Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint which holds that positions regarding truth should be formed on the basis of logic and empiricism, rather than authority, revelation, or dogma. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a freethinker is'a person who forms their own ideas and opinions rather than accepting those of other people in religious teaching.' In some contemporary thought in particular, freethought is tied with rejection of traditional social or religious belief systems. The cognitive application of freethought is known as "freethinking", practitioners of freethought are known as "freethinkers". Modern freethinkers consider freethought as a natural freedom of all negative and illusive thoughts acquired from the society; the term first came into use in the 17th century in order to indicate people who inquired into the basis of traditional religious beliefs. In practice, freethinking is most linked with secularism, agnosticism, anti-clericalism, religious critique; the Oxford English Dictionary defines freethinking as, "The free exercise of reason in matters of religious belief, unrestrained by deference to authority.
Freethinkers hold that knowledge should be grounded in facts, scientific inquiry, logic. The skeptical application of science implies freedom from the intellectually limiting effects of confirmation bias, cognitive bias, conventional wisdom, popular culture, prejudice, or sectarianism. Atheist author Adam Lee defines freethought as thinking, independent of revelation, established belief, authority, considers it as a "broader umbrella" than atheism "that embraces a rainbow of unorthodoxy, religious dissent and unconventional thinking."The basic summarizing statement of the essay The Ethics of Belief by the 19th-century British mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford is: "It is wrong always and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." The essay became a rallying cry for freethinkers when published in the 1870s, has been described as a point when freethinkers grabbed the moral high ground. Clifford was himself an organizer of freethought gatherings, the driving force behind the Congress of Liberal Thinkers held in 1878.
Regarding religion, freethinkers hold that there is insufficient evidence to support the existence of supernatural phenomena. According to the Freedom from Religion Foundation, "No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker and faith are invalid, orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth." And "Freethinkers are convinced that religious claims have not withstood the tests of reason. Not only is there nothing to be gained by believing an untruth, but there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the indispensable tool of reason on the altar of superstition. Most freethinkers consider religion to be not only untrue, but harmful."However, philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote the following in his 1944 essay "The Value of Free Thought:" What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free.
The whole first paragraph of the essay makes it clear that a freethinker is not an atheist or an agnostic, as long as he or she satisfies this definition: The person, free in any respect is free from something. To be worthy of the name, he must be free of two things: the force of tradition, the tyranny of his own passions. No one is free from either, but in the measure of a man's emancipation he deserves to be called a free thinker. Fred Edwords, former executive of the American Humanist Association, suggests that by Russell's definition, liberal religionists who have challenged established orthodoxies can be considered freethinkers. On the other hand, according to Bertrand Russell, atheists and/or agnostics are not freethinkers; as an example, he mentions Stalin, whom he compares to a "pope": what I am concerned with is the doctrine of the modern Communistic Party, of the Russian Government to which it owes allegiance. According to this doctrine, the world develops on the lines of a Plan called Dialectical Materialism, first discovered by Karl Marx, embodied in the practice of a great state by Lenin, now expounded from day to day by a Church of which Stalin is the Pope.
Free discussion is to be prevented. In the 18th and 19th century, many thinkers regarded as freethinkers were deists, arguing that the nature of God can only be known from a study of nature rather than from religious revelation. In the 18th century, "deism" was as much of a'dirty word' as "atheism", deists were stigmatized as either atheists or at least as freethinkers by their Christian opponents. Deists today regard themselves as freethinkers, but are now arguably less prominent in the freethought movement than atheists. Among freethinkers, for a notion to be considered true it must be testable, verifiable and logical. Many freethinkers tend to be humanists, where they basing morality on human needs and would find meaning in human compassion, social progress, personal happiness and the furtherance of knowledge
Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism is a political philosophy and school of anarchist thought that advocates the elimination of centralized state dictum in favor of self-ownership, private property and free markets. Anarcho-capitalists hold that in the absence of statute, society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through the spontaneous and organic discipline of the free market. In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement and all other security services would be operated by funded competitors selected by consumers rather than centrally through confiscatory taxation. Money, along with all other goods and services, would be and competitively provided in an open market. Personal and economic activities under anarcho-capitalism would therefore be regulated by victim-based dispute resolution organizations under tort and contract law, rather than by statute through centrally determined punishment under political monopolies, which tend to become corrupt in proportion to their monopolization.
