Anarchism is the political philosophy that holds that all state authority or power is oppressive and unjust, that the abolishing of government will produce the greatest individual and collective freedom and prosperity and that it is governmental authority that imposes unfair rules on people, steals their money, and keeps them in slavery. Therefore, to eliminate the state will result in justice and an end to poverty, violence, bondage, and war. Ironically, many anarchists have used violence and terrorism to try to destroy the existing government. Underlying the anarchist's political theory is a view that human beings are naturally peaceful, loving, and cooperative and that only the state system makes them selfish and cruel; so ending the government will unleash humanity's positive qualities. This optimistic view of human beings goes back to French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his idea that people are naturally virtuous but corrupted by society. This is contrary to most of Western political thought, which regards humanity as naturally selfish and bigoted who can only be made cooperative through education, political participation, religious ethics and spiritual development, and the threat of legal punishment. So anarchism is the very opposite of most Western knowledge in that it identifies individual and social problems with both the state and all other forms of authority (in business, the military, the church, and the family). So the ideal in anarchism is a kind of unrestrained, free child, with no controls or directing, and the belief that this would produce a perfect social harmony of selfdirected, self-controlled individuals freely relating to one another in a purely voluntary, happy way.

Other than this basic idealism over natural human kindness and peace and rejection of all authority, anarchists vary tremendously over how to achieve this utopia of perfection. Some anarchists believe in freemarket, laissez-faire capitalism to achieve all-perfect, authority-free happiness; others want a communist economy to achieve the same result; still others seek a religious community to accomplish anarchy. In each case, it is not believed that an anarchic social system would produce chaos and disorder (as it is often accused) because the free individuals will be self-regulating and respectful of others' rights. The idea is that people can control themselves internally and individually best, without external control (by law, government, parents, teachers, church or God). Most of all, anarchists hate all authority. The fact that an anarchist society has never succeeded does not prove to anarchists that it is unrealistic, just that the evils of authority and power keep creeping back into life.

The main philosophers of anarchism wrote in the 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe and Russia. The first was Frenchman Pierre-Joseph Proudhon whose maxim "property is theft" attacked power associated with wealth and advocated a socialist or communal anarchism without private property. The German thinker Max Stirner developed a more individualistic anarchy that allowed absolute private freedom which later developed into libertarianism. Peter Kropotkin, a Russian anarchist, advocated a communist anarchism in which peasants and workers would cooperate. Some anarchists blended Marxism with anarchism, conceiving of a highly organized technological society without any coercive qualities, preserving absolute individual liberty.  In Spain and Italy, anarcho-syndicalist movements tried to combine trade unions with anarchist ideals. How the anarchist freedom was to occur was not clear. Some anarchists (especially Marxists) wanted an armed violent revolution (like the Russian Revolution of 1917); others expected a spontaneous revolt of the masses of people, overthrowing existing authority in the state, the church, the family, and the economy. Some anarchists thought violent acts (assassinating political leaders or bombing government buildings) would set off this sudden revolt and usher in the total freedom of anarchism. Such acts of terrorism and violence by anarchists gave them the popular image of a crazed idealist with a bomb under his (or her) coat.

Anarchism also seeded other movements, like Feminism (women's revolt against male authority), Pacifism (peace activists against military organizations and war), Environmentalism (against corporate power and pollution), Animal rights (against human dominance over other animals), and atheism (against the authority of God, church, and religion). Each shares hostility toward authority.

Anarchism is viewed as unrealistic in the Western tradition of political thought and as having an inaccurate view of human nature (as naturally cooperative) and society (as capable of functioning without authority). Anarchists are seen by their critics as selfdeceived and self-righteous, denying the egoism and desire for power in their own hearts while criticizing it in others, and identifying all evil with established authority, rather than with inherent human weakness.

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