Definition of anarchy
As with any other concept in human thought, the definition of "anarchy" is historical and social. This means that the meaning and understanding of concepts depend on its historical and social context, and this happens because thoughts and ideas are not independent of concrete human experience. Historical and social events inform the way humans interpret the world, and ideas themselves inform the way humans interact with the world. This could be called a dialectical relationship between idealism and materialism.
Even though etymologically "anarchy" is related to the ancient Greek "anarchos", meaning "without rulers" or "without political sovereignity", in the mainstream media and electoral political discourse, "anarchy" is often used as a synonym for "chaos" and "disorder". There are three things that can be said about this:
The term could have gained this pejorative dimension due to the "propaganda of the deed" in which anarchist individuals and collectives cause physical damage to individuals or property in order to spread anarchist ideals. Propaganda of the deed had its historical prime time at the turn of the 19th century, with the assassination of influential statesmen and with the bombing of government buildings and bourgois but it is still found widespread in contemporary tactics such as the Black Bloc.
One could argue that the media and the rulling class spread this negative understanding of anarchy in order to mistify and badmouth social anarchist and worker movements by giving them a bad popular reputation.
As Uri Gordon posits, this negative understanding of the term could date back to its Greek origins. Gordon found out through researching Ancient Greek texts that the term was already used as a synonym for "disorder" and "chaos" by thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle. In other words, the view of "anarchy" as a negative ideal is deeply rooted in Western thought. This is why in an article in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Andrew Belsey writes that there is a dogma in political philosophy in which a social organization without the State will necessarily result in "chaos", and that this dogma is only denied by anarchists and classical marxists. It is true that both anarchists and classical marxists are anti-dogmatic in respect to the causation chain of statelessness = chaos, but they deal with this question in such a different and radical way that it has caused a major historical split in the global socialist movement.
Even though it has been adopted by many thinkers who put it forward neutrally – as the term that stands for "a state of social organization without political sovereignity" –, the term remains heavily connected to chaos and social disorder. While some people who identify themselves with anarchist principles choose to stick with the term in order to identify themselves with the rich historical political tradition of anarchism, many others renounce it in order to evade repetitive clarifications or theoretical ostracization, choosing alternative terms such as "libertarian socialism" or no labels at all.
