Anarchy is a system of belief that promotes self-governance or consensus based on the entire community. It opposes government rule and prevents hierarchies from being created. There are two anarchical schools of thought and four types of anarchy.
This system of belief doesn’t conform to a government as a form of authority and usually associates with civil unrest and chaos. The word itself comes from the Greek word that means “having no ruler”. As a political philosophy, it opposes government rule and prevents hierarchies from being created.
The origins of anarchy
As a philosophical concept steeped in extremism, anarchism started somewhere around the time of the French Revolution. However, it fully developed only in the twentieth century. While people who advocate anarchy as a philosophy say that it can result in thriving societies without government rule, the term anarchy usually describes chaos, lawlessness and societal problems.
There are primarily two major segments of anarchy. One school of thought believes in promoting the individual’s self-governance and rejects all forms of government authority. The other segment promotes collective or group ideology rather than giving importance to the individual, over government authority.
Two schools of thought on anarchy
Anarchism essentially has two major schools of thought as discussed above. These are the individualist anarchists and the social anarchists. There is yet another variant: anarcho-capitalism. Let’s look at all three.
- The individual anarchists: The individualist anarchism school of thought gives importance to the rights of an individual above the constraints of society or government rule. It has also influenced many other movements such as punk rockers in the 1980s and the “Yippies” in the 1960s. This concept of negative liberty came from a British political philosopher by the name of Isaiah Berlin in the 20th century.
- The social anarchists: Unlike the individual anarchists, this group promotes positive liberty. According to them, this means that an individual’s complete potential is realized only when all the resources available to them are shared mutually among members of a like-minded community. They follow direct democracy and the community commonly owns all means of production.
- The anarcho-capitalists: This group promotes the idea of a free society based on free-market capitalism. They don’t reject governance or individualism entirely. They encourage private property of certain types and if the government doesn’t interfere with their activities, the private sects would fulfill the needs of the group as a whole. This includes police protection, laying roads, etc. However, they discourage government interference in personal and economic matters.
Various types of anarchism
Over its decades of existence, anarchy has seen application in many ways to fulfill the end goals of various types of thinking. Here are the types of anarchism that have existed through the years:
- Anarchist socialism: Anarchist socialism brings together both the concepts of socialism and anarchism. It believes in placing the needs of the entire group over those of an individual in a society governed by self.
- Anarchist communism: Anarchist communism promotes social equality. But it’s a little different from the concept of regular communism in which the state owns the means of production. Under anarchist communism, self-governance is at the center of the economy.
- Crypto anarchism: The government controls and taxes the regular economy driven by cash. In order to step away from this in the belief that government control can be avoided, digital currency is being promoted as economic sustainability.
- Green anarchism: Here, the basic principles that govern anarchism apply to animal rights and environmental issues as well. They promote the freedom of both humans as well as non-humans.
How anarchism impact modern economics?
Anarchism has had its influence on modern economics to an extent. The philosophy influenced many of the movements around the turn of the 21st century that were based on anti-capitalist, anti-war, and anti-globalization ideas. It also drove the protests against the World Economic Forum, the Group of Eight, and the World Trade Organization. It even resulted in unrest in 1999 in Seattle at the WTO conference.
More recently, the main reason for the creation and popularization of cryptocurrencies all over the world is in fact a fight against the corruption within financial organizations and governments, to wrest power away from them. Many crypto-anarchists promote the most prominent cryptocurrency, bitcoin.
A few criticisms of anarchy
Over the years, anarchy as a concept has seen criticism for various reasons. Here are a few of them:
- Chaotic: One of the biggest criticisms of anarchy is that it is chaotic since it rejects all forms of government rule and structure.
- Unrealistic: The principle of anarchy is simply too unrealistic for it to work on a large scale. For example, while it may work for small communities, it definitely does not work for countries as a whole.
- Idealistic: Another criticism is that anarchy is extremely idealistic as a concept. Individuals cannot entirely reject government authority nor can they create a successful form of sustenance through individualism.
