Anarchism vis. Crime

[Storming Heaven]

How will anarchist societies solve the problem of crime? I have heard that Anarchists hold that crime is a product of property and authority - could someone detail me on how this might be?

[which doctor]

How will anarchist societies solve the problem of crime?

Well, first we have to talk about what causes crime. Most crimes are crimes of need or desire. People wouldn't really need to steal or get more money or anything, so most crimes like this wouldn't even be commited in the first place. However things get a little more complicated when it comes to crimes of passion, such as rape. People like this need to be rehabilitated by other members of the community. Of course all rehabilitation must be voluntary. We must keep these people who have crimes of passion from not commiting them. It is a difficult task and we must try to stay away from the easy option of "locking them up".


I have heard that Anarchists hold that crime is a product of property and authority - could someone detail me on how this might be?

Most crimes are a product of property and authority. Many crimes are commited because one person has power over another in some way so the person wants revenge. Other crimes are caused by the need of a particular item so they steal it. Crimes of jealousy also often end up with theft.

[CCCPneubauten]

Also I would like to pose this question....I hear that anarchy can have a government, but not levels of domination, so what diff' would it make to have a government or not, their laws woulddo nothing would they not?

[Creature]

How will anarchist societies solve the problem of crime? I have heard that Anarchists hold that crime is a product of property and authority - could someone detail me on how this might be?

It makes you think when the society we live in still have solved the problem of crime. In an Anarchist society crime would surely drop, but there is always going to be a small margin of ones kin that commit crimes, you cannot help that.

I will try to answer the questions as best I can.

Overall, crime is caused by an individual not having enough to forfill their wants and/or needs, slowly but inevitably becomes desperate and attempts to forfill the need by other means, thus theft or murder. The other is deemed crime by the state when an individual may disobey, for what ever reason, what they are supposed to do, and the state feels they need to punish the individual, thus tax dodging, resisting arrest etc. The later resulting more along the lines of 'petty crimes' while the former usualy result in more serious crimes. With the abolition of the state the latter will disappear, and since different schools of thought have different views on property, different amounts of the former will disapear.


Murder is one big subject that people always bring up when they talk about law in an Anarchist society.

People always ask, 'How would murder be prevented in an Anarchist society without a police force?' The thing about it is that if a murder IS going to happen, then it will probably happen unless the potential victim is likely to get to safe place, or get help. Since people can freely own guns this might also make so difference and allow potential victims to defend themselves accordingly.

Then the next question is, 'If there was a murder how would it be solved without a police force?' My answer to this is that in the event of an Anarchist society, logic states that some organisation of former forensic experts and the like have the job to solve the crime.

After this the next question is, 'Without a police force, and following proper investigation and identification, who would apprehend the murderer?'
I find this always sparks mixed responses from Anarchists. I tend to think that the community would apprehend the murderer, and come together to agree on a punishment accordingly.

The same could be applied to many other crimes, such as rape. I'm not sure if this will be any help to you, though I hope it is.

(Note: If I am wrong in any of the above, could another anarchist please correct me, for I know I have left much out)

[Clarksist]

Also I would like to pose this question....I hear that anarchy can have a government, but not levels of domination, so what diff' would it make to have a government or not, their laws woulddo nothing would they not?


Anarchism cannot have a government.

gov·ern·ment (gvrn-mnt) n.

1. The act or process of governing, especially the control and administration of public policy in a political unit.
2. The office, function, or authority of a governing individual or body.
3. Exercise of authority in a political unit; rule.
4. The agency or apparatus through which a governing individual or body functions and exercises authority.

A government means authority over the people. That is exactly what anarchism is fighting against.

What anarchist societies can have, is a system of laws and a system or order where everyone has an equal shot at ruling. But I believe that the term government, is not a correct one.

