What do you think of anarchism?

In the absence of other power structures (political, legal, religious, economic, etc) whoever has the means and willingness to do violence will exert their will over others. Unstructured societies always devolve into might makes right.
- There is a difference between Anomie and anarchy
  Just because there are no leaders/rulers, doesn't mean there are no social rules or morale values.
  A law doesn't keep one from doing bad stuff.
  Else we wouldn't have murderers.
  But society must grow and develop. At the current state anarchy probably wouldn't work...
  
  a law doesn't keep one from doing bad stuff
  that's true, they need to be enforced somehow....
- Unstructured societies always devolve into might makes right.
  you can't prove this
  
  Theoretically maybe, but empirically, humanity was completely unstructured at the beginning and currently not a single anarchist society exists. Why do you think everyone transformed into various kinds of nation-states eventually? Because nation-states were exceptionally good at filling that "power vacuum". To overpower nation-states, something at least comparable is needed. Transnational corporations/syndicates/unions, something like that.

I think that if humanity can manage to survive long enough, anarchism is inevitable.
It's essentially the adult stage of human society - the point at which humans collectively and consistently, rather than just individually and situationally, can be trusted to generally do the right thing simply because it's the right thing and therefore the most reasonable thing to do.
For the time being and the foreseeable future though, humanity is nowhere even close to that. Through the course of history, human society has managed to advance to about the equivalent of adolescence. There's still a long way to go.
In spite of that, I do identify as an anarchist, but my advocacy is focused on the ideal and the steps humanity as a whole has to take to achieve it. I think it's plainly obvious that it cannot be implemented, since any mechanism by which it might be inplemented would necessarily violate the very principles that define it. It can only be willingly adopted by each and all (or close enough as makes no meaningful difference), and that point will come whenever (if) it comes.
- Even when people will do the right thing in 99.99% of situations, there will still need to be rules.
  Just take a look at how game theory works. Anyone exploiting those mechanism in a group even if only one in a thousand, could devastate a society in no time , if it's naive enough to not have rules and norms for correct behavior, even when they are not usually needed.
  I do like your thinking though, and I also have dreams of a future society where criminals are not punished but nurtured. Because it must have been awful to have been in a state of mind, to want to do something to hurt others.
  I'm not sure it's possible though. But it is the ideal we should hopefully at some point strive for. But there still needs to be standards or "rules" for when people need help to be readjusted to functioning normally in society, if they get "confused".
  But I still don't think anarchy will work, because so many things will need to be structured, and societies are getting bigger and more complex, which increases the need for rules to make societies work. So instead of anarchy I think we must expect more rules not fewer.
  But probably in the future, many rules will be for machines and not for humans?
  
  Anarchy doesn't mean no rules, it means no rulers.

That it's basically the lefty equivalent to a libertarian. Both of those philosophies seem juvenile to me in a "I don't want to, and you can't make me" kind of way. Call me old fashioned, but I like structure as long as it's not totalitarian. I'm happy to pay taxes as long as they're going toward the benefit of society. Granted, that largely hasn't been the case, but I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater either.
Recent events have also highlighted how much my taxes actually were going toward the betterment of society (though still not nearly enough), and that I had taken them for granted until they were recently axed/defunded.
- Anarchists aren't against government, or even taxes, they're against the state, which is different.
  you defeated a strawman, no anarchist philosopher would disagree that that would be stupid
- You got it. Both anarchist and libertarian systems are what children come up with once they mature just enough to see how governments work.
  
  Which anarchist philosophers did you read to come to that conclusion?

It depends on the definition
- The definition is whatever you want the definition to be. Don't let others force a definition on you.

