Anarchy.
The heart of the punk movement in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
A driving force for civil wars and violent revolutions.
A concept held in esteem by activists like Leo Tolstoy, Noam Chomsky, and Mahatma Gandhi.
So, what is it?
Anarchy, very simply, is a state of being without any government or authority.
The original concept of anarchy was born alongside, and in response to, the concepts of democracy
and other political systems.
But it wasn’t until later, around the 18th and 19th centuries that modern anarchist philosophy
was fully developed in Western countries.
Following the French Revolution, anarchism gained prominence as a political alternative
to theocracies or monarchies, and as an attempt to achieve total equality by eliminating authoritarian
roles.
However, as Noam Chomsky and other academics have admitted, it is somewhat of an unrealistic
utopian theory.
Many forms of modern anarchy are political ideologies that hold the government responsible
for the world’s problems.
Because there are many forms of state control, there are many different forms of anarchy.
For example - Anarcha-feminism says that the hierarchies of the state lead to patriarchy,
which leads to oppression.
Green-Anarchism states that environmental exploitation is a result of capitalist government
policy.
And despite the violence commonly associated with anarchy, Anarcho-Pacifism holds that
it is the state that creates unnecessary political violence, and should therefore be abolished.
In fact, violence is not an intrinsic part of modern anarchism, as many believe.
Tolstoy and Gandhi specifically petitioned against all forms of violence.
And Chomsky has said that, quote, “[anarchy] is not…
people running around the streets… breaking store windows, [it’s] a conception of a
very organized society…
with as little control as is feasible”, end quote.
While violence is still controversially used by some groups of anarchists, in order to
destroy systems of government, many anarchists renounce it.
A lot people would agree that anarchism is a good idea, in theory, because it promotes
both freedom and egalitarianism.
However, in practice, it would be difficult to perfect.
As Chomsky explains, anarchy is a response to oppressive political movements rather than
as a stand-alone system of government.
Democracy is another political theory that is often more hard to understand than you
might think.
To learn more about what democracy really looks like, check out our video here.
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