Anarchy refers to a society, entity, group
of people, or a single person that rejects
hierarchy.
The word originally meant 'leaderlessness',
but in 1840 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon adopted
the term in his treatise What Is Property?
to refer to a new political philosophy: anarchism,
which advocates stateless societies based
on voluntary associations.
In practical terms, anarchy can refer to the
curtailment or abolition of traditional forms
of government and institutions.
It can also designate a nation—or anywhere
on earth that is inhabited—that has no system
of government or central rule.
Anarchy is primarily advocated by individual
anarchists who propose replacing government
with voluntary institutions.
== Etymology ==
The word anarchy comes from the ancient Greek
ἀναρχία (anarchia), which combines
ἀ (a), "not, without" and ἀρχή (arkhi),
"ruler, authority."
Thus, the term refers to the state of a society
being without authorities or an authoritative
governing body.
== Political philosophy ==
=== 
Description ===
Anarchism as a political philosophy advocates
self-governed societies based on voluntary
institutions.
These are often described as stateless societies,
although several authors have defined them
more specifically as institutions based on
non-hierarchical free associations.
Anarchism holds the state to be undesirable,
unnecessary, or harmful.
While anti-statism is central,
anarchism entails opposing authority or hierarchical
organisation in the conduct of all human relations,
including, but not limited to, the state system.There
are many types and traditions of anarchism,
not all of which are mutually exclusive.
Anarchist schools of thought can differ fundamentally,
supporting anything from extreme individualism
to complete collectivism.
Strains of anarchism have been divided into
the categories of social and individualist
anarchism or similar dual classifications.
Anarchism is often considered to be a radical
left-wing ideology, and much of anarchist
economics and anarchist legal philosophy reflect
anti-statist interpretations of communism,
collectivism, syndicalism or participatory
economics.
Some individualist anarchists are also socialists
or communists while some anarcho-communists
are also individualists or egoists.Anarchism
as a social movement has regularly endured
fluctuations in popularity.
The central tendency of anarchism as a mass
social movement has been represented by anarcho-communism
and anarcho-syndicalism, with individualist
anarchism being primarily a literary phenomenon
which nevertheless did influence the bigger
currents and individualists also participated
in large anarchist organizations.
Some anarchists oppose all forms of aggression,
supporting self-defense or non-violence (anarcho-pacifism),
while others have supported the use of militant
measures, including revolution and propaganda
of the deed, on the path to an anarchist society.Since
the 1890s, the term libertarianism has been
used as a synonym for anarchism and was used
almost exclusively in this sense until the
1950s in the United States.
At this time, classical liberals in the United
States began to describe themselves as libertarians,
and it has since become necessary to distinguish
their individualist and capitalist philosophy
from socialist anarchism.
Thus, the former is often referred to as right-wing
libertarianism, or simply right-libertarianism,
whereas the latter is described by the terms
libertarian socialism, socialist libertarianism,
left-libertarianism, and left-anarchism.
Right-libertarians are divided into minarchists
and anarcho-capitalists or voluntarists.
Outside the English-speaking world, libertarianism
generally retains its association with left-wing
anarchism.
=== Immanuel Kant ===
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant treated
anarchy in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic
Point of View as consisting of "Law and Freedom
without Force".
Thus, for Kant, anarchy falls short of being
a true civil state because the law is only
an "empty recommendation" if force is not
included to make this law efficacious ("legitimation",
etymologically fancifully from legem timere,
i.e. "fearing the law").
For there to be such a state, force must be
included while law and freedom are maintained,
a state which Kant calls a republic.Kant identified
four kinds of government:
Law and freedom without force (anarchy)
Law and force without freedom (despotism)
Force without freedom and law (barbarism)
Force with freedom and law (republic)
== Anthropology ==
Although most known societies are characterized
by the presence of hierarchy or the state,
anthropologists have studied many egalitarian
stateless societies, including most nomadic
hunter-gatherer societies and horticultural
societies such as the Semai and the Piaroa.
Many of these societies can be considered
to be anarchic in the sense that they explicitly
reject the idea of centralized political authority.The
egalitarianism typical of human hunter-gatherers
is interesting when viewed in an evolutionary
context.
One of humanity's two closest primate relatives,
the chimpanzee, is anything but egalitarian,
forming hierarchies that are dominated by
alpha males.
So great is the contrast with human hunter-gatherers
that it is widely argued by palaeoanthropologists
that resistance to being dominated was a key
factor driving the development of human consciousness,
language, kinship, and social organization.In
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology anarchist
anthropologist David Graeber attempts to outline
areas of research that intellectuals might
explore in creating a cohesive body of anarchist
social theory.
