///Library--Anarchist-to-English Dictionary
One major stumbling block in the way of the anarchist movement is simply how anarchists tend to speak. There are a number of terms that someone versed in anarchist theory would certainly be familiar with, but which the average guy or girl on the street has never heard of. There are also terms used by anarchists that tend to be misunderstood by the general population. We in Project Libr8 strive to use plain language whenever possible, but we cannot control the way others choose to present their ideas. This page, then, is an effort to make anarchist writings and speech more decipherable to the layperson. We attempt to be fair in our definitions, though of course there will be a recognizable bias.
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///Primary Terms
Anarchism: Any social system based around attaining the maximum possible liberty and equality for all by the elimination of rulers and other forms of institutional hierarchy.
Anarchy: The social state desired by anarchists as the result of anarchism. Note that this is a social state existing under a defined social system, and not the chaos or lawlessness suggested by popular usage of the term (which is properly called anomie).
Anarcha-Feminism: A theory of anarchism that emphasizes the importance of struggling against patriarchy in the process of furthering anarchism, including redefining family and gender roles. Developed as a reaction against prominent anarchist thinkers who were dismissive or even supportive of patriarchy.
Anarcho-Capitalism: A theory of anarchism stating that, with the elimination of government, unregulated capitalism will bring about the maximum possible liberty and equality for all. Anarcho-capitalism is not considered to be a legitimate form of anarchism by most anarchists, who point to the historically anti-capitalist stance of the theory.
Anarcho-Communism: Also known as anarchist communism. A theory of anarchism stating that all means of production should be collectively controlled rather than privately owned, and that people should be freely allowed to take those products they need, as opposed to being paid a wage and buying them. It is therefore based on the theory "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
Anarcho-Primitivism: A theory of anarchism stating that technological development always leads to oppression and advocating a return to a pre-industrial and often pre-agricultural way of life.
Anarcho-Syndicalism: A theory of anarchism that emphasizes the importance of radical labor unions and workers' self-management as a means to achieve anarchism. The theory describes a means more than an end, and anarcho-syndicalists may subscribe to other theories of anarchism as well.
Anarchism Without Adjectives: Also known as "big tent" anarchism. Any theory of anarchism that strives to rally all anarchist theories around their shared anti-authoritarian ideas or to accept all forms of anarchism without preference. Developed as a reaction against division and infighting between subscribers to differing theories of anarchism.
Anomie: A lack of social order or social standards, or a state of lawless chaos. This is the proper term for the state that is commonly referred to as anarchy.
Authoritarian: Any person or theory concerned with encouraging and enforcing obedience to an authority of some sort, and generally unconcerned with the advancement of liberty.
Borders: Lines of separation drawn between groups of people to restrict movement and/or designate which government a given individual must answer to. Anarchists reject the idea of borders as a restriction on liberty.
Bourgeois: Term for the ruling class. Originated in French revolutionary terminology.
Capital: Another term for private property.
Capitalism: Political-economic system wherein the state grants individuals the power to control private property (capital) and thus, hold a position of institutional power over the majority of individuals who do not. Advancement in capitalist society is therefore based upon competition.
Christian Anarchism: A social movement based in Christianity and the idea that state government should be eliminated in favor of a society following the "laws of God" (i.e., the Holy Bible).
Class Analysis: The identification of social classes based upon differing factors. Conventional, economic class analysis is based upon tax brackets or income levels. However, anarchist class analysis typically identifies either two (the working class and the ruling class) or three (the techno-managerial class in addition to the other two) classes. It is therefore innacurate to combine these two analyses (e.g., discussion of the middle class as enemies of the ruling class).
Class Struggle Anarchism: Anarchist theories and actions based upon the struggle between the working and ruling classes.
Class War: Also known as class struggle. The state of conflict present between two or more social classes with opposing interests. In anarchist terms, class war refers to the ongoing struggle between the working class and the ruling class over access to the means of production.
Class Warrior: An individual who actively champions the cause of the working class in a situation of class war.
Coercion: Any situation in which a person is forced to perform a certain action under threat of harm to themselves or other losses to their liberty (or the liberty of others). Anarchists consider the capitalist employee-employer relationship to be coercive due to the implicit threat of poverty and starvation toward members of the working class if they do not sell their labor to a member of the ruling class, calling this situation wage slavery.
