is one of the most common responses I get when I talk to people (usually liberals) about horizontal power structures. It comes down to some version of “Well, that sounds nice, but what about the bad actors?” I think the logic that follows from that fact is backwards. The standard response to this issue is to build vertical power structures. To appoint a ruling class that can supposedly “manage” the bad actors. But this ignores the obvious: vertical power structures are magnets for narcissists. They don’t neutralize those people. They empower them. They give them legitimacy and insulation from consequences. They concentrate power precisely where it’s most dangerous. Horizontal societies have always had ways of handling antisocial behavior. (Highly recommend Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior by Christopher Boehm. He studied hundreds of forager societies, overall done amazing work.) Exile, public shaming, revocable leadership, and distributed decision-making all worked and often worked better than what we do now. Pre-civilized societies didn’t let power-hungry individuals take over. They stopped them. We used to know how to deal with bad actors. The idea of a “power vacuum” only makes sense if you believe power must be held at the top. If you diffuse power horizontally, there is no vacuum to fill. There’s just shared responsibility. That may feel unfamiliar, but it’s not impossible. We’ve done it before. Most of human history was built on it. The real question isn’t whether bad actors exist. It’s how we choose to deal with them. Do we build systems that make it harder for them to dominate others, or ones that practically roll out the red carpet? I think this opens up a more useful conversation.
What if we started seriously discussing tactics for dealing with domination-seeking behavior?
What mechanisms help us identify and isolate that kind of behavior without reproducing the same old coercive structures?
How do we build systems that are resilient to sabotage without falling into authoritarian logic?
I’d love to hear your guys’ thoughts.
I have encountered the same. One avenue of argumentation that typically follows is “but we needs cops because there’s crime” -> “crime can be reduced with social policy, without cops” -> “but never to zero” -> “but cop duties needn’t be a person’s career”.
Next comes politics. The political system where I live is a parliamentary republic with proportional elections. Compared to volatile cases (e.g. presidential two-party system) it is fairly slow. Risk of takeover by a bad actor is not perceived as high. Anarchist critique fails to get attention.
I have also encountered the argument: “if we decentralize, we [insert national indentity] step too far down the organizational ladder [of ability to mobilize resources fast], and become possible to conquer”. People perceive that a stateless area or low-intensity state would be an invitation for the nearest highly invasive state. They also fear that change would cause weakness, which would be exploited. Thus, a foreign state becomes a justification for the local state. Sadly I must admit that the reasoning is not without merit.
My responses have typically been:
leaders wanting to return to power are a problem for democracy
playing voter groups against each other causes long-term problems (degrades cooperation)
electoral democracy inherently favours wealthy individuals (campaign expenses)
decentralization protects against takeover and decapitation strike
authoritarian takeover of local state has happened already once, with tragic results
party politicans have for decades failed to enact simple, popular measures (e.g. progressive income tax)
My suggestion to a statist person typically ends up being “at least, try sortition”. Which is laughably hard, since it would require a rewrite of the constitution, and parties agreeing to a measure that pushes them into history books. :)
I can convincingly argue that sortition reduces the sway that elites hold over policy, and makes equalizing policy measures easier to pass. But it keeps the number of politicians small and leaves the door open for acting fast (e.g. in case of military threat).
Meanwhile, I would appreciate if mainstreamers left anarchists on their own to experiment with more. Especially in the economy.
P.S. Ultimately, I fear that anarchist society can be only planted on the ruins of a state. The niche must have been emptied by a catastrophic event (and it’s ethically wrong to cause one). However, it’s not wrong to do what’s right when others have done wrong. One should know that catastrophic events increase people’s desire to have stability and order. So there must be a type of anarchy that can quickly deliver freedom + equality + stability + order. That’s a pretty tall list, which is why it typically doesn’t happen.