Dizionario di Politica

Authors: Bobbio, Matteucci, Pasquino
Summary: This 4,800-word entry gives the different meanings the term has had in pre-modern and modern eras and specifies anarchism's chief aims and tactics. The simplest definition of anarchism is of communal and individual freedom "without any juridical, spatial or temporal limit." In the pre-modern era, anarchism represented the aspiration to absolute freedom.
In the 18th century, the term began to take on a political meaning, in opposition to the concept of authority. With the intellectual and cultural changes wrought by the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, anarchism acquired a positive connotation. It is in this era that the modern conception of anarchism arose. William Godwin, an English thinker, helped spark the debate over anarchism at the end of the 18th century. In his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, he defined communitarian anarchism as a regime based on total freedom and the absence of the private property. Such a conception is distinct from individualistic anarchism, marked by a focus on the individual.
The entry then turns to the aims and tactics of anarchism. It distinguishes between positive and negative aims of anarchism. As negative aims, anarchism opposes authority, the State, and law, which are considered the main causes of human oppression in society. As positive aims, anarchism seeks to establish a truly communitarian organization of society, and direct democracy. Anarchist tactics range from education to disobedience to revolution. In general, anarchist tactics are marked by spontaneity, voluntarism, extremism and the rise of relatively amorphous, intense "movements."