> "Groups under a certain size (Dunbar * ?) can be managed socially with personal reputation and shame and shunning and all that."

You're just trading one hierarchy for another; an official and overt hierarchy traded for an unspoken social popularity hierarchy. Like students in highschool, officially everybody is on the same footing with each other. But in reality the pecking order exists and is rigidly enforced through 'personal reputation and shame and shunning and all that.' Nasty and manipulative people often rise to the top in this sort of environment.

Oh yeah, I'm not saying it's fun for everyone. But when people say we don't need a state because humans can naturally organize themselves, that's the organization. And it only really works up to a certain number.

This comment and the replies are based on incorrect assumptions. Is this context the words "hierarchy" and "authority" are used exclusively to refer to the coercive aspect that can exist. Anarchism does not oppose social organization in itself!

The whole point about "unspoken social popularity" and tyranny of of structurelessness is based on a misunderstanding.

> Is this context the words "hierarchy" and "authority" are used exclusively to refer to the coercive aspect that can exist. Anarchism does not oppose social organization in itself!

I think the point is that even in the absence of explicit hierarchy, you can still have coercion in the form of shaming/shunning/etc.

I'll recommend to bystanders (I assume you're already familiar with it from your comment), the seminal "Tyranny of Structurelessness", which makes this point lucidly.

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

I love this essay and I've shared it with many anarchists (or "anarchists") who have dismissed it entirely without engaging in the ideas at all.

I'm fairly anarchist-leaning, but I definitely see the applications for authority and hierarchy, specifically in the contexts of justice and finite resource distribution.

>Groups under a certain size (Dunbar * ?) can be managed socially with personal reputation and shame and shunning and all that.

Dunbar times two (~250 as seen here https://darrinchatter.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/blog-15...)

> Groups under a certain size (Dunbar * ?) can be managed socially with personal reputation and shame and shunning and all that.

In the absence of a (strong) state, those sorts of groups will just become clans/tribes that act like a proto-state. Just look at the problems of governance in Afghanistan.

Many people in Afghanistan have a long, specific religious and cultural history supporting, among other things, patriarchal organization. We shouldn't think of the current situation in Afghanistan as the natural outcome of any random large group of people existing outside a modern nation-state.

> Many people in Afghanistan have a long, specific religious and cultural history supporting, among other things, patriarchal organization.

Right, this is the kind of thing that tends to emerge in the absence of a formal state. You get a proto-state supported by the local culture and traditions.

That's a little backwards: something like the modern state might emerge from groups of people living in any number of ways. Clans/tribes don't emerge from the lack of a state. The state as we think of it is very recent in human history, after all.

Also you originally referred to the "problems of governance in Afghanistan" which I took to mean the warlordism, violence, suppression of women and so on. I was pointing out that these problems are more tied to the specific cultural and religious history of that area. If by governance problems you were instead referring to the strictly administrative or bureaucratic challenges you might encounter trying to, for example, organize a collection of peaceful worker communes, then I misunderstood.

> Clans/tribes don't emerge from the lack of a state. The state as we think of it is very recent in human history, after all.

Might wanna reread what you wrote there.

If it's from a lack of a state, why would states being recent be an issue? Though I would phrase it as, "in the absence of a state."

I don't totally understand your response. "Clans/tribes", which I think you originally used as a catch-all for the many and varied forms of local government over the past ten+ millennia of human history, predate the modern state. They don't emerge from the lack or absence of a state any more than freedom arises from the lack or absence of a jail.

All of my comments have been, I hope respectfully, pushing back on the implication that the modern nation-state is the natural form of government and that in its absence people will necessarily find themselves members of small, violently feuding patriarchal groups.

Those sorts of clans/tribes are a lot larger than Dunbar's number. But you're right that they're the first and easiest step in actual large-scale social organization.