ITT: Nobody has any idea what any anarchist philosopher ever said or believed and simply thinks it means no rules
They then strut victoriously, thinking they are smarter than every anarchist philosopher who has ever existed because they know that rules matter in a society, not realizing that no anarchist thinker has ever said "let's just have no rules or organization and just see how it goes based on the vibes"
- How’s about this: name me one functioning country of significant size (i.e. not just a commune) that functions on an anarchistic model. Demonstrate via examples that this system actually works in practice.
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia

Anarchy sounds good to me then someone asks "Who'd fix the sewers?"
edit: This is lyrics from The Dead Kennedy’s “Where Do You Draw the Line?”
- Anarchist response would be "people who want functioning sewers, which should be everybody."
  Yeah it's a dirty job. So is wiping your ass. Does someone need to threaten you to wipe your ass? Take a shower? When your toilet breaks at home do you shrug and just shit on the bathroom floor?
  No, you fix the toilet. Same with the sewers.
  
  Ok and who does that end up being?
- My experience organizing non-profit events have shown that most people actually have no problem doing dirty jobs for no material compensation. If the following things are true:
  They understand why the job is important
  They feel responsible for the job (usually comes from being given autonomy and trust)
  They get recognition for doing it (social rewards are actually very powerful)
  No one else is getting compensated either.
  I understand that this seems foreign to a lot of people, because this is not how work is generally motivated in capitalist society. You are used to your job being rather unimportant, with little autonomy, little trust, not much recognition from society and some people definitely profiting more than others. Your primary motivator is the threat of violence (via homelessness, starvation etc.), so it's hard to imagine what would happen if that was removed.
  That to me is the core idea of Anarchism, to base your organization on volontary cooperation rather than coercion.
  An interesting side-note is that the people who do the dirty jobs in these circumstances often take great pride in it, forming an identify around doing what others are not willing to and calling attention to it as a way to get more recognition.
  
  non-profit events and mucking a sewer are very different.
- Probably the people who own the sewers.
  Let me rephrase the question, who will fix the potholes?
  
  who will fix the potholes?
  Make the libertarians do it! /s
  Idk, ive fixed a pothole or two that bothered me near home, but yeah, I'm not doing a whole city lol
  I think though that once people realize the onus is on them to fix things, people will start to fix things. Provided of course, that they have the means and ability to do so.
  And then, there are still companies which can be hired to do these things, provided someone is willing to pay them
  
  It’s a Dead Kennedy’s song and do people own the sewers in anarchist societies?
- Someone doesn't understand what anarchism is. Opinion discarded. Please read a book and return.
  
  This is the opportunity to share resources and give them a direction to head, and you missed it.

The end goal of civilization.
Stateless, Egalitarian societies.

A lot of people think it means total chaos, but it really just means an opposition to hierarchy.
People living comfortable lives will rationalize any critique of the system away, even if that comfort is built upon emiseration and exploitation.

Pls no anarcho capitalism. A good breakdown of the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTN64g9lA2g&t=1

I don’t think practically you could end up with a state of anarchism because it implies that humans can exist in a power vacuum. Something will always fill that vacuum. Now, the question is what is that thing? It can take a lot of forms. The goal should be to make it serve the qualitative needs of most people - food, shelter, well being, safety. People advocating for true anarchy are usually doing so from a naive idealism. Idealism is often good, but sometimes ignores other factors that make the ideal impossible to achieve.
- Anarchists are not against government, they're against the state, and these are two different things.
  They are also not against rules, there's no power vacuum because power is held by consensus. I don't think you've ever read an anarchist philosopher, based on this take.
  
  Absence of government; the state of society where there is no law or supreme power; a state of lawlessness; political confusion
  https://gcide.gnu.org.ua/?q=Anarchy&define=Define&strategy=.
  Whatever you’re arguing for, I’d suggest using another word

It seems foolish and young to me. Same as libertarian rules or rule by religious doctrine. None of that shit works. Just shiny little playthings to keep people distracted from real and genuine problems that cause an existential threat to all species living on earth.
- Which anarchist philosophers beliefs did you find foolish and young, and why? I'd love a critique!
- Strange claim, given that it's arguably how humans have organized their society for 296,000 years until that religion you dislike fucked it all up.
  
  Uhm, no? For most of humanity, we were in patriarcal tribes. That's not the same as anarchy. And the moment settlements grew, there was typically some kind of hierarchy in place, some chief.

