A. Accountability plays a central role in any anarchist community. In any society that is not based on a heirachical chain of command, accountability plays a pivitol role in the running and long term survival of that community. Accountability in an anarchist society is not based on trust or people doing the right thing by their neighbours, it is based on the establishment of structures that incorporate accountability within their framework.
The idea of electing or appointing recallable delegates that are ultimately responsible to the groups that entrust them with carrying out particular decisions recognises the central role of accountability in an anarchist society. The rejection by anarchits of representative democratic structures highlights how seriously accountability is taken amongst anarchists. Anarchists rejection of parliamentray democracy rests on their rejection of the ideas that representatives are given a blank cheque to make decisions on their behalf for a three or four year period. No anarchist is willing to power unless there are mechanisms and structures in place, which make those who weild power directly and immediately accountable to those they exercise power for.
The same principles that are applied to the decision making processes within an anarchist society are also extended to how wealth is distributed within that community. Allowing distribution of wealth and resources to be based on the idea that human beings will do the right thing by each other is a recipe for disaster. How wealth is created and distributed is a matter for the community as a whole. Those who area given the power to be involved in the distribution process or have been delgated the power to distribute scarce resources within the community, do so under guidelines which are decided by the community. Their positions are revocable and if there are concerns about how they are exercising the power they have been delegated, mechanisms will have been created that can trigger the recallable process if enough people think they aren't applying the guidelines they were instructed to follow.
Accountability is an integral component of an anarchist society. The rejection of the idea that rulers should be able to exercise power is linked to the fact that they are not directly accountable to the people they exercise power over. It would be ridiculous to think that a group of people that has gone to all the trouble overthrowing unaccountable rulers and rejecting heirarchical structures, would not incorporate mechanisms within the non-heirarchical community they have created that does not make those who temporarily exercise power accountable to the people they exercise power over.
Q. Would Everybody Living in an Anarchist Society be an Anarchist?
A. No! People with different political, social and cultural practices would live in an anarchist society. As members if that community, they have both the power to take part in the decision making processes within that community and the right to share in what is produced by that society. They also have the right to openly campaign for the rejection of anarchist principles and the adoption of other principles of association. They don't have the right to forcibly impose their views on others that live within that society.
The strength of an anarchist society lies in its ability to create environments and structures that promote individual security and which gives everybody in that community to develop themselves to their fullest potential. Its survival ultimately depends on people volutarily participating in the day to day running of society. People with different philosophical view points within that community would soon find they would be holding marginal positions as long as that society functions well.
In such a community few would want to go back to the situation where their everyday affairs were ruled by the whims of people who were able to exercise power over them. The situation could change in terms of crisis, especially times when the structures and institutions that have been established do not meet the needs of people in that community. In such situations, people who are articulating and promoting differnent ideas may find a receptive audience. As anarchist communities are open communities, they need to guard both against sabotage and people within that community using force to coerce people to follow them. In these situations, the community is able to activate predetermined mechanisms to stop individuals and groups within their community from sabotaging their society or using force to impose their will on the members of that community.
Q. What Energy Sources Would be used in an Anarchist Society?
A. Energy has always been and will continue to be an important part of any society's infrastructure. Increasing population levels and diminishing acces to finite resources has made the search for renewable energy sources much more important than it was in the past. Anarchist communities would, over time change their resources of energy from non-renewable to renewable sources.
They do this not just because sources will run out at the current levels of usage. They will transfer to renewable sources because wind, sun, waste products and water are decentralised energy sources. Anarchists want to abolish the State apparatus and replace it with a federation of community and work place councils because they are concerned that small groups can capture State power and use the infrastructure of the State to impose their will on millions of people. Centalised forms of power production that need highly sophisticated infrastrusture are just as likely to be able to be controlled by a small group of people as the State apparatus is.
Anarchist communities would produce power to service their communities by building local energy infrastructure that uses renewable material. Exess production would be downloaded into a grid that provides power to a federation of communities. If one community does not have access to renewable resources one year, they would be able to obtain their power needs off the common grid.
A federation of anarchist communities could not be destroyed by destroying a centralised energy source, as each community has the capacity to produce energy for itself irrespective of whether it is attached to the common grid or not. The decentralisation of energy sources should be just as important an issue among anarchists as is the abolition of the State. In both cases small groups have the capacity to impose their will on million of people.
Q. How would an Anarchist Society deal with those Intractible Problems when Relationships and Families disintegrate?
A. There are no easy answers within our society or an anarchist society that can be automatically implemented to deal with the problems associated with familiy and relationship breakdowns. The fundemental difference in both communities, centres around the financial dependence that a significant number of people experience in the communities we currently live and work in. Access to resources within an anarchist society is not determined by who you are or by what you do. Every member of that community is guarenteed access to the resources that society produces.
Loosening the financial bonds involved in a relationship makes it easier for individuals to leave unsatisfactory relationships. The fact that individuals are financially independent in an anarchist community doesn't help to resolve the personal issues involved in a relationship breakdown but it helps to deal with the consequences of the breakdown. Personal assistance may be easier to access in an anarchist society than the ones we currently live in. Community mediation centres form an important focus for initial discussions between people facing difficulties. Staff from other neighbourhoods would work in these centres so that they initially have the option of dealing with the matters raised privately.
If no resolution is possible and the different parties find themselves in a threatening situation, the matters raised would have to be dealt with at another level. If intervention occurs, it is important that any alternative arrangements that are made to look after the dependents, doesn't cause them more trauma and suffering. All too often dependents who are rmoved from difficult and unsatisfactory arrangements, find themsleves in themselves in situations were both long and short term outcomes are much worse than they would have been if they had been left in the same environment and were offered support to deal with the problems they face.
Life in an anarchist community gives people options, it doesn't solve personal problems. As resources are held in common and profits are don't need to be generated, more time, effort and community resources can be allocated to deal with the inevitable problems that occur when relationships falter and disintegrate.