this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
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My understanding is that anarchy isn't about the lack of any authority, it's the lack of unearned authority or unearned authoritative hierarchy. If the members of a community choose to use a democratic process to elect individuals to hold some specific authority for an amount of time that doesn't stop being anarchy. It stops being anarchy when individuals capture or hold authority not granted by a dictate from the community. There are some issues with how a species like humanity could be governed under anarchy, but enforcing rights isn't a necessary problem.
I thought absence of a state was kind of core to anarchy. Wouldn't any sort of elected official or rights enforcing body be the de facto state regardless of how you frame it?
Though, I'm not trying to debate, just trying to grasp the concept, so if y'all have something like an anarchist pamphlet I'll be glad to take that and go lol. Longer literature is fine but no promises on when it'll get read.
Anarchist here. I recommend the Anarchist FAQ. for an extensive and well sourced answer.
Yeah no sweat I'm not an authority on anarchy if you'll excuse the pun and https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anarchism/ is probably going to be a better source
I think the biggest difference between what I was describing and a state is the individuals elected are not part of any governing body or political party and are granted authority by a community for a specific purpose/job.
In general and broadly somewhere between 'that's Diane we elected her during the last community meeting to take care of the roads for the next 5 years based on community funds because she's got some good ideas on how to do that we mostly agree on' and 'the person you elected is a member of a governing body representing a political party following a bureaucracy of processes and they're in charge of police, education, roads, etc so if you want anything done get your wallet ready for lobbying and if you try to fix that pothole yourself it's illegal' a line is crossed.