People calling themselves anarchists seem to reliably be less of a red flag than when they call themselves communists.
I think there's a lot of sentiment to sympathize with and a lot of ideas to learn about.
Implementation of anarchism seems hard and maybe sometimes a bit naïve, but on the other hand I don't actually understand the specifics nor is there any one opinion.
Anarvhism refers to a vlass of ideologies moreso than any one in specific.

I think it's one gun away from a dictatorship.
For power to be safely devolved to the people there need to be resilient structures in place to prevent a bad actor from simply wresting control by force.
Also, I think that while it solves societal issues well for the most personal of personal liberties it fails to properly add in protections from the liberties of others that may be imposed on you... i.e. a spouse trying to escape an abusive relationship will find sparse services to support them.
Lastly, I like trains. Trains don't happen in a reasonable time-frame without a strong centralized government. In the UK a coop recently opened a new train line... I think it took them 30+ years.
- For power to be safely devolved to the people there need to be resilient structures in place to prevent a bad actor from simply wresting control by force.
  Why do you think this is incompatible with anarchism?
  Also, I think that while it solves societal issues well for the most personal of personal liberties it fails to properly add in protections from the liberties of others that may be imposed on you… i.e. a spouse trying to escape an abusive relationship will find sparse services to support them.
  Why can't they simply vote on such laws being absolute, and hard to change, like we currently do in non-anarchist democracies?
  Trains don’t happen in a reasonable time-frame without a strong centralized government. In the UK a coop recently opened a new train line… I think it took them 30+ years.
  Why did it take them 30+ years? Why couldn't an anarchist society simply vote to build a new train line?
  
  For power to be safely devolved to the people there need to be resilient structures in place to prevent a bad actor from simply wresting control by force.
  Why do you think this is incompatible with anarchism?
  There still must be a state with the capacity for violence to prevent strongman takeovers. Most descriptions of anarchism generally exclude the existence of a unified state and often exclude any form of non-individual violence.
  Also, I think that while it solves societal issues well for the most personal of personal liberties it fails to properly add in protections from the liberties of others that may be imposed on you… i.e. a spouse trying to escape an abusive relationship will find sparse services to support them.
  Why can't they simply vote on such laws being absolute, and hard to change, like we currently do in non-anarchist democracies?
  What state apparatus would be preserved into anarchism that would provide these supports and how would it be funded? Additionally, how would we reconcile the lack of a state with the need for apparatuses to oppose individual suppression that are necessarily authoritarian and imbued with violence. Think first about a village of good people with one abusive relationship - that village can perhaps support the spouse in escaping that relationship. Think now about an evangelical or Mormon community with widespread and socially accepted spousal abuse - a solution to that abuse will almost never emerge internally. An outside authority imbued with the power of violence by a large populace is required to make that situation just - and that justice will come against the majority opinion of that locale.
  Shit like this has happened in the past - most cult raids you've heard of were breaking up situations where everyone made a voluntary choice with the assistance of coercion and other disabling factors.
  Trains don’t happen in a reasonable time-frame without a strong centralized government. In the UK a coop recently opened a new train line… I think it took them 30+ years.
  Why did it take them 30+ years? Why couldn't an anarchist society simply vote to build a new train line?
  It took them 30+ years because they needed to privately fund it. I think you may be confusing anarchy with council republics or other devolved and federated forms of governments (like Lenin's idealized Soviets - not to be confused with the USSR).
  It's important also to look at the costs of devolution of power. After the first Trump term human rights around reproductive care were devolved to be the decision of the states - that devolution of power resulted in less freedoms for individuals.
  People like to focus on the "I can do..." freedoms in US political thought but I think some of our most important freedoms are "I can refuse to have ... done to me" freedoms - and those two freedoms are always in opposition. Someone wants to not be murdered and someone else wants to murder them - no matter the outcome someone is having their freedom restrained.

coupled with communism it's the real shit

Technically the whole world runs on pure anarchism. No rules, only those created by local groups. With agreements between some of the groups. Most of it enforced by violence.
Laws only exist because most people believe in them. For the rest they are enforced with violence. I believe that anarchy would result in a similar system. Most people would behave but some would not. To protect everyone eventually some kind of police and laws would form again.
- Anarchism has nothing to do with "no rules"

I see it as a guideline for how society could be structured after the elimination of class.

