is one of the most common responses I get when I talk to people (usually liberals) about horizontal power structures. It comes down to some version of “Well, that sounds nice, but what about the bad actors?” I think the logic that follows from that fact is backwards. The standard response to this issue is to build vertical power structures. To appoint a ruling class that can supposedly “manage” the bad actors. But this ignores the obvious: vertical power structures are magnets for narcissists. They don’t neutralize those people. They empower them. They give them legitimacy and insulation from consequences. They concentrate power precisely where it’s most dangerous. Horizontal societies have always had ways of handling antisocial behavior. (Highly recommend Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior by Christopher Boehm. He studied hundreds of forager societies, overall done amazing work.) Exile, public shaming, revocable leadership, and distributed decision-making all worked and often worked better than what we do now. Pre-civilized societies didn’t let power-hungry individuals take over. They stopped them. We used to know how to deal with bad actors. The idea of a “power vacuum” only makes sense if you believe power must be held at the top. If you diffuse power horizontally, there is no vacuum to fill. There’s just shared responsibility. That may feel unfamiliar, but it’s not impossible. We’ve done it before. Most of human history was built on it. The real question isn’t whether bad actors exist. It’s how we choose to deal with them. Do we build systems that make it harder for them to dominate others, or ones that practically roll out the red carpet? I think this opens up a more useful conversation.
What if we started seriously discussing tactics for dealing with domination-seeking behavior?
What mechanisms help us identify and isolate that kind of behavior without reproducing the same old coercive structures?
How do we build systems that are resilient to sabotage without falling into authoritarian logic?
I’d love to hear your guys’ thoughts.
Edit: It seems as though the conversation has diverted in this comment section. That’s alright, I’ll clarify.
This thread was meant to be about learning how to detect domination-seek behavior and repelling narcissists. This was meant to be a discussion on how anarchism works socially in order to circumvent individuals from sabotaging or otherwise seeking to consolidate power for themselves.
It was not meant as a discussion on if anarchism works. There is plenty of research out on the internet that shows anarchism has the potential to work. Of course, arguing a case for or against anarchism should be allowed, however that drifts away from what I initially wanted to get at in this thread. It’s always good to hear some “what ifs”, but if it completely misses the main point then it derails the discussion and makes it harder for folks who are engaging with the core idea.
So to reiterate: this isn’t a debate about whether anarchism is valid. It’s a focused conversation about the internal dynamics of anarchist spaces, and how we can build practices and awareness that make those spaces resilient against narcissistic or coercive tendencies.
Thanks to everyone who’s contributed in good faith so far – let’s keep it on track.
It is also non-coercitive.
I would argue that when you have 1000+ people, you will necessarily have subgroups, teams, you wont have 1000 on 1000 communication. There will be subtasks, people a bit more specialized at organization and communication. Topologically, you will have a graph of people passing through specialized communication nodes. I think it is unavoidable.
There is no reason however for seeing these nodes as “above” the others. It is out of habit that we organize things as a pyramid, but the fact is if a dev or a maintainer disagree, they have no way to force each other. Resolution comes from overall consensus, and the reason why Linus Torvalds is often the arbiter of these cases is because he is very respected by the rest of the community, but whole forks have existed (and have been reintegrated).
Open source politics is quite different from what people are used to. The ability to fork a whole project gives a mean of resistance that no other organization has.
Fair points, maybe it does count after all