Anarcho-capitalism

Anarcho-capitalism is a political philosophy and economic theory that advocates the elimination of centralized states in favor of free markets, private property and the right-libertarian interpretation of self-ownership. In the absence of statute, anarcho-capitalists hold that society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through participation in the free market which they describe as a voluntary society. Anarcho-capitalists support wage labour and believe that neither protection of person and property nor victim compensation requires a state. In a theoretical anarcho-capitalist society, the system of private property would still exist and be enforced by private defense agencies and insurance companies selected by customers which would operate competitively in an open market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police.

Anarcho-capitalists claim that various theorists have espoused legal philosophies similar to anarcho-capitalism. However, anarcho-capitalism was developed in the 20th century and the first person to use the term anarcho-capitalism was Murray Rothbard. Rothbard synthesized elements from the Austrian School, classical liberalism and 19th-century American individualist anarchists Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker while rejecting their labor theory of value and the anti-capitalist and socialist norms they derived from it. Rothbard's anarcho-capitalist society would operate under a mutually agreed-upon "legal code which would be generally accepted, and which the courts would pledge themselves to follow". This legal code would recognize contracts, private property, self-ownership and tort law in keeping with the non-aggression principle.

Anarcho-capitalists are distinguished from anarchists and minarchists. The latter advocate a night-watchman state limited to protecting individuals from aggression and enforcing private property. On the other hand, anarchists support personal property (defined in terms of possession and use, i.e. mutualist usufruct) and oppose capital concentration, interest, monopoly, private ownership of productive property such as the means of production (capital, land and the means of labor), profit, rent, usury and wage slavery which are viewed as inherent to capitalism. Anarchism's emphasis on anti-capitalism, egalitarianism and for the extension of community and individuality sets it apart from anarcho-capitalism and other types of economic libertarianism.

Philosophy

The two principal moral approaches to anarcho-capitalism differ in regard to whether anarcho-capitalist society is justified on deontological or consequentialist ethics or both. Natural-law anarcho-capitalism as advocated by Murray Rothbard holds that a universal system of rights can be derived from natural law. Other anarcho-capitalists do not rely upon the idea of natural rights, but they present instead economic justifications for a free-market capitalist society. This latter approach has been offered by David D. Friedman in The Machinery of Freedom. Unlike other anarcho-capitalists, most notably Rothbard, Friedman has never tried to deny the theoretical cogency of the neoclassical literature on "market failure", but he openly applies the theory to both market and government institutions to compare the net result, nor has he been inclined to attack economic efficiency as a normative benchmark.

John Kosanke sees such a debate as irrelevant. Kosanke believes that in the absence of statutory law the non-aggression principle is naturally enforced because individuals are automatically held accountable for their actions via tort and contract law. Kosanke also argues that communities of sovereign individuals naturally expel aggressors in the same way that ethical business practices are allegadly naturally required among competing businesses that are subject to what he describes as the "discipline of the marketplace". For Kosanke, the only thing that needs to be debated is the nature of the contractual mechanism that abolishes the state, or prevents it from coming into existence where new communities form.

On the state

Anarcho-capitalists see capitalism and the free market as the basis for a free and prosperous society. Murray Rothbard, who is credited with coining the term anarcho-capitalism, stated that the difference between free-market capitalism and state capitalism is the difference between "peaceful, voluntary exchange" and a collusive partnership between business and government that uses coercion to subvert the free market.

Anarchists view capitalism as an inherently authoritarian and hierarchical system and seek the abolishment of private property. There is disagreement between anarchists and anarcho-capitalists as the former generally rejects anarcho-capitalism as a form of anarchism and considers anarcho-capitalism an oxymoron while the latter holds that the abolishment of private property would require expropriation which is "counterproductive to order" and would require a state in their opinion.

Anarcho-capitalists argue that the state relies on initiating force because force can be used against those who have not stolen personal property, vandalized private property, assaulted anyone, or committed fraud. Rothbard argued that all government services, including defense, are inefficient because they lack a market-based pricing mechanism regulated by "the voluntary decisions of consumers purchasing services that fulfill their highest-priority needs" and by investors seeking the most profitable enterprises to invest in. Many anarcho-capitalists also argue that private defense and court agencies would have to have a good reputation in order to stay in business. Furthermore, Linda and Morris Tannehill argue that no coercive monopoly of force can arise on a truly free market and that a government's citizenry can not desert them in favor of a competent protection and defense agency.

Rothbard stated that he based his philosophy on natural law grounds and provided economic explanations of why he thinks anarcho-capitalism is preferable on pragmatic grounds as well. David D. Friedman says that he is not an absolutist rights theorist, but he is also "not a utilitarian". However, Friedman believes that "utilitarian arguments are usually the best way to defend libertarian views". Peter Leeson argues that "the case for anarchy derives its strength from empirical evidence, not theory". Hans-Hermann Hoppe uses "argumentation ethics" for his foundation of "private property anarchism" which is closer to Rothbard's natural law approach. Rothbard wrote:

I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.

Rothbard used the term anarcho-capitalism to distinguish his philosophy from anarchism that opposes private property as well as to distinguish it from other forms of individualist anarchism. Other terms sometimes used for this philosophy, though not necessarily outside anarcho-capitalist circles, include: Anarcho-liberalism Anti-state capitalism Anti-state marketism Capitalist anarchism Free-market anarchism Individualist anarchism Market anarchism Natural order Nonarchy Ordered anarchy Polycentric law Private-law society Private-property anarchy Pure capitalism Radical capitalism Stateless capitalism Stateless liberalism Voluntaryism

Non-aggression principle

While the Friedmanian formulation of anarcho-capitalism is robust to the presence of violence and in fact assumes some degree of violence will occur, anarcho-capitalism as formulated by Rothbard and others holds strongly to the central libertarian nonaggression axiom. Rothbard wrote:

The basic axiom of libertarian political theory holds that every man is a self owner, having absolute jurisdiction over his own body. In effect, this means that no one else may justly invade, or aggress against, another's person. It follows then that each person justly owns whatever previously unowned resources he appropriates or "mixes his labor with". From these twin axioms – self-ownership and "homesteading" – stem the justification for the entire system of property rights titles in a free-market society. This system establishes the right of every man to his own person, the right of donation, of bequest (and, concomitantly, the right to receive the bequest or inheritance), and the right of contractual exchange of property titles.

Rothbard's defense of the self-ownership principle stems from what he believed to be his falsification of all other alternatives, namely that either a group of people can own another group of people, or the other alternative, that no single person has full ownership over one's self. Rothbard dismisses these two cases on the basis that they cannot result in a universal ethic, i.e. a just natural law that can govern all people, independent of place and time. The only alternative that remains to Rothbard is self-ownership which he believes is both axiomatic and universal.

In general, the non-aggression axiom is described by Rothbard as a prohibition against the initiation of force, or the threat of force, against persons (in which he includes direct violence, assault and murder) or property (in which he includes fraud, burglary, theft and taxation). The initiation of force is usually referred to as aggression or coercion. The difference between anarcho-capitalists and other libertarians is largely one of the degree to which they take this axiom. Minarchist libertarians such as libertarian political parties would retain the state in some smaller and less invasive form, retaining at the very least public police, courts and military. However, others might give further allowance for other government programs. In contrast, Rothbard rejects any level of "state intervention", defining the state as a coercive monopoly and as the only entity in human society that derives its income from what he refers to as "legal aggression", an entity that inherently violates the central axiom of libertarianism.

