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01 - Anarchy - Errico Malatesta · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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  Anarchy. Anarchy is a word which comes from the Greek and signifies, strictly
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  speaking, without government, the state of a people without any constituted authority,
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  that is, without government. Before such an organization had begun to be considered
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  possible and desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be taken
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  as the aim of a party, which party has now become one of the
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  most important factors in modern social warfare. The word anarchy was taken universally in
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  the sense of disorder and confusion, and it is still adopted in that sense
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  by the ignorant and by adversaries interested in distorting the truth. We shall not
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  enter into philological discussions, for the question is not philological, but historical.
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  The common meaning of the word does not misconceive its true etymological signification, but
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  is derived from this meaning, owing to the prejudice that government must be a
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  necessity of the organization of social life, and that consequently, a society without
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  government must be given up to disorder and oscillate between the unbridled dominion of some
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  and the blind vengeance of others. The existence of this prejudice and its influence
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  on the meaning which the public has given the word is easily explained. Man,
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  like all living beings, adapts and habituates himself to the conditions in which
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  he lives, and transmits by inheritance his acquired habits. Thus, being born
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  and having lived in bondage, being the descendant of a long line of slaves,
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  man, when he began to think, believed that slavery was an essential
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  condition of life, and liberty seemed to him an impossible thing. In like
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  manner, the workman, forced for centuries, and thus habituated to depend upon
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  the good will of his employer for work, that is, for bread,
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  and accustomed to see his own life at the disposal of those who possessed the
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  land and the capital, has ended in believing that it is his master who
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  gives him to eat, and demands ingeniously how it would be possible to live
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  if there were no master over him. In the same way, a man
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  who had had his limbs bound from his birth, but had nevertheless found out
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  how to hobble about, might attribute to the very hands that bound him his
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  ability to move, while on the contrary, they would be diminishing and paralyzing
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  the muscular energy of his limbs. If, then we add to the natural
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  effect of habit, the education given him by his masters, the parson,
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  teacher, et cetera, who are all interested in teaching that the employer and
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  the government are necessary. If also we add the judge and the bailiff to
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  force those who think differently and might try to propagate their opinions, to keep
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  silence, we shall understand how the prejudice as to the utility and necessity of
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  masters and governments has become established. Suppose a doctor brings forward a complete theory
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  with a thousand ably invented illustrations, to persuade that man with the bound limb
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  whom we were describing, that if his limb were freed, he could not
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  walk, could not even live. The man would defend his bands furiously and
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  consider any one his enemy who tried to tear them off. Thus, since
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  it is believed that government is necessary, and that without government there must be
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  disorder and confusion, it is natural and logical to suppose that anarchy, which
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  signifies without government, must also mean absence of order. Nor is this fact
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  without parallel in the history of words, in those epochs and countries where people
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  have considered government by one man monarchy necessary, the word republic, that is,
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  the government of many, has been used precisely like anarchy, to imply
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  disorder and confusion. Traces of this signification of the word are still to be
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  found in the popular language of almost all countries. When this opinion is changed
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  and the public convinced that government is not necessary but extremely harmful, the word
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  anarchy, precisely because it signifies without government, will become equal to saying natural
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  order, harmony of the needs and interests of all, complete liberty, with
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  complete solidarity. Therefore, those are wrong who say that anarchists have chosen their
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  name badly, because it is erroneously understood by the masses and leads to a
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  false interpretation. The error does not come from the word, but from the
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  thing. The difficulty which anarchists meet with in spreading their views does not depend
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  upon a name they have given themselves, but upon the fact that their conceptions
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  strike at all the inveterate prejudices that people have about the function of government,
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  or the state, as is called. Before proceeding further, it will be
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  well to explain this last word, the state, which in our opinion,
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  is the real cause of much misunderstanding anarchists and we among them have made use,
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  and still generally make use of the word state, meaning thereby that collection
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  of institutions political, legislative, judicial, military, financial, et cetera,
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  by means of which the management of their own affairs, the guidance of their
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  personal conduct, and the care of ensuring their own safety are taken from the
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  people and confided to certain individuals. And these, whether by usurpation or delegation,
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  are invested with the right to make laws over and for all, and
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  to constrain the public to respect them, making use of the collective force of
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  the community to this end. In this case, the word state means government,
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  or, if you like it, is the impersonal expression abstracted from the
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  state of things of which the government is the personification. Then such expressions as
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  abolition of the state or society without the state, agree perfectly with the conception
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  which anarchists wish to express, of the destruction of every political institution based on
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  authority, and of the constitution of a free and equal society based upon harmony
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  of interests and a voluntary contribution of all to the satisfaction of social needs.
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  However, the word state has many other significations, and among these some which
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  lend themselves to misconstruction, particularly when used among men whose sad social position has
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  not afforded them leisure to become accustomed to the delicate distinctions of scientific language,
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  or still worse, when adopted treacherously by adversaries who are interested in confounding the
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  sense or do not wish to comprehend. Thus, the word state is often
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  used to indicate any given society or collection of human beings united on a given
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  territory and constituting what is called a social unit, independently of the way in
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  which the members of the sad body are grouped or of their relations existing between
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  them. State is used also simply as a synonym for society. Owing to
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  these significations, the word our adversaries believe, or rather profess to believe,
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  that anarchists wish to abolish every social relation and all collective work, and to
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  reduce man to a condition of isolation, that is, to a state worse
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  than savagery. By state again, is meant only the supreme administration of a
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  country, the central power, distinct from provincial or communal power, and therefore
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  others think that anarchists wish merely for a territorial decentralization, leaving the principle of
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  government intact, and thus confounding anarchy with cantonal or communal government. Finally,
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  state signifies condition, mode of living, the order of social life, et
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  cetera. And therefore we say, for example, that it is necessary to
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  change the economic state of the working classes, or that the anarchical state is
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  the only state founded on the principles of solidarity, and other similar phrases,
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  so that if we say, also in another sense, that we wish to
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  abolish the state, we may at once appear absurd or contradictory. For these
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  reasons, we believe it would be better to use the expression abolition of the
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  state as little as possible, and the substitute for it another clearer and more
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  concrete abolition of government. In any case, the latter will be the expression
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  used in the course of this little work. End of Section one.