ABSTRACT
As a political ideology, anarchism is notoriously difficult to define, leading many commentators to complain of its being ‘amorphous and full of paradoxes and contradictions’ (Miller 1984: 2).
One reason for the confusion surrounding the use of the word ‘anarchism’ is the derogatory meanings associated with the connected terms ‘anarchy’ and ‘anarchic’. The Oxford English Dictionary defines anarchy as (1) absence of government or control, resulting in lawlessness (2) disorder, confusion; and an anarchist as ‘a person who believes that government is undesirable and should be abolished’. In fact, the title ‘anarchist’ was first employed as a description of adherence to a particular ideology by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1840 and, as shall transpire, the substantial part of this ideology consisted in far more than a simple rejection of government. Indeed, as many anarchists have stressed, it is not government as such that they find objectionable, but the hierarchical forms of government associated with the nation state.
