Anarcho-capitalism is a political philosophy
and school of anarchist thought that advocates
the elimination of centralized state dictum
in favor of self-ownership, private property
and free markets. Anarcho-capitalists hold
that in the absence of statute (law by arbitrary
autocratic decrees, or bureaucratic legislation
swayed by transitory political special interest
groups), society tends to contractually self-regulate
and civilize through the spontaneous and organic
discipline of the free market (in what its
proponents describe as a "voluntary society").In
an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement,
courts and all other security services would
be operated by privately funded competitors
selected by consumers rather than centrally
through confiscatory taxation. Money, along
with all other goods and services, would be
privately and competitively provided in an
open market. Personal and economic activities
under anarcho-capitalism would therefore be
regulated by victim-based dispute resolution
organizations under tort and contract law,
rather than by statute through centrally determined
punishment under political monopolies, which
tend to become corrupt in proportion to their
monopolization. Business regulations, such
as corporate standards, public relations,
product labels, rules for consumer protection,
ethics, and labor relations would be regulated
voluntarily via the use of competitive trade
associations, professional societies, and
standards bodies; this would, in theory, establish
market-recourse for businesses' decisions
and allow the market to communicate effectively
with businesses by the use of consumer unions,
instead of centralized regulatory mandates
for companies imposed by the state, which
anarcho-capitalists and other libertarians
argue is inefficient due to regulatory capture.Various
theorists have espoused legal philosophies
similar to anarcho-capitalism. However, the
first person to use the term was Murray Rothbard
who, in the mid-20th century, synthesized
elements from the Austrian School of economics,
classical liberalism and 19th-century American
individualist anarchists Lysander Spooner
and Benjamin Tucker (while rejecting their
labor theory of value and the norms they derived
from it). A Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist
society would operate under a mutually agreed-upon
libertarian "legal code which would be generally
accepted, and which the courts would pledge
themselves to follow". This pact would recognize
self-ownership, property, contracts, and tort
law, in keeping with the universal non-aggression
principle (NAP).
Anarcho-capitalists are distinguished from
minarchists, who advocate a small Jeffersonian
night-watchman state limited to protecting
individuals and their properties from foreign
and domestic aggression; and from other anarchists
who seek to prohibit or regulate the accumulation
of private property and the flow of capital.
== Philosophy ==
=== Ethics ===
Anarcho-capitalists argue for a society based
on the voluntary trade of private property
and services (in sum, all relationships not
caused by threats or violence, including exchanges
of money, consumer goods, land and capital
goods) in order to minimize conflict while
maximizing individual liberty and prosperity.
However, they also recognize charity and communal
arrangements as part of the same voluntary
ethic. 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 them, what is important is that it is
acquired and transferred without help or hindrance
from the compulsory state. Anarcho-capitalist
libertarians 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
see free market capitalism as the basis for
a free and prosperous society. Murray Rothbard
said 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 (Rothbard is credited with coining
the term "anarcho-capitalism"). "Capitalism",
as anarcho-capitalists employ the term, is
not to be confused with state monopoly capitalism,
crony capitalism, corporatism, or contemporary
mixed economies, wherein market incentives
and disincentives may be altered by state
action. They therefore reject the state, seeing
it as an entity which steals property (through
taxation and expropriation), initiates aggression,
has a compulsory monopoly on the use of force,
uses its coercive powers to benefit some businesses
and individuals at the expense of others,
creates artificial monopolies, restricts trade
and restricts personal freedoms via drug laws,
compulsory education, conscription, laws on
food and morality and the like.
Many anarchists view capitalism as an inherently
authoritarian and hierarchical system and
seek the expropriation of private property.
There is disagreement between these left anarchists
and laissez-faire 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 such
expropriation is counterproductive to order
and would require a state. On the Nolan chart,
anarcho-capitalists are located at the extreme
edge of the libertarian quadrant since they
reject state involvement in both economic
and personal affairs.Anarcho-capitalists argue
that the state relies on initiating force
because force can be used against those who
have not stolen private property, vandalized
private property, assaulted anyone, or committed
fraud. Many also argue that subsidized monopolies
tend to be corrupt and inefficient. Murray
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 bases his philosophy on natural law
grounds and also provides economic explanations
of why he thinks anarcho-capitalism is preferable
on pragmatic grounds as well. David D. Friedman
says he is not an absolutist rights theorist,
but is also "not a utilitarian". However,
he does believe 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
instead uses "argumentation ethics" for his
foundation of "private property anarchism",
which is closer to Rothbard's natural law
approach: 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.
