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Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is sceptical of authority and rejects all involuntary, coercive forms of hierarchy.

Anarchism calls for the abolition of the state, which it holds to be unnecessary, undesirable, and harmful.

Humans lived in societies without formal hierarchies long before the establishment of formal states, realms, or empires.

With the rise of organised hierarchical bodies, scepticism toward authority also rose.

Although traces of anarchist thought are found throughout history, modern anarchism emerged from the Enlightenment.

During the latter half of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century, the anarchist movement flourished in most parts of the world and had a significant role in workers' struggles for emancipation.

Various anarchist schools of thought formed during this period.

Anarchists have taken part in several revolutions, most notably in the Paris Commune, the Russian Civil War and the Spanish Civil War, whose end marked the end of the classical era of anarchism.

In the last decades of the 20th and into the 21st century, the anarchist movement has been resurgent once more.

Anarchism employs a diversity of tactics in order to meet its ideal ends which can be broadly separated into revolutionary and evolutionary tactics; there is significant overlap between the two, which are merely descriptive.

Revolutionary tactics aim to bring down authority and state, having taken a violent turn in the past, while evolutionary tactics aim to prefigure what an anarchist society would be like.

Anarchist thought, criticism, and praxis have played a part in diverse areas of human society.

The suffix -ism denotes the ideological current that favours anarchy.

Anarchism appears in English from 1642 as anarchisme and anarchy from 1539; early English usages emphasised a sense of disorder.

Various factions within the French Revolution labelled their opponents as anarchists, although few such accused shared many views with later anarchists.

Many revolutionaries of the 19th century such as William Godwin (1756–1836) and Wilhelm Weitling (1808–1871) would contribute to the anarchist doctrines of the next generation but did not use anarchist or anarchism in describing themselves or their beliefs.

The first political philosopher to call himself an anarchist () was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), marking the formal birth of anarchism in the mid-19th century.

Since the 1890s and beginning in France, libertarianism has often been used as a synonym for anarchism and its use as a synonym is still common outside the United States.

Additionally, some anarchists use libertarian socialist to avoid anarchism's negative connotations and emphasise its connections with socialism.

Anarchism is broadly used to describe the anti-authoritarian wing of the socialist movement.

Anarchism is contrasted to socialist forms which are state-oriented or from above.

Scholars of anarchism generally highlight anarchism's socialist credentials and criticise attempts at creating dichotomies between the two.

Some scholars describe anarchism as having many influences from liberalism, and being both liberals and socialists but more so, while most scholars reject anarcho-capitalism as a misunderstanding of anarchist principles.

While opposition to the state is central to anarchist thought, defining anarchism is not an easy task for scholars, as there is a lot of discussion among scholars and anarchists on the matter, and various currents perceive anarchism slightly differently.

It was after the creation of institutions of authority that anarchistic ideas espoused as a reaction.

The most notable precursors to anarchism in the ancient world were in China and Greece.

In China, philosophical anarchism (the discussion on the legitimacy of the state) was delineated by Taoist philosophers Zhuang Zhou and Laozi.

Alongside Stoicism, Taoism has been said to have had "significant anticipations" of anarchism.

Anarchic attitudes were also articulated by tragedians and philosophers in Greece.

Aeschylus and Sophocles used the myth of Antigone to illustrate the conflict between rules set by the state and personal autonomy.

Socrates questioned Athenian authorities constantly and insisted on the right of individual freedom of conscience.

Cynics dismissed human law (nomos) and associated authorities while trying to live according to nature (physis).

Stoics were supportive of a society based on unofficial and friendly relations among its citizens without the presence of a state.

In medieval Europe, there was no anarchistic activity except some ascetic religious movements.

These, and other Muslim movements, later gave birth to religious anarchism.

In the Sasanian Empire, Mazdak called for an egalitarian society and the abolition of monarchy, only to be soon executed by Emperor Kavad I.

In Basra, religious sects preached against the state.

In Europe, various sects developed anti-state and libertarian tendencies.

Renewed interest in antiquity during the Renaissance and in private judgment during the Reformation restored elements of anti-authoritarian secularism, particularly in France.

Enlightenment challenges to intellectual authority (secular and religious) and the revolutions of the 1790s and 1848 all spurred the ideological development of what became the era of classical anarchism.

The first anarchist currents developed throughout the 18th century as William Godwin espoused philosophical anarchism in England, morally delegitimising the state, Max Stirner's thinking paved the way to individualism and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's theory of mutualism found fertile soil in France.

