Anarchism is defined byThe American Heritage CollegeDictionary as "The theory or doctrine that all forms ofgovernment are unnecessary, oppressive, and undesirableand should be abolished." Anarchism is a negative; it holdsthat one thing, namely government, is bad and should beabolished. Aside from this defining tenet, it would bedifficult to list any belief that all anarchists hold. Just asatheists might support or oppose any viewpoint consistentwith the non-existence of God, anarchists might and indeeddo hold the entire range of viewpoints consistent with thenon-existence of the state. As might be expected, different groups of anarchists areconstantly trying to define anarchists with different views outof existence, just as many Christians say that their sect isthe only "true" Christianity and many socialists say that theirsocialism is the only "true" socialism. This FAQ takes whatseems to me to be the impartial view that such tactics arepointless and merely prevent the debate of substantiveissues. (N.B. The preceding definition has been criticized anumber of times. To view my appendix onDefining Anarchism, click here.) Unlike many observers of history, anarchists see a commonthread behind most of mankind's problems: the state. In the20th-century alone, states have murdered well over100,000,000 human beings, whether in war, concentrationcamps, or man-made famine. And this is merely acontinuation of a seemingly endless historical pattern:almost from the beginning of recorded history, governmentshave existed. Once they arose, they allowed a ruling classto live off the labor of the mass of ordinary people; andthese ruling classes have generally used their ill-gottengains to build armies and wage war to extend their sphere ofinfluence. At the same time, governments have alwayssuppressed unpopular minorities, dissent, and the efforts ofgeniuses and innovators to raise humanity to newintellectual, moral, cultural, and economic heights. Bytransferring surplus wealth from producers to the state'sruling elite, the state has often strangled any incentive forlong-run economic growth and thus stifled humanity's ascentfrom poverty; and at the same time the state has alwaysused that surplus wealth to cement its power. If the state is the proximate cause of so much needlessmisery and cruelty, would it not be desirable to investigatethe alternatives? Perhaps the state is a necessary evil whichwe cannot eliminate. But perhaps it is rather anunnecessaryevil which we accept out of inertia when atotally different sort of society would be a greatimprovement. By definition, anarchists oppose merelygovernment, notorder or society. "Liberty is the Mother, not the Daughter ofOrder" wrote Proudhon, and most anarchists would beinclined to agree. Normally, anarchists demand abolition ofthe state because they think that they have something betterto offer, not out of a desire for rebellion as such. Or asKropotkin put it, "No destruction of the existing order ispossible, if at the time of the overthrow, or of the struggleleading to the overthrow, the idea of what is to take theplace of what is to be destroyed is not always present in themind. Even the theoretical criticism of the existingconditions is impossible, unless the critic has in mind a moreor less distinct picture of what he would have in place of theexisting state. Consciously or unconsciously, theideal,the conception of something better is forming in the mind ofeveryone who criticizes social institutions." There is an anti-intellectual strain in anarchism which favorschaos and destruction as an end-in-itself. While possibly amajority among people who have called themselvesanarchists, this is not a prominent strand of thought amongthose who have actually spent time thinking and writingabout anarchist theory. Some anarchists have favored the abolition of one or moreof the above, while others have not. To some, all of theseare merely other forms of oppression and domination. Toothers, they are the vital intermediary institutions whichprotect us from the state. To still others, some of the aboveare good and others are bad; or perhaps they are badcurrently, but merit reform. As should become plain to the reader of alt.society.anarchyor 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 ananarchist society, people either would or should abandon orgreatly reduce the role of private property rights. Theeconomic system would be organized around cooperatives,worker-owned firms, and/or communes. A key value in thisline of anarchist thought is egalitarianism, the view thatinequalities, especially of wealth and power, areundesirable, immoral, and socially contingent. The second is broadly known as "anarcho-capitalism." These anarchists believe that in an anarchist society,people either would or should not onlyretainprivateproperty, but expand it to encompass the entire social realm. No anarcho-capitalist has ever denied the right of people tovoluntarily pool their private property andformacooperative, worker-owned firm, or commune; but they alsobelieve that several property, including such organizationsas corporations, are not only perfectly legitimate but likely tobe the predominant form of economic organization underanarchism. Unlike the left-anarchists, anarcho-capitalistsgenerally place little or no value on equality, believing thatinequalities along all dimensions -- including income andwealth -- are not only perfectly legitimate so long as they"come about in the right way," but are the naturalconsequence 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 myown view, it is necessary to re-write a great deal of history to maintainthis claim. In Carl Landauer'sEuropean Socialism: A History ofIdeas and Movements (published in 1959 before any important modernanarcho-capitalist works had been written), this great socialist historiannotes that: Actually, Tucker and Spooner both wrote about the free market's abilityto provide legal and protection services, so Landauer's remark was notaccurate even in 1959. But the interesting point is that before theemergence of modern anarcho-capitalism Landauer found it necessary to distinguishtwo strands of anarchism, only one of whichhe considered to be within the broad socialist tradition. This is actually a complicated question, because the term"libertarianism" itself has two very different meanings. InEurope in the 19th-century, libertarianism was a populareuphemism for left-anarchism. However, the term did notreally catch on in the United States. After World War II, many American-based pro-free-marketintellectuals opposed to traditional conservatism wereseeking for a label to describe their position, and eventuallypicked "libertarianism." ("Classical liberalism" and "marketliberalism" are alternative labels for the same essentialposition.) The result was that in two different politicalcultures which rarely communicated with one another, theterm "libertarian" was used in two very different ways. At thecurrent time, the American use has basically taken overcompletely in academic political theory (probably owing toNozick's influence), but the European use is still popularamong many left-anarchist activists in both Europe and theU.S. The semantic confusion was complicated further when someof the early post-war American libertarians determined thatthe logical implication of their view was, in fact, a variant ofanarchism. They adopted the term "anarcho-capitalism" todifferentiate themselves from more moderate libertarianism,but were still generally happy to identify themselves with thebroader free-market libertarian movement. If we accept one traditional definition of socialism --"advocacy of government ownership of the means ofproduction" -- it seems that anarchists arenotsocialistsby definition. But if by socialism we mean somethingmore inclusive, such as "advocacy of the strong restrictionor abolition of private property," then the question becomesmore complex. Under the second proffered definition, some anarchists aresocialists, but others are not. Outside of the Anglo-American political culture, there has been a long and closehistorical relationship between the more orthodox socialistswho advocate a socialist government, and the anarchistsocialists who desire some sort of decentralized, voluntarysocialism. The two groups both want to severely limit orabolish private property and thus both groups fit theseconddefinition of socialism. However, the anarchistscertainly do not want the government to own the means ofproduction, for they don't want government to exist in thefirst place. The anarchists' dispute with the traditional socialists -- adispute best illustrated by the bitter struggle betweenKarl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin for dominance in the 19th-century European workers' movement -- has often be described asa disagreement over "means." On this interpretation, thesocialist anarchists and the state-socialistsagreethat acommunal and egalitarian society is desirable, but accuseone another of proposing ineffective means of attaining it. However, this probably understates the conflict, which isalso over more fundamental values: socialist anarchistsemphasize the need for autonomy and the evils ofauthoritarianism, while traditional socialists have frequentlybelittled such concerns as "bourgeois." Still, this geographic division should not be over-stated. TheFrench anarchist Proudhon and the German Max Stirnerboth embraced modified forms of individualism; a number ofleft-anarchists (often European immigrants) attainedprominence in the United States; and Noam Chomsky andMurray Bookchin, two of the most influential theorists ofmodern left-anarchism, both reside within the United States. Anarcho-capitalism has a much more recent origin in thelatter half of the 20th century. The two most famousadvocates of anarcho-capitalism are probablyMurrayRothbard andDavid Friedman. There were however someinteresting earlier precursors, notably the Belgian economistGustave de Molinari. Two other 19th-century anarchistswho have been adopted by modern anarcho-capitalists witha few caveats areBenjamin Tucker andLysander Spooner. More comprehensive listings of anarchist figures may befound in a number of broad historical works listed later in theFAQ. There are many