anarchia

Anarchia, or anarchy, is a political concept referring to the absence of a centralized state or coercive authority, and more broadly to a social order based on voluntary associations and mutual aid rather than government. In political philosophy, anarchia denotes a family of theories that seek to replace hierarchical state power with non-hierarchical forms of organization, such as federations of communes, cooperatives, and voluntary associations. The term derives from the Greek anarkhos ("without a ruler") and was popularized in the 19th century by a range of thinkers; in English and many languages, “anarchy” is also used colloquially to mean disorder, a usage that some anarchists distinguish from the theoretical aims.

Anarchia as a political current developed from critiques of authority in the 19th century. Early contributors include Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who argued for a society organized by voluntary contract; Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, who emphasized collective self-management and mutual aid, and later autonomist and insurrectionary currents. Today, anarchist thought encompasses several tendencies, such as anarcho-communism (common ownership and voluntary cooperation), anarcho-syndicalism (labor unions as agents of change), mutualism, and various strands of individualist or platformist anarchism.

Historically, anarchia has taken practical form in experiments and movements, including the anarchist collectives in Revolutionary Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War and the Free Territory in Ukraine (1918–1921). Critics argue that the absence of a centralized state can impede coordination or defense, while supporters contend that federated, bottom-up structures can organize production and services without coercion. In contemporary discourse, anarchia influences libertarian-socialist and anti-authoritarian movements and remains a reference for critiques of state power and proposals for noncoercive social arrangements.