Graeber posits that anthropology is "particularly
well positioned" as an academic discipline
that can look at the gamut of human societies
and organizations, to study, analyze and catalog
alternative social and economic structures
around the world, and most importantly, present
these alternatives to the world.In Society
Against the State Pierre Clastres examines
stateless societies where certain cultural
practices and attitudes avert the development
of hierarchy and the state.
He dismisses the notion that the state is
the natural outcome of the evolution of human
societies.In The Art of Not Being Governed
James C. Scott studies Zomia, a vast stateless
upland region on Southeast Asia.
The hills of Zomia isolate it from the lowland
states and create a refuge for people to escape
to.
Scott argues that the particular social and
cultural characteristics of the hill people
were adapted to escape capture by the lowland
states and should not be viewed as relics
of barbarism abandoned by civilization.Peter
Leeson examines a variety of institutions
of private law enforcement developed in anarchic
situations by eighteenth century pirates,
preliterate tribesmen, and Californian prison
gangs.
These groups all adapted different methods
of private law enforcement to meet their specific
needs and the particulars of their anarchic
situation.Anarcho-primitivists base their
critique of civilization partly on anthropological
studies of nomadic hunter-gatherers, noting
that the shift towards domestication has likely
caused increases in disease, labor, inequality,
warfare, and psychological disorders.
Authors such as John Zerzan have argued that
negative stereotypes of primitive societies
(e.g. that they are typically extremely violent
or impoverished) are used to justify the values
of modern industrial society and to move individuals
further away from more natural and equitable
conditions.
== Examples of state-collapse anarchy ==
=== 
English Civil War (1642–1651) ===
Anarchy was one of the issues at the Putney
Debates of 1647:
Thomas Rainsborough: I shall now be a little
more free and open with you than I was before.
I wish we were all true-hearted, and that
we did all carry ourselves with integrity.
If I did mistrust you I would not use such
asseverations.
I think it doth go on mistrust, and things
are thought too readily matters of reflection,
that were never intended.
For my part, as I think, you forgot something
that was in my speech, and you do not only
yourselves believe that some men believe that
the government is never correct, but you hate
all men that believe that.
And, sir, to say because a man pleads that
every man hath a voice by right of nature,
that therefore it destroys by the same argument
all property – this is to forget the Law
of God.
That there's a property, the Law of God says
it; else why hath God made that law, Thou
shalt not steal?
I am a poor man, therefore I must be oppressed:
if I have no interest in the kingdom, I must
suffer by all their laws be they right or
wrong.
Nay thus: a gentleman lives in a country and
hath three or four lordships, as some men
have (God knows how they got them); and when
a Parliament is called he must be a Parliament-man;
and it may be he sees some poor men, they
live near this man, he can crush them – I
have known an invasion to make sure he hath
turned the poor men out of doors; and I would
fain know whether the potency of rich men
do not this, and so keep them under the greatest
tyranny that was ever thought of in the world.
And therefore I think that to that it is fully
answered: God hath set down that thing as
to propriety with this law of his, Thou shalt
not steal.
And for my part I am against any such thought,
and, as for yourselves, I wish you would not
make the world believe that we are for anarchy.
Oliver Cromwell: I know nothing but this,
that they that are the most yielding have
the greatest wisdom; but really, sir, this
is not right as it should be.
No man says that you have a mind to anarchy,
but that the consequence of this rule tends
to anarchy, must end in anarchy; for where
is there any bound or limit set if you take
away this limit , that men that have no interest
but the interest of breathing shall have no
voice in elections?
Therefore, I am confident on 't, we should
not be so hot one with another.As people began
to theorize about the English Civil War, "anarchy"
came to be more sharply defined, albeit from
differing political perspectives:
1651 – Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) describes
the natural condition of mankind as a war
of all against all, where man lives a brutish
existence.
"For the savage people in many places of America,
except the government of small families, the
concord whereof dependeth on natural lust,
have no government at all, and live at this
day in that brutish manner."
Hobbes finds three basic causes of the conflict
in this state of nature: competition, diffidence
and glory, "The first maketh men invade for
gain; the second, for safety; and the third,
for reputation".
His first law of nature is that "every man
ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has
hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain
it, that he may seek and use all helps and
advantages of war".
In the state of nature, "every man has a right
to every thing, even to then go for one another's
body" but the second law is that, in order
to secure the advantages of peace, "that a
man be willing, when others are so too…
to lay down this right to all things; and
be contented with so much liberty against
other men as he would allow other men against
himself".
This is the beginning of contracts/covenants;
performing of which is the third law of nature.
"Injustice," therefore, is failure to perform
in a covenant; all else is just.
1656 – James Harrington (The Commonwealth
of Oceana) uses the term to describe a situation
where the people use force to impose a government
on an economic base composed of either solitary
land ownership (absolute monarchy), or land
in the ownership of a few (mixed monarchy).
