Anarcho-capitalism

Anarcho-capitalism, sometimes referred to as "market anarchism" or "right-anarchism" [1], is a branch of libertarian political philosophy which calls for a society without state or other public government, and a form of free market where private property exists (see capitalism). Anarcho-capitalists favor a completely private system of law and order based on explicit contract.

The difference between anarcho-capitalists and other libertarians is largely one of degree. Minarchist libertarians wish to reduce the size and intrusiveness of the state, but unlike anarcho-capitalists, retain vital functions that they believe the private sector cannot adequately provide, like police, courts and the military. Anarcho-capitalists believe these should be privately owned, operated and funded.

Anarcho-capitalists differ from left anarchists in that they do not oppose private property (including private ownership of the means of production), they believe that contractual relationships between employers and employees are voluntary (including profit arrangements), and they are not motivated by egalitarian concerns. According to "mainstream" anarchists, the terms anarcho-capitalist and anarcho-capitalism are contradictions, because they claim capitalism is inherentially hierarchical and as such is opposed to anarchism. Anarcho-capitalists reject mainstream anarchism.

Anarcho-capitalism has also been called anti-state capitalism, neo-classical liberalism, anarcho-liberalism, voluntaryism, and, critically, free-market fundamentalism.

Philosophy

Anarcho-capitalists oppose coercion, which they (like other libertarians) commonly define as the act of preventing one from having the willful use of their person or property by employing physical force, the threat of such, or fraud. Any action that is made of one's own free will (i.e., not as a result of force or fraud) is considered by anarcho-capitalists to be "voluntary".

Private property and the idea of self-ownership are central to anarcho-capitalism. As a rule, anarcho-capitalists believe that property is not to be recognized as being legitimately-obtained unless it has been acquired through trade or gift. Anarcho-capitalists recognize that there are few parcels of land left on Earth that have not been coerced from their original possessors (some who may have staked claims millions of years ago), but they do not believe that the past can be remedied by forcefully taking the property from someone today who has acquired it in a consensual transaction.

Anarcho-capitalism opposes the syndicalist, socialist, and communist traditions of anarchism on many foundational issues, one of which is the issue of private property. While left-leaning types of anarchism have historically rejected private property as an illegitimate form of "authority," anarcho-capitalists embrace it as an essential element of individual liberty. Anarcho-capitalists, like other capitalists, have no goals of equal wealth distribution and support allowing any individual to amass as much wealth as they are able to acquire or produce. This allowance is supported without condition — wealth may be accumulated even if the enforcement of property rights denies others access to resources they need to survive (see TANSTAAFL). However, they do not see acquiring wealth through trade as a zero-sum game. Anarcho-capitalists believe that becoming wealthy in a capitalist system generally requires an individual to provide valuable goods and services for society, therefore contributing to its collective wealth.

Anarcho-capitalists hold that a modern territorial state is inherently coercive. For example, the United States maintains that it has co-ownership of the bodies and possessions of its citizens (i.e., the US government can punish you for harming yourself, and that punishment can involve seizure of your property). Another significant example is that the United States, like any other country, does not allow its citizens to truly own land (see Allodial title).

Anarcho-capitalists therefore oppose the existence of states and argue that markets and individuals should operate free and clear of such interference. If individual liberty is to be defended, anarcho-capitalists insist that it be in the form of an explicitly voluntary organization, rather than a public institution that relies on taxation (which anarcho-capitalists consider theft) to fund its operations. Individuals unable to pay for protection in such a system are left to the auspices of charity.

Contracts, explicitly agreed to, are the form of private law that would pervade such a society. It is difficult to predict precisely what sort of society anarcho-capitalism would produce, and the particulars are disputed both among anarcho-capitalists and between anarcho-capitalists and their critics. However, anarcho-capitalists (and many notable economists) maintain that whatever the specifics are, a society that is driven solely by a free market would be entirely self-regulating. Whether that self-regulation is "humane" or not is a sore point among many critics.

