Anarchism Outlined
Adapted from:http://www.sfasu.edu/polisci/Abel/APT/Summary.html

Directions:

1. Define the underlined words and then review the outline.
2. Describe how society would be run under the anarchist's scheme in one paragraph.
3. Explain what anarchists don't like about governments in one paragraph.

Anarchism

1. Rejects all forms of hierarchical authority, social and economic and political.
2. The abolition of government is the necessary precondition of a free and just society.
3. The state is a wholly artificial and illegitimate institution, the bastion of privilege and exploitation in the modern world.
4. Political institutions are inherently corrupting, and even the most selfless revolutionaries inevitably succumb to the joys of power and privilege.
   • Scorn liberalism's dedication to political liberty on the grounds that only the propertied classes can afford to enjoy it.
   • Rejected the Marxist "dictatorship of the proletariat," the idea of capturing and using the capitalist state to achieve a classless society.
   • Instead of the state "withering away," as the Marxists anticipated, it would simply perpetuate a new bureaucratic elite.
5. Once liberated from political oppression, society would spontaneously rebuild itself "from below upward."
6. A multitude of grass-roots organizations, or locally controlled economic and political entities, would spring up to produce and distribute economic goods and to satisfy other social needs.
7. Where necessary, these primary associations would form regional and even nation-wide federations.
8. The state, with its impersonal laws and coercive bureaucracies, would be supplanted by a dense web of self-governing associations and free federations.
9. Emphasis on the third of the values expressed in the French revolution's rallying cry "liberty, equality, and fraternity."
10. Enduring faith in the natural solidarity and social harmony of human beings.
11. The future society should be entrusted to the free play of popular instincts