This is a list of anarchist communities , past and present.
Throughout history, anarchists have been involved in a wide variety of communities. While there are only a few instances of large scale "anarchies" that have come about from explicitly anarchist revolutions, there are examples of societies functioning according to various anarchist principles.
Historical examples of societies successfully organized according to anarchist principles
In recent history there have been numerous instances of the collapse of state authority, sometimes prompted by war but also often due to implosion of the state. In some cases, state collapse is followed by lawlessness, rioting, looting and, if disarray lasts long enough, warlordism. Although such societies are often described as anarchy, they are not organized according to anarchist principles.
However, there are instances in which a society peacefully organizes itself without a government or other form of centralized power, along philosophically anarchist lines. A functioning society would then maintain peace without a state. It is often difficult to find and research past anarchist or semi-anarchist societies, since, as Murray Rothbard points out, "The lack of recordkeeping in stateless societies – since only government officials seem to waste time, energy, and resources on such activities – produce a tendency toward a governmental bias in the working methods of historians."
Icelandic Commonwealth (930 to 1262)
Classical ("Thing system") Iceland is an example of society where police and justice were guaranteed through a free market. Author Jared Diamond has written
Medieval Iceland had no bureaucrats, no taxes, no police, and no army. … Of the normal functions of governments elsewhere, some did not exist in Iceland, and others were privatized, including fire-fighting, criminal prosecutions and executions, and care of the poor.
Prominent anarcho-capitalist writer David D. Friedman featured classical Iceland in his book The Machinery of Freedom , and has written other papers about it.
Medieval Icelandic institutions have several peculiar and interesting characteristics; they might almost have been invented by a mad economist to test the lengths to which market systems could supplant government in its most fundamental functions. Killing was a civil offense resulting in a fine paid to the survivors of the victim. Laws were made by a "parliament," seats in which were a marketable commodity. Enforcement of law was entirely a private affair. And yet these extraordinary institutions survived for over three hundred years, and the society in which they survived appears to have been in many ways an attractive one. Its citizens were, by medieval standards, free; differences in status based on rank or sex were relatively small; and its literary, output in relation to its size has been compared, with some justice, to that of Athens.
This Icelandic "thing system" survived for several centuries. It was eventually destroyed by the Christian church, which bought up all the godards (defense agencies) creating a state monopoly. For market anarchist scholar Roderick Long, this illustrates a flaw in the thing system which differentiates it from pure anarcho-capitalism - new "startup" mutual defense units were not allowed.
The social anarchist authors of An Anarchist FAQ took issue with Friedman's portrayal of the period, arguing that the Icelandic system was pre-capitalist in nature with numerous communal institutions. Friedman accused them of misconstruing his position and not caring whether what they published was true. The authors of the FAQ admitted to making mistakes, but rejected the notion that they were uninterested in the truth, and maintained their analysis that Iceland was a communal system.
Gotland, Frisia, and the North Sea Pirates (1350 - 1520)
Piracy was rife in the North Sea and the Baltic since Viking times, but from the mid 14th Century through the dawn of the 15th a powerful guild of pirate - bandits called the Victual Brothers became a force to rival the might of the local Kingdoms and the powerful Hanseatic League. Their activities rose to the level of an intermittent insurrection across the entire region which was to last almost two centuries. The name 'Victual Brothers' came from being hired to bring food to relieve a siege and from the notion of being poor and hungry and sharing what they had. This band of pirates created havens which were organized, like many pirates in later eras, on democratic principles. They dominated the sea lanes around the Baltic sea, the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Bothnia. Preying upon ships of the Hanseatic league, they made their home in refuges on the Island of Gotland, and in the cities of Rostock, Ribnitz, Wismar and Straslund. In 1394 they occupied Visby on the Island of Gotland, which became their haven and center of operations for four years before they were finally evicted by the Teutonic Order in 1398.
After the Victual Brothers were expelled from Gotland in the wake of Queen Margarets political unification of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, many of the same pirates joined a new group called the Likedeelers which emerged in Friesland and began to ply the coasts of Holland, Brittany, and along the Atlantic coast as far south as Spain. Their name derived from their custom of dividing all their loot equally and sharing it with the poor population along the coast. Their most famous leader was Captain Störtebeker. He got his name allegedly because he could swallow four litres of beer without taking the beaker from his mouth. However, it might simply be a family name from Wismar. The Low German word "Störtebeker" means in English: "Down the drink in the beaker" . In 1401 the Hamburg warship Bunte Kuh, leading a small fleet under Commander Simon of Utrecht, caught up with Störtebeker's forces near Heligoland. After three days of running battle, Störtebeker and his crew were finally overpowered and trapped by means of a trick.
Friesland remained an effectively autonomous and ungovernable zone popular with rebels, bandits and pirates. One of the most famous was Pier Gerolfs Donia aka Grotte Pier or Lange Pier. Dania, allegedly a huge man, was radicalized when members of a Landsknecht Company called "The Black Band" who were garrisoning Friesland raped and killed his wife. He joined an anti-Hapsburg Guerilla Movement called the Arumer Zwarte Hoop "The Black Gang from Arum", which proceeded to wreak havoc against Dutch, Burgundian and English vessels on the sea, as well as the forces of the Holy Roman Empire on land. Their motto was Leaver dea as slaef" ("Better dead than slave"). In one battle Pier captured 28 Dutch ships, in another he led a force of 4000 Arumer Zwarte Hoop soldiers to capture and destroy the towns of Medemblik and Aspuren. Dania eventually retired from warfare in 1519, but was never captured or decisively defeated. The rebellion was finally put down in 1523, but the region remained partially autonomous and substantially ungovernable for centuries.
Hussite Rebellion (1414-1434)
In the early 1400s a radical religious faction called the Hussites arose in Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic, inspired by the theologian Jan Hus. Jan Hus was a disciple of the English cleric Jean Wycliffe who preached a radical doctrine of church reform which included abolishing secular power of the Church and the ordination of women as priests. He said "Woman was created in the image of God and should fear no man". Hus was invited to an ecclesiastical council in Germany to discuss his theories, where he was executed for heresy by fire in 1414.
This led to a series of violent incidents eventually breaking out into open war against Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund. A Crusade against the Hussites was called by Pope Martin V and men of nearly every nation in Europe flocked to the banner, eager to plunder the rich lands of Bohemia. In response the Hussites became far more radical and began to establish utopian societies and formed various communes with elected leaders. The radical Hussite faction called the Taborites innovated several new military tactics including the Wagenburg, the use of armored wagons as mobile fortifications manned by a militia of common people with various specialized skills, and incorporating several new weapon systems which they pioneered including the flail, the pistol and the howitzer ('houfinsce'). They found an able leader in the person of Jan Ziska, a grizzled military veteran with one eye. During the subsequent Hussite Wars The Hussites inflicted a series of stinging defeats upon five large, powerful Crusader armies which came to crush them over the next 15 years, leaving them in control of the region. Finally they went on a series of raids they called Spanilé jízdy (""Beautiful rides." ") through Germany, Hungary, and other neighboring countries who had sent troops against them, sacking and pillaging Catholic towns and reaching as far as the North Sea where they allegedly performed a pagan ritual.
The Hussites organized themselves according to democratic principles and included women in their armies and leadership councils. The radical Taborites founded a new utopian city called Tabor and experimented with extreme radical lifestyles including nudity. Eventually the moderate faction of the Hussites defeated the radical factions in an internecine squabble and Bohemia returned to the fold of Catholic Europe, but only after receiving guarantees of religious freedom and partial local autonomy whic
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