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: 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 nonaggression
axiom can be said to be a prohibition against
the initiation of force, or the threat of
force, against persons (i.e. direct violence,
assault, murder) or property (i.e. 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 most people involved
in 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, anarcho-capitalists
reject 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 legal aggression—an entity
that inherently violates the central axiom
of libertarianism.Some anarcho-capitalists,
such as Rothbard, accept the nonaggression
axiom on an intrinsic moral or natural law
basis. It is in terms of the non-aggression
principle that Rothbard defined anarchism,
"a system which provides no legal sanction
for such aggression ['against person and property']";
and said 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
libertarian journal New Banner, Rothbard said
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: 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.
This is the root of anarcho-capitalist property
rights and where they differ from collectivist
forms of anarchism such as anarcho-communism,
where the means of production are controlled
by the whole community and the product of
labor is collectivized in a pool of goods
and distributed "according to need" (which
is to be determined and enforced collectively).
Anarcho-capitalists advocate individual or
joint (i.e. private) ownership of the means
of production and the product of labor regardless
of what the individual "needs" or does not
"need". As Rothbard says, "if every man has
the right to own his own body and if he must
use and transform material natural objects
in order to survive, then he has the right
to own the product that he has made". After
property is transformed through labor, it
may then only exchange hands legitimately
by trade or gift—forced transfers are considered
illegitimate. 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. 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
argues 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, in terms of the ownership of land
anarcho-capitalists recognize that 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
says: 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.
Rothbard says in Justice and Property Right
that "any identifiable owner (the original
victim of theft or his heir) must be accorded
his property". In the case of slavery, Rothbard
says 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". He believes
slaves rightfully own any land they were forced
to work on under the "homestead principle".
If property is held by the state, Rothbard
advocates its confiscation and return to the
private sector, saying that "any property
in the hands of the State is in the hands
of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly
as possible". For example, he proposes that
state universities be seized by the students
and faculty under the homestead principle.
Rothbard also supports expropriation of nominally
"private property" if it is the result of
state-initiated force, such as businesses
who receive grants and subsidies. He proposes
that businesses who receive at least 50% of
their funding from the state be confiscated
by the workers. He says: "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".
Likewise, Karl Hess says 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:
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 ====
Although anarcho-capitalists assert a right
to private property, some anarcho-capitalists
also point out that common, i.e. community,
property can exist by right in an anarcho-capitalist
system. Just as an individual comes to own
that which was unowned by mixing his labor
with it or using it regularly, a whole community
or society can come to own a thing in common
by mixing their labor with it collectively,
meaning that no individual may appropriate
it as his own. This may apply to roads, parks,
rivers and portions of oceans. Anarchist theorist
Roderick T. Long gives the following example:
Consider a village near a lake. It is common
for the villagers to walk down to the lake
to go fishing. In the early days of the community
it's hard to get to the lake because of all
the bushes and fallen branches in the way.
But over time the way is cleared and a path
forms – not through any coordinated efforts,
but simply as a result of all the individuals
walking by that way day after day. The cleared
path is the product of labor – not any individual's
labor, but all of them together. If one villager
decided to take advantage of the now-created
path by setting up a gate and charging tolls,
he would be violating the collective property
right that the villagers together have earned.
Nevertheless, since property that is owned
collectively tends to lose the level of accountability
found in individual ownership to the extent
of the number of owners—and make consensus
regarding property use and maintenance decisions
proportionately less likely—anarcho-capitalists
generally distrust and seek to avoid intentional
communal arrangements. Privatization, decentralization
and individualization are often anarcho-capitalist
goals. However, in some cases they not only
provide a challenge, but are considered next
to impossible. Established ocean routes, for
example, are generally seen as unavailable
for private appropriation.
