Why should the specter of anarchy not frighten us, but liberate us? The renowned Italian philosopher Donatella Di Cesare uncovers a centuries-old blind spot: democracy is linked to anarchy by an indissoluble bond. In times of authoritarian turns, in which democracy is to be defended through isolation, she looks back to the Greek origins of the polis: 'Neither command nor be commanded' is the seal of democracy, the flag of anarchic freedom. Di Cesare shows that democracy arose through the inclusion of the excluded - women, foreigners, those without rights. In Äschylus, for example, it is women on the run who enable the people to assert themselves. Di Cesare drafts a radical rereading of the ancient sources. In dialogue with Hannah Arendt, Claude Lefort and other thinkers of democracy after totalitarianism, she develops a revolutionary thesis: anarchy is the deeply repressed element in the monumental history of democracy.