When was anarchy started

Marxist-Leninist parties advocate a vanguard model of organizing with a small group at the top, and anarchists are about horizontal, directly democratic kinds of politics. Since fascism is an antidemocratic ideology that thrives on oppression, and anarchism is explicitly against oppression in all forms, and for direct democracy, anarchism is inherently antifascist much like all anarchists are by necessity anti-police and anti-prison. Not all antifascists are anarchists , but all anarchists are antifascist , and have been fighting against fascist forces for centuries.

During the Spanish Civil War , most of the country was under anarchist control, and thousands of anarchists joined the International Brigades, a volunteer militia numbering in the thousands , who traveled to Spain to fight against General Francisco Franco and his fascist forces.

Famed author George Orwell fought alongside anarchists in the Spanish Civil War ; Irish playwright Oscar Wilde became an anarchist after reading the work of Peter Kropotkin; deaf and blind activist Helen Keller was a socialist who palled around with Emma Goldman and other anarchists.

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. In particular, he developed the concept of spontaneous order in society, where organisations can emerge without central or top-down coordination.

In fact, Godwin developed his anarchist theory half a century earlier — without ever using the term. His writings are a profound critique of the state and its structural violence, arguing that the state and its government has a bad influence on society in that it produces unwanted dependency. He has also pointed out that law and legislation is created by the rich and powerful. Sound familiar? However, it is also important to emphasise that most anarchist principles, convictions and moral positions are not at all an invention of modern anarchist theory — they are as old as human civilisation.

And due to the rather different political philosophies of liberalism and communism , anarchist theory — like most political ideologies — is not a consistent and homogeneous concept. It evolves as different people articulate its core ideologies in different ways.

We can at least distinguish between two rather different schools: social anarchism and libertarian anarchism or free market anarchism. While social anarchism puts emphasis on society and often supports a political economy that socialises the means of production, libertarian anarchism is mostly concerned with ensuring the maximum amount of liberty for the individual.

Here, the will of the individual is considered to be more important even than a harmonious and egalitarian society. It developed fully in the 20th century, but its roots as an epithet for extremism go back further, at least to the French Revolution. Self-described anarchists have formed fringe groups in tumultuous political times, such as the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War.

As a political belief system, anarchy breaks roughly into two separate schools of thought. One rejects all government authority in favor of a belief in the individual's liberty and the right to self-govern. The other rejects government authority in favor of a belief in collectivism or the primacy of the group over the individual.

Anarchy is also used colloquially as a term denoting societal breakdown and collapse. While the common critique of anarchy is that it results in lawlessness and chaos, anarchist philosophy's adherents suggest that societies can remain intact and even thrive under alternatives to traditional hierarchies.

As noted, there are two major schools of thought in anarchism, the individualist anarchists and the social anarchists.

Anarcho-capitalism, meanwhile, represents a surprising variant of anarchism. Among the individualists was Isaiah Berlin, a 20th-century British political philosopher, who described a concept of negative liberty, which focuses on the right of the individual to be free from constraints, in this case by the state or the larger society.

Individual anarchism has influenced many bohemian movements, including the "Yippies" of the s and the punk rockers of the s. Social anarchists, by contrast, focus on the concept of positive liberty, which identifies freedom as not merely liberty from outside interference but the fulfillment of the individual's full potential when power and resources are shared equally among all members of a community.

They favor direct democracy along with common ownership of the means of production. This school of thought has a number of branches, including collectivist anarchism, also referred to as revolutionary socialism; anarcho-communism, also known as libertarian communism; and anarcho-syndicalism, which promotes collectivist labor unions with no union bosses to speak of. Anarcho-capitalists, or laissez-faire capitalists, see free-market capitalism as the basis for a free society.

Unlike many anarchists, they believe in some version of private property. If unhampered by the government, they maintain that private enterprise would provide all of the services that people need. That includes things like road construction and police protection. In this case, the group is similar in ideology to libertarians, although at the extreme edge, as they reject all state involvement in economic and personal matters.