Anarcho-capitalists tend to concur with free
market environmentalists regarding the environmentally
destructive tendencies of the state and other
communal arrangements. Air, water and land
pollution, for example, are seen as the result
of collectivization of ownership. Central
governments generally strike down individual
or class action censure of polluters in order
to benefit "the many" and legal or economic
subsidy of heavy industry is justified by
many politicians for job creation within a
political territory.
=== Economics ===
The Austrian School of economics argued against
the viability of socialism and centrally planned
economic policy. Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, a
colleague of Austrian school founder Carl
Menger, wrote one of the first critiques of
socialism in his treatise The Exploitation
Theory of Socialism-Communism. Later, Friedrich
von Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom (1944),
which states that a command economy lacks
the information function of market prices
and that central authority over the economy
leads to totalitarianism. Another Austrian
economist, Ludwig von Mises, wrote Human Action,
an early exposition of the method he called
praxeology.
Rothbard attempted to meld Austrian economics
with classical liberalism and individualist
anarchism. He wrote his first paper advocating
"private property anarchism" in 1949 and later
came up with the alternative name "anarcho-capitalism".
He was probably the first to use "libertarian"
in its current United States pro-capitalist
sense. His academic training was in economics,
but his writings also refer to history and
political philosophy. When young, he considered
himself part of the Old Right, an anti-statist
and anti-interventionist branch of the Republican
Party. In the late 1950s, he was briefly involved
with Ayn Rand, but later had a falling-out.
When interventionist Cold Warriors of the
National Review, such as William F. Buckley
Jr., gained influence in the Republican Party
in the 1950s, Rothbard quit that group and
briefly associated himself with left-wing
antiwar groups. He believed that the Cold
Warriors were more indebted in theory to the
left and imperialist progressives, especially
with respect to Trotskyist theory. Rothbard
opposed the founding of the Libertarian Party,
but joined in 1973 and became one of its leading
activists.
=== Contractual society ===
The society envisioned by anarcho-capitalists
has been called the "contractual society"—i.e.
"a society based purely on voluntary action,
entirely unhampered by violence or threats
of violence" in which anarcho-capitalists
assert the system relies on voluntary agreements
(contracts) between individuals as the legal
framework. It is difficult to predict precisely
what the particulars of this society will
look like because of the details and complexities
of contracts.
One particular ramification is that transfer
of property and services must be considered
voluntarily on the part of both parties. No
external entities can force an individual
to accept or deny a particular transaction.
An employer might offer insurance and death
benefits to same-sex couples—another might
refuse to recognize any union outside his
or her own faith. Individuals are free to
enter into or reject contractual agreements
as they see fit.
Rothbard points out that corporations would
exist in a free society as they are simply
the pooling of capital. He says limited liability
for corporations could also exist through
contract: "Corporations are not at all monopolistic
privileges; they are free associations of
individuals pooling their capital. On the
purely free market, such 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 himself 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
himself argues that the right to contract
is based in inalienable human rights and therefore
any contract that implicitly violates those
rights can be voided at will and which would,
for instance, prevent a person from permanently
selling himself or herself into unindentured
slavery. 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. Unlike anarcho-communists,
anarcho-capitalists support the liberty of
individuals to be self-employed or to contract
to be employees of others, whichever they
prefer and the freedom to pay and receive
wages. Some anarcho-capitalists prefer to
see self-employment prevail over wage labor.
For example, 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". Others,
such as Rothbard, do not express a preference
either way but justify employment as a natural
occurrence in a free market that is not immoral
in any way.
=== 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 and
contract law) 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.
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, 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: 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 coercive taxation, or by cooperative self-help
by groups of individuals.Subrogation, which
allows remuneration for losses and damages
to be funded by the aggressors, reduces insurance
costs and could operate as a business in itself—converting
victims from paying customers into direct
beneficiaries. The concept of restitution
transfer and recoupment (RTR) has been explored
by freenation theorist John Frederic Kosanke.
RTR agencies would employ bonding agencies,
private investigators, private dispute resolution
organizations and private aggressor containment
agencies as required. Instead of having to
pay for restitution, victims sell restitution
rights to the RTR agencies. This arrangement
can be compared to the contractual nature
of the Goðorð system employed in the Icelandic
Commonwealth by competing chieftains.
