anarchy: A theoretical social state in
which there is no governing person or body of persons, but each individual
has absolute liberty (without implication of disorder).
1. a. Absence of government; a state of lawlessness due to the absence
or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder.
1539
TAVERNER
Erasm. Prov.
(1552) 43
This unleful lyberty or lycence of the multytude is called an Anarchie.
1605
BACON
Adv. Learn.
II.
xxiii. §36 (1873) 241
Pompey..made it his design..to cast the state into an absolute anarchy
and confusion.
1664
H. MORE
Myst. Iniq.
219
A Polity without an Head..would not be a Polity, but Anarchy.
1796
BURKE
Corr.
IV. 389
Except in cases of direct war, whenever government abandons law, it
proclaims anarchy.
1840
CARLYLE
Heroes
(1858) 277
Without sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing
possible but an anarchy; the hatefullest of things.
1878
LECKY
Eng. in 18th C.
I. i. 12
William threatened at once to retire to Holland and leave the country
to anarchy.
1 b. A theoretical social state in which there is no governing person
or body of persons, but each individual has absolute liberty (without
implication of disorder).
1850 Eclectic Rev. XCI. 167 Confessions
of an Anarchist... Proudhon proceeds..that ‘all men are equal and free.
Society is, therefore, by nature and destination, autonomic..there is
no government’... We see nothing a-head that warrants us in supposing
that man is about to be regenerated; and, for the present, must
pronounce anarchy to be a delightful dream!
1884 RAE Contemp. Socialism vii. 281 This idea of a ‘genial anarchy’..has always been the favourite social remedy of the Russian revolutionary party. 1889 W. DONISTHORPE Individualism 282 Scientific anarchy is..the end towards which society is moving. 1892 Daily News 27 Apr. 5/8 Anarchy
means the placing in common of all this world's riches to allow each to
consume according to his needs. Anarchy is a great family where each
will be protected by all and will take whatever he requires.
2. transf. Absence or non-recognition of authority and order in any sphere. a. gen.
1667 MILTON P.L. x. 283 The waste Wide Anarchie of Chaos. 1821 BYRON Sardan. I. ii. (1868) 356 The satraps uncontroll'd, the gods unworshipped, And all things in the anarchy of sloth. 1831 BREWSTER Newton (1855) II. xix. 205 Some of the provincial mints were in a state of anarchy. 1959 Daily Tel. 23 Feb. 10/5 The spirit of anarchy today current in the visual arts. Ibid., A form of emotional anarchy even more destructive of talent than the slovenly disregard of technique.
2 b. Non-recognition of moral law; moral disorder.
1656 COWLEY Chronicle ix, Thousand worse Passions then possest The Inter-regnum of my Breast. Bless me from such an Anarchy! 1713 STEELE Englishm. No. 7. 44 The Licentious are in a State of barbarous Anarchy. 1875 HAMERTON Intell. Life VI. ii. 203 A moral anarchy difficult to conceive.
2 c. Unsettledness or conflict of opinion.
a1661 FULLER in Webster, There being then..an anarchy, as I may term it, in authors and their reckoning of years. 1719 YOUNG Revenge IV. i, No more I'll bear this battle of the mind, This inward anarchy. 1754 CHESTERFIELD in Boswell Johnson (1816) I. 237 Our language is, at present, in a state of anarchy. 1842 W. GROVE Corr. Phys. Forces 3 An anarchy of thought,a perpetuity of mental revolutions.