Anarchism

Anarchism is a far left political and social theory that seeks to abolish the state, capitalism and other institutions it sees as resting on coercion and hierarchy, replacing them with a stateless society built on horizontal networks of voluntary association, free cooperation and mutual aid. Usually classed within the libertarian wing of socialism, anarchism holds that people are capable of organizing complex social and economic life without centralized authority once coercive institutions are removed. Although sympathetic ideas can be traced back to ancient China and Greece, anarchism as a self-conscious modern movement grew out of the Enlightenment, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon became, in the 1840s, the first political thinker to call himself an anarchist. William Godwin developed an early philosophical anarchism, Max Stirner pushed an individualist version centered on the sovereign self, Mikhail Bakunin built a collectivist anarchism opposed to Marxist state socialism, and Peter Kropotkin developed anarcho-communism grounded in mutual aid. Anarchists played major roles in the Paris Commune and in the Russian and Spanish Civil Wars, the period usually remembered as anarchism's classical era, and the movement has seen a further revival since the late twentieth century within anti-capitalist, anti-war and anti-globalization movements.