This essay traces the historical development of anarchism as a social model without coercive authority from its ancient roots to its global spread in the 20th century. The author of the essay asserts: 1) anarchism emerges in antiquity (Anacharsis the Scythian, Cynics, Stoics, Daoism of Laozi and Zhuangzi) as a critique of artificial norms in favor of natural equality and autonomy; 2) in the Middle Ages and the Modern Era, proto-anarchist ideas manifest in heretical movements (Brethren of the Free Spirit, Diggers), the English Revolution, and the French Revolution (Cloots, Godwin, Proudhon); 3) Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814–1876) systematizes collectivist anarchism, radicalizing the traditions of Proudhon and Godwin by introducing direct democracy and the revolutionary destruction of the state; 4) Marxist critique (Marx, Engels) declares anarchism a utopia but acknowledges the militancy of its adherents; 5) European anarchism (French and Russian) influences 20th-century Asian movements, adapting to Daoism in China and swaraj in India. In conclusion, the essay emphasizes the contemporary relevance of anarchism as a critique of authority and a proposal for federative self-organization.
The anarchist idea, as a model of society without coercive power, originates in antiquity. In ancient Greece, criticism of the state and laws as artificial limitations on man's natural freedom was found among a number of thinkers. One of the early examples is considered to be Anacharsis the Scythian (c. 6th century BCE), described in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius (I, 101–105). Anacharsis, a Scythian prince who visited Athens, criticized Greek customs and laws, contrasting them with the simplicity of Scythian life. Some modern interpreters consider him the first European anarchist due to his rejection of artificial norms in favor of a natural way of life.
The fundamental ideas of Anacharsis can be summarized as follows:
The laws and customs of the polis are artificial inventions, contrary to nature; true wisdom lies in simplicity and self-sufficiency.
Criticism of Greek luxury and social hierarchies as sources of vice.
Preference for natural equality and the autonomy of the individual over coercive norms.
In Greek philosophy, these themes were developed by the Cynics and Stoics. The Cynic Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412-323 BCE) rejected social conventions, property, and the state, living in a tub and preaching a life "according to nature." His pupil, Crates of Thebes (c. 365–285 BCE), described an ideal society without property and wars. Zeno of Citium (c. 334–262 BCE), the founder of Stoicism, envisioned an egalitarian community without a state, courts, money, or temples, founded on reason and natural law.
Anarchism represents a social behavioral model where the rights and freedoms of the individual are guaranteed through the observance of natural human rights. Laws and constitutions are seen as the alienation of one's own will and individual responsibility for the sake of depersonalization. No one has the right to condemn an anarchist for their actions, since absolute knowledge of what is "right" does not exist; optimal behavior is achieved through trial and error, approaching an autonomous regulation of rights and duties, analogous to the hypothetical "lost paradise" of the state of nature.
During the Roman period, elements of anarchism were present among the later Stoics, influenced by the Cynics. For example:
Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE – 65 CE) emphasized the inner freedom of the sage, independent of external authority; the state is a necessary evil, but true virtue is above the laws.
Epictetus (c. 50–135 CE) taught that freedom lies in the will of the individual, and external institutions (including the empire) cannot limit it; a slave can be freer than a master.
Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) in Meditations idealized a cosmopolis without national borders or coercion, where reason rules autonomously.
In the Middle Ages, the precursors of anarchism manifested themselves in heretical movements that rejected both ecclesiastical and secular hierarchy. The Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit (13th–14th centuries) preached the renunciation of property, marriage, and authorities, living in poverty and free love. The Bohemian Taborites (15th century, during the Hussite Wars) created communes with collective property and equality. The Anabaptists (16th century, during the German Peasants' War) demanded the abolition of the state and the church, establishing egalitarian communities. The Diggers (17th century, England) occupied lands collectively, rejecting private property. These movements introduced innovations: communal economy, the rejection of hierarchy, direct democracy within communities, seeing authority as the source of sin and oppression, and striving for biblical governance, particularly as described in the Book of Judges.
