Anarchism

Description of Anarchism

Anarchism, the philosophy, is the idea that any and all hierarchical power structures are inherantly immoral and always lead to human strife.

Anarchism, the political structure, is the organization of society in which there are no hierarchical power structures. This is naturally a stateless, classless society.

What is a hierarchical power structure?

Let's break the term down.

Power

Power, in this context, is when a person or group of people enacts their will on other people or groups of people. Power isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as it's consensual.

Hierarchy

This brings us to hierarchy. A hierarchy is when nodes in a system are arranged in such a way in which there are a small number of nodes that connect to the rest of the nodes in the system.

When connecting this to power, this is a system in which 1 person or a small group of people enact their will on the rest of society.

The idea that immediately comes to mind may be a monarchy or a dictatorship, but this includes a wide variety of things ranging from representative democracy, to racism, to capitalism, etc.

Consent

You may be wondering, "OK but how is this a bad thing? After all, in your description of power you said power can be OK if everyone consents. That's how representative democracy overcomes this, right?"

It's a nice thought to imagine our representatives have our best interests in mind, but I need only point to our current president (at the time of writing this) Trump to show how unrepresentative of our wishes our representatives truly are. And obviously that's an extreme example, but even in the best examples you will always find people left out of the conversation here.

The key issue here is that this isn't true consent. If I came up to you and said "Either me or one of my friends is going to beat the shit out of you. Pick who." you'd never consider this to be fair. What's missing here is that in order to consent to something, you have to consent to all prerequisites as well, and your consent should be able to be rescinded at any moment, should the outcome of the agreement not be as expected. If these requirements are not respected, then consent has not been truly established.

Did we really consent to having representatives? Did we consent to them taking on more power than we elected them for? The answer is no. We were never asked if we believed this was the best structure for society. Some rich white slave owners 250 years ago made the decision for us, and it's the system we've been stuck with, regardless of the new ideas people have come up with since.

Interestingly, this concept of "consent" and "hierarchical power structures" seems to be at the core of most, if not all problems we see in society.

Child abuse is a hierarchical power structure that gives power to the parents over and without the consent of the child.

Racial inequality is a hierarchical power structure that gives power to white people over and without the consent of people of other races.

Misogyny is a hierarchical power structure that gives power to men over and without the consent of people of other genders.

Imperialism is a hierarchical power structure that gives power to the global north over and without the consent of the global south.

Capitalism is a hierarchical power structure that gives power to those with capital over and without the consent of those without.

And of course, the government is a hierarchical power structure that gives power to the governors over and without the consent of the governed.

I really could go on and on, but I'll cut the list short here. The point is, no matter how socialist or "democratic" a government can be, as long as there's a nonconsensual hierarchical power structure, there will always be inequality.

So what?

So what if we've identified the problem, what's the solution? Are humans just inherantly evil and will naturally form hierarchical power structures, meaning any form of society is inherantly bad and people should just live by themselves in separate caves for the rest of their lives?

No, not at all. In my opinion, I believe this is where the concept of anarcho-communism comes into play. The solution is to form horizontal power structures, in which only those most affected by a decision may make the decision, and consensus is always striven for. This is how we avoid human suffering caused by hierarchical power structures.