Throughout the years, people have applied anarchism in a wide variety of ways. They include:. Anarchists often make categorical claims to the effect that no state is legitimate or that there can no such thing as a justifiable political state. As an absolute or a priori claim, anarchism holds that all states always and everywhere are illegitimate and unjust.

This sort of claim rests upon an account of the justification of authority that is usually grounded in some form of deontological moral claim about the importance of individual liberty and a logical claim about the nature of state authority. One typical and well-known example of this argument is found in the work of Robert Paul Wolff.

Wolff indicates that legitimate authority rests upon a claim about the right to command obedience Wolff Correlative to this is a duty to obey: one has a duty to obey legitimate authority. As Wolff explains, by appealing to ideas found in Kant and Rousseau, the duty to obey is linked to notions about autonomy, responsibility, and rationality.

But for Wolff and other anarchists, the problem is that the state does not have legitimate authority. The categorical nature of this claim indicates a version of absolute anarchism.

Wolff concludes:. If all men have a continuing obligation to achieve the highest degree of autonomy possible, then there would appear to be no state whose subjects have a moral obligation to obey its commands.

Hence, the concept of a de jure legitimate state would appear to be vacuous, and philosophical anarchism would seem to be the only reasonable political belief for an enlightened man.

Wolff This claim is stated in absolute and a priori fashion, a point made by Reiman in his critique of Wolff Reiman Wolff does not deny, by the way, that there are de facto legitimate states: governments often do have the approval and support of the people they govern. But this approval and support is merely conventional and not grounded in a moral duty; and approval and support are manufactured and manipulated by the coercive power and propaganda and ideology of the state.

But Kant is no anarchist: he defended the idea of enlightened republican government in which autonomy would be preserved. Rousseau may be closer to espousing anarchism in some of his remarks—although these are far from systematic see McLaughlin But despite his strong defense of individual rights, the stringent way he describes voluntary consent, and his advocacy of revolution, Locke believes that states can be defended based upon the social contract theory.

Leaving the canonical authors of Western political philosophy aside, the most likely place to find deontological and a priori anarchism is among the Christian anarchists. Of course, most Christians are not anarchists. But those Christians who espouse anarchism usually do so with the absolute, deontological, and a priori claims of the sort made by Tolstoy, Berdyaev, and Ellul—as noted above. A less stringent form of anarchism will argue that states could be justified in theory—even though, in practice, no state or very few states are actually legitimate.

Contingent anarchism will hold that states in the present configuration of things fail to live up to the standards of their own justification. This is an a posteriori argument see Simmons based both in a theoretical account of the justification of the state for example, the social contract theory of liberal-democratic theory and in an empirical account of how and why concrete states fail to be justified based upon this theory. The author of the present article has offered a version of this argument based upon the social contract theory, holding that the liberal-democratic social contract theory provides the best theory of the justification of the state, while arguing that very few states actually live up to the promise of the social contract theory Fiala a.

One version of the contingent anarchist argument focuses on the question of the burden of proof for accounts that would justify political authority. This approach has been articulated by Noam Chomsky, who explains:. Sometimes the burden can be met. Chomsky Chomsky accepts legitimate authority based in ordinary experience: for example, when a grandfather prevents a child from darting out into the street. But state authority is a much more complicated affair. Political relationships are attenuated; there is the likelihood of corruption and self-interest infecting political reality; there are levels and degrees of mediation, which alienate us from the source of political authority; and the rational autonomy of adults is important and fundamental.

By focusing on the burden of proof, Chomsky acknowledges that there may be ways to meet the burden of proof for the justification of the state. But he points out that there is a prima facie argument against the state—which is based in a complex historical and empirical account of the role of power, economics, and historical inertia in creating political institutions.

He explains:. Such institutions face a heavy burden of proof: it must be shown that under existing conditions, perhaps because of some overriding consideration of deprivation or threat, some form of authority, hierarchy, and domination is justified, despite the prima facie case against it—a burden that can rarely be met.

Chomsky does not deny that the burden of proof could be met. Rather, his point is that there is a prima facie case against the state, since the burden of proof for the justification of the state is rarely met.