In the period before the English Revolution (the 1640s), elements of anarchism, as a critique of the centralized state in favor of local autonomy, can be traced among Mennonites and other dissidents who rejected state authority, which laid the foundations for later "political anarchism."
The Diggers' party, led by Gerrard Winstanley (1609–1676), rejected private land ownership, occupied unused lands collectively, and preached an egalitarian society without authorities or money. Then the Levellers, under the leadership of John Lilburne (1614–1657), advocated for universal male suffrage, equality before the law, and the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords, seeing the state as an instrument of oppression. And the radical sect of the Ranters, which rejected church hierarchy, moral norms, and state control, preaching pantheistic freedom and antinomianism.
The French Revolution (1789-1799) became a key stage in the formation of modern anarchist ideas. The birthplace of "pre-scientific" (proto-) anarchism is considered to be Greece, spearheaded by Anacharsis the Scythian; Rome by the Gracchi brothers (Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, c. 163–133 BCE, and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, c. 154–121 BCE), who fought for land redistribution and the limitation of senatorial power. "Scientific" anarchism as a systematic theory arose during Republican France (1792–1804), with the first formulations of anti-state ideas.
Jean-Baptiste (Anacharsis) Cloots (1755–1794), a Prussian aristocrat who adopted the name Anacharsis, became an active participant in the Revolution. His key works: "Voeux d'un gallophile" (1786), "La Certitude des preuves du mahométisme" (1780, under a pseudonym), "La République universelle" (1792), "Bases constitutionnelles de la République du genre humain" (1793). Cloots preached a universal republic without borders or states, founded on the sovereignty of humanity.
Filippo Michele Buonarroti (1761–1837) in his work "Conspiration pour l'égalité dite de Babeuf" (1828) described the Conspiracy of the Equals. François-Noël (Gracchus) Babeuf (1760–1797) in the "Manifesto of the Equals" (1796) demanded the abolition of private property and the establishment of equality. William Godwin (1756–1836), an English thinker, in "An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice" (1793) substantiated anarchism as a society without a state, based on reason and voluntary cooperation.
In Britain, the ideas of the French Revolution inspired William Godwin's analysis of anarchist ideas of the "past" and "present." His main work, "An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on Modern Morals and Happiness" (1793), became the first systematic exposition of anarchist ideas in the modern era.
To summarize Godwin's anarchist ideas:
The state is the source of evil and violence; it suppresses individual reason and morality. Society should evolve toward a stateless structure through enlightenment and rational discussion.
Private property is the root of inequality; he proposed its gradual abolition in favor of distribution according to need, but without coercion, relying on a voluntary sense of justice.
The progress of humanity is possible through the perfection of reason; education and the free exchange of opinions will lead to a society of small autonomous communities where decisions are made by consensus, without laws and institutions of coercion.
A comparison of the understanding of anarchism in Cloots and Godwin:
Cloots saw anarchism as a cosmopolitan universal republic without nation-states, with global unity of humanity achieved through the revolutionary overthrow of tyrannies.
Godwin emphasized "enlightened reforms" based on education and reason, leading to a decentralized society of small autonomous communities without coercion.
Both rejected the state as a source of evil, but Cloots was more radical in his internationalism and revolutionary action, while Godwin was more so in pacifism and individual morality. One must fight not the system of the yoke of power and capital, Godwin noted, but one's own "inner demons."
After the passions of the French Revolution had faded and the devastating Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815) had ended, European monarchies were strengthened, yet social upheavals continued: famine riots, workers' unrest, and crises of power legitimacy. In this atmosphere, anarchist ideas received new development, transitioning from utopian sketches to economic and social critique.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), a self-taught French thinker, became the first to openly call himself an anarchist. In his foundational work What Is Property? (1840), he formulated the famous thesis: "La propriété, c’est le vol" ("Property is theft"), which was an allusion to the well-known thesis of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778): "The fruits of the earth belong to everyone, and the earth itself to no one." Proudhon argued that private property over the means of production allows for the exploitation of labor, appropriating surplus value and perpetuating the eternal cycle of master and slave.
