10 Instances Of Anarchist Societies That Actually Worked

“Anarchy” gets used like it means “everyone screaming, nothing functioning, and somehow the Wi-Fi is still down.”
But in political theory, anarchism is about skepticism toward unjustified authority and building social order through
voluntary association, mutual aid, and bottom-up decision-makingoften via assemblies, rotating roles, and cooperative
economics. In other words: less “Mad Max,” more “neighborhood group chat, but competent.”

Did anarchist (or strongly anarchist-inspired) societies ever work in the real world? Not as flawless utopiasbecause
humans are humansbut yes: there have been multiple historical and modern examples where communities organized
services, security, production, and conflict resolution with minimal state hierarchy, sometimes for years, sometimes
for decades, and sometimes under extremely hard conditions.

What Counts As An “Anarchist Society That Worked”?

For this list, “worked” doesn’t mean “lasted forever” or “had zero conflict.” It means the community:
(1) formed durable institutions (assemblies, councils, cooperatives, customary law, etc.),
(2) solved real problems (food, safety, schooling, healthcare, dispute resolution),
(3) kept legitimacy through participation rather than coercion, and
(4) sustained itself long enough to show it wasn’t just a weekend campout with better slogans.

Also: some entries are explicitly anarchist; others are anarchist-adjacentautonomous, stateless (or quasi-stateless),
and horizontally governedoften cited in serious discussions about how order can emerge without top-down control.
If you want a pure-ideology list only, you’d end up skipping some of the most interesting “it actually functioned”
cases.

10 Instances Of Anarchist Societies That Actually Worked

1) Revolutionary Catalonia’s Worker Self-Management (Spain, 1936–1937+)

After the 1936 military coup attempt, large parts of Cataloniaespecially Barcelonasaw workers and unions take over
factories, transit, and services. Many workplaces operated through assemblies and elected (often recallable) committees,
aiming for “worker control” rather than boss control. The point wasn’t chaos; it was continuity: keep production going,
keep cities moving, and make decisions closer to the people doing the work.

Even critics acknowledge the scale was extraordinary: thousands of enterprises and community services were reorganized
quickly, while wartime pressures forced constant improvisation. That’s not a small footnote; it’s a reminder that
“horizontal” doesn’t mean “unorganized”it can mean organized differently.

2) The Aragon Rural Collectives (Spain, 1936–1937)

In Aragon, many villages collectivized land and tools through local assemblies. In a lot of places, participation was
voluntary, and communities experimented with shared storehouses, work teams, and local distribution systems.
Committees often rotated, and major decisions went back to town meetingsbasically “direct democracy” with farm boots on.

The collectives faced huge constraints (war, supply issues, political infighting). Still, they managed to coordinate
planting, harvesting, and distribution at scale for a time, and their rapid emergence shows how quickly local governance
can form when people trust assemblies more than distant authorities.

3) The Makhnovist Free Territory (Ukraine, 1918–1921)

During the chaos of revolution and civil war, parts of southern Ukraine saw anarchist-aligned organizing associated with
Nestor Makhno. The “Free Territory” is often described as an attempt at bottom-up councils (“free soviets”) and local
autonomy, with peasants organizing production and defense in a landscape where multiple armies and governments were
competing for control.

It’s hard to evaluate any wartime experiment as if it were a peaceful civics projectbut that’s also the point:
amid instability, some communities still tried to build decision-making structures that were participatory rather than
strictly top-down. The result wasn’t a perfect society; it was an example of anarchist governance attempting to function
under extreme pressure.

4) The Korean People’s Association in Manchuria (KPAM) / “Shinmin Prefecture” (1929–1931)

One of the lesser-known but frequently discussed cases is the Korean People’s Association in Manchuria, sometimes framed
as an autonomous zone created by Korean anarchists and allies among Korean migrants in Manchuria. Accounts describe efforts
to build cooperative agriculture, education, and community administrationoften emphasizing federation and local councils
rather than a centralized state apparatus.

The experiment was short-lived, squeezed by regional conflict and imperial pressures. But its significance is that it
wasn’t just theory: it was an attempt to build “everyday governance” (food, schooling, coordination) with explicitly
anti-authoritarian principles in mind.

