Anarchism (from Greek *an*, no and *archos*, ruler) is a [socialist](socialism.md) political philosophy rejecting any social hierarchy and oppression. **Anarchism doesn't mean without rules, but without rulers**; despite popular misconceptions anarchism is not [chaos](chaos.md) -- on the contrary, it strives for a stable, ideal society of equal people that live in peace. It means order without power. Let's also stress that **anarchism is ALWAYS incompatible with and strongly opposes [capitalism](capitalism.md)**, as it's sadly heard too many times from the mouth of common people they think anarchism to be something akin "true capitalism" -- NO, capitalism and formal government are an anarchist's two most opposed ideas (and please do not be mislead by attempts at deception e.g. by so called "[anarcho capitalists](ancap.md)"; such a term just tries to merge two fundamentally incompatible ideas, like for example "militant pacifist" or "communist capitalist"). The symbols of anarchism include the letter A in a circle and a black flag that for different branches of anarchism is diagonally split from bottom left to top right and the top part is filled with a color specific for that branch.
A great many things about anarchism are explained in the text *An Anarchist FAQ*, which is [free licensed](free_culture.md) and can be accessed e.g. at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq-full.
Anarchism is a wide term and encompasses many flavors such as [anarcho communism](ancom.md), [anarcho pacifism](anpac.md), [anarcho syndicalism](ansyn.md), [anarcho primitivism](anprim.md) or [anarcho mutualism](anmut.md). Some of the branches disagree on specific questions, e.g. about whether [violence](violence.md) is ever justifiable, or propose different solutions to issues such as organization of society, however **all branches of anarchism are socialist** and all aim for **elimination of social hierarchy** such as social classes created by wealth, jobs and weapons, i.e. anarchism opposes [state](state.md) (e.g. police having power over citizens) and [capitalism](capitalism.md) (employers exploiting employees, corporations exploiting consumers etc.).
There exist many **fake, pseudoanarchist ideologies** such as ["anarcho" capitalism](ancap.md) (which includes e.g. so caleed [crypto "anarchism"](crypto_anarchism.md)) that deceive by their name despite by their very definition NOT fitting the definition of anarchism (just like [Nazis](nazi.md) called themselves [socialists](socialism.md) despite being the opposite). Also the "new", western [pseudoleftist](pseudoleft.md) "anarchism" is NOT true anarhism, e.g. ["anarcha" feminism](anfem.md) is just fascist bullshit. Anything individualist, connected to [feminism](feminism.md), [LGBT](lgbt.md) etc. is not true anarchism. The propaganda also tries to deceive the public by calling various violent criminals anarchists, even though they very often can't fit the definition of a true anarchist.
