Yeah I get that there are right-wing people who call themselves anarchists, and some who are called this by others like OP.
The problem is that none of these people are educated at all on the history or principles of anarchism, so they are using the word incorrectly. They are no more anarchist than North Korea is democratic.
I agree but also I think you’re getting at a broader issue of the cooption/reclaimation of words, and the problem of language being fluid.
Unfortunately for anarchism, its been an uphill battle. In Plato’s The Republic, Socrates refers to anarchy in the negative context we mostly see it used today, similar to just pure chaos.
The term was reclaimed by Proudhon in the 19th century as he developed anarchist philosophy, but I’m not sure the term ever really got divorced from the negative connotation it had. And so I think we still see people use anarchism to refer to any anti state belief, or chaos, in general. Are they wrong or right? Eh. Id like to say they’re wrong because I was really moved when I read Kropotkin and Graeber and whatever. But then again, I’m not gonna really get mad when someone uses “gentleman” for a polite man instead of a member of the landed gentry or whatever the term “gentleman” used to mean.
This is all me being an armchair linguist though and kinda talking outta my ass so take that for what you will
Edit: I just read your objection about the mischaracterization of anarchism as a movement because of all this – and yeah that is a problem for sure. It does make it difficult to describe to people, “I’m not talking about anarchism like you normally think, like pure chaos. I’m talking about anarchism as a political philosophy. See, in the 19th century there were these dudes…” Yeah, that gets pretty old. But idk my opinion is conflicted on this because my personal philosophy around language tends liberal due to their fluid nature
Yeah that’s all fair, although I will note that Aristotle was not writing in English, so the implication that this is the same word seems a little questionable.
Sometimes I wish that there was a different and better word to describe the movement, but that’s the one early theorists chose. I think their ideas remain foundational to the movement, and the linguistic connection remains important. Feminism sometimes suffers from a similar if less severe version of this issue.
There is libertarian socialism which is not exactly the same but could be used instead. But it’s a mouthful and those words have their own baggage, some of which has already come up in this thread.
Ultimately, the point of words is to communicate clearly and be understood by as many people as possible. There might be other solutions or ways to communicate but with all this in mind I still feel the best solution is asking people to use the word only for the movement and not these other ideas. But I’m happy to hear if anyone has an alternative.
Yeah I get that there are right-wing people who call themselves anarchists, and some who are called this by others like OP.
The problem is that none of these people are educated at all on the history or principles of anarchism, so they are using the word incorrectly. They are no more anarchist than North Korea is democratic.
I agree but also I think you’re getting at a broader issue of the cooption/reclaimation of words, and the problem of language being fluid.
Unfortunately for anarchism, its been an uphill battle. In Plato’s The Republic, Socrates refers to anarchy in the negative context we mostly see it used today, similar to just pure chaos.
The term was reclaimed by Proudhon in the 19th century as he developed anarchist philosophy, but I’m not sure the term ever really got divorced from the negative connotation it had. And so I think we still see people use anarchism to refer to any anti state belief, or chaos, in general. Are they wrong or right? Eh. Id like to say they’re wrong because I was really moved when I read Kropotkin and Graeber and whatever. But then again, I’m not gonna really get mad when someone uses “gentleman” for a polite man instead of a member of the landed gentry or whatever the term “gentleman” used to mean.
This is all me being an armchair linguist though and kinda talking outta my ass so take that for what you will
Edit: I just read your objection about the mischaracterization of anarchism as a movement because of all this – and yeah that is a problem for sure. It does make it difficult to describe to people, “I’m not talking about anarchism like you normally think, like pure chaos. I’m talking about anarchism as a political philosophy. See, in the 19th century there were these dudes…” Yeah, that gets pretty old. But idk my opinion is conflicted on this because my personal philosophy around language tends liberal due to their fluid nature
Yeah that’s all fair, although I will note that Aristotle was not writing in English, so the implication that this is the same word seems a little questionable.
Sometimes I wish that there was a different and better word to describe the movement, but that’s the one early theorists chose. I think their ideas remain foundational to the movement, and the linguistic connection remains important. Feminism sometimes suffers from a similar if less severe version of this issue.
There is libertarian socialism which is not exactly the same but could be used instead. But it’s a mouthful and those words have their own baggage, some of which has already come up in this thread.
Ultimately, the point of words is to communicate clearly and be understood by as many people as possible. There might be other solutions or ways to communicate but with all this in mind I still feel the best solution is asking people to use the word only for the movement and not these other ideas. But I’m happy to hear if anyone has an alternative.