Federations created by free association and popular affinity

According to Murray Rothbard, Zhuangzi was "perhaps the world's first anarchist"; Zhuangzi said, the world "does not need governing; in fact it should not be governed," and, "Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone." Rothbard says Zhuangzi was the first to work out the idea of spontaneous order, before Proudhon and Hayek.[1] Similarly, anarchistic tendencies can be traced to the philosophers of Ancient Greece, such as Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, and Aristippus, who said that the wise should not give up their liberty to the state [2]. Later movements – such as Stregheria in the 1300s, the Free Spirit in the Middle Ages, the Anabaptists, The Diggers, and the Ranters, – have also expounded ideas that have been interpreted as anarchist...

William Godwin, in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice" (1793) wrote what became the core anarchist critiques of government, economics, and society; though he did not use the word anarchism, some today regard him as the "founder of philosophical anarchism" [4]. It's commonly held that it wasn't until Pierre-Joseph Proudhon published "What is Property?" in 1840 that the term "anarchist" was adopted as a self-description. It is for this reason that some claim Proudhon as the founder of modern anarchist theory...

Anarchist communists also propose large- and small-scale connections of communities, groups, and workplaces through federations and networks created by free association and popular affinity. Anarchist communists want direct worker control over production, and have decisions made through workers councils and assemblies. Communities would be organized through systems of direct democracy, and through various organizations and collectives to carry out various tasks. Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and most recently, groups like NEFAC (North Eastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists), have advocated various forms of anarchist communism.