I personaly feel that anarchism is the best political ideology and the only way forward. But is it feasible? First one must consider the fact that it is extremely hard to implicate, unlike other ideologys such as communism and fascism. People seek control, the mass public want to be controled and even if anarchists were able to bring the government down, another one would pop up.
Besides this, for anarchism to work… everyone would have to become an anarchist. Lets say the UK all of a sudden became anarchic, we would be open to attack from any enemies and we’d have little hope of defending ourselves.
Even if the whole world was anarchist, do you think it would work? I think it could, but what I want to know from others is how?
I spent several years as an active anarchist.
My favorite is yep, Prince Peter Kropotkin.
Mutual aid and all that. Anyway,
The key to a future anarchist society will
be technology. As more and more people are displaced
from jobs with technology, especially with smaller and
smaller number of people owning more and more of the
economy, what will happen, is people will displace the small
number of people who have a great deal of wealth
{recall 5% of people in the U.S. own 95% of the wealth}
If you “liberate” that wealth from those few millions to
aid in the survival of the 200+ millions, we would have
a situation of anarchism. The key is not an internal situation,
but external. What of other countries? If we become anarchist,
what would a Russia do, or a china, or even Europe.
We cannot (indeed no one can) go first, we must all
become anarchist together. And the key is again technology.
computers now allows for people to vote from home, to order
groceries from home, to communcate to everyone in the world
from home. We can have a computer driven anarchist world.
If the workers own the means of production, I…E. workers
own the factories, the businesses, the corporations,
and share the profit equally between them, plus
with the technology of computers and cell phone,
we could create paradise. And workers owning companies
is done all the time today, Budwiser for instance, so the
groundwork is being laid out. Now we just have to have people
see beyond their greed, and “me” ism, the 2 year old mentality
of what is mine is mine and I’ll kill you if you take it.
A child vision of the world, not an adult vision.
For adults share and give freely. The best leaders are the ones
who share and give freely. The worst ones are the ones
who practice “me ism”. Saints offer freely, the best presidents
offer freely. Learn from the best leaders, they offer and share
freely.
Kropotkin
I never considered the role of technology in an anarchist community. But youre right, the replacement of many workers with technology will help.
Anarchist theorists have suggested that the world be split into small communities in which everyone chips in. There would be a rotor and those within the community would work jobs. Ofcourse, being an anarchy they could refuse. But in doing so they would not benefit from the society, they would be ignored and wont share the benefits.
Another important factor of anarchism is education, each generation must be educated on why its good to help others and why and how they can help keep anarchism alive.
“educated” to deny human nature
-Imp
Like all utopian ideas, anarchism sounds good if you could only get rid of the people. 
Anarchism is not against human nature. All political ideologies impliment human nature, capatalism impliments the nature of greed and communism the nature of community and sharing. Anarchism takes the best of human nature and uses it for the better. When I say educate, I mean to tell them why murder is wrong, theft is wrong, rape is wrong. These may all be products of human nature, but human nature is not always a positive thing. Youre post suggests that to deny certain aspects of human nature is bad. Do you mean to say that at every urge and impulse to kill, rape or steal… we should do so? Because to deny our human nature is wrong. Seems ridiculous to me.
tentative, for anarchism to be implimented we wouldnt need to get rid of the people. We would simply need to educate them, persuade them why anarchism is good. Im sure with time people will understand.
ah the new church of the reformed anarchist… worked well for all the other religions, it should have no problem working for yours…
no, but to believe they will magically vanish because you “educate” people that your flavor of sin (and you will object that it is not sinful because it is not religious but it is wrong because it is not communal and that is the same difference under a different name) is bad shows a lack of understanding of human nature.
that is not what I suggest at all, but to believe that these “uncommunal” non comaradic behaviors will be eliminated because your education camps will produce only those people with the best communal qualities seems stalinistic at best and like mengele at worst.
-Imp
Anarchism is about the best in people.
For the most part, people try do the right thing.
