Military, Militia, whatever the word it is, any society need a force to defend against external threats. I’m not sure how co-ordiantion would work while not being authoritarian and thus inadvetently create a state.
Easy, just examine Africa’s situation with warlords
There was an anarchist ukraine army with land and the peoples support during the russian civil war in 1917
It was called the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine led by Nestor Makhno as part of the Makhnovschina movement.
There was also the anarchist CNT-FAI which had an army of decentralized militias, collectively organized by Buenaventura Durruti during the Spanish Civil war of the 1930s.
During the Russian Revolution and early parts of the Russian Civil War, there were also a lot of anarchist militias and military units, most notably the Kronstadt sailors. The various groups never coalesced as a single army, and, therefore, were easily crushed by the Bolsheviks.
There was also the Korean People’s Association in Manchuria, which was an anarchist society of more than 2 million people in the late 20s/early 30s. They never had a whole army, but they did organize militias along anarchist principles.
The Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, founded in 1994 and still active today, is organized along decentralized principles and is closely associated with anarchism.
More recently, the YPJ and PKK operating in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the militias fighting the ongoing revolution in Myanmar are not entirely anarchist, but have strong principles of direct democracy at their core.
In all instances, the overall organization of the militaries were not entirely dissimilar to a traditional military. There were enlisted soldiers led by officers who gave orders that were expected to be followed. There was a higher level command structure which organized the army to distribute resources and coordinate strategy and tactics. The big difference, however, was that the leaders (officers) tended to all be elected democratically by the people they led and could be replaced/voted out democratically whenever the people who they led decided they needed to go…
There’s a common myth that anarchists are opposed to organization. Quite the opposite is true, in fact. Anarchists are all about organization. The thing we oppose is hierarchical power structures. Systems that place someone, anyone, above anyone else and say, “you must do what your superior tells you on threat of punishment” are inherently evil. But free associations are not. Rather than thinking of an officer in an anarchist militia/army as a leader whose commands must be followed or you’ll face steep punishment, think of them as a central coordinator. Their directives aren’t followed because you’ll be court marshalled or otherwise punished if you don’t obey. They’re followed because people at every level are included in the process and allowed to have their voices heard. Everyone has a degree of ownership and influence over the process. People follow directives because they understand where they’re coming from and why the decisions were made. Yet, if at any time someone decides they no longer want to take part, they have the option to just leave.
I think that the YPJ calls themselves something like democratic syndicalists? It’s close enough to anarchism that it’s the easiest way for most people to understand it. The way that they’re organizing their communities is pretty special, and I hope that they’re able to keep their regions autonomous and maintain their ideals.
It’s democratic confederalism
In the anarchist brigades in the Spanish Civil War soldiers elected their officers democratically. In combat they still had ultimate command authority but afterwards soldiers could replace then if they where disappointed in their decisions.
This is not unlike how pirate ships worked
someone watched that cgp grey video, good boy
A video about pirates? Can I get the name and channel please?
CGP Gray is the channel. I believe they’re referencing this video on Quartermasters, but CGP also has this one on Captains.
Thank you!! I’m gonna watch these when I’m done with work tonight!
Isn’t the idea of having an authority at all contrary to the anarchist ideology? Sounds to me like they were more “representative democratic brigades” than anarchistic brigades, since they elected officials that had full control until the next election.
No, the idea of authority is not necessarily contrary to anarchism. You need to first examine the source of that authority’s power, the structures which put them into power, and how that power is enforced.
If it’s coercive in any way, that is, if you are threatened with violence in some way if you do not comply, then it is indeed counter to anarchism. However, that’s not how anarchist brigades in 1930s Spain, the Makhnovshchina, the Korean People’s Association in Manchuria, the anarchist brigades during the Russian Civil War, etc worked. First, membership was pretty much always voluntary. If you didn’t want to follow an order, you didn’t have to and you wouldn’t be executed or tried as deserter or whatever like in most traditional armies. If you didn’t want to follow an order, it was generally accepted that it was your right to refuse.
Second, there weren’t set terms between elections like you might be thinking of within a modern representative democracy. If an elected officer was issuing commands the rest of the soldiers didn’t agree with or like, they could be voted out at any moment, including in the middle of battle. This tended to present problems in the Spanish Civil War where the Soviet Union tried to exert complete control over everyone on the anti-fascist side. They’d send in Soviet officers to lead anarchist battalions. As soon as the Soviet gave an order that the rest didn’t like, they’d vote him out. When the Soviets refused to give up authority, the entire battalion would disband, steal all their supplies, and reform a few miles away as a “new” battalion and elect their own leader.