Key ideas of Proudhon:
Mutualism an economic system of free associations of producers, exchange of equivalents, and mutual credit without interest through a people's bank.
Federalism a decentralized society of free communes and workers' associations, bound by voluntary contracts, without a centralized state.
Rejection of both capitalism and state socialism; critique of authority: "L’anarchie, c’est l’ordre" ("Anarchy is order").
In his works System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty (1846) and The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851), Proudhon developed a theory of gradual revolution through economic reforms, without a political seizure of power. The people, ordinary people, will be convinced of the correctness of the anarchist idea and will, politically, rid themselves of the bloodsuckers and stranglers.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814-1876) revived and radicalized the French anarchist traditions, standing on the foundation of the Great French Revolution. The theoretical ideas of William Godwin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon significantly influenced him, but Bakunin transformed the individualistic and reformist anarchism into a revolutionary doctrine of a collectivist type, oriented toward mass uprising.
In his principal Russian work, Statism and Anarchy (1873), Bakunin develops the idea of an inevitable conflict between the state and the people. The state, according to him, is "organized oppression" (a gang of thieves) of the minority over the majority. He rejects any form of state socialism: "Si vous prenez l’État, même le plus rouge, vous aurez toujours la domination" ("If you take the state, even the reddest one, you will always have domination"). The revolution must destroy the state entirely, replacing it with a federation of free productive associations and communes, built from the bottom up.
In his unfinished yet programmatic work God and the State (published posthumously in 1882), Bakunin formulates the famous thesis: "Si Dieu existait, il faudrait l’abolir" ("If God existed, it would be necessary to abolish him"). Religion and the state are twin oppressors (parasites): both demand submission to authority, suppressing freedom and reason. Scientific progress and revolution will liberate humanity from these chains.
In The Confession (1851, written in the Peter and Paul Fortress, published in 1921), Bakunin already outlines the transition from Hegelianism to revolutionary action, acknowledging the necessity of destroying the old order for the birth of freedom. For all that is rational is real, and all that is real is rational; anarchism stems from rationality, therefore, it is valid.
Bakunin earned the title "father of Russian democracy" not for rhetoric, but for introducing the idea of scientific, direct democracy into the revolutionary movement. Before him, the Decembrists (1825), Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky (1811-1848), Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (1812-1870), and Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) developed liberal or utopian-socialist concepts of democracy, often relying on an enlightened elite or the state. Bakunin brought something new: democracy must be immediate, federalist, anti-authoritarian, based on the self-management of the working masses without intermediaries. He rejected the parliamentary form as a "bourgeois lie" and called for "la révolution sociale", a social revolution, where the people themselves take power into their own hands.
Bakunin's contribution is sharp and polemical in synthesizing anarchism with revolutionary practice: "La liberté ne se donne pas, elle se prend" ("Freedom is not given, it is taken"). This made Bakunin a connecting link between 19th-century French anarchism and the international labor movement.
Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) criticized anarchism as theoretically untenable and practically harmful to the proletarian revolution. They saw it as a utopia, incapable of overcoming capitalism without a transitional stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), anarchists are indirectly mentioned as part of "reactionary socialism" and "utopian socialism." More direct criticism was developed by Marx and Engels in their polemic with Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin and his supporters.
In The Alliance of the Socialist Democracy (1872, jointly with Engels), Marx accuses the Bakuninists of conspiratorial tactics and petty-bourgeois individualism. He calls their program an "anarchist chimera," which under the guise of fighting authority destroys the organization of the working class.
Friedrich Engels' most famous critical work directed against anarchism is The Bakuninists at Work (Die Bakunisten an der Arbeit, 1873). In it, he analyzes the events of the Spanish Revolution of 1873, when anarchists (members of the Alliance) seized power in a number of cities (Cartagena, Cádiz) but were unable to maintain it. Engels concludes: in practice, anarchists are forced to create temporary organs of power, which contradicts their principles. "They themselves become a state, albeit the worst possible one." Engels develops the thesis: the immediate abolition of the state is impossible, because the proletariat needs to use the state machinery to suppress the bourgeoisie. Anarchism, in his opinion, remains "Thomas More's utopia", a beautiful dream that does not account for real class struggle.
