Anarchy

The word anarchy derives from the Greek «ἀναρχία» («anarkhia»). It is composed of the Greek prefix ἀν- (an), which means "not" or "without", and the root arkhê (in Greek ἀρχή, "origin", "beginning", "power" or "mandate"). The etymology of the term designates, in a general way, that devoid of directing principle and origin. This is translated as "absence of apriorism", "absence of norms", "absence of hierarchy", "absence of authority" or "absence of government", and serves to designate those situations where there is an absence of State or power. public. Unlike autarky (self-rule), a concept of moral philosophy, anarchy refers to a situation of political order.

In political philosophy the word anarchy is polysemic, being used as political chaos or as a form of government. In terms of international relations doctrine, anarchy in international relations is called the appreciation that States are autonomous from international law to the extent that there is no world government over national governments.

The term "anarchy"

Etymology

The term anarchy derives from the Greek «ἀναρχία» («anarkhia»), and is formed by the prefix a –privative an – (Greek αν, meaning “without” or “deprived of”) juxtaposed to the word arkhê (Greek ἀρχή , that is, "origin", "principle", "power", or "command"). The etymology of the term thus designates, in a general way, what is devoid of a directing principle and origin. This results in or implies "absence of principle", "absence of rules", "absence of leadership", "absence of authority" and "absence of government".

In one of its most common uses, anarchy evokes or equates to chaos, disorder (the opposite of organized), and anomie.

The terms "anarchy" and "anarchist" were used loosely, in a political sense, from the 13th century. Philip IV of France used these terms frequently in his ordinances to designate disorder or chaos. During the French Revolution, in terms of negative criticism, related to the abuses used by various parties to harm their opponents; Thus, both the Enragés, who distrusted excessive power, and Robespierre, who sought it, were labeled anarchists. The word added a new meaning, that which implies or is equivalent to a system or an organization where individuals are not subject to authority, when Pierre Joseph Proudhon published What is property? (1840), the book that established him as a pioneer of the anarchist social movement. After responding to the title ("property is theft"), the author becomes the first man to declare himself an anarchist and specifies what he means by anarchy: "a form of government without master or sovereign". However, the same author, since the Revolution of 1848, stopped defining himself as an "anarchist"; and he preferred to use other words for his radical thought.

Ancient Greece

The Death of Socrates (1787), by the French artist Jacques-Louis David.

According to Homer and Herodotus, the term anarkhia indicated a situation in which an armed group or an army found itself without a leadership. For example, in the work The Seven Against Thebes (year -467), the author Aeschylus of said tragedy used for the first time the term αναρχία in the sense of "disobedience". Indeed, in said piece, Antigone refused to obey the orders of the city (or polis), burying the corpse of his brother, who had been sentenced to have his body served as "food for the dogs".

According to the historian Xenophon in his work Hellenics, the year -404 was called "Anarchy" by the Athenians. Indeed, after the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, Sparta imposed to the city an oligarchic government made up of thirty magistrates known as the tyrants. Contrary to the custom then in use in Athens, the Athenians refused to honor Pytodoros, who had been elected archon by the oligarchs, thus preventing or making it difficult for the current year to be given that name.

The philosophers Socrates and Plato, for their part, used this term in a negative way, associating it with a corrupt form of democratic regime. In The Republic, Plato clearly denounced democracy, accusing it of bringing confusion between rulers and ruled , as well as to a certain extent lead to tyranny. Plato then described a very negative view of the anarchy generated or induced by democracy: end of hierarchies, conflicts between generations and between men and women, savagery and excesses of all kinds.

The term in French

Nicolas Oresme (miniature).

In French, the term anarchy arose in the Middle Ages with the translation of Aristotle's works by Nicole Oresme (1320-1382), and at the request of King Charles V (1364-1380). The aforementioned works were not direct translations from the Greek, but were based on the Latin versions of Robert de Lincoln (1175-1253), Guillaume de Moerbeke (1215-1286), and Durand d'Auvergne, which were accompanied by a glossary intended to facilitate the understanding of the work and the culture of the time. These translations in particular gave the French language some of the foundations of its political vocabulary, including terms such as démocratie, oligarchie, tyrannie, monarchie, aristocratie, etc. In total and according to Robert Taylor, Nicole Oresme introduced 450 new words into the French language, among them the first definition in French of the term "anarchie":

Date: Anarchie est quant l'on franschit aucuns serfs et met en grans offices.

Spanish translation: Anarchy is when you emancipate some servants and give them authority (and you entrust them power, office, or command).

Seldom used between the 14th and 17th centuries, this word entered the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française in 1694. Immediately associated with the term démocratie, the Académie française confirmed its definition with similar wording a century later, in its 1798 edition.

Date: Estat déréglé, sans chef et sans aucune forme de gouvernement. La démocratie pure dégénère facilement en Anarchie.

Spanish translation: Deregulated state, without leaders and without any form of government. Pure democracy that easily degenerates into anarchy.

Denis Diderot, in the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers of the year 1751, completes this definition, expanding it and deleting all reference to the term démocratie:

Date: C'est un désordre dans un État, qui consiste en ce que personne n'y a assez d'autorité pour commander et faire respecter les lois, et que par conséquent le peuple se conduit comme il veut, sans subordination et sans police. Ce mot est composé de a privatif et de arche, commandement. On peut affirmer que tout gouvernement en général tend au despotisme ou à l'anarchie.

Spanish translation: It is the disorder in a state, where it turns out that no one has sufficient authority to direct and enforce laws, and then and as a consequence, the people are led as they want, without subordination, without supervisors, and without effective police. The word anarchy in French forms with the prefix an juxtaposed to a term or root meaning command or address. In general it can be said that every government tends either to despotism or to anarchy.

Used by both Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet and Voltaire, the term became more common with the French Revolution, particularly during the so-called period of terror. It was also frequently used by both Mirabeau and Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud, Madame de Staël, and Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard, among others. The so-called "Enragés (furious)", a group led by Jacques Roux (1752-1794), were accused of inciting the people "to outlaw all traces of government". and then develop "the monstrous principles of anarchy". At that time, used by everyone and against everyone, that term then had a pejorative and insulting value.

A return to the “positive sense” of the word anarchy arose in Germany in the Universal Encyclopedia (Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste) published in Leipzig in 1818 by Johann Samuel Ersch and Johann Gottfried Gruber. The article "Anarchy" written by Karl Wenzeslaus Rodecker von Rotteck stated:

Date: Une forme spécifique de rapport entre les hommes qui ont conclu un pacte civique d'association, mais sans aucune clause d'asservissement; de ce fait ils bénéficient de la pleine liberté et de la reconnaissance mutuelle, sans aucune violence sociale, mais uniquement par la force de la décision unanime

Spanish translation: A specific form of relationship between men after having made a civic covenant of association, but excluding any kind of servilism or exploitation; thus, the benefit of full freedom and mutual recognition, without social violence, and only by the force of the unanimous decision to recognize themselves as equals was obtained.

Similarly, it was in 1840 that the socialist theorist Pierre Joseph Proudhon in his book Qu'est-ce que la propriété?, made a true semantic break with the pejorative usage in fashion after the revolution of 1789. Indeed, Proudhon declared himself an "anarchist" stating that "society seeks order in anarchy." Throughout his work, this author continued to use the term in its negative sense, even equating it to "chaos", in accordance with his "dialectic of opposites" according to which a just and dignified society will arise from maximum freedom, and not of authoritarianism (and not of dirigisme).

But note that at the time of Proudhon, there was no "anarchist movement". Indeed, it will be necessary to wait for the debates that opposed authoritarians and anti-authoritarians within the International Workers Association (1864-1872), as well as the creation of the Jura Federation (1871) and the Saint-Imier International (1872), to see the emergence of the first openly anarchist groups (period between 1876 and 1877).

Anarchist political philosophy

Traditional symbol of anarchy and anarchism.

In general terms, anarchism proposes a politically organized society without a state which they call "anarchy". against individual freedom and collective freedom. This concept can be accompanied, depending on the branch of anarchism that is consulted, by the concepts of horizontalism, which rejects hierarchies, or voluntarism, which does not reject hierarchies and which states that human relations must necessarily arise from the voluntariness of the parts. Anarchists of different currents differ greatly on the exact shape of this ideal society. The point of greatest controversy is what concerns the economic organization of society, having produced deep debates in this regard within the anarchist movement; the most heated and well-known of them was the one that took place during the late 19th century between collectivism and libertarian communism, the latter finally predominating. In the 20th century, the distinction in economic matters between forms of anarchism has been mainly between anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-socialism (a concept that groups together classical anarchism that adopts socialist economic ideas), both tendencies come from very different ideological traditions, historical contexts, and authors. although they share points of view on the theory of the State. The basic principle they agree on is the non-existence of a State within a system of non-aggression or anarchy. Within this framework, most anarchist tendencies propose that a voluntary association system of one kind or another can provide the services for which human beings have relied on the external coercive institutions of the State.

