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Epic Interactive Encyclopedia, The - 1998 Edition (1998)(Epic Marketing).iso
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Anarchism
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34 lines
Greek anarkhos `without ruler' political
belief that society should have no
government, laws, police, or other authority,
but should be a free association of all its
members. It does not mean `without order';
most theories of anarchism imply an order of
a very strict and symmetrical kind, but they
maintain that such order can be achieved by
cooperation. Anarchism must not be confused
with nihilism (a purely negative and
destructive activity directed against
society); anarchism is essentially a pacifist
movement. Religious anarchism, claimed by
many anarchists to be exemplified in the
early organization of the Christian church,
has found expression in the social philosophy
of the Russian writer Tolstoy and the Indian
nationalist Gandhi. The growth of political
anarchism may be traced through the British
Romantic writers William Godwin and Shelley
to the 1848 revolutionaries P J Proudhon in
France and the Russian Bakunin, who had a
strong following in Europe. The theory of
anarchism is expressed in the works of the
Russian revolutionary Kropotkin. From the
1960s there were outbreaks of politically
motivated violence popularly identified with
anarchism; in the UK, the bombings and
shootings carried out by the Angry Brigade
1968-71, and in the 1980s actions directed
towards peace and animal-rights issues, and
to demonstrate against large financial and
business corporations.