Past and present anarchist communities

Many features of modern human life have arisen without there being any authority creating or imposing the features, or regulating them. Interesting examples include human language, many forms of money, mathematics, and the body of academic literature. The original Internet, and many Internet communities, such as Wikipedia itself, are often presented as examples of working anarchist societies. They have no government, no prison, no law, but are based on voluntary cooperation, and, as Internet protocol designers characterize it: "rough consensus and working code".

Actually, about anything that happens without government backing or intervention, and without criminal interference, is ipso facto an anarchy, whether people involved are conscious of it or not: people cooperate freely; they are free to walk away if they do not want to cooperate; no one can force anyone else to cooperate, and so as to have other people cooperate with you, you must peacefully convince them through with polite rational discussion; people are free to split from any group or join any other group, etc.

Many anarchists consciously participate in such communities.

Historical Examples

Many libertarian socialists like to point out as examples of the societies they propose, the zones controlled by the anarchist forces during the Spanish Civil War.

anarcho-capitalists on the other hand, cite the Icelandic Free State[?] (930-1262) as an example of society where police and justice were guaranteed through a free market. They also cite the law merchant[?], international trade law, some traditional justice systems (as in Somaliland) and other historical examples of order happening outside of government (and sometimes against government).