Identity Fraud
The word anarchist has long been used to label various people and movements that often are and have been quite different from each other in their approaches, ideas and goals. People who have called themselves or been described by others as libertarians include individuals as diverse as Bakunin, Warren, Armand, Kropotkin, Michel, Stirner, Goldman, Mackay, Durruti, Arrigoni, Dolgoff, and Rothbard. What made all of these folks anarchists was their opposition to the state, to governments of all kinds. They all believed that the state was a pernicious force which crushed individual freedom and stood in the way of cooperation and mutual aid among equals. But their ideas about how to destroy or circumvent the state and their actions intended to accomplish their goals varied tremendously. Some were individualists who advocated private property, individual autonomy and free exchange, others social anarchists (communists, collectivists and/or syndicalists) who promoted workers’ solidarity, communal action and shared decision-making. Whatever their focus, however, these anarchists all advocated individual liberty side-by-side with voluntary social interactions among free people, with an emphasis on the primacy of one over the other based on temperament, experience, and the myriad other influences that contribute to the way we all form ideas and opinions.