This text was written for the Anarchist Studies Network (ASN) 2026 conference titled "More than Human Anarchism".
A random person on Mastodon once stated that there is no political theory that, by design, takes the ecosystems into account, not even anarchism. I wanted to jump in and defend anarchism but, on second thought, I stopped, wondering if the person might be right. One could argue that solidarity is a basic value in anarchism and that it also extends to ecosystems. But not all anarchists would agree on that. Classics like Kropotkin took cooperation in ecosystems as examples but focused more on the needs of humans. Some anarchists would not even see solidarity as a basic value. So within the sparkling diversity of anarchist theories, some actually take ecosystems into account by design, others are open to the idea, and then others don’t. I want to look at what worldviews, values, and practices are needed within anarchist practice to get to versions of anarchism that consider ecosystems by design.
The Anarchist Studies Network (ASN) had asked a similar question for their 2026 conference: "Or does anarchism already contain within it the seeds of a profoundly more‐than‐human worldview?" So let’s explore what is needed to fully incorporate the more-than-human perspective into anarchist economies.
First, one step back: Why focus on anarchist economies (again)? The current economic system (capitalism) plays a huge part in ecosystem destruction, humans, as well as non-human animals, are not getting what they need to live a good life, in some cases not even enough to survive or to continue existing as a species. And there are massive injustices caused by capitalism. So economics can be a lever to reduce harm. And we can look at anarchist economies to be prepared to replace capitalism with a better economy. To know what we actually want, to be able to imagine a better future, to know what we need to prepare for, what to organize, and which tools, skills, and infrastructure to build. Imagining anarchist economies in future anarchist societies might appear like a useless utopian thought, but it is, in my opinion, not only an important preparation but also a prefigurative praxis. Many of the skills we will need then are also useful today, in our daily anarchist praxis.
This text focuses on the more-than-human perspective on anarchist economies. For general information on how anarchist economies could work, see, for example, the Anarchist Economics FAQ.
In texts like the FAQ, I mostly thought about humans when I wrote about "the needs of all". I did have environmental impact in mind, and reducing it was a goal, but "all" was mostly human-centered. When I write about the "needs of all*" in this text, I’m explicitly including the needs of non-human animals, the needs of ecosystems and parts of these ecosystems like rivers, forests, and sub-climates. I’ll call all of these "more-than-human entities" to make clear that this not only includes animals but also other parts of nature that are not usually considered actors. This is a shift from a human-centered perspective to one in which complex networks of relations between many entities are the basis for decisions, with the goal of exploring how this affects thinking about anarchist economies.
When including all*, I think we should still be thinking critically about what we actually include and in which ways, because after all, as anarchists, our goal is to identify and reduce domination where possible. For that reason, it’s important when thinking of networks of relations between entities that while all those entities can have needs which should be considered, not all of those entities are equal with regards to the extend to which they dominate other entities (humans have a particularly damaging effect on many other entities) and with regards to the extend to which the entities are capable of taking responsibility for their actions. E.g. humans can and should take responsibility, while rivers can’t.
When thinking of the needs of all*, for me this also includes thinking of future entities and their needs so that we don’t use up all the resources today, leaving nothing for entities in the future. On the other hand, we need to watch out for right-wing tendencies (mostly in the tech bro bubble) of longtermism which try to convince us that, for the sake of a bright future, our needs today matter less and we need to accept exploitative scarcity and authoritarian measures so that some elitist future generations can thrive on Mars after having destroyed this planet. And I also want to warn about including AI algorithms in the entities we consider, especially when they are created by right-wing corporations.
The idea of anarchism is always the idea of a world of many worlds, of decentralization and diversity, of coexisting ways of living, doing politics, and also economies. The fact that there won’t be a single dominating way of doing economies anymore will probably already help the ecosystems. But I’m not happy to stop there, hoping that everything will evolve in beautiful ways. The following is digging deeper into one of those worlds, exploring more in detail how economies could be done in this world while keeping the more-than-human perspective in mind and while not presenting it as a blueprint but as an inspiration for one of the many worlds that can co-exist with others.
