See the full definition for anarchy in the English Language Learners Dictionary. Nglish: Translation of anarchy for Spanish Speakers. Britannica English: Translation of anarchy for Arabic Speakers. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Definition of anarchy. Synonyms for anarchy Synonyms lawlessness , misrule Visit the Thesaurus for More.
The Multiple Meanings of Anarchy Anarchy exemplifies how words may have similar yet distinctive meanings. Examples of anarchy in a Sentence Its immigration policies in the last five years have become the envy of those in the West who see in all but the most restrictive laws the specter of terrorism and social anarchy. The Silver Cities survived not only the bloody revolution of but also the ensuing century of anarchy and bloodshed. It is a crude and bizarre misrepresentation.
What is anarchism anyway? It is a radical and revolutionary political philosophy and political economy. While there are many definitions and many anarchisms, most would agree to the definition formulated by Peter Kropotkin. It stands for the absence of domination, hierarchy and power over others. Anarchism is a process whereby authority and domination is being replaced with non-hierarchical, horizontal structures, with voluntary associations between human beings.
It is a form of social organisation with a set of key principles, such as self-organisation, voluntary association, freedom, autonomy, solidarity, direct democracy, egalitarianism and mutual aid.
Based on these principles and values, anarchism rejects both a capitalist economy and a nation state that is governed by means of a representative democracy. It is a utopian project that aspires to combine the best parts of liberalism with the best parts of communism. At its heart is a mix of the liberal emphasis on individual freedom and the communist emphasis on an equal society. The political philosophy of anarchisms emerged in the midth century — as part of the thought of Enlightenment.
Anarchist symbols like the black flag and the circle A are easily recognizable when scrawled on desks or spray-painted on walls, but they have also become ubiquitous in music and film, from SLC Punk to V for Vendetta to the punk rock slasher flick Green Room though the biker-soap Sons of Anarchy has nothing to do with the political ideology itself.
Get the Teen Vogue Take. Sign up for the Teen Vogue weekly email. Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out:. Antifa History and Politics, Explained. She explains,. Sabotage is mainly concerned with obstructing, by every possible method, the regular process of production, thereby demonstrating the determination of the workers to give according to what they receive, and no more. Goldman [ 94]. Goldman struggled with the question of violence through the course of her career.
Early on she was a more vocal proponent of revolutionary violence. She began to rethink this later. Nonetheless, like other anarchists of her generation, she attributed violence to the state, which she opposed. She writes:. I believe that Anarchism is the only philosophy of peace, the only theory of the social relationship that values human life above everything else. I know that some Anarchists have committed acts of violence, but it is the terrible economic inequality and great political injustice that prompt such acts, not Anarchism.
Every institution today rests on violence; our very atmosphere is saturated with it. Goldman [ 59]. Goldman views anarchist violence as merely reactive.
In response to state violence, the anarchists often argued that they were merely using violence in self-defense. Another defender of violence is Malatesta who wrote that the revolution against the violence of the ruling class must be violent.
He explained:. I think that a regime which is born of violence and which continues to exist by violence cannot be overthrown except by a corresponding and proportionate violence.
Malatesta [ 48]. Like Goldman, Malatesta warned against violence becoming an end in itself and giving way to brutality and ferocity for its own sake. He also described anarchists as preachers of love and advocates of peace. He said,. Malatesta [ 46]. Anarchist violence appears as the violence of an individual against the state.
It is easy to see why such violence would be characterized as terroristic and criminal. For an individual to declare war against the state and take action to disrupt the state is criminal. And thus anarchists have also been interested in a critique of crime and criminality—arguing that it is the law and the legal system that creates and produces crime and criminality. Similar ideas are found in Foucault and in more recent criticisms of mass incarceration.
Contemporary anarchists will argue that mass incarceration is an example of state power run amok. The question of violence leads us to a further issue: the question of obedience, disobedience, resistance, and political obligation.
Much could be said here about the nature of political obligation and obedience: including whether obedience is merely pragmatic and strategic or based upon notions about loyalty and claims about identification with the nation and its laws. But it is clear that anarchists have no principled reason for political obedience. If the anarchist views the state as illegitimate, then obedience and participation are merely a matter of choice, preference, and pragmatism—and not a matter of loyalty or duty.