Some anarcho-capitalists such as Rothbard accept the non-aggression axiom on an intrinsic moral or natural law basis. It is in terms of the non-aggression principle that Rothbard defined his interpretation of anarchism, "a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression ['against person and property']"; and wrote that "what anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the State, i.e. to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion". In an interview published in the American libertarian journal The New Banner, Rothbard stated that "capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism".

Property

Private property

Central to Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism are the concepts of self-ownership and original appropriation that combines personal and private property. Rothbard wrote:

Everyone is the proper owner of his own physical body as well as of all places and nature-given goods that he occupies and puts to use by means of his body, provided only that no one else has already occupied or used the same places and goods before him. This ownership of "originally appropriated" places and goods by a person implies his right to use and transform these places and goods in any way he sees fit, provided only that he does not change thereby uninvitedly the physical integrity of places and goods originally appropriated by another person. In particular, once a place or good has been first appropriated by, in John Locke's phrase, 'mixing one's labor' with it, ownership in such places and goods can be acquired only by means of a voluntary – contractual – transfer of its property title from a previous to a later owner.

Anarcho-capitalism uses the following terms in ways that may differ from common usage or various anarchist movements. Anarchism: any philosophy that opposes all forms of initiatory coercion (includes opposition to the state) Contract: a voluntary binding agreement between persons Coercion: physical force or threat of such against persons or property Capitalism: economic system where the means of production are privately owned and where investments, production, distribution, income and prices are determined through the operation of a free market rather than by statutory regulation Free market: a market where all decisions regarding transfer of money, goods (including capital goods) and services are voluntary Fraud: inducing one to part with something of value through the use of dishonesty State: an organization that taxes and engages in regularized and institutionalized aggressive coercion Voluntary: any action not influenced by coercion or fraud perpetrated by any human agency

Anarcho-capitalists advocate individual or joint (i.e. private) ownership of the means of production and the allocation of the product of labor within the context of wage labour and the free market, regardless of what the individual needs or does not need. Original appropriation allows an individual to claim any never-before used resources, including land and by improving or otherwise using it, own it with the same "absolute right" as his own body, and retaining those rights forever, regardless if the resource is still being used by them. According to Rothbard, property can only come about through labor, therefore original appropriation of land is not legitimate by merely claiming it or building a fence around it—it is only by using land and by mixing one's labor with it that original appropriation is legitimized: "Any attempt to claim a new resource that someone does not use would have to be considered invasive of the property right of whoever the first user will turn out to be". Rothbard argued that the resource need not continue to be used in order for it to be the person's property as "for once his labor is mixed with the natural resource, it remains his owned land. His labor has been irretrievably mixed with the land, and the land is therefore his or his assigns' in perpetuity".

As a practical matter, anarcho-capitalists recognize that in terms of the ownership of land there are few, if any, parcels of land left on Earth whose ownership was not at some point in time obtained in violation of the homestead principle "through seizure by the state or put in private hands with the assistance of the state". Rothbard wrote:

It is not enough to call simply for defense of "the rights of private property"; there must be an adequate theory of justice in property rights, else any property that some State once decreed to be "private" must now be defended by libertarians, no matter how unjust the procedure or how mischievous its consequences.

In Justice and Property Right, Rothbard wrote that "any identifiable owner (the original victim of theft or his heir) must be accorded his property". In the case of slavery, Rothbard claimed that in many cases "the old plantations and the heirs and descendants of the former slaves can be identified, and the reparations can become highly specific indeed". Rothbard believed slaves rightfully own any land they were forced to work on under the homestead principle. If property is held by the state, Rothbard advocated its confiscation and "return to the private sector", writing that "any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible". Rothbard proposed that state universities be seized by the students and faculty under the homestead principle. Rothbard also supported expropriation of nominally "private property" if it is the result of state-initiated force such as businesses who receive grants and subsidies. Rothbard further proposed that businesses who receive at least 50% of their funding from the state be confiscated by the workers, writing: "What we libertarians object to, then, is not government per se but crime, what we object to is unjust or criminal property titles; what we are for is not 'private' property per se but just, innocent, non-criminal private property".

Similarly, Karl Hess wrote that "libertarianism wants to advance principles of property but that it in no way wishes to defend, willy nilly, all property which now is called private [...] Much of that property is stolen. Much is of dubious title. All of it is deeply intertwined with an immoral, coercive state system".

By accepting an axiomatic definition of private property and property rights, anarcho-capitalists deny the legitimacy of a state on principle. Hans-Hermann Hoppe argues:

For, apart from ruling out as unjustified all activities such as murder, homicide, rape, trespass, robbery, burglary, theft, and fraud, the ethics of private property is also incompatible with the existence of a state defined as an agency that possesses a compulsory territorial monopoly of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) and/or the right to tax.

Common property

Murray Rothbard (1926–1995), who coined the word anarcho-capitalism

Although anarcho-capitalists are known for asserting a right to private (individualized or joint non-public) property, some propose that non-state public or community property can also exist in an anarcho-capitalist society. For anarcho-capitalists, what is important is that it is acquired and transferred without help or hindrance from the "compulsory state". Deontological anarcho-capitalists believe that the only just and most economically beneficial way to acquire property is through voluntary trade, gift, or labor-based original appropriation, rather than through aggression or fraud.

Anarcho-capitalists state that there could be cases where common property may develop in a Lockean natural rights framework. Anarcho-capitalists make the example of a number of private businesses which may arise in an area, each owning the land and buildings that they use, but they argue that the paths between them become cleared and trodden incrementally through customer and commercial movement. These thoroughfares may become valuable to the community, but according to them ownership cannot be attributed to any single person and original appropriation does not apply because many contributed the labor necessary to create them. In order to prevent it from falling to the "tragedy of the commons", anarcho-capitalists suggest transitioning from common to private property, wherein an individual would make a homesteading claim based on disuse, acquire title by assent of the community consensus, form a corporation with other involved parties, or other means.

Some vast areas, except the scarce resources they contain, such as the air, rivers, oceans, the Moon and orbital paths are considered by anarcho-capitalists as largely unownable by individuals and consider them to be property common to all. However, they see challenges stemming from this idea such as whether an individual might claim fishing rights in the area of a major shipping lane and thereby forbid passage through it. In contrast, Hoppe's work on anarcho-capitalist theory is based on the assumption that all property is privately held, "including all streets, rivers, airports, and harbors" which forms the foundation of his views on immigration.

Contractual society

A postage stamp celebrating the thousandth anniversary of the Icelandic parliament—according to a theory associated with the economist David D. Friedman, medieval Icelandic society had some features of anarcho-capitalism; chieftaincies could be bought and sold and were not geographical monopolies; and individuals could voluntarily choose membership in any chieftain's clan

The society envisioned by anarcho-capitalists has been called the "contractual society" which Rothbard described as "a society based purely on voluntary action, entirely unhampered by violence or threats of violence" The system relies on contracts between individuals as the legal framework which would be enforced by private police and security forces as well as private arbitrations. Individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker accepted the use of violence as means of enforcing them.

Rothbard argues that corporations would exist in a free society as they are "simply the pooling of capital". He says that limited liability for corporations could also exist through contract, arguing that "[c]orporations are not at all monopolistic privileges; they are free associations of individuals pooling their capital. On the purely free market, those men would simply announce to their creditors that their liability is limited to the capital specifically invested in the corporation". However, corporations created in this way would not be able to replicate the limit on liabilities arising non-contractually such as liability in tort for environmental disasters or personal injury which corporations currently enjoy. Rothbard acknowledges that "limited liability for torts is the illegitimate conferring of a special privilege".

