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    Anarchist Theory FAQ

    or

    Instead of a FAQ, by a Man Too Busy to Write One

    by

    Bryan Caplan

    Version 5.2

    I heartily accept the motto, - "That government is best which governs least;" and Ishould like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, itfinally amounts to this, which I also believe, - "That government is best whichgoverns not at all;" and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of

    government which they will have.--Henry David Thoreau,"On the Duty of Civil Disobedience"

    Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but havedifferent origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even inits best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

    --Thomas Paine, Common SenseThey [the Marxists] maintain that only a dictatorship -- their dictatorship, of course -- can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No

    dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can begetonly slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom,that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.

    --Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and AnarchismIn existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. If the road between two villages is impassable, the peasant says, "There should bea law about parish roads." If a park-keeper takes advantage of the want of spiritin those who follow him with servile obedience and insults one of them, theinsulted man says, "There should be a law to enjoin more politeness upon thepark-keepers." If there is stagnation in agriculture or commerce, thehusbandman, cattle-breeder, or corn- speculator argues, "It is protectivelegislation which we require." Down to the old clothesman there is not one whodoes not demand a law to protect his own little trade. If the employer lowerswages or increases the hours of labor, the politician in embryo explains, "Wemust have a law to put all that to rights." In short, a law everywhere and for everything! A law about fashions, a law about mad dogs, a law about virtue, a

    mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]
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    law to put a stop to all the vices and all the evils which result from humanindolence and cowardice.

    --Peter Kropotkin,"Law and Authority"

    [W]hoever desires liberty, should understand these vital facts, viz.: 1. That every

    man who puts money into the hands of a "government" (so called) puts into itshands a sword which will be used against himself, to extort more money fromhim, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will. 2. That those who willtake his money, without his consent, in the first place, will use it for his further robbery and enslavement, if he presumes to resist their demands in the future. 3.That it is a perfect absurdity to suppose that any body of men would ever take aman's money without his consent, for any such object as they profess to take itfor, viz., that of protecting him; for why should they wish to protect him, if he doesnot wish them to do so?... 4. If a man wants "protection," he is competent tomake his own bargains for it; and nobody has any occasion to rob him, in order to "protect" him against his will. 5. That the only security men can have for their

    political liberty, consists in their keeping their money in their own pockets, untilthey have assurances, perfectly satisfactory to themselves, that it will be used asthey wish it to be used, for their benefit, and not for their injury. 6. That nogovernment, so called, can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonablybe supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends whollyupon voluntary support.

    --Lysander Spooner, No Treason: the Constitution of No Authority If we look at the black record of mass murder, exploitation, and tyranny levied onsociety by governments over the ages, we need not be loath to abandon theLeviathan State and ... try freedom.

    --Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty

    Table of Contents

    1. What is anarchism? What beliefs do anarchists share?2. Why should one consider anarchism in the first place?3. Don't anarchists favor chaos?4. Don't anarchists favor the abolition of the family, property, religion, and

    other social institutions besides the state? 5. What major subdivisions may be made among anarchists?6.

    Is anarchism the same thing as libertarianism?7. Is anarchism the same thing as socialism?8. Who are the major anarchist thinkers?9. How would left-anarchy work?10. How would anarcho-capitalism work?11. What criticisms have been made of anarchism?

    a. "An anarchist society, lacking any central coercive authority, wouldquickly degenerate into violent chaos."

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    b. The Marxist critique of left-anarchismc. The minarchists' attack on anarcho-capitalismd. The conservative critique of anarchisme. "We are already in a state of anarchy."

    12. What other anarchist viewpoints are there?13.

    What moral justifications have been offered for anarchism?14. What are the major debates between anarchists? What are the recurringarguments?

    a. "X is not 'true anarchism.'" b. "Anarchism of variant X is unstable and will lead to the re-

    emergence of the state." c. "In an anarchist society in which both systems X and Y existed, X

    would inevitably outcompete Y." d. "Anarchism of type X would be worse than the state."e. Etc.

    15. How would anarchists handle the "public goods" problem?a.

    The concept and uses of Pareto optimality in economics b. The public goods problem16. Are anarchists pacifists?

    a. Tolstoyan absolute pacifism b. Pacifism as opposition to war

    17. Have there been any historical examples of anarchist societies?18. Isn't anarchism utopian?19. Don't anarchists assume that all people are innately virtuous?20. Aren't anarchists terrorists?21. How might an anarchist society be achieved?22. What are some addresses for anarchist World Wide Web sites?23.

    What are some major anarchist writings?

    What is anarchism? What beliefs do anarchists share?

    Anarchism is defined by The American Heritage CollegeDictionary as "The theory or doctrine that all forms of governmentare unnecessary, oppressive, and undesirable and should beabolished." Anarchism is a negative; it holds that one thing, namelygovernment, is bad and should be abolished. Aside from thisdefining tenet, it would be difficult to list any belief that all anarchists

    hold. Just as atheists might support or oppose any viewpointconsistent with the non-existence of God, anarchists might andindeed do hold the entire range of viewpoints consistent with thenon-existence of the state.

    As might be expected, different groups of anarchists are constantlytrying to define anarchists with different views out of existence, justas many Christians say that their sect is the only "true" Christianity

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    and many socialists say that their socialism is the only "true"socialism. This FAQ takes what seems to me to be the impartialview that such tactics are pointless and merely prevent the debateof substantive issues. (N.B. The preceding definition has beencriticized a number of times. To view my appendix on Defining

    Anarchism , click here .)

    Why should one consider anarchism in the first place?

    Unlike many observers of history, anarchists see a common threadbehind most of mankind's problems: the state. In the 20th-centuryalone, states have murdered well over 100,000,000 human beings,whether in war, concentration camps, or man-made famine. Andthis is merely a continuation of a seemingly endless historicalpattern: almost from the beginning of recorded history,governments have existed. Once they arose, they allowed a ruling

    class to live off the labor of the mass of ordinary people; and theseruling classes have generally used their ill-gotten gains to buildarmies and wage war to extend their sphere of influence. At thesame time, governments have always suppressed unpopular minorities, dissent, and the efforts of geniuses and innovators toraise humanity to new intellectual, moral, cultural, and economicheights. By transferring surplus wealth from producers to the state'sruling elite, the state has often strangled any incentive for long-runeconomic growth and thus stifled humanity's ascent from poverty;and at the same time the state has always used that surplus wealthto cement its power.

    If the state is the proximate cause of so much needless misery andcruelty, would it not be desirable to investigate the alternatives?Perhaps the state is a necessary evil which we cannot eliminate.But perhaps it is rather an unnecessary evil which we accept out of inertia when a totally different sort of society would be a greatimprovement.

    Don't anarchists favor chaos?

    By definition, anarchists oppose merely government , not order or

    society. "Liberty is the Mother, not the Daughter of Order" wroteProudhon, and most anarchists would be inclined to agree.Normally, anarchists demand abolition of the state because theythink that they have something better to offer, not out of a desire for rebellion as such. Or as Kropotkin put it, "No destruction of theexisting order is possible, if at the time of the overthrow, or of thestruggle leading to the overthrow, the idea of what is to take theplace of what is to be destroyed is not always present in the mind.

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    Even the theoretical criticism of the existing conditions isimpossible, unless the critic has in mind a more or less distinctpicture of what he would have in place of the existing state.Consciously or unconsciously, the ideal , the conception of something better is forming in the mind of everyone who criticizes

    social institutions."

