this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Do anarchists think anarchy will result in a system with no classes?
Anarchists recognize class as a social construct rather than a biological imperative or a free market condition. As a result, they will often make a point of transgressing or undermining the pageantry that class-centric organizations cling to.
Its not that they think "no classes" will be a result so much as they think "explicitly defying class" is a political act.
Depends on the anarchist. Many would focus on seeking the absence of involuntary power hierarchies. A manager who distributes work and does performance evaluations isn't intrinsically a problem, it's when people doing the work can't say "no, they're a terrible manager and they're gone", or you can't walk away from the job without risking your well-being.
Anarchists and communists/socialists have a lot of overlap. There's also overlap with libertarians, except libertarians often focus on coercion from the government and don't give much regard to economic coercion. An anarchist will often not see much difference between "do this or I hit you" and "do this or starve": they both are coercive power hierarchies.
Some anarchists are more focused on removing sources of coercion. Others are more focused on creating relief from it. The "tear it down" crowd are more visible, but you see anarchists in the mutual aid and community organization crowds as well.
Oh boy…
Anarchism is not the thing you're told about in the media. It isn't a total lack of all government. It's a removal of hierarchical systems and exploitation. There still needs to be systems to protect people from these. They'd just be done through concensus.
This page has more information if you want to learn. https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionA.html#seca1
Yes, because anarchism is against all hierarchies and the class system is a form of hierarchy. Instead, decisions should me made collectively, for example in councils open for everyone
@lugal @danc4498 Anarchism is against specifically unjust hierarchies, it can permit certain ones to exist within individual communities should the community find it justified, but still strongly favours not having any where possible.
There are a group of anarchists who would still believe in the idea of an adult > child hierarchy as they struggle to imagine an alternative world without it.
Parents have natural bootmaker authority and if you want to be a good parent then you realise that the kids also have it: They, or maybe better put their genome, know how they need to be raised, and try to teach you, as well as (with increasing age) seek out the exact bootmakers that seem sensible. Worst thing you can do as a parent is to think that learning is a one-way street.
Isn't anarchy just against imposed hierarchy? Most anarchists I've met are okay with heirarchies that form naturally, and believe those hierarchies to be enough for society to function, hence why they call themselves anarchists, not minarchists.
I have never heard the term minarchist. Many anarchists say, we need structures against the building of hierarchies, like avoiding knowledge hierarchies by doing skillshares.
Natural authorities are a different topic. I think Kropotkin was an example of a leader who was accepted because everyone agreed with him. Once he said something people didn't like, they rejected him as a leader. You can call this a hierarchy if you like. I wouldn't because he couldn't coerce his followers but this is pure terminology.
Anarchy means "without hierarchy". Classes are a hierarchy, so by definition it wouldn't be anarchy if you don't dissolve class.
Classes, as per Marx, are foremost identified by the economical position of people, and not necessary a hierarchy as such, that's a secondary effect of how classes happen to work towards their own self-interest. If, in an anarchist utopia, one population freely chooses to live in a high-tech skyscraper doing engineering work, and another neighbouring one grows coffee in the rain forest, then their economical position is vastly different and they have different interests, thus they are different classes, but that doesn't mean that they need to be nasty to another.
Most importantly though this is all just arguing semantics and Marx didn't get anarchism anyway, mixing the theoretical bodies is usually more headache than it's worth.
Yeah... I'd argue, from my anarchist view point, that Marx nearly had it. Humans and unjust hierarchies have existed longer than economics, so, I feel that to be an oversight on his part. To my thinking, economic division is a mechanism of creating or sustaining a hierarchy of classes. The problem isn't purely economic nor sociological but both, that is socio-economic (like electricity and magnetism are make up electro-magnetism).
Economics (wealthy disparity), religion (castes), and violence are all mechanisms used to separate people into hierarchies of power and allow a small number to exercise power over others. Any hierarchy of societal power results in repression. The Soviets betrayed the Makhnovists, rolled tanks into Czechoslovakia to prevent self-determination, and committed genocide via forced relocation of "problematic" ethnic groups to destabilize any resistance to their hierarchy of power that made all subservient to Moscow.
They define anarchy differently from the common definition. Anarchists believe in creating community organizations to serve the needs of society, but they refrain from calling it a state because they believe a state requires a monopoly on the acceptable use of violence.
They don't think that we should just dissolve society and let everyone fend for themselves to eliminate class, unless they're an edgy teenager.
This is very well put. Thank you! I feel this way as well.
Everyone wants to immediately dogpile and go "OkAy SmArT gUy/GaL HoW wOuLd ThAt SoLvE eVeRyThiNg iMmEDiAtELy ToMmOrRoW huuuh?"
(As if what we've got now was just hatched up by some folks in its current form and implemented overnight lol)
I find myself an anarchist, but I'm also rational in seeing it more as an ideal to strive toward, rather than a concrete policy to implement overnight.
If we're heading towards a mutually cooperative society without unjust "I wear the hat so I make the rules" hierarchies, whether or not we reach it in a utopian sense, I think we're still moving in the right direction.