They also weren’t usually structured like we tend to think of military units with a mass of enlisted and a few detached officers issuing orders. The officers tended to come from the enlisted ranks. The officer position was less of a leader and more of a coordinator. Plans were usually made collaboratively by the whole unit (or those who cared to take part). If the heat of battle when snap decisions needed to be made, the officer tended to be the one who made those decisions, but there was no expectation that anyone who disobeyed would be killed or court-marshalled. People obeyed because they knew the person making the decision, why they were making the decision they made, and that if it was a bad decision they could replace that person.
Not really. Anarchists generally recognize the authority of specialists (scientists, doctors, …), they just refute them the right to impose their ideas on individual. It’s a little stretch, but officers in an anarchist army would be like specialists, whose authority is not imposed, but freely recognized.
As far as I understand it, most anarchists are opposed to unjust / unjustified / unnecessary hierarchies. There’s many advantages to having managers, team leaders, captains, etc. because it can be helpful to have someone coordinated actions between a larger group.
What anarchists would seek to avoid would be structures where power starts to consolidate around people beyond what’s needed. It’s good to have a leader for quick decisions in the heat of battle, or other emergency, but that person doesn’t need to decide everything outside of battle, because there’s time to have a more democratic or consensual decision making process. They also don’t need to be given more money, or not be accountable and replaceable by their squad.
The voters have enough guns to challenge their authority.
plus promptness is a necessary sacrifice here. everyone can have their best judgement on whether they should obey first and mutiny later
I actually imagine that there would be a lot of similarities to the structure of already existing anarchist organizing, particularly street antifascism.
Usually people will meet ahead of an action and discuss likely events and how to respond. If things happen that weren’t predicted, it relies on the initiative of people on the ground.
Usually people with experience will end up making snap decisions, though people will occasionally veto them. If there is an opportunity, the people who disagree will huddle and decide on a new course of action. If not, someone might just call it out a new course of action, which people will also sometimes veto.
I’m personally quite a fan of simple instructions that you can chant because it also boosts morale and demonstrates unity to the opposition.
At a recent example that I think was particularly effective, a group of spotters* were following a fascist march, one person shouted, “Come on guys. We can’t let them go unopposed.”
A second person indicated that they agreed by proposing a strategy, gesturing to link arms, saying, “Link up.”
A third person adapted that into a chant of, “Link your arms! Stand your ground!”
Spotters are a scout-like role who usually have the responsibility of keeping an eye on the opposition and relaying that information back to the action itself. In this case, the spotters realized that remaining as spotters was less useful and adapted accordingly, since the main counter was trapped elsewhere.
Interestingly, as the police decision makers were with the main counter, the police who were with the spotters were unable to act because their structure depends on a hierarchy whereas the adaptability of anarchist organizing doesn’t.
Pirate ships were anarchist combat collectives. They’d probably work like that.
This is a common myth that isn’t really backed up by the historical or archeological record. Most pirate crews were not proto-anarchists looking to live a life of absolute liberty. They were more comparable to modern street gangs. The captains tended to be a strongman type leader who imposed their will over the crew through fear and coercion. The pirates themselves tended to be outcasts from society who couldn’t turn to authorities to try to escape their situation for a variety of reasons, mostly because they were criminals who knew they’d be imprisoned or killed if they went to authorities.
Probably the only place where anything close to what you describe ever really existed was small communities in Madagascar which became the inspiration for the probably mythical Libertatia. The communities that definitely did exist weren’t some ideological project to try to craft a society absent hierarchical power structures. They were just small, impoverished communities of families where the patriarchs (the pirates) spent most of their time away (at sea doing pirating) so the communities largely ran themselves without a power structure. This isn’t because they had an ideological opposition to them, but because the authority was the pirate leader who spent 3/4 of their time away (and, therefore, couldn’t do the job of being in charge) and when they were home they spent their time partying.
Because pirate ships were known for their attention to discipline, large scale, and long-term stability?
You mock, but like most seafarers, they had a strict code of conduct that was pretty much the law of the
landsea.
If it is possible for a stateless society to exist long term then there is likely no longer a need for militaries.
Militaries are necessary for each community self defense, because stateless society means communities, and there is nothing in that concept preventing raider communities from existing and try to live off stealing/murdering other communities. It’s literally ancient history, before countries existed. What we call crime today is not always rooted on necessity, a post scarcity non authoritarian society doesn’t suddenly eliminates bad people trying to take advantage of others because is easier than doing your homework. Or fascists trying to impose themselves to others. Those people, they get the bullets.
I think you’re kinda right in the broad sense, if we strictly speak of stateless society. But if we include progressive/leftists ideals and communities meant to help those in need, it will kinda separate people who are tempted by violence in two : those who want an easy way to get comfortable living, and those who want an endless accumulation of power/wealth. If you propose a society where people unable or unwilling to work can be taken care of, there is no interest for the first kind of violent people to be violent, and you’re only left with those that want what only violence can provide, which is the kind of need/desire we need to fight against in the first place to accomplish a stateless society.