It is the small few who put their needs ahead of others
that challenges society. See what those people who
always say, anarchism does not factor in “People’s nature”,
what they miss is this, human nature is about collective work,
Human society is built upon people helping each other,
Society in fact, would not function if conservatives were
actually right about human behavior. If it was a me first,
selfish, greed, rugged individualism, survival of the fittest
society. Society under that situation could not have survive and
flourish under those conditions. It is only by cooperation and
sharing does society grow and flourish. Anarchism fits
the human condition far better then selfish capitalism.
Kropotkin
angst-ridden,
There is quite a difference in proposed ideals inside a utopian vision and the practices that evolve from their implementation. The will to power and all the perks are the same in any social arrangement. Forget the ideals - look to the practice.
I think so too, but unfortunately - people don’t have the spine to be responsible for their own actions. They’d rather elect people to do their dirty work for them, and then complain bitterly about them ‘betraying’ their good faith.
Imp, I never suggested that education was the only solution to reducing crime. Education serves more as a way to get each generation to understand that community is important, working together is important.
It would be very naive of me to think that education alone would stop people from commiting murder, rape and theft.
What we would need to do is punish these people without restricting their freedoms like the current government does. Instead of locking them up in prisons, we rehibilitate them. In the way of punishment, we simply ignore them. The community ignores the criminals, the criminals soon learn that there are consequences to doing bad things.
ignores the criminals? kinda like escape from new york? banish all criminals to an island and let them be the animals they are? how compassionate of you… that teaches them how to behave and really rehabilitates them…
or do they continue to steal and rape while you ignore them?
-Imp
Well, once upon a time we had an anarchy, and the present state of affairs is the eventual result.
If an anarchy were created in the United States, I would immediately start organizing people under my leadership to settle out a territory as ‘ours’, start re-organizing a Government, and bringing back good old fashion law and order. I’m not saying this as some hypothetical ‘what if’, I’m saying I would really do this. If I would, so would lots of other people.
So, what measures would have to be taken to make sure than an anarchy actually stayed as such for any length of time?
I, Uccisore President-for-Life, would probably arrange for something very much like that for all criminals and political enemies once I took over in this world of yours. Failing that, who is this 'we' you're talking about?
Working backwards…
Forward from what? Are we particularly backward in some way that I haven’t been made aware of? The first step to bringing about anarchy is that there’s something so terribly wrong in the world/country/state of your choosing, that the risks of anarchy are worth the attempt to fix it.
There is no "besides this"- this is why there will be no anarchy, and why anarchy is a terrible idea, full-stop.
How do you define ‘work’? I don’t think humanity would go extinct or anything like that, so if living like an animal and dying young still falls within the boundaries of ‘working’, then yes, I think anarchy would work very well.
Anarchy has never succeeded because, well, it devolved into anarchy and people couldn’t handle the resulting chaos. Others in history have asked for personal responsibility, and we killed them for their troubles…
The ignoring technique wouldnt work so well on criminals, I suppose it is better suited to members of the community who dont wish to help. But for criminals, rehabilitation is certainly in order. IMO punishment doesnt work well. But I was trying to offer a suggestion at punishment.
Because we never realised what heirachy would bring. We could have never predicted what has become of present society. But a modern anarchy would be a result of learning from past mistakes. It would be a better informed anarchy. It would be organised and we would have a world perspective… as oposed to the old anarchy which was purely by nature.
Good for you, . If you did so despite the success of anarchy, then you sir are a moron. If anarchy was failing, then fair enough. But I dont think it would fail.
‘we’ as in the community. There is such thing as an organised anarchy. Some have even proposed we keep government, but not allow it ultimate power. So for example, the government creates a law saying that all citizens must not use drugs. If the people disagree then the government cannot enforce such a rule. But this is not true anarchy, this is most probably riddled with problems.
I mean forward into the future, it is the political ideology we must attempt. And there is a problem with todays society, its lack of freedoms, its exploitation of the people, its use of the media, capatilism altogether. One day the people will have had enough, and then anarchy will take place. There is no way to fix the problems of modern society but anarchy. Even the current political ideologies are poor at best.
