Employment doesn't exist. People can band together and distribute tasks for a common goal (such as producing a certain good) but they all hold equal stake in all decisions.
Of course a group of people could use violence to oppress other people. But then you no longer have anarchy. The same way a democracy stops beeing a democracy once a group seizes power and doesn't allow fair elections anymore.
And who is going to stop a company from owning a factory or a farm? It wouldn’t even require violence for a company to do so. It just requires them to have enough resources to pay people to do it.
I guess I don’t see what you call “anarchy” as a system that would ever exist more than a year. The end result would always be “anarcho-capitalism”. That, or, people would have to form their own government to prevent that system.
The company would need violence. There's no reason for workers to work in a factory for less money than their goods are sold for, and there's no reason for the company to pay workers more than the goods are sold for. Without violence the workers could just produce and sell the goods themselves and ignore the company.
Is this a society without computers and other modern day electronics? Or do you think workers will be able to handle developing technology on their own?
Well, it's unlikely the entire world will turn anarchist all at once, and the modern supply chain is global, so the anarchist community would trade for what they need from outside the community. Or they may choose to go anarcho-primitivism I guess. I think some remote indigenous tribes we have now could be considered anarcho-primitivist. The most successful anarcho-socialist community would probably be the Zapatistas.
Anarchism is anti capitalist in nature since capitalism entails hierarchies
I just don’t understand how people think an anarchy can protect itself from capitalism.
Let's take the most "conservative" form of anarchism: anarchosyndicalism. Every factory is organized in councils, confederated both with the import or mining council and the consumer council. Now a capitalist comes and asks how much this factory costs. Do you think the council will tell them a price or to fuck off?
By teaching history, including how capitalism killed millions of people, whole ecosystems and uncountable species.
Anarchism is opposition to power hierarchies, specifically non-consensual or coercive ones. Wealth inequality without safety networks is a coercive power hierarchy, and so needs to be fought. Capitalism as a whole is almost always incompatible with anarchy, at least in the way we tend to do it now. In a system with strong social safety networks the choice to work for someone can actually be a choice, and so some schools of thought would view it as compatible.
Others view exclusive ownership of property as someone asserting power over someone else's ability to use said property, and therefore wrong. Needless to say, abolition of private property is not compatible with capitalism.
Depends on the anarchist. Many would focus on seeking the absence of involuntary power hierarchies. A manager who distributes work and does performance evaluations isn't intrinsically a problem, it's when people doing the work can't say "no, they're a terrible manager and they're gone", or you can't walk away from the job without risking your well-being.
Anarchists and communists/socialists have a lot of overlap. There's also overlap with libertarians, except libertarians often focus on coercion from the government and don't give much regard to economic coercion. An anarchist will often not see much difference between "do this or I hit you" and "do this or starve": they both are coercive power hierarchies.
Some anarchists are more focused on removing sources of coercion. Others are more focused on creating relief from it. The "tear it down" crowd are more visible, but you see anarchists in the mutual aid and community organization crowds as well.
Anarchists recognize class as a social construct rather than a biological imperative or a free market condition. As a result, they will often make a point of transgressing or undermining the pageantry that class-centric organizations cling to.
Its not that they think "no classes" will be a result so much as they think "explicitly defying class" is a political act.
Anarchism is not the thing you're told about in the media. It isn't a total lack of all government. It's a removal of hierarchical systems and exploitation. There still needs to be systems to protect people from these. They'd just be done through concensus.
This page has more information if you want to learn. https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionA.html#seca1
They define anarchy differently from the common definition. Anarchists believe in creating community organizations to serve the needs of society, but they refrain from calling it a state because they believe a state requires a monopoly on the acceptable use of violence.
They don't think that we should just dissolve society and let everyone fend for themselves to eliminate class, unless they're an edgy teenager.
This is very well put. Thank you! I feel this way as well.
Everyone wants to immediately dogpile and go "OkAy SmArT gUy/GaL HoW wOuLd ThAt SoLvE eVeRyThiNg iMmEDiAtELy ToMmOrRoW huuuh?"
(As if what we've got now was just hatched up by some folks in its current form and implemented overnight lol)
I find myself an anarchist, but I'm also rational in seeing it more as an ideal to strive toward, rather than a concrete policy to implement overnight.
If we're heading towards a mutually cooperative society without unjust "I wear the hat so I make the rules" hierarchies, whether or not we reach it in a utopian sense, I think we're still moving in the right direction.
Anarchy means "without hierarchy". Classes are a hierarchy, so by definition it wouldn't be anarchy if you don't dissolve class.
Oh boy…
It's actually right in the name. Anarchy from an-arkhos means "without ruler". They think hierarchies are illegitimate per se.