Collectivist Anarchism: A theory of anarchism. Collectivist anarchism holds that the means of production should be collectively owned, and that workers should receive wages as compensation for the amount of work they put in. It is therefore based on the theory "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work."
Communism: A political-economic system wherein all individuals are granted equal access to the means of production and free access to the products thereof, based upon their need. Advancement in communist society is therefore based upon cooperation.
Community: One of the four primary ideals of anarchism. Any group of people who interact on a regular basis and engage in a shared culture of some sort. Considered the basic unit of society by most anarchists.
Decentralization: Spreading power and control across a large group of people, rather than concentrating it in the hands of a few. The basic political goal of anarchism is total decentralization, spreading all power equally among all people.
Democratic Socialism: A theory of socialism stating that, in a system wherein the means of production are owned by the working class, the system of national government should be democratic.
Direct Action: Directly resolving a problem, rather than protesting or requesting that it be resolved. Many anarchists focus on direct action as activism in lieu of requesting assistance from government or business agents in resolving local issues.
Diversity of Tactics: The idea that, for a widespread social movement to be successful, the organizers and members of that movement need to accept a wide variety of tactics and plans operating simultaneously in order to effectively respond to differing situations in different locales.
Dual Power Strategy: An anarchist praxis focused on building up new, radical institutions and infrastructures to perform the functions currently performed by more authoritarian ones, and eventually replace them entirely.
Especifismo: Also known as specifism. An anarchist praxis developed in South America in the 1950's that revolves around building and using specifically anarchist organizations with unified ideas and approaches, as well as anarchist involvement in popular social movements.
Equality: One of the four primary ideals of anarchism. A state in which no individual has non-reciprocated power over any others. All other basic anarchist beliefs stem from the belief that people are inherently equal; even the other primary ideals are basically means toward achieving a society of equality.
Feminism: The belief that women and men are social equals. Feminism is often thought to be a theory of female superiority, misandry (male-hating), or separatism. While some feminist movements may include these elements, they are not a necessary part of feminism and are rejected by anarcha-feminists.
Freedom of Association: The liberty to leave or ignore a governing body, authority, community, or social system without coercive or forceful repercussions. The individual doing so does, however, naturally forfeit any potential benefits of continued association with that governing body, authority, community, or social system. Generally among the most prized of liberties among anarchists, as it is the defining difference between non-oppressive social hierarchy and oppressive institutional hierarchy.
Government: Any social system created for the regulation of behaviors within a society. Strictly speaking, anarchists are not opposed to all government; only authoritarian systems.
Heterosexism: Discrimination based upon sexual orientation, directed at any non-heterosexual individual or orientation. A more accurate and all-encompassing term than homophobia, as this discrimination is not always rooted in fear and is often directed at individuals who are not homosexual (bisexuals, transgendereds, etc).
Illegalist: An anarchist who advocates illegal actions, including theft and murder, as a form of personal revolt against an oppressive social order. While other anarchists may use or advocate illegal actions as a means to another end, illegalists advocate them specifically because they are illegal.
Individualist Anarchism: Any theory of anarchism that focuses primarily on the individual's independence from, and greater importance than, any group, collective, or community.
Infoshop: A business, generally a small library and/or bookstore, set up to serve as a distribution center for anarchist materials and community center. Infoshops are often collectively run as co-ops or even fully volunteer-run.
Institutional Hierarchy: Any situation of inequality between individuals that does not allow for freedom of association. Worker-boss and politician-citizen relationships in capitalist societies are prime examples of this. Anarchists are opposed to institutional hierarchies, as they are considered coercive, unlike social hierarchies.
Insurrectionism: Also known as insurrectionary anarchism. An anarchist praxis based in planning and executing various forms of open revolt against authoritarian structures and systems. This revolt can be violent or nonviolent. Insurrectionists generally oppose building formal radical organizations or working within preexisting groups like labor unions.
Intersectionality: A theory that suggests that different forms of social oppression (such as racism, sexism, and heterosexism) do not act independently of one another and instead "intersect" in people subject to them. Intersectionality indicates that intersecting forms of oppression must be addressed together as a whole, rather than individually.
Labor: Work that is sold, or done for the sake of earning a wage or salary, as opposed to work that is done voluntarily because it benefits the worker or her community directly. Anarchists often refer to labor in a capitalist context as wage slavery.
Libertarian Socialism: Any form of socialism that seeks social equality by maximizing liberty for all people.
Liberation Theology: A movement within Christianity, particularly in the Catholic church, that views God as the liberator of the oppressed and pushes for church involvement in matters of social justice.
