Honestly I disagree they had anarchism. Seemed they had a sort of collectivism where they replaced some authority with "computers that hand out assignments" and pseudo-authority from the capital (Anares? I forgot).

It looked like an odd system where presumably you were free but conditions were so hars and social pressure so strong that you did what was required. Sweden in space desert.

Anarchism means 'without leaders,' not without society.

Actual anarchists are generally interested in how to design a society that can function at a high level without leaders. This usually involves some mix of process and committees, with some serious thought about how to handle delegation of decision making without concentrating power in too few hands.

Honestly sounds like an extreme form of communism.

One of the benefits of hierarchy is that decision comes with personal responsibility (skin in the game?). Diluting all responsibility onto the whole population mean no accountability and shadow power structures.

I do think it is more about a form of Anarcho-syndicalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism

"social pressure so strong"

Wasn't that one of the points of the book?

Indeed, due to the extreme conditions, social pressure and conditioning since a young age, they were free in name only.

I really liked how balanced the view is the book takes. There was a point where I thought this was Ayn Rand in space, but it's definitely not. It's quite human and shows the inherent flaws that will come organizing humans either way.

My impression was that they had a form of communism on the moon, with all the associated problems. I didn’t see it as anarchic or libertarian. Quite the opposite, it felt unfree like communist societies in Eastern Europe.