Responsible anarchism is a good ideal to aim for, but in pure form it's utopian. Realistic way to get closer to this ideal is shifting to stateless/borderless societies that center around some alternative entities other than geopolitical nation-states.

Genuinely thought that said "anachronism" and was ready to go on a tirade about how cool cloaks are and how they should make a comeback
- Fuck yeah, I'd wear a cloak.

I consider myself an anarcho-pragmatist. It would be nice not to have any rulers or an hierarchy. But I also know people well enough to know that unless we defer any decision making to a supercomputer everyone trusts, we're going to need some form of societal structure.
- No one will unanimously trust a computer model. People will try to undermine and destroy it. So, the question would then be, how do you stop that? And suddenly you’re not really talking about anarchy. The computer will need to enforce its existence through violence.

I think it's great. We should fucking try it.
Seriously, though, I think it would be nice but it's going to be impossible unless you can fully get rid of greedy, corrupt, power hungry pieces of shit with zero empathy.
- Don't forget the morons who keep worshipping said pieces of shit. Even now, I run into Musk cultists regularly.
- So as long as the the greedy, power-hungry pieces of shit have at least some empathy, we can make it work?
  
  It at least shows they could possibly be rehabilitated.

When I was younger, I believed that it was an ideal worth striving for. Now I don't have that much faith in people anymore and I think that the best you can ask for is to try to live life your way and stay true to your beliefs and morals as best you can, according to whatever circumstances that you've been given.

Quite literally impossible to implement. Same as true "Libertarianism". Can't actually exist.
Look at it this way. You and your neighbours want no government. No taxes. No laws. No "authority" telling you what to do and how to do it. Great!
What happens when the road needs to be fixed? Do you fix just the road in front of your house? Or do you negotiate with your neighbours for you all to pay a fair share to get the entire road done? Congratulations...you just invented government.
So now the road is getting done, but the people doing the work really don't want to deal with every individual for every particular decision. It's a much better idea to elect one person to do the communicating. Congratulations...you just invented civics and beaurocracy
This person that you all agreed to handle all of this stuff doesn't have time anymore to support himself or his family because he's dealing with your shit, so he demands that each of you pay an amount to keep in able to feed himself while he administrates your "anarchic society." Congratulations...you just invented taxes
Replace "roads" with literally anything else in a community and the end result is the same. Both Libertarians and Anarchists are fucking morons.
- You don't know what anarchism is or what it means and are arguing with a strawman.
  anarchism means no rulers, not no rules
  we would just use direct democracy for our government
  we don't even want no government, we want no state, those are different things
  can you point to an anarchist philosopher who believes the nonsense you argued against?
  
  You say they're arguing against strawmen, but do nothing to refute the arguments or show why they're strawmen. Let's say you have what you want: Rules but no rulers, direct democracy, and government but no state (please explain the latter in more detail).
  The local hospital needs to decide how much money (read: resources) to spend on constructing a new wing, and who should do the job. A power line has to be built to replace the one that just fell down, and your direct democracy decided last week that you want to do something to incentivise the farmers to produce healthier and more sustainable food, rather than easy to produce and unhealthy food, but you haven't ironed out the details yet. The next option you have to affect these decisions is later today, when you'll have some kind of meeting or vote to decide on the matters. How you will find a time and place that allows everyone to have their say is an obvious issue, but I'll leave it to you to explain how to overcome it.
  These decisions need to be made, and when everyone doesn't agree, there needs to be a mechanism to get stuff done regardless. I haven't even gotten started on how to deal with internal groups or outside forces that want to exploit the system or the society as a whole.
  Please explain how this is solved without some kind of hierarchical system where some people make decisions and enforce those decisions on behalf of the group as a whole. These are the roles we typically assign to "rulers" or "the state" (i.e. the bureaucracy).
- Anarchism isn't "no government". I don't think your larger assessment is incorrect in that anarchism is utopian in nature and unrealistic on a larger scale but your understanding of the ideology is flawed.

