A few questions for Anarchists
Hey! I am a Socialist looking to learn more about Anarchism. I agree with a lot of Marxist theory, but the main thing I can't really get behind is a top-down government. I believe that society would function much better if there were no hierarchical structures, but I'm not sure how that would be executed. I have two main questions:
- How do you prevent bad actors?
If there are no hierarchical structures, things like prison wouldn't exist. But say a person did commit a crime, such as, say, beating anther person up (a tame example). Would/how would they face any sort of punishment? How would they be rehabilitated to assure that they wouldn't do something like that again? If there are no hierarchical structures, who gets to tell that person that they need to be rehabilitated?
- How does it work at scale?
This is probably a question you get asked a lot, but how would a nation-scale Anarchist body function? I just read this article on Anarchism, where it says that, "all top-down, military styles of organization like armies or bureaucracies or large corporations, based on chains of command, would no longer be necessary." This is all great, but if there are no "military styles of organization like armies", how would an Anarchist nation defend itself? Wouldn't you need to somehow coordinate an global-scale revolution?