By the late 1870s, various anarchist schools of thought had become well-defined and a wave of then unprecedented globalisation occurred from 1880 to 1914.

This era of classical anarchism lasted until the end of the Spanish Civil War and is considered the golden age of anarchism.

Drawing from mutualism, Mikhail Bakunin founded collectivist anarchism and entered the International Workingmen's Association, a class worker union later known as the First International that formed in 1864 to unite diverse revolutionary currents.

The International became a significant political force, with Karl Marx being a leading figure and a member of its General Council.

Bakunin's faction (the Jura Federation) and Proudhon's followers (the mutualists) opposed state socialism, advocating political abstentionism and small property holdings.

After bitter disputes, the Bakuninists were expelled from the International by the Marxists at the 1872 Hague Congress.

Anarchists were treated similarly in the Second International, being ultimately expelled in 1896.

Bakunin famously predicted that if revolutionaries gained power by Marx's terms, they would end up the new tyrants of workers.

In response to their expulsion from the First International, anarchists formed the St. Imier International.

Under the influence of Peter Kropotkin, a Russian philosopher and scientist, anarcho-communism overlapped with collectivism.

Anarcho-communists, who drew inspiration from the 1871 Paris Commune, advocated for free federation and for the distribution of goods according to one's needs.

At the turn of the century, anarchism had spread all over the world.

It was a notable feature of the international syndicalism movement.

In China, small groups of students imported the humanistic pro-science version of anarcho-communism.

Tokyo was a hotspot for rebellious youth from countries of the far east, travelling to the Japanese capital to study.

In Latin America, Argentina was a stronghold for anarcho-syndicalism, where it became the most prominent left-wing ideology.

During this time, a minority of anarchists adopted tactics of revolutionary political violence.

This strategy became known as propaganda of the deed.

The dismemberment of the French socialist movement into many groups and the execution and exile of many Communards to penal colonies following the suppression of the Paris Commune favoured individualist political expression and acts.

Even though many anarchists distanced themselves from these terrorist acts, infamy came upon the movement and attempts were made to exclude them from American immigration, including the Immigration Act of 1903, also called the Anarchist Exclusion Act.

Illegalism was another strategy which some anarchists adopted during this period.

Despite concerns, anarchists enthusiastically participated in the Russian Revolution in opposition to the White movement; however, they met harsh suppression after the Bolshevik government was stabilised.

Several anarchists from Petrograd and Moscow fled to Ukraine, notably leading to the Kronstadt rebellion and Nestor Makhno's struggle in the Free Territory.

With the anarchists being crushed in Russia, two new antithetical currents emerged, namely platformism and synthesis anarchism.

The former sought to create a coherent group that would push for revolution while the latter were against anything that would resemble a political party.

Seeing the victories of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution and the resulting Russian Civil War, many workers and activists turned to communist parties which grew at the expense of anarchism and other socialist movements.

In France and the United States, members of major syndicalist movements such as the General Confederation of Labour and the Industrial Workers of the World left their organisations and joined the Communist International.

In the Spanish Civil War of 1936, anarchists and syndicalists (CNT and FAI) once again allied themselves with various currents of leftists.

A long tradition of Spanish anarchism led to anarchists playing a pivotal role in the war.

In response to the army rebellion, an anarchist-inspired movement of peasants and workers, supported by armed militias, took control of Barcelona and of large areas of rural Spain, where they collectivised the land.

The Soviet Union provided some limited assistance at the beginning of the war, but the result was a bitter fight among communists and anarchists at a series of events named May Days as Joseph Stalin tried to seize control of the Republicans.

The 1960s witnessed a revival of anarchism, likely caused by a perceived failure of Marxism–Leninism and tensions built by the Cold War.

During this time, anarchism found a presence in other movements critical towards both capitalism and the state such as the anti-nuclear, environmental, and peace movements, the counterculture of the 1960s, and the New Left.

It also saw a transition from its previous revolutionary nature to provocative anti-capitalist reformism.

Anarchism became associated with punk subculture as exemplified by bands such as Crass and the Sex Pistols.

The established feminist tendencies of anarcha-feminism returned with vigour during the second wave of feminism.

Black anarchism began to take form at this time and influenced anarchism's move from a Eurocentric demographic.

This coincided with its failure to gain traction in Northern Europe and its unprecedented height in Latin America.

Around the turn of the 21st century, anarchism grew in popularity and influence within anti-capitalist, anti-war and anti-globalisation movements.

Anarchists became known for their involvement in protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Group of Eight and the World Economic Forum.