As goals for anarchist economies with a more-than-human perspective, I would pick a good life for all* (including ecosystems and all other more-than-human entities), as well as the absence of existential fears or fears of the future. But it’s not enough to have goals.
To develop anarchist economies that have the more-than-human perspective built in, a worldview that sees humans and societies as part of nature, as part of a network of relations, is helpful. As written before, it’s important to keep in mind that while humans are part of this network equally as other entities, they are different in that they can take responsibility for their actions. This worldview not only has the benefit of listening to the needs of more-than-human entities, but it also de-normalizes the idea that participants in anarchist discussions are usually, and thus need to be able-bodied, eloquent, white men with some free time at their hands.
When talking about anarchist economies, I usually say that they should be based on the values of freedom and solidarity, not putting too much weight on freedom, but balancing it with solidarity. I also understand freedom in a way that kind of merges it with solidarity: I claim that people can only be truly free if they know that their needs and the needs of people they relate to will be met in the future. Only if I don’t need to worry about whether or how I will have food tomorrow, I’m free to explore other activities than looking for food. With the more-than-human entities perspective in mind, I still think a balance of freedom and solidarity is a good start, but maybe we can improve: Both freedom and solidarity are concepts that are rather built around the idea of individuals. If we use the value of "responsibility without domination" instead, we shift the focus from individuals to relations between humans and more-than-human entities.
But having nice goals, worldviews, or values is not enough to build anarchist economies that incorporate the more-than-human perspective. The anarchist way of bottom-up social organization that puts as many decisions as possible at the most local layer is actually perfect for the more-than-human perspective. We can’t deny that the goal of considering the needs of all* in a complex network of relations comes with a certain complexity. According to cybernetics, complex requirements can only be handled by systems of adequate complexity (see Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety). This is why a central state can never handle diverse needs from many interconnected entities; it will always have to abstract and simplify in order to handle the information load, thus standardizing or even ignoring the needs of many.
Anarchist economies can instead have local consumer councils collecting the needs of all*, local production collectives producing and providing what is needed locally, if possible, and local coordination committees that facilitate the decisions needed for production and distribution to meet all* needs. Of course, there will also be regional, continental, and planetary councils and coordination committees to handle questions that affect more than local entities, but the idea is to move decisions to the most local level possible. On the local level, it is easier to get local insights into the needs of more-than-human entities and to find pragmatic solutions for the specific area. Also, diverse ways of locally relating to nature are often stronger motivators to actually care for nature than central moral guidelines that tell us to preserve ecosystems.
In addition to social organization, let's look at the concrete economic arrangements. Some anarchists like the idea of markets. While I have many concerns about this idea, the more-than-human entities perspective is a good argument against markets themselves: markets are built on the idea of active participants, actors who produce and sell goods on the market, actors who have money, actors who research and compare prices and buy. While this is already an ableist concept when only looking at humans, it excludes even more entities from economic participation in the more-than-human perspective.
Other anarchists, including the collectivists (an economic concept inspired by Bakunin) and those campaigning for commoning, favor economic arrangements in which the producers own the means of production and then decide how their products and services are distributed. This puts the producers in a potential position of power that makes it less likely to consider the needs of all*.
To consider the needs of all* I instead suggest the anarcho-communist way of doing economies: No one owns resources, means of production, or products. The means of production are used and maintained by the production collectives. The products and services are distributed based on need. Needs are not defined by an authority but considered subjective and diverse. The needs are collected locally, which makes it both easier to handle and more privacy-aware. The decisions about production and distribution are made by those affected by the decision.
This is easily imaginable if there is enough of a resource, product, or service: everyone can just take what they need. However, if there is scarcity, e.g., in products, services, or the willingness to do unpopular work, some best practices might be: creating transparency about how the scarce good is currently distributed, using key figures instead of one-dimensional prices to provide more insight into the amount of scarce resources used in a product, the environmental impact, or the working conditions. If these transparency measures are not enough to eliminate the specific scarcity in acceptable ways, explicit decisions about how to produce and distribute are needed.