Honestly, I don't really understand what it is. I don't understand socialism, communism, hell I hardly understand capitalism and I'm living in it.
I know the "it's chaos" interpretation isn't really correct though

Its interesting idea but i wonder if humans are capable of running it beyond so small groups that it wouldnt matter. It would require huge amount of planning and creative thinking to get anarchy working in such way it would benefit everyone and to mitigate its problems.
Then there is also the problem of our current system influencing the new system. Lets say we manage somehow overthrow the current opression and start implementing somekind of anarchy that has been planned in such way it functions beneficially for everyone. By its nature, there couldnt be any authority that defines what anarchy is by its core since it would be up to the people themselves.
I can imagine anarchy easily fragmenting into pieces and then some pieces gaining more support than others and then we would have several competing ideas. Ultimately one would win and others might or might not survive too. And then we would have new ruling system that is probably not anarchy. I dont mean this would happen immediately but eventually. So there would need to be somekind of defensive system against that that would prevent harmful ideas from gaining power, but how to make something like that without it becoming oppressive? And how do you restrict anarchy in the first place since the whole point is there is no central authority? And if you try to have authority that isnt central, you end up with multiple ones that become central authority within their area of influence.
Maybe i'm not as well versed on anarchy as i should to be throwing these thoughts around, but these are some thoughts i have on the subject. As far as i know, anarchism is that people make the rules themselves instead of there being central authority that tells them what to do.
So ultimately anarchism is idea that would require a lot of planning and researching to be even considered worth trying if you want to implement it in controlled way. And i dont see any government allowing such planning to happen since it would be direct threat to them if you manage to create something that is worth trying. And very likely if they still were to allow it, they would just want to influence your work in such way they gain more power from it at the expense of others. And if we had some government that would want it because they want what is good for everyone, then wouldnt that government type be what you wanted to have with anarchy in the first place? Anarchy for sake of itself doesnt seem very useful.
And if you want to implement it "naturally" by just removing all authorities and allowing people to settle things by themselves, i think we can all imagine how that would go.
When I think about it that way, anarchism seems more like "initialization" or starting point where you start building something more complex. Everything we currently have is founded on anarchism afterall, at least i dont think first humans could have had any other system. You cant really hold on to it because it will change either by the people or by the power that wants to preserve it.
Now this turned into kind of an essay

Nestor Makhno and his Makhnovists weren't perfect but I think its probably the closest we're going to get to seeing a working anarchist society. It seemed like it worked for a short time.
Also note the mutial aid systems that spring up in the wake of some disasters could probably be considered temporary anarchist societies. Rebecca Solenit wrote a book about this but I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet. A Paradise Built in Hell. I hear its good but I can't say that with firsthand knowledge

What led to the Haymarket Massacre, which might have been the main catalyst behind the 8-hour workday... So I cannot hate it out of principle
Seems reasonable but I don't know how to actually implement it
For some reason is more associated with Anarcho-Capitalism rather than the other variants, which I thought was... Interesting

It rules!

I think liberals don't even know what it means, but insist their opinions on it need to be heard anyways, because all opinions are valid, right?

There are already people living this lifestyle, unfortunately one only has the choice if you have lots of money.
- Lots of money? Do you actually know any anarchists? Living in communal squat houses and dumpster diving for food is the lifestyle that comes to mind for me.
  
  So you don't know any anarchists either, just the image you've seen in movies.

I thought it was quite cool when I was a teenager. Then I grew up.
- Aka you heard about it, did no reading on theory and slowly the capitalist culture you lived in burned your brain down. That's what happens when you don't have any actual education about something.
  
  No, I'm quite aware of what it is ... and concluded it to be a terrible idea.

