Anarchism was a late 19th century idea among a number of Europeans, Russians and Americans, that all government should be abolished, and that voluntary cooperation, rather than force, should be society's organizing principle. The word itself comes from a Greek word, anarkos, which means "without a chief." The movement had its origins in the search for a way to give industrial working classes a political voice in their societies.
By the turn of the 20th century, anarchism was already on the wane, to be replaced by other movements encouraging the rights of dispossessed classes and revolution.