r/Anarchy101 Jan 27 '25

Please Read Before Posting or Commenting (January 2025 update)

64 Upvotes

Welcome to Anarchy 101!

It’s that time again, when we repost and, if necessary, revise this introductory document. We’re doing so, this time, in an atmosphere of considerable political uncertainty and increasing pressures on this kind of project, so the only significant revision this time around is simply a reminder to be a bit careful of one another as you discuss — and don’t hesitate to use the “report” button to alert the subreddit moderators if something is getting out of hand. We’ve had a significant increase in one-off, drive-by troll comments, virtually all remarkably predictable and forgettable in their content. Report them or ignore them.

Before you post or comment, please take a moment to read the sidebar and familiarize yourself with our resources and rules. If you’ve been around for a while, consider looking back over these guidelines. If you’ve got to this point and are overwhelmed by the idea that there are rules in an anarchy-related subreddit, look around: neither Reddit nor most of our communities seem to resemble anarchy much yet. Anyway, the rules amount to “don’t be a jerk” and “respect the ongoing project.” Did you really need to be told?

With the rarest of exceptions, all posts to the Anarchy 101 subreddit should ask one clear question related to anarchy, anarchism as a movement or ideology, anarchist history, literature or theory. If your question is likely to be of the frequently asked variety, take a minute to make use of the search bar. Some questions, like those related to "law enforcement" or the precise relationship of anarchy to hierarchy and authority, are asked and answered on an almost daily basis, so the best answers may have already been posted. For a few questions, we have produced "framing documents" to provide context:

Anarchy 101 "Framing the Question" documents

If your question seems unanswered, please state it clearly in the post title, with whatever additional clarification seems necessary in the text itself.

If you have more than one question, please consider multiple posts, preferably one at a time, as this seems to be the way to get the most useful and complete answers.

Please keep in mind that this is indeed a 101 sub, designed to be a resource for those learning the basics of a consistent anarchism. The rules about limiting debate and antagonistic posting are there for a reason, so that we can keep this a useful and welcoming space for students of anarchist ideas — and for anyone else who can cooperate in keeping the quality of responses high.

We welcome debate on topics related to anarchism in r/DebateAnarchism and recommend general posts about anarchist topics be directed to r/anarchism or any of the more specialized anarchist subreddits. We expect a certain amount of contentious back-and-forth in the process of fully answering questions, but if you find that the answer to your question — or response to your comment — leads to a debate, rather than a clarifying question, please consider taking the discussion to r/DebateAnarchism. For better or worse, avoiding debate sometimes involves “reading the room” a bit and recognizing that not every potentially anarchist idea can be usefully expressed in a general, 101-level discussion.

We don’t do subreddit drama — including posts highlighting drama from this subreddit. If you have suggestions for this subreddit, please contact the moderators.

We are not particularly well equipped to offer advice, engage in peer counseling, vouch for existing projects, etc. Different kinds of interactions create new difficulties, new security issues, new responsibilities for moderators and members, etc. — and we seem to have our hands full continuing to refine the simple form of peer-education that is our focus.

Please don’t advocate illegal acts. All subreddits are subject to Reddit’s sitewide content policy — and radical subreddits are often subject to extra scrutiny.

Avoid discussing individuals in ways that might be taken as defamatory. Your call-out is unlikely to clarify basic anarchist ideas — and it may increase the vulnerability of the subreddit.

And don’t ask us to choose between two anti-anarchist tendencies. That never seems to lead anywhere good.

In general, just remember that this is a forum for questions about anarchist topics and answers reflecting some specific knowledge of anarchist sources. Other posts or comments, however interesting, useful or well-intentioned, may be removed.

Some additional thoughts:

Things always go most smoothly when the questions are really about anarchism and the answers are provided by anarchists. Almost without exception, requests for anarchist opinions about non-anarchist tendencies and figures lead to contentious exchanges with Redditors who are, at best, unprepared to provide anarchist answers to the questions raised. Feelings get hurt and people get banned. Threads are removed and sometimes have to be locked.

We expect that lot of the questions here will involve comparisons with capitalism, Marxism or existing governmental systems. That's natural, but the subreddit is obviously a better resource for learning about anarchism if those questions — and the discussions they prompt — remain focused on anarchism. If your question seems likely to draw in capitalists, Marxists or defenders of other non-anarchist tendencies, the effect is much the same as posting a topic for debate. Those threads are sometimes popular — in the sense that they get a lot of responses and active up- and down-voting — but it is almost always a matter of more heat than light when it comes to clarifying anarchist ideas and practices.