    There is an anti-intellectual strain in anarchism which favors chaosand destruction as an end-in-itself. While possibly a majority amongpeople who have called themselves anarchists, this is not aprominent strand of thought among those who have actually spenttime thinking and writing about anarchist theory.

    Don't anarchists favor the abolition of the family, property,religion, and other social institutions besides the state?

    Some anarchists have favored the abolition of one or more of theabove, while others have not. To some, all of these are merelyother forms of oppression and domination. To others, they are thevital intermediary institutions which protect us from the state. To stillothers, some of the above are good and others are bad; or perhapsthey are bad currently, but merit reform.

    What major subdivisions may be made among anarchists?

    As should become plain to the reader of alt.society.anarchy or alt.anarchism, there are two rather divergent lines of anarchist

    thought. The first is broadly known as "left-anarchism," andencompasses anarcho-socialists, anarcho-syndicalists, andanarcho-communists. These anarchists believe that in an anarchistsociety, people either would or should abandon or greatly reducethe role of private property rights. The economic system would beorganized around cooperatives, worker-owned firms, and/or communes. A key value in this line of anarchist thought isegalitarianism, the view that inequalities, especially of wealth andpower, are undesirable, immoral, and socially contingent.

    The second is broadly known as "anarcho-capitalism." These

    anarchists believe that in an anarchist society, people either wouldor should not only retain private property, but expand it toencompass the entire social realm. No anarcho-capitalist has ever denied the right of people to voluntarily pool their private propertyand form a cooperative, worker-owned firm, or commune; but theyalso believe that several property, including such organizations ascorporations, are not only perfectly legitimate but likely to be thepredominant form of economic organization under anarchism.

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    Unlike the left-anarchists, anarcho-capitalists generally place littleor no value on equality, believing that inequalities along alldimensions -- including income and wealth -- are not only perfectlylegitimate so long as they "come about in the right way," but are thenatural consequence of human freedom.

    A large segment of left-anarchists is extremely skeptical about theanarchist credentials of anarcho-capitalists, arguing that theanarchist movement has historically been clearly leftist. In my ownview, it is necessary to re-write a great deal of history to maintainthis claim. In Carl Landauer's European Socialism: A History of Ideas and Movements (published in 1959 before any importantmodern anarcho-capitalist works had been written), this greatsocialist historian notes that:

    To be sure, there is a difference between individualistic anarchism

    and collectivistic or communistic anarchism; Bakunin called himself a communist anarchist. But the communist anarchists also do notacknowledge any right of society to force the individual. They differ from the anarchistic individualists in their belief that men, if freedfrom coercion, will enter into voluntary associations of acommunistic type, while the other wing believes that the freeperson will prefer a high degree of isolation. The communistanarchists repudiate the right of private property which ismaintained through the power of the state. The individualistanarchists are inclined to maintain private property as a necessarycondition of individual independence, without fully answering the

    question of how property could be maintained without courts andpolice.

    Actually, Tucker and Spooner both wrote about the free market'sability to provide legal and protection services, so Landauer'sremark was not accurate even in 1959. But the interesting point isthat before the emergence of modern anarcho-capitalism Landauer found it necessary to distinguish two strands of anarchism, only oneof which he considered to be within the broad socialist tradition.

    Is anarchism the same thing as libertarianism?

    This is actually a complicated question, because the term"libertarianism" itself has two very different meanings. In Europe inthe 19th-century, libertarianism was a popular euphemism for left-anarchism. However, the term did not really catch on in the UnitedStates.

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    After World War II, many American-based pro-free-marketintellectuals opposed to traditional conservatism were seeking for alabel to describe their position, and eventually picked"libertarianism." ("Classical liberalism" and "market liberalism" arealternative labels for the same essential position.) The result was

    that in two different political cultures which rarely communicatedwith one another, the term "libertarian" was used in two verydifferent ways. At the current time, the American use has basicallytaken over completely in academic political theory (probably owingto Nozick's influence), but the European use is still popular amongmany left-anarchist activists in both Europe and the U.S.

    The semantic confusion was complicated further when some of theearly post-war American libertarians determined that the logicalimplication of their view was, in fact, a variant of anarchism. Theyadopted the term "anarcho-capitalism" to differentiate themselves

    from more moderate libertarianism, but were still generally happy toidentify themselves with the broader free-market libertarianmovement.

    Is anarchism the same thing as socialism?

    If we accept one traditional definition of socialism -- "advocacy of government ownership of the means of production" -- it seems thatanarchists are not socialists by definition . But if by socialism wemean something more inclusive, such as "advocacy of the strongrestriction or abolition of private property," then the question

    becomes more complex.Under the second proffered definition, some anarchists aresocialists, but others are not. Outside of the Anglo- Americanpolitical culture, there has been a long and close historicalrelationship between the more orthodox socialists who advocate asocialist government, and the anarchist socialists who desire somesort of decentralized, voluntary socialism. The two groups bothwant to severely limit or abolish private property and thus bothgroups fit the second definition of socialism. However, theanarchists certainly do not want the government to own the meansof production, for they don't want government to exist in the firstplace.

    The anarchists' dispute with the traditional socialists -- a disputebest illustrated by the bitter struggle between Karl Marx and MikhailBakunin for dominance in the 19th-century European workers'movement -- has often be described as a disagreement over "means." On this interpretation, the socialist anarchists and the

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    state-socialists agree that a communal and egalitarian society isdesirable, but accuse one another of proposing ineffective meansof attaining it. However, this probably understates the conflict,which is also over more fundamental values: socialist anarchistsemphasize the need for autonomy and the evils of authoritarianism,

    while traditional socialists have frequently belittled such concernsas "bourgeois."

    When we turn to the Anglo-American political culture, the storyis quite different. Virulent anti-socialist anarchism is much morecommon there, and has been from the early 19th-century. GreatBritain was the home of many intensely anti-socialist quasi-anarchistic thinkers of the 19th-century such as Auberon Herbertand the early Herbert Spencer . The United States has been aneven more fertile ground for individualist anarchism: during the19th-century, such figures as Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner ,

    and Benjamin Tucker gained prominence for their vision of ananarchism based upon freedom of contract and private property.And in the 20th-century, thinkers residing within the United Stateshave been the primary developers and exporters of anarcho-capitalist theory.

    Still, this geographic division should not be over-stated. The Frenchanarchist Proudhon and the German Max Stirner both embracedmodified forms of individualism; a number of left-anarchists (oftenEuropean immigrants) attained prominence in the United States;and Noam Chomsky and Murray Bookchin, two of the most

    influential theorists of modern left-anarchism, both reside within theUnited States.

    Who are the major anarchist thinkers?

    The most famous left-anarchists have probably been MikhailBakunin and Peter Kropotkin . Pierre Proudhon is also oftenincluded although his ideas on the desirability of a modified form of private property would lead some to exclude him from the leftistcamp altogether. (Some of Proudhon's other heterodoxies includehis defense of the right of inheritance and his emphasis on thegenuine antagonism between state power and property rights.)More recent left-anarchists include Emma Goldman , MurrayBookchin , and Noam Chomsky .

    Anarcho-capitalism has a much more recent origin in the latter half of the 20th century. The two most famous advocates of anarcho-capitalism are probably Murray Rothbard and David Friedman . There were however some interesting earlier precursors, notably

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    collective power over the system of social production as isolatedgroups competing in a market economy; rather, workers self-management requires structures of democratic control over socialproduction and public affairs generally. Workers' self- managementthus refers, not just to self-management of the individual workplace,

    but of the whole system of social production. This requiresgrassroots bodies, such as workers' congresses or conventions,through which coordinated policies for the society can bedeveloped in a democratic manner. This is proposed as asubstitute or replacement for the historical nation-state." On thisinterpretation of anarcho-syndicalism, the revolutionary tradeunions are a means for achieving an anarchist society, rather thana proposed basis for social organization under anarchy.