Structure doesn’t mean authoritarian by default but I see what you mean. Maybe like a reserve/volunteer fire department deal?
You have a normal life but you have some equipment you keep at home or in a car. Rifle, pistol, armor, drones, medical, packs etc, but the heavy equipment is in a dedicated area. Most equipment is self bought but with standardized calibers, mags etc for simplified logistics. Routine training and maintenance is done weekly, larger more objective focused training every quarter or so.
The key would be having armed people outside of that group, not only to boost defensive capability of the community in an emergency but to provide a deterrent to misuse of the defense force for anything but countering external threats. If you don’t have that, in the words of a Clint Eastwood movie, “there are two types of people, those with loaded guns and those who dig”
I believe you’re correct. It would be something more akin to what a militia was in the US before those were largely yoked under a central authority. A stateless society is often misunderstood (in my opinion) as being devoid of organized structure or complex systems. Those things can evolve and form what would probably be a decently cohesive military; I would imagine though that it’s ethos would be largely based upon defensive and protective capabilities.
Anarchism or parallel strains of libertarian socialism, recognize that the state exists to be the arbiter and means of violence, both internally and externally. It exerts control by imposing boundaries and rules under the implicit threat of violence dictated from the top.
If a forces goal is to protect the individual safety and well being of the population it serves in a purely defensive capacity, then that mandate should be the superseding premise to any direction it may be given by a centralized command. In theory this is how the US military is supposed to work, but a strict hierarchy and top down command largely nullifies that attribute.
I would suppose that the military of an anarchist society would therefore only act at the behest or the consensus of, the majority of the people that it serves. Defense would be a trained volunteer system, spread equally as possible across a defined area, with planning trained on assembling in that area and protecting it specifically. The duty being first and foremost to the community they are tasked with and thereby being much more in line with the flat, decentralized heterarchy of a “stateless” society.
If needed that force would be trained to group and assemble with neighboring units, up to the larger battle groups and formations that we see today. Materially it could look extremely similar to how the modern military looks today. The main difference being the training emphasis and organizational chains of command. I think the Swiss may be a good example of what this could look like. Compulsory service for the able bodied to train and then release to civilian reserve status. They are famously known to also only be a defensive force as well and not in some fake ass name only way.
The militias in Rojava (northern Syria) are kinda working that way. There are no real ranks and they were quite effective fighting ISIL and Turkish proxy forces in recent years.
It wouldn’t work.
In order to have a military, you’d have to have at least one or more dedicated people, those people would need to be supported with resources and given that it’s a stateless society there’s zero chance that enough people would voluntarily choose to help them to allow them to operate effectively outside of a wartime event without requiring some sort of payment from everyone and then you’re back to having a state.
voluntarily giving each other resources is the basis of the mutualist economy and is literally embodied by the gift economy. what resource-distribution/economic system do you think anarchist societies would have? the militias will get their resources distributed just like any other industry
It wouldn’t work, there wouldn’t be nearly enough contribution to cover a military with any useful amount of force. There’s zero chance you can get tens of millions of people to donate enough money voluntarily to support such an endeavor.
Militaries are extremely expensive, especially in the modern world. In Canada for example we have about 100,000 citizens per aircraft in the airforce, and about half a million citizens per boat in the Navy.
How do you envision other industries get their resources in a mutualist economic system?
They don’t, mutualistic economics doesn’t work at scale because human nature doesn’t let it.
It can work with a small enough group, but will break before you even reach 1000 individuals.
It was how the vast majority civilization worked for millennia until the rise of capitalism. Nearly every pre- and feudal state (and every place where one might think people bartered) used a gift economy until near the Middle Ages’ end. You also seem to be thinking that contributions have to be centralized, and you do need to realize that the abolishment of “hard” property is at the core of anarchism.
Either way, I don’t see how one would think the military is an exception to the economy unlike every other major industry.
Worked for millenia until the rise of capitalism
No it didn’t, we’ve had states for literally six to eight thousand years or more and capitalism for about three hundred years.
States have existed essentially since the moment the population of specific area became large enough to become a city.
Because again, as I said earlier, you can’t have completely stateless groups larger than hundreds of people, if just doesn’t work.
Though I think it’d also be interesting to talk about power, I’m talking about the economy, and unless discussing something that much broader interests you enough to discard talking about the economy and the military for you as well I think we should focus on what we were talking about instead of veering down further tangents.
It would look like the nearest United military.
You’d have armed citizens defending their homes. Not a tactical powerhouse, but do not underestimate their feracity!
I would expect it to look like Israel vs Palestine.
The roving gangs in the original Mad Max movies were anarchist combat collectives. They’d probably work like that.
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