Well, anarchism in general isn’t a “Get rid of state” nuclear button type of thing just as all communism isn’t a magic “skip the socialism part” ideology. (I’m skipping this part a bit, but if you need/want this explained, feel free to ask!)

There are more and less “extreme” versions of both. And the core idea is to abolish state authority, although the way they go around it is very different, but I feel the percieved reasons (by anarchists in particular) as to why it should be done are the most misunderstood thing about anarchism in general.

One of the core tenants of anarchism is its definition of a state: A monopoly on violence, full stop. And I have to add, this definition is academically accepted, as in, all academic definitions of a state agree on the “monopoly of violence” part, but also add other things into the focus of what “a state” embodies, while anarchists don’t.

The reason for this is that a state inherently takes away power away from the people, no matter how “good” the state itself is. If anything, the bureacuratic process oftentimes harms its citizens and makes misinformed decisions based on procedure rather than the facts and merits of each case (which is a general fact of life anarchism isn’t immune to, but it hopes to avoid).

Another reason is that to save costs, decisions aren’t made by all people in referendums on a local or national scale, but by nationwide election to decide “representatives” who wote in the general electorate’s stead. Or because it concentrates power and money in the hands of the few. But it probably goes both ways.

Anarchism doesn’t believe in “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” as much as it believes people should make all the important decisions. It is also aware of the fact that some compromises have to be made in reality.

This is why a bunch of streams in anarchism aren’t so focused on achieving direct democracy (a general referendum for every little thing imaginable), but rather want to upend the direction of power: all power must be bottom-up, as opposed to top-down: people join into neighborhood councils, which join into larger units of various sizes and names. Self-sufficiency is valued and respected, but isn’t a requisite. People aren’t islands, but being less dependant on others is seen as a good idea.

And it’s not just limited to democracy. People are expected to be members of multiple “home units”, for example a geographic one, a work-related one and one for a social issues they have strong feelings about. In other words, “Anarchism applied” translates strongly into workplace syndicalism and membership in charitous organizactions, i.e. looking out for your own interests as well as helping other members of the community.

These smaller units make smaller decisions. As they form larger ones, they jointly decide their leadership, but the focus is always on the top being more dependant on the bottom than vice versa, all the way up to the national assembly (or even beyond).

The most important idea here is the “social contract”. Individuals “sign off” a part of their “rights” (i.e. give decisionmaking power) to the larger units, in hopes of achieving a stronger, more general impact.

This is the core idea about globak decisionmaking. With power comes responsiblity. The more units join in on this issue, the more accoubtability the newly-formed body has. These are kind of like government-run agencies and departments work today, but are formed by groups “joining in”, as opposed to an assembly “going down” and saying “This town needs a hospital, thus one doesn’t”. Or “The maximum number of hotels in a city is one every 15 blocks” (What is a block? What is a hotel? Why everywhere, etc?).

It’s not quite different from how contemporary democracy works in theory. Merely the accountability in practice is flipped right around. The rest can stay mostly the same.

In contemporary democtacy, there are only a few elections for a few rigid bodies. In anarchism there’d be more bodies which would make up those bodies. Those bodies would retain some of their power*, but the lesser bodies could (and would) exercise some of that power as well.

Decisionmaking bodies are still made up of experts, but not spawned from above, but rather synthesized from bellow.

Power corrupts, so all power must be spread as democratically as possible. Holders of concentrared power must be personally and fully accountable to those under them whom they represent (and not, say, view those underneath them as pawns on their personal chess-board).

Yes exactly, authority would either come directly from the community or if need be, a temporary apparatus until the communityncan assume the authority. The point is to not leave any institutions lying around the psycho and sociopaths can hijack like they are now.

People agree on a regulation for a product > you claim compliance to that regulation voluntarily and mark it on your product > consumers chose whether to buy a regulated or unregulated product

crickets