The Abolishment of the State, Part 1

This is the first in a series of posts that seeks to enlighten those who are ignorant about the structure of an anarchist society. One of the most common criticisms is, "Well, what do you replace the state with!?" This series of posts will attempt to answer that question, with some theoretical answers, as well as several real life past, and current examples.

Throughout human history a hierarchical approach to relationships has always taken place. It probably started with a small clan with the bigger and stronger leader taking charge and telling the others what to do. Then religion developed and, again because of man's fears, he made up all powerful leader/s - a pantheon of gods to lead him in daily life. In the last several thousand years we've had kings, popes, and presidents become the leaders, even though they are just as fallible as every other human being on the planet.

Despite history not having some kind of explicit guideline for such a civilization, there are many known examples of how such a society could be set up. It would also require using human innovation and the willingness to see the truth that human beings don't need any gods, or leaders, to 'protect' us or take charge of our daily lives (often for their own benefit at that). I've shown that in doing this the state has done more harm than good, and once it is destroyed human beings can continue to create relationships, run their businesses without undue restrictions from government, and things can be done more efficiently without interference from the government.

One example of this happening was in New Zealand during the mid 1980's.

From Hillsdale College, the following was adapted from a lecture delivered on February 11, 2004, on the Hillsdale campus, during a five-day seminar on “The Conditions of Free-Market Capitalism,” co-sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.

“Rolling Back Government: Lessons from New Zealand”

By Maurice P. McTigue

Maurice P. McTigue is a distinguished visiting scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he directs the government accountability project. Previously, he was a member of the New Zealand Parliament and New Zealand’s ambassador to Canada, and was closely involved in New Zealand’s deregulation of labor markets, deregulation of the transportation industry, and restructuring of the fishing industry through the creation of conservation incentives. He also served as Minister of Employment, Minister of State Owned Enterprises, Minister of Railways, Minister of Works and Development, Minister of Labour and Minister of Immigration. Among his many honors, Mr. McTigue is a recipient of the Queen’s Service Order, bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace. In the U.S., he was recently appointed to the Office of Personnel Management Senior Review Committee, formed to make recommendations for human resources systems at the Department of Homeland Security. He also sits on the Performance Management Advisory Committee for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

If we look back through history, growth in government has been a modern phenomenon. Beginning in the 1850s and lasting until the 1920s or ’30s, the government’s share of GDP in most of the world’s industrialized economies was about six percent. From that period onwards—and particularly since the 1950s—we’ve seen a massive explosion in government share of GDP, in some places as much as 35-45 percent. (In the case of Sweden, of course, it reached 65 percent, and Sweden nearly self-destructed as a result. It is now starting to dismantle some of its social programs to remain economically viable.) Can this situation be halted or even rolled back? My view, based upon personal experience, is that the answer is “yes.” But it requires high levels of transparency and significant consequences for bad decisions—and these are not easy things to bring about.

What we’re seeing around the world at the moment is what I would call a silent revolution, reflected in a change in how people view government accountability. The old idea of accountability simply held that government should spend money in accordance with appropriations. The new accountability is based on asking, “What did we get in public benefits as a result of the expenditure of money?” This is a question that has always been asked in business, but has not been the norm for governments. And those governments today that are struggling valiantly with this question are showing quite extraordinary results. This was certainly the basis of the successful reforms in my own country of New Zealand.

New Zealand’s per capita income in the period prior to the late 1950s was right around number three in the world, behind the United States and Canada. But by 1984, its per capita income had sunk to 27th in the world, alongside Portugal and Turkey. Not only that, but our unemployment rate was 11.6 percent, we’d had 23 successive years of deficits (sometimes ranging as high as 40 percent of GDP), our debt had grown to 65 percent of GDP, and our credit ratings were continually being downgraded. Government spending was a full 44 percent of GDP, investment capital was exiting in huge quantities, and government controls and micromanagement were pervasive at every level of the economy. We had foreign exchange controls that meant I couldn’t buy a subscription to The Economist magazine without the permission of the Minister of Finance. I couldn’t buy shares in a foreign company without surrendering my citizenship. There were price controls on all goods and services, on all shops and on all service industries. There were wage controls and wage freezes. I couldn’t pay my employees more—or pay them bonuses—if I wanted to. There were import controls on the goods that I could bring into the country. There were massive levels of subsidies on industries in order to keep them viable. Young people were leaving in droves.