    Many would observe that there is nothing anarchistic about thisproposal; indeed, names aside, it fits easily into the orthodox state-

    socialist tradition. Bakunin would have probably ridiculed suchideas as authoritarian Marxist socialism in disguise, and predictedthat the leading anarchist revolutionaries would swiftly become thenew despots. But Wetzel is perhaps right that many or even mosthistorical anarcho-syndicalists were championing the systemoutlined in his preceding quotation. He goes on to add that "[I]f youlook at the concept of 'state' in the very abstract way it often is inthe social sciences, as in Weber's definition, then what theanarcho-syndicalists were proposing is not elimination of the stateor government, but its radical democratization. That was not howanarchists themselves spoke about it, but it can be plausibly argued

    that this is a logical consequence of a certain major stream of left-anarchist thought."

    Ronald Fraser's discussion of the ideology of the SpanishAnarchists (historically the largest European anarchist movement)strongly undermines Wetzel's claim, however. There were two well-developed lines of thought, both of which favored the abolition of the State in the broad Weberian sense of the word, and which didindeed believe that the workers should literally have control over their workplaces. After distinguishing the rural and the urbantendencies among the Spanish ideologists, Fraser explains:

    Common to both tendencies was the idea that the working class'simply' took over factories and workplaces and ran themcollectively but otherwise as before... Underlying this vision of simple continuity was the anarcho-syndicalist concept of therevolution not as a rupture with, the destruction and replacement of,the bourgeois order but as the latter's displacement . The takingover of factories and workplaces, however violently carried out, was

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    not the beginning of the revolution to create a new order but its finalgoal. This view, in turn was conditioned by a particular view of thestate. Any state (bourgeois or working class) was considered anoppressive power tout court - not as the organization of a particular class's coercive power. The 'state' in consequence, rather than the

    existence of the capitalist mode of production which gave rise to itsparticular form, often appeared as the major enemy. The state didnot have to be taken, crushed, and a new - revolutionary - power established. No. If it could be swept away, abolished, everythingelse, including oppression, disappeared. The capitalist order wassimply displaced by the new-won workers' freedom to administer the workplaces they had taken over. Self-organized in autonomouscommunes or in all-powerful syndicates, the workers, as theprimary factor in production, dispensed with the bourgeoisie. Theconsequences of this were seen in the 1936 Barcelona revolution;capitalist production and market relations continued to exist within

    collectivized industry.Overall, the syndicalist is probably the best elaborated of the left-anarchist systems. But others in the broader tradition imagineindividuals forming communes and cooperatives which would beless specialized and more self- sufficient than the typical one-product-line anarcho- syndicalist firm. These notions are oftenclosely linked to the idea of creating a more environmentally soundsociety, in which small and decentralized collectives redirect their energies towards a Greener way of life.

    Many left-anarchists and anarchist sympathizers have also beenattracted to Guild Socialism in one form or another. EconomistRoger A. McCain thoughtfully explores Guild Socialism as analternative to both capitalism and the state in "Guild SocialismReconsidered," one of his working papers. To view it, click here .

    Kropotkin's lucid essay "Law and Authority" gives a thoughtfulpresentation of the left-anarchist's view of law. Primitive humansocieties, explains Kropotkin, live by what legal thinkers call"customary law": an unwritten but broadly understood body of rulesand appropriate behavior backed up primarily by social pressure.Kropotkin considers this sort of behavioral regulation to beunobjectionable, and probably consistent with his envisagedanarchist society. But when centralized governments codifiedcustomary law, they mingled the sensible dictates of tribalconscience with governmental sanctions for exploitation andinjustice. As Kropotkin writes, "[L]egislators confounded in one codethe two currents of custom ... the maxims which representprinciples of morality and social union wrought out as a result of life

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    in common, and the mandates which are meant to ensure externalexistence to inequality. Customs, absolutely essential to the verybeing of society, are, in the code, cleverly intermingled with usagesimposed by the ruling caste, and both claim equal respect from thecrowd. 'Do not kill,' says the code, and hastens to add, 'And pay

    tithes to the priest.' 'Do not steal,' says the code, and immediatelyafter, 'He who refuses to pay taxes, shall have his hand struck off.'"

    So perhaps Kropotkin's ideal society would live under the guidanceof a reformed customary law stripped of the class legislation withwhich it is now so closely associated. But Kropotkin continues togive what appear to be arguments against even customary lawprohibiting e.g. murder. Almost all violent crime is actually causedby poverty and inequality created by existing law. A small residualof violent crime might persist, but efforts to handle it by legalchannels are futile. Why? Because punishment has no effect on

    crime, especially such crimes of passion as would survive theabolition of private property. Moreover, criminals should not be judged wicked, but rather treated as we now treat the sick anddisadvantaged.

    Most left-anarchists probably hold to a mix of Kropotkin's fairlydistinct positions on law and crime. Existing law should be replacedby sensible and communitarian customs; and the critic of anarchism underestimates the extent to which existing crime is infact a product of the legal system's perpetuation of inequality andpoverty. And since punishment is not an effective deterrent, and

    criminals are not ultimately responsible for their misdeeds, a strictlyenforced legal code may be undesirable anyway.

    Some other crucial features of the left-anarchist society are quiteunclear. Whether dissidents who despised all forms of communalliving would be permitted to set up their own inegalitarian separatistsocieties is rarely touched upon. Occasionally left-anarchists haveinsisted that small farmers and the like would not be forciblycollectivized, but the limits of the right to refuse to adopt anegalitarian way of life are rarely specified.

    How would anarcho-capitalism work?

    Most of the prominent anarcho-capitalist writers have beenacademic economists, and as such have felt it necessary to spellout the workings of their preferred society in rather greater detailthan the left-anarchists have. In order to best grasp the anarcho-capitalist position, it is helpful to realize that anarcho-capitalistshave emerged almost entirely out of the modern American

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    libertarian movement, and believe that their view is simply a slightlymore extreme version of the libertarianism propounded by e.g.Robert Nozick .

    FAQs on the broader libertarian movement are widely available

    on the Net, so we will only give the necessary backgroundhere. So-called "minarchist" libertarians such as Nozick haveargued that the largest justified government was one which waslimited to the protection of individuals and their private propertyagainst physical invasion; accordingly, they favor a governmentlimited to supplying police, courts, a legal code, and nationaldefense. This normative theory is closely linked to laissez-faireeconomic theory, according to which private property andunregulated competition generally lead to both an efficientallocation of resources and (more importantly) a high rate of economic progress. While left-anarchists are often hostile to

    "bourgeois economics," anarcho-capitalists hold classicaleconomists such as Adam Smith, David Hume, and Jean-BaptisteSay in high regard, as well as more modern economists such asJoseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, MiltonFriedman, George Stigler, and James Buchanan. The problem withfree-market economists, say the anarcho-capitalists, is not that theydefend the free market, but merely that their defense is toomoderate and compromising.

    (Note however that the left-anarchists' low opinion of the famous"free-market economists" is not monolithic: Noam Chomsky in

    particular has repeatedly praised some of the political insights of Adam Smith. And Peter Kropotkin also had good things to sayabout Smith as both social scientist and moralist; Conal Smith explains that "In particular he approved of Smith's attempt to applythe scientific method to the study of morals and society, his critiqueof the state in The Wealth of Nations , and his theory of humansociability in The Theory of Moral Sentiments .")

