Anarchy has more than one definition. In the United States, the term "anarchy" typically is used to refer to a society without a publicly enforced government or violently enforced political authority. When used in this sense, anarchy may or may not be intended to imply political disorder or lawlessness within a society.
Outside of the U.S., and by most individuals that self-identify as anarchists, it implies a system of governance, mostly theoretical at a nation state level although there are a few successful historical examples, that goes to lengths to avoid the use of coercion, violence, force and authority, while still producing a productive and desirable society.
Read more about Anarchy: Etymology, Anarchy and Anthropology
Famous quotes containing the word anarchy:
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“It’s the anarchy of poverty
delights me, the old
yellow wooden house indented
among the new brick tenements”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)