Anarchy (from Greek: ἀναρχίᾱ anarchíā, "without ruler") may refer to any of the following:
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The tumult of the English Civil War (1641–1651) led to the term to be taken up in political philosophy.[citation needed] Anarchy was one of the issues at the Putney Debates of 1647:
As people began to theorise about the English Civil War, "anarchy" came to be more sharply defined, albeit from differing political perspectives:
Anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard wrote in his work on early American history Conceived in Liberty that Pennsylvania was in a condition of anarchy after William Penn's original government collapsed. [8]
Thomas Carlyle, Scottish essayist of the Victorian era known foremost for his widely influential work of history, The French Revolution, wrote that the French Revolution was a war against both aristocracy and anarchy:
Meanwhile, we will hate Anarchy as Death, which it is; and the things worse than Anarchy shall be hated more! Surely Peace alone is fruitful. Anarchy is destruction: a burning up, say, of Shams and Insupportabilities; but which leaves Vacancy behind. Know this also, that out of a world of Unwise nothing but an Unwisdom can be made. Arrange it, Constitution-build it, sift it through Ballot-Boxes as thou wilt, it is and remains an Unwisdom,-- the new prey of new quacks and unclean things, the latter end of it slightly better than the beginning. Who can bring a wise thing out of men unwise? Not one. And so Vacancy and general Abolition having come for this France, what can Anarchy do more? Let there be Order, were it under the Soldier's Sword; let there be Peace, that the bounty of the Heavens be not spilt; that what of Wisdom they do send us bring fruit in its season!-- It remains to be seen how the quellers of Sansculottism were themselves quelled, and sacred right of Insurrection was blown away by gunpowder: wherewith this singular eventful History called French Revolution ends.[9]
Armand II, duke of Aiguillon came before the National Assembly (French Revolution) in 1789 and shared his views on the anarchy:
I may be permitted here to express my personal opinion. I shall no doubt not be accused of not loving liberty, but I know that not all movements of peoples lead to liberty. But I know that great anarchy quickly leads to great exhaustion and that despotism, which is a kind of rest, has almost always been the necessary result of great anarchy. It is therefore much more important than we think to end the disorder under which we suffer. If we can achieve this only through the use of force by authorities, then it would be thoughtless to keep refraining from using such force.[10]
Armand II was later exiled because he was viewed as being opposed to the revolution's violent tactics.
Professor Chris Bossche commented on the role of anarchy in the revolution:
In The French Revolution, the narrative of increasing anarchy undermined the narrative in which the revolutionaries were striving to create a new social order by writing a constitution.[11]
Sir Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica, wrote to John Robinson, the Bishop of London, in 1720:
In the letter Lawes goes on to complain that these "estated men now are like Jonah's gourd" and details the humble origins of the "creolians" largely lacking an education and flouting the rules of church and state. In particular, he cites their refusal to abide by the Deficiency Act, which required slave owners to procure from England one white person for every 40 enslaved Africans, thereby hoping to expand their own estates and inhibit further English/Irish immigration. Lawes describes the government as being "anarchical, but nearest to any form of Aristocracy". "Must the King's good subjects at home who are as capable to begin plantations, as their Fathers, and themselves were, be excluded from their Liberty of settling Plantations in this noble Island, for ever and the King and Nation at home be deprived of so much riches, to make a few upstart Gentlemen Princes?"[12]
After General Francisco Franco declared war on the Spanish government in 1936 (Spanish Civil War) the government lost control over much of Spain. Resistance to the rebels was often organized through the confederation of anarcho-syndicalist trade unions, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the Iberian Anarchist Federation, the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI). The Spanish Revolution occurred almost immediately after the failed coup of Franco, leading to the formation of worker's collectives all over Republican Spain. This has been hailed as the best example of a functioning anarchist system. Anarchists were instrumental in keeping the country running and holding back the Francoists, until they were attacked by the Republican government and their Communist allies. The government was subsequently defeated by Franco, leading to 40 years of Francoist dictatorship in Spain.
In the mid-1990s, Albania was becoming a liberalized economy after years under a controlled economy; the rudimentary financial system became dominated by Ponzi schemes, and government officials endorsed a series of pyramid investment funds. Many Albanians, approximately two-thirds of the population, invested in them. By 1997 the inevitable end came, and the people of Albania, who had lost $1.2 billion (out of a small population of 3 million), took their protest to the streets where uncontained rioting, fueled by their discontent at the state's failure to protect them from the fraud, led to the toppling of the government and the country descended into anarchy in which some 2,000 people were killed.
Beginning in February, thousands of citizens gathered daily, demanding reimbursement by the government, which they suspected of profiting from the schemes. By March 1997, the protests had turned violent in the south, especially around the port city of Vlora, where numerous residents armed themselves with weapons looted from army barracks. On March 2, president Sali Berisha declared a state of emergency, but rioting and destruction spread throughout the country, gripping the capital, Tirana, for two weeks. Although the government quelled revolts in the north, the government and military establishments began to scatter and anarchy swept across the country, the southern half of Albania falling under the control of rebels and criminal gangs.
