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Anarchism : a social philosophy whose central tenet is that human beings can live justly and harmoniously without government and that the imposition of government upon human beings is in fact harmful and evil. Anarchists are distinguished from Marxists and other socialists in that the latter believe that the state must first be taken over before it can "wither away"; anarchists are too suspicious of the corruptions of power to believe that this is desirable or even possible.

The word anarchism derives from an archos (Greek: "without a rule"). When the word first appeared it was used as a pejorative term; the Levelers of the English Civil War and the Enragés of the French Revolution were labeled anarchists by their opponents. In 1793 William Godwin anticipated many later anarchist views in his An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, although he did not use the word. Godwin not only supplied an outline of a decentralized society but also made explicit many of the theoretical assumptions involved. He insisted on the natural benevolence of individual human beings apart from governmental institutions and on the natural harmony of such individuals in their interactions. He therefore advocated the progressive breaking down of all institutions that contributed to coercion and inequality--eventually to include even marriage. Future organizations would be loose and voluntary associations.

The French writer Pierre-Joseph Proudhon adopted the word anarchism as a positive term for the first time in Qu'est ce que la propriété? ("What Is Property?") in 1840. Proudhon's book laid much of the theoretical groundwork for later anarchist movements, of which he is generally considered to be the father. First praised and later viciously attacked by Karl Marx, Proudhon denounced personal property ("property is theft") but rejected communism in advocating the relative autonomy of local communities.

The various heresies that Marxism faced during the last half of the 19th century consisted chiefly of different forms of anarchism that grew out of the work of Proudhon. The earliest of these, and Marx's chief obstacle in the First International, was that of Mikhail Bakunin. Bakunin's brand of anarchism came to be called collectivism. He and his followers agreed with Marx in stressing the role of workers' associations and the need for violent revolutionary action but protested what Bakunin called Marx's German authoritarianism in favour of a looser confederation of associations. When the International disbanded in 1872, Bakunin and his followers retained control of workers' organizations in Latin countries such as Spain and Italy. It was in those countries that anarchist movements attained their greatest strength, and they were finally and decisively crushed only by the victories of fascism just before the onset of World War II. Bakunin's emphasis on violence and revolutionary action inspired later anarchists, such as the Italian Errico Malatesta, to stress the value of violent acts as means of revealing the vulnerability of the state. A string of assassinations by anarchists took a heavy toll on world leaders around the turn of the century, including President Sadi Carnot of France (1894), Empress Elizabeth of Austria (1898), King Umberto I of Italy (1900), and President William McKinley of the United States (1901).

Not all anarchist movements were associated with violence. Many forms, such as that developed by Proudhon and known as mutualism, rejected revolutionary activity; certain of Proudhon's followers even rejected strikes as a tactic, since they represented a form of coercion. The form of anarchism to attract the largest following was known as anarcho-syndicalism, which developed in the late 1880s after the crushing of the Paris Commune. Anarcho-syndicalism combined the anarchists' distrust of political action with the tactics of the trade union movement; the labour syndicats were to become the basis for direct action by the working class, to culminate in a general strike that would paralyze the economy and the state. Anarcho-syndicalism generated a mystique of the working class instead of the mystique of the individual that was characteristic of other forms of anarchism.

Owing to their repudiation of political action and to their vision of a just and harmonious society of individuals linked only by voluntary associations, many anarchist thinkers tended to take a high moral tone; notable among them was Peter Kropotkin. Anarchism as a social movement did not survive World War II. Nevertheless, some of its tenets, such as that human beings can be naturally moral and complete without governments, continue to attract followers.

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