Anarchism (from Greek *an*, no and *archos*, ruler) is a [socialist](socialism.md) political philosophy rejecting any social hierarchy and oppression, most notably that of [capitalism](capitalism.md) and [state](state.md) but also any other form, e.g. [nationalism](nationalism.md), [identity fascism](identity_politics.md), [hero culture](hero_culture.md) etc. **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 who 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" or "[free market](free_market.md)" (people get very confused by abuse of the word "free") -- 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.
[LRS](lrs.md) is a truly anarchist movement, specifically [anarcho pacifist](anpac.md) and [anarcho communist](ancom.md) one. **True, purest anarchism is [pacifist](pacifism.md), [communist](communism.md) and [altruistic](altruism.md)** as that's the perfect ideal of society without hierarchy. Other forms of anarchism that try to sneak in acceptance of concepts such as "justified violence" or some form of "market economy" are mostly just poses of teenage boys who really believe in capitalism but want to adopt a cool label of "anarchist".
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](work.md) and [weapons](military.md), i.e. anarchism opposes [state](state.md) (e.g. police having power over citizens) and [capitalism](capitalism.md) (employers exploiting employees, corporations exploiting [consumers](consumerism.md) etc.). At the beginning stands the simple observation that **power ALWAYS comes with corruption** ("Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.") and therefore power inevitably comes with abuse of power -- it is impossible to ever have a position of power that won't be abused and so to eliminate abuse of power the only effective solution is to remove any positions (NOT the people) with power: be it kings, presidents, CEOs or managers, we simply have to let go of the concept of someone having a power over other people. Literally every single government, corporation, church and any other kind of hierarchical organization in history got corrupted over time, there is not a single counterexample, it's almost as certain as a fundamental law of nature and it keeps repeating over and over that something small, more or less nice appears (be it any "democratic" state, religious idea, political party, any company, any "people's project", [Wikipedia](wikipedia.md), [google](google.md), [reddit](reddit.md), [Linux](linux.md), name any single thing), then grows bigger and ends up corrupted, abused, blatantly denying its original principles; then a revolt (often called a [revolution](revolution.md)) follows, with violence, wars, bloodshed and destruction to replace the corrupted thing with a newly created thing that's just as surely destined to repeat the same cycle. Anarchism means simply learning from repeating the mistake and stopping repeating it. To common folk it seems impossible to achieve removal of social hierarchy, i.e. positions of power, however it stops being so once we realize power can only exist as long as it has support of majority of the people -- it is based on fear and so to remove power we may only have to do as much as [educate](education.md) and make the majority of people agree to not collaborate on sustaining the harmful societal system. Further extrapolation then predicts that removing power will achieve a truly good society in which no one is abused, everyone has abundance of all necessary resources and therefore most issues that stem from [competition](competition.md) and conflict such as [wars](war.md), criminality, [fascism](fascism.md) and declining mental health will simply disappear naturally on their own, as there will simply be no more reason for them to exist.
Anarchism comes with a **complete change of mindset**, it's not enough to say "state and corporations = bad" and then continue to live the comfortable life of a consumerist [NPC](npc.md); truly embracing anarchism means exploring and realizing in depth various societal forces, their extent, and as a result absolutely changing how one lives and thinks -- becoming active instead of passive, letting go of luxury, starting to rely as much as one can only on self, obtaining more [freedom](freedom.md) in every way, stopping [consumption](consumerism.md), becoming self sufficient as much as possible, becoming a generalist and so on. To have society without people being subdued to other people it's not possible to have passive zombies who rely on others: for example you are not an anarchist if you support a non-profit that is supposed to create "ethical" [free software](free_software.md) for you; you are an anarchist if you write that software yourself. You are not an anarchist if you wear a badge that says you support children in Africa or retweet inspirational messages about how we should support charities that do so, you are an anarchist if you go to Africa and help them yourself. Good society SHOULD provide people with what they need, with free food, free healthcare, free education, it should NOT be required to grow own food in order to be fed, but such society is only possible if people VOLUNTARILY try to do so, if they become wise enough to no longer require the capitalist's whip in order to do something. I.e. anarchism is NOT an excuse for being lazy, lying in bed and masturbating all day -- it is fine to be lazy and masturbate all day, but if that is your goal, you are better off dropping your morals and becoming a rich capitalist. The goal of anarchism is good society, and that indeed does take something, allowing people to be free in their decision of whether or not to work will require an effort. So before calling yourself an anarchist ask yourself: are you someone who is truly concerned with the greater values of anarchism, or just someone who selfishly likes what benefits it would bring him personally, on the detriment of others? The latter is nothing more than being a [capitalist](capitalism.md).
There exist many **fake, pseudoanarchist ideologies** such as ["anarcho" capitalism](ancap.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 anarchism, 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.
