Firstly, symbolic actions, whether violent or non-violent, but usually illegal, intended as propaganda by the deed: attempts to inspire wider popular revolt.
Through all these phases of its history the anarchist emphasis on direct action has taken two quite different forms. However, the new and largely youthful social movements originating in the 1960s saw a revival of the influence of anarchism, often unconscious or denied, but also often held as a self-conscious political ideology. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 redefined the framework of international labour politics, so that by the 1950s the remaining scattered anarchist groups seemed no more than ghosts of a once vibrant political movement. The historic anarchist movement of the late-nineteenth century was therefore distinguished from the rest of the international movement of organised labour by its rejection of state intervention from above in favour of self-organisation from below, as well as by its rejection of constitutional protest in favour of direct action. 
Anarchists disdain the customary use of 'anarchy' to mean 'chaos' or 'complete disorder': for them it signifies the absence of rulers in a self-managed society, more highly organized than the disorganization and chaos of the present. The media and other commentators in the UK constantly employ 'anarchists' and 'anarchism' as smear words unworthy of rational consideration, yet they refer to a long-established way of looking at the world which has a distinctive and impressive intellectual history.
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