Spending and Taxes

When a reform government was elected in 1984, it identified three problems: too much spending, too much taxing and too much government. The question was how to cut spending and taxes and diminish government’s role in the economy. Well, the first thing you have to do in this situation is to figure out what you’re getting for dollars spent. Towards this end, we implemented a new policy whereby money wouldn’t simply be allocated to government agencies; instead, there would be a purchase contract with the senior executives of those agencies that clearly delineated what was expected in return for the money. Those who headed up government agencies were now chosen on the basis of a worldwide search and received term contracts—five years with a possible extension of another three years. The only ground for their removal was non-performance, so a newly-elected government couldn’t simply throw them out as had happened with civil servants under the old system. And of course, with those kinds of incentives, agency heads—like CEOs in the private sector—made certain that the next tier of people had very clear objectives that they were expected to achieve as well.

The first purchase that we made from every agency was policy advice. That policy advice was meant to produce a vigorous debate between the government and the agency heads about how to achieve goals like reducing hunger and homelessness. This didn’t mean, by the way, how government could feed or house more people—that’s not important. What’s important is the extent to which hunger and homelessness are actually reduced. In other words, we made it clear that what’s important is not how many people are on welfare, but how many people get off welfare and into independent living.

As we started to work through this process, we also asked some fundamental questions of the agencies. The first question was, “What are you doing?” The second question was, “What should you be doing?” Based on the answers, we then said, “Eliminate what you shouldn’t be doing”—that is, if you are doing something that clearly is not a responsibility of the government, stop doing it. Then we asked the final question: “Who should be paying—the taxpayer, the user, the consumer, or the industry?” We asked this because, in many instances, the taxpayers were subsidizing things that did not benefit them. And if you take the cost of services away from actual consumers and users, you promote overuse and devalue whatever it is that you’re doing.

When we started this process with the Department of Transportation, it had 5,600 employees. When we finished, it had 53. When we started with the Forest Service, it had 17,000 employees. When we finished, it had 17. When we applied it to the Ministry of Works, it had 28,000 employees. I used to be Minister of Works, and ended up being the only employee. In the latter case, most of what the department did was construction and engineering, and there are plenty of people who can do that without government involvement. And if you say to me, “But you killed all those jobs!”—well, that’s just not true. The government stopped employing people in those jobs, but the need for the jobs didn’t disappear. I visited some of the forestry workers some months after they’d lost their government jobs, and they were quite happy. They told me that they were now earning about three times what they used to earn—on top of which, they were surprised to learn that they could do about 60 percent more than they used to! The same lesson applies to the other jobs I mentioned.

Some of the things that government was doing simply didn’t belong in the government. So we sold off telecommunications, airlines, irrigation schemes, computing services, government printing offices, insurance companies, banks, securities, mortgages, railways, bus services, hotels, shipping lines, agricultural advisory services, etc. In the main, when we sold those things off, their productivity went up and the cost of their services went down, translating into major gains for the economy. Furthermore, we decided that other agencies should be run as profit-making and tax-paying enterprises by government. For instance, the air traffic control system was made into a stand-alone company, given instructions that it had to make an acceptable rate of return and pay taxes, and told that it couldn’t get any investment capital from its owner (the government). We did that with about 35 agencies. Together, these used to cost us about one billion dollars per year; now they produced about one billion dollars per year in revenues and taxes.

We achieved an overall reduction of 66 percent in the size of government, measured by the number of employees. The government’s share of GDP dropped from 44 to 27 percent. We were now running surpluses, and we established a policy never to leave dollars on the table: We knew that if we didn’t get rid of this money, some clown would spend it. So we used most of the surplus to pay off debt, and debt went from 63 percent down to 17 percent of GDP. We used the remainder of the surplus each year for tax relief. We reduced income tax rates by half and eliminated incidental taxes. As a result of these policies, revenue increased by 20 percent. Yes, Ronald Reagan was right: lower tax rates do produce more revenue.