There are limits to the right to contract under some interpretations of anarcho-capitalism. Rothbard argues that the right to contract is based in inalienable rights and therefore any contract that implicitly violates those rights can be voided at will, preventing a person from permanently selling himself or herself into unindentured slavery. However, Rothbard justifies the practice of child selling. Other interpretations conclude that banning such contracts would in itself be an unacceptably invasive interference in the right to contract.

Included in the right of contract is "the right to contract oneself out for employment by others". While anarchists criticize wage labour describing it as wage slavery, anarcho-capitalists view it as a consensual contract. Some anarcho-capitalists prefer to see self-employment prevail over wage labor. David D. Friedman has expressed preference for a society where "almost everyone is self-employed" and "instead of corporations there are large groups of entrepreneurs related by trade, not authority. Each sells not his time, but what his time produces".

Law and order and the use of violence

Different anarcho-capitalists propose different forms of anarcho-capitalism and one area of disagreement is in the area of law. In The Market for Liberty, Morris and Linda Tannehill object to any statutory law whatsoever. They argue that all one has to do is ask if one is aggressing against another (see tort) in order to decide if an act is right or wrong. However, while also supporting a natural prohibition on force and fraud, Rothbard supports the establishment of a mutually agreed-upon centralized libertarian legal code which private courts would pledge to follow, as he presumes a high degree of convergence amongst individuals about what constitutes natural justice.

Unlike both the Tannehills and Rothbard who see an ideological commonality of ethics and morality as a requirement, David D. Friedman proposes that "the systems of law will be produced for profit on the open market, just as books and bras are produced today. There could be competition among different brands of law, just as there is competition among different brands of cars". Friedman says whether this would lead to a libertarian society "remains to be proven". He says it is a possibility that very unlibertarian laws may result, such as laws against drugs, but he thinks this would be rare. He reasons that "if the value of a law to its supporters is less than its cost to its victims, that law [...] will not survive in an anarcho-capitalist society".

Anarcho-capitalists only accept collective defense of individual liberty (i.e. courts, military or police forces) insofar as such groups are formed and paid for on an explicitly voluntary basis. However, their complaint is not just that the state's defensive services are funded by taxation, but that the state assumes it is the only legitimate practitioner of physical force—that is, they believe it forcibly prevents the private sector from providing comprehensive security, such as a police, judicial and prison systems to protect individuals from aggressors. Anarcho-capitalists believe that there is nothing morally superior about the state which would grant it, but not private individuals, a right to use physical force to restrain aggressors. If competition in security provision were allowed to exist, prices would also be lower and services would be better according to anarcho-capitalists. According to Molinari: "Under a regime of liberty, the natural organization of the security industry would not be different from that of other industries". Proponents point out that private systems of justice and defense already exist, naturally forming where the market is allowed to "compensate for the failure of the state", namely private arbitration, security guards, neighborhood watch groups and so on. These private courts and police are sometimes referred to generically as private defense agencies (PDAs). The defense of those unable to pay for such protection might be financed by charitable organizations relying on voluntary donation rather than by state institutions relying on taxation, or by cooperative self-help by groups of individuals.

Edward Stringham argues that private adjudication of disputes could enable the market to internalize externalities and provide services that customers desire.

The death of general Joseph Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolutionary War, a war which anarcho-capitalists such as Murray Rothbard admired and believed it was the only American war that could be justified

Like classical liberalism and unlike anarcho-pacifism, anarcho-capitalism permits the use of force as long as it is in the defense of persons or property. The permissible extent of this defensive use of force is an arguable point among anarcho-capitalists. Retributive justice, meaning retaliatory force, is often a component of the contracts imagined for an anarcho-capitalist society. Some believe prisons or indentured servitude would be justifiable institutions to deal with those who violate anarcho-capitalist property relations while others believe exile or forced restitution are sufficient.

Bruce L. Benson argues that legal codes may impose punitive damages for intentional torts in the interest of deterring crime. For instance, a thief who breaks into a house by picking a lock and is caught before taking anything would still owe the victim for violating the sanctity of his property rights. Benson opines that despite the lack of objectively measurable losses in such cases, "standardized rules that are generally perceived to be fair by members of the community would, in all likelihood, be established through precedent, allowing judgments to specify payments that are reasonably appropriate for most criminal offenses".

Morris and Linda Tannehill raise a similar example, noting that a bank robber who had an attack of conscience and returned the money would still owe reparations for endangering the employees' and customers' lives and safety, in addition to the costs of the defense agency answering the teller's call for help. However, the robber's loss of reputation would be even more damaging. Specialized companies would list aggressors so that anyone wishing to do business with a man could first check his record, provided they trust the veracity of the companies' records. The bank robber would find insurance companies listing him as a very poor risk and other firms would be reluctant to enter into contracts with him.

In the context of revolution, Rothbard stated that the American Revolutionary War was the only war involving the United States that could be justified. Some anarcho-capitalists such as Samuel Edward Konkin III feel that violent revolution is counter-productive and prefer voluntary forms of economic secession to the extent possible.

Anarcho-capitalist Matthew O'Keeffe proposes a form of a restitution system of justice in which the right to restitution created by the violation of the victims' property could be homesteaded by bounty hunters that would bring criminals to justice, thus creating the incentive for people to work defending the rights of victims that otherwise would not be able to pay for the service.

History

Anarchism

Main article: Anarchism and capitalism

The black and gold flag, a symbol of anarchism (black) and capitalism (gold) which was first flown in 1963 in Colorado and is also used by the Swedish AnarkoKapitalistisk Front

In both its social and individualist forms, anarchism is usually considered an anti-capitalist and radical left-wing or far-left movement that promotes libertarian socialist economic theories such as collectivism, communism, individualism, mutualism and syndicalism. Because anarchism is usually described alongside libertarian Marxism as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement and as having a historical association with anti-capitalism and socialism, anarchists believe that capitalism is incompatible with social and economic equality and therefore do not recognize anarcho-capitalism as an anarchist school of thought. In particular, anarchists argue that capitalist transactions are not voluntary and that maintaining the class structure of a capitalist society requires coercion which is incompatible with an anarchist society. The usage of libertarian is also in dispute. While both anarchists and anarcho-capitalist have used it, libertarian was synonymous with anarchism until the mid-20th century, when anarcho-capitalist theory developed.

Anarcho-capitalists are distinguished from the dominant anarchist tradition by their relation to property and capital. While both anarchism and anarcho-capitalism share general antipathy towards power by government authority, the latter exempts power wielded through free-market capitalism. Anarchists, including egoists such as Max Stirner, have supported the protection of an individual's freedom from powers of both government and private property owners. In contrast, while condemning governmental encroachment on personal liberties, anarcho-capitalists support freedoms based on private property rights. Anarcho-capitalist theorist Murray Rothbard argued that protesters should rent a street for protest from its owners. The abolition of public amenities is a common theme in some anarcho-capitalist writings.

As anarcho-capitalism puts laissez-faire economics before economic equality, it is commonly viewed as incompatible with the anti-capitalist and egalitarian tradition of anarchism. Although anarcho-capitalist theory implies the abolition of the state in favour of a fully laissez-faire economy, it lies outside the tradition of anarchism. While using the language of anarchism, anarcho-capitalism only shares anarchism's antipathy towards the state and not anarchism's antipathy towards hierarchy as theorists expect from anarcho-capitalist economic power relations. It follows a different paradigm from anarchism and has a fundamentally different approach and goals. In spite of the anarcho- in its title, anarcho-capitalism is more closely affiliated with capitalism and right-libertarianism than with anarchism. Some within this laissez-faire tradition reject the designation of anarcho-capitalism, believing that capitalism may either refer to the laissez-faire market they support or the government-regulated system that they oppose.

