Any sufficiently advanced disaster preparedness is indistinguishable from revolutionary dual power. Under the right conditions, all systems are optional. One of the defining properties of a disaster is the fact that it disrupts systems that people rely on. Disaster preparedness could, then, be defined as “a system that makes other systems situationally optional.” This simple fact will let us begin to describe a blueprint with which we can start to build our initial population.

And with that paragraph, we’ve reached the axis mundi: the central point around which this entire text revolves. Everything written thus far leads logically to it; Everything I will write from here on out one can derive from it. If you remember only one sentence from this entire text, that first sentence is the single most important.

From here we’ll get down to technical details about what to build (if you don’t already have a better idea). We’ll also come back to a couple of variations on the discovery problem. But first, let’s go back quite a bit further.

We are trapped by two interlocking systems: capitalism and government. We spend the majority of our lives interacting with these systems, from working and budgeting, to shopping and using public infrastructure. We are trapped within these systems, and therefore vulnerable to abuse by those with the most power in these systems, because we are forced to rely on them.

But what do they have that we actually rely on? What, specifically, would we actually need to replace to no longer rely on these systems?

Dawn of Everything concluded with the suggestion that authoritarian structures emerge from an intermingling of care and violence. Slaves were captured in many societies in order to care for others, to prepare food, harvest crops, or raise children. This is an externalization of care work through the use of violence. Ancient temples and the homes of chiefs, in other cultures, became places of refuge for those outside of other systems: orphans, elderly widows, refugees. They were taken care of, but also may work for the chief or temple in return. The community funded this care, but at some point these people could turn around and work for the temple priests or chiefs, allowing them to assert power over the community. In some ways, we have all become subjects of the sovereign state, both funding the infrastructure that makes our lives possible and being a possessed by it.

We allow both the state and capitalism to exist because they solve an array of commons management problems. Though markets are one of the worst possible ways to sole such problems, because they lead to “the tragedy of the commons,” they are a way to deal with any arbitrary commons in exactly the same way (and thereby destroy everything, but in a systematic, orderly, and well regulated way).

The generic problem we’re trying to solve is this:

We have a limited amount of stuff, we have things people need, and we have things people want. How do we make the stuff fulfill the needs and wants?

Traditional economies manage common resources using a combination of government agencies and capitalist markets. These two entities fulfill needs roughly along the following four pillars:

• consumable goods
• durable goods
• infrastructure
• services.

Any viable alternative to the dominant system must fulfill at least these same needs as are currently fulfilled by that dominant system. As the state withers and capitalism collapses, it will become easier to fulfill these needs outside than inside the system. A disaster preparedness to revolutionary strategy, which we will refer to from here on out as “Fractal Anarchism,” should fulfill these needs via bottom-up recursive institutions.

Each level of the social entity can establish (formally or informally) a set of institutional systems to address these needs as aligned with the aforementioned pillars.

These systems are…

• the dispensary to acquire and distribute consumable goods,
• the library, to acquire and provide shared access to durable goods,
• the works committee, to build, (own,) and maintain infrastructure such as housing,
• the services committee, to identify and provide services, such as child care, for its members.

One may notice that all of these committees are consumption oriented. This matches well with the existing orientation of the dominant economic systems, making it easier to transition from one system to another. Committees start by identifying needs within their domain, then work backwards from consumer, through logistics, to production. Humans also naturally enjoy producing things. Any artist or gardener will tell you the same. This text has been (as of the writing of this section) been entirely written and edited by volunteers. So opportunities may well present themselves to work in both directions and meet-in-the-middle.

Any committee is, by default, authorized to create subcommittees of it’s own members to solve challenges related to the completion of the committee mission. While the orientation may be more obvious, it may be harder to notice that these committees may be interrelated. Committees may task other committees with actions, as appropriate. They may also share subcommittees. Both the dispensary and library manage goods, if different types. A shared “logistics” committee may be valuable. Perhaps this would make sense outsourced to the works or services committee.

Following the VSM, each committee has maximum autonomy within it’s domain. We have also mentioned that needs are fulfilled via “bottom-up recursive institutions.” Let’s unpack that. Today many societies, at least with which an average reader would be familiar, with are largely centralized. Federalism is as close as might commonly be recognized to this type of recursion.

American federalism is a layered model. Towns and cities make up the base. Larger cities may be broken in to districts with some representation. At this “municipal” level, there are generally executive, legislative, and judicial branches. These branches have maximum authority to create and enforce laws, or carry out social programs, to the degree to which these actions don’t conflict with the laws at the state or national level. Counties are exactly the same, except that they have additional courts for resolving conflicts between the municipal and county level. They also have other courts and law enforcement capabilities for enforcing laws in unincorporated areas. States are the ultimate authority for all municipal and county systems under their jurisdiction. States have their own constitutions, which override all lower level constitutions, and are overridden by the national one. At the national level, the “federal” government provides the same function for states that state perform for counties and municipalities.

