The initial condition for grasping the anarchist ideas is that anarchism is not about vandalism or violence. Neither is it about lawlessness in its common form, because the concept of laws is largely rejected by anarchists: laws only make sense when they can be enforced by coercion and when the concept of the state is rejected (indeed, on the grounds that it can exert coercion), the rejection of the legal system follows. The ideal anarchist revolution is the implementation of statelessness to create a society based on the freedom and equality of rights that then follows.

When that is settled, trying to define the word 'anarchy' I looked over a few dictionaries:

1 disorder, esp. political or social, 2 lack of government in a society.

1 absence of government or control 2 lawless and social or political disorder caused by this 3 absence of order.

the doctrine of the abolishment of formal government and free action for the individual, and other resources being common property; the active support of anarchistic principles.

one who exercises disorder or revolt in a state; an advocate of anarchy and anarchism.

Most political anarchists and their sympathizers tend to suggest alternative definitions because the above quoted have an extreme negative bias:

the state of a geographical area in which there are no rulers or laws

a political idea defined by favoring the abolishment of the state

a person who believes in the ideas of anarchism

Introductions to the basic ideas of anarchism usually cite Gerrard Winstanley's 1649 pamphlet 'Truth Lifting Its Head Up Above Scandal' where a simple four-point list is drawn up:

• That power corrupts
• That property is incompatible with freedom
• That authority and property are the begetters of crime, and
• That only in a society without rulers, where work and its products are shared, can men be happy, acting not according to laws imposed from above but according to their own consciences.

Various forms of anarchism are usually formed by combining these basic ideas with another set of basic ideas. Hence, anarcho-pacifism, for example, is the combination of pacifism and anarchism into a set of ideas that opposes both violence and coercion. Two forms of anarchism stand out, however: political anarchism and philosophical anarchism. While political anarchism is best understood as a political utopia and ideology, philosophical anarchism is about questioning the moral legitimacy of the state. Political anarchism therefore tends towards being a revolutionary ideology, while philosophical anarchism takes place within society. On this website, the term anarchism usually refers to philosophical anarchism or the term anarchism in its widest form.