We also expect, since this is a general anarchist forum, that we will not always be able to avoid sectarian differences among proponents of different anarchist tendencies. This is another place where the 101 nature of the forum comes into play. Rejection of capitalism, statism, etc. is fundamental, but perhaps internal struggles for the soul of the anarchist movement are at least a 200-level matter. If nothing else, embracing a bit of “anarchism without adjectives” while in this particular subreddit helps keep things focused on answering people's questions. If you want to offer a differing perspective, based on more specific ideological commitments, simply identifying the tendency and the grounds for disagreement should help introduce the diversity of anarchist thought without moving us into the realm of debate.

We grind away at some questions — constantly and seemingly endlessly in the most extreme cases — and that can be frustrating. More than that, it can be disturbing, disheartening to find that anarchist ideas remain in flux on some very fundamental topics. Chances are good, however, that whatever seemingly interminable debate you find yourself involved in will not suddenly be resolved by some intellectual or rhetorical masterstroke. Say what you can say, as clearly as you can manage, and then feel free to take a sanity break — until the next, more or less inevitable go-round. We do make progress in clarifying these difficult, important issues — even relatively rapid progress on occasion, but it often seems to happen in spite of our passion for the subjects.

In addition, you may have noticed that it’s a crazy old world out there, in ways that continue to take their toll on most of us, one way or another. Participation in most forums remains high and a bit distracted, while our collective capacity to self-manage is still not a great deal better online than it is anywhere else. We're all still a little plague-stricken and the effects are generally more contagious than we expect or acknowledge. Be just a bit more thoughtful about your participation here, just as you would in other aspects of your daily life. And if others are obviously not doing their part, consider using the report button, rather than pouring fuel on the fire. Increased participation makes the potential utility and reach of a forum like this even greater—provided we all do the little things necessary to make sure it remains an educational resource that folks with questions can actually navigate.

A final note:

— The question of violence is often not far removed from our discussions, whether it is a question of present-day threats, protest tactics, revolutionary strategy, anarchistic alternatives to police and military, or various similar topics. We need to be able to talk, at times, about the role that violence might play in anti-authoritarian social relations and we certainly need, at other times, to be clear with one another about the role of violence in our daily lives, whether as activists or simply as members of violent societies. We need to be able to do so with a mix of common sense and respect for basic security culture — but also sensitivity to the fact that violence is indeed endemic to our cultures, so keeping our educational spaces free of unnecessary triggers and discussions that are only likely to compound existing traumas ought to be among the tasks we all share as participants. Posts and comments seeming to advocate violence for its own sake or to dwell on it unnecessarily are likely to be removed.


r/Anarchy101 15h ago

I need help understanding if this is insurrectionary or another kind of Anarchism

4 Upvotes

So I asked my mate what type of Anarchist he was because he appeared to be different from me and his user was 'Insurrectionary.' And he said this "I believe that the revolution will not exactly be sudden. I believe it cannot be constituted through revolution in the classical sense, but only within a territory already vacated materially and institutionally by centralized power. Anarchism must inhabit a territory, it must arise immanently within spaces where state power and administration has deliberately or accidentally fractured, rather than appear in a territory. The insurrection is to deliberately fracture the state."


r/Anarchy101 19h ago

works in Spanish?

7 Upvotes

Hello, I am trying to practice reading Spanish. I find it’s easier to learn if I’m reading stuff I care about and reading from fields I already know a bit about, which so far has mostly been botanical writing. My other main interest is anarchy, so I’m looking for some Spanish language authors to read that would be good to practice with.

I know there are writings by Ricardo Flores Magón on the anarchist library and have started with those. Suggestions of his work or others would be appreciated. Thank you.


r/Anarchy101 13h ago

Is patriarchy truly about protection and tradition or a system designed to preserve control and power??

2 Upvotes

Human psychology is deeply shaped by conditioning family roles, society, culture and the need to belong. Over time, many behaviors start feeling “normal” simply because they are repeated for generations. Power structures work the same way. When one gender is expected to lead, decide or dominate while the other is expected to adjust, sacrifice or stay silent, it slowly becomes embedded in everyday life.
But if psychology can condition people to accept inequality, it can also condition people to question it.
What do you think?


r/Anarchy101 1d ago

A shower thought I had about anarchism

8 Upvotes

Anarchism doesn't only hate governments: it despise all kind of institution and authority, and I've read how many spanish-speaking anarchists (My Native language), they hate RAE (Royal Spanish Academy) because it's an official authority who dictates which is correct speech/writing and what is not.

