Theory on rarity of anarchic communities

Economics Political Theory
1

Having looked for reasons why there are so few examples of anarchic communities and getting no satisfying answer, I tried to answer this question myself. I ask the fellow forum members to state (sorry for using this word :P) their opinions on this.

As far as I can tell, there are two important reasons:

  1. Lack of knowledge in previous ages

Economic science has been underdeveloped for most of the time since the human race appeared. For example, investing was a problem before the advent of stock markets. Not only funding is raised through this mechanism, but the investor has confidence he can easily back off from the investment whenever he needs. Technology, perhaps most importantly the modern means of communication, is another important factor that improves the “market response” to environment conditions.

Given the recent advances in human knowledge and industry, we can see that the notion of wealth in the past was quite narrow in comparison to this day. As long as the goods and services offered on the market of those days could satisfy a relatively small set of needs besides the basic needs, and as long as the marginal utility decreases with quantity, we can say that the incentive of acquiring wealth decreased a lot more rapidly with respect to current wealth than it is the case for today. Moreover, basic needs were satisfied through each man’s own production.

So it’s probably safe to assume the market of those distant ages played a lesser role in “regulating” society.

  1. Anarchy is inherently individualist

Consider a scenario where a state S attacks an anarchist community A. Through propaganda, coercion and false promises, S manages to rally an army against A, even if this is going to cost S many lives and many resources.

A’s members fight back, but weigh well both the defense costs and the expected gains (as in continuing to be free from S). If individuals from A believe the costs are incidentally too high, for example if this would result in high body counts and low chance of survival, they would abandon the fight. Surely, this is better for each individual unless they’re willing to go kamikaze, as life under the rule of S is a better prospect than death. This is a good decision whatever.

On the other hand, citizens of S are likely to continue fighting even if the losses go through the roof. This is not to say S’s troops never flee, just that they’ll keep going for longer. For example, it’s often the case that the attack was economically irrational in the first place, but nevertheless the troops proceed because the war is financed through taxation.

We can see that while there’s no net gain on any side, not even on S’s, the anarchic community disappears.

Of course, you can crosslink these two arguments and derive further argumentation. But are there any implications of this theory? I believe that, if at least the first argument is true, an anarchy that emerges today in a strongly developed county, and perhaps one with a reduced welfare state, is going to be a lot harder to put down than it was in historic times. To conclude, yes, the state likely has an edge in dark times, but there is hope.

How do you feel about this?

[minor edit: fixed typos and added a bit to the conclusion]

2

A state would always lose against an anarchic society in full out war. The anarchich society would be armed to the teeth, trained and have everything to fight for. On the other hand, the statists would be using soldiers, poorly trained and less well armed. Not to mention there is no centralized state in a free society, the statist aggressor would have to focus on decentralized attacks. On the other hand, it would be simple for the free society to eliminate the aggressors from the top down.

3

I believe this is inaccurate if you generalise to all historical periods. Possession of weapons wasn’t always a problem for the state’s citizens, even if it is now, probably because those weapons had a limited ability to inflict damage. And there’s no reason for the general population of an anarchic community to better trained than, say, the aggressor state’s conscription. I agree that professional fighters in an anarchy would likely be better trained. But human wave attacks have been very efficient at destroying opposing armies, especially when there’s little concern of heavy casualties on the attacking side.

On the other hand, yes, at present I believe it is harder to conquer an anarchic society, given the weapons that could be widely available to the general population.

4

This could easily be solved by a strong gun culture and location. Make your home in a place surrounded by mountain and make sure that everyone(including women) have a gun and can shoot accurately at 500 meters. That way every household is a potential sniper nest.

If their armed force is 3 times larger than your standing army, you only have to shoot 3 times and come home. Even if they managed to crush your army, they still have to deal with armed and skilled adults in every household.

5

Exactly, guerilla warfare is pretty damn hard to beat, see Vietnam.

But my post seeks to answer why there are so few examples of (fully) anarchic societies. I believe this type of defense might have been a lot less effective in past times.

6

I disagree - wars are impossible to fight without organization and since we as anarchists would have no central organization, they would go piecemeal taking out homesteads.

You are assuming that the military doesn’t do whatever it can to change its tactics to win. As a military officer I know first hand that we do - and that many times the best thing to do to win is to drink tea with the enemies rather than try and shoot them outright.