Business regulations, such as corporate standards, public relations, product labels, rules for consumer protection and labor relations would be regulated voluntarily via the use of competitive trade associations, professional societies, standards bodies. Various theorists have espoused legal philosophies similar to anarcho-capitalism. However, the first person to use the term was Murray Rothbard who, in the mid-20th century, synthesized elements from the Austrian School of economics, classical liberalism and 19th-century American individualist anarchists Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker. A Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist society would operate under a mutually agreed-upon libertarian "legal code which would be accepted, which the courts would pledge themselves to follow"; this pact would recognize self-ownership, property and tort law, in keeping with the universal non-aggression principle. Anarcho-capitalists are distinguished from minarchists, who advocate a small Jeffersonian night-watchman state limited to protecting individuals and their properties from foreign and domestic aggression.
Anarcho-capitalists argue for a society based on the voluntary trade of private property and services in order to minimize conflict while maximizing individual liberty and prosperity. However, they recognize charity and communal arrangements as part of the same voluntary ethic. Although anarcho-capitalists are known for asserting a right to private property, some propose that non-state public or community property can exist in an anarcho-capitalist society. For them, what is important is that it is acquired and transferred without help or hindrance from the compulsory state. Anarcho-capitalist libertarians believe that the only just and most economically beneficial way to acquire property is through voluntary trade, gift, or labor-based original appropriation, rather than through aggression or fraud. Anarcho-capitalists see free market capitalism as the basis for a prosperous society. Murray Rothbard said that the difference between free market capitalism and "state capitalism" is the difference between "peaceful, voluntary exchange" and a collusive partnership between business and government that uses coercion to subvert the free market.
"Capitalism", as anarcho-capitalists employ the term, is not to be confused with state monopoly capitalism, crony capitalism, corporatism, or contemporary mixed economies, wherein market incentives and disincentives may be altered by state action. They therefore reject the state, seeing it as an entity which steals property, initiates aggression, has a compulsory monopoly on the use of force, uses its coercive powers to benefit some businesses and individuals at the expense of others, creates artificial monopolies, restricts trade and restricts personal freedoms via drug laws, compulsory education, laws on food and morality and the like. Many anarchists view capitalism as an inherently authoritarian and hierarchical system and seek the expropriation of private property. There is disagreement between these left anarchists and laissez-faire anarcho-capitalists as the former rejects anarcho-capitalism as a form of anarchism and considers anarcho-capitalism an oxymoron, while the latter holds that such expropriation is counterproductive to order and would require a state.
On the Nolan chart, anarcho-capitalists are located at the extreme edge of the libertarian quadrant since they reject state involvement in both economic and personal affairs. Anarcho-capitalists argue that the state relies on initiating force because force can be used against those who have not stolen private property, vandalized private property, assaulted anyone, or committed fraud. Many argue that subsidized monopolies tend to be corrupt and inefficient. Murray Rothbard argued that all government services, including
East End of London
The East End of London called the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London, north of the River Thames. It does not have universally accepted boundaries, though the various channels of the River Lea are considered to be the eastern boundary, it comprises areas of East London and London Docklands. The East End began to emerge in the Middle Ages with slow urban growth outside the eastern walls, which accelerated in the 19th century, to absorb pre-existing settlements; the first known written record of the East End as a distinct entity, as opposed its component parts, comes from John Strype's 1720 Survey of London, which describes London as consisting of four parts: the City of London, Southwark, "That Part beyond the Tower". The relevance of Strype's reference to the Tower was more than geographical; the East End was the urbanised part of an administrative area called the Tower Division, which had owed military service to the Tower of London since time immemorial.
As London grew further, the urbanised Tower Division became a byword for wider East London, before East London grew further still, east of the River Lea and into Essex. The area was notorious for its deep poverty and associated social problems; this led to the East End's history of intense political activism and association with some of the country's most influential social reformers. Another major theme of East End history has been migration, both outward; the area had a strong pull on the rural poor from other parts of England, attracted waves of migration from further afield, notably Huguenot refugees, who created a new extramural suburb in Spitalfields in the 17th century, Irish weavers, Ashkenazi Jews, and, in the 20th century, Sylheti Bangladeshis. The closure of the last of the East End docks in the Port of London in 1980 created further challenges and led to attempts at regeneration and the formation of the London Docklands Development Corporation; the Canary Wharf development improved infrastructure, the Olympic Park mean that the East End is undergoing further change, but some parts continue to contain some of the worst poverty in Britain.