He distinguishes it from commonwealth, the
situation when both land ownership and governance
shared by the population at large, seeing
it as a temporary situation arising from an
imbalance between the form of government and
the form of property relations.
=== French Revolution (1789–1799) ===
Thomas Carlyle, Scottish essayist of the Victorian
era known foremost for his widely influential
work of history, The French Revolution, wrote
that the French Revolution was a war against
both aristocracy and anarchy: Meanwhile, we
will hate Anarchy as Death, which it is; and
the things worse than Anarchy shall be hated
more!
Surely Peace alone is fruitful.
Anarchy is destruction: a burning up, say,
of Shams and Insupportabilities; but which
leaves Vacancy behind.
Know this also, that out of a world of Unwise
nothing but an Unwisdom can be made.
Arrange it, Constitution-build it, sift it
through Ballot-Boxes as thou wilt, it is and
remains an Unwisdom,-- the new prey of new
quacks and unclean things, the latter end
of it slightly better than the beginning.
Who can bring a wise thing out of men unwise?
Not one.
And so Vacancy and general Abolition having
come for this France, what can Anarchy do
more?
Let there be Order, were it under the Soldier's
Sword; let there be Peace, that the bounty
of the Heavens be not spilt; that what of
Wisdom they do send us bring fruit in its
season!
– It remains to be seen how the quellers
of Sansculottism were themselves quelled,
and sacred right of Insurrection was blown
away by gunpowder: wherewith this singular
eventful History called French Revolution
ends.
Armand II, duke of Aiguillon came before the
National Assembly in 1789 and shared his views
on the anarchy: I may be permitted here to
express my personal opinion.
I shall no doubt not be accused of not loving
liberty, but I know that not all movements
of peoples lead to liberty.
But I know that great anarchy quickly leads
to great exhaustion and that despotism, which
is a kind of rest, has almost always been
the necessary result of great anarchy.
It is therefore much more important than we
think to end the disorder under which we suffer.
If we can achieve this only through the use
of force by authorities, then it would be
thoughtless to keep refraining from using
such force.
Armand II was later exiled because he was
viewed as being opposed to the revolution's
violent tactics.
Professor Chris Bossche commented on the role
of anarchy in the revolution: In The French
Revolution, the narrative of increasing anarchy
undermined the narrative in which the revolutionaries
were striving to create a new social order
by writing a constitution.
=== Jamaica (1720) ===
Sir Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica, wrote
to John Robinson, the Bishop of London, in
1720: As to the Englishmen that came as mechanics
hither, very young and have now acquired good
estates in Sugar Plantations and Indigo & co.,
of course they know no better than what maxims
they learn in the Country.
To be now short & plain Your Lordship will
see that they have no maxims of Church and
State but what are absolutely anarchical.
In the letter, Lawes goes on to complain that
these "estated men now are like Jonah's gourd"
and details the humble origins of the "creolians"
largely lacking an education and flouting
the rules of church and state.
In particular, he cites their refusal to abide
by the Deficiency Act, which required slave
owners to procure from England one white person
for every 40 enslaved Africans, thereby hoping
to expand their own estates and inhibit further
English/Irish immigration.
Lawes describes the government as being "anarchical,
but nearest to any form of Aristocracy".
"Must the King's good subjects at home who
are as capable to begin plantations, as their
Fathers, and themselves were, be excluded
from their Liberty of settling Plantations
in this noble Island, for ever and the King
and Nation at home be deprived of so much
riches, to make a few upstart Gentlemen Princes?"
=== Russian Civil War (1917–1922) ===
During the Russian Civil War – which initially
started as a confrontation between the Communists
and Monarchists – on the territory of today's
Ukraine, a new force emerged, namely the Anarchist
Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine
led by Nestor Makhno.
The Ukrainian Anarchist during the Russian
Civil War (also called the "Black Army") organized
the Free Territory of Ukraine, an anarchist
society, committed to resisting state authority,
whether capitalist or communist.
This project was cut short by the consolidation
of Bolshevik power.
Makhno was described by anarchist theorist
Emma Goldman as "an extraordinary figure"
leading a revolutionary peasants' movement.During
1918, most of Ukraine was controlled by the
forces of the Central Powers, which were unpopular
among the people.
In March 1918, the young anarchist Makhno's
forces and allied anarchist and guerrilla
groups won victories against German, Austrian,
and Ukrainian nationalist (the army of Symon
Petlura) forces, and units of the White Army,
capturing a lot of German and Austro-Hungarian
arms.
