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Anarcho-Capitalism
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Anarcho-capitalism is an individualist anarchist[1] political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state and the elevation of the sovereign individual in a free market. In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services are provided by voluntarily-funded competitors such as private defense agencies rather than through compulsory taxation, and money is privately produced in an open market. Because personal and economic activities are regulated by the natural laws of the market through private law rather than through politics, victimless crimes, and crimes against the state are rendered moot.
Contents
Theory
Anarcho-capitalism aims to be a liberal version of capitalism, where the state in its current form would no longer exist, and where regalian doctrine of it would be given to private organisations (private tribunals, private police, private army...).
Anarcho-Capitalism embraces the capitalist free market, which contrasts with traditional anarchism as anarchist philosophy has historically been opposed to capitalism. It should be noted that anarcho-capitalists define the words "capitalism" and free market differently from Anarchists, favouring the capitalists Austrian economic definition of the words. This difference in terminology is often the basis for controversy.
It emerged in the 1950s out of the disputed tradition of classical liberalism, and generally sets itself in contrast to individualist anarchists theory. Murray Rothbard, an Austrian economist influenced by work of individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner, rejecting from them the critics of wage labour, is thought as the founder of anarcho-capitalism.
Varying Views on Intellectual Property
While some Anarcho-capitalists support intellectual property, many oppose it, saying that intellectual property infringes on physical property. They hold that intellectual property laws "in effect grant the holder the right to control the property and bodies of other people". [1] Anarcho-capitalists consider intellectual property to be equivalent to mercantilism, the system under which monarchs would grant exclusive monopolies to companies in a certain industry or territory.
Jeremy Sapienza, founder anti-state.com writes, "Is there nothing more preposterous than equating intellectual property, whatever the hell that is, with real, personal property?"[2].
Roderick T. Long argues that intellectual property violates the freedom of the speech and of the press: "To enforce copyright laws and the like is to prevent people from making peaceful use of the information they possess. If you have acquired the information legitimately (say, by buying a book), then on what grounds can you be prevented from using it, reproducing it, trading it? Is this not a violation of the freedom of speech and press?" [3]
The debate over intellectual property among Anarcho-capitalists is still on-going.
Wage Labor
Anarcho-capitalists state that an employer-employee relationship is an elaborate and mutually profitable form of voluntary association. They resent government as a parasite that corrupts, biases, impedes and distorts what would otherwise be peaceful fair and free associations.
Anarcho-capitalists consider that in consenting to a contract, that each party was free to refuse, the contract is voluntary and therefore legitimate and beneficial, claiming any external power that attempts to prevent such relationship is itself an oppression to be fought.
Anarcho-capitalists argue that, no matter what social organization may or may not exist, social organizations will never eliminate the basic human requirement to work in order to support themselves. Therefore an objection based on a constraint that cannot be overcome is useless to argue about and not a rational objection at all. Additionally, they argue that while someone may not be able to refuse to work in general, one has the largest diversity on the free market with regard to their employers or beginning their own business operation. What matters is that no given employer/employee contract be coercive. Thus, Anarcho-capitalists believe that an individual may choose to work in any manner they wish, be it for a wage or for some other means of payment, so long as there is no coercion involved.
Criticism of Anarcho-capitalism
- This section criticises the topic of the article from the perspective of anarchism. If possible, please keep criticism constructive.
- “Freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice and Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.” ~ Mihail Bakunin
Anarcho-capitalism is a view that departs from some anarchist theory in that it regards only the government as unnecessary and harmful to human society. In its embrace of modern economics, Anarcho-capitalism contradicts communistic and pre-industrial anarchism, nominally anti-capitalist philosophies.
Another major distinction between capitalistic anarchism and communistic anarchism is emphases on 'negative liberty' versus 'positive liberty' in the philosophical discourse.
From the "Anarcho"-capitalist FAQ:
"What are the myths of socialism?
The just price doctrine and cost-price theories of value. The medieval notion of just price permeates socialist thought. It holds that there is a God-given or intrinsic price of a good, regardless of people's wants, needs, and desires, or supply and demand. In the industrial-era form of this doctrine, the value of a good is deemed to be equal to the cost of production, usually in terms of labor time expended (see labor theory of value below). This cost-price notion was refuted in the 1800s by the marginalist revolution in economics, but nevertheless many socialists remain mired in this creationism of the left. The marginalist economists, notably the Austrian School, consider value to be subjective. It depends on each person and his or her particular situation and values. In the desert, one may prefer a cup of water to a diamond.
The labor theory of value. The labor theory of value (LTV) is the cost-price doctrine which holds that all value springs from labor. In other words, it purports that land, capital, and entrepreneurship are all non-productive, and can impute no value to a good (except insofar as they represent past labor.) The general invalidity of all just price doctrines has already noted. The modern (marginalist) thought is that value is not determined by cost at all, but by the subjective preferences of the buyers interacting with the available quantity of the good in question. This is known as the subjective theory of value. Even on it's own intrinsic price terms, the LTV fails to account for factors of production other than labor. Standard counter-examples abound, e.g. No matter how much time you spend producing mud-pies, they are still worthless; A fresh bottle of wine gains value simply by aging; and so on. It is possible to formulate a purely descriptive LTV, which uses labor time as the measure of the productivity of land and capital, as Kevin Carson does in part 1 of his book Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, however the usefulness of this is dubious, and the temptation to slide into the prescriptive interpretation is enormous, as Carson does without justification in part 2 of the same book.
