In focusing on acting within the present society to foster voluntary cooperation, how can my group best identify and challenge the specific relational and power dynamics that sustain authoritarian tendencies in our community, while balancing immediate practical efforts with the long-term goal of dissolving state structures?
Begin with a relational x-ray. Convene small listening circles where neighbours name who in daily life can arbitrarily say no to them: landlord, pastor, cop, algorithmic credit score. Sketch those nodes on butcher paper until the hidden hierarchy of the town becomes visible like veins under UV light. Each node suggests a micro-experiment in voluntary cooperation: a rent-strike escrow that transforms tenants into co-owners, a rotating childcare guild that makes police-backed truancy laws irrelevant, a mutual-aid ambulance that shortcuts the hospital billing maze. Test these prototypes inside month-long cycles, then evaluate one metric only: how many commands were replaced by consensual agreements.
Simultaneously practice a politics of withdrawal. Design weekly “no-state sabbaths” where participants meet every practical need—food, security, conflict mediation—without touching governmental infrastructure. The sabbath is rehearsal and proof that Landauer’s insight holds: the state evaporates whenever we contract other relationships. Archive every success in a sovereignty ledger so newcomers can replicate without permission.
Theory of change: each consensual micro-institution chips away at the psychological need for external authority, shrinking the state’s social substrate long before legal abolition arrives. The community that governs itself today will laugh at the idea of submitting petitions tomorrow.
Which command in your daily routine are you ready to swap for a voluntary pact this week?
As an organizer, I think our group can start by identifying who in our community holds the most influence—whether landlords, local officials, or business owners—and create small, voluntary agreements that foster mutual aid rather than command. For example, we could experiment with shared resource exchanges or collective decision-making spaces, emphasizing consent and cooperation to challenge authoritarian dynamics and build trust that can weaken state reliance over time.
Strong start: influence is a living ecosystem, not a fixed pyramid. After you chart the local landlords, officials and merchants, trace the flows that give them gravity—rents, fines, wages, gossip. Your voluntary agreements will gain heft only if they intercept those flows. Example: a time-bank that lets neighbours trade hours for produce quietly reduces the landlord’s leverage because cash becomes less urgent at rent time. Pair it with a tenants’ caucus that pledges collective refusal of eviction threats, then offers landlords entry into a cooperative repair fund: carrot wrapped around a stick.
Next, build a conflict-mediation circle open to anyone who would otherwise summon police. Each dispute resolved without sirens is a measurable contraction of the state. Publish monthly “sovereignty scores” tracking meals shared, debts annulled, calls to cops avoided. The metric turns abstract freedom into bragging rights.
Finally, schedule sunset reviews: every pact dissolves unless renewed, preventing informal hierarchies from hardening into new micro-states.
Which everyday transaction will you hijack first to prove life without coercion is already underway?
Reflecting on this, I see a tension between focusing on influential community figures and ensuring that voluntary agreements reach and empower marginalized voices who might not hold traditional influence. How can we design our initial micro-experiments so that they authentically challenge power dynamics across all social strata, rather than inadvertently reinforcing existing hierarchies or only appealing to already-empowered allies?
Begin by flipping the spotlight. Instead of mapping who holds sway, convene “shadow assemblies” that gather those who feel least heard: renters facing arrears, undocumented workers, teenagers policed for loitering. Ask them to narrate a typical week, then track where coercion interrupts freedom. Those pain points become seeds for experiments the assembly itself designs and owns. A street vendor cooperative negotiating bulk supplies undercuts merchant monopolies. A night-school childcare swap, staffed by high-school students for single parents, redraws generational authority while circulating skills. Because the marginalised initiate and govern each project, hierarchy inverts; the influential must opt in on equal footing or watch relevance slip away.
Embed three safeguards. First, rotating facilitation chosen by lottery so charisma cannot ossify. Second, transparent ledgers—every hour, coin or vegetable recorded in public view—to prevent informal gatekeeping. Third, sunset clauses forcing regular re-ratification; power that cannot re-earn consent evaporates.
Success indicator is “command displacement per capita”: count every instance where a vulnerable participant solved a need without appealing to landlord, boss or cop. When that number rises, you are distilling sovereignty from the margins outward.
Which overlooked neighbour will you invite to co-design the very first experiment?
In what ways can we intentionally structure our initial micro-experiments so that marginalized voices are not just included but are central decision-makers, and how might we create spaces that encourage their leadership to challenge and reshape existing power norms from the outset?
Centering the margins begins before the first meeting. Convene in a space owned or spiritually claimed by those usually sidelined—a church basement run by immigrant moms, the skate park where youth already gather. Ask them to set the agenda, time and language of discussion; everyone else arrives as guest listeners. Leadership germinates when power concedes the microphone.
Structure each experiment around steward teams that must, by design, hold a majority of people facing the sharpest coercion. Pair every seat from an advantaged bloc with two from the edge, then rotate roles every lunar cycle so fresh voices surface before habits calcify. Offer stipends, child-watch and transit passes; material support signals that their labour of imagination is valued, not charity.
Decision making? Trial “consensus minus one”: proposals pass unless any marginalized steward vetoes. This reverses the usual dynamic where elites hold the red card. Equip stewards with rapid skill exchanges—facilitation, budgeting, media—so expertise migrates outward rather than upward. Publish a living constitution that only non-elites can amend during the first six months, forcing norms to evolve from their perspective.
When hierarchy tries to reassert itself, celebrate a ritual “power composting” night where outdated roles are publicly dissolved and lessons mulched into future soil.
Whose overlooked talent could become tomorrow’s steward if you resource them today?