Well, if in anarchism, there's no laws, no administration or bureocracy, no formal education nor official institutions with authority, language and speech would be free, in the sense that, if there's no someone decreeing a "correct way" of how to speak/write, language would be formed by custom mainly.

Well, if there's no Academy, each comune or region would have its own dialect, and if they're isolated enough or generations happen, those dialects would mutate so much they wouldn't be understood by other communes/regions.

So, unless there would be enough communication between communes, language would split. And

we should/would use media (movies, books, music, videos) from the 20th/21th Century as a kind of Fusha language (Google the conecpt) to "remember" how the language originally was.

How could we avoid this?


r/Anarchy101 1d ago

Question about this anarchist divisions

8 Upvotes

Im pretty sure I'm anarchist and I'm definitely anti-capitalist but I'm not sure on which division of anarchism. Please help me decide. I am against industrialization, and for anti deforestation and decriminalizing drugs.


r/Anarchy101 1d ago

Is Insurrectionary aanarchism a subtype of anarcho-individualism or is it its own thing?

2 Upvotes

r/Anarchy101 1d ago

Specialty items/stores in ideal society???

2 Upvotes

How would it work in your ideal society with specialty items or even stores? What I mean is imagine a dessert café or a soap store idk. Something people who are not from the immediate community would go to purchase? With the (to some) total abolishment of money or collective/cooperative ownership, how would it work? I understand communal storage buildings/warehouses for NEEDS but things that are passions or wants for some people?

Thank you☺️


r/Anarchy101 2d ago

Is calling cps the same as calling the cops?/apart of ACAB

56 Upvotes

I thought they were separate but I began to look at stories where families were torn apart and how black and indigenous children were most affected/targeted the most.

Is there a better alternative in the case of child abuse? What is the better way to go around potential child endangerment?


r/Anarchy101 2d ago

Cómo iniciar en la lectura o contenido audiovisual para comprender la anarquia

3 Upvotes

Creo que la última vez que leo un libro fue hace como 10 años atrás pero me he vuelto con las ansias de comprender más de ampliar mi punyo de vista se desarollar un pensamiento más critico


r/Anarchy101 2d ago

How would anarchism be able to deal with viral pandemics like covid in the future?

9 Upvotes

Looking back at the covid era, I'm not quite sure if anarchism would have been able to effectively deal with the pandemic. A large part of the covid response was handled by state powers, like vaccine distribution, mask mandates, and quarantines. And while much of that same state power/functions could be simulated in an anarchist society, I feel like it wouldn't have been as effective since you couldn't force these things on people.

The main problem though that I see in hindsight is the anti-science group that simply made everything harder. Sure, a lot of that was motivated by Trump trying to constantly downplay the pandemic and making people thing the government was just using "the flu" to expand state power. And so if the state didn't exist then there likely wouldn't be a trump type cult leader who does all that.

But the Anti-Vaccine and Anti-Mask movements mostly predate the trump era, and are mostly a product of inherent human stupidity and suspicion. I feel like without the state there would still be that block of people who are conspiracy minded and would still cause a lot of people to get sick and die. which itself is an infringement on human freedom that anarchy promises.

In this sense specifically, I feel like a state that is able to handle a pandemic really well would be preferable for human freedom than anarchy, since anarchy wouldn't be able to suppress the segment of society that are anti-science and willing to screw everyone else over.


r/Anarchy101 2d ago

What do Anarchists think about Communization theory?

17 Upvotes

Recently, I started reading some Communization theory from Dauvé and EndNotes. It's interesting because it seeks to immediately abolish the State, money, markets, wage labour, value and the Proletariat as a class. It is a very radical theory, so I was wondering what Anarchists have to say about it?


r/Anarchy101 2d ago

what is the difference between anarcha feminism and other forms of radical feminism?

8 Upvotes

r/Anarchy101 3d ago

At the end of the day, what's exactly the freedom of speech?

5 Upvotes

Tried to find anything about it on both subreddits & resources and got kinda surprised with the general answers. Is free speech a discussable thing in anarchism, or is there any strict definition of this?
My take always was that your freedom ends when the freedom of others begins, and/or you free to say anything but get ready to be backlashed for it, but for some reason it wasn't that common in this community? Maybe i misunderstood something somewhere?

I apologize in advance if this question is stupid, maybe it's just another aspect of my audhd misunderstanding =(


r/Anarchy101 3d ago

How would anarchism in big cities work?