There is some dispute among anarcho-capitalists as to the dividing line between "self-defense" and "initiation of force". To be somewhat metaphorical: the right to beat an enemy back to the borders of your territory is universally accepted, but some people that consider themselves anarcho-capitalist seek to justify counterattack and invading that enemy's territory as a form of punishment for the original use of force. In order to be self-consistent, anarcho-capitalism can only support this justification if the two combatants in this metaphor previously agreed to the terms of battle, and if the terms included those particular uses of force. Retributive justice (a kind of 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. The thing to remember about such arguments is that an individual has an unlimited right to contract, and can be held to terms of death, torture, incarceration, exile, slavery, or stripping of property if they willingly sign a contract to that effect.

Some note that anarcho-capitalism would allow individuals to choose between radically different governments and sub-economies, since anarcho-capitalism would be panarchic. This illustrates the fundamental difference of implementation between capitalism and communism. A commune can exist within an anarcho-capitalist world. People may group together and voluntarily live in a privately owned democracy, or republic, or even a monarchy, if they so choose. Anarcho-capitalism is capable of encompassing any form of lifestyle, provided the lifestyle does not involve initiating force or fraud on another person.

Classical liberal roots

Classical liberals have long distrusted states and called to limit government power to a minimum. See Liberalism for the history of liberal thought. In the 18th century, liberal revolutionaries in Britain and America had opposed statism without grounding it in theory, while some French economists had theorized it without endorsing it. In the 19th century, a group of classical liberals first explicitly argued to abolish monopoly government, the first being Gustave de Molinari in 1849. He and this new type of anti-state liberal grounded their reasoning on liberal ideals: individual liberty, private property, and natural law.

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, Auberon Herbert, and Albert Jay Nock.

In the 1950s, Austrian School economists such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek heavily influenced a new generation of anti-state liberals. Mises's student Murray Rothbard worked to fuse the insights of the Austrian School with classical natural law theory, bringing together European and American traditions and coining the term anarcho-capitalism. Since the 1950s, anarcho-capitalists have been an important if minority part of the libertarian capitalist movement in the US and have been consistent defenders of the liberal tradition.

Influence of American individualist anarchism

The philosophy of some noted American individualist anarchists have been significantly influential in anarcho-capitalists' philosophy. Some of the most noteable figures in this respect include Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker. While these figures do not support every principle that anarcho-capitalists uphold, there are some significant areas of agreement. Of particular importance are the ideas of "self-ownership" and a right to own the product of one's labor (though anarcho-capitalists tend not to agree with individualist anarchists' opposition to profiting from wage labor). These individualists opposed collectivist conceptions of property, in favor of individual private property.

Spooner, in Constitutional law, Relative to Credit, Currency, and Banking supports a "right to acquire property...as one of the natural, inherent, inalienable rights of men – one that is not surrendered to government – one which government has no power to infringe – one which government is bound to respect and secure." In Poverty: Its Illegal Causes and Cure, Spooner supports the freedom of individuals to charge interest for loans free of government regulation. There he says that "All legislative restraints upon the rate of interest, are, therefore,nothing less than arbitrary and tyrannical restraints upon a man's natural capacity amid natural right to hire capital, upon which to bestow his labor." Spooner was staunchly against government interference in private economic matters, and he was particularly vocal in opposing collusion between banks and government. He ran a successful business for a short time called the "American Letter Mail Company" in effort to privatize mail delivery and break the government's coercive monopoly, illustrating his belief in entrepreneurship and that "every man be his own employer or work for himself in a direct way, since working for another resulted in a portion being diverted to the employer." In an advertisement for his mail service he stated support of the right to "free competition."

Benjamin Tucker, though calling himself a "socialist" rejects the modern socialist idea of common ownership of land. Rather than having to do with collective ownership of resources, as it is commonly defined today, he says the foundational claim of socialim is "that labor should be put in possession of its own" (see definitions of socialism). He pronounces, in Liberty that anarchists deny the legitimacy of a collectivist doctrine: "That there is an entity known as the community which is the rightful owner of all land, Anarchists deny. I ...maintain that the community is a non-entity, that it has no existence, and is simply a combination of individuals having no prerogatives beyond those of the individuals themselves." However, Tucker says that "Anarchism undertakes to protect no titles except such as are based on actual occupancy and use" --a position taken by only a minority of anarcho-capitalists. Tucker supports private ownership of all wealth produced by an individual, but inconsistent with proponents of capitalism, claims that an employer retaining part of that produce as profit is unjustified.