It was the way for most of human history. And I’m not saying that in a good way, like “it’s totally normal, we should not be afraid of it.” I think the past was a uniformly awful time that’s slowly been getting better.
Anarchy working well depends on the people involved. Though at this point, we live in such a rules based world that I wonder if anyone would be able to function entirely without.

At its best it would be the most well functioning democracy possible, at its worst it would give way into centralisation (and infighting)
I don't think anarchist states are impossible, but I do think it wouldn't be as comfortable of a life compared to something more centralised.
- It would. An anarchist system requires participation at all ends from just about everyone. If you forfeith your vote once, you'll forfeight it again, not because of a conscious choice, but because you empowered others to make your choice for you in the first place.
  Anarchy is not about comfort. Its about freedom, as nebulous as that term is, and freedom, as has been said many many times, is not free.

I think there's a reason anarchists aren't migrating in droves to anarchies like Haiti or Somalia.
- being ruled by warlords is not anarchist.
  
  The point stands though. Pure Anarchism is a power vacuum. There is no way to achieve a power vacuum, it will be quickly filled — the most basic way it is filled is by dictators and warlords. You want to live in a power vacuum? Ask yourself how you will enforce it and suddenly you’re no longer talking about anarchy.
  
  You can't prove that
- Naive Understanding of the topic detected like
  Where did you learn this talking point?
  
  I'm going to play devil's advocate because I think this is a learning opportunity and I want to set someone up to give a good answer.
  A lot of people hear "anarchy" and equate it with a lack of government. Haiti has not had a functioning government for quite some time. What distinguishes Haiti's situation from anarchy?

Anarchy is the worst a society can devolve into.
And people who believe that certain anarchy "models" can work, know nothing about the psychology of larger groups.
When large groups of people need to live together there needs to be structure and rules that must be respected, and the rules need to be upheld by a governing body.
The best way we have to form that governing body is democracy.
- I don't disagree... But that's not how society operates historically or currently.
  Closest we ever came to that us post ww2 era in some countries.
  It has regressed into the circus we got eight now since then.
  Life is untenable for the majority already, it will get worse.
  
  I'm not sure, but I think maybe you are using USA as the norm, but USA is not a good example of a democracy, it is ranked as a FLAWED democracy. And it's been my opinion for more than a decade that USA is ranked way too high. An essentially 2 party system is not a real democracy.
  Democracies that actually work are for instance the Scandinavian countries:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
  Life is untenable for the majority already, it will get worse.
  All the countries with the highest democracy ranks, have way less poverty than USA, also when USA is the far richer country, all have healthcare for all, free education, and also generally people have high satisfaction about their lives.
  I agree USA has devolved badly in many ways since the start of the 80's. Hopefully it will turn around at some point. But it's hard to see it taking on a lasting course for improvements without a pretty serious modernization of their democracy, and cleaning up the corruption and exaggerated power of the super rich.
- When large groups of people need to live together there needs to be structure and rules that must be respected, and the rules need to be upheld by a governing body.
  you can't prove this.
  
  As I stated, people defending anarchy doesn't understand the psychology of larger groups.
  I can only say that EVERY successful society has a central government. If Anarchy could work as well, how come there are no successful anarchy societies?
  Not as in so few, but NONE! If it should work so well, why has no country ever even tried? When a country is thrown into anarchy because the government is removed, and nothing replaces it. It always turns out the same. Extreme violence, theft and hunger.
  That's what is shown to happen when Anarchy reigns.
- Anarchists believe in a government with direct democracy, you are arguing against a strawman
  
  Oh you mean a democracy that isn't flawed like the USA.
  Scandinavian countries have direct democracy, as in voting on their representatives directly, and they are in no way anarchist.
  Maybe you mean general elections on every detail of law, but again, that's impossible, it's stupid, it's a waste of time and resources to have people decide how farmers interact with suppliers and dairy, something 99.9% of all people have no knowledge of.
  It's stupid because it's impossible. You could also say it's decidedly insane.