Rothbard claimed that anarcho-capitalism is the only true form of anarchism—the only form of anarchism that could possibly exist in reality as he maintained that any other form presupposes an authoritarian enforcement of political ideology such as "redistribution of private property". According to this argument, the free market is simply the natural situation that would result from people being free from authority and entails the establishment of all voluntary associations in society such as cooperatives, non-profit organizations, businesses and so on. Moreover, anarcho-capitalists as well as classical liberal minarchists argue that the application of anarchist ideals as advocated by what they term left-wing anarchists would require an authoritarian body of some sort to impose it. Based on their understanding of anarchism, in order to forcefully prevent people from accumulating capital, which they believe is a goal of those anarchists, there would necessarily be a redistributive organization of some sort which would have the authority to in essence exact a tax and re-allocate the resulting resources to a larger group of people. They conclude that this body would inherently have political power and would be nothing short of a state. The difference between such an arrangement and an anarcho-capitalist system is what anarcho-capitalists see as the voluntary nature of organization within anarcho-capitalism contrasted with a centralized ideology and a paired enforcement mechanism which they believe would be necessary under a "coercively" egalitarian-anarchist system.

Despite their name, anarcho-capitalists are generally seen by anarchists, who reject the notion of capitalism, hierarchies and private property, as fraudulent and an oxymoron. Albert Meltzer argued that anarcho-capitalism simply cannot be anarchism because capitalism and the state are inextricably interlinked and because capitalism exhibits domineering hierarchical structures such as that between an employer and an employee. Anna Morgenstern approaches this topic from the opposite perspective, arguing that anarcho-capitalists are not really capitalists because "mass concentration of capital is impossible" without the state. According to Jeremy Jennings, "[i]t is hard not to conclude that these ideas", referring to anarcho-capitalism, argued to have "roots deep in classical liberalism" more so than in anarchism, "are described as anarchist only on the basis of a misunderstanding of what anarchism is". For Jennings, "anarchism does not stand for the untrammelled freedom of the individual (as the 'anarcho-capitalists' appear to believe) but, as we have already seen, for the extension of individuality and community". Similarly, Barbara Goodwin, Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, argues that anarcho-capitalism's "true place is in the group of right-wing libertarians", not in anarchism.

Classical liberalism

Main article: Classical liberalism

In his essay The Production of Security, Gustave de Molinari argued that "[n]o government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity". Molinari and this new type of anti-state liberal grounded their reasoning on liberal ideals and classical economics. Historian and libertarian Ralph Raico argues that what these liberal philosophers "had come up with was a form of individualist anarchism, or, as it would be called today, anarcho-capitalism or market anarchism". Unlike the liberalism of John Locke which saw the state as evolving from society, the anti-state liberals saw a fundamental conflict between the voluntary interactions of people, i.e. society; and the institutions of force, i.e. the state. This society vs. state idea was expressed in various ways such as natural society vs. artificial society, liberty vs. authority, society of contract vs. society of authority and industrial society vs. militant society, just to name a few. The anti-state liberal tradition in Europe and the United States continued after Molinari in the early writings of Herbert Spencer as well as in thinkers such as Paul Émile de Puydt and Auberon Herbert.

Individualist anarchism

Main article: Individualist anarchism and anarcho-capitalism

Lysander Spooner, an American individualist anarchist and mutualist, who is claimed to have influenced anarcho-capitalism

Murray Rothbard, a student of Ludwig von Mises, stated that he was influenced by the work of the 19th-century American individualist anarchists. In the winter of 1949, Rothbard decided to reject minimal state laissez-faire and embrace his interpretation of individualist anarchism. In 1965, Rothbard wrote that "Lysander Spooner and Benjamin R. Tucker were unsurpassed as political philosophers and nothing is more needed today than a revival and development of the largely forgotten legacy they left to political philosophy". However, Rothbard thought that they had a faulty understanding of economics as the 19th century individualist anarchists had a labor theory of value as influenced by the classical economists and was a student of Austrian School economics which does not agree with the labor theory of value. Rothbard sought to meld 19th-century American individualist anarchists' advocacy of economic individualism and free markets with the principles of Austrian School economics, arguing that "[t]here is, in the body of thought known as 'Austrian economics', a scientific explanation of the workings of the free market (and of the consequences of government intervention in that market) which individualist anarchists could easily incorporate into their political and social Weltanschauung". Rothbard held that the economic consequences of the political system they advocate would not result in an economy with people being paid in proportion to labor amounts, nor would profit and interest disappear as they expected. Tucker thought that unregulated banking and money issuance would cause increases in the money supply so that interest rates would drop to zero or near to it. Peter Marshall states that "anarcho-capitalism overlooks the egalitarian implications of traditional individualist anarchists like Spooner and Tucker".

In "The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View", Rothbard explained his disagreements. First of all, Rothbard stated that Tucker was wrong to think that that would cause the money supply to increase because he says that the money supply in a free market would be self-regulating. If it were not, then inflation would occur so it is not necessarily desirable to increase the money supply in the first place. Secondly, Rothbard claimed that Tucker was wrong to think that interest would disappear regardless because people in general do not wish to lend their money to others without compensation, so there is no reason why this would change just because banking was unregulated. Tucker held a labor theory of value and thought that in a free market people would be paid in proportion to how much labor they exerted and that exploitation or usury was taking place if they were not. As Tucker explained in State Socialism and Anarchism, his theory was that unregulated banking would cause more money to be available and that this would allow proliferation of new businesses which would in turn raise demand for labor. This led Tucker to believe that the labor theory of value would be vindicated and equal amounts of labor would receive equal pay. As an Austrian School economist, Rothbard did not agree with the labor theory and believed that prices of goods and services are proportional to marginal utility rather than to labor amounts in the free market. He did not think that there was anything exploitative about people receiving an income according to how much buyers of their services value their labor or what that labor produces.

Benjamin Tucker, another individualist anarchist, who identified as a socialist and his individualist anarchism as anarchistic socialism versus state socialism, said to have influenced anarcho-capitalism

Without the labor theory of value, some argue that 19th-century individualist anarchists approximate the modern movement of anarcho-capitalism, although this has been contested or rejected. As economic theory changed, the popularity of the labor theory of classical economics was superseded by the subjective theory of value of neoclassical economics and Rothbard combined Mises' Austrian School of economics with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the 19th century such as Tucker and Spooner. In the mid-1950s, Rothbard wrote "Are Libertarians 'Anarchists'?", concerned with differentiating himself from communist and socialistic economic views of anarchists, including the individualist anarchists of the 19th century, concluding that "we are not anarchists [...] but not archists either [...]. Perhaps, then, we could call ourselves by a new name: nonarchist". Joe Peacott, an American individualist anarchist in the mutualist tradition, criticizes anarcho-capitalists for trying to hegemonize the individualist anarchism label and make appear as if all individualist anarchists are in favor of capitalism. Peacott states that "individualists, both past and present, agree with the communist anarchists that present-day capitalism is based on economic coercion, not on voluntary contract. Rent and interest are mainstays of modern capitalism, and are protected and enforced by the state. Without these two unjust institutions, capitalism could not exist".