Subsidies, Education, and Competitiveness

…What about invasive government in the form of subsidies? First, we need to recognize that the main problem with subsidies is that they make people dependent; and when you make people dependent, they lose their innovation and their creativity and become even more dependent.

Let me give you an example: By 1984, New Zealand sheep farming was receiving about 44 percent of its income from government subsidies. Its major product was lamb, and lamb in the international marketplace was selling for about $12.50 (with the government providing another $12.50)per carcass. Well, we did away with all sheep farming subsidies within one year. And of course the sheep farmers were unhappy. But once they accepted the fact that the subsidies weren’t coming back, they put together a team of people charged with figuring out how they could get $30 per lamb carcass. The team reported back that this would be difficult, but not impossible. It required producing an entirely different product, processing it in a different way and selling it in different markets. And within two years, by 1989, they had succeeded in converting their $12.50 product into something worth $30. By 1991, it was worth $42; by 1994 it was worth $74; and by 1999 it was worth $115. In other words, the New Zealand sheep industry went out into the marketplace and found people who would pay higher prices for its product. You can now go into the best restaurants in the U.S. and buy New Zealand lamb, and you’ll be paying somewhere between $35 and $60 per pound.

Needless to say, as we took government support away from industry, it was widely predicted that there would be a massive exodus of people. But that didn’t happen. To give you one example, we lost only about three-quarters of one percent of the farming enterprises—and these were people who shouldn’t have been farming in the first place. In addition, some predicted a major move towards corporate as opposed to family farming. But we’ve seen exactly the reverse. Corporate farming moved out and family farming expanded, probably because families are prepared to work for less than corporations. In the end, it was the best thing that possibly could have happened. And it demonstrated that if you give people no choice but to be creative and innovative, they will find solutions.

New Zealand had an education system that was failing as well. It was failing about 30 percent of its children—especially those in lower socio-economic areas. We had put more and more money into education for 20 years, and achieved worse and worse results.

It cost us twice as much to get a poorer result than we did 20 years previously with much less money. So we decided to rethink what we were doing here as well. The first thing we did was to identify where the dollars were going that we were pouring into education. We hired international consultants (because we didn’t trust our own departments to do it), and they reported that for every dollar we were spending on education, 70 cents was being swallowed up by administration. Once we heard this, we immediately eliminated all of the Boards of Education in the country. Every single school came under the control of a board of trustees elected by the parents of the children at that school, and by nobody else. We gave schools a block of money based on the number of students that went to them, with no strings attached. At the same time, we told the parents that they had an absolute right to choose where their children would go to school. It is absolutely obnoxious to me that anybody would tell parents that they must send their children to a bad school. We converted 4,500 schools to this new system all on the same day.

But we went even further: We made it possible for privately owned schools to be funded in exactly the same way as publicly owned schools, giving parents the ability to spend their education dollars wherever they chose. Again, everybody predicted that there would be a major exodus of students from the public to the private schools, because the private schools showed an academic advantage of 14 to 15 percent. It didn’t happen, however, because the differential between schools disappeared in about 18-24 months. Why? Because all of a sudden teachers realized that if they lost their students, they would lose their funding; and if they lost their funding, they would lose their jobs. Eighty-five percent of our students went to public schools at the beginning of this process. That fell to only about 84 percent over the first year or so of our reforms. But three years later, 87 percent of the students were going to public schools. More importantly, we moved from being about 14 or 15 percent below our international peers to being about 14 or 15 percent above our international peers in terms of educational attainment.

Now consider taxation and competitiveness: What many in the public sector today fail to recognize is that the challenge of competitiveness is worldwide. Capital and labor can move so freely and rapidly from place to place that the only way to stop business from leaving is to make certain that your business climate is better than anybody else’s. Along these lines, there was a very interesting circumstance in Ireland just two years ago. The European Union, led by France, was highly critical of Irish tax policy—particularly on corporations—because the Irish had reduced their tax on corporations from 48 percent to 12 percent and business was flooding into Ireland. The European Union wanted to impose a penalty on Ireland in the form of a 17 percent corporate tax hike to bring them into line with other European countries. Needless to say, the Irish didn’t buy that. The European community responded by saying that what the Irish were doing was unfair and uncompetitive. The Irish Minister of Finance agreed: He pointed out that Ireland was charging corporations 12 percent, while charging its citizens only 10 percent. So Ireland reduced the tax rate to 10 percent for corporations as well. There’s another one the French lost!

