What is Anarchy?

Let's define this blog's key term: anarchy.

The worst source you can go to for a definition of anarchy is a dictionary. My favorite dictionary defines anarchy as "a state of lawlessness due to the absence or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder." Of course, that's how some people use the word anarchy, but that's not how you'll see it used in the posts on this blog. Anarchy, the way I use it, doesn't really mean lawlessness, and it certainly doesn't mean disorder.

Some people will tell you that anarchy means "an absence of government," but that's not quite the sense of the word I'm using either. I certainly am talking about an absence of government, but we can get rid of all government and all states and even all municipal governing bodies and still fail to have what I mean when I talk about anarchy.

Etymologically, anarchy means something like "an absence of dominion," or "an absence of sovereignty," or "an absence of positions of primacy in terms of power to command." That's a lot closer to what I mean by anarchy.

In an anarchistic society, no one is in a position that permits him to command anyone else. Everyone interacts with one another freely, in a completely uncoerced manner. When one person commands another person, there is always coercion, because implicit in the command is the threat of harm in the event of disobedience. On the schoolyard, we observe such behavior and rightly condemn it as bullying. In other contexts, however, the very same do-what-I-demand-or-I'll-hurt-you behavior is called government, foreign relations, parenting, marriage, school, a job, church, business, or any of myriad other noble-sounding names. But the behavior hasn't changed in any of these contexts. It's still just bullying.

Now, this doesn't mean that things like parenting, marriage, school, industry (in the older sense of that word), or church would be absent from an anarchistic society. What would be absent is the coercion. An anarchist would marry, work (though not, perhaps, in the way most people conceive it today), worship, have children, teach, and learn just as surely as any other human being would. But the anarchist won't introduce coercion into these healthy and natural human activities. He would let them stay healthy and natural.

Anarchy, then, is far more than a political system. Sure, anarchists are opposed to government, but that's just one of many forms in which people control one another, and all of that control over one another is evil and anarchy is opposed to all of it. Anarchy is a principle about how to interact with other people at all levels: in our nations, in our towns, in our homes, in our churches, in our schools, in our workplaces, in our playplaces, in our marketplaces, and in every other area where one person has any kind of involvement with another. All of those interactions and relationships should be free from any kind of power or coercion. That's anarchy.

So as you read the posts in this blog, keep in mind what anarchy means here. You'll see the word a lot and it's important that as you see it, you know what I mean by it. At least half the arguments against anarchy come about because the arguers have two different understandings of how the word is being used. Of course, there are other arguments against anarchy. Usually they're related to uncertainty about how it can be achieved. Those arguments, though, will be dealt with in other posts. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.