    Now the anarcho-capitalist essentially turns the minarchist's ownlogic against him, and asks why the remaining functions of the statecould not be turned over to the free market . And so, the anarcho-capitalist imagines that police services could be sold by freelycompetitive firms; that a court system would emerge to peacefullyarbitrate disputes between firms; and that a sensible legal codecould be developed through custom, precedent, and contract. Andin fact, notes the anarcho-capitalist, a great deal of modern law(such as the Anglo-American common law) originated not inlegislatures, but from the decentralized rulings of judges. (Theanarcho-capitalist shares Kropotkin's interest in customary law, but

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    normally believes that it requires extensive modernization andarticulation.)

    The anarcho-capitalist typically hails modern society's increasingreliance on private security guards, gated communities, arbitration

    and mediation , and other demonstrations of the free market's abilityto supply the defensive and legal services normally assumed to beof necessity a government monopoly. In his ideal society, thesemarket alternatives to government services would take over all legitimate security services. One plausible market structure wouldinvolve individuals subscribing to one of a large number of competing police services; these police services would then set upcontracts or networks for peacefully handling disputes betweenmembers of each others' agencies. Alternately, police servicesmight be "bundled" with housing services, just as landlords oftenbundle water and power with rental housing, and gardening and

    security are today provided to residents in gated communities andapartment complexes.

    The underlying idea is that contrary to popular belief, private policewould have strong incentives to be peaceful and respect individualrights. For first of all, failure to peacefully arbitrate will yield to jointlydestructive warfare, which will be bad for profits. Second, firms willwant to develop long- term business relationships, and hence bewilling to negotiate in good faith to insure their long-termprofitability. And third, aggressive firms would be likely to attractonly high-risk clients and thus suffer from extraordinarily high costs

    (a problem parallel to the well-known "adverse selection problem" in e.g. medical insurance -- the problem being that high-risk peopleare especially likely to seek insurance, which drives up the pricewhen riskiness is hard for the insurer to discern or if regulationrequires a uniform price regardless of risk). Anarcho-capitalistsgenerally give little credence to the view that their "private policeagencies" would be equivalent to today's Mafia -- the costadvantages of open, legitimate business would make "criminalpolice" uncompetitive. As David Friedman explains in TheMachinery of Freedom , "Perhaps the best way to see why anarcho-capitalism would be so much more peaceful than our presentsystem is by analogy. Consider our world as it would be if the costof moving from one country to another were zero. Everyone lives ina housetrailer and speaks the same language. One day, thepresident of France announces that because of troubles withneighboring countries, new military taxes are being levied andconscription will begin shortly. The next morning the president of France finds himself ruling a peaceful but empty landscape, the

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    population having been reduced to himself, three generals, andtwenty-seven war correspondents."

    (Moreover, anarcho-capitalists argue, the Mafia can only thrive inthe artificial market niche created by the prohibition of alcohol,

    drugs, prostitution, gambling, and other victimless crimes. Mafiagangs might kill each other over turf, but liquor-store ownersgenerally do not.)

    Unlike some left-anarchists, the anarcho-capitalist has no objectionto punishing criminals; and he finds the former's claim thatpunishment does not deter crime to be the height of naivete.Traditional punishment might be meted out after a conviction by aneutral arbitrator; or a system of monetary restitution (probably inconjunction with a prison factory system) might exist instead. Aconvicted criminal would owe his victim compensation, and would

    be forced to work until he paid off his debt. Overall, anarcho-capitalists probably lean more towards the restitutionalist rather than the pure retributivist position.

    Probably the main division between the anarcho-capitalistsstems from the apparent differences between Rothbard'snatural-law anarchism, and David Friedman's more economisticapproach. Rothbard puts more emphasis on the need for agenerally recognized libertarian legal code (which he thinks couldbe developed fairly easily by purification of the Anglo-Americancommon law), whereas Friedman focuses more intently on the

    possibility of plural legal systems co-existing and responding to theconsumer demands of different elements of the population. Thedifference, however, is probably over-stated. Rothbard believes thatit is legitimate for consumer demand to determine thephilosophically neutral content of the law, such as legal procedure,as well as technical issues of property right definition such as water law, mining law, etc. And Friedman admits that "focal points"including prevalent norms are likely to circumscribe and somewhatstandardize the menu of available legal codes.

    Critics of anarcho-capitalism sometimes assume that communal or worker-owned firms would be penalized or prohibited in ananarcho-capitalist society. It would be more accurate to state thatwhile individuals would be free to voluntarily form communitarianorganizations, the anarcho- capitalist simply doubts that they wouldbe 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 formedvoluntarily (i.e., individuals joined voluntarily and capital was

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    individual. Society cannot exist if the majority is not ready tohinder, by the application or threat of violent action,minorities from destroying the social order. This power isvested in the state or government."

    Or to consider a perhaps less ideological writer, ThomasHobbes implicitly criticizes anarchist theory when heexplains that "Hereby it is manifest, that during the time menlive without a common Power to keep them all in awe, theyare in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre,as is of every man, against every man." Hobbes goes on toadd that "It may peradventure be thought, there was never such a time, nor condition of warre as this; and I believe itwas never generally so, over all the world: but there aremany places, where they live so now. For the savage peoplein many places of America, except the government of small

    Families, the concord whereof dependeth on naturall lust,have no government at all; and live at this day in that brutishmanner, as I said before." Since it is in the interest of thestrong to take what they want from the weak, the absence of government lead inexorably to widespread violence and theprevention or destruction of civilization itself.

    Anarchists of all varieties would reject this argument;sometimes claiming that the critic misunderstands their position, other times that the critic's assumptions are toopessimistic. Kropotkin, for example, would seriously dispute

    the claim that war is the natural state of ungoverned humanbeings; like many other species of animals, cooperation ismore common, natural, and likely. Left- anarchists generallywould normally object that these criticisms rest uponcontingent cultural assumptions arising from a competitivescarcity economy. Replace these institutions with humaneand egalitarian ones; then poverty, the cause of crime andaggression, would greatly decrease. Finally, many left-anarchists envisage cooperatives and communes adoptingand enforcing rules of appropriate conduct for those whowish to join.

    The anarcho-capitalist would likely protest that the criticmisunderstands his view: he does believe that police andlaws are necessary and desirable, and merely holds thatthey could be supplied by the free market rather thangovernment. More fundamentally, he doubts the game-theoretic underpinnings of Hobbes' argument, for it ignoresthe likelihood that aggressive individuals or firms will provoke

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    retaliation. Just as territorial animals fight when defendingtheir territory, but yield when confronted on the territory of another animal, rational self-interested individuals and firmswould usually find aggression a dangerous and unprofitablepractice. In terms of game theory , the anarcho-capitalist

    thinks that Hobbes' situation is a Hawk-Dove game rather than a Prisoners' Dilemma . (In the Prisoners' Dilemma,war/non-cooperation would be a strictly dominant strategy; ina Hawk-Dove game there is normally a mixed-strategyequilibrium in which cooperation/peace is the norm but asmall percentage of players continue to play war/non-cooperation.) Self- interested police firms would gladly makelong-term arbitration contracts with each other to avoidmutually destructive bloodshed.