Marx, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), emphasizes that between capitalist and communist society lies a period of revolutionary transformation of the former into the latter. To this period corresponds a political transition period, and the state of this period can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. Anarchists, by denying this stage, doom the revolution to defeat.
In Anti-Dühring (1878), Engels definitively formulates: the state withers away on its own after the destruction of classes, but until then, it cannot be "abolished by decree." Anarchism, however, demands precisely this and therefore remains a utopia.
Engels in a letter to Theodore Cuno (letter dated 1872), and Marx himself in personal correspondence with various political figures and thinkers of his time, note the paradox that the best communists come from among the anarchists. They acknowledge that Bakuninists often display the greatest determination, self-sacrifice, and hatred for the bourgeois order, but believe that their anti-state dogma makes them incapable of organized victory. Marx and Engels, citing the example of the Paris Commune (1871), allowed for a "temporary and gradual" transition of "statelessness" to achieve communism, viewing anarchism as a moment of statelessness preceding the establishment of centralist democracy (Vladimir Lenin proved this thesis).
"Forgotten" Classics of Anarchism from the Second Half of the 19th – Early 20th Centuries
Johann Kaspar Schmidt (Max Stirner, 1806-1856). The most radical thinker of early anarchism. In his main work The Ego and Its Own (1844), Stirner argues that all "great ideas"—God, the state, society, morality, humanity, law—are merely "spooks" (Spuk) with which man frightens and subordinates himself. The only reality is the "I" (der Einzige), a unique, concrete being. Everything else has value only insofar as it serves this "I." Stirner did not call for revolution in the usual sense but proposed that each person radically reject worship of any abstractions and create temporary "unions of egoists"—voluntary associations that dissolve as soon as they cease to benefit the participants. His ideas greatly influenced individualist anarchism in the 20th century, as well as the philosophy of Nietzsche and existentialism.
Louise Michel (1830-1905). A teacher, poetess, and barricade fighter of the Paris Commune of 1871. After the defeat of the Commune, she was exiled to New Caledonia, where she unexpectedly supported the rebellion of the indigenous Kanak people against French colonizers. Upon returning to France, she became one of the most famous orators of the anarchist movement. Louise Michel was the first to use the black flag as a symbol of anarchism (as opposed to the red flag of socialists and statists). She was distinguished by particular passion on issues of anti-militarism, animal rights, and women's rights. She believed that the oppression of human by human and the oppression of nature by humans were links in the same chain.
Jacques Élisée Reclus (Élisée Reclus, 1830-1905). An outstanding geographer and one of the most educated anarchists of his time. Author of the monumental 19-volume Nouvelle Géographie universelle and the 6-volume work L'Homme et la Terre. Reclus viewed humanity as an integral part of the biosphere and believed that the exploitation of nature and the exploitation of humans were two sides of the same coin. He was a convinced vegetarian, advocate of free love, and opponent of all forms of colonialism. Within the anarchist movement, he championed the idea of "geographical federalism"—society should be built taking into account natural landscape boundaries, not artificial state borders.
Johann (Johann) Joseph Most (1846-1906). A German printer who became the most famous propagandist of "propaganda by the deed" in the German-speaking world and the USA. His newspaper Freiheit (Freedom) was one of the most radical publications of its time. Most openly called for violent acts against representatives of authority and capital, believing that only such acts could "awaken" the masses. His style—coarse, furious, often provocative—greatly influenced the young generation of American anarchists. It was Most who was the primary teacher of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) and Alexander Berkman (1870–1936). Both were emigrants from the Russian Empire (Lithuania and Vilnius, respectively) who moved to the USA. They became the most famous English-speaking anarchists of the first half of the 20th century. Goldman gained fame as a brilliant orator and publicist, championing women's rights, free love, contraception, the right to abortion, and anti-militarism. Her famous essay Anarchism: What It Really Stands For is still considered one of the best popular introductions to the topic. Berkman entered history through his attempt on the life of Henry Clay Frick (1892), and later through his book Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1912) and sharp criticism of the Bolshevik regime after his deportation from the USSR in 1921.
Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912). An American anarchist philosopher, poetess, and lecturer. Starting with individualist views in the spirit of Benjamin Tucker, she later moved towards a broader synthetic anarchism ("anarchism without adjectives"). Her essay Direct Action (1912) is one of the most famous texts justifying and explaining the tactic of direct action (strikes, sabotage, workplace seizures) as a natural expression of human freedom.
Errico Malatesta (1853-1932). An Italian anarchist, one of Bakunin's most consistent students. Unlike many theorists, he remained primarily an organizer and practitioner throughout his life. Malatesta advocated the idea that anarchists should participate in mass workers' movements, especially in syndicates, but should never subordinate them to party discipline. His famous formula: "Everyone says that anarchy is the absence of government. I will add: and it is the absence of man's domination over man."
Louis-Eugène Varlin (1839-1871). A French bookbinder, one of the leaders of the Paris Commune. Even before the Commune, he actively participated in creating workers' cooperatives and associations. During the Commune, he was responsible for supplies and attempted to organize production on the basis of self-management. He was brutally killed by the Versaillese at the age of 31. Varlin was one of the first to attempt in practice to combine the ideas of Proudhon (cooperation, mutual aid) with revolutionary struggle.
François Claudius Koenigstein, known as Ravachol (1859–1892). A French quarryman who became a symbol of "propaganda by the deed." In 1891–1892, he carried out a series of bombings and murders (including of judges and prosecutors), motivated by revenge for the executions of anarchists and the poverty of workers. He was guillotined in 1892. After his execution, his name became a battle cry for the radical wing of the movement—"Vive la Ravachole!"
These figures show how diverse the anarchist movement was even by the late 19th century: from the extreme individualism of Stirner to the revolutionary syndicalism of Malatesta and Varlin; from philosophical reflection to the direct action of Ravachol and the heroic practice of Louise Michel. Many of them still remain in the "second tier" in popular accounts of anarchism, although it was they who largely defined the face of the movement at the turn of the century.
In contrast to European traditions, Asian proto-anarchist motifs are often associated with philosophical schools that rejected artificial norms in favor of the natural order, equality, and autonomy.
In China, one of the early manifestations of such ideas was the Yellow Turban Rebellion (184–205 CE), a major peasant uprising against the Han dynasty. Its leader, Zhang Jue (d. 184 CE), and his brothers founded the sect "Way of Great Peace" (Taiping Dao), inspired by Daoism. The rebels wore yellow turbans as a symbol of the earth element, which was to replace the "fire" of the Han. They preached the equality of all people, the equal distribution of land, and the establishment of a utopian society without exploitation. The rebellion engulfed vast territories, gathered hundreds of thousands of participants, but was suppressed; it weakened the dynasty and led to the period of the Three Kingdoms.
The fundamental ideas of Daoism as a source of anarchism can be summarized as follows:
Laozi (6th–5th century BCE), author of the Daodejing: the state and laws are artificial limitations; the ideal is minimal interference by the ruler ("wu-wei" - non-action), with society self-organizing according to the natural way (Dao).
Zhuangzi (c. 369–286 BCE): critique of social conventions, hierarchies, and property; preference for a spontaneous life "according to nature," where the individual is free from authorities.
Bao Jingyan (3rd–4th centuries CE): in the treatise "Neither God nor Master," direct anarchism — rejection of the state as a source of inequality; the ideal is an egalitarian society without rulers and property.
Daoism influenced peasant uprisings that saw authority as a source of oppression. During the Wei-Jin period (220-420 CE), Neo-Daoism developed pacifist and anti-state motifs.
In India, elements of anarchism were present in heterodox (nāstika) schools that rejected Vedic authoritarianism and the caste system.
Key ideas:
Charvaka (Lokāyata, 6th century BCE and earlier): a materialist school that rejected gods, the soul, and the afterlife; empiricism and hedonism as the basis of life; critique of Brahmanic authority and rituals.
