A not-anarchist recently gave their attempt at describing anarchism: "I realized that the most meaningful form of anarchism is one that seeks to minimize concentrated power, ie, power concentrated in the hands of a few. It, rather, seeks to spread out power as evenly as possible. (Not completely, but just as much as possible and reasonable, which is, btw, far different from our world today.) Thus, for example, meaningful anarchism seeks _not_ to rid us of govt (for then we'd just get corporations or other powerful individuals or groups taking over ), but rather to have the minimal amount of government we need so that other such groups can't dominate our lives with the exercise of their _own_ (eg corporate) powers. That it is, it seeks a govt that is only just big enough (which would be a LOT smaller and much different from what we have now.)"
That's almost, but not exactly anarchism. True anarchism is against government entirely - even a minimal government. The nuance of the theory isn't in the SIZE of government, but rather in the definition. First of all, anarchists aren't against social organization, as long as people's participation is voluntary and free from coercion. So anarchists are only against coercive forms of government (which is basically anything we commonly think of as a government anyway). Not often discussed, however, is that anarchists are not just against "government" coercion, they're against any kind of coercion at all. So, if an anarchist is against a semi-democratic government (like ours), that anarchist would be doubly against the "corporations or other powerful individuals or groups taking over". A society isn't an anarchist one as long as ANYONE is being coercive and exercising power over others. Trading a coercive "government" institution for a coercive "non-government" institution doesn't move us towards anarchy - and in many cases, eliminating a socialist, liberal democratic government in favour of unchecked authoritarian rule by some non-government people with big guns would be a move even farther away from anarchy. So, there are degrees in how close any given state of affairs is to anarchism and the question of how close we are doesn't hinge on how much "government" there is, but rather how much coercion there is. A democracy is closer to anarchism than a dictatorship, and a direct, consensus-based decision-making system is even closer still. A liberal legal system limited to compassionate treatment of troubled people who perform harmful antisocial acts is closer to anarchism than a restrictive legal system which metes out harsh punishment to deviants. An unarmed group of deescalation-oriented peacekeepers is closer to anarchism than a heavily-armed, aggressive police force. A system with more commons is closer to anarchism than one in which everything is privately owned. A more equal distribution of goods is closer to anarchism than extreme inequality. Ultimately, an anarchist doesn't distinguish any difference in principle between a "government" and, say, playground bullies. They are both just groups of people using threats to make you do what they say. True anarchy requires building a society in which nobody is even trying to control others. We need to build a society of caring, intelligent people. That's why an anarchist utopia may be a long time off in the future.
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