During the protests, ad hoc leaderless anonymous cadres known as black blocs engaged in rioting, property destruction and violent confrontations with the police.

Other organisational tactics pioneered in this time include affinity groups, security culture and the use of decentralised technologies such as the Internet.

A significant event of this period was the confrontations at the 1999 Seattle WTO conference.

The individualist current emphasises negative liberty in opposing restraints upon the free individual, while the social current emphasises positive liberty in aiming to achieve the free potential of society through equality and social ownership.

In a chronological sense, anarchism can be segmented by the classical currents of the late 19th century and the post-classical currents (anarcha-feminism, green anarchism, and post-anarchism) developed thereafter.

Beyond the specific factions of anarchist movements which constitute political anarchism lies philosophical anarchism which holds that the state lacks moral legitimacy, without necessarily accepting the imperative of revolution to eliminate it.

A component especially of individualist anarchism, philosophical anarchism may tolerate the existence of a minimal state but claims that citizens have no moral obligation to obey government when it conflicts with individual autonomy.

Anarchism pays significant attention to moral arguments since ethics have a central role in anarchist philosophy.

Anarchism's emphasis on anti-capitalism, egalitarianism, and for the extension of community and individuality sets it apart from anarcho-capitalism and other types of economic libertarianism.

Anarchism is usually placed on the far-left of the political spectrum.

Much of its economics and legal philosophy reflect anti-authoritarian, anti-statist, libertarian, and radical interpretations of left-wing and socialist politics such as collectivism, communism, individualism, mutualism, and syndicalism, among other libertarian socialist economic theories.

As anarchism does not offer a fixed body of doctrine from a single particular worldview, many anarchist types and traditions exist and varieties of anarchy diverge widely.

One reaction against sectarianism within the anarchist milieu was anarchism without adjectives, a call for toleration and unity among anarchists first adopted by Fernando Tarrida del Mármol in 1889 in response to the bitter debates of anarchist theory at the time.

They were followed by the major currents of social anarchism (collectivist, communist and syndicalist).

They differ on organisational and economic aspects of their ideal society.

Mutualism is an 18th-century economic theory that was developed into anarchist theory by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Its aims include reciprocity, free association, voluntary contract, federation and monetary reform of both credit and currency that would be regulated by a bank of the people.

Collectivist anarchism is a revolutionary socialist form of anarchism commonly associated with Mikhail Bakunin.

Collectivist anarchists advocate collective ownership of the means of production which is theorised to be achieved through violent revolution and that workers be paid according to time worked, rather than goods being distributed according to need as in communism.

Anarcho-communism developed from radical socialist currents after the French Revolution but was first formulated as such in the Italian section of the First International.

It was later expanded upon in the theoretical work of Peter Kropotkin, whose specific style would go onto become the dominating view of anarchists by the late 19th century.

Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism that views labour syndicates as a potential force for revolutionary social change, replacing capitalism and the state with a new society democratically self-managed by workers.

The basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are direct action, workers' solidarity and workers' self-management.

Individualist anarchism is a set of several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasise the individual and their will over any kinds of external determinants.

Early influences on individualist forms of anarchism include William Godwin, Max Stirner, and Henry David Thoreau.

Interest in the anarchist movement developed alongside momentum in the anti-globalisation movement, whose leading activist networks were anarchist in orientation.

As the movement shaped 21st century radicalism, wider embrace of anarchist principles signaled a revival of interest.

Anarchism has continued to generate many philosophies and movements, at times eclectic, drawing upon various sources and combining disparate concepts to create new philosophical approaches.

The anti-capitalist tradition of classical anarchism has remained prominent within contemporary currents.

Contemporary news coverage which emphasizes black bloc demonstrations has reinforced anarchism's historical association with chaos and violence.

Its publicity has also led more scholars in fields such as anthropology and history to engage with the anarchist movement, although contemporary anarchism favours actions over academic theory.

Gender equality can be a common principle, although it ranks as a higher priority to anarcha-feminists than anarcho-communists.

Anarchists are generally committed against coercive authority in all forms, namely "all centralized and hierarchical forms of government (e.g., monarchy, representative democracy, state socialism, etc.

Anarchist schools disagree on the methods by which these forms should be opposed.

The principle of equal liberty is closer to anarchist political ethics in that it transcends both the liberal and socialist traditions.

A broad categorisation can be made between aims to destroy oppressive states and institutions by revolutionary means on one hand and aims to change society through evolutionary means on the other.

Evolutionary tactics embrace nonviolence, reject violence and take a gradual approach to anarchist aims, although there is significant overlap between the two.

