What is Anarchism?
Anarchism, not to be confused with anarchy, is an ideology or a way of thinking about how society should behave to those who follow it. To the rest of the population, it looks like pure chaos. Dr. Bylund does not choose to use the dictionary definitions when defining anarchism because the dictionaries make it seem like propaganda, which it is not. Anarchism is simply a society without order or rule. Anarchists believe that nobody should have power, and many are anti authority as well as anti state. Long story short, those who believe in anarchism do not want any rules or have anyone telling them what to do or what they cannot do. However, there will be people who call themselves anarchists, then try to propose what they should or should not follow, which in itself is not anarchism because they cannot propose anything when not one person has more power than the other.
Can It Work?
Well for starters, there are a couple of ways that anarchism could work in theory. The first being from voluntary cooperation. Since anarchists believe that no one person has power and there are no rules, then everything that comes from anarchism must be voluntary. This means society would now be based on the honor code, however not everyone has the same beliefs or morals, so this is problematic. Secondly, it could be built on free markets and free competition. This could be beneficial economically, given that there are no rules or regulations on what people can sell, where they can sell, or whom they can sell to, however, this also brings along problems of stealing and there would be no repercussions financially because there was no written rule telling them they could not, so again based on the honor code. Essentially, anarchism has to work off of mutual respect, which is ironic. But, given that the entire society, however large or small that may be, actually agrees to mutual respect and lives by the honor code, on paper anarchism could work.
Can It Really Work?
No. Anarchism is full of contradictions and grey areas. For starters, there are too many extremely opinionated people who have their own ideas that will for certain contradict others for this to be successful. One theory that Dr. Bylund mentioned was the idea of having “Panarchism” which is essentially a space or ability to have all types of anarchism live in peace and harmony. This means that one anarchist who believes that no one person has the right to any piece of land, that it is all communal and free game, lives next to another anarchist who believes that their property is theirs alone and no one is allowed to step foot on it without getting blown sky high, and are expected to coexist and thrive next to each other based off of an unwritten honors code, which in itself is contradictory to anarchism. This could never work in the real world, with real human beings, with no rules whatsoever, because the only way to make anarchism work is to create a form of order, like the honors code or some other unwritten set of rules, which is hypocritical to anarchism, if we use Dr. Bylund’s definition of anarchism being a society without order or rule.
Final Thoughts
I can understand where people are coming from when they say they are anarchists and they believe that no one should have the power or right to tell us what to do, and that freedom belongs to the people, however, most anarchists are hypocrites who only want rules that benefit them and their agendas. And the anarchists who believe that anarchism could work in a real society are just fooling themselves to help them sleep at night, because in no way would the United States be able to survive without rules and regulations; our society would turn into a real life Purge movie. I too would like to live in a world where I am not afraid of breaking a law I never knew about and could live life freely with no consequences, but I know that most (keyword) of the rules that we have in place are for our safety and others’ safety. I would be more on board with a federalist-style society than true anarchism, which I think most who believe they are anarchists are really just radical federalists anyways. In conclusion, anarchism is stupid, hypocritical, and frankly an immature way of thinking, and we could find better ways to change our government than send it into doomed chaos.