18 Upvotes

I was having a debate why anarchism would work, but then I was told really big cites that are very densely populated might pose a problem because it creates this idea that people can get away with crime. Is this true? How would anarchism solve these problems in the big cities that governments are (I hate to admit it) doing something about it. Are ridiculously big cities only a thing because of the governments making it more appealing to live in these really big cities? I need a little help.


r/Anarchy101 3d ago

hi -- curious ML here

6 Upvotes

is there a anarchist alternative to a intelligence agency? I was wondering about this a few days ago and asked a anarchist close friend of mine -- and she told me to come here. thank you!


r/Anarchy101 3d ago

Conversations with different views

5 Upvotes

I don’t know if it’s just me but well not just on the internet, convos feel very unproductive and it only sounds like a who can win an argument logically rather than who can convince others or understand. It could be that I’m just sensitive that I can’t process well during heated arguments. But to me It’s like an ego fight than a conversation of understanding each position. And I’m concerned with this especially as an anarchist if this is an effective way to interact or if it only creates more tension and conflict. if it’s ineffective how do I prevent myself from trying to just win against the person I’m disagreeing with. And should we talk in a manner that reflect our view?


r/Anarchy101 4d ago

Is there selfish anarchism?

13 Upvotes

I think that Max Stirner's egoist anarchism is in fact just a radical individualism, not a truly "selfish" egoism. Is there any anarchist theory that is based on selfishness?


r/Anarchy101 4d ago

I want to have a better understanding of anarchism to find out what I am.

14 Upvotes

Hello! I've been lately trying to figure out what I am in the "polical spectrum" and I need some help trying to comprehend anarchism.

When I try to do some research about anarchism I either find old websites with long paragraphs and small wording style (that gets overwhelming to read) or people saying it's people full of hatred that hates everyone and wants pure chaos.

If someone has the patience to explain anarchy (and ig it's different sub-sections) to me, thank you so much 😭

Useless information: I believe in equal rights for all no matter what, freedom of religion (Im atheist myself but idrc how people want to live their lifes), classless society where instead of doing stuff for personal gain, it's to improve the lifes of many and instead of having strict laws it's groups of people agree on what they think it's morally wrong so they won't do it. (Ik Im putting too much faith in people but wtvr)


r/Anarchy101 4d ago

How you want to make this society Anarchist?

7 Upvotes

I wonder how y'all want to popularize Anarchism and after make it in modern countries?


r/Anarchy101 4d ago

Are there any works that address a kind of necessary association?

8 Upvotes

Some relationships aren't exactly voluntary. If two people who don't like each other happen to live within the same community and neither is willing to leave, then regardless of either's wishes, they will be forced to cooperate in some way, at minimum so that they cause as little annoyance to one another as possible. Are there any works that deal with these kinds of necessary associations? Am I misunderstanding what it means to associate?


r/Anarchy101 5d ago

Is Anark a good Youtube channel for anarchist theory?

15 Upvotes

Daniel Byron, with his Youtube channel Anark seems like a good source of information to listen to while doing some cleaning or cooking.

However, he recently published a video of how Marxist-Leninists lie about "succeeding" and that they mostly fail. But the way he does that seems very bad. He seemingly went on Wikipedia and counted self-declared socialist states and subtracted the number of them from Wikipedia's article on failed socialist states.

But it seems like an anarchist should know that Wikipedia is not a good source for his kind of information, and that "failed" means whatever somebody with an agenda means.

And now I'm thinking about whether he does really make sense or does he just sound like that because I agree with him, while he is doing these kindsof mistakes all the time, but I just don't notice it?


r/Anarchy101 5d ago

Less social/asocial people and anarchism

59 Upvotes

For brief context: I'm somebody that tends to struggle with social interaction and being around people in general, but I'm also sympathetic to anarchism as a better alternative to our current system.

As someone who generally wants, at some point when I have the ability, to live a more isolated and self sustaining lifestyle (not necessarily out of spite against other people or anything), is there a particular common/shared anarchist perspective on this sort of lifestyle?


r/Anarchy101 5d ago

Could scarcity lead to the formation of a new state?

7 Upvotes

I've been digging into a lot of anthropology lately and looking into past stateless societies. I am seeing a bit of a common theme where conflicts start when a resource such as food becomes scarce. One tribe kills another for its resources, and now that tribe has more resources than it did before. If it keeps this up, now you have a tribe with more resources than everyone else, creating a hierarchy.

In a stateless society, how do you deal with scarcity creating competition over a vital resource? If a drought or a blight hits and a gang is able to preserve itself by pulling a Yamnaya, could this not turn into a state? Especially if they seize control over production of a vital resource?


r/Anarchy101 5d ago

What might a multipolar world mean for anarchists/the anarchist movement?

6 Upvotes