Anarchism

Anarchism is a family of political ideas that holds that the state is unnecessary, harmful or illegitimate. The word comes from the Greek anarchos, meaning without a ruler. Anarchists do not usually mean disorder. Instead, they argue that society can be organized through voluntary associations, mutual aid and direct democracy, without governments, police or armies. Most anarchists also oppose other forms of hierarchy they see as unjustified, such as capitalist ownership, patriarchy or religious authority. Anarchism has been a significant current in labor movements and social movements since the nineteenth century.

William Godwin set out an early philosophical case against government in 1793. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first person to call himself an anarchist, in 1840, and he developed the idea of mutualism. Mikhail Bakunin led the anti-authoritarian wing of the First International and clashed with Karl Marx over the role of the state, leading to a split in 1872. Peter Kropotkin developed anarchist communism and argued that cooperation, or mutual aid, is a natural factor in evolution. Errico Malatesta and Emma Goldman spread anarchist ideas in Europe and the Americas. Anarchism reached its largest scale during the Spanish Civil War, when anarchist unions organized collectives in Catalonia and Aragon from 1936.

Social anarchism includes anarchist communism, anarcho-syndicalism and collectivist anarchism, which all favor common ownership. Individualist anarchism, associated with thinkers such as Benjamin Tucker, places more weight on individual sovereignty and voluntary exchange. Mutualism sits between them. Later currents include anarcha-feminism, green anarchism, social ecology and anarcho-pacifism. Anarcho-capitalism, which supports private property and markets without a state, is sometimes listed as a variant, although many anarchists reject it as part of the tradition.

Conservative and liberal critics argue that without a state, there would be no reliable way to protect rights, enforce contracts or defend against invasion, and that stronger groups would fill the gap. Marxists have argued that anarchism lacks a realistic strategy and that a transitional state is needed to defeat organized opponents. Some critics also point to political violence by individual anarchists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though many anarchists rejected it. Others argue that small-scale self-government does not scale to large, complex societies.

No modern country has been organized on anarchist lines for long. Anarchist ideas shaped trade unions in Spain, France, Italy and Latin America, and the Free Territory in Ukraine from 1918 to 1921. They influenced cooperatives, free schools and housing movements. More recently, anarchist ideas about consensus decision-making and leaderless organization have been visible in protest movements and in some autonomous communities.