The exploitation theory. An exploitation theory is any theory which purports to justify the claim that one "class" exploits another. In socialist theory, the claim is that a capitalist class exploits a proletarian class. Most exploitation theories are based on the antiquated LTV notion described above. Other socialists realize the weakness of this argument, and base their exploitation theory on unequal negotiating positions. While this latter approach may explain outcomes of bargaining, it evades the relevant issue - whether the trade was voluntary. Thus this approach also fails to support the claim that (so-called) "exploitation" is undesirable or unethical.
Note that even stipulating the "creationist" LTV, the socialist argument is insufficient for proving exploitation. It lacks an explanation of why workers voluntarily exchanging labor time for wages is exploitative. Bohm-Bawerk of the Austrian school of economics showed long ago (1884 in "Exploitation Theories") that profit from wages could be explained by interest on advanced pay, i.e. workers getting paid prior to their produce being sold.
Denial of scarcity (property, money). This is a favorite of utopian socialists. The purpose of property is to solve the scarcity problem - that man's desires exceed available goods. This myth simply assumes away scarcity, as if this human condition was merely an effect of a particular property system rather than a fact of reality and human nature. The socialist denial of the validity of property involves an internal contradiction and much resulting "double-think." E.g. Proudhon writes that he's against contract property, but for possession property; yet he refuses to acknowledge that his "possession" is a type of property.
Another naive denial of scarcity is the claim of some socialists that a modern society can get along without money. Hayek made a living by refuting that view: in short, an economy needs the informational function of money to balance supply and demand. Without the amalgamation of the desires and preferences of the producers and consumers into price, chaos results. Shortages and surpluses abound when the communication of preferences is prevented or co-opted by rulers. Money is simply and ultimately the most liquid commodity in a market. There will always be a most liquid commodity in any market; ergo, there will be something used as money."
Quotations
"Capitalism is at least tolerable, which cannot be said of Socialism or Communism." - Benjamin Tucker
"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. This excludes from Anarchism all believers in compulsory Communism. As for the believers in voluntary Communism (of whom there are precious few), they are of necessity believers in the liberty to hold private property, for to pool one's possessions with those of others is nothing more or less than an exercise of proprietorship."
- Benjamin Tucker
"Critics of anarcho-capitalism sometimes assume that communal or worker-owned firms would be penalized or prohibited in an anarcho-capitalist society. It would be more accurate to state that while individuals would be free to voluntarily form communitarian organizations, the anarcho-capitalist simply doubts that they would be widespread or prevalent. However, in theory an "anarcho-capitalist" society might be filled with nothing but communes or worker-owned firms, so long as these associations were formed voluntarily."
- Bryan Caplan
"Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed."
- Mahatma Gandhi
"Miss Goldman is a communist; I am an individualist. She wishes to destroy the right of property, I wish to assert it. I make my war upon privilege and authority, whereby the right of property, the true right in that which is proper to the individual, is annihilated. She believes that co-operation would entirely supplant competition; I hold that competition in one form or another will always exist, and that it is highly desirable it should."
- Voltairine de Cleyre, In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation
"Capitalistic Anarchism? Oh, yes, if you choose to call it so. Names are indifferent to me; I am not afraid of bugaboos. Let it be so, then, capitalistic Anarchism."
- Voltairine de Cleyre
"I should say that when people talk about capitalism it's a bit of a joke. There's no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. That's right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. That's very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World." - Naom Chomsky (Talk titled "Sovereignty and World Order" at Kansas State University, September 20, 1999)
"Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism." - Murray Rothbard
"Without property there is no free personal life. Without property there is no power to act. The man who treads on strange ground, touches strange property at every movement he makes is not a free man. And the word 'property' must be taken literally as ownership, or, as we say to-day, private property. Without private property there is no freedom." - Emil Brunner
"The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, “This is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself.†Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the people — who have been neither able nor willing to sell, and who have received none of the proceeds of the sale — will have nowhere to rest, no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at the proprietor’s door, on the edge of that property which was their birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, “So perish idlers and vagrants!â€" - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (Ch. III: "Labor as the Efficient Cause of the Domain of Property")
"Property is robbery!" - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"
"Private property is the greatest revolutionary force which exists, with an unequaled capacity for setting itself against authority... and the principal function of private property within the political system is to act as a counterweight to the power of the State, and by so doing to insure the liberty of the individual."
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Theory of Property
External links
Criticism of Anarcho-capitalism
- Between Anarchism and Libertarianism: Defining a New Movement by Jeff Draughn
- Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy - by Peter Sabatini
- The New Right and Anarcho-capitalism, by Peter Marshall
- Anarchism and Capitalism, by Andrew Flood
- Anarchism and "Anarcho"-capitalism
- Replies to Some Errors and Distortions in Bryan Caplan's "Anarchist Theory FAQ" version 5.2