When we in New Zealand looked at our revenue gathering process, we found the system extremely complicated in a way that distorted business as well as private decisions. So we asked ourselves some questions: Was our tax system concerned with collecting revenue? Was it concerned with collecting revenue and also delivering social services? Or was it concerned with collecting revenue, delivering social services and changing behavior, all three? We decided that the social services and behavioral components didn’t have any place in a rational system of taxation. So we resolved that we would have only two mechanisms for gathering revenue—a tax on income and a tax on consumption—and that we would simplify those mechanisms and lower the rates as much as we possibly could. We lowered the high income tax rate from 66 to 33 percent, and set that flat rate for high-income earners. In addition, we brought the low end down from 38 to 19 percent, which became the flat rate for low-income earners. We then set a consumption tax rate of 10 percent and eliminated all other taxes—capital gains taxes, property taxes, etc. We carefully designed this system to produce exactly the same revenue as we were getting before and presented it to the public as a zero sum game. But what actually happened was that we received 20 percent more revenue than before. Why? We hadn’t allowed for the increase in voluntary compliance. If tax rates are low, taxpayers won’t employ high priced lawyers and accountants to find loopholes. Indeed, every country that I’ve looked at in the world that has dramatically simplified and lowered its tax rates has ended up with more revenue, not less.

What about regulations? The regulatory power is customarily delegated to non-elected officials who then constrain the people’s liberties with little or no accountability. These regulations are extremely difficult to eliminate once they are in place. But we found a way: We simply rewrote the statutes on which they were based. For instance, we rewrote the environmental laws, transforming them into the Resource Management Act—reducing a law that was 25 inches thick to 348 pages. We rewrote the tax code, all of the farm acts, and the occupational safety and health acts. To do this, we brought our brightest brains together and told them to pretend that there was no pre-existing law and that they should create for us the best possible environment for industry to thrive. We then marketed it in terms of what it would save in taxes. These new laws, in effect, repealed the old, which meant that all existing regulations died—the whole lot, every single one.

Thinking Differently About Government

What I have been discussing is really just a new way of thinking about government. Let me tell you how we solved our deer problem: Our country had no large indigenous animals until the English imported deer for hunting. These deer proceeded to escape into the wild and become obnoxious pests. We then spent 120 years trying to eliminate them, until one day someone suggested that we just let people farm them. So we told the farming community that they could catch and farm the deer, as long as they would keep them inside eight-foot high fences. And we haven’t spent a dollar on deer eradication from that day onwards. Not one. And New Zealand now supplies 40 percent of the world market in venison. By applying simple common sense, we turned a liability into an asset.

Let me share with you one last story: The Department of Transportation came to us one day and said they needed to increase the fees for driver’s licenses. When we asked why, they said that the cost of relicensing wasn’t being fully recovered at the current fee levels. Then we asked why we should be doing this sort of thing at all. The transportation people clearly thought that was a very stupid question: Everybody needs a driver’s license, they said. I then pointed out that I received mine when I was fifteen and asked them: “What is it about relicensing that in any way tests driver competency?” We gave them ten days to think this over. At one point they suggested to us that the police need driver’s licenses for identification purposes. We responded that this was the purpose of an identity card, not a driver’s license. Finally they admitted that they could think of no good reason for what they were doing—so we abolished the whole process! Now a driver’s license is good until a person is 74 years old, after which he must get an annual medical test to ensure he is still competent to drive. So not only did we not need new fees, we abolished a whole department. That’s what I mean by thinking differently.

