“Small communities of like minded individuals form and cooperate to solve food, safety, water and shelter concerns” - you literally described government. At its core, that is exactly what a government is.

Do “anarchists” hear themselves? I don’t know if OP is an anarchist, but this is why I don’t take them seriously. Their ‘ideal society’ always leads back to what is—in its most fundamental form—a government.

Anarchy, hierarchy and heterarchy are all different forms of social organization. You probably know what a hierarchy is. A heterarchy is a fanning out of organization and decision-making capabilities - think of how wikipedia editors work, or, I would argue, how the Senate and House of Representatives (are supposed to) work. Anarchy is just another organizational form, not a bunch of people throwing molotov cocktails or anything like that. At the core, anarchists seek to minimize the degree to which another group can oppress them by concentrating decision making among the small groups of people who will actually be affected by those decisions.

If you want to read a (fictional) example of how anarchy might work on a large scale, the scifi book The Disposessed by Ursula K Le Guin is superb (even if you are a strident anti-anarchist, it’s just such a good story).

Just finished reading The Dispossessed and was going to comment similarly. It was fantastic read and surprisingly modern considering it was written in the 60s. Some of her contemporaries don’t have the same sort of timeless readability as Le Guin.

The key anarchist takeaways from The Dispossessed is the use of syndicates in lieu of corporate or government, no private ownership or equity, and the absence of law, elections, and criminal punishment. Committees exist do public discussion, but the outcome of that discussion is non-binding (although one may find themselves an outcast). Le Guin presents anarchy like libertarianism mixed with socialism: you are free to do as you please, but you are obligated to recognize your role in the social organism.

Le Guin also recognizes that anarchist thought is in some ways extremely foreign to all of our modes of thought, philosophy, and language. So she devises a world where the anarchists invent a new language to correct and remove “egoist” ideas. The society she develops revolted against a hyper-consumerist society, referred to as “propertarians,” and this drives much of the plot and dialogue: what does it mean to not be an egoist while still being human?; what is the limit of personal possession before becoming a propertarian?; what happens when your personal freedom and needs are trampled on by the social organism?; and how long can a non-hierarchical society last when it inevitably creates systems that begin to self-organize into hierarchies and bureaucracies?

The protagonist realizes that any revolution must remain perpetually in a state of revolution lest the people settle into inviolable customs that then calcify into law.