What is Anarchism?
Anarchists say that rulers are not needed. The word comes from the Greek for "without a ruler", and it does not mean disorder. Anarchists want order that comes from below: people making agreements, sharing work and settling problems together. They see the state as a tool of force that protects the powerful. Many also challenge other fixed ranks, such as bosses, landlords and priests. The tradition grew out of the labor and radical movements of the 1800s, and it still has followers on every continent.
Core beliefs
- Power over others needs a good reason, and most rule by the state and by employers does not have one.
- Free people can cooperate without being ordered to.
- Decisions are best made by those they affect, in small groups and local assemblies.
- Cooperation and mutual aid are as natural to people as competition.
- A free society cannot be built by unfree methods, so the way of struggle should match the goal.
History
Early arguments against government came from writers like William Godwin in Britain in the 1790s. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a French printer's son, took the label "anarchist" for himself in 1840. The movement became a real force inside the First International, where Mikhail Bakunin and his followers fought Karl Marx over whether workers should seek state power. They were pushed out in 1872. Later Peter Kropotkin, a Russian geographer, argued that animals and humans survive by cooperating. Emma Goldman and Errico Malatesta carried the ideas across Europe and the Americas. Anarchist unions in Spain gained their biggest following in the 1930s, and after the 1936 revolt many factories and farms in Catalonia and Aragon were run by workers.
Variants
Social anarchists, such as anarchist communists and collectivists, want land and industry held in common. Individualists put the free person first and accept more private exchange. Mutualists want fair trade between small producers and cooperative credit. Newer strands include anarcha-feminism, green anarchism and pacifist anarchism. Anarcho-capitalists want no state but full private property. Many older anarchists say this is not anarchism at all, since the movement began as a protest against capitalism too.
Criticisms
Liberal and conservative critics ask who would stop a violent minority, enforce a contract or defend a border. They expect that the strongest gang would end up as the new government. Marxists said anarchists had no plan to beat organized enemies, so a temporary workers' state was needed. Others note that agreement by consensus works in a village but is hard across millions of strangers. A few anarchists in the late 1800s turned to bombings and assassinations, and critics still cite this, though most anarchists then and now reject such acts.
In practice
No large country has run on anarchist lines for long. The best known cases are short or small: the Ukrainian region led by Nestor Makhno around 1918-1921 and the Spanish collectives of 1936-1939. Both were crushed in war. Anarchist habits live on in unions, co-ops, free schools, squats and mutual aid groups, and in protest camps run without leaders. On the 12 axes it scores at the extreme Democratic end on Authority, strongly toward Liberty on Security, and fully Local on Structure.