Edward Stringham argues that private adjudication
of disputes could enable the market to internalize
externalities and provide services that customers
desire.
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". The
Tannehills 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. 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.One difficult application of defensive
aggression is the act of revolutionary violence
(including anarcho-capitalist revolution)
against tyrannical regimes. Many anarcho-capitalists
admire the American Revolution as the legitimate
act of individuals working together to fight
against tyrannical restrictions of their liberties.
In fact, according to Rothbard, 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.
== Branches of anarcho-capitalism ==
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 Rothbard) holds that a universal
system of rights can be derived from natural
law. Some other anarcho-capitalists do not
rely upon the idea of natural rights, but
instead present economic justifications for
a free-market capitalist society. Such a 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 openly applies the theory
to both market and government institutions
(see government failure) to compare the net
result, nor has he been inclined to attack
economic efficiency as a normative benchmark.Kosanke
sees such a debate as irrelevant since in
the absence of statutory law the non-aggression
principle (NAP) is naturally enforced because
individuals are automatically held accountable
for their actions via tort and contract law.
Communities of sovereign individuals naturally
expel aggressors in the same way that ethical
business practices are naturally required
among competing businesses that are subject
to the discipline of the marketplace. For
him, 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.
== Anarcho-capitalism and other anarchist
schools ==
In both its collectivist and individualist
forms, anarchism is usually considered a radical
left-wing and anti-capitalist ideology that
promotes socialist economic theories such
as communism, syndicalism and mutualism. These
anarchists believe capitalism is incompatible
with social and economic equality and therefore
do not recognize anarcho-capitalism as an
anarchist school of thought. In particular,
they 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.Murray Rothbard argues that the capitalist
system of today is indeed not properly anarchistic
because it so often colludes with the state.
According to Rothbard, "what Marx and later
writers have done is to lump together two
extremely different and even contradictory
concepts and actions under the same portmanteau
term. These two contradictory concepts are
what I would call 'free-market capitalism'
on the one hand, and 'state capitalism' on
the other". "The difference between free-market
capitalism and state capitalism", writes Rothbard,
"is precisely the difference between, on the
one hand, peaceful, voluntary exchange, and
on the other, violent expropriation". He continues:
"State capitalism inevitably creates all sorts
of problems which become insoluble".Rothbard
maintains that anarcho-capitalism is the only
true form of anarchism—the only form of
anarchism that could possibly exist in reality
as he argues 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 left-wing anarchist
ideals would require an authoritarian body
of some sort to impose it. In order to forcefully
prevent people from accumulating private capital,
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. This body would thus inherently
have political power and would be nothing
short of a state. The difference between such
an arrangement and an anarcho-capitalist system
is precisely the voluntary nature of organization
within anarcho-capitalism contrasted with
a centralized ideology and a paired enforcement
mechanism which would be necessary under a
coercively egalitarian-anarchist system.However,
Rothbard also wrote a piece, published posthumously,
entitled "Are Libertarians 'Anarchists'?"
in which he traced the etymological roots
of Anarchist philosophy, ultimately coming
to the conclusion that "we find that all of
the current anarchists are irrational collectivists,
and therefore at opposite poles from our position.
That none of the proclaimed anarchist groups
correspond to the libertarian position, that
even the best of them have unrealistic and
socialistic elements in their doctrines".
Furthermore, he said: "We must therefore conclude
that we are not anarchists, and that those
who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological
ground, and are being completely unhistorical.
On the other hand, it is clear that we are
not archists either: we do not believe in
establishing a tyrannical central authority
that will coerce the noninvasive as well as
the invasive. Perhaps, then, we could call
ourselves by a new name: nonarchist".
== History ==
=== 
Classical liberalism ===
Classical liberalism is the primary influence
with the longest history on anarcho-capitalist
theory. Classical liberals have had two main
themes since John Locke first expounded the
philosophy: the liberty of man and limitations
of state power. The liberty of man was expressed
in terms of natural rights while limiting
the state was based (for Locke) on a consent
theory.
In the 19th century, classical liberals led
the attack against statism. One notable was
Frédéric Bastiat (The Law), who wrote: "The
state is the great fiction by which everybody
seeks to live at the expense of everybody
else". Henry David Thoreau wrote: "I heartily
accept the motto, 'That government is best
which governs least'; and I should like to
see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.
Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which
also I believe, 'That government is best which
governs not at all'; and when men are prepared
for it, that will be the kind of government
which they will have".The early liberals believed
that the state should confine its role to
protecting individual liberty and property
and opposed all but the most minimal economic
regulations. The "normative core" of classical
liberalism is the idea that in an environment
of laissez-faire, a spontaneous order of cooperation
in exchanging goods and services emerges that
satisfies human wants. Some individualists
came to realize that the liberal state itself
takes property forcefully through taxation
in order to fund its protection services and
therefore it seemed logically inconsistent
to oppose theft while also supporting a tax-funded
protector. So they advocated what may be seen
as classical liberalism taken to the extreme
by only supporting voluntarily funded defense
by competing private providers. One of the
first liberals to discuss the possibility
of privatizing protection of individual liberty
and property was France's Jakob Mauvillon
in the 18th century. In the 1840s, Julius
Faucher and Gustave de Molinari advocated
the same.
In his essay The Production of Security, Molinari
argued: "No 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 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: 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.
In the early 20th century, the mantle of anti-state
liberalism was taken by the Old Right. These
were minarchists, anti-war, anti-imperialists
and (later) anti-New Dealers. Some of the
most notable members of the Old Right were
Albert Jay Nock, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel
Paterson, Frank Chodorov, Garet Garrett and
H. L. Mencken. In the 1950s, the new "fusion
conservatism", also called "Cold War conservatism",
took hold of the right-wing in the United
States, stressing anti-communism. This induced
the libertarian Old Right to split off from
the right and seek alliances with the (now
left-wing) antiwar movement, and to start
specifically libertarian organizations such
as the Libertarian Party.
=== 19th century individualist anarchism in
the United States ===
Rothbard was influenced by the work of the
19th-century American individualist anarchists
(who were also influenced by classical liberalism).
In the winter of 1949, influenced by several
19th century individualists anarchists, Rothbard
decided to reject minimal state laissez-faire
and embrace individualist anarchism. In 1965,
he said: "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". He thought
they had a faulty understanding of economics
as the 19th century individualists had a labor
theory of value as influenced by the classical
economists and Rothbard was a student of Austrian
economics which does not agree with the labor
theory of value. He sought to meld 19th-century
American individualists' advocacy of free
markets and private defense with the principles
of Austrian economics: "There 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".
He 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.
Rothbard disagreed with this as he explains
in The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's
View. He says that first of all 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,
he says that Tucker is 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 as a result he thought
that in a free market people would be paid
in proportion to how much labor they exerted
and that if they were not then exploitation
or "usury" was taking place. As he explains
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 him to believe that the labor theory of
value would be vindicated and equal amounts
of labor would receive equal pay. As an Austrian
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.
Of particular importance to anarcho-capitalists
and Tucker and Spooner are the ideas of "sovereignty
of the individual", a market economy and the
opposition to collectivism. A defining point
upon which they agree is that defense of liberty
and property should be provided in the free
market rather than by the state. Tucker said:
"[D]efense is a service like any other service;
that it is labor both useful and desired,
and therefore an economic commodity subject
to the law of supply and demand; that in a
free market this commodity would be furnished
at the cost of production; that, competition
prevailing, patronage would go to those who
furnished the best article at the lowest price;
that the production and sale of this commodity
are now monopolized by the State; and that
the State, like almost all monopolists, charges
exorbitant prices".
== Historical precedents similar to anarcho-capitalism
==
=== Yurok Indians and their Northern California
neighbors ===
After studying the Yurok, Hupa, and Karok
Indians and some of their Northern California
neighbors, Walter Goldsmidt reported "a culture
which reflects in surprising degree certain
structural and ethical characteristics of
emergent capitalistic Europe". Commenting
on this, Bruce Benson writes: In this Indian
society, property was universally held in
individual private ownership. Socially, these
Indians were organized in households and villages.