The East End lies east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London, north of the River Thames. Aldgate Pump, on the edge of the City, is regarded as the symbolic start of the East End. On the river, Tower Bridge is sometimes described in these terms. Beyond these reference points, the East End has no official or accepted boundaries, views vary as to how much of wider East London lies within it; the narrowest definition restricts the East End to the modern London Borough of Tower Hamlets. A more common preference is to add to Tower Hamlets the former borough of Shoreditch. Other commentators prefer a definition still broader, encompassing districts east of the River Lea, such as West Ham, East Ham, Leyton and Ilford; the East End began with the medieval growth of London beyond its walls, along the Roman roads leading from Bishopsgate and Aldgate and alongside the Thames. Growth was much slower in the east, the modest extensions on this side were separated from the much larger extensions in the west by the marshy open area of Moorfields adjacent to the wall on the north side, which discouraged development in that direction.
Building accelerated in the 16th century, the area that would become known as the East End began to take shape. In 1720 John Strype gives us our first record of the East End as a distinct entity when he describes London as consisting of four parts: the City of London, Southwark, "That Part beyond the Tower"; the relevance of Strype's reference to the Tower was more than geographical. The East End was the urbanised part of an administrative area called the Tower Division, which had owed military service to the Tower of London since time immemorial, having its roots in the Bishop of London's historic Manor of Stepney; as London grew further, the urbanised Tower Division became a byword for wider East London, before East London grew further still, east of the River Lea and into Essex. For a long time the East End was physically separated from London's western growth by the open space known as Moorfields. Shoreditch's boundary with the parish of St Luke's ran through the Moorfields, which became, on urbanisation, the boundary of east and north London.
That line, with slight modifications became part of the boundary between the modern London Boroughs of Hackney and Islington. Moorfields remained open until 1812, the longstanding presence of that open space separating the emerging East End from the western urban expansion of London must have helped shape the different economic character of the two parts and perceptions of their distinct identity; the East End has always contained some of London's poorest areas. The main reasons for this include: The medieval system of copyhold, which prevailed throughout the East End into the 19th century. There was little point in developing land, held on short leases; the siting of noxious industries, such as tanning and fulling downwind outside the boundaries of the City, therefore beyond complaints and official controls. The foul-smelling industries preferred the East End because the prevailing winds in London traveled from west to east, so that most odours from their busines
Anarcho-communism
Anarcho-communism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought which advocates the abolition of the state, wage labour and private property in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy, equal distribution of valuables, a horizontal network of workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Some forms of anarchist communism, such as insurrectionary anarchism, are influenced by egoism and radical individualism, believing anarcho-communism is the best social system for the realization of individual freedom. Most anarcho-communists view anarcho-communism as a way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and society. Anarcho-communism developed out of radical socialist currents after the French Revolution, but was first formulated as such in the Italian section of the First International; the theoretical work of Peter Kropotkin took importance as it expanded and developed pro-organizationalist and insurrectionary anti-organizationalist sections.
To date, the best-known examples of an anarchist communist society are the anarchist territories during the Spanish Revolution and the Free Territory during the Russian Revolution. Through the efforts and influence of the Spanish anarchists during the Spanish Revolution within the Spanish Civil War, starting in 1936 anarchist communism existed in most of Aragon, parts of the Levante and Andalusia as well as in the stronghold of anarchist Catalonia before being crushed by the combined forces of the regime that won the war, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Spanish Communist Party repression as well as economic and armaments blockades from the capitalist countries and the Spanish Republic itself. During the Russian Revolution, anarchists such as Nestor Makhno worked to create and defend—through the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine—anarchist communism in the Free Territory of the Ukraine from 1919 before being conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1921. Anarchist communist currents appeared during the English Civil War and the French Revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries, respectively.
