Anarchism and democracy

In an anarchic society, it is obvious that there will still have to be an institution capable of directing society—but, importantly, that institution must not have any power of its own over the society it is ‘directing’. Ideally, it would exist only to further the wishes of the people, in a purely administrative role. Decisions affecting the society, then, must be made by the people as a whole, and not by any smaller subdivision (e.g. modern ‘representative democracy’). Every major decision would have to be decided on by everyone, or else one group would be capable of obtaining power over the running of the country.

Democracy as an ideal is therefore essential to an anarchic society—but current democratic systems tend to centralise power, which is of course contrary to anarchic doctrine. A totally decentralised democracy, however, would have to have a completely impartial process to decide what gets put to the vote—and that could very quickly be corrupted, in favour of a more ‘conventional’ institution, re-centralising power and putting us all back where we started.