Just to say, they were still semi-anarchist in nature, but not in the modern sense where it means “chaos” rather the political sense where it means “absence of hierarchy and horizontally-structured self-governance”, which is representative of the confederated nature of the Flying Gang where the different crews were considered equal and all had a say in their governance, based in a mutually agreed upon code of conduct. Within the crews themselves, captains were more like delegates who were chosen to take on leadership responsibilities but were at the whims of the crew. Power came from the bottom up, not the top down. If a crew was displeased with how their captain led the ship they were well within their right to depose him and appointed a new one.

Anarchism is not the bad “chaos and disorder” that the ruling class would have you believe.