nonconformity

Webster's Third International Dictionary, succinctly defines anarchism as, “a political theory opposed to all forms of government and governmental restraint and advocating voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups in order to satisfy their needs.”
Britannica-Webster reads, “a political theory that holds all government authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocates a society based on voluntary cooperation of individuals and groups.”
And the New Webster Handy College Dictionary tersely states, “the political doctrine that all governments should be abolished.”
From wiktionary we get:
  anarchy
1. absence of hierarchy, power and authority
2. absence of any form of political authority or government
3. political disorder and confusion
4. absence of any cohesive principle, such as a common standard or purpose
5. without rules or laws (syn: anomie, anomy)
6. self-government

Finally my standby Random House Webster's yields:
an-ar-chism (an'uhr kiz uhm)   n.
1. a doctrine urging the abolition of government or governmental restraint as the indispensable condition for full social and political liberty.
2. the methods or practices of anarchists.
[1635-45]

Now that's all patently prettier than poetry and even in good keeping with its Greek roots - so where's the rub? Well as we've seen with “monetize”, there are always plenty of quasi-literates who need to bend straight clear concepts into twisted pretzels promoting perverse purposes.

For a good sampling of what I'm talking about just drop “anarchy” into your favorite search engine, and you'll quickly find this simple idea contorted & complicated. The following quote characterizes one major branch of colonization as raw as you'd want: “Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man.” - Daniel Guérin, Anarchism. As you might anticipate, we also find: 1) anarcho-syndicalists who crave a high degree of societal structure, 2) worker's control of the means of production and distribution, 3) opposition to personal property ownership, 4) parecon, etc. Particulars include: Russian anarchists Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) and Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) - Mutual Aid, Fields Factories and Workshops plus The Conquest of Bread, plus Pierre Joseph Proudhon - What is Property?.

We've previously cited the vital increases of production via the division of labor and cooperative effort.  For a more primordial perspective the word “production” might better be replaced with “subsistence” or even “survival”.  Yet before addressing the dominant bearing money has on these fundamental means of sustaining human existence;  we should first note that (like it or not) both are social (others oriented) phenomenon.  So from conception to the casket ‘others’ are a very real life & death determinant.  The significance of this is greatly amplified when one considers that our ‘survival instinct’ or ‘will to live’ is persuasively rumored to be the most ingrained cardinal commander of our strongest impulsions.  The preceding will hopefully help account for a human propensity found in a quote I encountered just yesterday - namely:
    When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an act of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school.  A group of seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a six-year-old.  “It is always so,” my mother said.  “You do things together which not one of you would think of doing alone.”  ...  Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards.  The military establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems to have been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things together which nobody in his right mind would do alone.
                -- Freeman Dyson, Weapons and Hope

Note that Dyson is suggesting that the same basic principle operant in a spontaneous episode involving a few seven-year-olds also applies to thousands of men in their prime totally immersed into a tightly controlled, highly regimented, patently propagandic environment.  Well to that I'd just have to say -- pretty perceptive!  Then there is that phrase of his.....