There are some great things happening along these lines in the United States today. You might not know it, but back in 1993 Congress passed a law called the Government Performance and Results Act. This law orders government departments to identify in a strategic plan what it is that they intend to achieve, and to report each year what they actually did achieve in terms of public benefits. Following on this, two years ago President Bush brought to the table something called the President’s Management Agenda, which sifts through the information in these reports and decides how to respond. These mechanisms are promising if they are used properly. Consider this: There are currently 178 federal programs designed to help people get back to work. They cost $8.4 billion, and 2.4 million people are employed as a result of them. But if we took the most effective three programs out of those 178 and put the $8.4 billion into them alone, the result would likely be that 14.7 million people would find jobs. The status quo costs America over 11 million jobs. The kind of new thinking I am talking about would build into the system a consequence for the administrator who is responsible for this failure of sound stewardship of taxpayer dollars. It is in this direction that the government needs to move.

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.


Obviously, this was not an example of an anarchist community, but it is an excellent example of people taking charge, and limiting government, and the excellent gains that were achieved because of it.

Other examples of government being tossed out of the loop in regards to private police protection is the following:

In Reminderville, Ohio, the city receives complete police protection from a private firm run by Arthur Robataille. Because of this, the people of Reminderville pay only half of what they originally paid the sheriff's office, and the service level is a lot higher. They contract for 90,000 per year calls for Corporate Security, Inc. to provide the service of seven officers, two patrol cars, and a six minute response time. One of the outcomes of this is that burglary rates in one 3.5 square mile area dropped from 14% to 0.7% per month and remain there (Source: Every Man and Woman an Island, by Robert Clapp, page 117).

Another city is Oro Valley, Arizona, which privatized its police services. The town hired a private firm to replace the County Sheriff's department. Even though the private firm gave higher quality service, cut a substantial amount of the cost, and had the complete support of all the citizens, the arrangement was challenged in court by the state law enforcement officer's association. Due to legal expenses, the private firm decided not to fight. Today, Oro Valley's government run police department costs four times as much in inflated-adjusted dollars (Source: Every Man and Woman an Island, by Robert Clapp, page 118).

That is an excellent example of what happens when the government senses competition: it wants to extinguish it. Despite it's claims of wanting to help its citizens, what this proves is the monopoly the government wants on everything. I think the reason is clear. The more it forces its way into peoples' lives, the more power it will ultimately gain over those people.

In San Francisco the entire north section of the city, to date (the date of my source is 2004), has eighty "private police beats"and are owned by private specialists. Business owners, homeowners, and landlords pay them. Each patrolman purchases a beat and negotiates the contract with each property owner. The costs for the service has produced a per annum savings in theft and damages in excess of four times that of the contracted costs, and nearly ten times that of when the local government "protected" them (Source: Every Man and Woman an Island, by Robert Clapp, page 118).

Other than the above examples, other services have begun to be privatized. Such services are the following, along with the number of cities that have switched from a government run service, to a private one.

Refuse Collection....... 489
Water Supply.............. 286
Street Construction/Maintenance... 206
Hospitals..................... 107
Libraries...................... 88
Fire Services................ 65
Full and Partial Police Services... 28

All of the above services were privatized and all of them operated more effectively and at a greatly reduced cost.

(Source: Every Man and Woman an Island, by Robert Clapp, page 119).

Combined, all of the cases I cited not only ran much more smoothly, but cost a lot less than the government run equivalents. I think this speaks volumes about the wastefulness of government.

Other than the previous examples of people taking charge and kicking government out of running many of the services, the following are some more anarchist-like communities that have thrived throughout history (referenced from wikipedia.org and anarchopedia.org):

Celtic Ireland (650-1650)

In Celtic Irish society of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, courts and the law were largely anarchist, and operated in a purely stateless manner. This society persisted in this manner for roughly a thousand years until its conquest by England in the seventeenth century. In contrast to many similarly functioning tribal societies, preconquest Ireland was not in any sense "primitive": it was a highly complex society that was, for centuries, the most advanced, most scholarly, and most civilized in all of Western Europe. A leading authority on ancient Irish law wrote, "There was no legislature, no bailiffs, no police, no public enforcement of justice... There was no trace of State-administered justice.[1]

All "freemen" who owned land, all professionals, and all craftsmen, were entitled to become members of a tuath. Each tuath's members formed an annual assembly which decided all common policies, declared war or peace on other tuatha, and elected or deposed their "kings." In contrast to primitive tribes, no one was stuck or bound to a given tuath, either because of kinship or of geographical location. Individual members were free to, and often did, secede from a tuath and join a competing tuath. Professor Peden states, "the tuath is thus a body of persons voluntarily united for socially beneficial purposes and the sum total of the landed properties of its members constituted its territorial dimension.[2] The "king" had no political power; he could not decree or administer justice or declare war. Basically he was a priest and militia leader, and presided over the tuath assemblies.