Though these individualists saw an employer's profiting from the labor of an employee as exploitative or "invasive," they would not coercively intervene in a voluntary wage labor employer/employee relationship where profit is retained by the "capitalist," prefering instead to set up alternate forms of business known as "mutualism" where workers retain gain the full value of their production. Individualist Clarence L. Swartz says in What is Mutualism?: "Will the movement prohibit or abolish private property? If it does, it is an enemy of liberty." This is seen by some as, while not in agreement with anarcho-capitalism, compatible with its overarching principles, since anyone who wished could organize mutualist enterprises in an anarcho-capitalist system and engage in free competition. This point about a peaceful coexistence of mutualism and anarcho-capitalism is often made by modern individualist anarchist Wendy McElroy. These individualists also advocated "free banking" where any individual or group of individuals would be allowed to lend money for interest and enter into competition with each other (though advocating a mutualist model for these ventures). This opposition to a "banking monopoly" sits squarely with the anarcho-capitalist advocacy of unrestricted free enterprise.

Early anarcho-capitalists were influenced by individualist critiques of the State and their arguments for the right to ignore or withdraw from it (as, for example, in Lysander Spooner's "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority," which was widely reprinted in early anarcho-capitalist journals), and they adopted individualist ethical arguments against the use of collectivist reasoning to defend State power or any other use of coercion to subordinate the individual to any external authority claiming to act on behalf of collective interests. Like modern anarcho-capitalists, 19th century individualist anarchists described their economic and political positions as a radicalization of the classical liberal defense of free markets and civil society — Tucker, for example, described anarchism (on his individualist conception) as "consistent Manchesterism" [2] and anarchists as "unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats" [3].

Anarcho-capitalism, corporations, and contracts

Anarcho-capitalists believe that private business, born out of voluntary contract, is the most moral and efficient way to conduct human affairs. However, they are critical of any entity that relies on government to exist. Thus, they do not support corporations as they are currently supported by governments (i.e., as an entity of law, with legal protections). Anarcho-capitalists believe that government protection of corporations is illegitimate.

To anarcho-capitalists, contracts are a particular case of voluntary exchange of property. They believe that a private agreement between two or more parties does not place a duty on anyone else and that, rather, private individuals have every right to choose for themselves whether or not to smile upon the arrangements that particular consenting adults make. Thus, the owner of an insurance company that disagrees with same-sex marriages is not forced to extend benefits to same-sex partners, whereas the owner of another insurance company may extend or deny benefits to any person that he wishes. Activists are free to boycott one provider and support another. The same principle applies to all providers of goods and services, as well as employers and employees. Anarcho-capitalists argue that no restrictions should be imposed on their choice of customers, business partners, employees, etc. An employer with racist views should be allowed to hire people based on racial standards, and a shopkeeper with very strong views against certain religions should be allowed to refuse the business of people with those religious views.

Anarcho-capitalists have very widely differing social views. As such, they tend to disagree about what social arrangements are "best". What they don't disagree about is what social arrangements ought to be "legal" — assuming that a social system does not interfere with the property claims of others, that system should be allowed to exist among the consentual in a free society. Most anarcho-capitalists expect that different communities will tend to coalesce around different social norms and attitudes, which would make some arrangements more common in a locale than others. The only important political issue, however, is that people are free from the threats of force and fraud no matter which community they live in, and that they can freely choose where to live. As long as that is the case, there may be many arguments about fairness or virtue, but there are no arguments of legality.

Anarcho-capitalism and violence

Anarcho-capitalists, like classical liberals in general, argue that the use of violence should be restricted to defense of property and self-defense of person. A few anarcho-capitalists are outright pacifists, but most defend the right to use force in defense of person or property, and many argue that the defensive use of force may include revolutionary violence against tyrannical regimes or even war against dangerous imperialist or terrorist foreign states. However, though they might approve of violence as legitimate in certain cases, and though they may concede that governments (having monopolized the means of violence) are the ones who currently are to enact this violence; they believe that governments should yield, so that individuals might organize freely to better handle such situations.

One prominent example of mixed feelings involving war is the admiration that many anarcho-capitalists express for the American Revolution. Many anarcho-capitalists see the American Revolution as the legitimate act of individuals working together to fight against tyrannical restrictions of their liberties. But these same people also sharply criticize the Revolutionaries for the means used — taxes, conscription, inflationary money — and the inadequacy of the result: a government.

