This content originally appeared on Go Make Things and was authored by Go Make Things
A common misconception of anarchy is that it’s lawless chaos.
But anarchy doesn’t mean “without rules.” It means “without rulers,” a subtle but important difference.
Anarchy (or anarchism, if you prefer) as a political system means that there’s no hierarchy, and that no one person has authority or power over another.
But what about…?
When you’ve spent your whole life in a system dripping with authority, it’s difficult to imagine how a system without it would be anything but chaos.
If there’s no police, who would stop crime? If there’s no mayors, who would build or maintain roads? If there’s no housing authority, what’s to stop builders from cutting corners and building houses that fall down?
I’ve long held these questions myself!
There are a few things that have radically reframed how I think about them, though…
- The web itself is anarchist. All the things you love about the web emerged from people building them because they wanted to, not just for personal gain or because they were ordered to.
- The reason things like crime and builders who cut corners exist is because capitalism incentives and rewards them. Remove the cause, and you remove the effect.
- This is why optimistic fiction is so important. It helps us imagine a world better than the one we have.
- Many (but by no means all) indigenous cultures operated in a low or no hierarchy system. It’s not without precedent. It’s just not the norm in colonial culture.
Imagine…
Imagine living in a community where everyone just had a house.
Maybe an empty one was just sitting there, so they got to have it. Maybe the community recognized there weren’t enough homes for everyone who needed them, so they built more.
But how would the people building the homes get paid? They wouldn’t!
Nor would they pay for the things they need, like food or clothing. But how would the farmers and grocers and clothiers get paid? They wouldn’t either!
Nor would those folks pay for the things they need, like a home.
We live in a world where we have more than everyone needs. We throw away massive amounts of food. Homes sit empty, owned by banks or people who only use them a few weeks a year. Companies like H&M destroy massive piles of clothes they don’t sell each season.
We have enough. We could just give people what they need.
But why would anyone do anything, then?
If the only thing that makes people do jobs is coercion and the threat of homelessness, hunger, and death, maybe those jobs aren’t worth doing.
And if they are (say, like… cleaning out sewers), maybe they just be regarded far more highly in society than truly useless jobs like being “an investor.”
Have you ever been so sick you’ve needed to sit in bed for a week and just watch TV or play video games?
It’s cool for a bit. And then it’s booooorrrrrring AF!
People, as a species, are restless. We need to invent. We need to move. We need to do.
Capitalism stifles growth
Imagine what would exist in the world if being able to afford to do it wasn’t a hindrance.
Right now, at this very moment, there are thousands of brilliant future doctors who will never become one because they cannot afford medical school.
There are people would invent magnificent, world-changing breakthroughs… but won’t, because they’re forced to work low-wage jobs on the edge of poverty through circumstances of birth.
Your worth is not your output
Colonialism fetishizes “work ethic.” Tech and “hustle bro” culture even more-so.
But your worth is not bound to how much you output.
Someone who can’t work—because they’re disabled, or need to care for someone else, or are burnt out—isn’t less valuable than someone who can. Someone who just plain doesn’t want to work isn’t less valuable than someone who does.
A Burger King employee isn’t less valuable than the CEO of a bank. A sanitation worker no less valuable than a software engineer.
Work—at least, work in a capitalist system—is a form of hierarchy designed to control people.
Think of the web
The web that you love—the one where people build cool stuff and share it with others and open source code and form friendships with strangers and work together—is anarchy in action.
If you didn’t depend on 40+ hours of work a week to not die, the rest of the world could work like that, too.
Remember this?
If there’s no police, who would stop crime?
What motivation would someone have to steal baby formula when they can just have it for free? What is “stealing” in a system where everything is free, anyways?
Crime would still happen, of course. People are people.
But if people are so dangerous that they can’t be trusted to not harm others, why the fuck would you want to concentrate power in the hands of just a few of them? Wouldn’t spreading it over the many provide a better safeguard against bad behavior?
Visions of futures
If you’d curious about what this could look like, I think the Monk & Robot series by Becky Chambers provides a really interesting look at one possible world.
To an extent, Kipo & the Age of Wonderbeasts is, too.
If you want to dig more into this topic, I also highly recommend Andrew Sage’s YouTube channel in its entirety, and Our Changing Climate’s videos on solarpunk.
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This content originally appeared on Go Make Things and was authored by Go Make Things
Go Make Things | Sciencx (2025-06-08T14:30:00+00:00) Rules, not rulers. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/06/08/rules-not-rulers/
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