Anarchism derives from the Greek avapxia ("without archons (rulers)"). Thus anarchism, in its most general meaning, is the belief that rulers are unnecessary and should be abolished. Anarchism refers to various political philosophies and related social movements that advocate the elimination of the state. In place of centralized political structures and coercive economic institutions, anarchists advocate what they regard as social relations based upon voluntary association of autonomous individuals and self-governance.

While anarchism is defined by what it is against, anarchists also offer positive visions of what they believe to be a truly free society. The word "anarchy," as anarchists use it, does not imply chaos or anomie, but rather a society without rulers. However, ideas about how an anarchist society might work vary considerably, especially with respect to economics. Also, there is disagreement about how a free society might be brought about.

Primitive cultures

Many anarchists, particularly anarcho-primitivists, assert that before recorded history, human society was organized on anarchist principles. They claim hunter-gatherer bands had an egalitarian structure, citing a lack of division of labour, accumulated wealth and decreed law as indicators of such indigenous "anarchist" systems. Others, however, question this, in particular in terms of a gender based division of labour.

Philosophical traces

Some anarchists have claimed that Taoism, which developed in Ancient China, was a source of anarchistic attitudes. Similarly, anarchistic tendencies can be traced to the philosophers of Ancient Greece, such as Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, Aristippus, who said that the wise should not give up their liberty to the state, and Diogenes of Sinope, the Cynic, who claimed to be a citizen of the world. Later movements such as Stregheria in the 1300s, the Free Spirit in the Middle Ages, the Anabaptists, The Diggers, and the Ranters have also expounded ideas that have been interpreted as anarchist

Ancient Greece

The first known usage of the word anarchy appears in the play Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus, dated 467 BC. There, Antigone openly refuses to abide by the rulers' decree to leave her brother Polyneices' body unburied, as punishment for his participation in the attack on Thebes, saying that "even if no one else is willing to share in burying him I will bury him alone and risk the peril of burying my own brother. Nor am I ashamed to act in defiant opposition to the rulers of the city (ekhous apiston tênd anarkhian polei)".

Ancient Greece also saw the first European instance of anarchism as a philosophical ideal, in the form of the stoic philosopher Zeno of Citium, who was, according to Kropotkin, "the best exponent of Anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece". As summarized by Kropotkin, Zeno "repudiated the omnipotence of the state, its intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual". Within Greek philosophy, Zeno's vision of a free community without government or slavery is opposed to the state-Utopia of Plato's Republic. Zeno argued that although the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads humans to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to it by providing man with another instinct sociability. Like many modern anarchists, he believed that if people follow their instincts, they will have no need of law, courts, or police, no temples and no public worship, and use no money (a gift economy taking the place of the exchanges). Zeno's beliefs have only reached us as fragmentary quotations.

Anabaptists and Diggers

The Anabaptists of 16th century Europe are sometimes considered to be religious forerunners of modern anarchism. Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, writes that the Anabaptists "repudiated all law, since they held that the good man will be guided at every moment by the Holy Spirit...from this premise they arrive at communism...." The novel Q by Luther Blissett provides a fictional depiction of this movement and its revolutionary ideology. The Diggers were an early anarchistic and communistic movement during the time of the English Civil War. They are considered another of the forerunners of modern anarchism. The Diggers were engaged in the squatting of common land in England until eventual supression by local landowners and Cromwell's men. The Diggers and the Levellers (a more moderate liberal movement within the parliamentary New Model Army) benefitted from mass agitation made possible by the invention of the printing press. The Diggers spokesperson Gerrard Winstanley published pamphlets calling for communal ownership and social and economic organization in small agrarian communities in the 17th century:

"And let all men say what they will, so long as such are rulers as call the land theirs, upholding this particular propriety of mine and thine, the common people shall never have their liberty, nor the land be ever freed from troubles, oppressions, and complainings.." From The New Law of Righteouness (1649)

"Kingly government governs the earth by that cheating art of buying and selling, and thereby becomes a man of contention his hand is against every man, and every man's hand against him. And take this government at the best, it is a diseased government and the very City Babylon, full of confusion, and if it had not a club law to support it there would be no order in it, because it is the covetous and proud will of a conqueror, enslaving the conquered people." From The Law of Freedom (1652)

Age of Enlightenment

The first use of the term anarchy in the modern era to mean something other than chaos was by Louis-Armand, Baron de Lahontan in his Nouveaux voyages dans l'Amérique septentrionale, (1703), where he described the indigenous American society, which had no state, laws, prisons, priests, or private property, as being in anarchy. Russell Means, a leader in the American Indian Movement, has repeatedly stated that he is "an anarchist, and so are all his ancestors."

The one of the first Enlightenment essays explicitly advocating the absence of government was "A Vindication of Natural Society" (1756) written anonymously by Edmund Burke. There is an ongoing historical dispute about whether this essay was serious or satirical; nevertheless, it was influential among some later anarchists such as William Godwin, Benjamin Tucker, and others who praised it. However Burke is considered as a founding father of modern conservativism and indeed disavowed this early essay (his first) as he started his career as a conservative Whig Member of Parliament. Karl Marx pilloried him as an opportunistic bourgeois politician.