Celtic Ireland survived many invasions, but was finally vanquished by Oliver Cromwell's reconquest in 1649-50.


Albemarle (1640s-1663)

The coastal area north of Albemarle Sound in what is now northeastern North Carolina was home to a quasi-anarchistic society in the mid-17th century. Officially a part of the Virginia colony, in fact it was independent. It was a haven for political and religious refugees, such as Quakers and dissident Presbyterians. The libertarian society ended in 1663, when the King of England granted Carolina to eight feudal proprietors backed by the military.[5]


Utopia (1847 to 1860s)

Utopia was an individualist anarchist colony begun in 1847 by Josiah Warren and associates, on a tract of land in the United States approximately 30 miles (48 km) from Cincinnati, Ohio. Personal invitation from the first settlers was required for admission to the community, with Warren reasoning that the most valuable individual liberty was "the liberty to choose our associates at all times." Land was not owned communally, but individually, with lots being bought and sold at cost, as required by contractual arrangement. The economy of the community was a system based upon private property and a market economy where labor was the basis of exchange value (see Mutualism (economic theory)). Goods and services were traded by the medium of "labor notes." By the mid-1850's, the community eventually came to contain approximately 40 buildings, about half of which were of an industrial nature. Also present were two "time stores" (see Cincinnati Time Store). The impact of the American Civil War, the rising prices of surrounding land (which made expansion difficult), and the requirement of being invited by the original settlers are said to have led to the eventual dissolution of the project. However, as late as 1875 a few of the original occupants were still in residence and some business in the area was still being conducted by labor notes.


Modern Times (1851 to late 1860s)

See also Modern Times (intentional community) Modern Times was an individualist anarchist colony begun on March 21, 1851 on 750 acres (3 km²) of land on Long Island, New York, Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews. By contract, all land was bought and sold at cost, with three acres being the maximum allowable lot size. The community was said to be based in the idea of "individual sovereignty" and "individual responsibility." There was an understanding that there was to be no initiation of coercion, leaving all individuals to pursue their self-interest as they saw fit. All products of labor were considered private property. The community had a local private currency based upon labor exchange in order to trade goods and services (see Mutualism). All land was private property, with the exception of alleys which were initially considered common property but later converted to private property. No system of authority existed in the colony. There were no courts, no jails, and no police; yet, there are no reports of any problem with crime existing there. This appears to have given some credence to Warren's theories that the most significant cause of violence in society was most attributable to policies and law which did not allow complete individuality in person and property. However, the modest population of the colony might be considered a factor in this characteristic. The Civil War, as well as a gradual infiltration into the community by those that did not share the same libertarian and economic philosophy, is said to have contributed to its eventual dissolution. The colony's location is now known as Brentwood, New York. Almost all of the original buildings that existed in Modern Times have been destroyed.


Whiteway Colony (1898 to present)

Whiteway Colony in the Cotswolds near Stroud, Gloucestershire was set up in 1898 and still exists today[9]. Though it no longer has an explicitly anarchist outlook, it still retains a flavor of its roots and many of its residents are both aware and proud of its origins[9]. Today the traces of its anarchist past can be seen in the communal facilities such as the playing field, hall and swimming pool built and used by residents, and in the way the governance of the community is still carried out by general meeting of all residents. Whiteway is regarded as a collectivist anarchist society and is one of the longest running anarchist experiments in existence.