Gerrard Winstanley, part of the radical Diggers movement in England, wrote in his 1649 pamphlet, The New Law of Righteousness, that there "shall be no buying or selling, no fairs nor markets, but the whole earth shall be a common treasury for every man," and "there shall be none Lord over others, but every one shall be a Lord of himself". The Diggers themselves resisted tyranny of the ruling class and of kings, instead operating in a cooperative fashion in order to get work done, manage supplies, increase economic productivity. Due to the communes established by the Diggers being free from private property, along with economic exchange, their communes could be called early, functioning communist societies, spread out across the rural lands of England. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, common ownership of land and property was much more prevalent across the European continent, but the Diggers were set apart by their struggle against monarchical rule, they sprung up by means of workers' self-management after the fall of Charles I.
In 1703, Louis Armand, Baron de Lahontan wrote the novel New Voyages to North America where he outlined how indigenous communities of the North American continent cooperated and organised. The author found the agrarian societies and communities of pre-colonial North America to be nothing like the monarchical, unequal states of Europe, both in their economic structure and lack of any state, he wrote that the life natives lived was "anarchy", this being the first usage of the term to mean something other than chaos. He wrote that there were no priests, laws, ministers of state, no distinction of property, no way to differentiate rich from poor, as they were all equal and thriving cooperatively. During the French Revolution, Sylvain Maréchal, in his Manifesto of the Equals, demanded "the communal enjoyment of the fruits of the earth" and looked forward to the disappearance of "the revolting distinction of rich and poor, of great and small, of masters and valets, of governors and governed". Maréchal was critical not only of the unequal distribution of property, but how religion would be used to justify evangelical immorality.
He viewed the link between religion and what came to be known as capitalism as two sides of the same corrupted coin. He had once "Do not be afraid of your God - be afraid of yourself. You are the creator of your own joys. Heaven and hell are in your own soul". Sylvain Maréchal was involved with the Conspiracy of the Equals, a failed attempt at overthrowing the monarchy of France and establishing a stateless, agrarian socialist utopia, he worked with Gracchus Babeuf in not only writing about what an anarchist country might look like, but how it will be achieved. The two of them were friends, though didn't always see eye to eye with Maréchal's statement on equality being more important than the arts. An early anarchist communist was Joseph Déjacque, the first person to describe himself as "libertarian". Unlike Proudhon, he argued that, "it is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, sometimes referred to as Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world; the Irish Sea lies between Great Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world, it is the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017. The UK is constitutional monarchy; the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 1952, making her the longest-serving current head of state.
The United Kingdom's capital and largest city is London, a global city and financial centre with an urban area population of 10.3 million. Other major urban areas in the UK include Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire conurbations, Greater Glasgow and the Liverpool Built-up Area; the United Kingdom consists of four constituent countries: England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their capitals are London, Edinburgh and Belfast, respectively. Apart from England, the countries have their own devolved governments, each with varying powers, but such power is delegated by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which may enact laws unilaterally altering or abolishing devolution; the nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the UK, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation. The medieval conquest and subsequent annexation of Wales by the Kingdom of England, followed by the union between England and Scotland in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, the union in 1801 of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There are fourteen British Overseas Territories, the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, encompassed a quarter of the world's land mass and was the largest empire in history. British influence can be observed in the language and political systems of many of its former colonies; the United Kingdom is a developed country and has the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It has a high-income economy and has a high Human Development Index rating, ranking 14th in the world, it was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK remains a great power, with considerable economic, military and political influence internationally, it is sixth in military expenditure in the world. It has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946.
It has been a leading member state of the European Union and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. The United Kingdom is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Council of Europe, the G7, the G20, NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Trade Organization; the 1707 Acts of Union declared that the kingdoms of England and Scotland were "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". The term "United Kingdom" has been used as a description for the former kingdom of Great Britain, although its official name from 1707 to 1800 was "Great Britain"; the Acts of Union 1800 united the kingdom of Great Britain and the kingdom of Ireland in 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland and the independence of the Irish Free State in 1922, which left Northern Ireland as the only part of the island of Ireland within the United Kingdom, the name was changed to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Although the United Kingdom is a sovereign country, Scotland and Northern Ireland are widely referred to as countries. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom; some statistical summaries, such as those for the twelve NUTS 1 regions of the United Kingdom refer to Scotland and Northern Ireland as "regions". Northern Ireland is referred to as a "province". With regard to Northern Ireland, the descriptive name used "can be controversial, with the choice revealing one's political preferences"; the term "Great Britain" conventionally refers to the island of Great Britain, or politically to England and Wales in combination. However, it is sometimes used as a loose synonym for the United Kingdom as a whole; the term "Britain" is used both as a synonym for Great Britain, as a synonym for the United Kingdom. Usage is mixed, with the BBC preferring to use Britain as shorthand only for Great Britain and the UK Government, while accepting that both terms refer to the United K
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a theory of anarchism that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence in broader society. Syndicalists consider their economic theories a strategy for facilitating worker self-activity and as an alternative co-operative economic system with democratic values and production centered on meeting human needs; the basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are solidarity, direct action and direct democracy, or workers' self-management. The end goal of syndicalism is to abolish the wage system. Anarcho-syndicalist theory therefore focuses on the labour movement. Anarcho-syndicalists view the primary purpose of the state as being the defense of private property, therefore of economic and political privilege, denying most of its citizens the ability to enjoy material independence and the social autonomy that springs from it. Reflecting the anarchist philosophy from which it draws its primary inspiration, anarcho-syndicalism is centred on the idea that power corrupts and that any hierarchy that cannot be ethically justified must either be dismantled or replaced by decentralized egalitarian control.
