As promised, here is a little more from Colin Ward.  It is from his essay Harmony in Complexity appearing in Anarchy in Action.  I'll just quote a few sentences to give the gist and recommend you read the balance for yourself, which is my strategy for all the posts in this series.


One of the most frequently met reasons for dismissing anarchism as a social theory is the argument that while one can imagine it existing in a small, isolated, primitive community, it can not possibly be conceived in the context of large, complex, industrial societies.  This view misunderstands both the nature of anarchism and the nature of tribal societies. . . .


Anarchy is a function, not of society's simplicity and lack of organisation, but of its complexity and multiplicity of social organisations. . . . 

The anarchist alternative is that of fragmentation, fission rather than fusion, diversity rather than unity,  a mass of societies rather than  a mass society.