The autonomous Shinmin region (1929-1931)

The apex of Korean anarchism came in late 1929 outside the actual borders of the country, in Manchuria. Over two million Korean immigrants lived within Manchuria at the time when the Korean Anarchist Communist Federation (KACF) declared the Shinmin province autonomous and under the administration of the Korean People’s Association. The decentralized, federative structure the association adopted consisted of village councils, district councils and area councils, all of which operated in a cooperative manner to deal with agriculture, education, finance and other vital issues. An Army to fight for the defense of Shinmin was also set up and spearheaded by the great Korean Anarchist Kim jwa-jin which had great successes against the Japanese and Stalinist Armies using hit-and-run guerrilla tactics. KACF sections in China, Korea, Japan and elsewhere devoted all their energies towards the success of the Shinmin Rebellion, most of them actually relocating there. Dealing simultaneously with Stalinist Russia’s attempts to overthrow the Shinmin autonomous region and Japan’s imperialist attempts to claim the region for itself, the Korean anarchists had been crushed by 1931.


Western Sahara Exiles (1976 to Present)

According to the Institute for Anarchist Studies: Since 1976, nearly half the indigenous population of Western Sahara has lived in exile in four self-managed refugee camps in Algeria. Their relatives and friends, the other half of the divided population, still live under Moroccan occupation in what is Africa’s last official colony, Western Sahara. In the four Sahrawi refugee camps–small spaces of political autonomy ceded by Algeria–the Western Saharan independence movement (Polisario Front) has committed itself to a now thirty-year-old experiment in prefigurative self-governance. Unlike any other refugees’ experiences in the world, the Western Saharan refugees who inhabit the camps manage their daily lives without direct help from the international community. At the same time, they participate in the political structures of their own liberation movement–from daily meetings in “tent groups” to the “National Congress” held every three years. There has been a recent uprising in Western Sahara that has almost completely overthrown the anarchist movement that has dominated the area since 1976 that has been led by Gzuku Al Farquawi who calls himself Ju Ju reincarnate. The refugees claim that the camps model the very society an independent Western Sahara will achieve once Morocco withdraws, along with Farquawi.[16]

Spanish revolution (1936 to 1939)

In 1936, against the background of the fight against fascism, there was a profound libertarian socialist revolution throughout Spain.

Much of Spain's economy was put under direct worker control; in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%, but lower in areas with heavy Socialist influence. Factories were run through worker committees, agrarian areas became collectivized and run as libertarian communes. Even places like hotels, barber shops, and restaurants were collectivized and managed by their workers. George Orwell describes a scene in Aragon during this time period, in his book, Homage to Catalonia:

"I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life – snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc. – had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master."

The communes were run according to the basic principle of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," without any Marxist dogma attached. In some places, money was entirely eliminated. Despite the critics clamoring for maximum efficiency, anarchic communes often produced more than before the collectivization. The newly liberated zones worked on entirely egalitarian principles; decisions were made through councils of ordinary citizens without any sort of bureaucracy. It is generally held that the CNT-FAI leadership was at this time not nearly as radical as the rank and file members responsible for these sweeping changes.

In addition to the economic revolution, there was a spirit of cultural revolution. Oppressive traditions were done away with. For instance, women were allowed to have abortions, and the idea of free love became popular. In many ways, this spirit of cultural liberation was similar to that of the "New Left" movements of the 1960s.

Christiania (1970's-present)

Freetown Christiania is a quarter of Copenhagen that became independent and self-governing in the 1970s after an anarchist commune took over army barracks in the center of the city. While in theory governed by the laws of Denmark, it is left alone by the authorities. For a third of a century, this self-described social experiment has successfully resolved conflicts threatening its continued existence, arising both internally and from the Danish state. Some in Christiania derive income from the sale of illegal drugs such as Hashish and Marijuana to non-residents. This has created problems for the community, notably between supporters and opponents of recreational drug use.

Argentina (2001-present)

After the collapse of the Argentine economy, coupled with riots and finally the fall of the government in the last days of 2001, the social and economic organization of Argentina underwent major changes. Argentina was once a shining example of free market reforms and structural adjustment programs ("the IMF's best pupil"). However, after the economy crashed, the IMF responded by demanding that more social programs (health care, schools, etc) be cut, and more things be privatized. Massive popular rebellion erupted.