[Morpheus]

There's a detailed explanation of how anarchists would handle crime at http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secI5.html#seci58

[anomaly]

I disagree with Clarksist. Anarchism certainly will have a government. It will be government for, by, and of the people, truly. In other words, anarchist government will take shape in the form of direct democracy. It is very simple, so simple, in fact, that we can describe it with Clarksist's found definitions of 'government; we only need the first half of the first definition: "The act or process of governing". So, using this definition, not the bourgeois definitions pertaining to 'authority', we can say that anarchism will have a government, that is, a body that governs. The make up of this body is the thing anarchism will change.

Now, all this, which so far is seemingly waste, is actually quite useful in explaining how 'crime' will be dealt with in anarchist society. The governing body, the people collectively that is, will act as the enforcer, collectively. And so, in my opinion, the people will form a relatively simple people's court, in which either a group of individuals chosen at random (which is more practical), or the commune as a whole (less practical) will decide whether the defendant is guilty or not, and then what is fair judgement. This may then, if we chooce the randomly selected small group, be backed up by a commune wide vote, to see whether the commune agrees or disagrees with the randomly selected group. Thus, justice, which become a thing far too complex today, will be greatly simplified under anarchism.

[Morpheus]

Anomaly, your'e confusing government with organization. Government = political hierarchy, which is incompatable with anarchism (as is any other kind of hierarchical authority). Anarchist government is a contradiction in terms. While almost all governments claim to be truly controlled by the people, that's actually impossible because of its hierarchical nature. See http://question-everything.mahost.org/Soci.../Socialism.html (http://question-everything.mahost.org/Socio-Politics/Socialism.html) or http://question-everything.mahost.org/Soci...tics/State.html (http://question-everything.mahost.org/Socio-Politics/State.html)

[rebelworker]

Though i agree with a collective community response to aprehending criminals, this is only half the solution, right now people a disempowered to deal with their own problems.
When something comes up, you call the police, communities are not taught how to succesfully deal with conflict and anti social behavior.

Also i wouldsay that the vast majority of crime could be eliminated under a more community based society, as is the sace in most smaller indigenous societies.

most anti social behavior(theft, violence, drug abuse, ect...) comes from poverty and alienation. This could be eliminated in a more egatitarian and directly democratic society.

Towards the issue of Rape, i would like to say that it is not infact a crime of "passion" but a crime of controll and inbalance in gender relations.
Rapists commit rape(im not including date rape and other forms of sexual assault here) as a power trip, its about having controll. I would argue that this stems from patriarchal views about mens dominance over women coupled with the disempowerment of men in a class based system that leves them no controll over their daily lives. By eliminating a class based society with a cultural base of relegious patriarchal social groundings i think that this could eliminate most rape of this nature.
Also in a more colse nit and community based society people would in general have more con cern for each other, no more faceless victims in unresponsive neighborhoods.

As far as Date rape and most other forms of sexual assault, these again are mostly based on ideas of male domination and entitelment. Also alcohol abuse and indeiquet sexual education (due again to religeous morality) lead to a society where people are not taught from an early age what is, and is not, healthy sexual behavior.
With women having more of an equal social role in society(revolution is not ust about economics) their rights and preferences and most importantly boundries would be more understood and respected by men from a younger age, hopefully building a culture based on mutual pleaseure and sensitivity to the needs of others(unlike the current culture of objectivication and sexual conquest and domination).

I hope this helps to answer the question of how crime would be dealt with in a stateles, but hightly socially organized and accountable future society.

[anomaly]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2005, 11:07 PM
Anomaly, your'e confusing government with organization. Government = political hierarchy, which is incompatable with anarchism (as is any other kind of hierarchical authority). Anarchist government is a contradiction in terms. While almost all governments claim to be truly controlled by the people, that's actually impossible because of its hierarchical nature. See http://question-everything.mahost.org/Soci.../Socialism.html (http://question-everything.mahost.org/Socio-Politics/Socialism.html) or http://question-everything.mahost.org/Soci...tics/State.html (http://question-everything.mahost.org/Socio-Politics/State.html)
Government is simply an entity that governs. It's rather simple. The 'hierarchical organization' to which you are apparently referring is commonly called 'the state'. Government does not neccesarily mean political hierarchy, especially when you consider that true democracy cannot possibly have hierarchy, otherwise it ceases to be a democracy and becomes a republic. If anarchism has no government, and thus no order, it will never exist for more than, say, a couple of hours! The people must collectively govern, as I described. Anyway, Morpheus, I really don't care your particular terminology of preference, I care whether you agree with what I wrote. So instead of 'government', if you must persist with your odd definitions derived from some website, sub in any word you please. It really doesn't matter. The question is whether you agree with my ideas, not my terminology.