    (To view an excellent short related essay on anarchism and

    game theory, click here .)The Marxist critique of left-anarchism

    One of the most famous attacks on anarchism waslaunched by Karl Marx during his battles with Proudhonand Bakunin. The ultimate result of this protracted battle of words was to split the 19th-century workers' movement intotwo distinct factions. In the 20th century, the war of wordsended in blows: while Marxist-Leninists sometimescooperated with anarchists during the early stages of the

    Russian and Spanish revolutions, violent struggle betweenthem was the rule rather than the exception.

    There were at least three distinct arguments that Marx aimedat his anarchist opponents.

    First: the development of socialism had to follow a particular historical course, whereas the anarchists mistakenlybelieved that it could be created by force of will alone. "Aradical social revolution is connected with certain historicalconditions of economic development; the latter are its

    presupposition. Therefore it is possible only where theindustrial proletariat, together with capitalist production,occupies at least a substantial place in the mass of thepeople." Marx continues: "He [Bakunin] understandsabsolutely nothing about social revolution ... For himeconomic requisites do not exist...He wants a Europeansocial revolution, resting on the economic foundation of capitalist production, to take place on the level of the

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    Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples ... Will power and not economic conditions is the basis for his socialrevolution." Proudhon, according to Marx, suffered from thesame ignorance of history and its laws: "M. Proudhon,incapable of following the real movement of history,

    produces a phantasmagoria which presumptuously claims tobe dialectical ... From his point of view man is only theinstrument of which the idea or the eternal reason makesuse in order to unfold itself." This particular argument isprobably of historical interest only, in light of the grossinaccuracy of Marx's prediction of the path of futurecivilization; although perhaps the general claim that socialprogression has material presuppositions retains somemerit.

    Second, Marx ridiculed Bakunin's claim that a socialist

    government would become a new despotism by socialistintellectuals. In light of the prophetic accuracy of Bakunin'sprediction in this area, Marx's reply is almost ironic: "Under collective ownership the so-called people's will disappears tomake way for the real will of the cooperative." It is on thispoint that most left-anarchists reasonably claim completevindication; just as Bakunin predicted, the Marxist"dictatorship of the proletariat" swiftly became a ruthless"dictatorship over the proletariat."

    Finally, Marx stated that the anarchists erroneously believed

    that the government supported the capitalist system rather than the other way around. In consequence, they wereattacking the wrong target and diverting the workers'movement from its proper course. Engels delineated theMarxist and left-anarchist positions quite well: "Bakuninmaintains that it is the state which has created capital, thatthe capitalist has his capital only by the grace of the state .As, therefore, the state is the chief evil, it is above all thestate which must be done away with and then capitalism willgo to blazes of itself. We, on the contrary, say: Do away withcapital, the concentration of the means of production in thehands of the few, and the state will fall of itself." The left-anarchist would probably accept this as a fair assessment of their disagreement with the Marxists, but point out how inmany historical cases since (and before) Marx's timegovernments have steered their countries towards verydifferent aims and policies, whereas capitalists are oftenfairly adaptive and passive.

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    The minarchists' attack on anarcho-capitalism

    Probably the earliest minarchist attack on anarcho-capitalism may be found in Ayn Rand 's essay "TheNature of Government." ("Minarchism" designates the

    advocacy of a "minimal" or nightwatchman state, supplyingonly police, courts, a legal system, and national defense.)Her critique contained four essential arguments. The firstessentially repeated Hobbes' view that society withoutgovernment would collapse into violent chaos. The secondwas that anarcho-capitalist police firms would turn to war assoon as a dispute broke out between individuals employingdifferent protection agencies: "[S]uppose Mr. Smith, acustomer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, hasrobbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones'

    house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, whodeclare that they do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there."Her third argument was that anarcho-capitalism was anexpression of an irrational subjectivist epistemology whichwould allow each person to decide for himself or herself whether the use of physical force was justified. Finally, her fourth argument was that anarcho-capitalism would lack anobjective legal code (meaning, presumably, both publiclyknown and morally valid).

    Rand's arguments were answered at length in Roy Childs ' "Objectivism and the State: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand,"which tried to convince her that only the anarcho-capitalistposition was consistent with her view that the initiation of force was immoral. In brief, Childs argued that like other free-market institutions, private police would have economicincentives to perform their tasks peacefully and efficiently:police would negotiate arbitration agreements in advanceprecisely to avoid the kind of stand-off that Rand feared, andan objective legal code could be developed by free-market

    judges. Childs strongly contested Rand's claim that anarcho-capitalism had any relation to irrationalism; an individualcould be rational or irrational in his judgment to usedefensive violence, just as a government could be rational or irrational in its judgment to do so. As Childs queried, "Bywhat epistemological criterion is an individual's actionclassified as 'arbitrary,' while that of a group of individuals issomehow 'objective'?"

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    Robert Nozick launched the other famous attempt torefute the anarcho-capitalist on libertarian grounds.Basically, Nozick argued that the supply of police and legalservices was a geographic natural monopoly, and thattherefore a state would emerge by the "invisible hand"

    processes of the market itself. The details of his argumentare rather complex: Nozick postulated a right, stronglycontested by other libertarians, to prohibit activities whichwere exceptionally risky to others; he then added that thepersons whose actions were so prohibited were entitled tocompensation. Using these two principles, Nozick claimedthat the dominant protection agency in a region could

    justifiably prohibit competition on the grounds that it was "toorisky," and therefore become an "ultra-minimal state." But atthis point, it would be obligated to compensate consumerswho were prohibited from purchasing competitors' services,

    so it would do so in kind by giving them access to its ownpolice and legal services -- thereby becoming a minimalstate. And none of these steps, according to Nozick, violateslibertarian rights.

    There have been literally dozens of anarchist attacks onNozick's derivation of the minimal state. To begin with, nostate arose in the manner Nozick describes, so all existing states are illegitimate and still merit abolition. Secondly,anarcho-capitalists dispute Nozick's assumption that defenseis a natural monopoly, noting that the modern security guard

    and arbitration industries are extremely decentralized andcompetitive. Finally, they reject Nozick's principles of riskand compensation, charging that they lead directly to thedespotism of preventive law.

    The conservative critique of anarchism

    The conservative critique of anarchism is much lessdeveloped, but can be teased out of the writings of suchauthors as Edmund Burke , Russell Kirk , and Ernest van denHaag. (Interestingly, Burke scholars are still debatingwhether the early Burke's quasi-anarchistic A Vindication of Natural Society was a serious work or a subtle satire.)

    Burke would probably say that, like other radical ideologues,the anarchists place far too much reliance on their imperfectreason and not enough on the accumulated wisdom of tradition. Society functions because we have graduallyevolved a system of workable rules. It seems certain that

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    Burke would apply his critique of the French revolutionarieswith equal force to the anarchists: "They have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very fullmeasure of confidence in their own. With them it is asufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things,

    because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste;because duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place alltheir hopes in discovery." To attempt to replace the wisdomof the ages with a priori theories of justice is sure to lead todisaster, because functional policies must be judiciouscompromises between important competing ends. Or inBurke's words, "The science of constructing acommonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like everyother experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it

    a short experience that can instruct us in that practicalscience; because the real effects of moral causes are notalways immediate." The probable result of any attempt torealize anarchist principles would be a brief period of revolutionary zeal, followed by chaos and social breakdownresulting from the impracticality of the revolutionary policies,and finally ending in a brutal dictator winning widespreadsupport by simply restoring order and rebuilding the people'ssense of social stability.