Hubert Lagardelle wrote that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon laid out fundamental ideas of anarcho-syndicalism and repudiated both capitalism and the state in the process since he viewed free economic groups and struggle, not pacifism, as dominant in humans. In September 1903 and March 1904, Sam Mainwaring published in Britain two issues of a short-lived newspaper called The General Strike, a publication that made detailed criticisms of the "officialism" of union bureaucracy and publicized strikes in Europe making use of syndicalist tactics. In 1910, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo was founded in the middle of the restoration in Barcelona in a congress of the Catalan trade union Solidaridad Obrera with the objective of constituting an opposing force to the then-majority trade union, the socialist UGT and "to speed up the economic emancipation of the working class through the revolutionary expropriation of the bourgeoisie"; the CNT started small, counting 26,571 members represented through several trade unions and other confederations.
In 1911, coinciding with its first congress, the CNT initiated a general strike that provoked a Barcelona judge to declare the union illegal until 1914. That same year of 1911, the trade union received its name. From 1918 on, the CNT grew stronger and had an outstanding role in the events of the La Canadiense general strike, which paralyzed 70% of industry in Catalonia in 1919, the year the CNT reached a membership of 700,000. Around that time, panic spread among employers, giving rise to the practice of pistolerismo, causing a spiral of violence that affected the trade union; these pistoleros are credited with killing 21 union leaders in 48 hours. In 1922, the International Workers' Association was founded in Berlin and the CNT joined but with the rise of Miguel Primo de Rivera's dictatorship the labor union was outlawed once again the following year. However, with the workers' movement resurgent following the Russian Revolution, what was to become the modern IWA was formed, billing itself as the "true heir" of the original International.
The successful Bolshevik-led revolution of 1918 in Russia was mirrored by a wave of syndicalist successes worldwide, including the struggle of the Industrial Workers of the World in the United States alongside the creation of mass anarchist unions across Latin America and huge syndicalist-led strikes in Germany, Spain and France, where it was noted that "neutral syndicalism had been swept away". The final formation of this new International known as the International Workingmen's Association, took place at an illegal conference in Berlin in December 1922, marking an irrevocable break between the international syndicalist movement and the Bolsheviks; the Italian Syndicalist Union: 500,000 members The Argentine Workers Regional Organisation: 200,000 The General Confederation of Workers in Portugal: 150,000 The Free Workers' Union of Germany: 120,000 The Committee for the Defense of Revolutionary Syndicalism in France: 100,000 The Federation du Combattant from Paris: 32,000 The Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden: 32,000 The National Labor Secretariat of the Netherlands: 22,500 The Industrial Workers of the World in Chile: 20,000 The Union for Syndicalist Propaganda in Denmark: 600The first secretaries of the International included the famed writer and activist Rudolph Rocker, along with Augustin Souchy and Alexander Schapiro.