These victories over much larger enemy forces
established Makhno's reputation as a military
tactician; he became known as Batko ('Father')
to his admirers.Makhno called the Bolsheviks
dictators and opposed the "Cheka [secret police]...
and similar compulsory authoritative and disciplinary
institutions" and called for "[f]reedom of
speech, press, assembly, unions and the like".
The Bolsheviks accused the Makhnovists of
imposing a formal government over the area
they controlled, and also said that Makhnovists
used forced conscription, committed summary
executions, and had two military and counter-intelligence
forces: the Razvedka and the Kommissiya Protivmakhnovskikh
Del (patterned after the Cheka and the GRU).
However, later historians have dismissed these
claims as fraudulent propaganda.
=== Spain (1936) ===
Francisco Franco, a fascist Spanish general
staged a military rebellion which attempted
overthrew the Popular Front (the established
Spanish government), in 1936.
Following Franco's rebellion, anarchist, communist
and what remained of Popular Front joined
forces against Franco.
This was seen as a social revolution as much
as a political revolution to some.
Throughout the war and shortly after, many
Spanish working-class citizens lived in anarchist
communities, many of which thrived during
this time.
With major support of Germany and Italy the
nationalists won the war, and set up a fascist
dictatorship led by Franco, effectively ending
much of the anarchism in Spain.
=== Albania (1997) ===
In 1997, Albania fell into a state of anarchy,
mainly due to the heavy losses of money caused
by the collapse of pyramid firms.
As a result of the societal collapse, heavily
armed criminals roamed freely with near total
impunity.
There were often 3–4 gangs per city, especially
in the south, where the police did not have
sufficient resources to deal with gang-related
crime.
=== Somalia (1991–2006) ===
Following the outbreak of the civil war in
Somalia and the ensuing collapse of the central
government, residents reverted to local forms
of conflict resolution; either secular, traditional
or Islamic law, with a provision for appeal
of all sentences.
The legal structure in the country was thus
divided along three lines: civil law, religious
law and customary law (xeer).While Somalia's
formal judicial system was largely destroyed
after the fall of the Siad Barre regime, it
was later gradually rebuilt and administered
under different regional governments, such
as the autonomous Puntland and Somaliland
macro-regions.
In the case of the Transitional National Government
and its successor the Transitional Federal
Government, new interim judicial structures
were formed through various international
conferences.
Despite some significant political differences
between them, all of these administrations
shared similar legal structures, much of which
were predicated on the judicial systems of
previous Somali administrations.
These similarities in civil law included:
a) a charter which affirms the primacy of
Muslim shari'a or religious law, although
in practice shari'a is applied mainly to matters
such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and
civil issues.
The charter assured the independence of the
judiciary, which in turn was protected by
a judicial committee; b) a three-tier judicial
system including a supreme court, a court
of appeals, and courts of first instance (either
divided between district and regional courts,
or a single court per region); and c) the
laws of the civilian government which were
in effect prior to the military coup d'état
that saw the Barre regime into power remain
in forced until the laws are amended.
== Lists of ungoverned communities ==
=== 
Ungoverned communities ===
Zomia, Southeast Asian highlands beyond control
of governments
Republic of Cospaia (1440–1826)
Anarchy in the United States (19th century)
The Diggers (England; 1649–1651)
Libertatia (late 17th century)
Neutral Moresnet (26 June 1816 – 28 June
1919)
Kowloon Walled City was a largely ungoverned
squatter settlement from the mid 1940s until
the early 1970s
Drop City, the first rural hippie commune
(Colorado; 1965–1977)
Comunidad de Población en Resistencia (CPR),
indigenous movement (Guatemala; 1988–present)
Slab City, squatted RV desert community (California;
1965–present)
Abahlali baseMjondolo, a South African social
movement (2005–present)
Ras Khamis
=== 
Anarchist communities ===
Anarchists have been involved in a wide variety
of communities.
While there are only a few instances of mass
society "anarchies" that have come about from
explicitly anarchist revolutions, there are
also examples of intentional communities founded
by anarchists.
Intentional communitiesUtopia, Ohio (1847)
Whiteway Colony (1898)
Kibbutz (1909–present)
Life and Labor Commune (1921)
Freetown Christiania (September 26, 1971)
Trumbullplex (1993)Mass societiesFree Territory
(Ukraine; November 1918 – 1921)
Revolutionary Catalonia (21 July 1936–May
1939)
Shinmin Prefecture (1929–1931)
Federation of Neighborhood Councils-El Alto
(Fejuve; 1979–present)
Rebel Autonomous Zapatista Municipalities
(MAREZ; 1994–present)
Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (Rojava;
2012–present)
== See also ==
Libertarian socialism
Anomie
Criticisms of electoral politics
List of anarchist organizations
Outline of anarchism
Power vacuum
Unorganization