different views on this. Among left-anarchists, there are some who imagine returning to a muchsimpler, even pre-industrial, mode of social organization. Others seem to intend to maintain modern technology andcivilization (perhaps in a more environmentally soundmanner) but end private ownership of the means ofproduction. To be replaced with what? Various suggestions have beenmade. Existing firms might simply be turned over to workerownership, and then be subject to the democratic control ofthe workers. This is the anarcho-syndicalist picture: keepingan economy based upon a multitude of firms, but with firmsowned and managed by the workers at each firm.Presumably firms would then strike deals with one anotherto secure needed materials; or perhaps firms would continueto pay money wages and sell products to consumers. It isunclear how the syndicalist intends to arrange for theegalitarian care of the needy, or the provision of necessarybut unprofitable products. Perhaps it is supposed thatsyndicates would contribute out of social responsibility;others have suggested that firms would electrepresentatives for a larger meta-firm organization whichwould carry out the necessary tasks. It should be noted thatTom Wetzel disputes mycharacterization of anarcho-syndicalism; he argues that veryfew anarcho-syndicalists ever imagined that workers wouldsimply take over their firms, while maintaining the basicfeatures of the market economy. Rather, the goal hasusually been the establishment of an overarchingdemocratic structure, rather than a multitude ofuncoordinated firm-centered democracies. Or at Wetzelstates, "Anarcho-syndicalism advocates the development ofa mass workers' movement based on direct democracy asthe vehicle for reorganization of the society on the basis ofdirect workers' collective power over social production, thuseliminating the domination and exploitation of the producingclass by an exploiting class. Workers cannot have collectivepower over the system of social production as isolatedgroups competing in a market economy; rather, workers self-management requires structures of democratic control oversocial production and public affairs generally. Workers' self-management thus refers, not just to self-management of theindividual workplace, but of the whole system of socialproduction. This requires grassroots bodies, such asworkers' congresses or conventions, through whichcoordinated policies for the society can be developed in ademocratic manner. This is proposed as asubstituteorreplacement for the historical nation-state." On thisinterpretation of anarcho-syndicalism, the revolutionarytrade unions are ameansfor achieving an anarchistsociety, rather than a proposed basis for social organizationunder anarchy. Many would observe that there is nothinganarchisticabout this proposal; indeed, names aside, it fits easily intothe orthodox state-socialist tradition. Bakunin would haveprobably ridiculed such ideas as authoritarian Marxistsocialism in disguise, and predicted that the leadinganarchist revolutionaries would swiftly become the newdespots. But Wetzel is perhaps right that many or evenmost historical anarcho-syndicalists were championing thesystem outlined in his preceding quotation. He goes on toadd that "[I]f you look at the concept of 'state' in the veryabstract way it often is in the social sciences, as in Weber'sdefinition, then what the anarcho-syndicalists wereproposing is not elimination of the state or government, butits radical democratization. That was not how anarchiststhemselves spoke about it, but it can be plausibly arguedthat this is alogical consequence of a certain majorstream of left-anarchist thought." Ronald Fraser's discussion of the ideology of the Spanish Anarchists(historically the largest European anarchist movement) stronglyundermines Wetzel's claim, however. There were two well-developed linesof thought, both of which favored the abolition of the State in thebroad Weberian sense of the word, and which did indeed believe that theworkers should literally have control over their workplaces. After distinguishing the ruraland the urban tendencies among the Spanish ideologists, Fraser explains: Overall, the syndicalist is probably the best elaborated ofthe left-anarchist systems. But others in the broadertradition imagine individuals forming communes andcooperatives which would be less specialized and more self-sufficient than the typical one-product-line anarcho-syndicalist firm. These notions are often closely linked tothe idea of creating a more environmentally sound society,in which small and decentralized collectives redirect theirenergies towards a Greener way of life. Many left-anarchists and anarchist sympathizers have also beenattracted to Guild Socialism in one form or another.Economist Roger A. McCain thoughtfully explores Guild Socialismas an alternative to both capitalism and the state in "GuildSocialism Reconsidered," one of his working papers. To view it, click here. So perhaps Kropotkin's ideal society would live under theguidance of a reformed customary law stripped of the classlegislation with which it is now so closely associated. ButKropotkin continues to give what appear to be argumentsagainst even customary law prohibiting e.g. murder. Almostall violent crime is actually caused by poverty and inequalitycreatedby existing law. A small residual of violent crimemight persist, but efforts to handle it by legal channels arefutile. Why? Because punishment has no effect on crime,especially such crimes of passion as would survive theabolition of private property. Moreover, criminals should notbe judged wicked, but rather treated as we now treat thesick and disadvantaged. Most left-anarchists probably hold to a mix of Kropotkin'sfairly distinct positions on law and crime. Existing lawshould be replaced by sensible and communitarian customs;and the critic of anarchism underestimates the extent towhich existing crime is in fact a product of the legal system'sperpetuation of inequality and poverty. And sincepunishment is not an effective deterrent, and criminals arenot ultimately responsible for their misdeeds, a strictlyenforced legal code may be undesirable anyway. Some other crucial features of the left-anarchist society arequite unclear. Whether dissidents who despised all forms ofcommunal living would be permitted to set up their owninegalitarian separatist societies is rarely touched upon. Occasionally left-anarchists have insisted that small farmersand the like would not be forcibly collectivized, but the limitsof the right to refuse to adopt an egalitarian way of life arerarely specified. Most of the prominent anarcho-capitalist writers have beenacademic economists, and as such have felt it necessary tospell out the workings of their preferred society in rathergreater detail than the left-anarchists have. In order to bestgrasp the anarcho-capitalist position, it is helpful to realizethat anarcho-capitalists have emerged almost entirely out ofthe modern American libertarian movement, and believe thattheir view is simply a slightly more extreme version of thelibertarianism propounded by e.g.Robert Nozick. Now the anarcho-capitalist essentially turns the minarchist'sown logic against him, and asks why the remaining functionsof the state could not beturned over to the free market. Andso, the anarcho-capitalist imagines that police servicescould be sold by freely competitive firms; that a court systemwould emerge to peacefully arbitrate disputes betweenfirms; and that a sensible legal code could be developedthrough custom, precedent, and contract. And in fact, notesthe anarcho-capitalist, a great deal of modern law (such asthe Anglo-American common law) originated not inlegislatures, but from the decentralized rulings of judges. (The anarcho-capitalist shares Kropotkin's interest incustomary law, but normally believes that it requiresextensive modernization and articulation.) The anarcho-capitalist typically hails modern society'sincreasing reliance on private security guards, gatedcommunities,arbitration and mediation, and otherdemonstrations of the free market's ability to supply thedefensive and legal services normally assumed to be ofnecessity a government monopoly. In his ideal society,these market alternatives to government services would takeoveralllegitimate security services. One plausiblemarket structure would involve individuals subscribing toone of a large number of competing police services; thesepolice services would then set up contracts or networks forpeacefully handling disputes between members of eachothers' agencies. Alternately, police services might be"bundled" with housing services, just as landlords oftenbundle water and power with rental housing, and gardeningand security are today provided to residents in gatedcommunities and apartment complexes. The underlying idea is that contrary to popular belief, privatepolice would have strong incentives to be peaceful andrespect individual rights. For first of all, failure to peacefullyarbitrate will yield to jointly destructive warfare, which willbe bad for profits. Second, firms will want to develop long-term business relationships, and hence be willing tonegotiate in good faith to insure their long-term profitability. And third, aggressive firms would be likely to attract onlyhigh-risk clients and thus suffer from extraordinarily highcosts (a problem parallel to the well-known"adverseselection problem" in e.g. medical insurance -- the problembeing that high-risk people are especially likely to seekinsurance, which drives up the price when riskiness is hardfor the insurer to discern or if regulation requires a uniformprice regardless of risk). Anarcho-capitalists generally givelittle credence to the view that their "private police agencies"would be equivalent to today'sMafia -- the cost advantagesof open, legitimate business would make "criminal police"uncompetitive. As David Friedman explains inThe Machinery ofFreedom, "Perhaps the best way to see why anarcho-capitalism wouldbe so much more peaceful than our present system is by analogy.Consider our world as it would be if the cost of moving from onecountry to another were zero. Everyone lives in a housetrailerand speaks the same language. One day, the president of Franceannounces that