    Many anarchists would in fact accept Burke's critique of

    violent revolution, which is why they favor advancing their views gradually through education and nonviolent protest. Infact, Bakunin's analysis of Marxism as the ideology (i.e.,rationalization for the class interests of) middle-classintellectuals in fact differs little from Burke's analysis:Bakunin, like Burke, perceived that no matter howoppressive the current system may be, there are alwayspower-hungry individuals who favor violent revolution astheir most practical route to absolute power. Their protestsagainst actual injustices must be seen in light of their ultimate aim of imposing even more ruthless despotism uponthe people.

    On other issues, anarchists would disagree strongly withseveral of Burke's claims. Many forms of misery stem fromthe blind adherence to tradition; and rational thinking hassparked countless improvements in human society ever since the decline of traditional despotism. Moreover,anarchists do not propose to do away with valuable

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    traditions, but simply request evidence that particular traditions are valuable before they lend them their support.And what is to be done when -- as is usually the case -- asociety harbors a wide range of mutually incompatibletraditions?

    Anarchists might also object that the Burkean analysis reliestoo heavily upon tradition as a result rather than a process.Cultural evolution may constantly weed out foolish ideas andpractices, but it hardly follows that such follies have already perished; for the state to defend tradition is to strangle thecompetitive process which tends to make tradition sensible.As Vincent Cook explains: "[I]t is precisely because wisdomhas to be accumulated in incremental steps that it cannot becentrally planned by any single political or religious authority,contrary to the aspirations of conservatives and collectivists

    alike. While the collectivists are indeed guilty of trying torationalistically reconstruct society in defiance of tradition (avalid criticism of left-anarchists), conservatives on the other hand are guilty of trying to freeze old traditions in place.Conservatives have forgotten that the process of wisdomaccumulation is an on-going one, and instead have opted for the notion that some existing body of traditions (usuallyJudeo-Christian) already represent social perfection."

    Russell Kirk, noted Burke scholar, has written a brief critique of the modern libertarian movement. (Another

    conservative, Ernest van den Haag, wrote a lengthier essaywith a similar theme and perspective.) In all likelihood, Kirkwould apply many (but not all) of the same arguments to left-anarchists.

    Kirk faults the libertarians (and when he discusses"libertarians" he usually seems to have the anarcho-capitalists in mind) on at least six counts. First, they deny theexistence of a "transcendent moral order." Second, order isprior to liberty, and liberty is possible only after governmentestablishes a constitutional order. Third, libertarians assumethat self-interest is the only possible social bond, ignoring thebroader communitarian vision of human nature found in boththe Aristotelian and Judeo- Christian traditions. Fourth,libertarians erroneously assume that human beings arenaturally good or at least perfectible. Fifth, the libertarianfoolishly attacks the state as such, rather than merely itsabuses. Sixth and last, the libertarian is an arrogant egoistwho disregards valuable ancient beliefs and customs.

    mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]
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    Left-anarchists would perhaps agree with Kirk on pointsthree and six. So if Kirk were to expand his attack onanarchism to encompass the left-anarchists as well, hemight acquit them of these two charges. The remaining four,however, Kirk would probably apply equally to anarchists of

    both varieties.

    How would anarchists reply to Kirk's criticisms? On the"moral transcendence" issue, they would point out therehave been religious as well as non-religious anarchists; andmoreover, many non-religious anarchists still embrace moralobjectivism (notably anarchists in the broader natural lawtradition). Most anarchists would deny that they make self-interest the only possible social bond; and even those whowould affirm this (such as anarcho-capitalists influenced byAyn Rand) have a broad conception of self-interest

    consistent with the Aristotelian tradition.As to the priority of order over liberty, many anarchistsinfluenced by e.g. Kropotkin would reply that as with other animal species, order and cooperation emerge as a result ,not a consequence of freedom; while anarcho- capitalistswould probably refer Kirk to the theorists of "spontaneousorder" such as Hayek, Hume, Smith, and even EdmundBurke himself.

    The FAQ addresses the questions of human perfectibility

    and utopianism in sections 20 and 21. As for Kirk's finalpoint, most anarchists would reply that they happily acceptvaluable customs and traditions, but believe that they haveshown that some ancient practices and institutions -- aboveall, the state --have no value whatever.

    "We are already in a state of anarchy."

    Under anarchy, it is conceivable that e.g. a brutal gang mightuse its superior might to coerce everyone else to do as theywish. With nothing more powerful than the gang, there would

    (definitionally) be nothing to stop them. But how does thisdiffer from what we have now? Governments rule becausethey have the might to maintain their power; in short,because there is no superior agency to restrain them.Hence, reason some critics of anarchism, the goal of anarchists is futile because we are already in a state of anarchy.

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    This argument is confused on several levels.

    First, it covertly defines anarchy as unrestrained rule of thestrongest, which is hardly what most anarchists have inmind. (Moreover, it overlooks the definitional differences

    between government and other forms of organizedaggression; Weber in particular noted that governmentsclaim a monopoly over the legitimate use of force in a givengeographical region.) In fact, while anarchism is logicallycompatible with any viewpoint which rejects the existence of the state, there have been extremely few (perhaps no)anarchists who combined their advocacy of anarchism withsupport for domination by those most skilled in violence.

    Second, it seems to assume that all that particular anarchistsadvocate is the abolition of the state; but as we have seen,

    anarchism is normally combined with additional normativeviews about what ought to replace the state. Thus, mostanarchist theorists believe more than merely that the stateshould not exist; they also believe that e.g. society should bebased upon voluntary communes, or upon strict privateproperty rights, etc.

    Third, the argument sometimes confuses a definitional with acausal claim. It is one thing to argue that anarchy would lead to the rule by the strongest; this is a causal claim about thelikely results of the attempt to create an anarchist society. It

    is another thing entirely to argue that anarchy means rule bythe strongest. This is simply a linguistic confusion, bestillustrated by noting that under this definition anarchy and thestate are logically compatible.

    A related but more sophisticated argument, generally leveledagainst anarcho- capitalists, runs as follows. If competingprotection agencies could prevent the establishment of anabusive, dominant firm, while don't they do so now ? In short,if market checks against the abuse of power actually worked,we wouldn't have a state in the first place.

    There are two basic replies to this argument. First of all, itcompletely ignores the ideological factor. Anarcho-capitalists are thinking of how competing firms would preventthe rise of abusive protection monopolists in a society wheremost people don't support the existence of such amonopolist. It is one thing to suppress a "criminal firm" whenit stands condemned by public opinion and the values

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    traditional art, bourgeois culture, comfortable middle-aged people,the British monarchy, etc. This position, when articulated, is oftendifficult to understand, for it seems to seek destruction without anysuggestion or argument that anything else would be preferable.Closely linked to emotivist anarchism, though sometimes a little

    more theoretical, is nihilist anarchism. The anarcho-nihilistscombine the emotivist's opposition to virtually all forms of order withradical subjectivist moral and epistemological theory.

    To see Tracy Harms' criticism of my treatment of Stirner, egoism,and nihilism, click here .

    Related to emotivist anarchism is a second strand of lessintellectual, more emotional anarchist thought. It has been called bysome "moral anarchism." This view again feels that existing statistsociety is bad; but rather than lay out any comprehensive plans for

    its abolition, this sort of anarchist sticks to more immediate reforms.Anarchism of this sort is a kind of ideal dream, which is beautifuland inspiring to contemplate while we pursue more concrete aims.