Contingent anarchism is based in consequentialist reasoning, focused on details of historical actuality. Consequentialist anarchism will appeal to utilitarian considerations, arguing that states generally fail to deliver in terms of promoting the happiness of the greater number of people—and more strongly that state power tends to produce unhappiness. The actuality of inequality, classism, elitism, racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression can be used to support an anarchist argument, holding that even though a few people benefit from state power, a larger majority suffers under it.

As we shall see in the next section, individualist anarchists are primarily concerned with the tendency of utilitarian politics to sacrifice the rights of individuals in the name of the greater good. Godwin articulated a form of anarchism that is connected to a utilitarian concern.

He writes:. Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind; and that, however we may be obliged to admit it as a necessary evil for the present. Godwin bk V, ch. The goal of political development should be in a direction that goes beyond the state and toward the development of individual reason and morality.

The point here is that our judgments about the justification of the state are contingent: they depend upon present circumstances and our current form of development. And while states may be necessary features of the current human world, as human beings develop further, it is possible that the state might outlive its usefulness.

We should note that utilitarian arguments are often used to support state structures in the name of the greater good. Utilitarian anarchists will argue that states fail to do this. But utilitarian conclusions are not usually based upon a fundamental appeal to moral principles such as liberty or the rights of the individual. Bentham More principled deontological anarchism will maintain that states violate fundamental rights and so are not justified.

Rather, the complaint for a utilitarian anarchist is that state structures tend to produce disadvantages for the greater number of people. For the utilitarian, this all depends upon the circumstances and conditions. Ben-Dor calls this anarchism because it rejects any a priori notion of state justification. In other words, the utilitarian anarchist does not presume that states are justifiable; rather a utilitarian anarchist will hold that the burden of proof rests upon the defender of states to show that state authority is justifiable on utilitarian grounds, by bringing in historical and empirical data about human nature, human flourishing, and successful social organization.

Forms of anarchism also differ in terms of the content of the theory, the focal point of the anarchist critique, and the imagined practical impact of anarchism. Socialist forms of anarchism include communist anarchism associated with Kropotkin and communitarian anarchism see Clark The socialist approach focuses on the development of social and communal groups, which are supposed to thrive outside of hierarchical and centralized political structures.

Individualist forms of anarchism include some forms of libertarianism or anarcho-capitalism as well as egoistically oriented antinomianism and non-conformism. He argued that there was no duty to obey the state and the law because the law and the state impair self-development and self-will.

The state seeks to tame our desires and along with the church it undermines self-enjoyment and the development of unique individuality. Stirner is even critical of social organizations and political parties. Individualist anarchism has often been attributed to a variety of thinkers including Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, and Thoreau.

Individualist anarchism also seems to have something in common with egoism of the sort associated with Ayn Rand. Libertarians are still individualists, who emphasize the importance of individual liberty, even though they disagree with full-blown anarchists about the degree to which state power can be justified.

Some individualist anarchists appear to focus on negative liberty, i. But anarchism has also been concerned with community and the social good. In this sense, anarchists are focused on something like positive liberty and concerned with creating and sustaining the social conditions necessary for actualizing human flourishing.

In this regard, anarchists have also offered theories of institutional rules and social structures that are non-authoritarian. This may sound paradoxical i. According to Prichard rather than focusing on state-authority, anarchist institutions will be be open-ended processes that are complex and non-linear Prichard We see then, that individualist anarchism that focuses only on negative liberty is often rejected by anarchists who are interested in reconceiving community and restructuring society along more egalitarian lines.

Bookchin and other critics of lifestyle individualism will argue that mere non-conformism does very little to change the status quo and overturn structures of domination and authority. Nor does non-conformism and lifestyle anarchism work to create and sustain systems that affirm liberty and equality.

But defenders of lifestyle non-conformism will argue that there is value in opting out of cultural norms and demonstrating contempt for conformity through individual lifestyle choices.

A more robust form of individualist anarchism will focus on key values such as autonomy and self-determination, asserting the primacy of the individual over and against social groups as a matter of rights.

Individualist anarchists can admit that collective action is important and that voluntary cooperation among individuals can result in beneficial and autonomy preserving community.

