A question a about Anarchism?

[DoCt SPARTAN]

I just got into the ideology of Anarchism......dont really understand it

How would it not turn into complete chaos?

there would be no police or army who would protect us?

[Captain Ahab]

http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionA
This should answer many questions you have about anarchism.

[homegrown terror]

I just got into the ideology of Anarchism......dont really understand it

How would it not turn into complete chaos?

there would be no police or army who would protect us?

most anarchists support the idea of a post-statist society run through collective organisation and mutual aid. as such, direct democracy on a local level and citizen-defense will take the place of oppressive government and professional armies.

[DoCt SPARTAN]

most anarchists support the idea of a post-statist society run through collective organisation and mutual aid. as such, direct democracy on a local level and citizen-defense will take the place of oppressive government and professional armies.


SO citizens will take up arms?

[Starship Stormtrooper]

Yes, the citizens will be armed and able to resist attempts at reaction by the capitalists with force. Ideally there wouldn't be any such armed body distinct from the masses of the people, but one may or may not be necessary during the revolution.

[homegrown terror]

Yes, the citizens will be armed and able to resist attempts at reaction by the capitalists with force. Ideally there wouldn't be any such armed body distinct from the masses of the people, but one may or may not be necessary during the revolution.

this, exactly. an organised paramilitary force would be necessary to secure the existence of an anarchist society, but after such actions are completed, a cooperative armed population would be the only "muscle" necessary. obviously there would be a need for communications between regions so that if one town or city is experiencing more than they can hold back, other local areas could raise a force to provide assistance, kind of like (for the nerds out there) the beacon system connecting Rohan and Gondor in LOTR.

[Jimmie Higgins]

How would it not turn into complete chaos?What do you mean by chaos? Do you mean random violence? Instability in our lives, lack of control, being forced to do things for those with the most power? Well we have that now with capitalism; it's just "chaos" for us, "order" for the sake of wealth exploitation.


there would be no police or army who would protect us?But do these institutions do this now? In the US, police almost never stop a violent crime in progress; the vast majority of US policing and arrests is stop-and-frisk pre-text stops, also known as racial profiling. As their name implies, they aren't crime prevention, but law enforcement. So they are there to preserve a particular order of society, for the rulers of society and the police specifically were designed to handle urban "mobs" in industrial cities, not protect people generally. In addition, this order they exist to protect is one that insures inequality, poverty, and chaos in our lives that dirves some people to be violent for the purpose of stealing or just for the purpose of exacting some violent control even if it's just random lashing out or beefs.

Anarchist or Marxist, revolutionaries believe that police are not needed for liberated people. For one thing, people having more control over the conditions of their life, not having the stress of capitalist competition and the struggle just to eek by, would make people generally much more mellow and give people a life worth preserving. For another thing, a life where democracy is worked into daily life means that people would like have more time to know their neighbors and co-workers and would be in contact with them through neighborhood meetings over a range of things. A less atomized and privitized life would mean that people would probably feel more "ownership" of their communities and know their neighbors.

There may be times when "policing" or patrolling is necissary and this can be organized by neighborhoods. There are many examples of people doing this already and in urban revolutionary situations, this has often come up out of necissirty. In Egypt neighborhoods set up check-points to prevent looters or political thugs/police from entering their street.

[The Feral Underclass]

How would it not turn into complete chaos?

We would use magic.


there would be no police or army who would protect us?

This is predicated on the false premise that this is what they do now.

[Narodnik]

Ideally there wouldn't be any such armed body distinct from the masses of the people, but one may or may not be necessary during the revolution.
Even in a post-revolution society it would be possible. Take a society organized according to anarcho-syndicalist ideas. If that society deems it neccessary, it can (with the populace still armed) form a standing security force as just another branch of industry, along with farming, mining, metal, healthcare, teaching and others.

[The Feral Underclass]

What is a society organised according to anarcho-syndicalist ideas?

[Ele'ill]

I have no idea if you have a reading list resource yet but these two sites are good

This one is a basic keyword search to find questions that have been asked and of course you can ask your own questions, I don't know how often it is updated http://anarchy101.org/

This is searchable by author, title, keyword for radical texts on a ton of subjects http://theanarchistlibrary.org/


A brief response to your question is that in comparison to what you see now there probably would be what looks like 'chaos'. There would be a loss of control by a dominant class over the dominant systems that prevent 'total freedom''. I don't think anybody knows exactly what this will look like. I think it will be a big block party with lots of fireworks, beer, drugs and dead cops.