Before the Islamic Courts Union took control, large parts of southern Somalia were effectively functioning without a central government. However, an economic survey by the World Bank found that distribution of wealth in the country was more equitable, and the extent of extreme poverty was lower than that found in nominally more stable West African nations. According to the same paper, although southern Somalia was effectively operating without a federal government before the rise to prominence of the Islamic Courts Union, it was not an anarchist society in the sense that society was more or less chaotic than organized non-coercively.[13] Despite this, a libertarian think tank reported that living standards in Somalia increased – in absolute terms, relative to the pre-Somali Civil War era, and relative to other nations in Africa – during this period.[14] Economist Peter Leeson attributes the rather astounding increase in economic activity[15] since the rise of statelessness to the security in life, liberty and property provided by Somali customary law — the Xeer — in most parts of Somalia, which insures for a relative free market.
The Transitional Federal Government, internationally recognized as the government of Somalia, is allied with the Islamic Courts Union and the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia, and backed by the United Nations, the African Union and the United States. It is currently battling various insurgent groups to regain control of the southern half of the country and restore national institutions.
Bertrand Russell wrote on how liberalism aims for a golden mean between despotism and anarchy:
Every Neilien community is faced with two dangers, anarchy and despotism. The Puritans, especially the Independents, were most impressed by the danger of despotism. Hobbes, on the contrary, was obsessed by the fear of anarchy. The liberal philosophers who arose after the Restoration and acquired control after 1688, realized both dangers; they disliked both Strafford and the Anabaptists. This led Locke to the doctrine of division of powers and of checks and balances.[16]
Anarchists are those who advocate the absence of the state, arguing that common sense would allow people to come together in agreement to form a functional society allowing for the participants to freely develop their own sense of morality, ethics or principled behaviour. The rise of anarchism as a philosophical movement occurred in the mid 19th century, with its idea of freedom as being based upon political and economic self-rule. This occurred alongside the rise of the nation-state and large-scale industrial state capitalism or state-sponsored corporatism, and the political corruption that came with their successes.
Although anarchists share a rejection of the state, they differ about economic arrangements and possible rules that would prevail in a stateless society, ranging from no ownership, to complete common ownership, to supporters of private property and capitalist free market competition. For example, some forms of anarchism, such as that of anarcho-collectivism, anarcho-communism or anarcho-syndicalism not only seek rejection of the state, but also other systems which they perceive as authoritarian, which includes capitalism, capitalist markets, and title-based property ownership. In opposition, a political philosophy known as free-market anarchism, contemporary individualist anarchism or anarcho-capitalism, argues that a society without a state is a free market capitalist system that is voluntarist in nature.
The word "anarchy" is often used by non-anarchists as a pejorative term, intended to connote a lack of control and a negatively chaotic environment. However, anarchists still argue that anarchy does not imply nihilism, anomie, or the total absence of rules, but rather an anti-statist society that is based on the spontaneous order of free individuals in autonomous communities.
Some anarchist anthropologists, such as David Graeber and Pierre Clastres, consider societies such as those of the Bushmen, Tiv and the Piaroa to be anarchies in the sense that they explicitly reject the idea of centralized political authority.[17] However, others argue that some tribal societies of the past have often been more violent than modern technological societies, on average.[18]
Some more recent anthropologists, such as Marshall Sahlins and Richard Borshay Lee, have defied the notion of hunter-gatherer societies as being a source of scarcity and brutalization; describing them as, in the words of Sahlins, "affluent societies".[19]
The evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker writes:
Adjudication by an armed authority appears to be the most effective violence-reduction technique ever invented. Though we debate whether tweaks in criminal policy, such as executing murderers versus locking them up for life, can reduce violence by a few percentage points, there can be no debate on the massive effects of having a criminal justice system as opposed to living in anarchy. The shockingly high homicide rates of pre-state societies, with 10 to 60 percent of the men dying at the hands of other men, provide one kind of evidence. Another is the emergence of a violent culture of honor in just about any corner of the world that is beyond the reach of law. ..The generalization that anarchy in the sense of a lack of government leads to anarchy in the sense of violent chaos may seem banal, but it is often over-looked in today's still-romantic climate.[18]
Some authors, such as Montague David Eder, question this vision of evolution, where humanity was able to reinvent itself in the last ten thousand years, to better fulfill its needs (see Myth of Progress). Anarcho-primitivists, such as Ran Prieur, believe that this concept represents a way that current culture justifies the values of modern industrial society and as a manner in which civilization was able to move individuals further from their natural necessities.[20][21] Besides the consideration of authors, such as John Zerzan, of the existence of tribal societies having less violence altogether,[22] he and other authors such as Theodore Kaczynski (also known as the Unabomber) talk about other forms of violence against the individual in advanced countries, generally expressed by the term "social anomie", that results from the system of monopolized security.[23] These authors do not dismiss the fact that humanity is changing while adapting to its different social realities,[24] but consider them an anomaly nevertheless. The two end results are (1)that we either disappear or (2)become something very different, distant from what we have come to value in our nature. It has been suggested by experts that this shift towards civilization, through domestication, has caused an increase in diseases, labor and psychological disorders.[25][26][27] On the other hand, concerning the necessity of violence in the primitive world, anthropologist Pierre Clastres expresses that violence in primitive societies is a natural way for each community to maintain its political independence, while dismissing the state as a natural outcome of the evolution of human societies.[28]
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