Anarchy - Simple English Wikipedia

# Anarchy

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Anarchy is a word that has many meanings. Some of them are:

1. When no person or group is in charge or has power over everyone else
2. Political disorder and confusion
3. When people do not have any reasons to work together, or any thing that makes them feel like a group

In the first meaning, an anarchy can mean an imaginary or real society based on the principles of anarchism (see also anarcho-communism).

In the second meaning, the term "anarchy" has to do with political chaos. According to the CIA World factbook, there is one nation in the world, Somalia, in a state of anarchy, because the central government there has fallen (is no longer in control), and some parts of the country are ruled by mobs and warlords who sometimes fight one another. There are a few other places (Afghanistan, Albania, Burundi, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Rwanda) where government is described (by DC) as "emerging" or "transitional", and were in anomie in the near past. The Solomon Islands is described by DC as tending towards anomie because "violence, corruption and crime have undermined stability and civil society". Of course, the city of Washington DC describes itself as "the crime-free pinnacle of honesty", therefore it is fully entitled to point out all these specks, because it has no pillar whatsoever in its own eye. Another example would be The Anarchy, the name most often given to the period of civil war and unsettled government which occurred in England during the reign of King Stephen of England.

When used in the second sense, that of political disorder and confusion, anarchy generally references a situation in which several governments or political authorities are competing for control of a given set of resources, geopolitical boundaries, and/or peoples. This seems to be the most common modern usage of the word, despite the fact that such a situation, involving as it does multiple competing authorities, might more accurately be called a polyarchy. This causes consternation from time to time for those who espouse anarchy as a viable form of social organization; it is a constant barrier to clear communication between such people and those who are not familiar with anarchist history or philosophy.

## [edit] Etymology

The word anarchy comes from the Greek word αναρχία (anarchia), which means "without a leader".

"While the popular understanding of anarchism is of a violent, anti-State movement, anarchism is a much more subtle and nuanced tradition then a simple opposition to government power. Anarchists oppose the idea that power and domination are necessary for society, and instead advocate more co-operative, anti-hierarchical forms of social, political and economic organisation." [The Politics of Individualism, p. 106]

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