Buddhism (Siddhartha Gautama, c. 563–483 BCE): description of a prehistoric state of harmony without a state; equality of all beings, renunciation of violence and hierarchies.
Jainism (Mahavira, c. 599–527 BCE): ahimsa (non-violence), autonomy of the individual in achieving liberation; critique of castes and rituals.
In Hindu cosmology, the Satya Yuga described a stateless society regulated by the natural law of dharma. Parallels to the Gracchi brothers in the Roman context can be found in Indian reformers who fought for land redistribution.
Anarchism in Asia presented a model where rights and freedoms were guaranteed by the natural order, and the state and religion were seen as an alienation of individual responsibility. The optimal society was achieved through harmony with nature, by trial and error, approaching a "golden age" of autonomous equality.
In medieval China, Daoist ideas inspired sects and uprisings that rejected imperial hierarchy. In India, Buddhist and Jain communities created egalitarian sanghas without centralized power.
In China, the Opium Wars and the Qing crisis stimulated the search for alternatives; in India, British rule provoked a critique of authority. However, systematic anarchism appeared later, under the influence of European ideas, through students in Japan and Europe.
At the beginning of the 20th century, European anarchism, especially the French tradition of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon with its mutualism and federalism, and the Russian collectivist anarchism of Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, with its emphasis on the revolutionary destruction of the state and mass self-management, penetrated Asia through translations, emigrants, and students in Europe and Japan.
In China, anarchism became prominent from the 1900s onwards, thanks to the Paris group of Chinese students. Liu Shipei (1884-1919) and Zhang Ji (1882-1947) in Tokyo and Paris studied Proudhon and Bakunin; they translated “What Is Property?” and God and the State. Li Shizeng (1881-1973) and Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940) founded societies in Paris (1907–1910), preaching a synthesis of anarchism with Daoism. Key figures: Liu Shipei developed agrarian anarchism with communes; Ba Jin (1904-2005) popularized Bakuninist ideas of freedom and anti-authoritarianism in his novels.
Bakunin called for a federation of communes from below, and Chinese anarchists adapted this to village communities in their struggle against the empire and militarists. Proudhon's mutualism influenced ideas of mutual aid in the workers' associations of Guangzhou (1920s). During the Xinhai Revolution (1911) and the May Fourth Movement (1919), anarchists criticized the state as a new form of oppression.
In India, anarchism developed through the anti-colonial struggle. Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) was not a pure anarchist, but his satyagraha and gram-swaraj (village self-rule) echoed Godwin's "enlightened reforms" as a progressive struggle against evil, and Proudhonian federalism. More radically: Har Dayal (1884–1939) and Mandayam Prativadi Bhayankara Tirumala Acharya (1887–1954) in the Ghadar Party (USA, 1913) studied Bakunin in Europe; they preached the revolutionary destruction of the British state and the creation of a federation of communities. Bhagat Singh (1907–1931) in the 1920s read Bakunin and Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842–1921), seeing anarchism as a tool against imperialism.
Bakunin's call for social revolution inspired Indian revolutionaries to undertake terrorist acts and form trade unions, while Proudhon's critique of property influenced land reforms in communities. Both trends adapted European ideas to local traditions: in China — to Daoist wu-wei; in India — to ahimsa and swaraj.
Russian anarchism, through Pyotr Kropotkin with his theory of mutual aid and anarcho-communism, and Nestor Ivanovich Makhno (1888–1934) with his practice of free councils in Ukraine (1918–1921), reinforced the collectivist emphasis. Russian emigrants in the 1920s made contact with Asian groups.
Russian anarchism "breathed fire" into the Romance peoples: in Italy — Errico Malatesta (1853–1932). In Spain the CNT-FAI movement (1936) with its collectivization. Spanish and Italian anarchist emigrants in Latin America and Asia transmitted the ideas further; through Buenos Aires and Shanghai, Bakuninism reached China and India, intensifying anti-imperialist radicalism.
