The word has potential to mean "without rule", following its etymology. Once in a while, especially in art criticism, it can be unambiguously used that way. If a review of Dude, Where's My Car calls it an anarchic comedy, that doesn't mean it attacks hierarchies. It just means it defies established rules, such as "a successful movie must be any good". But historically, early anarchists were class-struggle types (maybe Irish or Spanish?) with those round cartoon bombs with the lit fuse sticking out, so it's always going to carry both meanings.

I notice this raises the question of the similarities or differences between hierarchies (of people, not html tags or whatever) and rulership. Certainly management, or government, or the church (going etymological again), has a hierarchy of higher-up hierophants issuing commands to lower-down losers, and it's all full of stinking rules, and there's some connection. And, say, HN, has a hierarchy which consists of Dang, and us, and below us, noobs, and that's about enforcing the rules, which I have to admit might not stink in this particular case. But sometimes there can be a hierarchy without a connection to rules. For instance, how fancy is your hairstyle? Do you shave it off as irrelevant, or just let it grow like a hippie, or cultivate dreadlocks, or have a bowl cut, or trim it with clippers, craft it with scissors, or perhaps opt for dye, a perm, a beehive, or Roman braids? In the hair hierarchy there are people, the owners of the hair, but no chain of command or enforced rules. Capitalism, seen as simply people having money, has potential, perhaps, to be as benign as people having hair.