Anarchist activists and scholars do not consider anarcho-capitalism as a part of the anarchist movement because anarchism has historically been an anti-capitalist movement and see it as incompatible with capitalist forms. Although some regard anarcho-capitalism as a form of individualist anarchism, many others disagree or contest the existence of an individualist–socialist divide because individualist anarchism is largely libertarian socialist. In coming to terms that anarchism identified with socialism, Rothbard wrote that individualist anarchism is different from anarcho-capitalism and other capitalist theories due to the individualist anarchists retaining the labor theory of value and socialist doctrines. Similarly, many writers deny that anarcho-capitalism is a form of anarchism or that capitalism is compatible with anarchism.

The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism writes that "[a]s Benjamin Franks rightly points out, individualisms that defend or reinforce hierarchical forms such as the economic-power relations of anarcho-capitalism are incompatible with practices of social anarchism based on developing immanent goods which contest such as inequalities". Laurence Davis cautiosly asks "[I]s anarcho-capitalism really a form of anarchism or instead a wholly different ideological paradigm whose adherents have attempted to expropriate the language of anarchism for their own anti-anarchist ends?" Davis cites Iain McKay, "whom Franks cites as an authority to support his contention that 'academic analysis has followed activist currents in rejecting the view that anarcho-capitalism has anything to do with social anarchism'", as arguing "quite emphatically on the very pages cited by Franks that anarcho-capitalism is by no means a type of anarchism". McKay writes that "[i]t is important to stress that anarchist opposition to the so-called capitalist 'anarchists' does not reflect some kind of debate within anarchism, as many of these types like to pretend, but a debate between anarchism and its old enemy capitalism. [...] Equally, given that anarchists and 'anarcho'-capitalists have fundamentally different analyses and goals it is hardly 'sectarian' to point this out".

Davis writes that "Franks asserts without supporting evidence that most major forms of individualist anarchism have been largely anarcho-capitalist in content, and concludes from this premise that most forms of individualism are incompatible with anarchism". Davis argues that "the conclusion is unsuistainable because the premise is false, depending as it does for any validity it might have on the further assumption that anarcho-capitalism is indeed a form of anarchism. If we reject this view, then we must also reject the individual anarchist versus the communal anarchist 'chasm' style of argument that follows from it". Davis maintains that "the ideological core of anarchism is the belief that society can and should be organised without hierarchy and domination. Historically, anarchists have struggles against a wide range of regimes of domination, from capitalism, the state system, patriarchy, heterosexism, and the domination of nature to colonialism, the war system, slavery, fascism, white supremacy, and certain forms of organised religion". According to Davis, "[w]hile these visions range from the predominantly individualistic to the predominantly communitarian, features common to virtually all include an emphasis on self-management and self-regulatory methods of organisation, voluntary association, decentralised society, based on the principle of free association, in which people will manage and govern themselves". Finally, Davis includes a footnote stating that "[i]ndividualist anarchism may plausibly be re regarded as a form of both socialism and anarchism. Whether the individualist anarchists were consistent anarchists (and socialists) is another question entirely. [...] McKay comments as follows: 'any individualist anarchism which support wage labour is inconsistent anarchism. It can easily be made consistent anarchism by applying its own principles consistenly. In contrast 'anarcho'-capitalism rejects so many of the basic, underlying, principles of anarchism [...] that it cannot be made consistent with the ideals of anarchism'".

Historical precedents

Several right-libertarians have discussed historical precedents of what they believe were examples of anarcho-capitalism.

Free cities of medieval Europe

Economist and libertarian scholar Bryan Caplan considers the free cities of medieval Europe as examples of "anarchist" or "nearly anarchistic" societies, further arguing:

One case that has inspired both sorts of anarchists is that of the free cities of medieval Europe. The first weak link in the chain of feudalism, these free cities became Europe's centers of economic development, trade, art, and culture. They provided a haven for runaway serfs, who could often legally gain their freedom if they avoided re-capture for a year and a day. And they offer many examples of how people can form mutual-aid associations for protection, insurance, and community. Of course, left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists take a somewhat different perspective on the free cities: the former emphasize the communitarian and egalitarian concerns of the free cities, while the latter point to the relatively unregulated nature of their markets and the wide range of services (often including defense, security, and legal services) which were provided privately or semi-privately.

Medieval Iceland

19th century interpretation of the Althing in the Icelandic Commonwealth which authors such as David D. Friedman and Roderick Long believe to have some features of anarcho-capitalist society

According to the libertarian theorist David D. Friedman, "[m]edieval Icelandic institutions have several peculiar and interesting characteristics; they might almost have been invented by a mad economist to test the lengths to which market systems could supplant government in its most fundamental functions". While not directly labeling it anarcho-capitalist, Friedman argues that the legal system of the Icelandic Commonwealth comes close to being a real-world anarcho-capitalist legal system. Although noting that there was a single legal system, Friedman argues that enforcement of law was entirely private and highly capitalist, providing some evidence of how such a society would function. Friedman further wrote that "[e]ven where the Icelandic legal system recognized an essentially 'public' offense, it dealt with it by giving some individual (in some cases chosen by lot from those affected) the right to pursue the case and collect the resulting fine, thus fitting it into an essentially private system". Commenting on its political structure, libertarian scholar Roderick T. Long writes:

The legal system's administration, insofar as it had one, lay in the hands of a parliament of about 40 officers whom historians call, however inadequately, "chieftains". This parliament had no budget and no employees; it met only two weeks per year. In addition to their parliamentary role, chieftains were empowered in their own local districts to appoint judges and to keep the peace; this latter job was handled on an essentially fee-for-service basis. The enforcement of judicial decisions was largely a matter of self-help (hence Iceland's reputation as a land of constant private feuding), but those who lacked the might to enforce their rights could sell their court-decreed claims for compensation to someone more powerful, usually a chieftain; hence even the poor and friendless could not be victimized with impunity. The basis of a chieftain's power within the political order was the power he already possessed outside it, in civil society. The office of chieftaincy was private property, and could be bought or sold; hence chieftaincies tended to track private wealth. But wealth alone was not enough. As economic historian Birgir Solvason notes in his masterful study of the period, "just buying the chieftainship was no guarantee of power"; the mere office by itself was "almost worthless" unless the chieftain could "convince some free-farmers to follow him". Chieftains did not hold authority over territorially-defined districts, but competed for clients with other chieftains from the same geographical area.

Long suggests that the system of free contract between farmers and chieftains was threatened when harassment from Norwegian kings that began around AD 1000 forced the people of Iceland to accept Christianity as the national religion, which paved the way for the introduction of a compulsory tax in AD 1096 which was to be paid to the local chieftain who owned a churchstead. This, he believes, gave an unfair advantage to some chieftains who at least in part did not need to rely upon the voluntary support of their clients in order to receive some income. This gradually lead to the concentration of power in the hands of a few big chieftains, enabling them to restrict competition and eventually establish effective monopolies. Although the Commonwealth was politically stable for over three centuries, Long suggests that the downfall of the Icelandic system was brought about "not through having too much privatization, but through having too little". Long writes:

[T]he Free State failed, not through having too much privatization, but through having too little. The tithe, and particularly the portion allotted to churchstead maintenance, represented a monopolistic, non-competitive element in the system. The introduction of the tithe was in turn made possible by yet another non-competitive element: the establishment of an official state church which everyone was legally bound to support. Finally, buying up chieftaincies would have availed little if there had been free entry into the chieftaincy profession; instead, the number of chieftains was set by law, and the creation of new chieftaincies could be approved only by parliament – i.e., by the existing chieftains, who were naturally less than eager to encourage competitors. It is precisely those respects in which the Free State was least privatized and decentralized that led to its downfall – while its more privatized aspects delayed that downfall for three centuries.