At each level, the level above is responsible for enforcing restrictions on the power system’s authority. However, there is no “ultimate authority” above the national level. Put another way, unrestrained authority comes from the top and is enforced down on to the people. This is the problem we previously discussed as essentially being two vulnerabilities:

1. The logic of the constraints on the system are defined within the context of the system that is intended to be constrained and all constraints within the system are mutable.

2. Power over the constraint logic enforcement mechanism is within the system, thus the system can fail to or choose not to enforce constraint logic.

This seems impossible to solve, and it is for all systems where authority flows from a top level down. This top level can never be restricted because there must always be a level “above it” to maintain and enforce these restrictions. But how do we trust the system at the top? Well, we need a set of rules to control that authority. So we need a system above that one to constrain it. But how do we know…

Any top level authority is necessarily unrestrained, and unrestrainable. But that top level authority is always actually stolen. It is only possible by restricting the autonomy of individuals, by enslaving the population and impressing them into it’s service. The answer is quite simple then: reverse the flow of authority.

There’s another way to think about this. If freedom and authority are thought of as a commons, that commons must be managed or it will be squandered. By centralizing management of this resource, we incentivize those in control of the resource to hoard it. If we do not manage it, then some will hoard it while bothers will suffer. Only by collectively managing it can we actually make sure everyone gets the maximum that they can without taking from others.

All commons are best managed as locally as possible, by those most impacted. Those most impacted by mismanagement are also those most incentivized to maintain the commons. This would be the inverse of the current system.

Indeed, the whole socioeconomic system is actually just this: commons management. Under capitalism, markets manage labor and goods while the state manages the commons of the markets themselves. Money is simply a stand-in for autonomy, which, at a high enough imbalance, can allow people to control the very machinery of the state’s stated goal: “freedom management.” Our autonomy is restricted by the mismangement of these commons via markets and manipulation.

To invert this is to return to the natural root of authority: the individual. The familiar Liberal model of authority is that the individual trades freedom for the protection of the community. All criticisms of Liberal ideology aside, this is exactly not untrue. Individual humans don’t tend to live very long on their own in the wild. But why does Liberal ideology refuse to accept such an exit as an option? The question of safety vs autonomy is never posed within the ideology in such a way, but rather relative to authority and violence. It is posed as an answer to “why can people acting on behalf of an authority commit violence?” It’s never posed as, “should I be allowed to exit the system if I choose?” Put another way, “Shouldn’t I be able to withdraw my authority if I do not feel collective freedom management is working?”

This text works from the answer “yes.”

Now the individual retrains maximum autonomy, yielding autonomy in exchange for the ability to fulfill larger objectives that require coordination. This will be familiar to anyone who has ever lived with another person, giving up the autonomy to do whatever one wishes in exchange for lower costs (by sharing meals, heating, etc) and companionship. Similarly, this will be familiar to anyone who joined an existing organization and done volunteer work. Volunteering one gives up the autonomy to solve a problem their own way in exchange for the efficiency of not having to set up all the infrastructure to solve that same problem. In the later case, authority is always revocable while in the former there may be additional systemic restrictions that make the system harder to leave.

Then the system becomes a recursive volunteer organization: each layer can leave, thus minimizing the friction to exiting the system which forces the system to organize towards the maximum benefit of all members.

Individuals make up the base layer. The individual is maximally autonomous, giving up autonomy to the affinity group in exchange for the ability to achieve greater things. Affinity groups are generally small enough to work by consensus, ranging from 3-10 individuals but usually operating best at around 5. Affinity groups can similarly join together to form a collective. A “spokescouncil” is a system by which affinity groups can choose delegates to send to represent them on such councils. By maintaining small sizes, it can be possible to know other members well enough to accurately represent the interests of each individual during meetings. Collectives can join (federate) together to form a “clusters,” clusters can form “federations,” and federations can form “meta federations.” (Whomever achieves that is more than welcome to name the next level.) When spokescouncils stay small, Each layer can represent all members below their level. Even at 5 levels of recursion, accounting for just over 3k people (assuming 5 in each group), any individual delegate only needs to work with 25 people in total at any time.

As described earlier, the ultimate rejection of authority is to exit the system. In this case, that rejection is built right in. Any member, collective, cluster, federation, federation of federations, and so on, can leave at any time, for any reason. This means that each layer is incentivized to consider the interests of everyone if they wish to achieve their objectives.

Each level fulfills their needs either directly at a given level, or by coordinating to build larger systems. Thus each level will solve more complex variations of similar problems at greater levels of efficiency. Each level will likely operate some variation of the four committees. Within the VSM, each committee will operate as operational units, while each level will also execute a collective management function, such that the remaining systems (2-5) will also be executed at each level.

We will walk through an example implementation of systems 2-5 as recursive systems in the next installment. In the immediately following sections, we will introduce each section again within the context of disaster preparedness.

Individuals

The individual is the smallest unit we will focus on. Individuals are responsible for personal disaster preparedness and supporting collective preparedness via affinity groups. Personal preparedness depends on the disaster situation, but, at a minimum, must cover water, food, shelter/heat, sanitation, and entertainment for at least 72 hours.

