To be fair, anarchism is not particularly difficult to “sell” on ethical grounds. Across the political spectrum, people tend to intuitively grasp that the absence of coercion and the voluntary association of individuals is something good and desirable—at least as a kind of idealized, abstract model of society.
The difficulty usually arises in two places.
First, sensitivity to threat and the need for control—that is, value systems that help reduce the feeling of uncertainty.
I would rather not reduce this to the formula that “conservatives are more easily frightened”—it is pathologizing and ultimately unhelpful. But in practice, one can observe a spectrum in how people relate to the unknown, with two poles: for some, the unknown is threatening; for others, it is intriguing. Neither stance is false. I am personally biased toward the latter, and I will try to explain why.
Second, the need to own one’s capacity for violence.
This capacity may be underdeveloped or effectively absent. From early on, we are socialized into environments where we—especially women—are expected to outsource our capacity for violence to those who are supposedly better equipped to handle it. As a result, our relationship with self-defense is often weak. In such conditions, it can feel safer to align oneself with a large, abstract entity (the state), which may either protect or harm us—but crucially, it has teeth, while we do not. It can therefore seem that our chances of survival are higher with it than without it (though this is far from certain).
This is not even to mention the discomfort—if not outright fear—associated with relocating ethical judgment inward and acting in accordance with one’s own values.
There is also a third, more general issue: what people imagine when they hear the word “anarchy.”
Few actually read anarchist thinkers. Instead, literature, media, and everyday discourse tend to present an image closer to Mad Max.
This image is partly shaped by the fact that it would be strange to expect one’s direct competitor (the state) to provide a platform, a megaphone, and positive publicity—especially within an attention economy. Anti-systemic ideas, when filtered through the system, tend to become caricatures of themselves.
It is also shaped by a long-dominant mythology about nature—both in general and human nature in particular—as fundamentally based on struggle and competition. Within this framework, cooperative models may be acknowledged, but they are treated as secondary, if they are acknowledged at all. This, however, is not the case. There is substantial evidence suggesting that cooperation is not only real but often preferred, even when it comes at a cost. Example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9043698/
The difficulty usually arises in two places.
First, sensitivity to threat and the need for control—that is, value systems that help reduce the feeling of uncertainty.
I would rather not reduce this to the formula that “conservatives are more easily frightened”—it is pathologizing and ultimately unhelpful. But in practice, one can observe a spectrum in how people relate to the unknown, with two poles: for some, the unknown is threatening; for others, it is intriguing. Neither stance is false. I am personally biased toward the latter, and I will try to explain why.
Second, the need to own one’s capacity for violence.
This capacity may be underdeveloped or effectively absent. From early on, we are socialized into environments where we—especially women—are expected to outsource our capacity for violence to those who are supposedly better equipped to handle it. As a result, our relationship with self-defense is often weak. In such conditions, it can feel safer to align oneself with a large, abstract entity (the state), which may either protect or harm us—but crucially, it has teeth, while we do not. It can therefore seem that our chances of survival are higher with it than without it (though this is far from certain).
This is not even to mention the discomfort—if not outright fear—associated with relocating ethical judgment inward and acting in accordance with one’s own values.
There is also a third, more general issue: what people imagine when they hear the word “anarchy.”
Few actually read anarchist thinkers. Instead, literature, media, and everyday discourse tend to present an image closer to Mad Max.
This image is partly shaped by the fact that it would be strange to expect one’s direct competitor (the state) to provide a platform, a megaphone, and positive publicity—especially within an attention economy. Anti-systemic ideas, when filtered through the system, tend to become caricatures of themselves.
It is also shaped by a long-dominant mythology about nature—both in general and human nature in particular—as fundamentally based on struggle and competition. Within this framework, cooperative models may be acknowledged, but they are treated as secondary, if they are acknowledged at all. This, however, is not the case. There is substantial evidence suggesting that cooperation is not only real but often preferred, even when it comes at a cost. Example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9043698/
People move through the streets in the millions, and for the most part they do so without violence. It’s not as though every single one of them is held back by fear of the police. Sometimes it’s simply the case that a person, on a very human level, cannot be bothered to harm another when they could just as easily refrain.
More broadly, I find the idea that human beings require—and will always require—top-down control deeply unconvincing. If we truly believe that people are so fundamentally incapable that they must be disciplined indefinitely, then so be it—let the heavens burn. But if we do not believe that, then it seems only natural to orient ourselves toward a trajectory of development that allows for greater, not lesser, degrees of individual and collective freedom.
In that case, the question is no longer “anarchy or not,” but rather: when anarchy, what kind of anarchy, and by what means do we get there? These are altogether different questions—and they are open to discussion.
More broadly, I find the idea that human beings require—and will always require—top-down control deeply unconvincing. If we truly believe that people are so fundamentally incapable that they must be disciplined indefinitely, then so be it—let the heavens burn. But if we do not believe that, then it seems only natural to orient ourselves toward a trajectory of development that allows for greater, not lesser, degrees of individual and collective freedom.
In that case, the question is no longer “anarchy or not,” but rather: when anarchy, what kind of anarchy, and by what means do we get there? These are altogether different questions—and they are open to discussion.
I disagree that it requires a posconventional level of moral development. People strongly lean to match and reflect behaviors of others rather than invent their own, which is shown by various experiments. Defecting is a rational strategy, but we're irrational beings first (or rather überrational, with the same flavor as in "supernatural"). And our ethics emerges from our aesthetical principles, rather than on our intellectual decisions, because it's intimately tied to subjective experience of suffering. Aesthetics, in return, is largely shaped by familiarity. So, I think it's not a problem of "uplifting humanity to moral heights", but rather a question of normalizing cooperation in a society. After all, monkey see – monkey do.