r/Anarchy101 • u/Deathofimperialists • 2d ago
Making an anarchist story
So I just thought of an idea. It's so easy to just think of dystopia stories that strip away your hope. But what about stories where anarchists win? That's why I've thought of a story set in a post revolutionary world, seen from a POV of someone who has travelled there from the past, which should highlight the differences between our present world and our target world. So....
The premise: Anarchists have successfully won the world through a long term revolution. God intervened in the world and gave many anarchists powers, which enabled them to win the world. But now they’re facing a problem. The earth’s core is set to explode in 300 years, and none of the scientists from the present world have a solution. Which is why one anarchist with powers over time summons a queer scientist from the past who has the intelligence and capability of solving this problem. THEY are an incredibly brilliant polymath who were taken too soon from this world by crime. Now normally fixing the world would be no problem, but unfortunately, the fascists have also acquired powers of their own, and want to remake the world in their image. So now, the real challenge begins. How will the anarchists prevail?
My name is Siddharth, and I'm an anarchist from India. I want to create a story that inspires more people to become anarchists, and hopefully this should help. I want y'alls feedback on this. Should I continue and try to create a story or should I just shut up and go on with my life?
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u/cybersheeper 2d ago
I like that idea! We need to think of more creative ways like this to radicalize people.
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u/papachecoa 2d ago
Wishing you the best in your path and I hope one day you can post your story so I can read it. I don’t like the idea of a god involved in the process of anarchy becoming a reality, because I think anarchy must come after a human process/progress… but it’s your story. Do as you seem fitting to you and your ideas.
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u/Deathofimperialists 2d ago
Thank you for the encouragement! Again, this is merely a shower thought that I'm going to refine, I'll keep the bits that sound off. I'm still learning about anarchism, so I also don't know so much about it yet. I'm learning more about it everyday, so there's that.
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u/Vesp3ral 2d ago
So, if i'm correct : your anarchist people are imbued with divines powers and get their solution through someone else linked to the past.
Not being a dick, it just doesn't seems to serve any anarchist narrative to me, rather the opposite. Still wishing you the best through the fantastic course of writing though.
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u/Deathofimperialists 2d ago
Oh so I'm still not sure about including god or divine intervention now, this was just a shower thought. I'm refining this idea even more. I'm thinking more and more about what I should do with it.
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u/OwlHeart108 2d ago
Many anarchists are inspired by spirituality and see God as completely consistent with anarchy (an-arché means without beginning and many see God as eternal - without beginning or end).
Check out, for example, Gustav Landauer, Dorothy Day, Ursula Le Guin (who refers to the Tao), Starhawk, and many more.
Others are inspired by the spiritual wisdom of Yoga & Hinduism including the American Transcendentalists and Emma Goldman who followed them.
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u/Annkatt 1d ago
Etymologically, anarchy is derived from the Greek: αναρχία, romanized: anarchia; where "αν" ("an") means "without" and "αρχία" ("archia")/"archos" means "ruler"
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u/OwlHeart108 1d ago
It's not just ruler ... :-)
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u/Annkatt 1d ago
I do understand that "archos" can also be interpreted as "first" or "beginning", but in the context of understanding the word "anarchism", an ideology opposing authority and rulers, understanding it as it's primary definition, "ruler", is etymologically more consistent and relevant
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u/OwlHeart108 1d ago
What if we didn't define anarchism in negative, oppositional terms but through a positive focus on what is always present - the inherent dignity, equality and, we might even say, sacredness of all life?
This is another school of anarchism found in the works of Ursula Le Guin, Gustav Landauer and many others.
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u/Ordinary_Passage1830 Student of Anarchism 1d ago
The word "anarchy" came from ancient Greek.
And it doesn't mean without beginning it means beginning,orgin,sourse of action,first principle or an element.
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u/SonnetZZ 2d ago
As a fellow aspiring writer and anarchist, I find your story rather intriguing! As the other commentor said I don't like the idea of God getting involved (No gods, no masters, right?) but it is your story and you could do something with it and the themes or religions (correct me if im wrong but the quakers were somewhat anarchists? Or had some form of horizontal organization?)
Honestly go write your story because we all gotta start somewhere and it's so important to spread an optimistic message especially during dark times like today. I wish you luck on your journey if you do decide to write it!
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u/Deathofimperialists 2d ago
I'll be modifying the story more, I may not keep the religious angle, but I'm going to refine this a lot more for sure. Thanks for your encouragement!
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u/SonnetZZ 2d ago
Of course! I would love to hear any updates about it. I'm not sure if reddit as DMs or something (I don't really use this website often but again, I would love to hear more and maybe brainstorm together? I'm really new to anarchism too tho so I might not have a lot of insight to things ^.^*)
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u/OwlHeart108 2d ago
The best way, perhaps, to learn to write great anarchist fiction is to read lots of it. Great examples include
Always Coming Home, The Dispossessed and everything else written by Ursula Le Guin
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
Disnaeland by DD Johnston
You might also like to read Octavia Butler, NK Jamieson, Kim Stanley Robinson and other radical science fiction writers.
