is one of the most common responses I get when I talk to people (usually liberals) about horizontal power structures. It comes down to some version of “Well, that sounds nice, but what about the bad actors?” I think the logic that follows from that fact is backwards. The standard response to this issue is to build vertical power structures. To appoint a ruling class that can supposedly “manage” the bad actors. But this ignores the obvious: vertical power structures are magnets for narcissists. They don’t neutralize those people. They empower them. They give them legitimacy and insulation from consequences. They concentrate power precisely where it’s most dangerous. Horizontal societies have always had ways of handling antisocial behavior. (Highly recommend Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior by Christopher Boehm. He studied hundreds of forager societies, overall done amazing work.) Exile, public shaming, revocable leadership, and distributed decision-making all worked and often worked better than what we do now. Pre-civilized societies didn’t let power-hungry individuals take over. They stopped them. We used to know how to deal with bad actors. The idea of a “power vacuum” only makes sense if you believe power must be held at the top. If you diffuse power horizontally, there is no vacuum to fill. There’s just shared responsibility. That may feel unfamiliar, but it’s not impossible. We’ve done it before. Most of human history was built on it. The real question isn’t whether bad actors exist. It’s how we choose to deal with them. Do we build systems that make it harder for them to dominate others, or ones that practically roll out the red carpet? I think this opens up a more useful conversation.
What if we started seriously discussing tactics for dealing with domination-seeking behavior?
What mechanisms help us identify and isolate that kind of behavior without reproducing the same old coercive structures?
How do we build systems that are resilient to sabotage without falling into authoritarian logic?
I’d love to hear your guys’ thoughts.
Edit: It seems as though the conversation has diverted in this comment section. That’s alright, I’ll clarify.
This thread was meant to be about learning how to detect domination-seek behavior and repelling narcissists. This was meant to be a discussion on how anarchism works socially in order to circumvent individuals from sabotaging or otherwise seeking to consolidate power for themselves.
It was not meant as a discussion on if anarchism works. There is plenty of research out on the internet that shows anarchism has the potential to work. Of course, arguing a case for or against anarchism should be allowed, however that drifts away from what I initially wanted to get at in this thread. It’s always good to hear some “what ifs”, but if it completely misses the main point then it derails the discussion and makes it harder for folks who are engaging with the core idea.
So to reiterate: this isn’t a debate about whether anarchism is valid. It’s a focused conversation about the internal dynamics of anarchist spaces, and how we can build practices and awareness that make those spaces resilient against narcissistic or coercive tendencies.
Thanks to everyone who’s contributed in good faith so far – let’s keep it on track.
Hierarchical, formal power structures have a competitive advantage when it comes to making decisions quickly and directing the group. This has nowhere been more evident than in the countless military victories of organized armies over groups of tribal warriors.
The advantage of anarchism and structureless society is with diversity of ideas and the innovations you can get from that. Straight up fights against organized adversaries is its biggest weakness.
I don’t think that assessment lines up with historical events. During the Spanish Civil War, the anarchist militias/army were hierarchies, but directly democratic ones, where soldiers would vote on who their commanders would be, commanders would vote on who their generals would be, all with the ability to immediately revoke that power if it was abused or performed badly.
That form of structure was still considered Anarchistic, and historically performed very well with the limited resources they had, and garnering the public respect of even the fascist generals from their capability.
Nester Makhno’s Anarchist Army also was extremely effective during the Russian revolution, without which the Soviets wouldn’t have been able to beat the White Army (and thus survive to then turn on the Anarchists and attempt to kill them all).
So the examples we have available don’t really show Anarchists unable to make quick decisions or lack military might, they usually are defeated by allies (Marxist-leninists) betraying them, lack of foreign logistical aid (since there are no other countries that would ever ally with them, and often outright refused to help), and the opposite, where their enemies are given an abundance of aid from friendly fascist powers.
First of all, that’s not what direct democracy means. Direct democracy is when voters are directly voting on a course of action. Soldiers voting on who their military commanders should be is representative democracy (electing a vertical power structure) which is exactly what the OP is arguing against. A purely horizontal power structure is one where no one can give orders to anyone else and decisions must be made by consensus, unless those decisions have only a small reach (within the domain of an individual).
So you’re not really arguing against my point which is that having a military chain of command with hierarchical decision making is superior to just letting everyone do what they want (tribal warrior societies). The point about democratically electing your commanding officers is a cool one but no army is going to hold an impromptu election for a new General as artillery shells are raining down around their ears. When the shooting starts, you stick with the chain of command you have or all hell breaks loose and you get routed.
That is a misuse of the term, my bad.
I thought it would be obvious that ‘immediately’ wouldn’t mean in the context of mid-battle (unless the officer is like, going rogue or something), but in the context of outside of an active battle, where there isn’t a huge bureaucracy to go through to remove a bad commander, since that commander is directly responsible to the people who elected him.