There were no class or other inalienable group
affiliations, and no vested authoritarian
position-that is no state-like government
with coercive power. Private property rights
were sharply defined. Title considerations,
for example, included (1) separation of title
to different types of products; (2) ownership
rights within the territory of an alien group
(e.g. Hupas owned property inside Yurok territory);
and (3) the division of title between persons
(e.g., a fishing place could be owned by several
people and its use divided so that one person
used it one day, another the next, and so
on). Ownership was complete and transferable.
Exchange was facilitated by a monetary system.
Benson also notes that there was a well-developed
system of private arbitration: These Indian
tribes nevertheless had a well-developed system
of private judging. For instance, if a Yurok
wanted to process a legal claim he would hire
two, three, or four "crossers" – nonrelatives
from a community other than his own. The defendant
in the claim would also hire crossers, and
the entire group hired by both parties would
act as go-betweens, ascertaining claims and
defenses and gathering evidence. The crossers
would render a judgment for damages after
hearing all the evidence.
=== The legal system of the Ifugao of Northern
Luzon ===
Legal scholar Bruce Benson notes: The economy
of the Ifugao in Northern Luzon during the
early 1900s was dominated by an intensive
irrigation hoe culture. Such an economy inevitably
requires laws, if for no other reason than
to resolve issues over water rights and maintain
a complex real-estate system. And the Ifugao
developed a very elaborate system of substantive
law. Yet the Ifugao had no tribal, district,
or village governmental organizations, and
no centralized authority with the power to
force compliance with the laws or to levy
compulsive sanctions on behalf of the society
at large.
The basic political unit was the family, which
had a leader, but not in the sense of a political
ruler as Hoebel notes: "Although he leads
the family in legal and economic enterprise,
its members think of him more as an integrating
core than as a head who in any way dominates".
The kinfolk had a mutual duty to support each
other in disputes with members of other families.
They did not settle these disputes through
warfare, but through arbitration by a voluntarily
contracted "monkalun". Benson notes: But what
happened if the defendant refused to admit
his guilt and would not come to terms through
the monkalun? Did interfamily warfare break
out? The answer to the second question is
no because the answer to the first is that
such a refusal would be viewed as an insult
to the monkalun and align his family against
whichever party initiated the violence. This
prospect deterred any immediate action by
either party even when an impasse was reached.
=== The Kapauku Papuans of West New Guinea
===
The Kapauku Papuans were a primitive linguistic
group of about 45,000 living by means of horticulture
in the western part of the central highlands
of West New Guinea until well past the middle
of the 20th century. Their culture emphasized
individual freedom and there was no common
property; and almost all property was individually
owned as Pospisil remarks: A house, boat,
bow and arrows, field, crops, patches of second-growth
forest, or even a meal shared by a family
or household is always owned by one person.
Individual ownership is so extensive in the
Kamu Valley that we find the virgin forests
divided into tracts which belong to single
individuals. Relatives, husbands and wives
do not own anything in common. Even an eleven-year-old
boy can own his field and his money and play
the role of debtor and creditor as well.
Benson observes: Their reciprocal arrangements
for support and protection were based on kinship,
as with the Ifugao. However, members of two
or more patrilineages typically joined together
for defensive and legal purposes, even though
they often belonged to different sibs. These
"confederations" often encompassed from three
to nine villages, with each village consisting
of about fifteen households. The Kapauku had
no formal government with coercive power.
Those who were rich and considered to be honest
and generous became leaders called tonowi.
However, they held no coercive authority over
others. Legal disputes were handled through
contractual arbitration, which was enforced
ultimately by the threat of being outlawed
and ostracized by all members of one's confederation.
=== Free cities of medieval Europe ===
Economist and libertarian scholar Bryan Caplan
cites the free cities of medieval Europe as
important examples of anarchist or nearly
anarchistic societies: 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 ===
According to the libertarian theorist David
D. Friedman: "Medieval 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, he
argues that the legal system of the Icelandic
Commonwealth comes close to being a real-world
anarcho-capitalist legal system because while
there was a single legal system, enforcement
of law was entirely private and highly capitalist;
and so it provides some evidence of how such
a society would function. "Even 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 Long remarks: 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 observes how 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 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, longer than
any democracy has lasted, its eventual down
fall was brought about according to Long "not
through having too much privatization, but
through having too little". He notes: [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 the research of 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 states: 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 ===
Many libertarian historians have cited law
merchant, admiralty law and early common law
as examples of anarcho-capitalism. In his
work Power and Market, Rothbard states: 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.