Imagine this, each community is placed in charge of an area of land. The communities are small and the areas proportionate to the size of the community. Each community is left in charge of their area… if a government forms in their area then negotiations begin.
angst-ridden
The way you say it, you make it sound like ‘what has become of present society’ must be pretty rotten. If the people from pre-historic days who were just starting to form ideas about organized society and heirarchy could look ahead to now, and see the results of their decisions, do you think they would be discouraged?
So your solution to people like me would be name-calling and well-wishing? Your anarchy would be truly short-lived, then. This is a serious problem. Perhaps THE serious problem to anarchy- not only that it wouldn't last because of people like me, but because an anarchy has no way to stop people like me from getting into power- even if they would abuse that power in hideous ways far worse than whatever the anarchists revolted against to begin with.
Let’s up the ante. Suppose I’m a white-supremacist, and my goals are to form a new government from your anarchy AND to deliver genocide to the Eskimos. Would you still say ‘good for me’ and let the chips fall where they may?
I disagree with this. I think mankind could persist for another several thousand years with the sorts of democracies, republics, and dictatorships we have now. Why must we attempt anarchy?
By who? Who decides where and how big each chunk is?
This sounds too much like "Let's roll everything back to the stone age, and cross our fingers that it turns out better the next time around". Maybe it's just my conservative nature, but that's sounds crazy to me. Again, the above is what we had, and the present it what we got. These communities would fight, join up with each other, and all the usual stuff.
Also, why not just live in an anarchy yourself? I mean, if you’re convinced it’s the best way, ignore the laws and do what you feel is best in all things, and be done with it. Why does the rest of the planet have to do it too?
i have long thought that anarchy is the only way, that it is the right way…no government is the best government.
To call democracy freedom is a fallacy…freedom is anarchy.
however, there are many things that we benefit from in our democratic (and others) societies today, such as…
education.
how could education be effectively achieved unless there was some form of government? i believe that although education as it stands today is certainly not perfect it is neccessary to become edified by somewhat similar means.
and if people were not given proper education, how could we have doctors? we need people to give us medical aid, we need doctors.
and what about scientists? technology would not get very far.
and all this aside, to quote tentative
people will always look for a leader and there are leaders all around us, anarchy would not last because there would be so many individual organizations that would arise out of neccesity for things such as: food, medical aid, education, ect., and then eventually we would be back to square one.
…i like anarchy…i want anarchy, but i am just not convinced it will work.
now perhaps in a very futuristic society…like you said, a competely connected world where organization could be had without ‘organizations’, where things could get done because communication is amazing…
well unfortunetely, your talking about a world we will never see and can never actually know…
although humans must change first…the world must change drastically in many ways before there can be anarchy.
obviously the first step would be peace, and the second step…well thats where it gets tricky. 
as of now anarchy is impossible. a robot cant organize schools and business and if it can (which kinda scares me because it will eventually get to that point) i dont know if i would want to be that detatched from humans.
plus the major flaw in anarchy is managing crime. robots cant do that either. besides i dont know if id want to give them that power. people need to have a respect for the laws of a society. if they dont theres nothing stopping them from doing what they want. goodness is not a human virtue. the reason there is government is to defend against overwhelming numbers. a single family cant survive a raid of 10 people. a single village cant survive a raid of 1000 people. what do you do? you tell everyone these are the laws you follow when dealing with us if you dont want to respect them then we go to war. its harsh but its reality. you cant have anarchy because its too unorganized. it leaves everyone vulnerable.
Oh crap, I wrote a long reply but it all got deleted. I hate it when this happens. I cant be bothered to write it out again. Later, later.
Anarchy is a political idea I have a close affinity with…it is a great alternative…a radical alternative…in theory it all seems perfectly well…but how could a ‘developed’ politic and society even ‘build down’ to an anrachist reality?
In short, how could Anachry become a social reality in our daily lives without it being some kind of civil war or every man for himself? Surprisingly, I think the answers lies in a strong sense of civility.
Like most political ideas or organising principles they fail when the come into contact with pratical reality. I imagine Anarchy would do the same…depending on what kind of anarchy we are discussing…