[whiddershins]

TLDR; Anarchist systems have existed throughout history both alongside and within, and most certainly in awareness of hierarchical systems which they often explicitly reject.

Most assertions about the nature of those societies are based on ignorance. Most relevant to your comment, they tend(ed) to maintain rules, conventions, personal property, arbitrate disputes, take care of the weak, and do any number of other things considered impossible without government. Various types of egalitarian social order have existed, it isn't one monolithic concept, and it certainly doesn't necessarily result in chaos or might-makes-right.

If you want specific examples and actual information, take the time to read the pdf. It is written by an anthropologist, so it is his gig to footnote all this stuff.

[mpyne]

How have these anarchist societies fared after hierarchically-driven societies came through? I don't seem to recall it working out well in Africa, Asia, North America, or South America.

[whiddershins]

That wasn't the discussion I was responding to. If anything, it bolsters my intuition which is: the fact that anarchist societies historically haven't stood up well to the depredations of authoritarian and warlike organizations is probably the reason we think they can't work.

But to do the other things discussed, other than organized warfare, they seem to work just as well as anything else.

I think this point is important when evaluating the need for government in a variety of other contexts, other than war.

[mpyne]

> If anything, it bolsters my intuition which is: the fact that anarchist societies historically haven't stood up well to the depredations of authoritarian and warlike organizations is probably the reason we think they can't work.

Sure, but my intuition is that you cannot simultaneously stamp out all authoritarian/warlike organizations. And even if you could, you'd eventually get one more, which would screw the whole world up again.

The idea is one of those "would be nice in theory/won't work in the real world" types of things. I wish it weren't, I really do. But life is about dealing with the hand you're given, not the hand you'd wished you'd have been dealt.

[whiddershins]

By that logic we would all still be sitting in mud huts. Progress is about imagining a better future and then working to achieve it.

[mpyne]

Well, you get people to not ever rape or murder one another and I'll get political schemes to all settle on anarchist societies where major industrial projects still manage to get funded and no one ever tried to take more by force.