Post #1358572

2026-04-13 11:37 UTC

That's a really great question, thank you for asking. I will begin, in the classic anarchist tradition, of pointing out that I do not have all of the answers - this always sounds like a bit of a cop-out, but don't worry, I'll answer your question directly in a moment, and it's really important to communicate this because it's super important: anarchism isn't some blueprint for a society that we follow by rote and dogmatically implement, but rather a base layer of ideas we can use. As per [an anarchist FAQ](https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionI.html#seci2) > Anarchists have always been reticent about spelling out their vision of the future in too much detail for it would be contrary to anarchist principles to be dogmatic about the precise forms the new society must take. Free people will create their own alternative institutions in response to conditions specific to their area as well as their needs, desires and hopes and it would be presumptuous of us to attempt to set forth universal policies in advance. Also, I'll point out that my objection is to *representative democracy*, i.e. the current system, where voters are mere passive spectators of occasional, staged, and highly rehearsed debates among candidates pre-selected by the corporate elite, who pay for campaign expenses. The public is expected to choose simply on the basis of political ads and news sound bites. Once the choice is made, cumbersome and ineffective recall procedures insure that elected representatives can act more or less as they (or rather, their wealthy sponsors) please. My objection is not with people representing the opinions of others, as long as representatives have very limited power, a limited mandate, and as long as that power can be withdrawn and representatives recalled in a quick and easy way. Anyways, with that out of the way, I will approach your question by explaining one possible system out of infinitely many which are possible. Anarchists believe in structuring things from a bottom-up approach, so let's start at the bottom - each neighborhood could have a [participatory community](https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionI.html#seci51) which makes decisions for that neighborhood around practical, everyday decisions that directly affect shared living. For example, maintenance of shared areas, the use of community buildings/rooms, improvements to the neighborhood, etc. Of course, neighborhoods do not exist in a vacuum - neighborhoods would want to work together to share resources and to collaborate to achieve greater goals, so [confederations of neighborhoods](https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionI.html#seci52) could be formed. Each neighborhood could select one or more delegates to attend confederation meetings and speak on the behalf of the neighborhood, but not make decisions on behalf of them. Instead, each delegate would attend the confederation meeting, and meet with their neighborhood to bring them news of what was discussed at the delegation meeting. Then, in the neighborhood meetings, each neighborhood would come to their own decisions around what should happen at the confederation level, and a delegate - not necessarily the same person as before - would take those decisions, questions, concerns and discussion points back to the confederation, where either a consensus would be reached, or further discussion - which could again, be brought back to the neighborhood to share. In fact, rotating the role of delegate would be a really good idea, so that multiple people can get a better idea of the issues in the wider community and understanding of how the bottom-up power structure functions. The cool thing about anarchism is that we can experiment on these ideas and try out different things in a very responsive, small scale way, since the lower levels of participatory communities are small, even bad ideas have very limited harm if/when implemented, and other communities can learn from the failures of others. I hope this makes sense, and I hope you see how this would differ from representative democracy. The main difference is where the power lies - under anarchism, the power to make decisions always remains with the people as a whole, rather than being concentrated into the hands of a very select few. If you are interested in learning more, have any doubts about problems with the ideas I have outlined, or some other approaches which could be taken, I would strongly encourage you to have a read of [an Anarchist FAQ's section about what an anarchist society would look like](https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionI.html) - I can pretty much guarantee that any question you have is answered somewhere in there, it's nothing if not comprehensive!

Replies (2)

@SaraTonin@lemmy.world 2026-04-13 18:42

I used to go out with someone who lived in a commune, which operated how you describe here - everybody gets a say in every decision. It was very equitable, but nothing *ever * got done. Part of the roof was falling down and the exposure to the elements was damaging the building at that point. The longer it was exposed the more damage was being done. The wall was starting to crumble. If it fell down it could damage as-yet undamaged parts of the building. A couple of families had already had to move to a different part of the building At that point it had been 10 years and no decisions had been made. No decisions were close to being made. Their home was literally being destroyed and potentially endangering people -they were and had been no issues more pressing - and nothing has been done for a decade That was ~15 families living together. And you think it’s feasible to scale that up to millions of people by increasing the group size and number of steps?

Open ##1358573
@thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 2026-04-13 14:19

> Of course, neighborhoods do not exist in a vacuum - neighborhoods would want to work together to share resources and to collaborate to achieve greater goals, so confederations of neighborhoods could be formed. Each neighborhood could select one or more delegates to attend confederation meetings and speak on the behalf of the neighborhood, but not make decisions on behalf of them. Instead, each delegate would attend the confederation meeting, and meet with their neighborhood to bring them news of what was discussed at the delegation meeting. Then, in the neighborhood meetings, each neighborhood would come to their own decisions around what should happen at the confederation level, and a delegate - not necessarily the same person as before - would take those decisions, questions, concerns and discussion points back to the confederation, where either a consensus would be reached, or further discussion - which could again, be brought back to the neighborhood to share. In fact, rotating the role of delegate would be a really good idea, so that multiple people can get a better idea of the issues in the wider community and understanding of how the bottom-up power structure functions. This sounds like a really good idea, but let me point something out: For the sake of efficiency, it would quickly make sense for most neighbourhoods to give their delegate a mandate of the type "We want something like this, but you can make minor changes to points X, Y, and Z in order to reach an agreement with the others". For example: We want the new road to be a gravel road that's about 2 m wide, but you can decide the exact quality of gravel, and whether the road is 1.5 m or 2.5 m in the meeting with the others. Whether we have light posts every 40 or 80 meters isn't so important, as long as the road is well lit (just make sure the lights are strong enough if they're widely spaced). Further, once we get to scaling this up from the neighbourhood level to a scale of hundreds of thousands or millions of people, we're going to get progressively more details and specialist tasks that need ironing out: Should there be import tariffs on any goods? If so, which? What should the tax be? Should it be progressive? If so, how should it scale? What should be the standard bridge-height on a highway (very useful to standardise if you want any kind of long-haul transport)? How many students should there be per teacher in classrooms at different grade levels, and what kind of education should we require from those teachers? etc. etc. etc. This *absolutely massive* number of questions that need answering, will in practice demand that your delegate receives some kind of mandate to make decisions within the limits of what you've decided. The larger the society in question, the wider those limits will need to be in order for the society to be able to reach any kind of consensus within a reasonable time frame. If every detail needs to go neighbourhood meeting (O(100 people) => neighbourhood confederation (O(10 000) people) => community meeting (O(100 000) people) => national meeting (O(1 000 000) people) and back for every iteration, the kids are going to be grown before you've decided whether a 5th grade teacher needs minimum high-school level or university level mathematics in order to teach science classes, or even before you've decided on whether this should be something you coordinate at the national level or not for that matter. Once you start giving your delegates a mandate to make decisions within some pre-determined limits.... you've reinvented representative democracy.

Open ##1358574