Anarchism

Anarchism is a broad social philosophy rooted in the rejection of rulership (i.e. hierarchy or imposed authority).

There is, however, some dispute as to what “hierarchy” and or “rulership” means. Whereas someone of a more mutualist variety may define hierarchy in even the sense of a local business owner that hires employees, a more “traditional” Rothbardian variety will simply define it as a compulsory organization also known as a state. This dispute, however, is somewhat marginalized when one considers the implications of state involvement with most modern property structures, though the actual sentiments involved in this structure of property is debated among some anarchists.

Anarchism includes a great many schools of thought, often overlapping and interconnected. Several terms, notably Agorism and syndicalism describe both economic ideals and revolutionary strategies.

On the Left are schools oriented towards economic collectivity such as anarchist communism and anarcho-syndicalism as well as schools oriented towards market interaction such as agorism, mutualism and geoism; on the “right” is what is known as anarcho-capitalism.

Economic strategies include agorism in the sense of counter-economics, anarcho-syndicalism, and mutualism in the sense of mutual banking, among others.

Anarchists without adjectives promote multiple anarchist systems. However, some anarchists without adjectives decline to support one or more of the above models.

Stateless societies were common before the 19th century, and many groups within states expressed an interest in stateless societies. In 1793, William Godwin published his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, which challenged John Locke's social contract justification of the state.

In the early and mid-19th centuries, some, notably Josiah Warren and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, sought to bring liberal and socialist ideas together. Warren and Proudhon proposed forms of market anarchism (later known as mutualism or individualist anarchism), while others, such as Joseph Dejacque, proposed forms of anarchist communism. Mikhail Bakunin adopted Marx's historical end economic theories, but condemned Marx's state, and proposed collectivist anarchism, instead of state-socialism, as a transitional stage between state-capitalism and stateless communism.

Proudhon rooted his mutualism in his then-standard interpretation of the labor theory of value. He argued that free markets would eliminate non-commercial (non-entepreneurial) profit. Bakunin rooted his collectivist anarchism in Marx's interpretation of the labor theory of value. He argued that free markets would reduce wages to the minimum for survival, and would create profits, with the productivity of labor exceeding the costs of labor-power.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as concentrated industry grew more important (partly through state intervention), anarchist projects more often focussed on labor unions, for the employees of large firms, than, for example, on mutual banks for the self-employed. Many anarchists of different traditions, as well as some state-socialists who saw a role for economic struggle, worked as union organizers. Revolutionary unionists, sometimes called syndicalists, emphasized tactics such as strikes, general strikes, work-to-rule, sabotage, etc. The Russian Revolution and the rise of the Bolshevik dictatorship split many revolutionary unions into anarchist and Marxist factions.