Can someone tell me exactly how Anarchy works

[Comrade Hill]

Because whenever I think about Anarchy, I think about complete chaos and stagnation.

Is my perception wrong? Any insight on this would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Sentinel]

Anarchists* strive for a democratic, libertarian socialist society without a state. That doesn't mean that they oppose organisation, though. They just want it to be without a central authority with monopoly over the use of force, but rather decentralised and federative, with direct democracy -- everyone getting to decide over things that affect them. In other words a highly organised society rather than chaos.

Such a stateless society is the long term goal of all communists, but some of us -- those that you probably think of a 'communists' rather than 'anarchists', and who usually identify as some kind of Marxists -- think that it needs to be preceded by a socialist workers state, or half-state. This half state is to be used by the working class (the Proletariat) to repress the capitalist class (the Bourgeoisie), until class contradictions have disappeared and it will wither away as unnecessary.

In other words, also 'statist', marxist communists recognise that a state is an organ of repression by one class over another, and view it as a necessary evil. We argue, however, that it can be used democratically by the proletariat to repress only the bourgeoisie as long as it's officials are accountable, electable and recallable. The anarchists on the other hand argue that even a socialist state by definition is repressive towards the workers, that it's officials will always be corrupted by their power, etc.

Thus they want to proceed to a stateless society immediately, something Marxists on the other hand don't see as realistic and/or desirable for various reasons.

I hope this helped. :)

* I'm speaking about anarchists in the revolutionary left context here. There are however other branches of anarchist thought such as nihilist, primitivist and individualist etc anarchism that this doesn't apply on.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

There is this: http://www.revleft.com/vb/making-sense-anarchism-t6416/index.html

For reading material: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/