However, whether or not a given group of anarcho-capitalists thinks that forceful resistance and revolutionary violence are legitimate, the vast majority of anarcho-capitalists think that it is more reasonable to create change by disseminating opinions and spreading facts. The use of force is seen as a dangerous tool at best, and violent insurrection is usually seen as a last resort. Some anarcho-capitalists are not happy with either violence or soap-boxing as ways to end statism, and instead are trying to found private communities (and thus lead by example) and essentially ignore government until it goes away.

Criticisms of anarcho-capitalism

(Many criticisms of anarcho-capitalism apply more broadly to all libertarians, and can be found in the Libertarianism article.)

Anarcho-capitalism being a radical development of liberalism, the same general arguments for and against liberalism, laissez-faire capitalism and capitalism usually apply, except as regards the justice system, in which anarcho-capitalism is more specific and differs from the classical liberal tradition.

Critics often accuse it of reducing to plutocracy or feudalism in practice. The rational economic decision for some of the protection organizations with strong military power would be to exploit organizations with weak military power. Piracy, military imperialism, and slavery can be very profitable.

The idea that people have the right to own the result of their work is differently-championed by a number of political movements. For example, many branches of socialism hold that capitalism is unjust because capitalism denies workers the right to own the results of their labor (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.

Many opponents of anarcho-capitalism maintain that human beings cannot be considered property (even their own), that private property in general is illegitimate (or immoral), and that private ownership of natural resources is especially illegitimate. 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).

Some critics argue that anarcho-capitalism does not maximize utility; indeed, they 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.

Many anarchists reject all forms of hierarchy as coercive (which conflicts with anarcho-capitalism). They believe ownership is inherently unjust, and that it guarantees a hierarchy by its very nature.

One of the most common criticisms of anarcho-capitalism is that free market defense and security companies will turn into governments (because they have all the firepower).

Minarchist and statist critics often argue that the free rider problem makes anarcho-capitalism (and, by extension, any anti-statist 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.

Conflicts with anarchism

Anarcho-capitalism opposes the syndicalist, socialist, feminist, green, primitivist, communist, situationist, autonomist, post-left, libertarian municipalist, social ecologist, councilist, and most other traditions within anarchism. Anarchists and other critics of anarcho-capitalism note that it does not seek to abolish power relations that stem from the enforcement of private property, and point out that anarcho-capitalists endorse economic hierarchy. Anarcho-capitalists, as well as some individualist anarchists maintain that private property is essential for liberty. All of the original anarchists, including Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michael Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Benjamin Tucker, and Rudolf Rocker opposed the defining practices of capitalism, though the American school supported a right to private property.

There is dispute as to whether anarcho-capitalism is a "successor" of American individualist anarchism, the only anarchist tradition they do not oppose in entirety — as exemplified by 19th century individualists such as Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner. The anarcho-capitalist claim to individualist tradition is rejected by many individualist anarchists. Though Tucker rejected the idea of common ownership of land in support of private property, he did explicitly denounce capitalism. Spooner, who, while supporting private ownership of property, business, "free competition," and opposing government intervention in the economy (including restrictions on interest rates), did oppose some significant aspects of capitalism. Contemporary individualist anarchists believe that explicit support for capitalism places one outside of the individualist anarchist tradition.

Other anarchists hold that anarcho-capitalists have repudiated essential components of the historical tradition of anarchism — in particular, individualist anarchism, including not only specific conclusions about practices such as interest, but also underlying premises such as the labor theory of value. However, anarcho-capitalism has drawn much from the 19th century individualists — such as the critique of collectivist justifications for force, the identification of organized coercion as a primary cause of social ills, and the rejection of violence for any purpose other than defense against invasion — and argue that their differences with 19th individualists are corrections within a tradition rather than a break from the individualist tradition.

Anarcho-capitalists believe that some of the above difference of opinion may be understood as terminological: Some individualist anarchists, such as Tucker, referred to themselves as "socialists". However, Tucker says that the foundational claim of socialism was "that labor should be put in possession of its own" — differing from modern definitions of socialism that revolve around opposition to private property. Tucker, Spooner, and others supported a right to private property. Tucker asserts that anyone who opposes private property is not an anarchist. In The New Freewoman, November 15th, 1913: "Anarchism is a word without meaning, unless it includes the liberty of the individual to control his product or whatever his product has brought him through exchange in a free market --that is, private property. Whoever denies private property is of necessity an Archist."

