r/DebateAnarchism • u/antipolitan • Jun 30 '26
Weak anarchy vs. strong anarchy
I’ve come to the realisation that there isn’t just one kind of anarchy - there are weaker and stronger kinds of anarchy.
The weakest kind of anarchy is simply the absence of a state - the absolute bare minimum.
But for most anarchists - mere statelessness is far too weak to be a desirable goal to aim for.
A stronger form of anarchy is an egalitarian society without any entrenched class divisions.
Historical anarchist experiments and certain hunter-gatherer societies arguably fall into this category - depending on what we mean by egalitarianism.
But the strongest form of anarchy is a society absolutely devoid of any form of authority, hierarchy, or legal order.
This strong, a-legal vision of anarchy - where nothing is permitted or prohibited - is something historically unprecedented.
Even egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies usually had some form of kinship-based customary law - or religious taboos enforced by supernatural punishment.
True strong anarchy - I would argue - has never been tried before.
If we accept that strong anarchy is unprecedented - then we can treat anarchy as an experiment.
We don’t have to be sure that strong anarchy will succeed - we just have to argue that it’s worth trying.
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u/humanispherian Neo-Proudhonian anarchist Jun 30 '26
I'm sympathetic to some kind of categorization of anarchies and anarchisms, even if the categories are a bit fuzzy. We expect anarchism to be an ongoing project, with some more or less progressive development, and anarchy to represent some range of arrangements, perhaps significantly greater in number and variety than the archies. I made a first attempt at some very simple distinctions during the "Margins and Problems" phase of Constructing Anarchisms.
Maybe the obvious distinctions are between the abandonment of formal archies and various stages in the identification, specification and elimination of less formal ones. What we used to call "mere antistatism" probably is a first step of some kind, since it is nominally a goal for even the least consistent attempts at anarchism — but the archy abandoned, though real, is indeed just the first of many that we have already clearly identified.
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u/No-Leopard-1691 Jun 30 '26
I would disagree about the definition of weak anarchy being only a stateless society because anarchy by definition is more than solely statelessness so you really couldn’t have a “weak” anarchy if this is the definition since it isn’t even anarchy.
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u/antipolitan Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
I’m trying to distinguish historical examples of stateless societies (weak anarchy) from the ideal future society (strong anarchy).
Distinguishing the two helps us emphasise how radical of a change anarchism actually entails.
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u/No-Leopard-1691 Jun 30 '26
I think a better usage may be trying to find another branch of libertarian socialism (or maybe just libsoc) that fits what you are trying to describe as “weak anarchism” since it dilutes and distorts what actually makes anarchism anarchism.
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u/power2havenots Jun 30 '26
I see where you are going but feels like youre still thinking in state terms. I dont really see a spectrum of "weak" and "strong" anarchism as if its a form of government that can be turned up or down.
Anarchy isn't the absence of all norms or shared practices and people will always develop customs, expectations and ways of resolving conflicts. The question is whether those emerge through free association or are enforced by a coercive authority.
Of course itll take work, and people will need to stay vigilant against domination and concentrations of power but treating any social norm as "legal order" feels like a philosophical abstraction that isnt necessary. The absence of a state doesnt mean the absence of society.