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this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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Memes of Production
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But you do get to participate in those decisions. We are a troupe species, after all.
Anarchism has suffered centuries of propaganda convincing people that it is synonymous with unregulated chaos, rather than more organized than authoritarian schemes. If someone shits in the water, you and all the other people who rely on that water can rightfully observe that that person is impinging on your freedoms and security, and can deal with it using the endless decision making process you’re required to have to get things done in your region.
Freedom is absolutely relative, not relatively absolute. It’s defined and negotiated, not subject to impulse and ego. Under anarchism, you are not free to attack, or shit in drinking water.
So do I get to make their decisions for them or not?
If yes, the original post is faulty.
If no, they shit in the water.
I expect the original post is faulty because it's a meme trying to be funny.
A community can collectively decide on rules, and collectively decide how to enforce those rules. If someone is harming the community and will not stop when asked, the community can decide to forcibly eject that person from the community.
So, yes, I (with enough backing of the community) do get to tell hypothetical-you that you can't shit in the drinking water.
Yes. The difference between our current system and Anarchism is that it is much, much harder to create a system that does not benefit the everyone, since the people who are usually negatively effected by the whims of corporations or centralized power would now have the ability to directly have a say in how their local community decides on rules and how to enforce them.
There would also be no wealthy elites who can influence things, as there would be no mechanism or ability for an individual to accumulate vast resources or wealth.
But isn't this going to create issues for minority if what its members want is reasonable but inconveniences the majority? I don't want to come up with a specific example, but something like improved accessibility for a disabled person that requires resources and may be seen as unnecessary by most comes to mind
Afaik it's one of the issues with democracy: how to define what is good for everyone when people have conflicting interests and groups are disproportionate
Minority groups or people with disabilities would be just as entitled as anyone else at a community meeting to determine what gets done. In Rojava, minorities get to speak first to ensure their concerns are heard by the majority, and issues can be worked out via consensus decision making, which would help ensure that the needs of minorities or people with disabilities are not ignored.
Yeah, consensus sounds like a good solution I didn't think of. But then there are scaling issues, imo, consensus is not for thousands at once, maybe we get to representatives interacting with neighbouring communities, but that already seems to diverge from original idea
You're definitely on the right path! A community could elect recall-able delegates (which are distinct from representatives) to interact with other community's or their delegates, which can collectively implement wider rules, such as regulating cross-community electricity grids, or organize bigger projects that would need multiple communities to participate in to accomplish. With that, the different communities can still operate horizontally, but be able to collaborate together with federation, much like how lemmy itself operates :D
Sounds reasonable as you've written it. I do worry about people's over willingness to bend the knee, especially when they're frightened or angry. It seems like someone with a strong personality could convince people to go along with stuff that benefits him more than them. But, no system is immune to bad actors and idiots.
Agreed. Though I think it would be particularly difficult for a strongman or strong personality to take hold in an Anarchist society.
If it was successfully implemented, and everyone is now receiving free housing, food, healthcare, public transport, and education all in exchange for 2 to 3 months of voluntary work (the rest being free time), I think it would be exceptionally difficult to convince that populace that actually they should actually go back to the old way where they work for him all year in exchange for some paper that would then give you access to those things which you already have for free.
I just think it would be almost impossible to put that genie back in the bottle, just as it would've been almost impossible for medieval kings and lords to bring back serfdom after mercantilism/capitalism was established.