Also, anarcho-capitalists typically use the word "capitalism" to mean the free market, i.e., an economic order based entirely on voluntary association, free of intervention from the State, per the common modern definition. Socialist anarchists, on the other hand, typically use "capitalism" to identify a system of specific economic practices prevalent in historical and modern markets. One can be an advocate of capitalism in the first sense without being an advocate of capitalism in the second sense; indeed, some anarcho-capitalists argue that government intervention creates many problems in the "capitalist" marketplace today.

Crypto-anarchism

The development of the internet and cryptographic methods raises a new possibility for unregulated trades on the internet (or 'in cyberspace') called crypto-anarchism. Pseudonymous communication allows services, especially information services (e.g. consulting, translation, programming, etc.), to be provided without revealing the physical identity of the person providing a service in exchange for anonymous electronic money. Also available are private money alternatives [4]. As laws can not be enforced without knowing the identity of people, the relevant laws become irrelevant. As even the nationality of the individuals is unknown, it is not even clear which country's laws will be ignored. Also, in the case of private money, taxation becomes problematic. In a sense, 'cyberspace' can be regarded as an independent territory. Crypto-anarchism is still in its infancy, and it is not clear how closely it will resemble libertarianism, anarchism, or anarcho-capitalism.

Anarcho-capitalist literature

External links

Anarcho-capitalism websites

• Anarchism.Net sells books
• Ancapistan Network comes with an ancap start-up, articles and links
• Anti-State.com[5], has one of the more active forums and infrequent theoretical and practical articles.
• Bertrand Lemennicier, a renowned French anarcho-capitalist economist and his links (English and French)
• Cuthhyra is a resource promoting anarcho-capitalism through essays, humour, quotes, links and more.
• Bryan Caplan's "Anarchism Theory FAQ" is written from the perspective of an anarcho-capitalist.
• LewRockwell.com is a widely read anarcho-capitalist news site with a Catholic slant.
• Panarchy, another way of considering things that is considered by some ultimately equivalent to anarcho-capitalism.
• David Hart's Gustave De Molinari And The Anti-Statist Liberal Tradition
• Liberalia, an anarcho-capitalist site
• The contrast of anarcho-capitalist and individualist anarchism is a matter of some debate. For one anarcho-capitalist view, see A Brief Introduction to Philosophical Anarchism.
• Samizdata is a group blog by "...a varied group [ that includes ] wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists"
• Strike The Root is an anarcho-capitalist news site with an atheistic slant.
• The Statrix is an anarcho-capitalist blog themed on the movie The Matrix
• Why I Call Myself A Free Market Anarchist And Why I Am One by Brian Miklethwait
• Libertari.org Italian libertarian/anarcho-capitalist site

Opposing views

• Section F of the Anarchist FAQ is an anarchist critique of anarcho-capitalism.
• Jeff Draughn's Between Anarchism and Libertarianism: Defining a New Movement is an anarchist critique of anarcho-capitalism
• The "Critiques Of Libertarianism" website contains critiques of both libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism.
• Within libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism is contrasted with minarchism. Criticisms of anarcho-capitalism by minarchists include Robert J. Binidotto's The Contradiction in Anarchism, and Paul Birch's A Fatal Instability in Anarcho-Capitalism? and Anarcho-Capitalism Dissolves into City States.
• Fake Anarchists and Libertarians
• Collection of critical articles

Other

• Anarchy and Invention: How Does Somalia's Private Sector Cope Without Government? (PDF version) Something resembling rudimentary anarcho-capitalism is developing organically in Somalia HTML version
• Telecoms thriving in lawless Somalia Somali telecommunications infrastructure without government.
• American Anarchism 19th Century Individualist Anarchists influence on Anarcho-Capitalism
• American Liberal-Anarchism from The Conquest of Power, by Albert Weisbord
• The Philosophy of Liberty (animated)

See also

• anarchism
• Anarchist law
• Anarcho-capitalist terminology and symbolism
• classical liberalism
• Free market
• individualist anarchism
• Libertatia
• libertarianism
• panarchism
• statism