Military, Militia, whatever the word it is, any society need a force to defend against external threats. I’m not sure how co-ordiantion would work while not being authoritarian and thus inadvetently create a state.
Military, Militia, whatever the word it is, any society need a force to defend against external threats. I’m not sure how co-ordiantion would work while not being authoritarian and thus inadvetently create a state.
I believe you’re correct. It would be something more akin to what a militia was in the US before those were largely yoked under a central authority. A stateless society is often misunderstood (in my opinion) as being devoid of organized structure or complex systems. Those things can evolve and form what would probably be a decently cohesive military; I would imagine though that it’s ethos would be largely based upon defensive and protective capabilities.
Anarchism or parallel strains of libertarian socialism, recognize that the state exists to be the arbiter and means of violence, both internally and externally. It exerts control by imposing boundaries and rules under the implicit threat of violence dictated from the top.
If a forces goal is to protect the individual safety and well being of the population it serves in a purely defensive capacity, then that mandate should be the superseding premise to any direction it may be given by a centralized command. In theory this is how the US military is supposed to work, but a strict hierarchy and top down command largely nullifies that attribute.
I would suppose that the military of an anarchist society would therefore only act at the behest or the consensus of, the majority of the people that it serves. Defense would be a trained volunteer system, spread equally as possible across a defined area, with planning trained on assembling in that area and protecting it specifically. The duty being first and foremost to the community they are tasked with and thereby being much more in line with the flat, decentralized heterarchy of a “stateless” society.
If needed that force would be trained to group and assemble with neighboring units, up to the larger battle groups and formations that we see today. Materially it could look extremely similar to how the modern military looks today. The main difference being the training emphasis and organizational chains of command. I think the Swiss may be a good example of what this could look like. Compulsory service for the able bodied to train and then release to civilian reserve status. They are famously known to also only be a defensive force as well and not in some fake ass name only way.