Enjoy your project!
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u/OwlHeart108 2d ago
You might also like The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk if you're interested in the overlap of spirituality and anarchism in fiction.
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u/alriclofgar 2d ago
I think this is a good idea!
I wonder, though, whether the story would be a more compelling exploration of anarchism if you made the conflict be less about fascists vs victorious anarchists, and more about the internal conflicts between power and freedom that anarchism is all about.
If God made anarchists powerful enough to win the world—how can we realize the “no gods, no masters!” ethic that so many of us cherish? I think that’s potentially a really interesting question to explore, as it drills to the heart of many of the most important tensions that imo make anarchism such a useful framework for life. What are the limits of an anarchist society that achieved anarchism by divine intervention rather than through the hard work of grassroots organizing? How would such a society fail to handle a crisis, and what perspectives would a queer anarchist from the past bring to challenge that order and help it better embody the ideals we want to see in the world?
Have you read Le Guin, The Dispossessed? It’s a sci-fi book set in a world where anarchists have won, and while it’s very different from your concept, I think it might be a cool example of anarchist fiction for you to read and think about. Le Guin does a really good job showing how winning isn’t the end, when you’re an anarchist.
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u/Anarchist-monk 2d ago
If you ever finish this project please let us know. I have been interested in anarchist fiction lately.
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u/AProperFuckingPirate 1d ago
If you want to keep the part of God giving them powers, you could always use that as a point of tension in the world. Your conflict probably shouldn't just be anarchists v fascists, to make it feel grounded the anarchists should have internal disagreements and conflicts, and some of that could be a result of some people having superpowers.
And the fascists may be able to use that in propaganda, like saying "hey look, they didn't win with the power of their ideas, they used their powers and forces you all into anarchism, that's basically authoritarianism if you think about it...."
And the super powered anarchists can struggle with the power they have, as they feel it conflicts with their ideals but it would be so easy to just force everyone to get along, right...
And maybe some people form cults around the super anarchists, which would likely cause some problems all around
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u/JudgeSabo Libertarian Communist 1d ago
I think fiction like this, especially when you're adding in more fantastic elements like superpowers into the mix, I'd personally recommend trying to figure this out as a system.
You're saying God is giving out powers here, so okay. Is the story going to have a worked out theology? Why do fascists have powers too? What is the system determining how powers are given out? How does someone get powers? Are they given out strategically? Randomly? Does the power reflect the individual with them at all? Can powers be taken away? How do you deal with serious threats?
You are also mixing in exploring two major changes here that will need to be familiarized with your readers: how these superpowers work and the impacts they've had on society, and a picture of an anarchist society functioning. Ideally, these should tie together, where the benefits and challenges this society is facing is more a pure outgrowth of the kind of system you are setting up.
I'm a huge fan for this other superhero story called Worm, which I think does a good job with this, so I'll try to describe how it works with these systems as a point of comparison. This will have some spoilers, since where powers come from is one of the big mysteries, but I'll try to be vague enough about it while still elaborating.
In that setting, superpowers started showing up some time in the 1980s for unknown reasons. People started developing certain glands in their brain and, if they go through an appropriate kind of traumatic 'trigger event', these glands activate to give them powers. This tends to have very bad consequences, being something like the functional equivalent of giving someone a loaded gun at their lowest moment. These powers also tend to be reflections of that trigger event, almost working as a physical manifestation of PTSD, e.g. the teenage girl who is horribly bullied and stuffed into a locker filled with trash gets the power to control bugs, reflecting that social isolation with a 'master' power in a form that reflects that gross environment. And because that's her power, it also shapes and reinforces some of those original problems too, further isolating her as other people are grossed out by her or see her.
The big word to keep in mind for this setting is 'unstable.' People are randomly getting powers at some of the worst moments of their lives. The way powers are distributed is almost guaranteed that, no matter how good your system is, the people that tend to get the new powers are the people that system failed enough to lead to this kind of traumatic event, and they're in a position where they are set to start bigger conflicts. New powers are constantly showing up too, so any kind of stability gained might see a new power introduced which throws things entirely out of whack. Who knows when some random person will go mad scientist and try to blow up the moon or something?
On top of that, you have the people with powers causing big problems. If a kaiju monster is attacking a city every couple of months, how does the world respond to that in an organized way? How does it recover? How does a justice system work when some people can walk through walls or mind control guards to let them out?
Does the government set up its own sponsored 'hero teams?' Does it allow for independent hero teams? What do you do when kids gets powers? Do people with powers face persecution from the scared populace? Does the government basically get taken over by people with powers, and everyone else is screwed? Is there a division between capes that more public facing vs ones with powers more hidden behind the scenes? Are they integrated into the military, or are 'cape' matters socially considered separate? It can shake out a lot of different ways, and does in different parts of the world.
Even villain teams tend to have a difficult time maintaining any organization at scale because, the more people with powers you add, the more broken or traumatized people you have with more of the power, and there is more opportunities for things to go badly, with more chances for conflict. Most groups tend to be smaller and independent
All of this is to say that we are starting off with a more basic system about how powers work, and then most of the setting is trying to deal with all the different ways this adds a chaotic and destabilizing element to society, and keeps introducing problems that seem to more and more require some kind of organized response (e.g. fighting regular kaiju monster attacks).