Christian anarchists will look, for example, to the case of Jesus and his idea of rendering unto Caesar what is due to Caesar Matthew — Jesus does not recognize the ultimate moral and religious authority of Caesar or Pilate. But he goes along with the political regime. Thus some anarchists may simply be compliant and submissive. But politically motivated anarchists encourage resistance to state power, including strategic and principled disobedience.
Such disobedience could involve symbolic actions—graffiti and the like—or acts of civil resistance, protests, tax resistance and so on—up to, and possibly including, sabotage, property crime, and outright violence. One important example is found in Thoreau, who famously explained his act of disobedience by tax resistance as follows:.
In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases. Thoreau [ ]. He recognizes that a declaration of war against the state is a criminal act. He willingly goes to jail. But he also admits that he will cooperate with the state in other cases—since there is something advantageous about cooperation. This indicates the complexity of the question of cooperation, protest, and disobedience.
Kropotkin discussed him as an anarchist Kropotkin []. And Tolstoy admired his act of civil disobedience—as did Gandhi. Anarchists continue to discuss strategies and tactics of disobedience. One problem throughout this discussion is the degree to which disobedience is effective. If there were to be successful anarchist campaigns of disobedience they would have to be organized and widespread. Whether such campaigns would actually work to disassemble the state apparatus remains an open question.
Perhaps there are reforms and short-term gains that can be obtained through traditional political means: voting, lobbying legislators, etc. But anarchists have often held to an all-or-nothing kind of approach to political participation.
We noted above that the Christian anarchist Jacques Ellul has said that he does not vote because anarchy implies conscientious objection. But herein lies a strategic conundrum. If progressively minded anarchists opt out of the political system, this means that less enlightened policies will prevail. By not voting or otherwise engaging in ordinary politics, the anarchist ends up with a system that he or she will be even less happy with than if he or she had actively participated in the system.
This is, really, a problem of revolution versus reform. The revolutionary wants revolution now, believing that it will occur by way of direct action of various sorts. Perhaps the revolutionary is also thinking that the psychological, cultural, and spiritual evolution toward revolutionary consciousness can only occur when direct action is taken: in order for anarchism to emerge, the anarchist may think, one ought to behave and think like an anarchist.
Meanwhile those reform-minded folks who work within the system of political power and legality can end up supporting a system that they have doubts about. This philosophical problem of reform vs.
Davis Many anarchists are revolutionaries who want change to be created through direct action. But given our preceding discussion of violence, disobedience, and the potential for success of revolutionary activity, the question arises about opting-out of political life.
The Epicureans and Cynics pointed in this direction. The history of anarchism is replete with efforts to construct anarchist communes that are independent and separated from the rest of state centered political life. We might pick up the history here with the Christian anarchists and pacifists of the Reformation: the Mennonites, for example; or the Quakers who refused to doff their hats for political authorities and who sought a refuge in Pennsylvania.
In the Seventeenth Century, Anne Hutchinson was cast out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and forced to found a new community, when she concluded that the idea of government was flawed. Hutchinson is considered as one of the first anarchists of North America see Stringham Separatist communities were founded by the New England abolitionists and transcendentalists, by Josiah Warren, and by others. Anarchist communes were formed in Europe during the Nineteenth Century and in Spain during the s.
There have been ongoing movements and organizations of indigenous peoples and others who inhabit the margins of mainstream political life. In the s and 70s, anarchist separatism was reiterated in the Hippy communes and attempts to live off the grid and get back to nature.
Alternative communes, squats, and spontaneous gatherings continue to occur. Separatist communities have to consider: the degree to which they give up on anarchist direct action against dominant political forces, the extent to which they have to accommodate themselves to political reality, and the risk that customary hierarchies will be reinstated within the commune.
For the revolutionary anarchist, separatism is a strategy of avoidance that impedes political action. Separatist communes must often obey the rules of the dominant political organization in order to trade and get connected to the rest of the world. Finally, a complaint made about separatist communes is that they can end up being structured by sexist, classist, and other hierarchical organizing principles.