Individuals should have at least two ways to achieve any objective. There should, for example, be twice as much water as the minimum needed for any individual. Taking care of additional supplies rapidly become easier as group size grows. One person needs twice the supply of water and food, but 3 people can safely only need supplies for 4 people, and 5 only really needs supplies for 7 to be comfortable. A single pack of playing cards or some dice can easily provide entertainment and distraction for a group when conversation might run out.

Supplies all fall in to the category of a dispensary (or pantry) at the individual level. Libraries and other committees don’t exist at this level.

The Affinity Group

An affinity group is generally a group of roughly 3-5 people, but no more than 10. It is small enough that every member knows each other so intimately that they can predict, at a basic level, what decisions others might make in a situation. It is small enough to allow pure consensus democracy. Any group that grows too large should split in to two groups and federate (described in the following section).

At this level, a dispensary can focus on making sure each member has sufficient consumable supplies as well as extra. It would make sure supplies are distributed at different locations to make sure a disaster in one area doesn’t destroy all supplies. The affinity group library would track (survival) tool locations and similarly make sure caches are distributed.

It also becomes possible to directly address some of the immediate challenges of capitalism. The same library affinity group library can facilitate tool sharing. A works committee could collaborate to purchase and maintain technical infrastructure such as file shares or mastodon instances. An affinity group could buy and own vehicles (such as cars or e-bikes), vehicle repair facilities, land, or housing.

A services committee could organize foraging to fulfill basic needs such food and soap. It could organize guerilla gardening or support gardening to fill shared pantries. It could organize community dinners. Libraries and dispensaries could distribute things crafted by members, and could even facilitate either giving away supplies or selling them within capitalist markets to fund growth or new activities.

An affinity group must work together to identify it’s internal agreements and codify them for future reference. This will be discussed in more depth later, within the context of the VSM and systems 2-5.

Collectives, Clusters, and Federations

In the text we’ve been using the term “collective” A federation (or “cluster”) is roughly an affinity group of affinity groups. Federations are also recursive, so they can also be federations of federations, or federations of federated federations, etc, to any level. Just as every affinity group needs to figure out how they work together, so does every federation.

Federations are generally expected to coordinate via “spokes councils.” A spokes council is a meeting where appointed representatives speak on behalf of their entities (affinity groups or federations).

As federations grow, more things become possible. An affinity group in the US may be able to reduce costs by getting a shared Costco card or shopping together at a restaurant supply store. A federation of affinity groups may be able start an informal coop. A federation of such federations may be able open a storefront for a coop.

Social Insertion

A fractal is roughly defined as something that has the same shape at multiple levels. We’ve defined the levels, how they nest and interact, and touched on the shape of these levels. Next we’ll talk about the four pillars of the system (dispensary, library, works committee, services committee) in more depth. But in order to build any of those, we’ll need to work with someone else.

We’ve come back to the problem of discovery that we that we pushed away for at the time. But we can’t really escape it anymore, so now we need to turn and face it. The nice thing about facing a problem is that sometimes you also realize you can solve other problems at the same time.

Social insertion is the practice drawn from Especifismo (an Anarchist tradition that developed in South America) of working to forward local struggles as members of a specific (political) group. Anarchists, as anarchists, will be involved in groups like Food Not Bombs because it aligns with their existing beliefs. Anarchists, as anarchists, may be involved with campaigns to improve transit infrastructure because car culture feeds petro-fascism and lends itself well to authoritarian social control. These individuals are open about their political alignment and also are honestly working with external organizations. They try, where possible, to work with existing organizations rather than trying to start their own.

This is distinct from “entryism,” where members of a political movement will try to hijack a social movement towards their own ends or will try to take members away from social movements and shift those members to their own, organization controlled, social organizations.

The practice of social insertion can solve two problems. The first is the aforementioned problem of discovery. At any level of organization, doing volunteer work that you identify as important can help you identify other people with similar objectives.

If organizations already exist align with the objectives of fractal anarchism, and these organizations are viable and healthy, there’s no reason to duplicate the work of organizing in parallel. Not only that, but organizing in parallel could draw people away from an already valuable organization. It tends to be more efficient to join an existing organization rather than start a new one, both because established organizations have already learned lessons that new ones would need to learn and because established organizations can benefit from scale that a new organization would not quickly achieve.

Even if an organization doesn’t completely align with the objectives or optimal structure of your specific group, it may still be useful to participate in those organizations in order to fill gaps in one’s own organizing.

Where there exists organizations that are not antithetical to fractal anarchism, individuals, affinity groups, etc, should practice social insertion and support those existing entities. Unless there is a clear reason not to, such as authoritarian organization structures, general non-profit dysfunctionality, bigotry, or other toxic patterns, it’s far easier and more efficient to find and support existing organizations as a group than to create one’s own.

Food Not Bombs and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief are both excellent examples of organizations that covens should actively work with and support, where possible.

One of the first objectives of a services committee could be to identify local organizations that align with one of the four pillars described earlier and organize members to work with these organizations.