You also assume that a state would conform to some kind of geneva conventions-esque rules of engagement, which I would venture to guess in a case like this they wouldnt.

7

Humans naturally want to organize. Humans also want security - and security and freedom are like oil and water. Add organization and you get states.

For most people, they would rather have security over freedom - hence you get very few anarchists and in general societies that are anarchistic. Especially seeing as people don’t have the guts to stick out being truly free.

8

You say it’s “impossible to fight without organization”, but then you go on talking about “central organization”. There’s no need for central organization: let one homestead be attacked by an enemy and the defense providers will join forces if necessary, without creating any monopoly.

Otherwise, the customers are likely to cease buying defense services if they can’t make for effective action against a common enemy. And certainly defense services themselves wish to be protected by other defense providers, just like insurance companies can reinsure themselves through another party. So the anarchic community can adapt in two ways to aggressive action: cooperatively and market-driven.

However, I wasn’t after pointing out how effective is an anarchy at war. I was merely stating that such a society would maximise the individual’s benefit, e.g. not fighting to the death to prove a point.

9

And we would eliminate them from the top down, which they’d be unable to do. Not to mention every person in society would be incentivized by their protection agency to know how to use a gun and well. Any invading army would have be up again a well armed, well trained populace with every incentive to kill them. Moreover, PDAs have an incentive to use their resources to fight the invaders, and would be well equipped to do so. As a result of selective immigration they’d be restrained for even entering the stateless society. They’d have to wait on the sidelines before any invasion.

As for lack of organisation, that’s ridiculous, of course there would be, look at Iraq.

In which case we use their own democratic structure against them through means of propaganda, the government and the war would lose public support, as in the case of Vietnam.

10

Not exactly true. Look at the guerrilla war waged by Peter Kemnater, Andreas Hofer, Joseph Speckbaceker, and co. against General Von Wrede’s Franco-Bavarian troops in the early 19th century near Innsbruck in the Alps. From a potential combat power standpoint it was one of the most astonishing victories ever achieved by by a guerrilla force (and it was done with three well-coordinated, simple attacks). They captured two generals (and their entire staffs), more than 6,000 infantrymen, 1,000 cavalrymen (along with 800 of their horses), and several cannons. This was all done by “peasants with pitchforks.”

Hell, even the French and Indian war and American Revolution contains plenty of examples of how successful guerrilla tactics can be. French settlers and Indians completely destroyed Braddock’s forces in the Monongahela Valley in the 1750’s despite being outnumbered and outgunned 3 to 1. This spawned the British to rethink their strategy and hire the help of the Swiss Col. Henri Bouquet to deal with these guerrilla tactics (which he did so by adopting guerrilla tactics himself, thus providing another example of how effective this tactic can be. The Swiss in general are a great example of this, come to think about it). Francis Marion is another American example during the American Revolution.

Going back further in history we can see examples of the successful use of guerrilla tactics in the instance of the nomadic Scythians causing the armies of Darius I (who led the largest empire and commanded the best army in the world at the time) to retreat back across the Danube. Hannibal’s forces even used them with great success (after facing them themselves in their crossing of the Alps) against their enemies.

Guerrilla war certainly is an ancient art that has many success stories scattered across history.

11

Yes, I was merely stating that anarchists aren’t likely to put themselves at risk. Even if such battles may be won, the body count can be high, which is certainly worse for those affected than being conquered.

But let me ask you about your point of view… why are (fully) anarchic communities so rare? Of course there is always some degree of anarchy, but the question is “How did states manage to become ubiquitious, in spite of their inferiority?”. Thanks for your comments so far.

12

Central organization and organization are the same thing when talking about military operations - one of the biggest things we have learned about ilitary campaigns is that centralized organization decentralized control is the key to both symmetric and asymmetric warfare. The left hand needs to know what the right hand is doing in order to be effective. Without an organization it is impossible to successfully prosecute any kind of campaign in the long run - history proves this.

Military campaigns and organizations arent as simplistic as you make it sound - if the CENTCOM commander is killed, we don’t stop, we just get a new one. You assume that the rest of the population would be on board, armed and trained - which has never been and will never be the case.

Obviously you dont understand Iraq. In case you couldn’t tell, the Iraqis are still under the U.S. thumb, and handily - just look at the difference in U.S. v Iraqi death toll. For every one of us they kill we kill 5 or more of them. So while it makes for good headlines, the Iraqi insurgents aren’t making headway at all. We have also been shifting strategy since 2006 with the shia awakening and the al-sadr ceasefire - getting the local population to oppose the insurgents in favor of the Iraqi state rather than just the U.S.. The insurgents certainly didnt help their cause by killing civilians, but we capitalized on that showing the population that they were worse than us.

