What is anarchy?

"What is property" - Proudhon says – "Theft!"

Anarchy in Greek means “without authority”.

The history of our world has always been divided into two groups of people: slaves and lords. Democracy as one of the oldest political system comes from Greece. Former US President, Mr. Bush, inadequately gave democracy a new meaning by saying that, „Our democracy is the best invented system in the world." Of course, it has always been the Greek democracy, not the “our one”.

The lords of this world have always used brutal power to oppress others. Russel Means, an Indian activist for the Lakotah Republic, says "There is a great deal of propaganda about why the US broke away from England. But the fact is that George Washington, the largest landowner, along with the slave owners, broke with England so that the original treaties of England with American Indians in the west would not have to be honored. The US broke with England, to invade the west and take the land."

Intelligentsia of the world noticed that this world had always been incredibly unjust and various revolutions appeared throughout history. I can mention Thomas Campanella and his socialist utopia (City of the Sun, 1623). Marx was only one of many such utopists, but he was correct in his observation that possession of property may rise to astronomical heights of a few “Big Apes” - few richest families dictate us what we should do. How many countries have laws that oblige owners of companies to share the maximum percentage of their profit with their workers?

Among people who noticed bad practices of the rich are also anarchists. The most important historical representatives of the anarchic ideology are a Frenchmen, Pierre Proudhon, and his Russian disciple in exile, Mikhail Bakunin.

Why not authority?

In the anarchist system of thinking, suppression of authorities does not imply that a physician or a historian should be deprived of his or her qualities, but that society gives a number of people more authority that they actually deserve. An actor, for example, is allowed to speak about issues of human rights, not just anybody. We see that "authorities" have often an "authority" in topics off their professional scope. In the anarchist thinking, authority is accepted as long as it is natural and professional.

Authoritarianism is good only in a profession and in things this profession deals with (an astronomer and his theory about stars), but ask how many Europeans or Americans would give a positive response to an astronomer's opinion on Hinduism only because this astronomer is a graduate of Harvard?

Anarchy communism

Although communism and anarchy have one goal - the stateless world with communities living in accordance to their wishes, not to the wishes of the “few Apes”, the basic goal of anarchy, contrary to communism, is to suppress authorities. Anarchy can be divided to anarchy alone and anarchy communism.

The quintessence of anarchy communism is to suppress the unjust division of the poor (slaves) and the rich (lords) and put all people to equal position.

Anarchy

Anarchy without any adjectives is thinking in favor of suppressing authorities, but the division between the poor and the rich is not such a concern. Political parties solve problems of the system, but for anarchists the system alone is cause of many problems.

The Matrix

The capital gets concentrated into the hands of the “few”. No intelligent view but rather greediness and various secret purposes to control others get the best of it. If environmentalists want to change anything, they find it difficult. An example is the US policy against the Kyoto protocol, or various attempts of the US administration to change legislation and to exploit Alaska (oil, coal, etc.). Our system - the Matrix - turned into a dictatorship of money.

Disadvantages of the system we live in:

1) No equal justice for everyone

As legal services are very expensive, justice is not for everybody.

2) No equal laws for everyone

Legislation for software patents in the US is only for a few and the trend is going to Europe and elsewhere. Big companies press on politicians to approve laws in favor of their interests.

3) Health care is not for everyone

Many people all around the globe simply cannot afford quality health care, which is important for everybody living on this planet.

4) Criminal activities of mega corporations

This is quite self-explanatory, but to add a few words - if a mega corporation finds oil in aboriginal or Indian reservations, they can easily take it in opposition to most agreements previously signed between native tribes and the government of such a country. This already happened.

Conclusion

The essential idea of anarchy has been always based upon utopian philosophers who noticed the omnipresent social injustice and who proposed various solutions. The journey to first utopia begins with Plato and Socrates; hence we are again in Greece. To be even more consistent, we can also make a journey to ancient history of ancient India and look at Dharmic laws of Gods like Krishna.