because of troubles with neighboring countries, newmilitary taxes are being levied and conscription will begin shortly.The next morning the president of France finds himself ruling apeaceful but empty landscape, the population having been reduced tohimself, three generals, and twenty-seven war correspondents." (Moreover, anarcho-capitalists argue, the Mafia can onlythrive in the artificial market niche created by the prohibitionof alcohol, drugs, prostitution, gambling, and othervictimless crimes. Mafia gangs might kill each other overturf, but liquor-store owners generally do not.) Unlike some left-anarchists, the anarcho-capitalist has noobjection to punishing criminals; and he finds the former'sclaim that punishment does not deter crime to be the heightof naivete. Traditional punishment might be meted out aftera conviction by a neutral arbitrator; or a system of monetaryrestitution (probably in conjunction with a prison factorysystem) might exist instead. A convicted criminal would owehis victim compensation, and would be forced to work untilhe paid off his debt. Overall, anarcho-capitalists probablylean more towards the restitutionalist rather than the pureretributivist position. Critics of anarcho-capitalism sometimes assume thatcommunal or worker-owned firms would be penalized orprohibited in an anarcho-capitalist society. It would be moreaccurate to state that while individuals would be free tovoluntarily form communitarian organizations, the anarcho-capitalist simply doubts that they would be widespread orprevalent. 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 wasobtained with the consent of the owners) and individualsretained the right to exit and set up corporations or otherprofit-making, individualistic firms. On other issues, the anarcho-capitalist differs little if at allfrom the more moderate libertarian. Services should beprivatized and opened to free competition; regulation ofpersonal AND economic behavior should be done awaywith. Poverty would be handled by work and responsibilityfor those able to care for themselves, and voluntary charityfor those who cannot. (Libertarians hasten to add that aderegulated economy would greatly increase the economicopportunities of the poor, and elimination of taxation wouldlead to a large increase in charitable giving.) For a detailed discussion of the economics of privatization ofdispute resolution, rule creation, and enforcement, see my"The Economics of Non-State Legal Systems," which is archived withmy othereconomics writings. Anarchism of various breeds has been criticized from anextremely wide range of perspectives. State-socialists,classical liberals, and conservatives have each on occasionexamined anarchist theorists and found them wanting. Afterconsidering the unifying argument endorsed by virtually allof the critics of anarchism, we shall turn to the more specificattacks of Marxist, moderate libertarian, and conservativelineage. Anarchists of all varieties would reject this argument;sometimes claiming that the critic misunderstands theirposition, other times that the critic's assumptions are toopessimistic. Kropotkin, for example, would seriously disputethe 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: hedoesbelieve 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 willprovoke retaliation. Just as territorial animals fight whendefending their territory, but yield when confronted on theterritory of another animal, rational self-interestedindividuals and firms would usually find aggression adangerous and unprofitable practice. In terms ofgametheory, the anarcho-capitalist thinks that Hobbes' situationis aHawk-Dove game rather than aPrisoners' Dilemma. (Inthe Prisoners' Dilemma, war/non-cooperation would be astrictly dominant strategy; in a Hawk-Dove game there isnormally a mixed-strategy equilibrium in whichcooperation/peace is the norm but a small percentage ofplayers continue to play war/non-cooperation.) Self-interested police firms would gladly make long-termarbitration contracts with each other to avoid mutuallydestructive bloodshed. (To view an excellent short related essay onanarchism and game theory,click here.) There were at least three distinct arguments that Marxaimed at his anarchist opponents. First: the development of socialism had to follow a particularhistorical 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 itspresupposition. 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 ofcapitalist production, to take place on the level of theRussian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples ...Willpower and not economic conditions is the basis for hissocial revolution." Proudhon, according to Marx, sufferedfrom the same ignorance of history and its laws: "M.Proudhon, incapable of following the real movement ofhistory, produces a phantasmagoria which presumptuouslyclaims to be dialectical ... From his point of view man is onlythe instrument 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 socialistgovernment 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: "Undercollective ownership the so-called people's will disappearsto make 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"dictatorshipoverthe proletariat." Finally, Marx stated that the anarchists erroneously believedthat the government supported the capitalist system ratherthan 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 thestatewhich has created capital,that the capitalist has his capitalonly by the grace of thestate. As, therefore, the state is the chief evil, it is aboveall the state which must be done away with and thencapitalism will go to blazes of itself. We, on the contrary,say: Do away with capital, the concentration of the means ofproduction in the hands of the few, and the state will fall ofitself." The left-anarchist would probably accept this as afair assessment of their disagreement with the Marxists, butpoint out how in many historical cases since (and before)Marx's time governments have steered their countriestowards very different aims and policies, whereas capitalistsare often fairly adaptive and passive. 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 allexistingstates are illegitimate and still merit abolition. Secondly, anarcho-capitalists dispute Nozick's assumptionthat defense is a natural monopoly, noting that the modernsecurity guard and arbitration industries are extremelydecentralized and competitive. Finally, they reject Nozick'sprinciples of risk and compensation, charging that they leaddirectly to the despotism of preventive law. 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 oftradition. Society functions because we have graduallyevolved a system of workable rules. It seems certain thatBurke would apply his critique of the French revolutionarieswith equal force to the anarchists: "They have no respect forthe 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 sortof fear with regard to the duration of a building run up inhaste; because duration is no object to those who think littleor nothing has been done before their time, and who placeall their hopes in discovery." To attempt to replace thewisdom of the ages with a priori theories of justice is sure tolead to disaster, because functional policies must bejudicious compromises between important competing ends. Or in Burke'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 isit 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 ofrevolutionary 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 thepeople's sense of social stability. Many anarchists would in fact accept Burke's critique ofviolent revolution, which is why they favor advancing theirviews gradually through education and nonviolent protest. In fact, 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 theirultimate 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 eversince the decline of traditional despotism. Moreover,anarchists do not propose to do away with valuabletraditions, but simply request evidence that particulartraditionsarevaluable before they lend them theirsupport. And what is to be done when -- as is usually thecase -- a society harbors a wide range of mutuallyincompatible traditions? Anarchists might also object that the Burkean analysis reliestoo heavily upon tradition as aresultrather than aprocess.Cultural evolution may constantly weed outfoolish ideas and practices, but it hardly follows that suchfollies havealreadyperished; for the state to defendtradition is to strangle the competitive process which tendsto make tradition sensible. AsVincent Cook explains: "[I]t isprecisely because wisdom has to be accumulated inincremental steps that it cannot be centrally planned by anysingle political or religious authority, contrary to theaspirations of conservatives and collectivists alike. Whilethe collectivists are indeed guilty of trying to rationalisticallyreconstruct society in defiance of tradition (a valid criticismof left-anarchists), conservatives on the other hand areguilty of trying to freeze old traditions in place. Conservatives have forgotten that the process of wisdomaccumulation is an on-going one, and instead have optedfor the notion that some existing body of traditions (usuallyJudeo-Christian) already represent social perfection." 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 denythe existence of a "transcendent moral order." Second,order is prior to liberty, and liberty is possible only aftergovernment establishes a constitutional order. Third,libertarians assume that self-interest is the only possiblesocial bond, ignoring the broader communitarian vision ofhuman nature found in both the Aristotelian and Judeo-Christian traditions. Fourth, libertarians erroneouslyassume that human beings are naturally good or at leastperfectible. Fifth, the libertarian foolishly attacks the stateas such, rather than merely its abuses. Sixth and last, thelibertarian is an arrogant egoist who disregards valuableancient beliefs and customs. 