Does this direct democracy include majority rule?

• If not then why keep calling it democracy? Is anarchy not enough? What does the term democracy give that anarchy doesn't?
• If it does then I don't know how anarchic I would call it. My tolerance for anarchy is quite large so I can see it working but I also would definitely understand people who don't consider it such.

And as a final note: by going back to the roots of the word "an-archy" loosely means "no-rule" and "demo-cracy" loosely means "people rule". So taking purely by their roots they are contradictory. One wishes for the abolishment of "rule" while the other wishes for people to "rule".

All this is meant as just fun discussion about words and ideas. In the grand scheme none of this matters as I think that the reality will be too messy to fit into any neat definition and at the end of the day if people are free it doesn't matter.

Or maybe you just lack faith in people due to only being exposed to the worst of them. As my (yes, very short) life experience as only proven that people are more than capable of living anarchicly. Have you ever been to an anarchist bookfair? Sat in an anarchist cafe and listen to a passionate presentation about pigeons? Or sit in that same cafe playing cards into the night? I feel like I have more than enough experience to know that people are capable of organising and acting anarchicly.

I could give you an answer. I have a couple prepared: "The same way it does right now except without the state or capitalism", "Councils set up that co-ordinate efforts between different local groups and, for lack of a better word, contractors that actually do the work".

But a better answer is I don't know. I can't know because I don't have any experience with infrastructure construction or maintenance. I can only guess. But I do know that an anarchist who does have the experience will be able to answer these questions and I will help them any way I can. Anarchism isn't about listening to a single persons answers. It's about collecting the knowledge and experience of everyone involved and have them come up with solutions together. Any answer from a single person is flawed, by combining our ideas together we could make something least flawed. That's what anarchy is about.

First you need to have a solid measure of both "success" and "anarchistic". Does the CNT/FAI count? Rojava/DAANES? Paris commune? Tribal societies basically anywhere pre-civilisation?

There are reasons to discard every anarchist experiment or society because you do not deem them "successful". Especially if you measure success in an archic way.

If you are genuinely curious, here is one of many places you can start: https://crimethinc.com/2016/09/28/feature-the-secret-is-to-begin-getting-started-further-resources-frequently-asked-questions#faq

If you consider a mug to consist of two parts, the handle and the cup, the cup has broken into pieces and the handle is holding two of them together. So I think "two pieces held together by the handle" is the most correct way to describe it.

This is why I think it's important to use violence only for self-defence. Our main weapons should be peaceful but if the ruling class refuses to give up power then we will have to use violence to defend ourselves. However it should never be allowed to be the means through which we achieve change, only to protect what we have already achieved.

Eww: https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too

For radicals, fetishizing the guillotine is just like fetishizing the state: it means celebrating an instrument of murder that will always be used chiefly against us.

The worst punishment anyone could inflict on those who govern and police us today would be to compel them to live in a society in which everything they’ve done is regarded as embarrassing—for them to have to sit in assemblies in which no one listens to them, to go on living among us without any special privileges in full awareness of the harm they have done. If we fantasize about anything, let us fantasize about making our movements so strong that we will hardly have to kill anyone to overthrow the state and abolish capitalism. This is more becoming of our dignity as partisans of liberation.

So we repudiate the logic of the guillotine. We don’t want to exterminate our enemies. We don’t think the way to create harmony is to subtract everyone who does not share our ideology from the world. Our vision is a world in which many worlds fit, as Subcomandante Marcos put it—a world in which the only thing that is impossible is to dominate and oppress.

Oh look. An obviously SVG image that's been JPEGed. Let me fix that.

Much better. Licence (as always): CC-0, no rights reserved. Any mistakes are encouragements for you to try and improve it.

Are you fucking KIDDING ME? I linked to crimethink. An anarchist site actively telling and helping people to fight against Flock and ICE:

• https://crimethinc.com/2026/08/17/you-are-under-surveillance-2026-a-sticker
• https://crimethinc.com/2026/07/16/protecting-your-neighbors-by-following-ice-vehicles-a-guide-from-the-bay-area
• https://crimethinc.com/2026/05/07/protecting-our-neighbors-from-ice-a-do-it-yourself-community-defense-skills-workshop-guide
• And there are many more

And you dare say I "sound like a MAGAt". NO I FUCKING DON'T! I'm LITERALLY distributing anarchist propaganda!

But clearly you didn't actually read the post I linked you to because in that case you would have seen exactly why anarchists oppose the guillotine, and why we can't "burn it after" because we would have been on the chopping block.

For radicals, fetishizing the guillotine is just like fetishizing the state: it means celebrating an instrument of murder that will always be used chiefly against us.

It is impossible to make the revolution with the guillotine alone. Revenge is the antechamber of power. Anyone who wants to avenge themselves requires a leader. A leader to take them to victory and restore wounded justice.”

- Alfredo Bonanno, Armed Joy

The guillotine is the law made concrete… It is not neutral and does not permit you to remain neutral. Whoever sees it quakes, mysteriously shaken to the core. All social problems set up their question mark around that blade.

- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Have mass killings ever helped us advance our cause? […] If we seek transformation rather than conquest, we ought to appraise our victories according to a different logic than the police and militaries we confront.

When we see ourselves as fighting against specific human beings rather than social phenomena, it becomes more difficult to recognize the ways that we ourselves participate in those phenomena. We externalize the problem as something outside ourselves, personifying it as an enemy that can be sacrificed to symbolically cleanse ourselves. Yet what we do to the worst of us will eventually be done to the rest of us.

Precisely because it is sometimes necessary to employ force in our conflicts with the defenders of the prevailing order, it is especially important that we never lose sight of our aspirations, our compassion, and our optimism. When we are compelled to use coercive force, the only possible justification is that it is a necessary step towards creating a better world for everyone—including our enemies, or at least their children. Otherwise, we risk becoming the next Jacobins, the next defilers of the revolution.

Those last three are taken from my previous comment when this came up: https://anarchist.nexus/post/357494/comment/2040563
Feel free to read my other responses in that thread as well.

And before you dare to claim I'm advocating against fighting:

This is not an argument against the use of force. Rather, it is a question about how to employ it without creating new hierarchies, new forms of systematic oppression. [...] The image of the guillotine is propaganda for the kind of authoritarian organization that can avail itself of that particular tool. Every tool implies the forms of social organization that are necessary to employ it. [...] As a tool, the guillotine takes for granted that it is impossible to transform one’s relations with the enemy, only to abolish them. What’s more, the guillotine assumes that the victim is already completely within the power of the people who employ it.

In the flames where it belongs: https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too

No you're singing it wrong. It goes "so here I am, doing everything I can, holding on to what I am, pretending I'm a superman" /j

I personally like the start of the second verse better: "So here I am, growing older all the time, looking older all the time, feeling younger in my mind."

And I'm grateful for the 1+2 remake introducing me to Zebrahead.