Anarchism, as an idea of a society without coercive power, has traversed a path from ancient critics of the state: Anacharsis the Scythian and Daoist thinkers — through the European revolutionary traditions of Proudhon and Bakunin to its global spread in the 20th century. Despite repeated attempts by Marxists to declare it a utopia and the historical defeats of anarchist experiments, this doctrine retains its viability.
The first reason for its relevance lies in its fundamental critique of the state as an institution of organized oppression. Bakunin, in Statism and Anarchy and God and the State, demonstrated that any state, regardless of ideology, reproduces the domination of a minority over the majority. This critique is confirmed by experience: bureaucratic apparatuses, even in socialist systems, lead to alienation and new hierarchies (the emergence of the nomenklatura). Anarchism offers an alternative: a federation of autonomous associations and communes where decisions are made from below, without intermediaries.
The second reason is its emphasis on individual and collective freedom through self-organization. From Godwinian enlightenment and Proudhonian mutualism to Kropotkinian mutual aid, anarchism insists that rights and responsibilities are regulated voluntarily, through trial and error, without external coercion. In conditions of centralized structures that suppress initiative, this model remains attractive to those who see laws and constitutions as an alienation of their own will.
The third reason is its adaptability to local traditions and anti-authoritarian movements. In China, anarchism synthesized with Daoism, and in India with the ideas of swaraj. In Romance countries, it inspired mass syndicates. Anarchism does not demand a single dogma, allowing it to integrate into the struggle against imperialism, militarism, and exploitation.
Rejection of the State. The state is an instrument of organized coercion and oppression of the majority by a minority; it must be completely abolished, not reformed.
Voluntary Cooperation. Society is built on free associations of individuals and groups, bound by mutual benefit and solidarity, without external coercion.
Federalism from the Bottom Up. Social organization through federations of autonomous communes, workers' associations, and communities, where decision-making powers are delegated only temporarily and are revocable.
Direct Democracy. Decisions are made directly by participants through assemblies, consensus, or majority vote, without permanent representatives or intermediaries.
Critique of Private Ownership of the Means of Production. Property that allows for the exploitation of another's labor is considered a source of inequality; personal possession is permissible, but not capitalist ownership. Property belongs to those who best understand its utility. Utility consists of maximum production and the provision of all possible goods through one's labor using available tools of production. If someone else is capable of improving extraction, production, etc., then they are granted the right to develop and utilize resources to provide for themselves and society.
Mutual Aid as a Natural Law. Cooperation and mutual support are the basis of survival and progress, confirmed by biology, history, and ethics. The biological species that survive are those that manage to agree, forming a temporary or permanent union, a symbiotic rather than parasitic connection (Kropotkin).
Rejection of Authority and Hierarchy. Any form of coercive authority (state, religious, patriarchal) suppresses freedom and must be eliminated.
Individual Freedom. Full autonomy of the individual in thought, action, and way of life, limited only by the equal freedom of others. However, each person is a natural biological and hereditary unit of binary natural forces and is thus a bearer of the genetic and moral traditions of their ancestors (each is bound by the legacy of deceased ancestors and has obligations to unborn generations). In this sense, each person has the right, upon reaching sound judgment, to rely on their own landmarks and beacons in life.
Equality of Social Opportunity. Absence of classes, privileges, and hereditary inequality; distribution of resources according to need or contribution.
Revolutionary Path or Gradual Transformation. Transition to an anarchist society is possible through social revolution (Bakunin) or evolutionary economic and cultural changes (Proudhon).
Anti-Militarism and Internationalism. Rejection of armies, borders, and nationalism; solidarity of the working people of all countries against all forms of oppression.
Self-Management and Responsibility. Each individual and collective bears direct responsibility for their actions; behavioral norms are formed voluntarily, through trial and error, without external laws.
These postulates summarize the main ideas of "classical anarchism" from the 19th–20th centuries. Different schools (e.g., collectivism, mutualism, anarcho-communism, individualism) emphasize them differently, but all recognize the centrality of freedom and equality without coercion.
Thus, anarchism remains alive because it diagnoses the root of the problem authority and coercion and offers a realistic alternative: a society based on equality and direct participation. It will not disappear as long as states and hierarchies exist.