Out of the uprisings came many popular organs of self-management and direct democracy. Worker occupations of factories and popular assemblies have both been seen functioning in Argentina, and both are the kind of action endorsed by anarchists: the first is a case of direct action and the latter a case of direct democracy. Approximately 200 "recovered" factories (fábricas recuperadas) are now self-managed and collectively owned by workers. Over 10,000 people are working in factories with little or no management or hierarchy. In the large majority of them, pay is completely egalitarian; generally no professional managers are employed, or managers are collectively controlled in the other cases. Decisions are made by all workers, in general assembly type structures. These co-operatives have organized themselves into networks. Solidarity and support from external groups, such as neighborhood assemblies and unemployed (piquetero) groups, have often been important for the survival of these factories. Unemployed workers elsewhere have also organized takeovers of plots of vacant land, and taken them back for housing and growing food. Similar developments have taken place in Brazil and Uruguay.

In a survey by an Argentina newspaper in the capital, it was found that around 1/3 of the population had participated in general assemblies. The assemblies used to take place in street corners and public spaces, and generally gathered to discuss ways of helping each other in the face of eviction, or organizing around issues like health care, collective food buying, or conducting free food distribution programs. Some assemblies started to create new structures of health care and schooling, to replace the old ones that were not working. Neighborhood assemblies met once a week in a large assembly to discuss issues affecting the larger community. [1] In 2004, Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein (Author of No Logo) released the documentary The Take, about these events.

Popular assemblies have gradually died out as the economy began its recovery. However, activism has continued. The piqueteros and unemployed worker movements have become organized and often adopted an extreme left-wing ideology. Most middle-class Argentinians, especially in Buenos Aires, now regard piqueteros as violent and disruptive, due to the continuous road blocks and massive demonstrations they stage in the capital.





As most of these examples will show, anarchist societies can be formed, and can be stabilized. A large problem isn't that it can't work but the unfortunate fact that many in anarchist societies are pacifists and lack armies, and rulers swoop into the community and take it over. Either that, or the anarchist community fights for it's community and eventually is defeated by the larger forces.

I feel what this proves is that this is possible, it's just that all people need to wake up from this state indoctrination and come together so we all can live in truly free communities. I also think a large enough defense is needed to repel possible invaders.

Other than the above examples, the exact shape of an anarchist society isn't that well known, as I've explained before. Not only is there few examples, but anarchism itself is simply a philosophy which states that man can live without rulers in peace and harmony (with some exceptions obviously - no society is perfect). Anarchism doesn't necessarily have a set pattern for success because of the constant changes that occur within civilizations. Any method of management must also be flexible if it is to survive. To quote the anarchist Emma Goldman from her essay, Anarchism: What it Really Stands For:

"Anarchism is not, as some might suppose, a theory of the future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions. The methods of anarchism therefore do not comprise an iron-clad program to be carried out under all circumstances. Methods must grow out of the economic needs of each place and clime, and of the intellectual and temperamental requirements of the individual....Anarchism does not stand for military drill and uniformity; it does, however, stand for the spirit of revolt, in whatever form, against everything that hinders human growth. All anarchists agree in that, as they also agree in their opposition to the political machinery as a means of bringing about the great social change."

- Anarchism and Other Essays, by Emma Goldman, page 45

I'd also like to note an obvious "rebuttal" that some might use in an attempt to make the past anarchist societies an irrelevant argument. Yes, about half of these societies are not in existence anymore, but that doesn't mean such a society could not survive indefinitely. Many of the societies were overrun by powerful armies wishing to take it over. I argue that if such a society can gather a large enough army to defend itself then I see no large problem for the society. Of course, there is always that chance that a more powerful army could overtake the anarchist army, but measures can be put in place to protect the city as much as possible such as barriers, and other obstructions, etc. One must also acknowledge the fact that many of the societies listed are still in existence and so to claim such a society cannot work is foolish. Although, who knows what the future could bring. As I argued in the beginning of this post, if only everyone could see their horrible predicament and pull the wool from their eyes they could see how the state is not needed since everything an all powerful state can do, so can private companies, and individuals. This has been proven with the many examples I've given.

With the several examples I've given I think I've done a good job in squashing several of the claims of the opponents of anarchism such as, "Who will fix the roads, help protect people?," etc." These things are not only possible, but have actually happened in many parts of the world.

In upcomming posts I will explain other aspects of anarchist societies, and further prove that the state is not needed in any way, shape, or form.