American Old West

According to Terry L. Anderson and P. J. Hill, the Old West in the United States in the period of 1830 to 1900 was similar to anarcho-capitalism in that "private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved" and that the common popular perception that the Old West was chaotic with little respect for property rights is incorrect. Since squatters had no claim to western lands under federal law, extra-legal organizations formed to fill the void. Benson explains:

The land clubs and claim associations each adopted their own written contract setting out the laws that provided the means for defining and protecting property rights in the land. They established procedures for registration of land claims, as well as for protection of those claims against outsiders, and for adjudication of internal disputes that arose. The reciprocal arrangements for protection would be maintained only if a member complied with the association's rules and its court's rulings. Anyone who refused would be ostracized. Boycott by a land club meant that an individual had no protection against aggression other than what he could provide himself.

According to Anderson, "[d]efining anarcho-capitalist to mean minimal government with property rights developed from the bottom up, the western frontier was anarcho-capitalistic. People on the frontier invented institutions that fit the resource constraints they faced".

Gaelic Ireland

In his work For a New Liberty, Murray Rothbard has claimed ancient Gaelic Ireland as an example of nearly anarcho-capitalist society. In his depiction, citing the work of Professor Joseph Peden, the basic political unit of ancient Ireland was the tuath, which is portrayed as "a body of persons voluntarily united for socially beneficial purposes" with its territorial claim being limited to "the sum total of the landed properties of its members". Civil disputes were settled by private arbiters called "brehons" and the compensation to be paid to the wronged party was insured through voluntary surety relationships. Commenting on the "kings" of tuaths, Rothbard stated:

The king was elected by the tuath from within a royal kin-group (the derbfine), which carried the hereditary priestly function. Politically, however, the king had strictly limited functions: he was the military leader of the tuath, and he presided over the tuath assemblies. But he could only conduct war or peace negotiations as agent of the assemblies; and he was in no sense sovereign and had no rights of administering justice over tuath members. He could not legislate, and when he himself was party to a lawsuit, he had to submit his case to an independent judicial arbiter.

Law merchant, admiralty law and early common law

Some libertarians have cited law merchant, admiralty law and early common law as examples of anarcho-capitalism.

In his work Power and Market, Rothbard stated:

The law merchant, admiralty law, and much of the common law began to be developed by privately competitive judges, who were sought out by litigants for their expertise in understanding the legal areas involved. The fairs of Champagne and the great marts of international trade in the Middle Ages enjoyed freely competitive courts, and people could patronize those that they deemed most accurate and efficient.

Somalia from 1991 to 2006

Main article: History of Somalia (1991–2006)

Economist Alex Tabarrok claimed that Somalia in its stateless period provided a "unique test of the theory of anarchy", in some aspects near of that espoused by anarcho-capitalists David D. Friedman and Murray Rothbard. Nonetheless, both anarchists and some anarcho-capitalists argue that Somalia was not an anarchist society.

Criticism

Practical questions

Critics often assert that anarcho-capitalism will degenerate into plutocracy or feudalism in practice. They argue that it is a rational economic decision for organizations with the ability to exert coercion (private police, security and military forces) to exploit groups with less power. In this kind of environment, piracy, military imperialism, and slavery can be very profitable. Taken to its logical extreme, this argument assumes that allowing such "security" organizations to exert coercive power will inevitably lead to their becoming a de facto state.

The anarcho-capitalist would respond that in the absence of what they call "victim disarmament" (gun control), such domination would be expensive even for the most powerful, who would instead prefer peaceful trade with all.

Violence on a picket line. Critics of anarcho-capitalism argue that private ownership of capital and the pursuit of profit are exploitative, leading to class divisions and conflict, resulting in a hierarchical society governed by a tyrannical state.

Minarchist critics often argue that the free rider problem makes anarcho-capitalism (and, by extension, any non-public-property political system) fundamentally unworkable in modern societies. They typically argue that there are some vital goods or services — such as civil or military defense, management of common environmental resources, or the provision of public goods such as roads or lighthouses — that cannot be effectively delivered without the backing of a government exercising effective territorial control, and so that "abolishing" the state as anarcho-capitalists demand will either lead to catastrophe or to the eventual re-establishment of monopoly governments as a necessary means to solving the coordination problems that the abolition of the state created. One counter-argument by free market economists, such as Alex Tabarrok, emphasizes the private use of dominant assurance contracts. Some anarcho-capitalists also contend that the "problem" of "public goods" is illusory and its invocation merely misunderstands the potential individual production of such goods.

Robert Nozick argued in Anarchy, State and Utopia that anarcho-capitalism would inevitably transform into a minarchist state, even without violating any of its own non-aggression principles, through the eventual emergence of a single locally-dominant private defense and judicial agency that it is in everyone's interests to align with, because other agencies are unable to effectively compete against the advantages of the agency with majority coverage. Therefore, he felt that, even to the extent that the anarcho-capitalist theory is correct, it results in an unstable system that would not endure in the real world.

Anarchism vs. Private Property

Anarcho-capitalists are the only group to claim the title anarchist while expressly embracing private property and capital. Given this, many anarchists have questioned the legitimacy of the title "anarcho-capitalist," claiming that anarchism is essentially antithetical to capital relations due to their perception that capitalism inhibits individual freedom. Because these forms of anarchism originally arose, in part, to decry capital relations, anarchists of many different factions have a diverse set of arguments against property (which some distinguish from possession). All of these arguments, some of which occupy the space of several books, would thus apply as arguments against anarcho-capitalism. One brief example of such an argument is to consider private property an institution enforced privilege, and so regard individual or collective defense of it to be a form of coercive violence used to oppress non-owners. Anarcho-capitalists, on the other hand, typically argue that a broad classical liberal conception of private property is justified independently of the State, either by utilitarian considerations or by natural law. Thus, they argue that individuals can use force to defend a wide range of private property, and they can cooperate with others or hire a defense agency to defend whatever they can rightfully defend on their own. There are several critical responses and counter-responses to these arguments and others.

Some of these conflicts are the result of debates over fundamental perspectives on issues of social organization, justice systems, property, self-defense, and so on. Many anarchists approach these from a socialist standpoint, whereas anarcho-capitalists consider any kind of collectivist politic as oppression of the political minority by the political majority. In response, collectivist anarchists tend to argue that anarcho-capitalism would involve the oppression of the political majority by the economic minority, and that collectives based on consensus would by definition not be able to oppress a political minority.

Other anarchists, like the individualists, are also wary of collective arguments, but critique anarcho-capitalism on other grounds. For example, some individualists argue from the labor theory of value to conclude that capital enforcement, and thus the institutions of rent and interest, are destructive of free market relations and thus involuntary. Others argue that wage labor is exploitative and thus incompatible with individual freedom. Still others, like the egoists, deny the validity of property claims altogether, arguing that they are mere "spooks," nothing more than figments of the mind that serve no essential purpose.

