Anarchy is frequently portrayed as chaos and anarchists as terrorists. Proponents of any extant (i.e., non-anarchist) system equate its abolition with the abolition of all social order. For example, in their time, Monarchists accused Republicans of seeking the destruction of all social order. Very few anarchists are nihilists, however (see NihilisM?).
Anarchism has a long and rich tradition. Its philosophy and history begin with rejection of aristocracy and of capitalism and their hierarchical structures. Anarchists reject the claims of the property owner and the landlord. Having rejected private property, they reject the political machinery (the StatE?) which defends and supports private property. In place of private property, anarchism is based on personal possessions and democratically controlled communal property.
A simple and common objection to anarchism is that any notion of communal control implies something akin to a StatE?. Anarchists reply that the similarity between the power hierarchies of corporations and the layered division of labour in cooperatives is superficial. The State is what you get under private property, in the modern corporation. Cooperatives, credit unions and mutual aid societies are the principal instances of cummunal control and they do not involve the kind of authoritarianism found in corporations. If you compare both organizations using the items on the Psychopathy Checklist as a guide then it becomes clear that cooperatives act like normal humans, humane, warm, feeling and stable while the corporation can only be described as a psychopathic entity that cold-bloodedly uses workers for its own ends and acts on one impulse after another. As an example, one of the items on the PCL-R is "criminal versatility". Corporations have it, Microsoft demonstrates it when it buys companies expert in areas MS knows nothing about. In contrast, cooperatives cannot do this because it would violate their charters.
Communal control is subject to the danger of a state developing but does not logically or practically entail it (nor something like it). The Mondragon system of cooperatives in Spain is slowly devolving. There was a crucial flaw in the charter of the Caja Laboral Popular; the capability and incentive to accumulate vast cash reserves to the point where it can (almost) act independently of its members. Anarchists don't claim that people will be able to slack off after the revolution. And even if Mondragon does fail, it's significant that it took more than three decades for it to do so. Three decades in which the inhabitants of the region enjoyed one of the highest standards of living available.
The rejection of government is not essential to traditional anarchism, but derives from the desire to eliminate the political machinery which supports private property. In any event, the rejection of the state entails the rejection of electioneering (see DemocracY). Insofar as politics refers to the actions of power structures then anarchism seeks the abolition of politics itself. Hence, it is helpful to regard anarchism as a social and economic movement with ramifications in the political sphere. To regard anarchism as a political ideology, anarchists hold, is an error. In place of political maneuvering, anarchists champion the use of direct action of which the general strike, occupation of workplaces and sabotage are prime examples. Anarchists who engage in sabotage do to impair or destroy the machinery of capitalism and not to terrorize otherwise innocent people.
Before the twentieth century, "anarchism" strictly meant traditional, socialist anarchism. By the mid-twentieth century, however, some radical proponents of CapitalisM began calling their view "anarchism" and in particular, AnarchoCapitalism. This usage is geographically limited to Austria and the Anglo-American countries. Since the beliefs and actions of AnarchoCapitalists are rarely compatible with those of traditional anarchists, traditional anarchists do not regard the AnarchoCapitalists as anarchists.
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