Dispelling 2 Myths About Anarchism and showing why it is obtainable

Plenty of people see anarchism as a dumb and unobtainable goal that will always lead to chaos. While I disagree with that assessment, I can kind of see why people think like that. Plenty of myths about anarchism and things even said by anarchists have made the ideology seem like something that is more appealing to edgy teens than actual intelligent adults who understand humans need some degree of society in order to function. This is why I want to write this article and dispel some of the myths surrounding anarchism as a concept that has led to it getting such a negative reception in the eyes of the average person.

The first of those myths is the idea that all anarchists want no government or society whatsoever. Many anarchists are ok with a voluntary government or a government with less of a monopoly on violence known as a nightwatchman state - a state that is basically the only kind that anarchists will accept. Here is a definition of what a nightwatchman state is as defined by the website US Legal:

A night watchman state refers to a state with the least possible amount of powers, to uphold law. Powers exercised by a night watchman state cannot be reduced any further without abolishing the state altogether [...] Powers of the state is limited to the police, the judicial system, prisons and the army to protect individuals from coercion and theft, punish criminals, and defend the country from foreign aggression.

The nightwatchman state was popularized in the book Anarchy, State, and Utopia by political philosopher and anarchist Robert Nozick which was released in the 1970s. Left libertarian Peter Marshall even endorsed the concept of a nightwatchman state and described it in his book Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism and Tiber R. Machan in his article "Anarchism and Minarchism. A Rapprochement" in the French economic journal Journal des Economists et des Estudes Humaines. The concept was even something Noam Chomsky stated he was ok with in an interview and he is an anarchosyndicalist.

Anarchists propose other measures to deal with these problems, without recourse to state authority. ... Social democrats and anarchists always agreed, fairly generally, on so-called 'welfare state measures'. - Noam Chomsky, 2007 Interview with Z Magazine

So, there is a type of voluntarist government that can exist even within an anarchist society. The existence of the concept of a nightwatchman state is also the reason why there are some successful anarchist societies in human history, which brings me to the second myth that needs to be debunked...

There is a popular idea that there have been no successful libertarian or anarchist communities that have lasted longer than a couple of years before they fell apart. However, there are plenty of autonomous successful communities that were anarchist or anarchist adjacent in terms of the ideals and implementation which have seen success in the real world! In terms of history, there are plenty of groups that can be mentioned that were successful I will have to talk about. One of the successful examples of an old nightwatchman state that lasted long enough to be considered successful should include the Qarmatian civilization from 899 AD to 1077 AD, a group of successful Islamic socialists that practiced a unique mix of communalist nightwatchman state and Islam. Other examples exist that would probably require many stories of their own to fully go over!

Citations:

- Crone, Patricia (May 2000). "Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists". Past & Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 167 (167): 3–28. doi:10.1093/past/167.1.3. ISSN 0031-2746. JSTOR 651252. LCCN 65077388. OCLC 4639911110.

- Fiscella, Anthony T. (2009). "12. Imagining an Islamic Anarchism: A New Field of Study is Ploughed". In Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre J. M. E. (ed.). Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1443815031. OCLC 667050168.

- Daftary, Farhad (2011-12-30). Historical Dictionary of the Ismailis. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-7970-6.

- Daftary, Farhad (1990). The Ismāʿı̄lı̄s: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-37019-6.

- Machan, Tibor R. (December 2002). "Anarchism and Minarchism. A Rapprochement". Journal des Economists et des Estudes Humaines. 14 (4): 569–588.

- Nozick, Robert (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465097203.

- Sperlich, Wolfgang B. (2006). Noam Chomsky. Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-86189-269-0