Anarchism: What It Is, and Why It’s Relevant Now

Maeve N. Hopewell
Nov 1, 2025
7 min read

Defining Anarchism

While anarchists often rock a punk rock vibe, anarchism is more than a feeling. It’s not nihilism or chaos. David Graeber, anthropologist and one of the leading figures of Occupy Wall Street clarifies:

"Many people seem to think that anarchists are proponents of violence, chaos, and destruction, that they are against all forms of order and organization, or that they are crazed nihilists who just want to blow everything up. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion. But it’s one that the rich and powerful have always found extremely dangerous."

Principles like consent, fairness, self-organization, and voluntary association, Graeber goes on to say, are hallmarks of anarchism. See a theme here?

While this may seem simple enough, the devil’s in the details—there are many flavors of anarchism. In this article, I’m coming from a social anarchist position. Social anarchists have many things in principles in common with socialists or communists but may disagree on means and priorities. Anarchists are deeply skeptical of hierarchy, restrictions on personal freedoms, and career politicians.

War: Good for few, bad for most. — Anarchists see nations as inherently violent and war as a way for the rich to profit at the expense of the poor. Credit: Carlos Latuff via Wikimedia Commons.o

Graeber asserts:

"Anarchists believe that power corrupts and those who spend their entire lives seeking power are the very last people who should have it."

Other Dilate articles illustrate the ways our system is failing us (some are listed in the Related Posts section at the end of the article). The rich are getting richer. Healthcare and education are collapsing. It’s not your doctor’s fault they seem rushed. It’s not the teacher’s fault your five-year-old is learning from a tablet instead of a book. The fault lies in broken systems being manipulated and starved of resources by ketamine-fueled billionaires. We're being milked. Like cows.

Anarchism Now?

The most difficult part of anarchism is charting the path from here to there. Am I ready to sign over my possessions to a collective and stop requiring payment for my day job? Nope. Marxism outlines a series of steps to achieve the “withering away of the state.” Marx didn't have a crystal ball, and critics will point out that his vision got quite distorted in places like the USSR and the PRC. Staunch communists point to Cuba as the closest realization of Marxist principles. It is certainly not without flaws, but neither are the alternatives. Utopias are both thought exercises and escapes but never, to my knowledge, realities. See the reading list at the end of the chapter for some fiction that envisions anarchist societies.

Uncle Sam sits with a shotgun in front of a sign that says This country is unhealthy for every kind of Bolsheviks, Reds, Agitators, or Disorganizers of Our Labor or Our Business! — Corporate interests often portray self-organization by workers as an antipatriotic, communist threat, as in this 1912 propaganda targeted at employees of a railroad company. Credit: Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company via Wikimedia Commons.

The US government has long sought to quash anarchism and communism, most visibly breaking out in the witch hunts of McCarthyism.

"McCarthyism is a political practice defined by the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s."

—Wikipedia

In the 1970s, Populist groups like the Young Lords and Black Panthers were infiltrated by government agents. Nowadays, the media plays groups that have common cause (working class whites, queers, Latinos, women, men, etc.) against one another. And, look, I’m a queer woman. I get it. Men, right? Stone Butch Blues explores the tensions of being both a labor organizer and a butch woman. But men are also being sickened and killed under our current system. We can learn to respect each other. We are not enemies. We have common cause.

It’s American men who were drafted and sent off to fight in Vietnam as the US and its allies faced off against countries espousing communist ideologies in the long and deadly Cold War. Thousands of soldiers came home with not just physical, but spiritual, moral, and psychological wounds that reverberated throughout their families and communities. The US continues to be heavily involved in Central and South American politics under the guise of a War in Drugs (most recently, we have been bombing Venezuelan ships). Our government is also deeply invested in undermining social movements perceived as hostile to capitalism or US market influence, such as the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Part of the smear campaign against anarchism involves focusing on violence, and indeed, some anarchists have killed people (as have crazed capitalists, liberals, and theocrats). But anarchism is not inherently violent. Indeed, stateless, communistic societies, as described by Graeber and Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything, tend to be egalitarian and peaceful.

Capitalist, market-driven propaganda and outright bribery of our political leaders (also known as “lobbying”) has done its job. Literacy rates are declining. School libraries are being censored by ideologues, and AI’s creators are forcing it, with only manufactured consent, into higher ed, the job market, and your mind, with disastrous results. Americans are getting sicker, mentally and physically, and social services are shuttering in rural areas as our leaders cut healthcare to build bigger ballrooms. Urban areas are feeling the strain of traumatized people looking for help, when our support systems are bursting at the seams. Our bridges are on the verge of collapse, but most of us have ridiculously expensive smartphones.

Even market capitalists say they want to empower local governance and a thriving citizenry who can think for themselves. But, somehow, despite this country’s massive wealth and productivity, the opposite is happening. It’s easy to feel hopeless. We’re supposed to feel hopeless.

Well, That’s Depressing. Now What?

So, Game Over, right? Aren’t we just victims, consumers, pawns? How can regular people combat wealth inequality, new diseases, or the rise of AI? Most of us still get to make some choices. Here are some entirely non-violent ways you can begin working towards an anarchist future:

Associate

Flex your pro-social skills. Learn to share and contribute without anyone making you (if you have any energy left from surviving in capitalism all day, that is). Use libraries. Join a grange, club, or class. Join a mutual aid society or volunteer. Burrito Brigade and White Bird Clinic are two organizations that help vulnerable people in Eugene, Oregon. Our local non-profit bike shop, Shift Community Cycles provides bikes and bike education. Support workers in your community. In Oregon, we can choose to shop at worker-owned cooperatives like Winco and Bimart over national chains, and there are similar option in many U.S. states.

Educate

Punk, DIY, and anarchism go together. Read broadly from experts in different fields. Factcheck media before you share it. Learn how to do things and make things. Start a band, potluck, or book club. Plant a garden or take a first aid class. Be prepared to help your neighborhood in case of a disaster.

Resist

Learn how to evaluate your choices and say no. Protect your mind and your relationships from toxic marketing and government surveillance. Resist the allure of AI, social media, excess consumer goods, and grind culture. Donate to a thrift store that helps people and shop there, too. Host a neighborhood clothing or tool swap. Experience joy with people you love, just because. Don't record it, and don't upload it—don't let it be monetized.

Advocate

Advocate locally for more student leadership in schools, more worker control over businesses, more nurse and patient input in hospitals, more tenant power in housing. Join the school board. Write a watchdog publication. Email. Call. Protest. Fight censorship and oppression. Make and share protest art. Keep an eye on your elected officials.

Don't get overwhelmed. Choose ONE new thing from the list above. Or make up your own.

When the state collapses, I want to live in a community of people who trust one another and can respond in a humane and reasonable fashion—without being forced to. Why do I believe this is possible? Because I’ve seen it. When I was 7, I lived through a major hurricane on an island with notoriously fragile infrastructure. We had no power for 4 weeks, no water for 6. This community was poor economically, but rich in social ties. Within a day, neighbors came together with chainsaws and cleared the roads. This was a literal lifesaver for my dad, who is a type 1 diabetic and had to store his insulin at a hospital with a generator 10 miles away. My story is not unique in disasters. When the Cascadia earthquake hits the Northwest US, the government will be overwhelmed. First responders won’t be FEMA, they’ll be your neighbors.

“It is our suffering that brings us together. . . We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia