Anarchy Essays (1831 words) - Anti-capitalism, Anti-fascism

Anarchy Throughout the ages, man has toiled with various forms of government. From early day aristocracies to modern day democracies, man has developed theories of the ideal government. Of these governments, Anarchy has proven itself to be an unrealistic form of government. Anarchists pose different views of absolute liberty and the degree of government intervention as to the governmental figure of the times. Anarchy comes from the Greek word, anarchos, prefix an meaning not, the want of, the absence of, or the lack of, plus archos, meaning a ruler, director, chief, person in charge, or authority, derived as having no government or without rule (Ask.com). Justice defines anarchism as the name given to a principle of theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government - harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of the needs and aspirations of a civilized being[.] In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state of its functions (Tigerden.com). It is the form of government where it rejects all forms of domination, as distinguished from power (Creagh). An example of anarchism in Sir Thomas Mores Utopia describes of a governmental system where each town sends three of its older to an annual meeting at Aircastle to discuss the general affairs of the island (74). It depicts a life of the least amount of governmental intervention within the individual and of the state. Anarchism was meant to be that an individual should be free; where no one has the right to enslave another, boss another, rob another of ones belongings, or impose upon another person. It generally means that the individual should be free to do the things he wants to do; and that the individual should not be compelled to do what the individual does not want to do (Tigerden.com). A brief history of what and how anarchy came about as depicted in the Anarchist Timeline. Anarchism is usually associated with its heredity found as a recent western phenomenon. But as one digs deep into anarchy, one finds its roots reach deep within the ancient civilization of the East. The first clear expression of anarchist awareness may be traced as far back as sixth century B.C. to the Taoists in ancient China. Later on in history, in ancient Greece during 270 B.C., Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, who rejected the omnipotence of the state, its regiments and interventions, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law to that of an individual. In 1793, during the upstart of the French Revolution, the English writer, William Godwin, was the first to devise the political and economical conceptions of anarchism (Zpub.com). During the nineteenth century and later on, as acknowledged in Ask.com, shows a vast majority of anarchist movements. For example, the Paris Commune in 1871 played an important role in the development of both anarchist ideas and movement. It was a movement where a major city declaring itself autonomous, organizing itself, leading by example, and urging the rest of the planet to follow it. Shortly after on May 1, 1886, the Haymarket Martyrs of the labor movement closely linked with the anarchist movement occurred. The struggle of the working class using direct action in labor unions to change the world depicts another system of anarchy in action (Ask.com). The Russian Revolution of 1917 shows a glimpse of an enormous growth in anarchism within the country and many experiments in anarchist ideas according to Ask.com. The Revolution was not brought about by ordinary people struggling towards freedom but as the means by which Lenin imposed his dictatorship in Russia. The initial overthrow of the Tsar, thought by many, was not enough. All across Russia, ordinary people seized workplaces and lands and eventually overthrew the feudal exploitation of the colonies and built organizations, unions and co-operatives in anarchist fashion.