This society takes ideas from all different schools of anarchism - with the exception of anarco-capitalism all concepts of anarchism can be found, or have the potential to be found, within this society. At the moment this society can only be found in a few people’s minds and probably some far off lands, but hopefully in the future this society will become reality and common place. I have partly addressed already how to best move into an anarchist society would be through the use of communes. These communes would be completely different to how we live life now. People would only be doing jobs that are vital for survival and they would hopefully be moneyless societies of about 60 - 150 people in size. Obviously the size can be completely different, this is just a guideline. These communes would prepare people for community living for when the government crumbles and anarchism stands. By developing a more community based approach to society the hope would be that the people would be able to, as soon as the government crumbles connect all together and anarchisticly run everything. But what does it mean to anarchisticly run something?
I think the best and most efficient way to anarchisticly run something is through the anarcho-communist idea. This idea would run everything from the bottom up rather than the massively top down approach we have to everything at the moment. The idea would be that you have a series of councils and delegates. Imagine levels of councils, at the bottom (this is in no way saying the least influential, on the contrary the most important) the people. So one community, a neighbourhood say, would be a council itself, say for examples sake that all community councils are made up of 100 people. One level above that would be a borough style council. Which would be a collection of all the community delegates in a certain area in one meeting. I would say no more that 21 councils should be in a borough, to keep things simple, but again this is just a guideline, in practicality just remember to go with whatever works sustainably (when I say sustainably I do not mean like systems that “work” nowadays but are really just going to crash on us in the future: for example, how banks are managed at the moment). All of the borough councils would be geographically organised so there would be no communities joining together solely out of common interests (as this is how powerful interests are born). Up from a borough council there would be a regional council. The size of all council meetings above the community level would depend on what the meeting was about and how many communities it affected. A council meeting cannot be held without all the members (whether communities or individuals) it affects being notified. If communities decide not to show up for the meetings they abstain. Only in extreme cases would there ever be a "national" council (obviously because within an anarchistic society there would be no nations this would just depend on how big the mass of land was that the people inhabited, for example what is now England, Scotland and Wales would all be one national council, Ireland would be its own national council). All councils above the level of community councils would only have meetings when they are necessary. So borough meetings would be uncommon, regional meetings would be almost unheard of and National councils would only be assembled if for example another "country" of people decided to invade your land mass by force. Any meetings above that of the community level would be made up of delegates. So what exactly is a delegate?
Delegates are, simply put, representatives. These delegates would be selected by a rota system, so everyone would have to be a delegate at some point, and no-one could be a delegate three times while someone else has only been a delegate once. You can only be a delegate for one meeting before it is the next persons turn. If a community - or someone within a community - has any reason to doubt a person as being a delegate, then they can voice their opinion and a general consensus will be taken by the community as to whether the potential delegate is fit to act as a delegate. Although I would warn against this as this is a big betrayal of trust in an anarchist society and can cause unnecessary divides. Before a meeting made up of delegates takes place the list of discussion topics will be sent around to all the communities, so they can tell their delegate exactly what to say. So all the decisions that have to be made at a council of delegates will have already been made before hand. The delegates just meet to debate the ideas of the community they are representing. A minute taker, also from the same community council of the delegate, would always attend a meeting alongside a delegate. They would not speak, just take the minutes of whatever the delegate is talking about so it can be shown to the community after the meeting. The community can then decide if they have been happy with how the delegate has acted. Both the minute taker and the delegate would change every meeting. The selection process of delegates and minute takers would be totally random. If the votes in a delegate meeting are equal so there is a 50/50 split. The status quo will be maintained.
The world is always changing, if you don't like it at the moment, mould it in to something you like for the future.
Picture an area the size of London, I have no idea how many people would be in this area in an anarchist society but let’s say it’s roughly 5 million people. Of course I do not see how cities would fit into an anarchist society. There would be no reason for people to amalgamate in such a way as to form a city. Now if there was ever a decision that had to be made affecting the all of the people in that area of “London” then everyone would need to have a say. Imagine the decision was to build a nuclear reactor somewhere in "London" of which the potential spill out of that nuclear reactor – should it break – be big enough to seriously affect the people and potentially kill them. Everyone would of course have to have a say in this. But imagine the meeting without delegates that would be held to make that decision. 5 million people would all have to try and squeeze into one meeting place and make themselves heard. The voting would take forever, it would be too confusing and no one would ever get things done. A delegates’ job is simply to cut down on the number of people. A delegate would hold 2 pieces of information. One would be the general consensus of the people, so if 70 out of the 100 people in the community voted yes to the nuclear power plant, the delegate would vote yes. The second piece of information would be the make-up of how many people voted for it in their community. So if when the decision by all the delegates was unanimously yes then that would mean the overwhelming majority of the individuals in all of the communities combined had voted yes. But it also means that if the vote is quite close. Say anything from a 65%-35% split on the vote to a 51%-49% split then all the delegates would have to show the individual vote make-up of their communities. In this case the individuals votes (as opposed to the community's' votes) would then be counted, and it could appear that the majority of people actually want to vote no, and the proposal will not pass. In the present voting system we have of First Past The Post, quite a lot of people fall into this trap and we quite often end up with leaders who have not got the majority vote. This process will take a long time I know, but to quote the EZLN "This is the speed of democracy".
Anything not made by humans cannot be owned.
Everyone would have to attend these council meetings and everyone would be a part of the councils, there would be no discrimination based on mental health or anything else. This system proves that things absolutely can be done in an anarchist society. There is absolutely no authority in any of the councils and very little chance, I think, for corruption. This is just an image of my perfect society and of course people can in reality do whatever they want. I think at the start of an anarchist society there would be quite a bit of opting out of the community council system and we would see the starting up of more primitive-anarchist and individual-anarcho communes of their own. This would not mean however that these communities would not have a say in the nuclear power plant example mentioned above. It just means they would choose not to run their communes on this basis. Some critics I have heard have said this system creates an environment of individualism and tribe like mentalities. I think that assessment is a load of rubbish. In reality people will still be living together in the bigger village or whatever they live in. And because all important decisions that affect other communities would have to be made by "borough" councils there could be little passive aggressive political warfare created between different communities. Also with the creation of the New People (see my People's Liberty entry) everyone would in theory be able to get on.
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