By the way, you will notice that direct democracy (the government of anarchism) is absolutely neccesary to solve the problem of justice in anarchist society.

[Morpheus]

I agree with the general thrust of what you wrote. However, government & the state are the same thing. I didn't "read this on a website" I read it in the many books written by anarchists over the last 100+ years going into this subject in some detail; this is standard anarchist terminology (BTW, those links I posted weren't sites I "read it on," they were to articles I wrote on the topic). By using a term that refers to a kind of hierarchy you muddy the waters and open the door to authoritarians using that to their advantage. It's like using the word "sexism" to mean "the abolition of patriarchy." That kind of usage only aids real sexists. As Daniel Guerin pointed out in Anarchism: From Theory to Practice:

"The reader knows by now that the anarchists refused to use the term "State" even for a transitional situation. The gap between authoritarians and libertarians has not always been very wide on this score. In the First International the collectivists, whose spokesman was Bakunin, allowed the terms "regenerate State," "new and revolutionary State," or even "socialist State" to be accepted as synonyms for "social collective." The anarchists soon saw, however, that it was rather dangerous for them to use the same word as the authoritarians while giving it a quite different meaning.

They felt that a new concept called for a new word and that the use of the old term could be dangerously ambiguous; so they ceased to give the name "State" to the social collective of the future.

The Marxists, for their part, were anxious to obtain the cooperation of the anarchists to make the principle of collective ownership triumph in the International over the last remnant of neo-Proudhonian individualism. So they were willing to make verbal concessions and agreed halfheartedly to the anarchists' proposal to substitute for the word "State" either federation or solidarisation of communes. In the same spirit, Engels attacked his friend and compatriot August Bebel about the Gotha Programme of the German social democrats, and thought it wise to suggest that he "suppress the term 'State' throughout, using instead Gemeinwesen, a good old German word meaning the same as the French word 'Commune.'" At the Basel Congress of 1869, the collectivist anarchists and the Marxists had united to decide that once property had been socialized it would be developed by communes solidarisees. In his speech Bakunin dotted the i's:

"I am voting for collectivization of social wealth, and in particular of the land, in the sense of social liquidation. By social liquidation I mean the expropriation of all who are now proprietors, by the abolition of the juridical and political State which is the sanction and sole guarantor of property as it now is. As to subsequent forms of organization . . . I favor the solidarisation of communes . . . with all the greater satisfaction because such solidarisation entails the organization of society from the bottom up."

[anomaly]

We agree, obviously, and yet we persist in meaningless argument over mere terminology. A sickening thing it is, that we leftists argue over such petty matters. Let's just say that anarchism will use direct democracy, and it will have no 'government' in the sense in which you speak. Quite simply, anarchism will have no economic or political hierarchy.

[Janus]

Yes, there is no actual hierarchy and control in anarchism; but people can still give advice on how things should be run rather than forcefully implemeting them. However, certain forms of anarchy believe that some sort of power can be delegated to a council or "authority" if there is unanimous approval but that power is limited to the subject matter at hand. Correct me if I'm wrong on this.

[Janus]

Yes, there is no actual hierarchy and control in anarchism; people can only give advice on how things should be run rather than forcefully implemeting them. However, certain forms of anarchy believe that some sort of power can be delegated to a council or "authority" if there is unanimous approval but that power is limited to the subject matter at hand. Correct me if I'm wrong on this.