Anarchy

As a type of stateless society, it is commonly contrasted with states, which are centralized polities that claim a monopoly on violence over a permanent territory.

The word "anarchy" was first defined by Ancient Greek philosophy, which understood it to be a corrupted form of direct democracy, where a majority of people exclusively pursue their own interests.

During the Age of Enlightenment, philosophers began to look at anarchy in terms of the "state of nature", a thought experiment used to justify various forms of hierarchical government.

[12] Sociologist Francis Dupuis-Déri has described chaos as a "degenerate form of anarchy", in which there is an absence, not just of rulers, but of any kind of political organization.

[15] When the word "anarchy" (Greek: αναρχία, romanized: anarchia) was first defined in ancient Greece, it initially had both a positive and negative connotation, respectively referring to spontaneous order or chaos without rulers.

[15] Christian theologists came to claim that all humans were inherently sinful and ought to submit to the omnipotence of higher power, with the French Protestant reformer John Calvin declaring that even the worst form of tyranny was preferable to anarchy.

[23] It was used to describe the disorder that results from the absence of or opposition to authority, with John Milton writing of "the waste/Wide anarchy of Chaos" in Paradise Lost.

[29] He argued that, without established laws, such a society would be inherently unstable, which would make a limited government necessary in order to protect people's natural rights.

[33] In contrast to Thomas Hobbes, who conceived of the state of nature as a "war of all against all" which existed throughout the world, Kant considered it to be only a thought experiment.

[40] Burke insisted that reason was all that was needed to govern society and that "artificial laws" had been responsible for all social conflict and inequality, which led him to denounce the church and the state.

[42] In his 1793 book Political Justice, Godwin proposed the creation of a more just and free society by abolishing government, concluding that order could be achieved through anarchy.

[43] Although he came to be known as a founding father of anarchism,[44] Godwin himself mostly used the word "anarchy" in its negative definition,[45] fearing that an immediate dissolution of government without any prior political development would lead to disorder.

[50] He concluded by declaring anarchy to be the best form of political regime, as it was law that gave rise to tyranny and anarchic revolution that was capable of bringing down bad governments.

Jefferson's political philosophy later inspired the development of individualist anarchism in the United States, with contemporary right-libertarians proposing that private property could be used to guarantee anarchy.

[60] In his 1863 work The Federal Principle, Proudhon elaborated his view of anarchy as "the government of each man by himself," using the English term of "self-government" as a synonym for it.

[67] One of Proudhon's keenest students was the Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin, who adopted his critiques of private property and government, as well as his views on the desirability of anarchy.

[68] During the Revolutions of 1848, Bakunin wrote of his hopes of igniting a revolutionary upheaval in the Russian Empire, writing to the German poet Georg Herwegh that "I do not fear anarchy, but desire it with all my heart".

For we are convinced that anarchy, meaning the unrestricted manifestation of the liberated life of the people, must spring from liberty, equality, the new social order, and the force of the revolution itself against the reaction.