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 remainingfour, however, Kirk would probably apply equally toanarchists 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-interestconsistent with the Aristotelian tradition. As to the priority of order over liberty, many anarchistsinfluenced by e.g. Kropotkin would reply that as with otheranimal species, order and cooperation emerge as aresult, not a consequence of freedom; while anarcho-capitalists would probably refer Kirk to the theorists of"spontaneous order" such as Hayek, Hume, Smith, and evenEdmund Burke himself. The FAQ addresses the questions of human perfectibilityand utopianism in sections 20 and 21. As for Kirk's finalpoint, most anarchists would reply that they happily acceptvaluablecustoms and traditions, but believe that theyhave shown that some ancient practices and institutions --above all, the state --have no value whatever. Under anarchy, it is conceivable that e.g. a brutal gangmight use its superior might to coerce everyone else to doas they wish. With nothing more powerful than the gang,there would (definitionally) be nothing to stop them. But howdoes this differ from what we have now? Governments rulebecause they have the might to maintain their power; inshort, because there is no superior agency to restrain them. Hence, reason some critics of anarchism, the goal ofanarchists is futile because we are already in a state ofanarchy. 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 differencesbetween government and other forms of organizedaggression;Weber in particular noted that governmentsclaim amonopolyover thelegitimateuse of force in agiven geographical region.) In fact, while anarchism islogically compatible with any viewpoint which rejects theexistence of the state, there have been extremely few(perhaps no) anarchists who combined their advocacy ofanarchism with support for domination by those most skilledin violence. Second, it seems to assume thatallthat particularanarchists advocate is the abolition of the state; but as wehave seen, anarchism is normally combined with additionalnormative views about what ought to replace the state. Thus, most anarchist theorists believe more than merely thatthe state should not exist; they also believe that e.g. societyshould be based upon voluntary communes, or upon strictprivate property rights, etc. Third, the argument sometimes confuses a definitional witha causal claim. It is one thing to argue that anarchy wouldlead to the rule by the strongest; this is a causal claimabout the likely results of the attempt to create an anarchistsociety. It is another thing entirely to argue that anarchymeansrule by the strongest. This is simply a linguisticconfusion, best illustrated by noting that under this definitionanarchy and the state are logically compatible. A related but more sophisticated argument, generallyleveled against anarcho- capitalists, runs as follows. Ifcompeting protection agencies could prevent theestablishment of an abusive, dominant firm, while don't theydo sonow? In short, if market checks against the abuseof power actually worked, we wouldn't have a state in thefirst 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 wouldprevent the rise of abusive protection monopolists in asociety where most people don't support the existence ofsuch a monopolist. It is one thing to suppress a "criminal firm" when it stands condemned by public opinion and thevalues internalized by that firm's employees; it is anotherthing entirely to suppress our current "criminal firms" (i.e.,governments) when qua institution enjoy the overwhelmingsupport of the populace and the state's enforcers believe intheir own cause. When a governing class loses confidencein its own legitimacy -- from the Ancien Regime in France tothe Communist Party in the USSR -- it becomes vulnerableand weak. Market checks on government could indeedestablish an anarchist society if the self-confidence of thegoverning class were severely eroded by anarchist ideas. Secondly, the critique ignores the possibility ofmultiple social equilibria. If everyone drives on the right side of theroad, isolated attempts to switch to the left side will bedangerous and probably unsuccessful. But if everyonedrives on the left side of the road, the same danger existsfor those who believe that the right side is superior and planto act on their believe. Similarly, it is quite possible thatgiventhat a government exists, the existence ofgovernment is a stable equilibrium; but if a system ofcompetitive protection firms existed, that too would be astable equilibrium. In short, just because one equilibriumexists and is stable doesn't mean that it is the only possibleequilibrium. Why then is the state so pervasive if it is justone possible equilibrium? The superiority of this equilibriumis one possible explanation; but it could also be due toideology, or an inheritance from our barbarous ancestors. For the emotivist anarchist, opposition to the state is just aspecial case of his or her opposition to almost everything:the family, traditional art, bourgeois culture, comfortablemiddle-aged people, the British monarchy, etc. Thisposition, when articulated, is often difficult to understand, forit seems to seek destruction without any suggestion orargument that anything else would be preferable. Closelylinked to emotivist anarchism, though sometimes a littlemore theoretical, is nihilist anarchism. The anarcho-nihilistscombine the emotivist's opposition to virtually all forms oforder with radical subjectivist moral and epistemologicaltheory. To see Tracy Harms' criticism of my treatment of Stirner, egoism, andnihilism,click here. Related to emotivist anarchism is a second strand of lessintellectual, more emotional anarchist thought. It has beencalled by some "moral anarchism." This view again feelsthat existing statist society is bad; but rather than lay out anycomprehensive plans for its abolition, this sort of anarchiststicks to more immediate reforms. Anarchism of this sort isa kind of ideal dream, which is beautiful and inspiring tocontemplate while we pursue more concrete aims. The emotivist anarchist often focuses on action and disdainstheorizing. In contrast, another breed of anarchists, knownas "philosophical anarchists," see few practical implicationsof their intellectual position. Best represented by RobertPaul Wolff, philosophical anarchism simply denies that thestate's ordersas such can confer any legitimacywhatever. Each individual must exercise his moralautonomy to judge right and wrong for himself, irrespectiveof the state's decrees. However, insofar as the state'sdecrees accord with one's private conscience, there is noneed to change one's behavior. A position like Wolff's says,in essence, that the rational person cannot and must notoffer the blind obedience to authority that governments oftenseem to demand; but this insight need not spark any politicalaction if one's government's decrees are not unusuallyimmoral. Yet another faction, strongly influenced byLeo Tolstoy, refer to themselves as "Christian anarchists." (Tolstoy avoidedthe term "anarchist," probably because of its associationwith violence and terrorism in the minds of contemporaryRussians.) Drawing on the Gospels' themes of nonviolenceand the equality of all human beings, these anarchistscondemn government as contrary to Christian teaching. Tolstoy particularly emphasized the immorality of war,military service, and patriotism, challenging Christians to liveup to the radical implications of their faith by withdrawingtheir support from all three of these evils. Tolstoy's essay"Patriotism, or Peace?" is particularly notable for its earlyattack upon nationalism and the bloodshed that usuallyaccompanies it. Finally, many leftist and progressive movements have ananarchist interpretation and anarchist advocates. Forexample, a faction of feminists, calling themselves"anarcha-feminists" exists. Again, there are a great many answers which have beenoffered. Some anarchists, such as the emotivist and(paradoxically) the moral anarchists have little interest inhigh-level moral theory. But this has been of great interest tothe more intellectual sorts of anarchists. One popular argument for anarchism is that it is the onlyway for true socialism to exist. State-socialism is unable toactually establish human equality; instead it simply creatinga new ruling class. Bakunin prophetically predicted theresults of socialists seizing control of the state when hewrote that the socialist elite would form a "new class" whichwould be "the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant, andcontemptuous of all regimes." Elsewhere Bakunin wrotethat "[F]reedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice,... Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality." Ofcourse, socialism itself has been defended on bothdeontological and utilitarian grounds, and there is no needto repeat these here. On the other hand, anarcho-capitalists have argued thatonly under anarchism can the Lockean rights to person andproperty so loudly championed by more moderatelibertarians be fully respected. Any attempt to impose amonopolistic government necessarily prevents competingpolice and judicial services from providing a legitimateservice; moreover, so long as government exists taxationwill persist. The government's claim to defend privateproperty is thus quite ironic, for the state, in Rothbard'swords, is "an institution that presumes to 'defend' personand property by itself subsisting on the unilateral coercionagainst private property known as taxation." Other anarcho-capitalists such as David Friedman find these argumentsfrom natural Lockean rights unconvincing, and instead takeup the task of trying to show that Adam Smith's utilitariancase for free-market capitalism applies just as well to freemarkets in defense services, making the state useless aswell as dangerous. Still other anarchists, such as Lysander Spooner andBenjamin Tucker as well as Proudhon, have argued thatanarchism would abolish the exploitation inherent in interestand rent simply by means of free competition. In their view,only labor income is legitimate, and an important piece ofthe case for anarchism is that without government-imposedmonopolies, non-labor income would be driven to zero bymarket forces. It is unclear, however, if they regard this asmerely a desirable side effect, or if they would rejectanarchism if they learned that the predicted economic effectthereof would not actually occur. (Other individualistanarchists have argued that contrary to Spooner andTucker, free