Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s anarchosyndicalist peasant scene is one of the funniest parts of the film.

In it, two peasants claim that they’re living in an autonomous collective, a small selfgoverned society that doesn’t answer to a higher power, such as a lord, a king or a government.

It seems like it’s a crazy idea and just part of the zany humour of the film.

But how accurate is this scene? Could a society like this have existed back in the middle ages, and how would it work?

It was a question recently posed on Reddit, and there were some truly fascinating answers.


Let’s look into it.


Thanks to Redditors WifiKnight, Mike Dash, JForce and Airborne Walrus for their insight.

Here's the original question on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorian...

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