Commenting on law merchant, the Britannica
Encyclopedia states: The law merchant was
developed in the early 11th century in order
to protect foreign merchants not under the
jurisdiction and protection of the local law.
Foreign traders often were subject to confiscations
and other types of harassment if one of their
countrymen had defaulted in a business transaction.
A kind of law was also needed by which the
traders themselves could negotiate contracts,
partnerships, trademarks, and various aspects
of buying and selling. The law merchant gradually
spread as the traders went from place to place.
Their courts, set up by the merchants themselves
at trade fairs or in cities, administered
a law that was uniform throughout Europe,
regardless of differences in national laws
and languages. It was based primarily on Roman
law, although there were some Germanic influences;
it formed the basis for modern commercial
law.
Regarding common law, David D. Friedman notes:
The common law had its origin in the legal
system of Anglo-Saxon England, whose early
form involved a large element of private enforcement
and private arbitration. It evolved in an
environment of multiple court systems – church,
royal, and local – where litigants had at
least some control over where their disputes
were resolved. Some common law rules originated
as private norms, and I have argued that norms
are produced on something like a competitive
market. Some rules may have been borrowed
from the medieval Fair Courts, which had some
of the characteristics of the system I have
described.
Commenting on the evolution of British common
law, the classical liberal economist Adam
Smith noted in his treatise The Wealth of
Nations: The fees of court seem originally
to have been the principal support of the
different courts of justice in England. Each
court endeavoured to draw to itself as much
business as it could, and was, upon that account,
willing to take cognisance of many suits which
were not originally intended to fall under
its jurisdiction. The court of king's bench,
instituted for the trial of criminal causes
only, took cognisance of civil suits; the
plaintiff pretending that the defendant, in
not doing him justice, had been guilty of
some trespass or misdemeanour. The court of
exchequer, instituted for the levying of the
king's revenue, and for enforcing the payment
of such debts only as were due to the king,
took cognisance of all other contract debts;
the plaintiff alleging that he could not pay
the king because the defendant would not pay
him. In consequence of such fictions it came,
in many cases, to depend altogether upon the
parties before what court they would choose
to have their cause tried; and each court
endeavoured, by superior dispatch and impartiality,
to draw to itself as many causes as it could.
The present admirable constitution of the
courts of justice in England was, perhaps,
originally in a great measure formed by this
emulation which anciently took place between
their respective judges; each judge endeavouring
to give, in his own court, the speediest and
most effectual remedy which the law would
admit for every sort of injustice.
=== Somalia from 1991 to 2006 ===
From 1991 to 2006, Somalia is cited as a real-world
example of a stateless society and legal system.
Since the fall of Siad Barre's government
in January 1991, there had been no central
government in Somalia until the establishment
of the Transitional National Government and
its successor the Transitional Federal Government.
While some urban areas such as Mogadishu had
private police forces, many Somalis simply
returned to the traditional clan-based legal
structures for local governance and dispute
resolution. Anthropologist Spencer MacCallum
has identified the rule of law during the
period as that of the Xeer, a customary law
indigenous to Somalia. The law permits practices
such as safe travel, trade and marriage, which
survives "to a significant degree" throughout
Somalia, particularly in rural Somalia where
it is "virtually unaffected". MacCallum credits
the Xeer with "Somalia's success without a
central government, since it provides an authentic
rule of law to support trade and economic
development". In the Xeer, law and crime are
defined in terms of property rights and consequently
the criminal justice system is compensatory
rather than the punitive system of the majority
of states as the Xeer is "unequivocal in its
opposition" to any form of taxation. Powell
et al. (2006) find that the existence of the
common law dispute resolution system in Somalia
makes possible basic economic order. MacCallum
compares the Xeer to the common law in 6th
century Scotland, and notes that there is
no monopoly of either police nor judicial
services, a condition of polycentric law.
Nonetheless, many anarcho-capitalists argue
that Somalia was not an anarchist society.Benjamin
Powell argued that statelessness led to more
order and less chaos than had the previous
state under central government and 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.