banking would lead to a much lower rate ofinflation than we experience today; that rent and interest arenot due to "monopoly" but to scarcity of land and loanablefunds; and that there is no moral distinction between laborand rental or interest income, all of which depend upon amixture of scarcity, demand, luck, and effort.) A basic moral intuition that probably anarchists of allvarieties share is simply that no one has the right to ruleanother person. The interpretation of "rulership," however,varies: left anarchists tend to see the employer-employeerelationship as one of rulership, and anarcho-capitalists areoften dubious of the claim that envisaged anarchistscommunes would be democratic and hence voluntary. Aclosely related moral intuition, again widely shared by allsorts of anarchists, is that each person should exercisepersonal autonomy, or self-rule. One should questionauthority, and make up one's mind for oneself rather thansimply following the herd. Again, the interpretation of"personal autonomy" varies: the left-anarchist sees theemployer-employee relationship as inherently violatingpersonal autonomy, whereas the anarcho-capitalist is morelikely to see personal autonomy disappearing in thecommune or collective, regardless of how democraticallythey run themselves. Without a doubt, the most repeated debate among modernanarchists is fought between the left-anarchists on one sideand the anarcho-capitalists on the other. Of course, thereare occasional debates between different left-anarchistfactions, but probably most of them would be content with ananarchist society populated by some mixture of communes,worker-controlled firms, and cooperatives. And similarlythere are a few internal debates between anarcho-capitalists, notably the tension between Rothbard's naturallaw anarcho-capitalism and David Friedman's moreeconomistic anarcho-capitalism. But it is the debatebetween the left-anarchists and the anarcho-capitalistswhich is the most fundamental and the most acrimonious. There are many sub-debates within this wider genre, whichwe will now consider. One of the least fruitful of these sub-debates is the frequentattempt of one side to define the other out of existence("You are not truly an anarchist, for anarchists must favor [abolition of private property, atheism, Christianity, etc.]") Inaddition to being a trivial issue, the factual supportingarguments are often incorrect. For example, despite apopular claim that socialism and anarchism have beeninextricably linked since the inception of the anarchistmovement, many 19th-century anarchists, not onlyAmericans such as Tucker and Spooner, but evenEuropeans like Proudhon, were ardently in favor of privateproperty (merely believing thatsomeexisting sorts ofproperty were illegitimate, without opposing private propertyas such). 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 ofthe New YorkLiberty." Similarly in his article onanarchism for the 1910 edition of theEncyclopediaBritannica, Kropotkin again freely mentions the Americanindividualist anarchists, including "Benjamin Tucker, whosejournalLibertywas started in 1881 and whoseconceptions are a combination of those of Proudhon withthose of Herbert Spencer." 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 asthe new government; or else they would collude to establishthemselves as the new capitalist oligarchs. As NoamChomsky says in an interview withUlrike Heider, "The predatory forces of the market would destroy society, would destroy community, and destroy the workforce. Nothing would 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 veryunprofitable and dangerous, and is more likely to beprovoked by ideology than sober profit-maximization; andthat economic theory and economic history show thatcollusion is quite difficult to maintain. Anarcho-capitalists for their part accuse the left-anarchistsof intending to impose their communal vision uponeveryone; since everyone will not go along voluntarily, agovernment will be needed to impose it. Lest we think thatthis argument is a recent invention, it is interesting to findthat essentially this argument raged in the 19th- centuryanarchist movement as well. In John MacKay'sTheAnarchists, we see the essential dialogue betweenindividualist and collectivist anarchism has a longer historythan one might think: There have been several left-anarchist replies. One is toreadily 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 attitudesso that they will be more communitarian and lessindividualistic. Finally, some argue that this is simplyanother sophistical argument for giving the rich and powerfulthe liberty to take away the liberty of everyone else. Again, this argument has been made from severalperspectives. Left-anarchists have argued that if workershad the genuine option to work for a capitalist employer, orelse work for themselves in a worker cooperative, virtuallyall workers would choose the latter. Moreover, workers in aworker-managed firm would have higher morale and greaterincentive 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 ofcompetition would gradually vanish. Anarcho-capitalists find that the argument works in preciselythe opposite direction. For what is a worker-owned firm ifnot a firm in which the workers jointly hold all of the stock? Now this 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 firmgoes bankrupt, they lose everything. It would make muchmore sense for workers to exchange their shares in theirown firm to buy shares in other firms in order to insurethemselves against risk. Thus, the probable result ofworker-owned firms with negotiable shares would be thatworkers would readily and advantageously sell off most oftheir shares in their own firm in order to diversify theirportfolios. The end result is likely to be the standard form ofcapitalist organization, in which workers receive a fixedpayment for their services and the owners of the firms'shares earn the variable profits. Of course, alienation ofshares could be banned, but this appears to do nothingexcept force workers to live with enormous financial risk. None of this shows that worker-owned firms could notpersist if the workers were so ideologically committed toworker control that their greater productivity outweighed theriskiness of the workers' situation; but anarcho-capitalistsdoubt very much that such intense ideology would prevail inmore than a small portion of the population. Indeed, theyexpect that the egalitarian norms and security from dismissalthat left-anarchists typically favor would grossly undermineeveryone's incentive to 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 ofproperty right, and would refuse to hire new workers onequal 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.) 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,for instance, has suggested that anarcho-capitalists focusincorrectly onstatedomination, failing to recognize theunderlying principle of opposition toalldomination,including the employer-employee relationship. Overall,since anarcho-capitalism relies heavily on laissez-faireeconomic theory, and since left-anarchists see no validity tolaissez-faire economic theory, it seems to the latter thatanarcho-capitalism would be a practical disaster. Left-anarchists often equate anarcho-capitalism withsocialDarwinism and evenfascism, arguing that the cruel idea of"survival of the fittest" 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 tovoluntarilypool 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 effectson economic incentives, and swiftly lead humanity intomiserable poverty. The anarcho-capitalist is also frequentlydisturbed by the opposition toallorder sometimes voicedby 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 ofauthors strongly influenced by emotivist anarchism) frightenthe anarcho-capitalist considerably. Modern neoclassical (or "mainstream") economists --especially those associated with theoretical welfareeconomics -- have several important arguments for thenecessity or desirability of government. Out of all of these,the so-called"public goods" problem is surely the mostfrequently voiced. In fact, many academics consider it arigorous justification for the existence and limits of the state. Anarcho-capitalists are often very familiar with this line ofthought and spend considerable time trying to refute it; left-anarchists are generally less interested, but it is still usefulto see how the left-anarchist might respond. The most widely-used concept in theoretical welfareeconomics is "Pareto optimality" (also known as "Paretoefficiency"). An allocation isPareto-optimaliff it isimpossible to make at least one person better off withoutmaking anyone else worse off; aPareto improvement is achange in an allocation which makes someone better offwithout making anyone else worse off. AsHal Varian'sMicroeconomic Analysis explains, "[A] Pareto efficientallocation is one for which each agent is as well off aspossible, given the utilities of the other agents." "Better"and "worse" are based purely upon subjective preferenceswhich can be summarized in a"utility function," or ordinalnumerical index of preference satisfaction. While initially it might seem that every situation isnecessarily Pareto optimal, this is not the case. True, if theonly good is food, and each agent wants as much food aspossible, then every distribution is Pareto optimal. But ifhalf of the agents own food and the other half own clothes,the distribution will not necessarily be Pareto optimal, sinceeach agent might prefer either more food and fewer clothesor vice versa. Normally, economists would expect agents to voluntarilytrade in any situation which is not Pareto optimal; butneoclassical theorists have considered a number ofsituations in which trade would be a difficult route to Paretooptimality. For example, suppose that each agent is soafraid of the other that they avoid each other, even thoughthey could both benefit from interaction. What they need isan independent and powerful organization to e.g. protectboth agents from each other so that they can reach aPareto-optimal allocation. What they need, in short, is thestate. While economists' examples are usually moreelaborate, the basic intuition is that government isnecessary to satisfy the seemingly uncontroversial