Why Is Anarchist Society Utopic?

“Disorder, chaos, anarchy: now that's fun!” – says Top Dollar in 1994 movie The Crow. There is nothing wrong with that, right? But here is the problem: anarchism is indeed perceived as something “fun”: pure chaotic disorder with no restrictions to do anything. This point being the most adopted creates a need for proper discussion on what anarchy really is – and why, for better or worse, it is rather utopic for a modern society. “Why Is Anarchist Society Utopic?” article investigates anarchism as a socio-political model, which is historically rooted in anti-authoritarian traditions: elimination and further no need for government or any other type of authority, voluntary cooperation and self-governance among individuals and groups.

Historically, anarchist ideas have inspired multiple movements and experiments in stateless or semi-stateless communities, yet such experiments have collapsed under internal contradictions or external pressures. In our contemporary information society, cyber-anarchism, digital decentralisation and “crypto-anarchist” visions seem to offer a new chance for anarchist structures. Nevertheless, the same technological networks that seem to decentralise power often create new forms of domination: through surveillance, algorithmic control, data extraction and corporate monopolies. Beyond structural and socio-economic problems, deep psychological, cultural and moral obstacles prevent broad adoption of anarchist social forms.

Drawing on classical anarchist writers (such as Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin), critical social theory (notably Herbert Marcuse), and existential-moral critique inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the article argues why anarchist society remains a utopia: not because its ideals are incoherent, but because human societies and human natures are not yet prepared for the depth of freedom, responsibility and solidarity it requires.

Historical Background

Origins of Anarchist Ideology

Most of the people mistakenly match anarchy with chaos: no government to control citizens’ actions will necessarily result in criminal mayhem, people neglecting free will and overall lack of economical and societal growth. But in fact, anarchism is structured and has purpose: abolishment of coercive institutions (state and hierarchies) and their replacement with free associations, voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. In words of Herbert Marcuse, the goal of anarchy is reorganisation of society into egalitarian and horizontal structure, allowing real democracy: freedom to govern yourself instead of freedom to choose who will govern you.

Among early ideologists, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (“What Is Property?”) criticises private ownership, naming it “theft” in cases of property coming into possession through wealth without personal labour, because it leads to exploitation and inequality. Anarchy borrows his idea of property distribution and its usage among workers in self-managed groups.

Mikhail Bakunin in his “God and the State” work proclaims the need to abolish any type of coercive external governance, such as the state and religion, and advocates for a society based on voluntary association, mutual aid and decentralised self-governance, where individuals cooperate freely without being forced externally. Emma Goldman was of a similar opinion: her core idea in “Anarchism and Other Essays” is that true liberation requires discontinuation of government, patriarchy and certain social norms in order to foster individual freedom, voluntary cooperation, mutual respect and social well-being (including feminism).

Peter Kropotkin has later expanded these ideas towards collectivism and collective freedom. His work “Mutual Aid” declared that cooperation, and not competition, is the primary driver of evolution. In the end, it is mutual support, empathy and voluntary association within species that foster social institutions – exactly the core pillars of anarchism.

Historical Examples of Anarchist Societies

Anarchist ideology is not limited to just writing and has shown concrete attempts to implement the anarchist ideas through workers' unions, revolts and even revolutions.

For example, workers’ Paris Commune (1871) experimented with self-management and decentralised democracy. Just 72 days was enough to elect representatives, equalise wages, abolish army and police and implement progressive anti-religious and social policies. Later Karl Marx viewed the Commune as a form of “dictatorship of the proletariat” that proved the necessity to replace the existing bourgeois state machine with temporary workers' government. At the same time, Mikhail Bakunin believed that the community members did not act radically enough against the idea of authority itself, and that any form of state, even a workers' state, would inevitably lead to a new form of oppression. Similarly, during the Russian Civil War, the Free Territory (Ukraine) (1918–1921), associated with Nestor Makhno, attempted a stateless community. The society promoted free agricultural communes, local decision-making councils and mutual aid. Although, the society was later criticised by anarchism ideologists for, among other things, the lack of true statelessness and repressions.

Another social revolution happened in Spain and was given a name of Revolutionary Catalonia (1936–1939). This society was based on principles of self-management, equality and mutual aid, where decisions were made through worker assemblies and local committees, such as The CNT (National Confederation of Labour) and FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation). Murray Bookchin (“The Spanish Anarchists”) and George Orwell (“Homage to Catalonia”) saw the commune as a basis for future revolutionary movements, demonstrating the feasibility of a stateless and classless society organised around common ownership. The most significant criticism of the revolution, however, covers coercion in collectivisation and propaganda.

These historical examples, along with many smaller communal movements, show the real social potential of anarchism, stretching beyond just theory. Nevertheless, across these experiments, anarchism remains utopic: anarchist forms have almost always eventually collapsed due to external pressure or war, internal divisions or economic instability.

