10 famous symbols and what they really mean - You won't believe what BLUETOOTH stands for (With Pics) | Page 10 of 10

10 famous symbols and what they really mean – You won’t believe what BLUETOOTH stands for (With Pics)

1. The Anarchy Symbol

To properly understand the Anarchy symbol, we must first look at what Anarchy is and what it actually stands for. Anarchy is a political ideology just like democracy, monarchy, oligarchy, communism, or liberalism. It evolved alongside democracy in ancient Greece and derives from the ancient Greek word anarchia, which translates to “without a ruler.” What this means is that Anarchy doesn’t cite lawlessness or chaos; rather, a society with proper rules and regulations put in place, but without an authoritarian ruler over everyone else. Anarchy was further developed and improved upon during the French Revolution period at the end of the 18^th century. This was also the time when Anarchy got its negative connotations, as the ruling elites obviously didn’t what it to happen.

On a standard political chart, besides the usual economic left and right, there is also an authoritarian up and a libertarian down. All famed dictators like Stalin, Mao, or Hitler, are all found at the very top of the chart, either on the left or the right, depending on their economic principles. On the bottom of the chart is anarchy in various forms like Anarcho-communism, Syndicalism, Mutualism, Anarcho-capitalism or Anarcho-socialism, among others. In fact, Karl Marx envisioned Communism as being a form of Anarchism with a state and class-free society. Problems arose, however, when it was put into practice. While fellow anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued that the state should be abolished from the start, Marx preferred a Big Government first to act as a provisional intermediary that would put everything in order and ensure eventual Anarchy in the end. But as we all know, once in power, people rarely relinquish it and thus Communism ended up being the exact opposite of what was intended. Striving towards a form of Anarchy applies, in principle, to all modern political systems that state to uphold and promote liberty or equality.

Now, the symbol itself was designed by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a French journalist and libertarian socialist from the 19^th century. The symbol is made out of the letter A which obviously stands for Anarchy, and a circle around it that is actually the letter O for order. It’s quite often to see this symbol spray-painted on walls, or people waving an Anarchy flag while wreaking havoc on a city street. But you can be sure that these people have no idea what Anarchy really is, and all that they end up doing is enforcing the idea instilled by the ruling classes from the 18^thand 19^th centuries; the idea that Anarchy is chaos. Civic duty and volunteerism are the driving forces behind Anarchy, not violence, as so many believe.