principleof Pareto optimality. Anarchists of all sorts would immediately object that the veryexistence of deontological anarchists shows that Paretooptimality canneverjustify state action. If even theslightest increase in the level of state activity incompensablyharms the deontological anarchist, then obviously it is nevertrue that state action can make some people better offwithout making any others worse off. Moreover, virtually allgovernment action makes some people better off and otherpeople worse off, so plainly the pursuit of Paretoimprovements has little to do with what real governments do. In the final analysis, welfare economists' attempt to providea value-free or at least value-minimal justification of thestate fails quite badly. Nevertheless, economic analysismay still inform more substantive moral theories: Paretooptimality, for example, is a necessary but not sufficientcondition for a utilitarian justification of the state. The "public goods" argument is certainly the most populareconomic argument for the state. It allegedly shows that theexistence of government can be Pareto optimal, and that thenon-existence of the state cannot be Pareto optimal; or atleast, it shows that the existence of government is justifiableon cost-benefit grounds. Supposedly, there exist importantservices, such as national defense, which benefit peoplewhether they pay for them or not. The result is that selfishagents refuse to contribute, leading to disaster. The onlyway to solve this problem is to coerce the beneficiaries toraise the funds to supply the needed good. In order for thiscoercion to work, it needs to be monopolized by a singleagency, the state. Public goods arguments have been made not only fornational defense, but for police, roads, education, R&D,scientific research, and many other goods and services. The essential definitional feature of public goods is "non-excludability"; because the benefits cannot be limited tocontributors, there is no incentive to contribute. (A seconddefinitional characteristic often attributed to public goods is"non-rivalrousness"; my own view is that this secondattribute just confuses the issue, since without the non-excludability problem, non-rivalrousness would merely beanother instance of the ubiquitous practice of pricing abovemarginal cost.) The concept of externalities is very closely connected to theconcept of public goods; the main difference is thateconomists usually think of externalities as being both"positive" (e.g. R&D spill-overs) and "negative" (e.g.pollution), whereas they usually don't discuss "public bads." In any case, again we have the problem that agents performactions which harm or benefit other people, and theharm/benefit is "non-excludable." Victims of negativeexternalities can't feasibly charge polluters a fee forsuffering, and beneficiaries of positive externalities can'tfeasibly be charged for their enjoyment. Government issupposed to be necessary to correct this inefficiency. (Asusual, it is the inefficiency rather than the injustice thateconomists focus upon.) Left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists would probably haveremarkably similar replies to this argument, althoughdoubtlessly the tone and emphasis would vary. It is simply not true that people always act in their narrowself-interest. Charity exists, and there is no reason to thinkthat the charitable impulse might not be cultivated to handlepublic goods problems voluntarily on an adequate basis. Nor need charity as such be the only motive: inSocialContract, Free Ride,Anthony de Jasay lays out an "ethicsturnpike" of possible voluntary solutions to serious publicgoods problems, moving from motivation from high moralprinciples, to "tribal" motivations, to economic motivations. As de Jasay writes, "On the map of the Ethics Turnpike ...three main segments are marked off according to the basictype of person most likely to find his congenial exit along it. The first segment is primarily for the type who fears God oracts as if he did. The second segment has exits to suitthose who are not indifferent to how some or all their fellowmen are faring, and who value only that (but notallthat)which people want for themselves or for others. The third isforhomo oeconomicus, maximizing a narrowly definedutility that varies only with the money's worth of his ownpayoffs." In short, much of the public goods problem is an artificialcreation of economists' unrealistic assumptions abouthuman nature. Anarchists would surely disagree amongthemselves about human nature, but almost all would agreethat there is more to the human character than Hobbesianself-interest. Some people may be amoral, but most are not. Moreover, charitable impulses can even give incentives touncharitable people to behave fairly. If the public boycottsproducts of polluters, the polluters may find that it is cheaperto clean up their act than lose the public's business. Interestingly, many economists haveexperimentallytested the predictions of public goods theory. (Typically,these experiments involve groups of human subjects playingfor real money.) The almost universal result is that thecentral prediction of public goods theory (i.e., that no onewill voluntarily contribute to the production of a public good)is totally false. While the level of contributions rarely equalsthe Pareto-optimal level, it never even approaches the zero-provision level that public goods theory predicts. Summarizing theexperimental literature, Douglas Davis andCharles Holt write "[S]ubjects rather persistently contributed40 to 60 percent of their token endowments to the groupexchange, far in excess of the 0 percent contributionsrate..." Subsequent experiments examined the conditionsunder which voluntary provision is most successful; seeDavis and Holt'sExperimental Economics for details. Even if individuals act in their narrow self-interest, it is nottrue that government is theonlyway to manage publicgoods and externalities problems. Why couldn't a left-anarchist commune or an anarcho-capitalist police firm dothe job that the neoclassical economist assumes must bedelegated to the government? The left-anarchist wouldprobably be particularly insistent on this point, since mosteconomists usually assume that government and the marketare the only ways to do things. But thriving, voluntarycommunities might build roads, regulate pollution, and takeover other important tasks now handled by government. Anarcho-capitalists, for their part, would happily agree: whilethey usually look to the market as a first solution, theyappreciate other kinds of voluntary organizations too:fraternal societies, clubs, family, etc. But anarcho-capitalistswould probably note that left-anarchists overlook the waysthat the market might take over government services --indeed, malls and gated communities show how roads,security, and externalities can be handled by contract ratherthan coercion. Anarcho-capitalists would emphasize that a large number ofalleged "public goods" and "externalities" could easily behandled privately by for-profit business if only thegovernment would allow the definition of private propertyrights. If ranchers over-graze the commons, why notprivatize the commons? If fishermen over-fish the oceans,why not parcel out large strips of the ocean by longitude andlatitude to for profit-makingaquaculture? And why iseducation supposed to create externalities any more thanany other sort of investment? Similarly, many sorts ofexternalities are now handled with private property rights. Tort law, for example, can give people an incentive to takethe lives and property of others into account when they takerisks. Left-anarchists would emphasize that many externalities arecaused by the profit-seeking system which the statesupports. Firms pollute because it is cheaper thanproducing cleanly; but anarcho-syndicalist firms couldpursue many aims besides profit. In a way, the state-capitalist system creates the problem of externalities bybasing all decisions upon profit, and then claims that weneed the state to protect us from the very results of thisprofit-oriented decision-making process. While few left-anarchists are familiar with the experimentaleconomics literature, it offers some support for this generalapproach. In particular, many experiments have shown thatsubjects' concern for fairness weakens many of the harshpredictions of standard economic analysis of externalitiesand bargaining. To rely upon democracy as a counter-balance simplyassumes away the public goods problem. After all,intelligent, informed voting is a public good; everyonebenefits if the electorate reaches wise political judgments,but there is no personal, material incentive to "invest" inpolitical information, since the same result will (almostcertainly) happen whether you inform yourself or not. Itshould be no surprise that people know vastly more abouttheir jobs than about their government. Many economistsseem to be aware of this difficulty; in particular, publicchoice theory in economics emphasizes the externalitiesinherent in government action. But a double standardpersists: while non-governmental externalities must becorrected by the state, we simply have to quietly endure theexternalities inherent in political process. Since there is no incentive to monitor the government,democracies must rely uponvoluntary donations ofintelligence and virtue. Because good government dependsupon thesevoluntary donations, the public goodsargument for government falls apart. Either unpaid virtuecan make government work, in which case government isn'tnecessary to solve the public goods problem; or unpaidvirtue is insufficient to make government work, in which casethe government cannot betrustedto solve the publicgoods problem. Again, this is a complicated question because "pacifism" hasat least two distinct meanings. It may mean "opposition toall violence," or it may mean "opposition to allwar(i.e.,organized violent conflict betweengovernments)." Someanarchists are pacifists in the first sense; a very largemajority of anarchists are pacifists in the weaker, secondsense. This Tolstoyan theme appears most strongly in the writingsof Christian anarchists and pacifist anarchists, but it pops upquite frequently within the broader left-anarchist tradition. For