this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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Agreed. Anarchists don't claim to be able to eliminate violence. That would be almost impossible.
I also agree with you here. This is part of the reason anarchists believe there would be less violence under anarchy. Withholding food from another person would not be allowed, as that would be a form of hierarchical authority. Food is withheld from millions of people in our current system simply because they cannot afford it.
Er, and who would enforce this?
Also, the measures necessary to enforce it at large scale would probably be unethical.
Well OK, this is getting more into socialism or communism, but the next obvious question is where is this food coming from, if people are not required to pay for its production?
Even if you want some sort of idealized currency-free economy, it costs resources to grow food and to distribute it to the people who want to eat it (land, water, infrastructure, time, labor, etc). Does everyone contribute to food production with their own labor? Is this a purely agrarian society? Is food withheld from people who do not contribute labor?
Large-scale farming as it is done today depends highly on the socioeconomic structure around it. Sure, there's a lot of waste, but the system also supports a large population who do not have to participate in agriculture in order to eat.
While I'm sure other systems are possible, I'm not sure that other systems can operate at a similar scale. Which is to say that the impression I get from everyone who argues for such things is that they carry some form of idealized "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" agrarian society in their head, some romantic idea about small-scale farming and simple life. Mostly these are people who have never worked on a farm themselves. The whole idea sounds regressive to me, practically tradlife conservative.
I believe what you are referring to there is a state. States enforce laws at a large scale. All anarchists oppose the existence of states.
It is everyone's responsibility to oppose hierarchical authority wherever it appears. There are probably hundreds of ways to do this, and some methods will work better than others depending on the situation. The rapid response networks in Minneapolis are a great example of this.
I think you're attempting to derail my point by implying that the existence of the state is necessarily unethical. I don't buy that. Some actions that are necessary for public good (e.g. operating a hospital) require collective organization and public funding, which would be a government in fact regardless of how you might try to relabel it.
My point is that preventing violence in totum, not only at the international level but also the interpersonal level, would require enforcement such that no person could act without prior approval from the enforcer (everyone would have to be watched all the time). This is different from normal law enforcement.
This line of thinking is pointless. If something is everyone's responsibility in theory then it is no one's responsibility in practice.