Libertarian: Any person or theory concerned with the advancement of individual liberty. Libertarianism in the United States generally refers to any of a number of forms of libertarian capitalism (including anarcho-capitalism), while outside the US the term is more often used in reference to forms of communal or collective libertarianism (including anarcho-communism).
Liberty: One of the four primary ideals of anarchism. The ability of an individual or group to freely choose their own actions. Anarchists seek to create a society wherein all people simultaneously have the maximum possible liberty; that is, they can do whatever they choose, except infringe on anyone else's liberty.
Lifestyle Anarchist: An individual who concentrate on their lifestyle as the main focus of their anarchism, rather than class struggle or anti-oppression work.
Lifestylist: A pejorative name sometimes used by class struggle anarchists to describe lifestyle anarchists.
Means of Production: Any facilities and/or specialized equipment designed and used to produce goods or services of some value to the community. Most anarchists seek collective control over the means of production by the community at large.
Misogyny: Hatred of women.
Mutual Aid: Voluntary exchange of goods and services within a community for mutual benefit. Considered the foundation for a community based upon cooperation, rather than competition.
Mutualism: An early theory of anarchism that supports a free market, but only allows for conditional individual ownership of the means of production based on their continued use by the owner.
National Anarchism: A theory of anarchism stating that, in an anarchist society, people will naturally separate themselves out into nations, generally along ethnic lines. Not considered to be a legitimate form of anarchism by most anarchists due to its support of nationalism and the white-supremacist stance of the majority of its supporters.
Objectification: The reduction of any human being to nothing but a useful, function-serving stereotype in the eyes of the beholder. The term is popularly used to refer only to visual, sexual objectification, sometimes falsely identifying all instances in which an image of a woman is acknowledged to be visually, sexually appealing as occurences of objectification. However, this is inaccurate and though objectification is usually sexual and tends to be applied most frequently to women, it can also be a point of view applied based on race or other social factors or situations.
Oppression: The state of having some or all of one's liberty restricted and/or being treated as an inferior or second-class citizen by another individual or group. Anarchists oppose oppression in any form.
Organizational Dualism: Simultaneous involvement of an anarchist or group of anarchists in specifically anarchist organizations and in more mainstream popular groups such as labor unions.
Pacifism: The belief that all forms of positive social change can and should be enacted without the use of physical force or violence. Some strains of pacifism reject the idea of even violence in response to violence or self-defense as acceptable options. Most anarchists argue against pacifism on the grounds that diplomatic, non-violent negotiations are often insufficient means to liberate oppressed people.
Patriarchy: Societal power granted to males over females. Various aspects of patriarchy may be overtly misogynistic, may be based in sexism, and/or may involve the objectification of women.
Personal Property: Any item or resource controlled by an individual or group of people that is of no value to the community as a whole. Anarcho-communism and other forms of anarchism that seek to abolish private property are not opposed to personal property.
Platformism: An anarchist organizational praxis focused on leading a mass anarchist movement by creating a "General Union of Anarchists" based around unity of theory and tactics, responsibility of each member to the group and the group to each member, and decision-making being done by those whom the decisions will most effect. Based on a 1926 document titled, "The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists," written by anarchists exiled after the Russian revolution.
Praxis: The process of putting theory into actual real-world use, and the strategy used in doing so.
Prefigurative Politics: The theory that anarchist organizations and relationships should embody the ideals of the post-revolutionary society that the anarchists creating them hope to bring about.
Proletariat: Term for the working class, commonly used during the Russian revolution.
Private Property: Private control of portions of land and other significant amounts of natural resources or means of production by an individual, government, or small group. In anarchist terminology, "property" or "private property" only refers to individual ownership of resources great enough to be of value to the community at large and not merely the individual (known as the means of production). Most anarchists seek to abolish private property, as opposed to personal property.
Racism: The belief in essentialism (inherent behavioral traits and capabilities) based upon ethnic ancestry. The word is commonly used to refer only to overt and conscious displays of racial prejudice, but this is misleading as it ignores the reality of this essentialism as an unconscious and ever-present part of our social systems (particularly white privilege).
Radical: Any political theory or stance that calls for extensive, often revolutionary changes to the current political system. In modern capitalist nations, anarchism is a radical theory.