example, Kropotkin looked upon criminals with pityrather than contempt, and argued that love and forgivenessrather than punishment was the only moral reaction tocriminal behavior. With the self-described Christian andpacifist anarchists, the Tolstoyan position is a firmconviction; within the broader left-anarchist tradition, itwould be better described as a tendency or general attitude. Some left-anarchists and virtually all anarcho-capitalistswould strongly disagree with Tolstoy's absolute oppositionto violence. (The only anarcho-capitalist to ever indicateagreement with the Tolstoyan position was probablyRobertLeFevre.) Left-anarchist critics include the advocates ofrevolutionary terrorism or "propaganda by the deed"(discussed in section 22), as well as more moderate anti-Tolstoyans who merely uphold the right to use violence forself-defense. Of course, their definition of "self-defense"might very well include using violence to hinder immoralstate actions or the functioning of the capitalist system. The anarcho-capitalist critique of Tolstoyan pacifism issomewhat different. The anarcho-capitalist generallydistinguishes betweeninitiatoryforceagainst person or property (which he views as wrong), andretaliatoryforce (which he views as acceptable andpossibly meritorious). The anarcho-capitalist condemns thestate precisely because it institutionalizes the initiation offorce within society. Criminals do the same, differing only intheir lack of perceived legitimacy. In principle, both "private"criminals and the "public" criminals who run the governmentmay be both resisted and punished. While it may beimprudent or counter-productive to openly resist stateauthority (just as it might be foolish to resist a gang of well-armed mobsters), there is a right to do so. Almost all anarchists, in contrast, would agree in theircondemnation of warfare, i.e., violent conflict betweengovernments. Left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists bothlook upon wars as grotesque struggles between ruling eliteswho treat the lives of "their own" people as expendable andthe lives of the "other side's" people as worthless. It is herethat anarchism's strong distinction between society and thestate becomes clearest: whereas most people see war as astruggle between societies, anarchists think that war isactually a battle betweengovernmentswhich greatlyharms even the society whose government is victorious. What is most pernicious about nationalist ideology is that ismakes the members of society identify their interests withthose of their government, when in fact their interests arenot merely different but in conflict. In short, anarchists ofboth sorts would readily accede toRandolph Bourne'sremark that "War is the health of the state." The anarcho-capitalist critique of war is similar in manyways to e.g. Chomsky's analysis, but has a different lineageand emphasis. As can be seen particularly in MurrayRothbard's writings, the anarcho-capitalist view of war drawsheavily upon both theanti-war classical liberals of the 18thand 19th centuries, and the long-standing Americanisolationist tradition. Early classical liberal theorists such asAdam Smith,Richard Cobden, and John Bright (and later Norman Angell) argued thatwarfare was caused bymercantilism, by the prevailingalliance between governments and their favored businesselites. The solution, in their view, was to end the incestuousconnection between business and government. TheAmerican isolationists were probably influenced by thisbroader classical liberal tradition, but placed more emphasison the idea that foreign wars were at best a silly distraction,and at worst a rationalization for tyranny. Both views arguedthat "balance of power" politics lead inevitably to endlesswarfare and unrestrained military spending. Building upon these two interrelated traditions, anarcho-capitalists have built a multi-layered attack upon warfare. Firstly, modern war particularly deserves moralcondemnation (according to libertarian rights theory) for thewidespread murderous attacks upon innocent civilians --whether by bomb or starvation blockade. Secondly, thewars waged by the Western democracies in the 20th-century had disastrous, unforeseen consequences: WorldWar I paved the way for Communist, fascist, and Nazitotalitarianism; and World War II, by creating powervacuums in Europe and Asia, turned over a billion humanbeings to Stalinist despotism. The anarcho-capitalist seesthese results as predictable rather than merely accidental:just as rulers' hubris leads them to try to improve the free-market economy, only to find that in their ignorance theyhave wrecked terrible harm, so too does the "fatal conceit"of the national security advisor lead Western democraciesto spend billions of dollars and millions of lives before hefinds that he has inadvertently paved the way fortotalitarianism. The anarcho-capitalist's third point againstwar is that its only sure result is to aid the domesticexpansion of state power; and predictably, when wars end,the state's power never contracts to its original limits. There have probably been no societies whichfullysatisfyany anarchists' ethical ideals, but there have been a numberof suggestive examples. Left-anarchists most often cite the anarchist communes oftheSpanish Civil War as examples of viable anarchistsocieties. The role of the Spanish anarchists in the SpanishCivil War has perhaps generated more debate on alt.society.anarchythan any other historical issue. Since this FAQ is concernedprimarily with theoretical rather than purely historical questions,the reader will have to search elsewhere for a detailed discussion.Suffice it to say that left-anarchists generally believe that:(a) The Spanish anarchist political organizations and unionsbegan and remained democratic throughout the war; (b) That a majorityof the citizenry in areas controlled by the anarchists was sympathetic to the anarchist movement; (c) That workers directly controlled factories and businesses that they expropriated, ratherthan being subject to strict control by anarchist leaders; and (d)That the farm collectives in the anarchist-controlled regionswere largely voluntary, and rarely exerted coercive pressure againstsmall farmers who refused to join. In contrast, anarcho-capitalistcritics such asJames Donald normally maintain that: (a) The Spanishanarchist political organizations and unions, even if they wereinitially democratic, quickly transformed into dictatorial oligarchieswith democratic trappings once the war started; (b) That the Spanish anarchists, even if they initially enjoyed popular support, quicklyforfeited it with their abuse of power; (c) That in many or most cases,"worker" control meant dictatorial control by the anarchist elite;and (d) That the farm collectivizations in anarchist-controlled regionswere usually coercively formed, totalitarian for their duration,and marked by a purely nominal right to remain outside the collective(since non-joining farmers were seriously penalized ina number of ways). For a reply to James Donald's piece,click here. For my own account of the controversy regarding the Spanish Anarchists, seeThe Anarcho-Statists of Spain: An Historical,Economic, and Philosophical Analysis of Spanish Anarchism. For areply to my piece,clickhere. Israelikibbutzim have also been admired asworking examples of voluntary socialism. Kropotkin andBakunin held up themir, the traditional communal farmingsystem in rural Russia, as suggestive of the organizationand values which would be expressed in an anarchistsociety. Various experimental communities have also laidclaim to socialist anarchist credentials. Anarcho-capitalists' favorite example, in contrast, ismedieval Iceland. David Friedman has written extensivelyon the competitive supply of defense services andanarchistic character of a much-neglected period ofIceland's history. Left-anarchists have occasionallycriticized Friedman's work on medieval Iceland, but overall thisdebate is much sketchier than the debate over the Spanish Civil War.SeeIs Medieval Iceland an example of"anarcho"-capitalism working in practice?; for DavidFriedman's reply to an earlier draft of this piece,click here. A long stretch of medieval Irish history hasalso been claimed to have pronounced anarcho-capitalistfeatures. Other anarcho-capitalists have argued that theAmerican "Wild West" offers an excellent illustration ofanarcho-capitalist institutions springing up only to be latersuppressed and crowded out by government. Anarcho-capitalists also often note that while the United States hasnever been an anarchist society by any stretch of theimagination, that before the 20th-century the United Statescame closer to their pure laissez-faire ideals than any othersociety in history.America's colonial and revolutionaryperiod especially interests them. Murray Rothbard inparticular published a four-volume history of the colonial andrevolutionary eras, finding delight in a brief period ofPennsylvania's history when the state government virtuallydissolved itself due to lack of interest. (An unpublished fifthvolume in the series defended the "weak"Articles of theConfederation against the strong, centralized stateestablished by theU.S. Constitution.) One case that has inspired both sorts of anarchists is that ofthe free cities of medieval Europe. The first weak link in thechain of feudalism, these free cities became Europe'scenters of economic development, trade, art, and culture. They provided a haven for runaway serfs, who could oftenlegally gain their freedom if they avoided re-capture for ayear and a day. And they offer many examples of howpeople can form mutual-aid associations for protection,insurance, and community. Of course, left-anarchists andanarcho-capitalists take a somewhat different perspectiveon the free cities: the former emphasize the communitarianand egalitarian concerns of the free cities, while the latterpoint to the relatively unregulated nature of their marketsand the wide range of services (often including defense,security, and legal services) which were provided privatelyor semi-privately. Kropotkin'sMutual Aid contains anextensive discussion of the free cities of medieval Europe;anarcho-capitalists have written less on the subject, butstrongly praise the historical