One might argue that until the dominant culture is revolutionized, separatism will only be a pale reflection of the anarchist ideal. And yet, on the other hand, advocates of separatism will argue that the best way for anarchist ideals to take hold is to demonstrate that they work and to provide an inspiration and experimental proving ground for anarchism. If revolutionary activity is taken off the table, then anarchists are left with various forms of gradualism and reformism.
Along these lines David Graeber provides a description of the cultural and spiritual work that would be required in order to prepare the way for anarchist revolution. Revolutionary anarchists will respond to this by arguing that liberation in the imaginary is simply imaginary liberation: without actual change in the status quo, oppression and inequality continue to be a problem.
Objection: This objection holds that anarchism is merely another name for chaos and for a rejection of order. This objection holds that anarchists are violent and destructive and that they are intent on destroying everything, including morality itself.
Reply: This objection does not seem to recognize that anarchists come in many varieties. Many anarchists are also pacifists—and so do not advocate violent revolution. Many other anarchists are firmly committed to moral principles such as autonomy, liberty, solidarity, and equality. But one can be committed to anarchism, while advocating for caring communities.
Indeed, many of the main authors in the anarchist tradition believed that the state and the other hierarchical and authoritarian structures of contemporary society prevented human flourishing. Objection : This objection holds that anarchism is inherently unstable. Hobbes and other early modern social contract theories maintain that the state emerges as a necessary response to natural anarchy which keeps order and protects our interests. Some anarcho-primitivists will argue that things were much better for human beings in the original state of nature in small communities living close to the land.
Other anarchists might argue that the disadvantages of state organizations—the creation of hierarchies, monopolies, inequalities, and the like—simply outweigh the benefits of state structures; and that rational agents would choose to remain in anarchy rather than allow the state to evolve. Some anarchists may argue that each time a state emerges, it would have to be destroyed. But others will argue that education and human development including technological development would prevent the reemergence of the state.
Objection : This objection holds that there simply is no way to destroy or deconstruct the state. So exercises in anarchist political theory are fruitless.
It would be better, from this point of view to focus on critiques of hierarchy, inequality, and threats to liberty from within liberal or libertarian political theory—and to engage in reforms that occur within the status quo and mainstream political organization. Reply : Ideal theory is always in opposition to non-ideal theory. But utopian speculation can be useful for clarifying values.
Thus philosophical anarchism may be a useful exercise that helps us understand our values and commitment, even though political anarchism has no hope of succeeding. Furthermore, there are examples of successful anarchist communities on a small local scale for example, in the separatist communities discussed above.
These concrete examples can be viewed as experiments in anarchist theory and practice. Objection : This objection holds that a political theory that abolishes political structures makes no sense. A related concern arises when anarchism is taken to be a critique of authority in every case and in all senses. This sort of criticism is related to standard criticisms of relativism and nihilism. Related to this is a more concrete and mundane objection that holds that there can be no anarchist movement or collective action, since anarchism is constitutionally opposed to the idea of a movement or collective since under anarchism there can be no authoritative ruler or set of rules.
Reply : This objection only holds if anarchism is taken to be an all-or-nothing theory of the absolutist variety. Political anarchists do not necessarily agree with the skeptical post-foundationalist critique which holds that there can be no ruling principle or authority whatsoever.
Rather, political anarchists hold that there are legitimate authorities but that political power quickly loses its authoritativeness and legitimacy. From this point of view anarchist communities can work very well, provided that they avoid coercive authority. To support this point anarchists will point to historical examples of successful anarchist communes.
They will also point to ordinary human relations—in families and civil society relationship—which operate quite well apart form coercive and hierarchical political authority. Objection : One objection to philosophical anarchism of the sort discussed throughout this essay is that it remains merely theoretical. Some political anarchists have little patience for abstract discourses that do not engage in direct action. One worry about philosophical anarchism is that in failing to act—and in failing to take responsibility for the actions that ought to follow from thought—philosophical anarchism remains a bourgeois convenience that actually serves the status quo.
Thus when philosophical anarchists remain uncommitted in terms of the concrete questions raised by anarchism—whether they should obey the law, whether they should vote, and so on—they tend to support the interests of defenders of the status quo. Reply : In response to this objection, one might defend the importance of philosophical reflection.
It is important to be clear about principles and ideas before taking action.
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