But how can we decide about scarce resources with more-than-human entities in mind? There are at least five challenges related to this. Again, solving these is not an intellectual game for a utopian future, but these ideas can be helpful in prefigurative anarchist practice.
For the discussion and decision process, it is important that it stays accessible, using easy language and the possibility of being notified only about certain topics. The following is a description of the well-known consensus process, with a focus on those aspects that might need tweaking in order to incorporate more-than-human entities. The process is, of course, only one possible option as a basis for discussion.
As preparation, I think it’s good to locally discuss acceptable risk levels in the communities. Many conflicts around needs can arise from diverse needs for supply security. What might feel like an unsafe decision to some entities might be safe enough for others. This is similar to affinity groups discussing what they are willing to risk before protests. To avoid these conflicts, it might make sense to build communities that share similar risk levels if possible. However, we should keep in mind that a need for low risk can be related to providing care for others and that care work should be fairly distributed. So while communities might have diverse ways of living and risk-taking, they should cooperate in solidarity.
The following are the steps in the modified consensus process.
Step 1: Clearly define the topic and scope of the upcoming decision as concretely as possible. Make sure everyone who could possibly be affected by the decision is informed about the decision for transparency. This might be done by a public communication medium. This step also involves some research on which more-than-human entities might be affected. An open call should then ask for humans who are capable and willing to represent them.
Step 2: Create transparency about who is representing affected more-than-human entities. Who are the humans willing to take this on, and what is their process for listening to and emotionally connecting with the affected entities? What are their personal interests in the matter, and are they able to keep these separated?
Step 3: In the information-gathering step, it is especially important to involve transdisciplinary research and diverse prediction models so that various viewpoints and multiple scenarios of uncertain futures are considered. I also like the idea of presenting various forms of art related to the topic at social events. An important part of this step to address the challenge of emotions is to collect feelings and emotions related to the topic, e.g., in listening sessions.
Step 4: In this step, affected entities could explore the needs related to the topic, maybe in moderated discussions.
Step 5: I like the idea of clearly separating a more systematic approach to discussing multiple options by exploring the pros and cons of each option, e.g., with tools like Kialo. This step can happen outside of meetings, thus improving accessibility for those who can’t or don’t like meetings.
Step 6: Maybe in another moderated discussion, the options can be further deliberated on, moving toward a potential consensus on the topic.
It might be necessary to iterate steps 3-6 if a consensus is not in sight, while keeping in mind that long processes are less accessible and might conflict with the needs of some entities. Both pressure to finish a decision process quickly as well as a very slow decision process can – but don’t have to be – a method of domination that should be critically watched out for. If the representation of the more-than-human entities does not work well, the humans might have to be recalled (imperative mandate) and replaced by other representatives.
Step 7: The affected entities come to a decision while acknowledging that the future is uncertain and the decision might have to be adapted in the future by another decision. Decisions about economic questions might often involve guarantees to meet needs. It is important that communities can build trust in the decisions taken. Or as Ursula Le Guin put it in "The Dispossessed": "To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past; therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future." If, contrary to the decision, the needs are not met (but could have been met under the given circumstances), it is, in my opinion, important to create transparency about this fact and to find ways to minimize the harm. In repeated cases of not respecting the decision, transparency measures about this could increase the level of scandalization about them.
Step 8: Continue with necessary decisions on related topics if needed, acknowledging the fact that in the complex network of relations between humans and more-than-human entities, many things are interconnected.
This concludes the exploration of anarchist economies that consider the needs of all*. I went from very abstract philosophical values to very concrete organizational concepts and process ideas. If the organizational setup and processes sound overwhelmingly complex, remember that as an anarchist, you don’t have to be involved in every decision. It’s up to you how much you want to get involved. And like other entities, you can ask for or trust others to care for your needs. Also, not every decision needs to be re-taken every month.
I feel like if we pick our anarchist methods with care, anarchist economies contain the seeds of a more-than-human worldview at their core. And while some needed tools and processes could be improved, we already have the basics to make it work at hand. We just need to get organized and get it done.
The slides from the talk about this text are here.