As the story goes on (and this is the bigger spoilers), you find the reason powers show up and kind of how they work. On some other planet millions or billions of years ago some species of alien developed which, by fierce competition, basically ate up all resources on their planet, evolving in ways to actually go to alternate earths. They kept growing and growing, developing new abilities, but also saw the limited time until the heat death of the universe and the problems of entropy. They fought and collaborated enough until all that was left was this massive planet-size interdimensional species was left, but needed more resources, more ingenuity, and more testing and recombining of the resources. So now these entities basically blow up planets to fling themselves through space, finding different inhabited worlds and 'seeding' powers throughout to find what information they can get, collect whatever resources they can, and once they've tested out these abilities as far as they can, take all the powers back, blow up the planet, and fling themselves to the next spot. Powers are being distributed as they are right now to maximize conflict in society, and therefore to maximize the amount of data the entities can gather from their use. This also ties into the function of the powers themselves, as the gland in people's brains are really just the connection point between each person with powers to some part of this interdimensional gigantic monstrosity, which is what is actually providing all the physical infrastructure and power source for all these bizarre abilities. So basically, there is a good in-universe sci-fi explanation for why powers work the specific way they do.
I emphasize this as a way to say I think it is possible to do a really good political and sociological analysis in a setting where you're throwing in superpowers. But this also depends on how seriously you want to take things. What I'd warn against is having one part of your setting you'd want readers to take very seriously (the political analysis, trying to present anarchist ideals as an actually functioning and viable alternative on an international or global scale), but then be just trying to pave over issues by introducing more fantastic elements like superpowers.
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u/Resonance54 1d ago edited 1d ago
I would like to add a disclaimer that I am an incredibly casual writer, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
I like the idea of it and it's a good spin on the utopian fiction genre, but I feel like there are a couple issues coming from both a theoretical framework of anarchism and from writing
The story is based around the idea of exceptionalism. Yes it's an anarchist society, but the reason it worked is because a single great being divined them the ability to make it work. In the same sense with the plot, you are saying there is a single person who can put together all the answers to save the world. These are concepts that, while not incompatible with anarchism, aren't really anarchist beats.
With the divine being, you can fix it by treating it more as a metaphor for communalism or the fire of revolution. Rather than being a literal divine being granting them strength, it is their power coming together that gives them the strength and fortitude to succeed in the revolution.
With the polymath time traveler part, my advice is both simpler but also changes the fundemental of the story. You should remove them from the story. You have someone from the past coming in so that way you have a direct comparison to the world we live in; but, the reader already knows the world we live in you don't have to explain it to them. They are a thematic redundancy in getting your point across. The point of a time displaced character is to give a plot and drive to the story as a vessel for exploring the society, but you already have the plot and the drive for the story in the explosion of the earth.
Both of these things also make your backstory very overstuffed. You want to be able to sum up the entire idea of the story in a single sentance or two, otherwise the story starts to lose focus and gets off topic. You will end up spending more time explaining the backstory rather than actually telling the story you're trying to tell. Rather than taking pages and pacing to get to the core of the conflict, you have to think out how the fascists got powers, why the god gave them these powers, why is this polymath from the past the only person in all of existence that can save them, and why can't the divine being that gave them powers save them? In my opinion, the answer would be to cut both of these things out and simplify the narrative to better deal with the themes
You should instead really focus and drive into the core question of this story which is "how can a utopian anarchist society deal with a extinction level event?". You look at the phenomenon of people willing to centralize power in times of crisis and a frame an anarchist rebuttal to that idea that centralization is needed when in crisis. Every single page of this story should be either building up that conflict, discussing that conflict, or resolving that conflict either positively or negatively. That is how you get effective and engaging storytelling that gets a point across.
You have an engaging concept at the core of this. It's an idea that can be something that is both personally illuminating to you about your own beliefs, and useful in helping to deconstruct the strawmans made against anarchists. There's just a little bit that I would reccomend cutting out in the backstory area to make it more lean and effective.
EDIT: Also I don't think either the idea of divinely granted powers or the "A Modern Polymath in Anarchy's Court" concept are bad ideas. Just they are the cores of two different stories from this one. Both would be good stories to keep in your head for futureideas, but it does a disservice to them for them to be window dressing this story
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u/Calaveras-Metal 2d ago
I like the general premise, but I think the reliance on a god and 'powers' will actually detract from the story. There is a very long winded version which I typed out and then deleted. But basically I would point to the example of the Superman comic book. The hero can not be hurt by regular weapons. He can fly, see through walls and is essentially impervious to everything in the universe. Except for a fictional green element the writers invented when they realized how boring the comic was when you always know he is going to win.
Perhaps change 'god' to a passing space alien. Maybe instead of powers the anarchists just have evolved a very advanced post-capitalist technology?
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u/Tancrisism 2d ago
Check out The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin for a great example of this. She looks at some of the complexities of an already existing and developed anarchist planet.