Political Memes

Borrowing a passage from David Graeber:

"At their very simplest, anarchist beliefs turn on to two elementary assumptions. The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how. The second is that power corrupts. Most of all, anarchism is just a matter of having the courage to take the simple principles of common decency that we all live by, and to follow them through to their logical conclusions."

Or phrased another way:

• Humans have the capacity to be and to do good
• Humans can also do terrible things
• Hierarchical power structures can lead to harmful feedback loops where bad actors who gain power can continue to gain power
• Even well intentioned people can slip into modes of unhealthy power dynamics
• Thus building a truly equitable and just system requires ongoing work

If the question at hand is "bad actors exist. What should society do about them?", Anarchism as a school of thought is an attempt to answer that. It's not a solved problem, so Anarchism is far from the only possible answer to that question. For example, someone else might argue that an authoritarian government is the best way to solve the bad actor problem. Of course, I would disagree with this hypothetical person, but my point is that social movements like anarchism arise in response to some crisis, tension or problem in society — if society was working well for everyone and everyone got along, then anarchist thought would have never emerged. Whether you feel it's an effective answer to the problem is a different matter, but to properly analyse it, we need to recognise what anarchism is trying to do.