Can we have order and security without government?

First, ask yourself whether government really protects us against criminals.

Government makes law, but laws are not carried out by them. Instead, it is the police,
detectives, state forces, judges, lawyers, prison wardens who are responsible for
successful implementation of laws. Government can make any laws they want, but if
there were no police to punish the law-breakers, would the laws be still as effective in
maintaining order and security?
he legislatures pass laws, the judges interpret them, the various officials e!ecute
them, the police track and arrest the criminal, and finally the prison warden gets him
into custody. "umerous persons and institutions are busy ensuring that laws are still in
place and law-breakers are punished dutifully.
his whole cumbersome process is not possible without the support of the ta!payers#
money. In other words, it is not the government, but the ta!-paying citi$ens who are
ultimately responsible for making the laws effective in maintaining order and security.
%ence, what little order and peace we do have is due to the good common sense and
joint efforts of the people, not so much of the government.
Who will protect us against the criminals?
&ssuming that 'without government (and hence without laws), people would rob and
murder.* If they really would, why would they commit such crimes? +ould they do it
just for the pleasure of it or because of certain reasons?
,rime is the result of economic conditions, of social ine-uality, of wrongs and evils of
which government and monopoly are the parents. Government and law can only
punish the criminal, but not prevent crimes. %owever, it is possible to eliminate crime
by doing away with the conditions that create it.
In other words, simply by removing government, crime rates will plummet. ,rimes
resulting from government, from its- oppression and injustice, from ine-uality and
poverty, will disappear. hese constitute by far the greatest percentage of crime.
+ithout government, there will not be many criminals to speak of.
How would anarchists deal with anti-social crimes?
,rime is the result of hierarchy. the abolition of hierarchy will cause it to disappear.
/01 of crime is caused by patriarchy, private property and capitalism (stealing, etc.).
its abolition will result in the end of /01 of crime. +hat little is left over could be
better dealt with by the community than by any police force.
2any historical pre-capitalist societies had little or no crime. a few weeks after the
3panish 4evolution began crime plummeted. he state has proven completely
incapable of combating crime - it has been trying to prevent crime for years yet has
been a complete failure. &t best it merely punishes people after the fact.
Anarchy vs. Government
&narchy would begin by feeding the 5criminal5 and securing him work instead of first
watching him, arresting, trying, and imprisoning him, and finally ending by feeding
him and the many others who have to watch and feed him. 3urely even this e!ample
shows how much more sensible and simpler life would be under &narchism than now.
Anarchy does not cause violence
he truth is that in every country, in every social movement, violence has been a part
of the struggle from time immemorial. 6ven the "a$arene, who came to preach the
gospel of peace, resorted to violence to drive the money changers out of the temple.
&s we have seen, acts of political violence have been committed not only by
&narchists, 3ocialists, and revolutionists of all kinds, but also by patriots and
nationalists, by 7emocrats and 4epublicans, by suffragettes, by conservatives and
reactionaries, by monarchists and royalists, and even by religionists and devout
,hristians.
+e know now that it could not have been any particular idea or 5ism5 that influenced
their acts, because the most varied ideas and 5isms5 produced similar deeds. I have
given as the reason individual temperament and the general feeling about violence.
What about Human Nature
If human nature is bad then hierarchy should be abolished because those on the top
will inevitably abuse their power. If human nature is good then there is no need for
hierarchy because people will do good things without being dominated by others.
6ither way, we should have anarchy. If people are too evil to rule themselves then
they are far too evil to rule other people. he immense majority of human history has
been lived in hunter-gatherer societies, a form of primitivist anarchy. If human nature
favors any particular social system it favors hunter-gatherer anarchy because that is
what the majority of human history has been lived in. Given the immense diversity of
social systems humans have created over the eons it is unlikely that human nature, if it
even e!ists, plays a great role in determining social structure.
Coordination and Administration
It is possible to coordinate activities without hierarchy. &ny group of people can get
together and hold a general assembly where they can divvy up the tasks they need to
do and decide who will do what. If needed they can assign one or more people to act
as coordinators. 3uch coordinators would simply implement the plans developed by
the general assembly and would have no authority themselves. In the 8krainian and
3panish 4evolutions when workers took over factories the worker assemblies often
created factory committees that performed administrative and coordination tasks.
7ecision making power stayed with the worker assemblies, the factory committees
simply implemented what the workers decided in their assemblies. ,oordination
between multiple assemblies can be done through the council system.