Anarchy

"Anarchy" (1907) is a political classic written by famous anarchist Errico Malatesta.

"Anarchy is a word which comes from the Greek, and signifies, strictly speaking, without government: the state of a people without any constituted authority. Before such an organization had begun to be considered possible and desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be taken as the aim of a party (which party has now become one of the most important factors in modern social warfare), the word anarchy was taken universally in the sense of disorder and confusion; and it is still adopted in that sense by the ignorant and by adversaries interested in distorting the truth. We shall not enter into philological discussions, for the question is not philological but historical. The common meaning of the word does not misconceive its true etymological signification, but is derived from this meaning, owing to the prejudice that government must be a necessity of the organization of social life."

Errico Malatesta (1853-1932) was an Italian anarchist. He spent much of his life exiled from Italy and in total spent more than ten years in prison.