As someone who has written a work anarchist political theory 15 years ago, my understanding is that many anarchist theories argue among the lines of:
The political question is not about whether there are hierarchies, but how to organize them in a way that:
1. hierarchies are not set in stone and won't get people stuck in one space
2. power accumulation and corruption through power is successfully prevented both in the short and the long term (ideally while still keeping the whole thing very mobile on small matters and more stable and careful on grand matters)
3. hierarchies are not steeper than absolutely necessary and there should be a high mobility between hierarchical layers
4. anarchy is about an absence of centralized ruling structure, not about an absence of rules. This might seem a weird distinction, but having a ruler and no rules is not the same as having no ruler and coming up with a set of clear rules
Most anarchist theorists would therefore have argued the notion that anarchy requires a higher sense of order and does not represent "chaos" as it is often described. One of the most important prerequisites for that was good education, at least in the CNT educating yourself was seen as one of the prime duties of an anarchist, because if everybody comes into the role of the decider, it is good if you know what you are doing.
Democracy is also a system that tries to deal with the way power is given, transitioned by giving the people a vote. In most anarchist or anarchosyndicalist systems voting is also pretty important, it is just much more self-organized, more bottom up than top down and came with ideas like strict term limits and rotations for all positions of power. Often councils where proposed to gain some continuity, with members of these councils often leaving and new ones coming in.
Please note that I describe that CNT flavoured anarchism from the top of my head, there are different notions elsewhere (e.g. less collectivist and much more libertarian ones in the US).
Thank you for this edifying comment. As someone who has, at best, an extremely surface level understanding of anarchism, I found some aspects of what I understood quite appealing but I thought that it may be impractical or too idealistic. This has sparked my interest to actually go deep.
1. hierarchies are not set in stone and won't get people stuck in one space
2. power accumulation and corruption through power is successfully prevented both in the short and the long term (ideally while still keeping the whole thing very mobile on small matters and more stable and careful on grand matters)
3. hierarchies are not steeper than absolutely necessary and there should be a high mobility between hierarchical layers
4. anarchy is about an absence of centralized ruling structure, not about an absence of rules. This might seem a weird distinction, but having a ruler and no rules is not the same as having no ruler and coming up with a set of clear rules
Most anarchist theorists would therefore have argued the notion that anarchy requires a higher sense of order and does not represent "chaos" as it is often described. One of the most important prerequisites for that was good education, at least in the CNT educating yourself was seen as one of the prime duties of an anarchist, because if everybody comes into the role of the decider, it is good if you know what you are doing.
Democracy is also a system that tries to deal with the way power is given, transitioned by giving the people a vote. In most anarchist or anarchosyndicalist systems voting is also pretty important, it is just much more self-organized, more bottom up than top down and came with ideas like strict term limits and rotations for all positions of power. Often councils where proposed to gain some continuity, with members of these councils often leaving and new ones coming in.
Please note that I describe that CNT flavoured anarchism from the top of my head, there are different notions elsewhere (e.g. less collectivist and much more libertarian ones in the US).