This I think is the main problem. Humanity began as an anarchy and formed governments, and by the definition of anarchy, there'd be no one to stop it happening again.

Anarchy is wonderful idea but is nearly impossible

This depends entirely on the form of "anarchy". There are many societies which lack a state (primitive Native American tribes, most monasteries, part of Spain during the civil war, etc etc)

You can't group anarchy into one term and assert "by definition" it will happen again. Humans in a tribal state are vastly different than humans today in ways too numerous to list. Your anarchy -> state progression assumes that once the state is gone, we will go back to living in caves and hunting-gathering, which almost nobody (and certainly not myself) is advocating.

Obviously if we just tore the state away immediately, some chaos, power struggles, etc would ensue, and another one would take its place. This happens all the time. The interesting question anarchism brings up is which transitory methods we should use to get there. This is where the line between anarchism and Marxism/communism becomes rather blurred. Given that a collectivist-anarchist society is not feasible with the culture we have today, how do we change the culture to the point that it is feasible? This was the aim of the Russian and Chinese revolutions, both just happened to fail miserably. However, we should not give up hope, but rather use these mistakes as an opportunity to learn how to enact a successful revolution.

It may be impossible today, but that does not mean it won't be possible in the future, nor does it mean we should give up striving towards it.

The idea that "human nature" means that anarchy will never work is erroneous to the point of absurd. Countless societies have operated on mutualist, collectivist terms. The idea of man being selfish, egoist, etc is a rather western, capitalist concept - many early European societies, as well as Eastern societies, operated not on individual self-interest, but on selfless devotion to a group, the collective, etc.

In addition, in any society, we see a myriad of people with a myriad of traits. Some are extraordinarily selfish hedonists, others are selfless, doing volunteer work, helping those in need, etc. Are the selfless people "not human" or "unnatural"? No, they're just another expression of human characteristics.

Why are some people selfish and others kind and generous? If they answer is anything but "A substantial portion of the population is genetically hardwired to be self-interested, and regardless what sort of society they are exposed to, they will act that way" (an idea which has absolutely no evidential basis, and is rather absurd), then anarchism is feasible given the right circumstances.

Nice post. Some things I was gonna post but didn't have the wherewithal.

I think that as global consciousness evolves toward greater enlightenment we will begin to see the manifestation of the circumstances that you're alluding to. I'm very hesitant to throw the label of anarchy on such a situation and I believe part of the problem is that the term to some denotes a kind of dystopian society and for others quite the opposite, a sort of soft communism. I do think that in what you're referring to is a bit of the latter mixed with some pretty heavy idealism. I don't believe that humans are beyond achieving that ideal, but I'm fairly hard pressed to call it anarchy, simply because of the myriad of connotations that the term is already saturated with.

watch the movie "Watchmen" beginning to End

the end is the closest we could ever get to anarchy, and even that probably wouldn't last.

Contrary to popular belief, anarchy is not necessarily some kind of natural state. Cardboard Adolescent wrote that animals don't form governments. That may be true, but hierarchies of power where most mass towards the bottom and you get fewer on top is very common. When you go to feed the ducks in your park, you may assume that every duck you feed has a place in the duck population hierarchy. The ones closest to you which get the most food are likely on top of this hierarchy while the birds in the back are at the bottom.

Something which is important in evolutionary biology and which also is highly relevant to an anarchy discussion is the concept of stable states. Sometimes, the optimal strategy for everyone in a population would be to be nice to everyone all the time. That would benefit everyone the most. However, that can't easily evolve because even if it sounds nice, such a strategy may get exploited. Let's say you have a society where everyone shares food with eachother. If an individual appears in that population that does not share food, but only takes it, that individual would thrive - he or she would get more food than anyone else. Although everyone sharing sounds good, the social environment in that population would greatly reward the exploitive behaviour.

You can apply this principle to groups of people. I think one of the most important things a society should do is increase the living standards of the people in it, now and for the future. To do that, you have to create a societal environment where it is possible for people to be sharers because that is what benefits us all. This is only feasible if society has also created an environment where exploiters cannot thrive, one that punishes exploitation.

I find it hard to imagine anarchic societies where the strong will not be rewarded for exploiting the weak. We need some kind of central authority with the power to ensure that negative actions have negative consequences, create an environment that punishes exploitation. Neither is anarchy in any way "natural". Believing it's for the best is something I generally consider wishy-washy.

I'm no anarchist and I've never paid mind to politics, but if these Tory cunts deprive me my right to my seventeen wanks a day then I'm taking it to the streets.

Meh, there aren't really any words you can use to describe it that aren't saturated with negative connotation. By strict definition, it is anarchy (a stateless society) and it is communism (a classless, stateless society without property). Unfortunately, you say "anarchy" and people think Molotov ****tails [edit: Silly censor.] you say "communism" and people think gulags.

I only used "anarchy" because the discussion began with the term. Typically I say communism, simply because it is strictly the most accurate, but that generally has even more baggage.

Indeed, that's my point. We should not constrain ourselves to what is perceived as "natural" or "unnatural" societal structures, but rather look towards what is possible, and what is ideal. Evolution got us here, but it also gave us the ability to reason, to go beyond our biological conditioning if the situation deems it necessary.