Alexander Wendt is one of the founders of the Constructivist school of international relations (IR) theory (and a huge influence on my own work). His 1992 “Anarchy Is What States Make of It,” though about the behavior of *states* in an anarchic system...

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...has a lot to teach us about anarchism in general, especially about the way we should think about *security* in an anarchic system.

Here’s a link to the pdf:

https://courses.helsinki.fi/sites/default/files/course-material/4594742/Wendt.pdf

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Wendt notes that IR theorists treat "self-help"—individual self-defence—as a natural product of an anarchic system. In the absence of any higher authority, any state might attack any other at any moment, so all states have to assume potential threat in every interaction.

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This dynamic, they believe, drives the security dilemma: an iterative process by which each state, unwilling to risk attack by others, rationally takes *defensive* steps that are perceived by other states—also risk averse—as potentially *offensive* steps.

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By trying to maximize their own self-defence against potential threats, each state contributes to an escalatory process that, counterintuitively, can trigger conflict between states even when none of them want it, purely through rational, risk averse self-defence.

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So traditional IR theory treats anarchy as *causal* with regards to violence. Wars happen because there is nothing to stop them; war is the intrinsic nature of states in the absence of a higher authority.

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States must assume the worst in order to survive, which leads them to amass power & behave with suspicion or hostility towards each other, driving conflict. States will sometimes even start conflicts they don’t want as *preventive* measures, fearing that inaction is riskier.

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Wendt argues instead that states *construct* their identities, interests, and relationships, and that this process of identity and relational construction is what drives behavior, not some instinctual aggression in the absence of authority. 

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That is, self-help is an *institution* that can exist within anarchy, but it is not the only one, and it is not a necessary, organic consequence of anarchism. Contra classical IR theory, anarchy in the abstract cannot predict the behavior of states.

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Wendt argues: “Self-help is one such institution, constituting one kind of anarchy but not the only kind.” Self-help cannot explain enduring alliances, the survival of weak states next to strong ones, etc. How did NATO endure after the fall of the Soviet Union?

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So how do systems of competitive self-help or cooperation emerge from anarchy? Through learning from experience, which in turn informs our construction of our identities vis-a-vis each other.

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Wendt argues that *sequencing* is critical to the emergence of different institutions in anarchy. A threat that emerges as an actors first encounter with the world is going to have a very different effect than a threat that emerges in a robust cooperative community.

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This brings to mind the deliberate re-armament of Germany in 1955 by the Western Allies, despite having just fought two World Wars against Germany, because this happened within the context of West Germany’s inclusion in NATO. It was otherwise unthinkable.

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That’s all well and good for states, but what does this have to do with political anarchism for individuals?

Everything! Every theoretical dynamic that Wendt articulates for states, assumed to be rational unitary actors, applies to individual people too.

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Wendt’s argument points towards a more humanistic security in anarchy that relies on robust communities, with strong norms of cooperation, rather than a problematic reliance on “private security” forces that have a tendency to turn to predation:

15/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_company

Rather than a chaotic, Hobbesian fantasy of war of all against all, anarchy—especially one with strong egalitarian norms baked into it from the ground up—could and should be dramatically more peaceful than our current predicament.

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Consider that—contra popular myth—egalitarian, non-state hunter-gatherer societies tend to be *more* peaceful, with less interpersonal violence, than our own:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sinisa-Malesevic-2/publication/272163012_Forms_of_Brutality_Towards_A_Historical_Sociology_of_Violence/links/54dc95c30cf28a3d93f7f55c/Forms-of-Brutality-Towards-A-Historical-Sociology-of-Violence.pdf

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Anarchy looks particularly bad if you start with our own society, with rampant alienation and violence, the dismantling of traditional social support, the commodification of every aspect of life, and project forward from there.

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But modernity is contingent, not a good indicator of how humans tend to behave. Instead, Wendt’s insight suggests we should be focusing on mutual aid and community building *now* so that robust community cooperation is operative *later.*

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