Anarchist tactics have shifted during the course of the last century.

Anarchists during the early 20th century focused more on strikes and militancy while contemporary anarchists use a broader array of approaches.

Not only did they confront state armed forces, as in Spain and Ukraine, but some of them also employed terrorism as propaganda of the deed.

Assassination attempts were carried out against heads of state, some of which were successful.

Many anarchists, especially the Galleanists, believed that these attempts would be the impetus for a revolution against capitalism and the state.

Many of these attacks were done by individual assailants and the majority took place in the late 1870s, the early 1880s and the 1890s, with some still occurring in the early 1900s.

Their decrease in prevalence was the result of further judicial power and targeting and cataloging by state institutions.

Anarchist perspectives towards violence have always been controversial.

Anarcho-pacifists advocate for non-violence means to achieve their stateless, nonviolent ends.

Other anarchist groups advocate direct action, a tactic which can include acts of sabotage or terrorism.

This attitude was quite prominent a century ago when seeing the state as a tyrant and some anarchists believing that they had every right to oppose its oppression by any means possible.

Emma Goldman and Errico Malatesta, who were proponents of limited use of violence, stated that violence is merely a reaction to state violence as a necessary evil.

Anarchists took an active role in strike actions, although they tended to be antipathetic to formal syndicalism, seeing it as reformist.

They saw it as a part of the movement which sought to overthrow the state and capitalism.

Anarchists also reinforced their propaganda within the arts, some of whom practiced naturism and nudism.

Those anarchists also built communities which were based on friendship and were involved in the news media.

Both Bonanno and the French group The Invisible Committee advocate for small, informal affiliation groups, where each member is responsible for their own actions but works together to bring down oppression utilizing sabotage and other violent means against state, capitalism, and other enemies.

Members of The Invisible Committee were arrested in 2008 on various charges, terrorism included.

Overall, contemporary anarchists are much less violent and militant than their ideological ancestors.

They mostly engage in confronting the police during demonstrations and riots, especially in countries such as Canada, Greece, and Mexico.

This can take the form of disrupting and protesting against unjust hierarchy, or the form of self-managing their lives through the creation of counter-institutions such as communes and non-hierarchical collectives.

Decision-making is often handled in an anti-authoritarian way, with everyone having equal say in each decision, an approach known as horizontalism.

Those anarchists would rather base their thought and praxis on their own experience which they will later theorize.

The decision-making process of small anarchist affinity groups plays a significant tactical role.

Anarchists have employed various methods in order to build a rough consensus among members of their group without the need of a leader or a leading group.

One way is for an individual from the group to play the role of facilitator to help achieve a consensus without taking part in the discussion themselves or promoting a specific point.

Minorities usually accept rough consensus, except when they feel the proposal contradicts anarchist ethics, goals and values.

Anarchists usually form small groups (5–20 individuals) to enhance autonomy and friendships among their members.

These kinds of groups more often than not interconnect with each other, forming larger networks.

Anarchists still support and participate in strikes, especially wildcat strikes as these are leaderless strikes not organised centrally by a syndicate.

As in the past, newspapers and journals are used, and anarchists have gone online in the World Wide Web to spread their message.

Anarchists have found it easier to create websites because of distributional and other difficulties, hosting electronic libraries and other portals.

Anarchists were also involved in developing various software that are available for free.

The way these hacktivists work to develop and distribute resembles the anarchist ideals, especially when it comes to preserving users' privacy from state surveillance.

Anarchists organize themselves to squat and reclaim public spaces.

During important events such as protests and when spaces are being occupied, they are often called Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ), spaces where art, poetry, and surrealism are blended to display the anarchist ideal.

As seen by anarchists, squatting is a way to regain urban space from the capitalist market, serving pragmatical needs and also being an exemplary direct action.

Acquiring space enables anarchists to experiment with their ideas and build social bonds.

Its diversity has led to widely different uses of identical terms among different anarchist traditions which has created a number of definitional concerns in anarchist theory.

The compatibility of capitalism, nationalism, and religion with anarchism is widely disputed, and anarchism enjoys complex relationships with ideologies such as communism, collectivism, Marxism, and trade unionism.

Sexuality was not often discussed by classical anarchists but the few that did felt that an anarchist society would lead to sexuality naturally developing.

Sexual violence was a concern for anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker, who opposed age of consent laws, believing they would benefit predatory men.

A historical current that arose and flourished during 1890 and 1920 within anarchism was free love.

In contemporary anarchism, this current survives as a tendency to support polyamory and queer anarchism.