    The emotivist anarchist often focuses on action and disdainstheorizing. In contrast, another breed of anarchists, known as"philosophical anarchists," see few practical implications of their intellectual position. Best represented by Robert Paul Wolff,philosophical anarchism simply denies that the state's orders assuch can confer any legitimacy whatever. Each individual mustexercise his moral autonomy to judge right and wrong for himself,

    irrespective of the state's decrees. However, insofar as the state'sdecrees accord with one's private conscience, there is no need tochange one's behavior. A position like Wolff's says, in essence, thatthe rational person cannot and must not offer the blind obedience toauthority that governments often seem to demand; but this insightneed not spark any political action if one's government's decreesare not unusually immoral.

    Yet another faction, strongly influenced by Leo Tolstoy , refer tothemselves as "Christian anarchists." (Tolstoy avoided the term"anarchist," probably because of its association with violence andterrorism in the minds of contemporary Russians.) Drawing on theGospels' themes of nonviolence and the equality of all humanbeings, these anarchists condemn government as contrary toChristian teaching. Tolstoy particularly emphasized the immoralityof war, military service, and patriotism, challenging Christians to liveup to the radical implications of their faith by withdrawing their support from all three of these evils. Tolstoy's essay "Patriotism, or

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    Peace?" is particularly notable for its early attack upon nationalismand the bloodshed that usually accompanies it.

    Finally, many leftist and progressive movements have an anarchistinterpretation and anarchist advocates. For example, a faction of

    feminists, calling themselves "anarcha- feminists" exists. TheGreen and environmentalist movements also have stronganarchist wings which blend opposition to the state and defense of the environment. Their primary theoretician is probably MurrayBookchin, who (lately) advocates a society of small and fairlyautarchic localities. As Bookchin explains, "the anarchist conceptsof a balanced community, a face-to-face democracy, a humanistictechnology and a decentralized society -- these rich libertarianconcepts -- are not only desirable, they are also necessary."Institutions such as the town meeting of classical democratic theorypoint the way to a radical reorganization of society, in which small

    environmentally concerned townships regularly meet to discuss andvote upon their communities' production and broader aims.Doubtlessly there are many other fusions between anarchism andprogressive causes, and more spring up as new concerns develop.

    What moral justifications have been offered for anarchism?

    Again, there are a great many answers which have been offered.Some anarchists, such as the emotivist and (paradoxically) themoral anarchists have little interest in high-level moral theory. Butthis has been of great interest to the more intellectual sorts of

    anarchists.One popular argument for anarchism is that it is the only way for true socialism to exist. State-socialism is unable to actuallyestablish human equality; instead it simply creating a new rulingclass. Bakunin prophetically predicted the results of socialistsseizing control of the state when he wrote that the socialist elitewould form a "new class" which would be "the most aristocratic,despotic, arrogant, and contemptuous of all regimes." ElsewhereBakunin wrote that "[F]reedom without Socialism is privilege andinjustice, ... Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality." Of course, socialism itself has been defended on both deontologicaland utilitarian grounds, and there is no need to repeat these here.

    On the other hand, anarcho-capitalists have argued that only under anarchism can the Lockean rights to person and property so loudlychampioned by more moderate libertarians be fully respected. Anyattempt to impose a monopolistic government necessarily preventscompeting police and judicial services from providing a legitimate

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    service; moreover, so long as government exists taxation willpersist. The government's claim to defend private property is thusquite ironic, for the state, in Rothbard's words, is "an institution thatpresumes to 'defend' person and property by itself subsisting on theunilateral coercion against private property known as taxation."

    Other anarcho- capitalists such as David Friedman find thesearguments from natural Lockean rights unconvincing, and insteadtake up the task of trying to show that Adam Smith's utilitarian casefor free-market capitalism applies just as well to free markets indefense services, making the state useless as well as dangerous.

    Still other anarchists, such as Lysander Spooner and BenjaminTucker as well as Proudhon, have argued that anarchism wouldabolish the exploitation inherent in interest and rent simply bymeans of free competition. In their view, only labor income islegitimate, and an important piece of the case for anarchism is that

    without government-imposed monopolies, non-labor income wouldbe driven to zero by market forces. It is unclear, however, if theyregard this as merely a desirable side effect, or if they would rejectanarchism if they learned that the predicted economic effect thereof would not actually occur. (Other individualist anarchists haveargued that contrary to Spooner and Tucker, free banking wouldlead to a much lower rate of inflation than we experience today; thatrent and interest are not due to "monopoly" but to scarcity of landand loanable funds; and that there is no moral distinction betweenlabor and rental or interest income, all of which depend upon amixture of scarcity, demand, luck, and effort.)

    A basic moral intuition that probably anarchists of all varieties shareis simply that no one has the right to rule another person. Theinterpretation of "rulership," however, varies: left anarchists tend tosee the employer-employee relationship as one of rulership, andanarcho-capitalists are often dubious of the claim that envisagedanarchists communes would be democratic and hence voluntary. Aclosely related moral intuition, again widely shared by all sorts of anarchists, is that each person should exercise personal autonomy,or self-rule. One should question authority, and make up one's mindfor oneself rather than simply following the herd. Again, theinterpretation of "personal autonomy" varies: the left-anarchist seesthe employer-employee relationship as inherently violating personalautonomy, whereas the anarcho-capitalist is more likely to seepersonal autonomy disappearing in the commune or collective,regardless of how democratically they run themselves.

    What are the major debates between anarchists? What are therecurring arguments?

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    Without a doubt, the most repeated debate among modernanarchists is fought between the left-anarchists on one side and theanarcho-capitalists on the other. Of course, there are occasionaldebates between different left-anarchist factions, but probably mostof them would be content with an anarchist society populated by

    some mixture of communes, worker-controlled firms, andcooperatives. And similarly there are a few internal debatesbetween anarcho- capitalists, notably the tension betweenRothbard's natural law anarcho-capitalism and David Friedman'smore economistic anarcho-capitalism. But it is the debate betweenthe left-anarchists and the anarcho-capitalists which is the mostfundamental and the most acrimonious. There are many sub-debates within this wider genre, which we will now consider.

    "X is not 'true anarchism.'"

    One of the least fruitful of these sub-debates is the frequentattempt of one side to define the other out of existence ("Youare not truly an anarchist, for anarchists must favor [abolitionof private property, atheism, Christianity, etc.]") In addition tobeing a trivial issue, the factual supporting arguments areoften incorrect. For example, despite a popular claim thatsocialism and anarchism have been inextricably linked sincethe inception of the anarchist movement, many 19th-centuryanarchists, not only Americans such as Tucker and Spooner,but even Europeans like Proudhon, were ardently in favor of private property (merely believing that some existing sorts of

    property were illegitimate, without opposing private propertyas such).

    As Benjamin Tucker wrote in 1887, "It will probably surprisemany who know nothing of Proudhon save his declarationthat 'property is robbery' to learn that he was perhaps themost vigorous hater of Communism that ever lived on thisplanet. But the apparent inconsistency vanishes when youread his book and find that by property he means simplylegally privileged wealth or the power of usury, and not at allthe possession by the laborer of his products."

    Nor did an ardent anarcho-communist like Kropotkin denyProudhon or even Tucker the title of "anarchist." In hisModern Science and Anarchism , Kropotkin discusses notonly Proudhon but "the American anarchist individualistswho were represented in the fifties by S.P. Andrews and W.Greene, later on by Lysander Spooner, and now arerepresented by Benjamin Tucker, the well-known editor of

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    the New York Liberty ." Similarly in his article on anarchismfor the 1910 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica ,Kropotkin again freely mentions the American individualistanarchists, including "Benjamin Tucker, whose journalLiberty was started in 1881 and whose conceptions are a

    combination of those of Proudhon with those of HerbertSpencer."