Reductionist: Someone who reduces complex social issues down to their simplest observable components and addresses only those. The most commonly cited form of this is class reductionism, in which all social ills and forms of oppression are seen as symptoms or components of class war, rather than as separate issues to be addressed.
Religion: A belief or set of beliefs about the spiritual nature of the universe, held in common to a large group of people. Religion and other forms of spiritual belief/practice have traditionally been considered by anarchists to be fictions created by authoritarians for the sake of manipulating the working class, but modern anarchists are often of the opinion that religious freedom should be preserved as a matter of preserving liberty. This creates controversy, as class struggle anarchists frequently consider organized religion (as opposed to personal belief) to be a form of institutional hierarchy.
Revolution: A major change or upheaval in the social structures and/or values of a society. The term is often thought to apply only to violent uprising, but revolution involves many social factors and may not even involve any period of militant resistance.
Ruling Class: Those who own capital (also known as private property), and thus control significant quantities of the natural resources needed by everyone for survival. They have the power to withold these resources from others or grant portions of them (in the form of wages) in exchange for labor. Doing so generally helps them expand their ownership of capital.
Separatism: The belief that certain types of individuals should form societies seperate from others, usually determined on racial lines. Seperatism can be an oppressive measure from a powerful group, as in the case of white nationalism, or a reaction to oppression from an oppressed group, as in the case of black nationalism or lesbian separatism. However, anarchists reject all forms of separatism.
Sexism: The belief in essentialism (inherent behavioral traits and capabilities) based upon sex. Unlike racism, many sexist beliefs gain acceptance due to the fact that significant biological differences between the sexes are established scientific fact. However, sexism does not refer to recognition of these tendencies, but to the belief that all men and women are, by virtue of being men or women, capable or incapable in certain areas or naturally prone to be fulfilled by certain lifestyles, respective to their sex.
Social Hierarchy: Any situaton of inequality between individuals that allows for freedom of association. Teacher-student relationships and skill- or ability-based heirarchies are prime examples of this. Anarchists are not opposed to social hierarchies, unlike institutional hierarchies.
Social Production: The production of goods or services by groups of people without the use of a hierarchical power structure for planning and managing the production. Open-source software is a common example of this.
Socialism: A general term for any social or political system organized around ensuring or increasing equality for all members of society. This can mean many things, from authoritarian central government control over a capitalist economy to full-fledged anarcho-communism.
Solidarity: One of the four primary ideals of anarchism. Unity of feeling, purpose, interest, or cause among people who may belong to one or many communities. Anarchism promotes solidarity among all oppressed people, regardless of race, gender, nation, orientation, or any other outside factor.
State: A political organization with control over a specific, bordered geographic area, including control over who may and may not use physical force against others within that area. Anarchists reject the idea of the state as authoritarian.
Synthesism: A theory suggesting that different, apparently contradictory theories of anarchism can and should be synthesized into a single, unified whole. In synthesist anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism forms the method of revolution, and anarcho-communism becomes the blueprint for the post-revolutionary society, with individualist anarchism in such a society being the goal.
Techno-Managerial Class: A relatively new social class consisting of highly-skilled workers and managers who exert some control over the workplace and members of the working class, but who do not own capital of their own. In situations of class struggle, members of this class may side with either workers or bosses.
Theocracy: A state or society governed by a church or clerical group in order to enforce the rules and edicts of a particular religion upon the governed people. A highly authoritarian and oppressive form of government.
Wage Slavery: A term used by anarchists to describe the condition of life for members of the working class, specifically, that of selling one's labor for a wage or salary in order to survive. Anarchists consider this relationship a form of slavery, differing from traditional slavery only in the sense that those enslaved have the freedom to choose a different master.
White Privilege: An ever-present and largely unconscious form of racism by which white people are afforded an automatically higher status than people of color. White privilege is generally experienced in subtle, daily ways (such as being looked at more or less favorably by potential employers or police officers) rather than in large individual instances like more overt racism.
Workerist: Pejorative term sometimes used by lifestyle anarchists to describe class struggle anarchists, as lifestylists reject the practice of employment and oppose those who support working-class laborers.
Working Class: Those members of a society who do not own capital and must therefore sell their labor in order to survive (as opposed to earning income without work through ownership of a business or renting of property). The term is commonly used to refer to only those workers who are impoverished, but this definition is generally considered inaccurate and damaging by class struggle anarchists, because it creates unecessary antagonism between working class people according to their levels of income.
Xenophobia: Fear or hatred of people from other cultures or countries.