Some authors equate the concept of anarchy, understood as an ideal society, to the concept of acracy or natural order.

Anarchies in history

Political chaos

Political chaos can be produced after the collapse of a State by not being able to apply the law on its territory (see: Failed State), or through a serious institutional conflict in which no one manages to exercise the leadership of the State or its recognition is disputed (see: Power vacuum). Some examples of this meaning of the word are:

• The anarchy of the third century during the Roman Empire.
• The English anarchy. Civil war in England and Normandy.
• The Terror.
• Anarchy in the United States, a phenomenon of the seventeenth century given in some communities created by political and religious dissidents of the Thirteen American Colonies, outside of colonial authority and linked to anarcocapitalism rather than with classic anarchism.
• The Military Anarchy (1841-1845), a chaotic period and a great instability in Peru's history during the Peruvian Restoration.
• The organization of the Republic of Chile and the acephalysis of the Executive (Chile).
• The anarchy of the twentieth year and the presidential acephalysis in Argentina.
• The anarchy in Somalia.
• Anarchy in Albania (1997).

Communities and societies organized without a state

On other occasions, anarchy is called the cases of small communities or more extended societies where the State is dispensed with —at least in the way in which the Modern State is understood— and the institutions of social coexistence are or are formed by free agreement or arise spontaneously —and not necessarily for ideological motivations. Probably this use of the term anarchy for these cases derives from the favorable use given to this term by anarchist political philosophies, even applied in cases of societies prior to the appearance of such ideologies. These forms of coexistence resort to some type of traditional organization such as the family, religion, the neighborhood community, professional unions (including unions that would otherwise be illegal, such as mafias), to forms of organization based on ideological affinity for productive or on the contrary for lifestyle purposes, or even cases where the organization of social life is in charge of private companies. Sometimes this use of "anarchy" for specific communities and societies seems to be ambiguous, as it denotes a heterodox form of organization but also alludes to the meaning of chaos, implying that some kind of order exists but that it is somehow unstable.

• Celtic Ireland (Old Age-1607). The clans or Tuaths were the basic political units and formed from people willingly united to and the total sum of the land of their members constituted their geographical dimension.
• Icelandic community (930-1262). Individuals could voluntarily choose belonging to any clan and clan chiefdoms could be bought and sold, and there were no geographical monopolies of clan.
• Republic of Cospaia (1440-1826), a territory and village in Italy that accidentally remained outside the limits of the Republic of Florence and the Pontifical States, being terra nullius declared its independence and finally became a prominent agricultural and trade zone without taxes or authorities.
• Anarchy in the United States, a 17th century phenomenon in some communities that gave themselves volunteer and free-business governments, highlighting the case of the Holy Experiment in the Pennsylvania of William Penn. They were usually created by political and religious dissidents of the Thirteen American Colonies, outside of British colonial authority.
• From a disputed existence, the community of Libertatia. In the framework of a pirate utopia, and in the context of piracy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
• The Christian community created on the hill of Saint George, in England, by the Cavadors.
• Quilombo de los Palmares, Brazil 16th and 17th centuries.
• La Whiteway Colonyin the UK.
• As a result of the majnovisian revolution of anarchco-communist court, there existed between January 1919 and August 1921 the "Free Territory" or "Majnovia".
• Free Province of Shinmin, Korea and China (1929-1931).
• Anarcho-syndicalist communities in Spain during the Spanish Revolution, joined in La Colectividad; such as anarcho-syndicalism in Catalonia (21 July 1936-14 June 1937) and the Regional Council for the Defense of Aragon (6 October 1936-10 August 1937).
• Free City of Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark (26 September 1971-present). There she rules The General Assemblyformed by citizens of the Christiania chosen by direct democracy. Some of its laws are independent of the Danish State, so they do not pay taxes on it.
• Anarchy in Somalia (1991-present).
• Kowloon walled city (1898-1993), a Chinese enclave within the British Hong Kong that in practice was self-governed by Chinese refugees and the local mafia.
• Gurgaon (1979-present), a thriving business district in India that emerged without urban planning after remaining in a legal limbo that left the territory outside the country's administrative division.
• Liberland, a micronation and self-declared state in 2015 in a terra nullius between Serbia and Croatia, which proposes the “imposed volunteers” and which is inspired by the anarcocapitalist ideal. He has been diplomatically recognized by Somaliland.

See also

• Antistatism
• Society without State
• Anarcocapitalism

References

External links

• Wikcionario has definitions and other information about anarchy.
• Wikiquote hosts famous phrases of or over Anarchy.