Remaining disputes will consider whether what results from individual cooperation is a form of capitalism or a form of social sharing or communism. Libertarian anarchists or anarcho-capitalists will defend free market ideas based upon individual choices in trading and producing goods for market.

On the other hand, socialist or communistically oriented anarchism will focus more on a sharing economy. This could be a large form of mutualism or something local and concrete like the sharing of family life or the traditional potlatch. But these ideas remain anarchist to the extent that they want to avoid centralized control and the development of hierarchical structures of domination. Unlike state-centered communism of the sort developed by Marxists, anarchist communism advocates decentralization.

In The Conquest of Bread Kropotkin criticizes monopolistic centralization that prevents people from gaining access to socially generated wealth. Anarchy leads to communism, and communism to anarchy, both alike being expressions of the predominant tendency in modern societies, the pursuit of equality.

Kropotkin [ 31]. Kropotkin argues that the communal impulse already exists and that the advances in social wealth made possible by the development of individualistic capitalism make it likely that we will develop in the direction of communal sharing.

He argues that the tendency of history is away from centralized power and toward equality and liberty—and toward the abolition of the state. Libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism also think that the free market will work to adequately maximize human well-being and help individuals to realize their own autonomy.

But for the socialist and communist anarchists, the question of individual self-realization is less important than the idea of social development. Socialist and communally focused forms of anarchism emphasize the importance of social groups. For example, families can be viewed as anarchic structures of social cooperation and solidarity. A social anarchist would be critical of hierarchical and domineering forms of family organization for example, patriarchal family structure.

But social anarchists will emphasize the point that human identity and flourishing occur within extended social structures—so long as it remains a free and self-determining community. The tension between individualist and socialist anarchism comes to a head when considering the question of the degree to which an individual ought to be subordinated to the community.

Individualists will want to struggle against this assault upon autonomy and individual identity. On the other hand communally focused theorists will point out that individual human beings cannot exist outside of communal structures: we are social animals who flourish and survive in communities.

Thus radical individualism also remains a dream—and as more politically oriented anarchists will point out, individualism undermines the possibility of organized political action, which implies that individualist anarchists will be unable to successfully resist political structures of domination.

Anarchism forces us to re-evaluate political activity. Ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato held that human beings flourished within just political communities and that there was a virtue in serving the polis. Modern political philosophy tended to hold, as well, that political action—including obedience to the law and the ideal of a rule of law—was noble and enlightened.

In Hegelian political philosophy, these ideas combine in a way that celebrates citizenship and service to the state. And in contemporary liberal political philosophy, it is often presumed that obedience to the law is required as a prima facie duty see Reiman ; Gans Anarchists, of course, call this all into question.

The crucial question for anarchists is thus whether one ought to disengage from political life, whether one ought to submit to political authority and obey the law, or whether one ought to engage in active efforts to actively abolish the state.

The idea of direct action is often viewed as typical of anarchists, who believe that something ought to be done to actively abolish the state including: graffiti, street theater, organized occupations, boycotts, and even violence. There are disputes among anarchists about what ought to be done, with an important dividing line occurring with regard to the question of violence and criminal behavior.

Franks has argued that anarchist direct action ought to exemplify a unity of means and ends Franks On this view, if liberation and autonomy are what anarchists are pursuing, then the methods used to obtain these goods must be liberationist and celebrate autonomy—and embody this within direct action. Coercive imposition of the anarchist ideal re-inscribes the problem of domination, hierarchy, centralization, and monopolistic power that the anarchist was originally opposed to.

One significant philosophical and ethical problem for politically engaged anarchists is the question of how to avoid ongoing cycles of power and violence that are likely to erupt in the absence of centralized political power. One suggestion, mentioned above, is that anarchists will often want to emphasize the unity of means and ends. This idea shows why there is some substantial overlap and conjunction between anarchism and pacifism. Pacifist typically emphasize the unity of means and ends.

But not all pacifists are anarchists. However, we mentioned above that there is a connection between anarchism and Christian pacifism, as found in Tolstoy, for example. Gandhi was influenced by Tolstoy and the anarchists.