Is anarchy compatible with modern society?

The post argues that anarchy should be understood by shape rather than size. It describes anarchist scale as wide and deep, with decentralized networks, social rewards for generosity, and built environments that favor diffusion, repair, and shared use instead of hierarchy and display.

It also argues that anarchist organizing has already existed in large populations, both in prehistorical societies that resisted hierarchy and in modern struggles against state and capital. Examples include prisoner self-organization and the Spanish Civil War, while the main obstacle remains capitalism’s global power.

Reading notes

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• Anarchy can be large without looking large, because egalitarian and decentralized organization is horizontal rather than vertical.
• In an anarchist culture, status rewards generosity and kindness instead of wealth accumulation or using others.
• Beauty can still matter, but not as a sign of accumulation, and sex does not have to be tied to selling or to monogamous marriage.
• The built environment would favor less urban sprawl, more connection between urban and rural life, local manufacturing, repair, recycling, and shared spaces when tall buildings exist.
• The text says anarchist principles have already operated beyond Dunbar’s number and that people can live without hierarchy in large numbers.
• Prehistorical societies are presented as having created social structures to prevent hierarchy from emerging, rather than as simple or static societies.
• The text cites Graeber and Wengrow on the long and varied history of human societies, and says many oral and natural traditions have been forgotten.
• Bob Black is cited for primitive affluence and for the claim that sedentary life, not hunting and gathering, is more closely tied to ecological and health decline.
• Graeber is cited for examples of societies channeling power and limiting wealth accumulation, including a story from Madagascar.
• Modern anarchist organizing is described as labor struggle, taking over production and distribution, then defending autonomy, though these movements have usually been crushed by militaries.
• The Wapo prison rebellion and the Spanish Civil War are given as examples of anarchist self-organization at scale.
• The post says capitalism’s global reach means anarchist experiments are treated as threats and suppressed.
• It concludes that people should not wait for capitalism to collapse, but should practice alternatives now and build the habits needed to live freely within current limits.