I’ve been reading some works by Benjamin Tucker, one of the last individualist anarchists from the 19th century. One of his quotes does a better job of explaining anarchism than any other definition I’ve come across. According to Tucker:
This distinction between invasion and resistance, between government and defence, is vital. Without it there can be no valid philosophy of politics. Upon this distinction and the other considerations just outlined, the Anarchists frame the desired definitions. This, then, is the Anarchistic definition of government: the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an external will. And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.
The state really is the embodiment of invasion for it is a gang of individuals who call themselves masters inflicting their will at the point of a gun onto those who live in its claimed territory. Anarchism, being a philosophy of anti-statism, is the opposition of invasion. Those of us who oppose statism don’t do so because we desire to see the person with the most guns ruling, we oppose statism because we desire the opposite. When you boil it down the state is the embodiment of the person with the most guns ruling. Without a doubt the state has the most guns and it uses those guns to inflict its will onto the general population. It is an invasive force that works to trample individual liberty.