Social anarchism, also known as left-wing anarchism or socialist anarchism, is an anarchist tradition that sees individual liberty and social solidarity as interlinked.

It advocates for a social revolution to eliminate hierarchical power structures, such as capitalism and the state, and establish economy based on collective ownership of means of production, distribution and economic planning. In their place, social anarchists encourage voluntary social collaboration through mutual aid and envision non-hierarchical forms of social organization, such as networks of popular assemblies and worker cooperatives.

Identified with the socialist tradition of Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, social anarchism is often contrasted with individualist anarchism.

Social anarchism is opposed to all forms of hierarchical power structures, and oppression, including (but not limited to) the State and capitalism. Social anarchism sees liberty as interconnected with social solidarity, and considers the maximization of one to be necessary for the maximization of the other. As such, social anarchism seeks to guarantee equal rights to freedom and material security for all persons.

Social anarchism envisions the overthrow of capitalism and the state in a social revolution, which would establish a federal society of voluntary associations and local communities, based on a network of mutual aid.

The key principles that form the core of social anarchism include anti-capitalism, anti-statism and prefigurative politics.

As an anti-capitalist ideology, social anarchism is opposed to the dominant expressions of capitalism, including the expansion of transnational corporations through globalization. It comprises one of the main forms of socialism, alongside utopian socialism, democratic socialism and authoritarian socialism. Social anarchism rejects private property, particularly private ownership of the means of production, as the principal source of social inequality. As such, social anarchists typically oppose propertarianism, as they consider it to exacerbate social and economic inequality, suppress individual agency and require the maintenance of hierarchical institutions.

Social anarchists argue that the abolition of private property would lead to the development of new social mores, encouraging mutual respect for individual freedom and the satisfaction of individual needs. Social anarchism therefore advocates the breaking up of monopolies and the institution of common ownership over the means of production. Instead of capitalist markets, with their profit motives and wage systems, social anarchism desires to organise production through a collective system of worker cooperatives, agricultural communes and labour syndicates.