I cynically expected to see “no rulers doesn’t mean no rules” and similar anarcho-authoritarian rhetoric put in an appearance here, as a purported rejoinder to anarchism’s purported “misunderstanders.”

So I was pleasantly surprised to instead read a piece from someone who apparently actually understands the necessary realities of anarchism.

I was particularly pleased and impressed to see this:

When we say “we don’t know what an anarchist society would be like because we are not yet in one,” we are not being vague or evasive. We are saying that societies ought to be constructed by the people in them. Anarchism is a set of tools and principles with which to construct societies that value freedom and cooperation.

I’ve tried to make this point countless times, to little avail.

It’s literally impossible to decree in advance what form an anarchistic society will take, simply because, by definition, there is and can be no mechanisms by which to enforce any such decree.

The only way it possibly can play out is for each and all to be fundamentally free to choose as they prefer, constrained only by the fact that each and all are fundamentally free to choose as they prefer, then to just get out of the way and let them get to it.

Whoever wishes to will be free to advocate for whatever they want and nobody will be empowered to nominally rightfully force anyone else to submit to any particular thing, so really the only possibility is that all involved will eventually arrive at something to which they’re all willing to agree. And the thing is that that’s sufficient in and of itself. We can’t know what they’ll arrive at, but arguably more to the point, we don’t need to. It’s enough that whatever it is can only be what everyone involved will agree to.

Lots of other good stuff in that essay, but that was the one that most caught my attention. It’s discouragingly rarely that I see anyone else make that point.