I love that story! I tell it every time someone tries to sell me on anarchism.

Christiana was an old military complex that the government gave up on, so anarchist squatters moved in.

Soon they realized, that they needed some way to decide matters that concerned everyone. So they formed small councils, and in these councils they each chose some people to represent them in one big council. These people weren’t elected politicians, just people chosen to represent them. They then voted on issues, and no, that wasn’t a form of democracy. It’s still anarchism.

Then then realized, that the upkeep of common areas and infrastructure costs money, so they required that everyone paid their share. That obviously weren’t taxes. Just mandatory contributions.

When organized crime started to spread, they decided on some mandatory rules (you read right: these weren’t laws, just mandatory rules that you had to keep if you didn’t want to face punishment). Then they chose some strong men that should make sure the rules were followed. No, not police men. Just concerned strong men.

They worked together with Kopenhagen’s police. Basically, they’d call the cops and then drag the offenders outside of Christiania to the waiting cops.

Part of the rules were that it wasn’t allowed to consume hard drugs or to wear motor cycle gang attire.

So in the end, they had no politicians, no government, no taxes and no police force. Just things that where basically identical to these things. The only thing they really don’t have is a prison, because they outsourced that to Kopenhagen.

Anarchism directly leads to a form of government, no matter how you call it.

If you want an opposite example, how anarchism lead to an anarcho-capitalistic nightmare, where the community decended into a rule by organized crime, google the Kowloon Walled City. It’s equally interesting.

There isn’t much I hate more than Christiania. Started as a project of privileged kids looking for a place to smoke weed and occupying a land that was meant for redevelopment and actual communal housing. Cool, cool. It quite quickly became a class society, with peddlers (those who sell drugs) ostentatiously flaunting their wealth, with the other side of the “commune” developing into a typical bourgeoisie, nuclear-family powered suburb, all with a horse rink included.

In this revolutionary commune that is not bound by the laws of European Union, as they claim, you can buy Nestle products and pay for them with a card.

It is, ultimately, a weed dispensary with state monopoly, holding together with the police violence against mostly minorities that sell weed outside its walls indispensable for its well-being.

But then, I wouldn’t say it’s a problem of the anarchist movement. Anarchists are generally aware of those contradictions and the anarchist praxis is that of building an alternative to the society within the society. Christiana was a hippie project. Hippies, in my opinion, destroyed the left wing movement. They decided that they can use their privilege (because, of course, it was mostly white, middle class kids) to fuck off from the society. They withdrew from the class struggle at large. Instead of working in the unions, instead of organizing with Rainbow Coalition, they just fucked off the their “horizontally governed communes” to smoke weed and have sex.

Fuck hippies. And fuck Christiania.

Also, fun fact, last year they legally bought the land from the city, using a loan from the city.