You again assume the state is structured such that the population know and care to such an extent that it makes a difference - obviously the current U.S. population doesn’t care. If demonized enough to the populous anyone will look like satan - need we be reminded of the crazy old coot at McCain’s rally, or the way Ron Paul was treated at the debates.

I suggest reading The Art of War if you haven’t already as well as Clausewitz’s On War and General Patreus’ counterinsurgency warfare handbook to get the basic building blocks of current military theory to understand what exactly we would be up against.

Beyond that, we aren’t just talking about the U.S. here, and this is my main concern with an anarchist society - we would be poorly equipped to deal with an invading state which has air superiority, land supremacy and naval dominance. Let’s be honest, nothing but an organized state could build such a force simply because I highly doubt if private defense companies could reasonably defend against a state. Do you think blackwater could take on even just the 101st airborne - or hell even a supported ranger regimen? Doubtful.

13

The goverment would just send you to die in battle. If you won’t, they’ll lock you up. Sure, drafting is effective for defending the state if you don’t account for cannon fodder and everything else which is lost. And sincerely, I don’t believe a libertarian gives a damn about what happens to the state or its community if his life is at stake. If I had been summoned for conscription in a war situation (even defensive), and if we stood little chances of survival, I would’ve looked for any good opportunity (possibly along with my family/friends) to flee, perhaps to a neutral party. And let’s say I could find a 80% chance of survival too much of a risk.

Given these conditions, the state isn’t an option for defending us. It’s just defending itself.

14

I dont really see how this is an answer to my post…I didnt talk about drafting or conscription at all; only the significant problems we as anarchists would have in fighting a state.

I think you are mistaking me as advocating for a state’s military.

15

I find the assumption that the independently minded would band together to fight off the collectivists to be foolish. lok how easily the italian city states fell to the invading, unified french in machiavelli’s time.

collectivism is self reinforcing, individualism is self defeating. in terms of power at least.

16

My point exactly.

Now, how do we overcome it?

17

either technology will save us or the collectivists will win. if we don’t make it to a post scarcity economy by the time we reach a critical mass of humans we’re screwed.

18

Because people are generally ignorant to the beauty that is liberty.

It is in the interest of some people to keep said people in the dark about this. Unfortunately, liberty is on the minority side in the war of ideas.

19

I’m not just talking about the military, politicians would be the prime target. Starting from the president and working downwards. And if the commander is killed and replaced? The replacement goes too. I don’t look fondly upon such violence, but it would be the most effective way of doing and it would reduce the deaths of innocent soldiers and damage to propety.

As for the rest of the population being armed and trained. Look at Switzerland, when the Nazis asked what would happen if they tried to invade Switzerland, they’d be told that the Swiss would merely shoot three times and go home. Nobody dares to invade Switzerland, they wouldn’t get anywhere. Well, I’d imagine that a free society would be even more dangerous, more gun ownership (the incentive for owning and being able to use a gun would be cheaper insurance).

You assume that a free society means that people wouldn’t voluntarily assume responsibility of defending themselves, that people must be coerced to do so. You’re like all statists in this regard, stateless Ireland managed to hold off numerous invasions from a more economically developed England.

These are a number of extremely impoverished Iraqis, 1 Americans for 5 Iraqis isn’t at all bad when that’s taken into considerations. Now try to imagine what would happen upon an invasion of Switzerland.

And these are poor Iraqis, now try to imagine a more educated populace with far greater access to TV, internet and radio. And invading nation would be bombarded with propaganda from the free society.

Really? They’d have far greater economic power and the PDAs would have every incentive to combine forces to deal with the invading army. You’re still thinking within the context of statism. There’s a good reason the Nazis never tried to invade Switzerland, they’d have been humiliated.

20

Oh, I’m sorry then.

However, for this part, I’m sticking to the fact that recently developed weapons (let’s say since the 1900s) surely do help anarchists more than statists. States have been trying to prohibit possession of much of modern weaponry for their citizens. While in older times a pike, bow or even a cannon could only do relatively limited damage, this day’s weapons are capable of so much more. And not only from a raw power standpoint; consider portability, means of concealing and everything else.