Understanding Anarchism

Of course, anarchism is not without its problems. Predictably, such an idealistic society which it defends leads to the questioning of whether its realisation is feasible or not. As a result, one of the charges often brought against anarchism is that it is utopian, that it can only exist on papers and peoples’ minds but not in reality. It is indeed difficult to imagine how an anarchist society would deal, for example, with crime. One anarchist view is that because it is the very problems of non-anarchist societies that prompt people to commit crimes, once those problems are gone and an anarchist society is established, crime will no longer exist. Such view takes us back to the question of utopianism, since it seems over-optimistic to assume crime is exclusively inherent to social problems. On the other hand, the just, egalitarian and free nature of anarchism means that its realisation remains desirable and, though seemingly difficult, is not impossible. After all, it has been successfully tried a few times before (albeit on a limited scale), the Spanish example of the 1930’s being the most notable and significant of all.

However, it is not my aim to make an analysis of anarchism here, as this will be done on another occasion.

The Greek riots did not begin as an active anarchist movement nor are intended to bring about an anarchist revolution, but they do underline the growing discontent and distrust of the system as a result of the collapse of capitalism and show us that the anarchist ideal remains very much alive in the 21st century.