Philosophical Foundations: Freedom and Authority  

Negative Freedom vs. Positive Freedom

Anarchism as a leftist political movement places freedom at the top of its list of values. And while from the first glance it may seem that anarchy gives people freedom from interference, mostly governmental, (also called “Negative freedom”) – social anarchism emphasises “Positive freedom”, the freedom to: to act and self-determine. This dual approach ensures freedom isn't just abstract but real for everyone. Anarchists view hierarchical authority (state, capital, class) as the opposite to true human freedom, because it deprives people of self-consciousness and critical thinking.

Yet human nature and social psychology introduce challenges. On one hand, classical anarchists like Kropotkin argued that cooperation and mutual aid are in reality not utopian fantasies but are rooted in evolutionary and social realities.

The Problem of One-Dimensional Society

On the other hand, modern anarchist ideologists highlight that advanced industrial societies are built in a way that weaken individual capacities for autonomy, solidarity and resistance. In “One-Dimensional Man”, Herbert Marcuse argues that societies create "false freedoms" through mass media, advertising and consumer culture, that serve to integrate individuals into a system of total control. In simple words, while being presented as a freedom of vote, the system in fact only lets people to choose their “masters” among pre-defined options, which means people become forcibly integrated into the social order not through coercion but through consent.

“Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves” – Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 1964.

For Marcuse, “false freedom” is simply perceived by people as comfortable and safe, which helps governments use it as a mask for domination in order to eliminate any revolutionary potential. This means, even if anarchist ethics are theoretically coherent, the established psychological and structural frameworks make the realisation of true autonomy extremely difficult.

The Utopia Regarding The Information Society

Modern technological development may bring up a new question: could the achievements of an information society, learning from historical difficulties of sustaining anarchist communes, give birth to anarchism in new, achievable forms? The reasons to assume so include the rise of digital decentralisation, peer production and cryptographic networks.

Digital Decentralisation as a Neo-Anarchist Dream

Early Cyber-Utopianism

At the dawn of the Internet certain political activists believed that digital networks could reimagine traditional authority system. This wave of cyber-utopianism was reflected in John Perry Barlow’s “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”: cyberspace was named a new realm beyond traditional view of government, free from physical borders and hierarchies and, vice versa, truly self-governing. The society was expected to erase physical regulations like property, speech and identity rules, eliminating any prejudice by race, economic power or station of birth.

Later in the 1990s, cyberspace appeared as a network where no single member could dominate. Ideologists such as Howard Rheingold popularised the idea of “virtual communities” capable of organising themselves outside traditional political structures. In this sense, the early Internet seemed to overlap cyber-utopianism with neo-anarchism by offering tools to coordinate societies without government and borders.

Peer Production and Commons as Anarchist Structures

The rise ofdigital tools that enabled peer production influenced the new wave of anarchist idea of mutual aid and voluntary participation: systems, in which large and physically separated groups collaborate to create shared resources outside of market or state control, became widely available. One of the most well-known examples is Wikipedia, a global knowledge storage voluntarily created and maintained by ordinary users. Transparency and absence of hierarchy, its key concepts, in many ways embody ideas familiar with anarchist theory, such as collective ownership and decentralised decision-making. Similarly, the Open-source Software Movement demonstrates how complex infrastructure can be built through voluntary labour and peer review to achieve equal access. The Creative Commons ecosystem as a way for creators to easily and freely share their works and for others to use them with certain rules challenges the established capitalist model of intellectual property, proposing the idea that cultural production belongs to the community.

Anarchist Thought in Crypto, Blockchain and DAOs

The rise of blockchain technologies, cryptocurrencies and Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) represents digital decentralisation in a different way, proposing “trust without authority” by replacing certain frameworks defined by state. To begin with, cryptocurrencies can be viewed as an attempt to bypass state monetary systems, providing individuals with financial autonomy. Likewise, DAOs promise governance without leaders: rules are embedded in transparent code, while participants collectively vote on common decisions.

This trend, however, reveals significant tensions. David Golumbia (“The Politics of Bitcoin”) argues on “libertarian distortions” of anarchism, mostly because the core ideas of crypto were drawn from right-wing anti-government ideology: there appears a conflict between anarchism’s focus on mutual aid, cooperation and social equality and libertarianism’s emphasis on property rights and market supremacy. Furthermore, DAOs in practice often centralise power among large token holders.

Digital Anonymity, Hacktivism and Cyber-Anarchism

Modern anarchist activism is often reflected in hacktivist and transparency-enforcing movements. Groups like Anonymous, with their fluid organisational structure, decentralised decision-making and emphasis on direct action, represent a form of digital anarchism. Their operations, such as DDoS attacks and political interventions, are conducted without formal leaders and are guided by shared goals. Then, WikiLeaks created a platform that bypassed traditional media gatekeepers and as a result reduced power centralisation. The Guerilla open-access movement, represented by figures such as Aaron Swartz, advocated that academic knowledge should be free for all. Swartz’s “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” explicitly names the enclosure of information a moral injustice. He challenges institutional control over knowledge, positioning equal access to digital information as a human right. Gabriella Coleman (“Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous”) has shown how hacker collectives operate through non-hierarchical organisation and shared technical norms, value autonomy, transparency and resistance.

