The word ‘anarchy’ is derived from the Greek ‘anarkhia’, meaning against authority or, more strongly, acting in the absence of a ruler. Until 1840, when the word was adopted by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to describe his political and social ideology, it was generally used in a derogatory fashion. But Proudhon argued that political organization without rigid and hierarchical forms of government was both possible and desirable. He was picking up from where William Godwin (partner of Mary Wollstonecraft and father of Mary Shelley) had left off in his landmark work Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). Proudhon’s work was extended and given a revolutionary character by two Russian intellectuals, Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, who remain major figures in the field. As these thinkers defined it, anarchism is anti-hierarchical; it holds that no single person or group of persons should have power or authority over another person or group of persons. It is often dismissed as infeasible or utopian for this reason, but anarchism nonetheless maintains a strong claim on contemporary political thinking for the way it challenges us to question the underpinnings of the delegated power structures that obtain in most nation states today---i.e. why should one elected official such as a president have so much power to decide on policies and policy actions affecting the lives of millions of people? The Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 is an example of an anarchist-inspired movement that, in however short-lived a fashion, set out to question the status quo, and in doing so created the powerful slogan of the 99%. Further Reading: C. Ward Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction (2004).