5) The Paris Commune as a Proto-Anarchist Laboratory (France, 1871)

The Paris Commune wasn’t “anarchist” in a single-party sense (it included multiple radical currents), but it mattered
enormously to anarchists because it showed how a city could run itself through delegates, clubs, neighborhood-level
mobilization, and worker-centered reformsbriefly, but concretely.

The Commune’s life was short, yet it demonstrated a core anarchist claim: governance can be decentralized and still
functional. Even a few months of municipal self-organization became a reference point for later libertarian socialists
because it turned “people can self-govern” from a slogan into a lived (if endangered) reality.

6) Freetown Christiania (Copenhagen, 1971–Present)

Christiania began in 1971 when people occupied abandoned military barracks and tried to build a self-governing community.
Over time, it developed communal rules, shared infrastructure, and local decision-making traditionsoften associated with
consensus politics and a strong “community first” ethos.

Is it a flawless paradise? No. But it has endured for decades, which is a pretty solid answer to the question “can a
semi-autonomous, self-governed neighborhood exist without immediately combusting?” Christiania’s long run shows that
alternative governance can stabilizeespecially when residents commit to norms, participation, and a shared sense of place.

7) Zapatista Autonomous Governance (Chiapas, Mexico, 1994–Present)

The Zapatistas (EZLN and supporting communities) are not “anarchist” in a neat label sense, but they’ve been one of the
most visible modern examples of autonomous self-governance. Their communities developed systems that emphasized local
assemblies, rotating responsibilities, and the principle often translated as “lead by obeying.”

Their governance structures evolvedmost famously through regional centers and “Good Government Councils”and they have
continued adapting, including major reorganizations announced in the 2020s. Regardless of labels, the core lesson is clear:
communities can build durable institutions for education, health, and local justice outside the standard party-politics model.

8) Rojava / The Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (2012–Present)

In northern and eastern Syria, Kurdish-led and allied communities developed a system often described through “democratic
confederalism,” influenced by ideas of local assemblies, communal councils, and pluralistic governance. Observers have noted
experiments in local councils and co-leadership structures, including strong emphasis on women’s participation.

The region has faced enormous geopolitical pressure and shifting military realities, and its future has been shaped by
negotiations and external powers. Still, the governance experiment has been widely discussed precisely because it tried to
build non-state legitimacy through neighborhood-level institutions rather than a classic centralized nation-state model.

9) Cherán, Mexico: Self-Rule Without Political Parties (2011–Present)

Cherán (an Indigenous Purépecha community) is a striking example of local autonomy that looks anarchist in practice:
it rejected party politics locally, built community-based decision-making (including neighborhood assemblies), and created
a self-governing system recognized under Mexico’s legal framework for “uses and customs.”

What makes Cherán stand out is its clarity: residents decided that legitimacy would come from participation and community
accountability rather than party machines. Whatever your political label preference, Cherán shows how local governance can
rebuild trust when people feel formal institutions have failed them.

10) Palmares and Maroon “Quilombo” Autonomy (Brazil, 1600s)

Palmaresformed by communities of escaped enslaved people (quilombos/mocambos)functioned as a long-running autonomous
polity in the 1600s. It’s not “anarchist ideology” in the modern pamphlet-and-book-club sense, but it is a powerful example
of non-state autonomy: communities organized defense, agriculture, leadership selection, and social norms outside colonial
authority for decades.

Palmares reminds us that statelessness is not automatically disorder. Under intense external threat, maroon communities
created governance capable of survivalshowing how mutual aid, shared purpose, and local legitimacy can substitute for
imposed state control.

What These “Working” Examples Have In Common

Across wildly different places and centuries, a few patterns repeat:
local assemblies (decision-making close to daily life),
rotation and accountability (leaders as temporary jobs, not lifelong identities),
mutual aid and cooperative economics (survival through shared capacity),
and legitimacy built from participation (people follow rules they helped make).

Also: many “successful” cases were forced to mature quickly because the alternative was collapse. Ironically, nothing
accelerates institutional creativity like realizing you can’t outsource your problems to distant authorities.

Can Anarchist Societies Scale?

The honest answer: sometimes, partially, and usually in hybrid forms. Large-scale self-management tends to work best when
it’s federatedmany local units coordinating through delegates with clear mandatesrather than a single giant assembly
trying to decide everything (because nobody deserves meetings that long).

The deeper takeaway is less “abolish the state tomorrow” and more “build governance where power is answerable downward.”
Many of these examples didn’t succeed because they had no structure; they succeeded because they had structure without
permanent hierarchy.

Experiences And Lessons From “Working Anarchy” (Extra 500+ Words)

If you read these examples like a scavenger hunt for “proof,” you’ll miss the most useful part: the lived experience of
building order without leaning on a boss, a party machine, or a distant bureaucracy. Across cases, people report a similar
emotional arc: first comes urgency (“We have to solve this ourselves”), then chaos-with-potential (“Okay, who knows how to
do budgets?”), then the slow birth of norms (“We rotate roles,” “We meet weekly,” “We settle disputes this way”), andif
the project survivessomething like civic pride.

Experience #1: Meetings Become Infrastructure, Not Theater

In functioning autonomous communities, assemblies stop being symbolic and become practical tools. People learn quickly that
the agenda matters, facilitation matters, and the difference between “everyone gets heard” and “we never decide anything”
is often a clipboard, a timekeeper, and a shared agreement on process. Consensus models can work, but they require skill:
clarifying proposals, distinguishing “blockers” from “concerns,” and creating ways to revisit decisions without treating
disagreement like betrayal.

Experience #2: Rotation Prevents Mini-Kings (And Burnout)

Many successful experiments rely on rotating responsibilitiesespecially in justice, logistics, and resource allocation.
Rotation does two things at once: it keeps authority from ossifying, and it spreads competence. When more people understand
how the system runs, fewer people can hijack itand fewer people get exhausted carrying the entire community on their backs.

Experience #3: Mutual Aid Is Not “Nice,” It’s Operational

Mutual aid sounds warm and fuzzy until you realize it’s also the community’s supply chain, safety net, and informal
insurance policy. Whether it’s shared childcare, communal food distribution, or neighbors showing up for patrol shifts,
“helping each other” becomes a governance mechanism: it builds trust, creates reciprocity, and raises the cost of antisocial
behavior without needing a heavy-handed enforcement apparatus.

Experience #4: The Hard Part Isn’t StartingIt’s Staying Fair

Early stages often feel inspiring because everyone is aligned against a clear problem. The tougher test comes later:
how do you handle freeloading, interpersonal conflict, unequal skills, or the quiet return of status hierarchies?
Working anarchist models tend to answer with transparent rules, public accounting (of money, labor, and resources), and
culturally reinforced expectations like “everyone contributes,” balanced with care for people who can’t.

Experience #5: External Pressure Shapes Internal Design

Many of the strongest examples formed under threatwar, violence, repression, or exploitation. External pressure can
strengthen solidarity, but it can also tempt communities to centralize “temporarily” for efficiency. The most resilient
experiments develop ways to coordinate quickly without making emergency leadership permanent: delegated teams with
mandates, rapid recall mechanisms, and frequent reporting back to assemblies.

Put all of that together and “anarchist society” looks less like a fantasy and more like a craft. It’s carpentry, not
magic: you need tools (process), materials (trust and resources), and maintenance (accountability). The experiences above
suggest that what “worked” wasn’t the absence of rulesit was the presence of rules people felt they owned.

Conclusion

The best evidence that anarchist societies can function is that, in multiple places and eras, people have built order
from the ground upsometimes under conditions where top-down institutions were absent, distrusted, or actively hostile.
These experiments weren’t perfect. Some were crushed; some compromised; some evolved into hybrids. But they refute the
lazy assumption that hierarchy is the only thing standing between us and chaos.

If your takeaway is “anarchism is impossible,” the history says: not exactly. If your takeaway is “anarchism is easy,” the
history says: absolutely not. The real lesson is more interesting (and more useful): when communities treat governance as a
shared responsibilityrather than a service you outsourcesurprising forms of stability become possible.