However, these movements also reveal a key limitation: they only disrupt power rather than replacing it. Anonymous can mobilise globally within hours, but it cannot maintain sustained governance. WikiLeaks exposed systemic injustices but faced internal power conflicts. Open-access Guerrilla movement highlights inequality but cannot replace academic publishing systems.

Why the Information Society Makes Anarchy Look Possible

Digital networks create an illusion of equality and flattened hierarchy. In reality, democratic environment with equal distribution of visibility and voice are legitimate only online, which reinforces the belief that the Internet naturally leads to non-hierarchical societies. But power in fact is still centralised around servers, platforms and algorithms, and the architecture of the information society privileges those who control over them. As Shoshana Zuboff’s “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” demonstrates, society is built in a way that praises the widespread collection and commercialisation of personal data by corporations, which means data-driven platforms indeed concentrate various forms of control in corporate hands. Zuboff notes that surveillance capitalism extends beyond the realm of private firms and transforms into accumulating not only assets, but rights, which draw parallels with government surveillance.

The paradox is clear: the more technologically decentralised the network is, the more socially centralised the power becomes. For example, global corporations, such as Meta and Amazon, control communication channels for billions of people. Cloud infrastructure, app ecosystems and advertising networks do not abolish authority, but reassemble it in new forms. Therefore, the information society makes anarchism feel possible because it visibly democratises social interaction, but it simultaneously strengthens hidden systems of governance and surveillance.

Dystopical Aspects

As we have seen through historical examples and modern frameworks, anarchist society may seem to have quite a promising potential. Still, certain structural, psychological and moral barriers keep such a society utopic (impossible), with some aspects even viewed as dystopic (extremely unfavourable).

Human Psychological Barriers

Preference for Authority

The core idea of anarchism is freedom without authority, although it is believed that people simply see stability and predictability in abiding to certain government or hierarchy. In "Escape from Freedom", Erich Fromm argues that individuals are likely to perceive freedom from authority and freedom to be your own law not as liberation, but as a source of anxiety. This happens due to the fact that after the abolition of traditional authorities, such as government or religion, people are confronted with responsibility for their own choices and actions, which is usually avoided. In this sense, authority takes over this burden of decision-making, and many people would rather choose to escape this freedom by submitting to new forms of authority. Fromm even suggests that after society is liberated from traditional authority, under stress and uncertainty, it may lean towards even more authoritarian power sources.

Continuing, Marcuse argues that individuals in modern capitalist society are internally shaped by ideology through mass media, consumer culture, competition and bureaucracy to desire exactly what government brings them: consumption, comfort and hierarchy. For this society, anarchy is not only unrealistic, but irrational and inconvenient. Furthermore, such “propaganda” deprives humans of revolutionary thinking alongside with ability to see positive in mutual aid and collective governance.

The Fear of Freedom and Responsibility

Freedom is viewed as a burden and not clearly liberating as well in the novel “Demons” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, where the author illustrates psychological unpreparedness for radical freedom. The fear of inner freedom and responsibility is expressed in the characters’ desire for radical ideas to relieve themselves of the burden of personal choice and moral responsibility, which leads to chaos, destruction and obsession. Ideological “anxiety” is preferred to true freedom and responsibility for their lives and actions, while the desire for “liberation” through the destruction of the old world is viewed as an escape from responsibility for the creation of a new, more complex world. Having rejected God and the state, the characters are left with no own moral ideals and have to surrender to the “demons” of ideas that ultimately destroy both themselves and society.

According to Dostoevsky, the lack of compassion and responsibility can only lead not to utopia but to spiritual and social chaos. We need individual freedom, which is realised in a community, to be fully human. Therefore, anarchism demands not only structural transformation of society but also a profound change in human perception of self.

Socio-Economic Confrontations

Certain philosophers also consider socio-economic changes in the society, that are required to achieve anarchy, as dystopic for modern communities due to established economic inequality and geopolitical competition. First, in opposition to anarchist assumption that community is able to naturally regulate itself, Karl Polanyi (“The Great Transformation”) states that self-regulating market economy is dystopian and unnatural, because it will destroy society in an effort to commodify labour, land and money. He sees forced liberation as a source of poverty and inequality, which would, said once again, lead to an extremist countermovement, like fascism.

Second, Garrett Hardin contradicted Peter Kropotkin’s idea of mutual aid as a natural tendency in his work “The Tragedy of the Commons”. He believes that individuals in a society powered by mutual collaboration and shared resources will tend to maximise their personal gain from these shared and unregulated resources, which will lead to overuse and further to collapse of the society. Thus, collective sustainability is only possible under coordination.

In conclusion, anarchism requires complex changes in mindset and the operating way of modern societies. Taking together the aspects mentioned above, it would be essential to de-commodify the recourses in general in order to allow voluntary cooperation, as well as assure deep cultural and ethical transformation of human nature towards altruism.

Note on AI Usage

Artificial Intelligence (ChatGPT; OpenAI; GPT-4o) was used to assist in structuring my article, as well as to propose relevant and openly accessible sources in addition to my opinions and the short original list of books I had. Additionally, AI (Google Gemini) was used to clarify certain complex terms and concepts related to the topic. Apart from those, the work, its core ideas and chapters conclusions are my own.