[anm89]

Very well said.

It's a bit ironic to say anarchism works because people have been interested in it for centuries if not more and yet it has clearly never worked. And then people always bring up something or other "oh, these people were anarchists for 2 and a half months in Spain in 1926, see it works!"

Another glaring inconsistency with anarchism is that if you are unwilling to use coercion or organized force, then how do you defend yourself against another group who will and wants to take you over? You'll just get obliterated and then be forced into their version of non anarchism. And then the nit picking starts "you can defend yourself" yeah but if you haven't been actively cultivating an organized defense force you're going to lose and maintaining an organized defense force involves all sorts of coercion and hierarchies.

No point even writing this stuff, it's not the kind of thing you'll ever convince anyone of who doesn't want to here it but organized anarchism is just such a preposterous idea that it's hard not to.

[UtopiaPunk]

There are anarchist experiments that lasted much longer, even in the United States. Modern Times in New York was a town that used "labor notes" instead of dollars (within their own community at least), and they had no jails. They existed for 13 years. Eventually some gossipy rumors spread that this eccentric town (which it was) was just a bunch of "free love" weirdos (they were not). The founding members and strongest personalities either moved or passed away, and the remaining people got tired of defending themselves to others, so they reorganized the town as Brentwood. The public library in Brentwood has a neat collection of writings and artifacts from Modern Times, and I once spent a fun day there looking through their collection. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_Community_of_Modern_...

Home, WA was more explicitly "anarchist." It lasted for about 18 years, and I think from the beginning they had a rough time from neighboring towns as it was founded right about the same time McKinley was assassinated. McKinley's assassin was a self-proclaimed anarchist, so overnight the word "anarchist" became notorious and dangerous in mainstream opinion. There was, again, much outside gossip about the town being a weird "free love" town (which was not such a baseless claim in this case). Internally, it seems people never really agreed on social norms about being nude in public spaces, either.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home,_Washington

As to your point of defense, I once heard someone describe that as the major difference between anarchism and Marxism. Marxists generally believe that the State needs to be seized from capitalists, and then we must use the power of the State to oppress the oppressors. That is supposed to be a transitory period, and eventually the State will have squashed all capitalist opposition, at which point the State "withers away." The anarchists see all that and say we should try to jump straight to the good part :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withering_away_of_the_state

[pphysch]

13 years here, 18 years there are blips and outliers in the grand scheme of millennia of successful political systems.

I think your system needs to prove it can survive at least a generation if not multiple human lifetimes to be historically proven.

[anm89]

And always in relatively tiny groups of people.

Lol, try explaining to people in the balkans that everyone's an anarchist now and they all just should get along.

You could take an over under on the amount of hours before the genocide starts

[int_19h]

Chiapas would be a real world example of 300k+ people managing for 30+ years.

[anm89]

> seized from capitalists,

Funny, I'd rather have you in solitary confinement for the rest of your life then running around robbing people with weapons but hey, psychopath is in the eyes of the beholder.

Just be aware, you can come seize my capital but you better have more guns then I have.