On Anarchy
Anarchy’s got a really bad wrap. There’s a lot of FUD, and general misinformation about the meaning of the term. In Decentralism: Where It Came From–Where Is It Going?, I found a great section discussing Anarchy:-
“Examining the root meaning of ‘anarchy,’ we find that ‘an’ means no or none, ‘archy’ means rulership. Thus ‘anarchy’ means no rulership or enforced authority. Anarchy does not mean chaos and disorder.
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Today, the terms anarchist, anarchism, and anarchy have been used so loosely that their specific meaning of no enforced authority has been obscured. Anarchists do, of course, believe in authority, and in leadership, and in organizations—all voluntary and unimposed. It is an error to use ‘anarchy’ to mean chaos, or hostility to the status-quo.True anarchists hold that individual choice is primary to maturity, and responsibility. For this, they hold that private property is essential, ie, for courageous dissident beliefs or actions, a person must be a beholden to no one—neither to employer nor group or government. For such independence, he needs a place of his own, inviolable and private to himself, from which he can produce his own survival, and from which he cannot be excluded for speech or actions that harm no one. To ensure widespread private property, individualist anarchists work to remove all forms of privilege and monopoly which centralize property, ownership, and control into the hands of a few people.”
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