These debates, in turn, are often seen as fruitless by anarchists who view the "left-right spectrum" as an irreconcilable and artificial abstraction that simply institutionalizes debate about an existing property rights system, as opposed to examining the life-purposes fulfilled by such entities. One such example is "Greens and Libertarians: the Yin and Yang of our political future", in which Dan Sullivan, a Libertarian from the United States, explores common attitudes about monopoly and draws a new bottom-to-top spectrum, claiming that the Green and Libertarian political movements disagreed on the appropriate scale of solutions, but that they generally saw many of the same problems and disdained left-right arguments. The common belief in natural law made it at least possible to debate differences amiably, in a way that the traditional worker-manager divide did not permit.

Is the state the same kind of coercion as defense agenture?

Another related argument, characteristic of opposing anarchist views, is to deny the claim that natural monopolies cannot be coercive. This view holds that capitalist defense agencies and the owners who employ them would constitute de facto monopoly governments in themselves due both to the economic powers they hold and their exclusive right to legitimate defense of those properties they claim. Proponents of this view say that a cooperative group which sets to enforce its claims in such a manner, without accounting for the active involvement of dissenting parties, would amount to the very same monopoly on violence that anarcho-capitalists claim to reject. As such, some hold anarcho-capitalist businesses to be identical to a state in all but name - thus incompatible with anarchism.

Neither Natural Law nor Utility

Criticism of anarcho-capitalism can focus on either of its two variants, or on the elements they share. The Natural Law approach encounters criticism from those who maintain that human beings cannot be considered property, even their own, and/or that private property in general is illegitimate (or immoral), or that private ownership of natural resources is so in particular. Natural Law anarcho-capitalism is also criticized by those who have a different view on what exactly is "natural law", and by those who believe that natural laws or rights do not exist (i.e. that laws and rights are a human invention, a product of human society).

The idea that people have the right to own the result of their work, which anarcho-capitalists champion after their own fashion, is differently-championed by a number of different political movements. For example, many branches of socialism hold that capitalism is unjust precisely because the workers have a right to own the results of their labor and because capitalism denies them this right (since the result of a worker's labor becomes the property of the businessman who hired him). Some critics of capitalism also argue that, while one has the right to own one's own labor, no such right exists in the case of natural resources; and since natural resources are ultimately required in the construction of any object, it can be concluded that all property is illegitimate.

Criticism of the utilitarian anarcho-capitalist approach argues that anarcho-capitalism does not maximize utility; indeed, most critics contend that it would fall far short of that goal. This kind of criticism comes from a variety of different political views and ideologies, and different critics have different views on which other system does or would do a better job of bringing the greatest benefits to the greatest number of people.

Moral questions

Anarcho-capitalists consider a choice or action to be "voluntary", in a moral sense, so long as that choice or action is not influenced by coercion or fraud perpetrated by another individual. They also believe that maintaining private property claims is always defensive so long as that property was obtained in a way they believe to be legitimate. Thus, so long as an employee and employer agree to terms, employment is regarded as voluntary regardless of the circumstances of property restriction surrounding it. Some critics say this ignores constraints on action due to non-human factors, such as the need for food and shelter. Thus, if a person requires employment in order to feed and house himself, it is said that the employer-employee relationship cannot be voluntary, because the employer restricts the use of resources from the employee in such a way that he cannot meet his needs. This is essentially a semantic argument over the term "voluntary". Anarcho-capitalists simply do not use the term in that latter sense in their philosophy, believing that sense to be morally irrelevant. Other critics argue that employment is involuntary because the distributions of wealth that make it necessary for some individuals to serve others by way of contract are supported by the enforcement of coercive private property systems. This is a deeper argument relating to distributive justice. Some of these critics appeal to an end-state theory of justice, while anarcho-capitalists (and propertarians in general) appeal to an entitlement theory. Other critics regard private property itself to either be an aggressive institution or a potentially-aggressive one, rather than necessarily a defensive one, and thus reject claims that relationships based on unequal private property relations could be "voluntary".

Critics also point out that anarcho-capitalist ethics do not entail any positive moral obligation to help others in need (see altruism, the ethical doctrine). Like other right libertarians, anarcho-capitalists may argue that no such moral obligation exists or argue that if a moral obligation to help others does exist that there is an overarching moral obligation to refrain from initiating coercion on individuals to enforce it. Anarcho-capitalists believe that helping others should be a matter of free personal choice, and do not recognise any form of social obligation arising from an individual's presence in a society. They, like all right libertarians, believe in a distinction between negative and positive rights in which negative rights should be recognized as being legitimate, and positive rights rejected. Critics often dismiss this stance as being unethical or selfish, or reject the legitimacy of the distinction between positive and negative rights.

Property ownership rights and their extent are a source of contention among different philosophies. Most see the rights as less absolute than anarcho-capitalists do. The main issues are what kinds of things are valid property, and what constitutes abandonment of property. The first is contentious even among anarcho-capitalists: there is disagreement over the validity of intellectual property^[1] — non-tangible goods that are not economically scarce. Some supporters of private property but critics of anarcho-capitalism may question whether unused land is valid property (Agorism, Georgism, geolibertarianism, individualist anarchism). The second issue is a common objection among socialists who do not believe in absentee ownership. Anarcho-capitalists have strong abandonment criteria — one maintains ownership (more or less) until one agrees to trade or gift it. The critics of this view tend to have weaker abandonment criteria; e.g., one loses ownership (more or less) when one stops personally using it. Also, the idea of original appropriation is anathema to most types of socialism, as well as any philosophy that takes common ownership of land and natural resources as a premise. There are also philosophies that view any ownership claims on land and natural resources as immoral and illegitimate, thus rejecting anarcho-capitalism as a philosophy that takes private ownership of land as a premise.

Utilitarian critics simply argue that anarcho-capitalism does not maximize utility, contending that it would fall far short of that goal. This kind of criticism comes from a variety of different political views and ideologies, and different critics have different views on which other system does or would do a better job of bringing the greatest benefits to the greatest number of people. Anarcho-capitalists consider the non-aggression axiom to be a "side-constraint" on civilized human action^[2], or a necessary condition for human society to be beneficial (Herbert Spencer, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard), and thus should not be used as a trade-off for vague utilitarian values. Another response, implied by Austrian economics, is to note that personal utility is not an additive quantity, therefore establishing that all utilitarian arguments, which invariably rely on aggregation of personal utilities, are logically and mathematically invalid.

State, justice and defense

Anarchists such as Brian Morris argue that anarcho-capitalism does not in fact get rid of the state. He says that anarcho-capitalists "simply replaced the state with private security firms, and can hardly be described as anarchists as the term is normally understood". In "Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy", anarchist Peter Sabatini notes:

Within [Right-Wing] Libertarianism, Rothbard represents a minority perspective that actually argues for the total elimination of the state. However Rothbard's claim as an anarchist is quickly voided when it is shown that he only wants an end to the public state. In its place he allows countless private states, with each person supplying their own police force, army, and law, or else purchasing these services from capitalist vendors. [...] Rothbard sees nothing at all wrong with the amassing of wealth, therefore those with more capital will inevitably have greater coercive force at their disposal, just as they do now.

Similarly, Bob Black argues that an anarcho-capitalist wants to "abolish the state to his own satisfaction by calling it something else". He states that they do not denounce what the state does, they just "object to who's doing it". It has also been argued that anarcho-capitalism dissolves into city states. Some critics argue that anarcho-capitalism turns justice into a commodity as private defense and court firms would favour those who pay more for their services. Randall G. Holcombe argues that defense agencies could form cartels and oppress people without fear of competition. Philosopher Albert Meltzer argued that since anarcho-capitalism promotes the idea of private armies, it actually supports a "limited State". He contends that it "is only possible to conceive of Anarchism which is free, communistic and offering no economic necessity for repression of countering it".

