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Anon has a problem with Bioshock
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this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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Core ideas of anarchism: mutual aid, no hierarchies, stateless moneyless society, free association.
This person: anarchism is capitalism without rules
You're probably thinking Anarcho-Communism or some other convoluted trite. Dictionaries all say the same thing: no laws, no leader, no order.
Surely you know better after skimming through a dictionary than me, an anarchist that has read dozens of anarchist theory books
Even antivaxxers have their own books, your theories mean nothing in the face of the consensus.
You might wanna read up slightly on this, you're quite far away from the consensus meaning of anarchism. While superficial, you could start with the first three paragraphs of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
Three paragraphs may be too long of a read for that person
That's the article for "anarchism", not the article for "anarchy", which is what the OP has clearly been talking about this entire time. Surely you didn't link the wrong article on purpose to disingenuously support your point.
Here's the correct one, if it's difficult for you to find: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy
And here's the relevant bit:
"Anarchy is often defined synonymously as chaos or social disorder,[10] reflecting the state of nature as depicted by Thomas Hobbes.[11] By this definition, anarchy represents not only an absence of government but also an absence of governance. This connection of anarchy with chaos usually assumes that, without government, no means of governance exist and thus that disorder is an unavoidable outcome of anarchy."
So, clearly, yes, by one widely accepted definition, "anarchy" does mean a system with no governing bodies or political structure of any kind.
That article also mentions anarchism, of course, but I don't care how a few political theorists in their ivory tower define the word, because that's not how word meaning is determined among speakers of a language - it's determined by continuous negotiation and agreement among speakers, and, currently, the most accessible default definition of "anarchy" for most speakers, OP clearly included, is "the absence of all government and political organization; chaos".
lol nice mobile website link
To say an example of a place and people with no laws is not Anarchy, you're kidding yourself.
Which anarchist philosophers or anarchists agree with you?
Since philosophers don't determine what words mean (as much as they'd like to think so), this question is completely irrelevant.
Oh god I hope none of them lmao
...you deliberately want to use a definition that precisely zero anarchist philosophers or thinkers use for anarchist thought?
That seems rather... silly? How can you critique or even talk about the ideas of anarchism without using the definition anarchists actually use? Do you expect anarchists to use a different term than the one already established in the literature?
If your favorite fantasy fiction genre uses a wildly different definition than the vast majority of people, but also the same but sort of not, then maybe you should take your arguments up with dictionary and encyclopedia publishers.
I am sure that if you presented the trite-philosophers own breif definitions to each other or gave them a series of examples to decide Anarchy or Not-Anarchy then they would all disagree with each other.
but the dictionary does use one similar to the academic definition...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anarchism
if we use dictionary.com
"the principles or practice of anarchists"
so you're wrong by your own source
anarchist thinkers, philosophers and academics should obviously get to define the term, no? Dictionaries are often wrong in countless ways for academic usage because the meaning of words are often more complex than can be summarized in one paragraph, dictionaries are not ultimate references, and ANYONE can create a dictionary, these are not academically primarily sourced documents these are what some guy thinks a word means based on a survey of some people who claim to, in no way shape or form should dictionaries be used in place of foundational documents and the notion that they are perfect and the best way to derive the meaning of any word is false...
both of your references are literally designed to be summaries of topics as quickly as possible, and often contain glaring inaccuracies, in academia you aren't even allowed to cite an encyclopedia, or a dictionary, and this is for good reason.
"Who writes the dictionary? Where do they get their information and authority? What if the dictionary has a typo, misprint, or error? If nobody catches an error, does that mean everybody is "secretly incorrect"? If tomorrow the Academie française publishes a new dictionary that states all /i/ vowels are pronounced [a], does that make swiftly ~80 million native French speakers incorrect?" --another comment on the matter i found elsewhere
Me and DonPiano already had this discussion, Merriam-Webster dictionary page for Anarchy is verbatim what I said.
but not for "anarchism"
1: a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups
2: the advocacy or practice of anarchistic principles
anarchy is not anarchism and the terms are not interchangeable, though they sound similar
You're gonna sit there and pretend Anarchism has nothing to do with Anarchy? You're not even arguing against anything I've said anymore lmao
the definitions in the dictionary you provided conflict, how do you explain that, if not that they are not synonyms?
They don't provide conflict, you just have a skill issue with reading the dictionary.
you simultaneously hope that no anarchist philosophers agree with you, and use a definition that says
"the advocacy or practice of anarchistic principles"
Who established anarchistic principles, exactly, if not anarchists?
Do you think Apples wrote the definition of an Orchard?
No and I don't see how that is relevant or comparable.
lmao