== Criticisms of anarcho-capitalism ==
=== Justice and defense ===
Some critics argue that anarcho-capitalism
turns justice into a commodity; 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".In Anarchy, State, and Utopia,
Robert 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. 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.Anarcho-capitalists
counter that this argument is circular because
monopolies are artificial constructs that
can only be maintained by political immunity
to natural market processes, or by perpetual
provision of superior quality products and
services. Unless competitors are prevented
from entering a market, the profit incentive,
which is fueled by constant demand for improvement,
proportionately draws them into it. Furthermore,
as demonstrated by the medieval systems in
Ireland and Iceland, treating the right to
justice as a property means that it is sold
(not purchased) by victims. Some libertarians
propose 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.
=== Rights and freedom ===
Many anarcho-capitalists believe that negative
rights should be recognized as legitimate,
but positive rights should be rejected. Some
critics, including Noam Chomsky, reject the
distinction between positive and negative
rights:
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 ===
Most 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. David Graeber noted his skepticism
about anarcho-capitalism along the same lines:
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; and active
restriction of both used and unused resources
by those enforcing property claims. For instance,
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.Some 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—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; for
example, 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.Anarcho-capitalists
counter that property is not only natural,
but unavoidable, citing the Soviet Union as
an inevitable result of its prohibition and
collectivization, which they claim eliminates
the incentives and accountability of ownership
and blackens markets. Kosanke further challenges
what he perceives as egalitarian dogma by
attempting to demonstrate that all costs of
living are naturally determined, subject to
a variety of factors and can not be politically
manipulated without net negative consequences.
== Anarcho-capitalist 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, Austrian micro–
and macroeconomics
Power and Market, classification of State
economic interventions
The Ethics of Liberty, moral justification
of a free society
For a New Liberty, an outline of how an anarcho-capitalist
society could work
David D. Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom,
classic consequentialist defense of anarchism
Michael Huemer, The Problem of Political Authority,
a lengthy defense of philosophical and political
anarchism (with the latter version being of
the anarcho-capitalistic variety) drawing
on a mix of natural rights and consequentialist
arguments
Linda and Morris Tannehill, The Market for
Liberty, classic on private defense agencies
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
Frédéric Bastiat, The Law, radical classical
liberalism and precursor to anarcho-capitalism
Bruce L. Benson, The Enterprise of Law: Justice
Without The State
To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community
in Criminal Justice
James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg,
The Sovereign Individual, historians look
at technology and its implications
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, includes
the essay "The Right to Ignore the State"
ad though Spencer was not an anarcho-capitalist,
many of his ideas, including the law of equal
freedom, were precursors to modern anarcho-capitalism
George H. Smith, "Justice Entrepreneurship
in a Free Market", examines the epistemic
and entrepreneurial role of justice agencies
Edward P. Stringham, Anarchy and the Law:
The Political Economy of Choice, 700 page
book presenting the major arguments historical
studies about anarcho capitalism
=== Fiction ===
Anarcho-capitalism has been examined in certain
works of literature, particularly science
fiction. An early example is Robert A. Heinlein's
1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress in
which he explores what he terms "rational
anarchism".
Cyberpunk and postcyberpunk authors have been
particularly fascinated by the idea of the
breakdown of the nation-state. Several stories
of Vernor Vinge, including Marooned in Realtime
and Conquest by Default, feature anarcho-capitalist
societies, sometimes portrayed in a favorable
light and sometimes not. Neal Stephenson's
Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, Max Barry's
Jennifer Government and L. Neil Smith's The
Probability Broach all explore anarcho-capitalist
ideas. The cyberpunk portrayal of anarchy
varies from the downright grim to the cheerfully
optimistic and it need not imply anything
specific about the writer's political views.
In particular, Neal Stephenson refrains from
sweeping political statements when deliberately
provoked.In Matt Stone's (Richard D. Fuerle)
novelette On the Steppes of Central Asia,
an American grad student is invited to work
for a newspaper in Mongolia and discovers
that the Mongolian society is indeed stateless
in a semi-anarcho-capitalist way. The novelette
was originally written to advertise Fuerle's
1986 economics treatise The Pure Logic of
Choice.
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 ==
Anarcho-capitalism portal