Robert Nozick argues that a competitive legal system would evolve toward a monopoly government—even without violating individuals rights in the process. In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick argues that an anarcho-capitalist society would inevitably transform into a minarchist state through the eventual emergence of a monopolistic private defense and judicial agency that no longer faces competition. He argues that anarcho-capitalism results in an unstable system that would not endure in the real world. While anarcho-capitalists such as Roy Childs and Murray Rothbard have rejected Nozick's arguments, John Jefferson actually advocates Nozick's argument and states that such events would best operate in laissez-faire. Paul Birch argues that legal disputes involving several jurisdictions and different legal systems will be too complex and costly, therefore the largest private protection business in a territory will develop into a natural monopoly. Robert Ellickson states that anarcho-capitalists "by imagining a stable system of competing private associations, ignore both the inevitability of territorial monopolists in governance, and the importance of institutions to constrain those monopolists' abuses".

Rights and freedom

Negative and positive rights are rights that oblige either action (positive rights) or inaction (negative rights). Anarcho-capitalists believe that negative rights should be recognized as legitimate, but positive rights should be rejected as an intrusion. Some critics reject the distinction between positive and negative rights. Peter Marshall also states that the anarcho-capitalist definition of freedom is entirely negative and that it cannot guarantee the positive freedom of individual autonomy and independence.

About anarcho-capitalism, Noam Chomsky says:

Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn't the slightest possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of "free contract" between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.

Economics and property

Anarchists argue that certain capitalist transactions are not voluntary and that maintaining the class structure of a capitalist society requires coercion which violates anarchist principles. anthropologist David Graeber noted his skepticism about anarcho-capitalism along the same lines, arguing:

To be honest I'm pretty skeptical about the idea of anarcho-capitalism. If a-caps imagine a world divided into property-holding employers and property-less wage laborers, but with no systematic coercive mechanisms[;] well, I just can't see how it would work. You always see a-caps saying "if I want to hire someone to pick my tomatoes, how are you going to stop me without using coercion?" Notice how you never see anyone say "if I want to hire myself out to pick someone else's tomatoes, how are you going to stop me?" Historically nobody ever did wage labor like that if they had pretty much [any] other option.

Some critics argue that the anarcho-capitalist concept of voluntary choice ignores constraints due to both human and non-human factors such as the need for food and shelter as well as active restriction of both used and unused resources by those enforcing property claims. If a person requires employment in order to feed and house himself, the employer–employee relationship could be considered involuntary. Another criticism is that employment is involuntary because the economic system that makes it necessary for some individuals to serve others is supported by the enforcement of coercive private property relations. Some philosophies view any ownership claims on land and natural resources as immoral and illegitimate. Objectivist philosopher Harry Binswanger criticizes anarcho-capitalism by arguing that "capitalism requires government", questioning who or what would enforce treaties and contracts.

Some right-libertarian critics of anarcho-capitalism who support the full privatization of capital such as geolibertarians argue that land and the raw materials of nature remain a distinct factor of production and cannot be justly converted to private property because they are not products of human labor. Some socialists, including other market anarchists such as mutualists, adamantly oppose absentee ownership. Anarcho-capitalists have strong abandonment criteria, namely that one maintains ownership (more or less) until one agrees to trade or gift it. Anti-state critics of this view tend to have comparatively weak abandonment criteria. One loses ownership more or less when one stops personally occupying and using it. Furthermore, the idea of perpetually binding original appropriation is anathema to socialism and traditional schools of anarchism as well as to any moral or economic philosophy that takes equal natural rights to land and the Earth's resources as a premise.

Literature

Nonfiction

The following is a partial list of notable nonfiction works discussing anarcho-capitalism.

• Murray Rothbard, founder of anarcho-capitalism:
  • Man, Economy, and State
  • Power and Market
  • The Ethics of Liberty
  • For a New Liberty
• David D. Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom
• Michael Huemer, The Problem of Political Authority
• Linda and Morris Tannehill, The Market for Liberty
• Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography
  • The Economics and Ethics of Private Property
  • A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism
  • Democracy: The God That Failed
• Bruce L. Benson, The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without The State
  • To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice
• Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State
• Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State, Franz Oppenheimer's thesis applied to early United States history
• Herbert Spencer, Social Statics
• George H. Smith, "Justice Entrepreneurship in a Free Market"
• Edward P. Stringham, Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice

Fiction

Anarcho-capitalism has been examined in and influenced by certain works of literature, particularly science fiction. One of the earliest and influential works is Robert A. Heinlein's 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress in which a penal colony on the Moon revolts against the rule of Earth, creating a society based on what the author terms "rational anarchism".

Sharper Security: A Sovereign Security Company Novel, part of a series by Thomas Sewell, is "set a couple of decades into the near-future with a liberty view of society based on individual choice and free market economics" and features a society where individuals hire a security company to protect and insure them from crime. The security companies are sovereign, but customers are free to switch between them. They behave as a combination of insurance/underwriting and para-military police forces. Anarcho-capitalist themes abound, including an exploration of not honoring sovereign immunity, privately owned road systems, a laissez-faire market and competing currencies.

Sandy Sandfort's, Scott Bieser's and Lee Oaks's Webcomic Escape from Terra examines a market anarchy based on Ceres and its interaction with the aggressive statist society Terra.

See also

• Agorism
• Anarchism and capitalism
• Anarcho-capitalism and minarchism
• Consequentialist libertarianism
• Counter-economics
• Creative disruption
• Crypto-anarchism
• Dark Enlightenment
• Definition of anarchism and libertarianism
• Individualist anarchism
• Issues in anarchism
• The Libertarian Forum
• Left-wing market anarchism
• Natural-rights libertarianism
• Privatization in criminal justice
• Propertarianism
• Stateless society
• Voluntaryism

Further reading

• Brown, Susan Love (1997). "The Free Market as Salvation from Government: The Anarcho-Capitalist View". In Carrier, James G., ed. Meanings of the Market: The Free Market in Western Culture (illustrated ed.). Oxford: Berg Publishers. p. 99. ISBN 9781859731499.
• De Leon, David (1979). "The Beginning of Another Cycle". The American as Anarchist: Reflections of Indigenous Radicalism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 117 and 123. ISBN 9780801821264.
• Doherty, Brian (2009). Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. London: Hachette UK. ISBN 9780786731886.
• Stringham, Edward (2007). Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice (illustrated ed.). Transaction Publishers. ISBN 9781412805797.
• Sylvan, Richard (1995). "Anarchism". In Goodin, Robert E.; Pettit, Philip, eds. A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy (reprinted ed.). Hoboken: Wiley. p. 231. ISBN 9780631199519.

External links

• Template:Curlie
• Anarcho-capitalist FAQ
• Anti-state.com – described as the "online center for market anarchism", it has an active forum and archive of theoretical and practical articles from notable anarcho-capitalists
• Freedomain Radio – hosted by Stefan Molyneux, it discusses anarcho-capitalism topics
• The Libertarian Standard – website of Austrian and Rothbardian-influenced libertarians
• LewRockwell.com – website run by Lew Rockwell
• Mises Institute – research and educational center of classical liberalism, including anarcho-capitalism, Austrian School of economics and American libertarian political theory
• Property and Freedom Society – international anarcho-capitalist society
• Strike The Root – anarcho-capitalist website featuring essays, news and a forum