    "Anarchism of variant X is unstable and will lead to the re-emergence of thestate."

    A more substantive variation is to argue that the opposinganarchism would be unstable and lead to the swift re-emergence of government. Thus, the left-anarchists oftenargue that the defense corporations envisaged by anarcho-capitalists would war with one another until one came out as

    the new government; or else they would collude to establishthemselves as the new capitalist oligarchs. As NoamChomsky says in an interview with Ulrike Heider , "Thepredatory forces of the market would destroy society, woulddestroy community, and destroy the workforce. Nothingwould be left except people hating each other and fightingeach other." Anarcho-capitalists reply that this grosslyunderestimates the degree of competition likely to prevail inthe defense industry; that war is likely to be very unprofitableand dangerous, and is more likely to be provoked byideology than sober profit-maximization; and that economic

    theory and economic history show that collusion is quitedifficult to maintain.

    Anarcho-capitalists for their part accuse the left-anarchists of intending to impose their communal vision upon everyone;since everyone will not go along voluntarily, a governmentwill be needed to impose it. Lest we think that this argumentis a recent invention, it is interesting to find that essentiallythis argument raged in the 19th- century anarchistmovement as well. In John MacKay's The Anarchists , wesee the essential dialogue between individualist andcollectivist anarchism has a longer history than one mightthink:

    "Would you, in the system of society which you call 'freeCommunism' prevent individuals from exchanging their labor among themselves by means of their own medium of exchange? And further: Would you prevent them fromoccupying land for the purpose of personal use?"... [The]

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    question was not to be escaped. If he answered "Yes!" headmitted that society had the right of control over theindividual and threw overboard the autonomy of theindividual which he had always zealously defended; if on theother hand he answered "No!" he admitted the right of

    private property which he had just denied so emphatically ...Then he answered "In Anarchy any number of men musthave the right of forming a voluntary association, and sorealizing their ideas in practice. Nor can I understand howany one could justly be driven from the land and housewhich he uses and occupies ... [E]very serious man mustdeclare himself: for Socialism, and thereby for force andagainst liberty, or for Anarchism, and thereby for liberty andagainst force."

    There have been several left-anarchist replies. One is to

    readily agree that dissenters would have the right to not joina commune, with the proviso that they must not employothers or otherwise exploit them. Another is to claim thatanarchism will change (or cease to warp) human attitudes sothat they will be more communitarian and less individualistic.Finally, some argue that this is simply another sophisticalargument for giving the rich and powerful the liberty to takeaway the liberty of everyone else.

    "In an anarchist society in which both systems X and Y existed, X wouldinevitably outcompete Y."

    Again, this argument has been made from severalperspectives. Left-anarchists have argued that if workershad the genuine option to work for a capitalist employer, or else work for themselves in a worker cooperative, virtually allworkers would choose the latter. Moreover, workers in aworker-managed firm would have higher morale and greater incentive to work hard compared with workers who justworked for the benefit of their employer. Hence, capitalistswould be unable to pay their workers wages competitive withthe wages of the labor-managed firm, and by force of competition would gradually vanish.

    Anarcho-capitalists find that the argument works in preciselythe opposite direction. For what is a worker-owned firm if nota firm in which the workers jointly hold all of the stock? Nowthis is a peculiarly irrational portfolio to hold, because itmeans that workers would, in effect, put all their eggs in onebasket; if their firm does well, they grow rich, but if their firm

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    goes bankrupt, they lose everything. It would make muchmore sense for workers to exchange their shares in their own firm to buy shares in other firms in order to insurethemselves against risk. Thus, the probable result of worker-owned firms with negotiable shares would be that workers

    would readily and advantageously sell off most of their shares in their own firm in order to diversify their portfolios.The end result is likely to be the standard form of capitalistorganization, in which workers receive a fixed payment for their services and the owners of the firms' shares earn thevariable profits. Of course, alienation of shares could bebanned, but this appears to do nothing except force workersto live with enormous financial risk. None of this shows thatworker-owned firms could not persist if the workers were soideologically committed to worker control that their greater productivity outweighed the riskiness of the workers'

    situation; but anarcho-capitalists doubt very much that suchintense ideology would prevail in more than a small portionof the population. Indeed, they expect that the egalitariannorms and security from dismissal that left-anarchiststypically favor would grossly undermine everyone's incentiveto work hard and kill abler workers' desire for advancement.

    Some anarcho-capitalists go further and argue thatinequality would swiftly re-emerge in an anarcho-syndicalisteconomy. Workers would treat their jobs as a sort of property right, and would refuse to hire new workers on

    equal terms because doing so would dilute the currentworkers' shares in the firm's profits. The probable resultwould be that an elite class of workers in capital-intensivefirms would exploit new entrants into the work force much ascapitalists allegedly do today. As evidence, they point toexisting "worker-controlled" firms such as law firms --normally they consist of two tiers of workers, one of whichboth works and owns the firm ("the partners"), while theremainder are simply employees ("the associates" as well asthe secretaries, clerks, etc.)

    "Anarchism of type X would be worse than the state."

    To the left-anarchist, the society envisaged by the anarcho-capitalists often seems far worse than what we have now.For it is precisely to the inequality, exploitation, and tyrannyof modern capitalism that they object, and rather thanabolishing it the anarcho-capitalist proposes to unleash itsworst features and destroy its safety net. Noam Chomsky,

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    for instance, has suggested that anarcho-capitalists focusincorrectly on state domination, failing to recognize theunderlying principle of opposition to all domination, includingthe employer-employee relationship. Overall, since anarcho-capitalism relies heavily on laissez-faire economic theory,

    and since left-anarchists see no validity to laissez-faireeconomic theory, it seems to the latter that anarcho-capitalism would be a practical disaster. Left- anarchistsoften equate anarcho-capitalism with social Darwinism andeven fascism , arguing that the cruel idea of "survival of thefittest" underlies them all.

    The anarcho-capitalist, in turn, often suspects that the left-anarchist's world would be worse than the world of today.Under anarcho-capitalism, individuals would still have everyright to voluntarily pool their property to form communes,

    worker-controlled firms, and cooperatives; they would simplybe unable to force dissenters to join them. Since this factrarely impresses the left-anarchist, the anarcho-capitalistoften concludes that the left-anarchist will not be satisfiedwith freedom for his preferred lifestyle; he wants to force hiscommunal lifestyle on everyone. Not only would this be agross denial of human freedom, but it would (according tothe anarcho-capitalist) be likely to have disastrous effects oneconomic incentives, and swiftly lead humanity intomiserable poverty. The anarcho-capitalist is also frequentlydisturbed by the opposition to all order sometimes voiced by

    left-anarchists; for he feels that only coerced order is badand welcomes the promotion of an orderly society byvoluntary means. Similarly, the left-anarchists' occasionalshort time horizon, emphasis on immediate satisfaction, andlow regard for work (which can be seen in a number of authors strongly influenced by emotivist anarchism) frightenthe anarcho-capitalist considerably.

    Etc.

    A large number of arguments that go back and forthbasically duplicate the standard socialist vs. capitalistdebate. The need or lack thereof for incentives, security,equality, regulation, protection of the environment, and so onare debated extensively on other sources on the Net, andthere are several FAQs which discuss these issues from avariety of viewpoints. FAQs on the broader libertarianmovement are frequently posted on alt.individualism,alt.politics.libertarian, and talk.politics.libertarian. FAQs on

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