An Anarchist Safety Net
Zach Perrin
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A realistic strategy for bottom-up change lies in what we can do right now, outside of anything involving the state. Free market activism must challenge the state with institutions that can do the job better and in a more voluntary way. But how do we replace what the state used to do and make it more voluntary? How can we build an anarchist safety net?
The answer could be to start cooperatives. Cooperatives that operate on principles of mutual aid allow the working class to take care of each other without relying on the government or another economic class. Look in your communities. Find a need that must be fulfilled. Start an enterprise with shared ownership among all the people with that same need. Own the solution together and make decisions democratically. This is how you can organize a whole safety net in an anarchist society—through cooperative mutual aid.
How do we turn these cooperatives into a full-on safety net for an anarchist system? Today, we have the internet, enabling people to organize cooperatives nationally and even internationally. Let’s say some workers in the same industry identify a shared need that is common across the industry. Through online communication, this cooperative could serve that industry nationwide.
Of course, cooperatives will need physical structures in communities. We need to find physical locations which are embedded into the community and be able to sufficiently pay for them like any other business. But the essence of them is the members—the ordinary people who come together at workplaces in geographical areas supported by the system. When we have enough cooperatives taking up real estate in certain geographical locations, we need to group the cooperatives in any given area into what I would call the local commune.
The cooperative provides the need nationwide, but local communes manage its delivery on a local level. These communes unite people in various industries and connect them to multiple cooperatives, creating a decentralized, participatory safety net.
The cooperative focuses on fulfilling a specific need across a wide area, while the commune acts as a voluntary group of local people with diverse needs, connecting them to cooperatives that address those needs. The result is a consortium of social services that exists entirely in a free market—funded and owned by the very people who use the services. This ensures everyone is cared for, even in an anarchist society, without the need for a state.
The members of any given cooperative in any given commune would form a syndicate. The syndicates would decide some things on their own and some things as a commune depending on whether it affects the specific cooperative members or the larger ecosystem of all the cooperatives. But through the syndicate, the commune connects from the local area to the national and even international market.
As a market anarchist, I do not believe democracy can or should completely disappear. Instead, the question becomes: How can we practice democracy voluntarily, in ways that serve us positively? While anarchism rejects systems of coercion, it embraces diverse property arrangements—not just private property and not just social property.
This diversity opens space for voluntary democratic systems, like cooperatives, communes, and syndicates, particularly when meeting society’s needs. While equality should never force everyone to be the same, true economic democracy is about giving everyone access to what they need to become the best version of themselves.
A system of participatory democracy divides power down to the individual. Each person has the most power over decisions affecting them directly. Communes support this by dividing unique needs into separate syndicates, so everyone maintains control over their specific needs. Decentralized decision-making gives individuals their rightful say, ensuring power remains distributed.
This system—operating in a free market without state intervention—does not seek to dominate the market entirely. It echoes an anarcho-capitalism that values true “live-and-let-live” principles. It tolerates voluntary democratic arrangements, even if they involve collective decision-making, because anarchism must offer ways to organize the provision of society’s needs.
There needs to be a dual-pronged approach to achieve this system: grassroots action and political engagement. Politically, libertarian policies should prioritize “cooperativization” of state resources instead of neoliberal privatization. This means transitioning government services to cooperatives and communes owned by those who directly use them.
However, to reach this stage, we must build the foundation ourselves. It begins with creating cooperatives and communes in our communities. If this model gains traction, political efforts can follow, supporting the sale of government resources to the people who use those services. The state dissolves, replaced by a voluntary, decentralized system rooted in mutual aid.
Anarchism’s vision for the future is not one of forced uniformity but of diverse, voluntary systems working together to fulfill human needs. Cooperatives and communes offer a blueprint for how we can build an anarchist safety net—starting today.
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