Anarchism is a generic term given to political philosophies advocating a society without "the state". Anarchists believe that society could be better organised without government and propose many different ways of doing so. As Benjamin Tucker put it, anarchism is the philosophy that "all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the state should be abolished."
__Overview and brief history__
Anyone who opposes the concept of the state is considered an anarchist. One can distinguish two main trends in anarchist traditions, differing by the general focus of their philosophical arguments. These trends are not necessarily mutually exclusive and do not cover all the nuances of anarchism:
*individualist anarchism: argues for the "sovereignty of each individual"
*libertarian socialism: argues for the abolition of privately held means of production
In contrast to common misconceptions, the anarchy sought by most anarchists is not chaos or anomie -- that is, anarchists do not desire an absence of order, rules, and organized structure. Anarchists oppose hierarchy, power and authority, which they argue to be immoral, oppressive, and detrimental to society. In short, anarchists oppose rulers, not rules.
Anarchists are divided on both the methods to use to achieve their goal and the nature of the goal itself. They philosophise on the distinctions between order and hierarchy, rules and authority, organised structure and power.
Although anarchists all wish to reach a stateless society, the proposed methods of political, economic and social organisation vary immensely. William Godwin's vision of a free society published in 1793 alongside a critique of government in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice is considered the first anarchist treatise and Godwin is credited with founding philosophical anarchism. His society was to be reached rationally and gradually. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's mutualism was to be reached by a similarly peaceful evolution of society. Later in the nineteenth century, though, revolutionaries like Mikhail Bakunin saw a need for violence to overthrow the existing society to reach anarchism; this view encouraged acts of political violence such as the assassinations of heads of state at the end of the nineteenth century, though these actions were regarded by many anarchists as counter-productive or ineffective. Peter Kropotkin's anarchist communism developed from a scientific approach based on an alternative theory of evolution as illustrated in Mutual Aid (1897).
Anarchism first achieved mass media attention during the Second Industrial Revolution, when anarchists assassinated rulers of Russia (1881); the French Republic (1894); Italy (1900); and the United States (1901). Although anarchists are divided on whether, or not, to accept violence as a political tool, most anarchists reject such "propaganda by deed" as ineffectual at best and counterproductive at worst. Although some are pacifists, most would accept the need for a robust self defence of a revolution by the working class.
Anarchists played an important role in many of the labour movements, up-risings and revolutions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the Russian Revolution (1917) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-9). However, increasingly authoritarian rule and political repression across Russia and southern Europe in the first half of the twentieth century put an end to anarchism as a mass movement for most of that century.
After World War II, a new form of anarchism developed, mainly in North America. This new strand has become known as anarcho-capitalism, and owed more to classical liberalism than to previous anarchist traditions, only being politically related via individualism.
A surge of popular interest in anarchism occured during the 1970s in Britain following the birth of the punk rock movement. Though the early punk scene appropriated anarchist imagery mainly for it's shock value, the band Crass expounded 'serious' anarchist and pacifist ideas, and were to become a notable influence within various late twentieth century protest movements.
At the beginning of the 21st century, anarchism has incorporated strong influences from the feminist and animal rights movements. North American anarchism also takes strong influences from the American Civil Rights Movement and the movement against the war in Vietnam. European anarchism has developed out of the labour movement. Globally, anarchism has also grown in popularity and influence as part of the anti-war, anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movements.
Though anarchists took control of large areas of the east of Spain during the civil war in the 1930s, anarchism was never taken as a central ideology for any nation or society for any significant length of time. However, it's influence on modern political thought is still considered significant. As Andrew Heywood writes in Political Ideologies,
*Anarchists have highlighted the coercive and destructive nature of political power, and in so doing have countered statist tendencies within other ideologies... anarchism has had a growing influence on modern political thought. Both the new left (including "anticolonialism, feminism and environmentalism") and the new right (including anarcho-capitalism and free market economics), for instance, have exhibited libertarian tendencies, which bear the imprint of anarchist ideas. (Political Ideologies (second edition, 1998) p.210-211.)
__Anarchist theory__
__Anarchist schools of thought__
From William Godwin's free society, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's mutualism to Max Stirner's individualism, the roots of anarchist thought were always varied, with many different views of what a society without government should be like. Individualists, taking much from the writings of Stirner, among others, demanded the utmost respect for the liberty of the individual. Anarchist communists like Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin built on the Marxist critique of capitalism and synthesised it with their own critique of the state, developing a view of society where the fate of the individual was tied to that of society.
Anarcho-syndicalism developed as the industrialised form of this libertarian communism, emphasising industrial actions, especially the general strike, as the primary strategy to achieve anarchist revolution, and 'build the new society in the shell of the old'.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, two new schools of thought developed in North America: namely, anarcho-capitalism and primitivism. Anarcho-capitalism built on the classical liberal tradition, taking the distrust of government further and claiming that free markets could provide justice and security; the state was not required, its intervention was harmful. Primitivists like John Zerzan proclaimed that civilisation -- not just the state -- would need to be abolished to create liberty and a just social order.
Pacifism, referring to opposition to the practice of war, is considered by most anarchists to be inherent in their philosophy, since they see war as something that occurs between nation states, the concept of which they are opposed to. Some anarchists take it further and follow Leo Tolstoy's belief in non-violence (note, however, that these anarcho-pacifists are not necessarily Christain anarchists as Tolstoy was), advocating non-violent resistance as the only method of achieving a truly anarchist revolution.
__'Anarchy', as opposed to chaos and disorder__
From mainstream media and everyday language to many academic political works, the word 'anarchy' is often used to refer to lawless and chaotic political situations where, for instance, warlords rule by virtue of military force or there is a temporary power vacuum. The current political situation in Somalia, for example, is often referred to as anarchy, since it has no central government.
This use of the word implies a broad definition: usually, any situation where there is no internationally recognised form of government can be considered 'anarchy'. Anarchists, however, reserve the term anarchy for an anarchist society: that is, a society organised on the principles of anarchism, though exactly what these principles are differs from anarchist to anarchist. Primitivists, for instance, assert that in prehistoric times human society was organised on such principles as they define them (for example, non-hierarchal decision making), and so call these ancient societies anarchies.
__Development of anarchism__
Although anarcho-primitivists assert that for the longest period of human history, human society was organised on anarchist principles, there is little evidence available to support this notion. However, anarchist ideas are generally held to go back as far as Ancient Greece, where Zeno of Citium was, according to Kropotkin, "the best exponent of Anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece" and the philosopher Aristippus said that 'the wise should not give up their liberty to the state'.
Zeno distinctly opposed his vision of a free community without government to the state-Utopia of Plato. "He repudiated the omnipotence of the state, its intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual." Zeno argued that although the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads humans to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to it by providing man with another instinct -- sociability. Like many modern anarchists, he believed that if people follow their instincts, they will have no need of law courts or police, no temples and no public worship, and use no money (free gifts taking the place of the exchanges). Zeno's beliefs, unfortunately, have only reached us as fragmentary quotations.
Some also interpret the Ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism as the oldest example of anarchist doctrine.
The first author to have published a treatise explicitly advocating the absence of government was William Godwin in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793); though he did not use the word anarchism, he is today regarded as the "founder of philosophical anarchism". The term "anarchist" is thought to have first come into use during the French Revolution as a derogatory term against the left, but Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, in the 1840s, adopted the term to describe his political philosophy.Nike React Element 87