Following the first congress, other groups affiliated from France, Denmark, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Romania. A bloc of unions in the United States, Peru, Guatemala, Costa Rica and El Salvador shared the IWA's statutes; the biggest syndicalist union in the United States was the IWW and considered joining, but ruled out affiliation in 1936 by citing the IWA's policies on religious and political affiliation. Although not anarcho-syndicalist, the IWW were informed by developments in the broader revolutionary syndicalist milieu at the turn of the 20th century. At its founding congress in 1905, influential members with strong anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist sympathies like Thomas J. Hagerty, William Trautmann and Lucy Parsons contributed to the union's overall revolutionary syndicalist orientation. Although
Anarchy
Anarchy refers to a society, group of people, or a single person that rejects hierarchy. The word meant leaderlessness, but Pierre-Joseph Proudhon adopted the term in his 1840 treatise What Is Property? to refer to anarchism, a new political philosophy which advocates stateless societies based on voluntary associations. In practical terms, anarchy can refer to the curtailment or abolition of traditional forms of government and institutions, it can designate a nation—or anywhere on earth, inhabited—that has no system of government or central rule. Anarchy is advocated by individual anarchists who propose replacing government with voluntary institutions; the word anarchy comes from the ancient Greek ἀναρχία which combines ἀ, "not, without" and ἀρχή, "ruler, authority". Thus, the term refers to the state of a society being without authorities or an authoritative governing body. Anarchism as a political philosophy advocates self-governed societies based on voluntary institutions; these are described as stateless societies, although several authors have defined them more as institutions based on non-hierarchical free associations.
Anarchism holds the state to be unnecessary, or harmful. While anti-statism is central, anarchism entails opposing authority or hierarchical organisation in the conduct of all human relations, including yet not limited to the state system. There are many traditions of anarchism, not all of which are mutually exclusive. Anarchist schools of thought can differ fundamentally, supporting anything from extreme individualism to complete collectivism. Strains of anarchism have been divided into the categories of social and individualist anarchism or similar dual classifications. Anarchism is considered to be a radical left-wing ideology and much of anarchist economics and anarchist legal philosophy reflect anti-statist interpretations of communism, syndicalism, or participatory economics; some individualist anarchists are socialists or communists while some anarcho-communists are individualists or egoists. Anarchism as a social movement has endured fluctuations in popularity; the central tendency of anarchism as a mass social movement has been represented by anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism, with individualist anarchism being a literary phenomenon which did influence the bigger currents and individualists participated in large anarchist organizations.
Some anarchists oppose all forms of aggression and support self-defense or non-violence while others have supported the use of militant measures, including revolution and propaganda of the deed, on the path to an anarchist society. Since the 1890s, the term libertarianism has been used as a synonym for anarchism and was used exclusively in this sense until the 1950s in the United States. At this time, classical liberals in the United States began to describe themselves as libertarians and it has since become necessary to distinguish their individualist and capitalist philosophy from socialist anarchism. Thus, the former is referred to as right-wing libertarianism or right-libertarianism whereas the latter is described by the terms libertarian socialism, socialist libertarianism, left-libertarianism and left-anarchism. Right-libertarians voluntarists. Outside the English-speaking world, libertarianism retains its association with left-wing anarchism; the German philosopher Immanuel Kant treated anarchy in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View as consisting of "Law and Freedom without Force".
For Kant, anarchy falls short of being a true civil state because the law is only an "empty recommendation" if force is not included to make this law efficacious. For there to be such a state, force must be included while law and freedom are maintained, a state which Kant calls a republic. Kant identified four kinds of government: Law and freedom without force Law and force without freedom Force without freedom and law Force with freedom and law Although most known societies are characterized by the presence of hierarchy or the state, anthropologists have studied many egalitarian stateless societies, including most nomadic hunter-gatherer societies and horticultural societies such as the Semai and the Piaroa. Many of these societies can be considered to be anarchic in the sense that they explicitly reject the idea of centralized political authority; the egalitarianism typical of human hunter-gatherers is interesting when viewed in an evolutionary context. One of humanity's two closest primate relatives, the chimpanzee, is anything but egalitarian, forming hierarchies that are dominated by alpha males.
So great is the contrast with human hunter-gatherers that it is argued by palaeoanthropologists that resistance to being dominated was a key factor driving the development of human consciousness, language and social organization. In Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, anarchist anthropologist David Graeber attempts to outline areas of research that intellectuals might explore in creating a cohesive body of anarchist social theory. Graeber posits that anthropology is "particularly well positioned" as an academic discipline that can look at the gamut of human societies and organizations to study and catalog alternative social and economic structures around the world, most present these alternatives to the world. In Society Against the State, Pierre Clastres examines stateless societies where certain cultural practices and attitudes avert the development of hierarchy and the state. He
