someone help understand Anarchy. How does it work as a government? Is it just libertarianism?

[Warren DeMontague]

22. The basic idea, as I understand it, is that left to their own devices small groups of people

Behave cooperatively and self-organize around principles of mutual aid and benefit.

There is actually some anecdotal evidence to back it up, at least in terms of how people behave in disaster situations. Instead of the chaotic free for all envisioned by those who posit the need for a strong daddy state, usually- but not always- humans organize organically and tend to help each other out.

Certainly like many absolutist philosophical or sociopolitical positions, it presupposes both certain basic conditions and fundamental structural change in the way people look at reality and relate to each other, to ever have a chance of "working" on a large scale.

But i would say it is no more of a pipe dream than the orwellian fantasies of the authoritarians among us who spend all day thinking they are just a few more laws away from getting their neighbors to stop blaspheming, eating meat, having gay sex, using birth control, looking at porn, smoking pot, etc etc.