Free love advocates were against marriage, which they saw as a way of men imposing authority over women, largely because marriage law greatly favoured the power of men.

The notion of free love was much broader and included a critique of the established order that limited women's sexual freedom and pleasure.

Those free love movements contributed to the establishment of communal houses, where large groups of travelers, anarchists and other activists slept in beds together.

Free love had roots both in Europe and the United States; however, some anarchists struggled with the jealousy that arose from free love.

Anarchist feminists were advocates of free love, against marriage, and pro-choice (utilising a contemporary term), and had a similar agenda.

Anarchist and non-anarchist feminists differed on suffrage but were supportive of one another.

During the second half of the 20th century, anarchism intermingled with the second wave of feminism, radicalising some currents of the feminist movement and being influenced as well.

By the latest decades of the 20th century, anarchists and feminists were advocating for the rights and autonomy of women, gays, queers and other marginalised groups, with some feminist thinkers suggesting a fusion of the two currents.

With the third wave of feminism, sexual identity and compulsory heterosexuality became a subject of study for anarchists, yielding a post-structuralist critique of sexual normality.

Some anarchists distanced themselves from this line of thinking, suggesting that it leaned towards an individualism that was dropping the cause of social liberation.

Anarchists consider proper education, one which sets the foundations of the future autonomy of the individual and the society, to be an act of mutual aid.

Anarchist writers such as William Godwin (Political Justice) and Max Stirner ("The False Principle of Our Education") attacked both state education and private education as another means by which the ruling class replicate their privileges.

In 1901, Catalan anarchist and free thinker Francisco Ferrer established the Escuela Moderna in Barcelona as an opposition to the established education system which was dictated largely by the Catholic Church.

Ferrer's approach was secular, rejecting both state and church involvement in the educational process whilst giving pupils large amounts of autonomy in planning their work and attendance.

Ferrer aimed to educate the working class and explicitly sought to foster class consciousness among students.

The school closed after constant harassment by the state and Ferrer was later arrested.

Contemporary anarchists such as Ward claim that state education serves to perpetuate socioeconomic inequality.

While few anarchist education institutions have survived to the modern-day, major tenets of anarchist schools, among them respect for child autonomy and relying on reasoning rather than indoctrination as a teaching method, have spread among mainstream educational institutions.

Anarchists consider the state as a tool of domination and believe it to be illegitimate regardless of its political tendencies.

Instead of people being able to control the aspects of their life, major decisions are taken by a small elite.

Authority ultimately rests solely on power, regardless of whether that power is open or transparent, as it still has the ability to coerce people.

Another anarchist argument against states is that the people constituting a government, even the most altruistic among officials, will unavoidably seek to gain more power, leading to corruption.

Anarchists consider the idea that the state is the collective will of the people to be an unachievable fiction due to the fact that the ruling class is distinct from the rest of society.

Specific anarchist attitudes towards the state vary.

In literature, anarchism was mostly associated with the New Apocalyptics and the neo-romanticism movement.

In music, anarchism has been associated with music scenes such as punk.

Anarchists such as Leo Tolstoy and Herbert Read stated that the border between the artist and the non-artist, what separates art from a daily act, is a construct produced by the alienation caused by capitalism and it prevents humans from living a joyful life.

Other anarchists advocated for or used art as a means to achieve anarchist ends.

Throughout the 20th century, many prominent anarchists (Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Gustav Landauer and Camillo Berneri) and publications such as Anarchy wrote about matters pertaining to the arts.

Three overlapping properties made art useful to anarchists.

It could depict a critique of existing society and hierarchies, serve as a prefigurative tool to reflect the anarchist ideal society and even turn into a means of direct action such as in protests.

As it appeals to both emotion and reason, art could appeal to the whole human and have a powerful effect.

The 19th-century neo-impressionist movement had an ecological aesthetic and offered an example of an anarchist perception of the road towards socialism.

In Les chataigniers a Osny by anarchist painter Camille Pissarro, the blending of aesthetic and social harmony is prefiguring an ideal anarchistic agrarian community.

Another common criticism of anarchism is that it fits a world of isolation in which only the small enough entities can be self-governing; a response would be that major anarchist thinkers advocated anarchist federalism.

Philosophy lecturer Andrew G. Fiala composed a list of common arguments against anarchism which includes critiques such as that anarchism is innately related to violence and destruction, not only in the pragmatic world, such as at protests, but in the world of ethics as well.

Secondly, anarchism is evaluated as unfeasible or utopian since the state cannot be defeated practically.

This line of arguments most often calls for political action within the system to reform it.