treatments in Henri Pirenne'sMedieval Cities and Harold Berman'sLaw andRevolution. The Enclopedia Brittanica article onAnarchism givesat best a cursory summary of anarchist theory, but does containuseful information on the history of left-anarchist politicaland labor movements.Click here to view the article. Utopianism is perhaps the most popular criticism made of anarchism.In an atypically uncharitable passage in hisEuropean Socialism,socialist historian Carl Landauer states: As we have seen, however, virtually all anarcho-capitalists and many left-anarchists accept the use of force in some circumstances. Landauer'sremark would be better directed at absolute pacifists rather thananarchists in general. Anarchists' supposed unwillingness to use force in any circumstanceis only one reason why they have been widely perceived as utopian.Sometimes the utopian charge is trivial; if, for example,anyradical change is labelled "utopian." If on the other hand "utopian" simply means that anarchism couldwork if and only if all people were virtuous, and thus inpractice would lead to the imposition of new forms ofoppression, then the question is more interesting. Interesting, because this is more or less the charge thatdifferent types of anarchists frequently bring against eachother. To the left-anarchist, for example, anarcho-capitalism isbased upon a truly fantastic picture of economics, in whichfree competition somehow leads to prosperity and freedomfor all. To them, the anarcho-capitalists' vision of "economicharmonies" and the workings of the "invisible hand" are atbest unlikely, and probably impossible. Hence, in a sensethey accuse the anarcho-capitalists of utopianism. The anarcho-capitalists charge the left-anarchists similarly. For the latter imagine that somehow a communitariansociety could exist without forcible repression of dissentingindividualists; think that incentives for production would notbe impaired by enforced equality; and confusedly equatelocal democracy with freedom. Moreover, they generallyhave no explanation for how crime would be prevented orwhat safeguards would prevent the rise of a new ruling elite. For the anarcho-capitalist, the left-anarchist is againhopelessly utopian. But in any case, probably most anarchists would offer asimilar reply to the charge that they are utopians. Namely:what is truly utopian is to imagine that somehow thegovernment can hold massive power without turning it tomonstrous ends. As Rothbard succinctly puts it: "the manwho puts all the guns and all the decision-making power intothe hands of the central government andthensays, 'Limityourself'; it ishewho is truly the impractical utopian." Isnot the whole history of the 20th century an endless list ofexamples of governments easily breaking the weak bondsplaced upon their ability to oppress and even murder asthey see fit? This is a perfectly reasonable question, for it is indeed thecase that some anarchists expect a remarkable change inhuman nature to follow (or precede?) the establishment ofan anarchist society. This assumption partially explains thefrequent lack of explanation of how an anarchist societywould handle crime, dissenting individualists, and so on. The belief in innate human virtue is normally found onlyamong left-anarchist thinkers, but of course it does notfollow, nor is it true, that all left-anarchist thinkers believe inhumanity's innate human virtue. Anarcho-capitalists have a very different picture of humannature. While they normally believe that people have astrong capacity for virtuous action (and it is to people'smoral sense that they frequently appeal when they favor theabolition of the state), they believe that it is wise andnecessary to cement moral virtue with material incentives.Capitalism's system of unequal wages, profits and losses,rent and interest, is not only morally justified but vitallynecessary for the preservation and expansion of theeconomy. In short, anarcho-capitalists believe in andindeed must depend on some reasonable level of humanmorality, but prefer to rely on material incentives whenfeasible. (Similarly, they morally condemn crime andbelieve that most people have no desire to commit crimes,but strongly favor some sort of criminal justice system todeter the truly amoral.) Aren't statists terrorists? Well, some of the them are; in fact,the overwhelming majority of non-governmental groups whomurder and destroy property for political aims believe thatgovernment ought to exist (and that they ought to run it). And just as the existence of such statist terrorists is a poorargumentforanarchism, the existence of anarchistterrorists is a poor argumentagainstanarchism. For anyidea whatever, there will always be those who advocateadvancing it by violence. It is however true that around the turn of the century, acertain segment of anarchists advocated what they called"propaganda by the deed." Several heads of state wereassassinated by anarchists, along with businessmen,industrialists, stock-brokers, and so on. One of the mostfamous instances was when the youngAlexander Berkmantried to murder the steel industrialist Henry Frick. During this era, the left-anarchists were divided as to thepermissibility of terrorism; but of course many stronglyopposed it. And individualist anarchists such as BenjaminTucker almost always saw terrorist activities as bothcounter-productive and immoral when innocents wereinjured (as they often were). The basic argument of the advocates of "propaganda by thedeed" was that anarchist terrorism would provokegovernments -- even avowedly liberal and democraticgovernments -- to resort to increasingly harsh measures torestore order. As governments' ruthlessness increased,their "true colors" would appear for all to see, leading tomore immediate results than mere education and theorizing. As E.V. Zenker notes in hisAnarchism: A Criticism andHistory of the Anarchist Theory, a number of Westerngovernments were driven to adopt anti-terrorist laws as aresult of anarchist terrorism. (Zenker goes on to note thatGreat Britain remained true to its liberal heritage by refusingto punish individuals merely for espousing anarchist ideas.) But as one might expect, contrary to the terrorists' hopes, itwas the reputation of anarchism -- peaceful and violent alike-- which suffered rather than the reputation of the state. Undoubtedly the most famous modern terrorist in the tradition of"propaganda by the deed" is the so-called Unabomber, who explicitlylabels himself an anarchist in his now-famousmanifesto.In his manifesto, the Unabomber makes relatively little attempt tolink himself to any particular figures in the anarchist tradition,but professes familiarity and general agreement with theanarchistic wing of the radical environmentalist movement.A large proportion of this wide-ranging manifesto criticizesenvironmentalists' cooperation with socialists, minority rightsactivists, and other broadly left-wing groups; the point of thiscriticism is not of course to propose an alliance with conservatives,but to reject alliance with people who fail to reject technology as such.The more positive portion of the manifesto argues that freedom andtechnology are inherently incompatible, and outlines a program forthe destruction of both modern industry and the scientific knowledge necessary to sustain it. But anarchists have a more instrumental reason to opposethe use of violence. Terrorism has been very effective inestablishing new and more oppressive regimes; but it isnearly impossible to find any instance where terrorism led togreater freedom. For the natural instinct of the populace isto rally to support its government when terrorism is on therise; so terrorism normally leads to greater brutality andtighter regulation by the existing state. And when terrorismsucceeds in destroying an existing government, it merelycreates a power vacuum without fundamentally changinganyone's mind about the nature of power. The predictableresult is that a new state, worse than its predecessor, willswiftly appear to fill the void. Thus, the importance of usingnonviolent tactics to advance anarchist ideas is hard tooverstate. Aside from this, the similarity between anarchist approachesbreaks down. In particular, what should the "transitional"phase look like? Anarcho-capitalists generally see everyreduction in government power and activity as a step in theright direction. In consequence, they usually support anymeasure to deregulate, repeal laws, and cut taxation andspending (naturally with the caveat that the cuts do not gonearly far enough). Similarly, they can only hail the spreadof the underground economy or "black market," tax evasion,and other acts of defiance against unjust laws. The desirable transitional path for the left-anarchist is moreproblematic. It is hard to support expansion of the statewhen it is the state that one opposes so fervently. And yet,it is difficult to advocate the abolition of e.g. welfareprograms when they are an important means of subsistencefor the oppressed lower classes of capitalist society. Perhaps the most viable intermediate step would be toexpand the voluntary alternatives to capitalist society:voluntary communes, cooperatives, worker-owned firms, orwhatever else free people might establish to fulfill their ownneeds while they enlighten others. To begin with, there is my homepage at: I keep the list of addresses short because the sites providedallow easy access to a large number of related sites. Some starting points for discussion of left-anarchism are: Some starting points for discussion of anarcho-capitalism are: There are several other anarchism FAQs available on the web. Noneof them are to my complete satisfaction; among other failings,they normally either ignore anarcho-capitalism entirely, or attack a straw man version thereof, and thus do little toclarify the most heated of the net-related debates. Onthe positive side, these other FAQsoften have much more historical information thanmine does. See for yourself. There does exist a FAQ written by Roger McCain on libertarian socialism and left-anarchismof markedly higher quality than the preceding five. It is archivedat: A new, highly detailed FAQ from a left-anarchist perspective hasrecently been set up, ostensibly in celebration of the 60th anniversaryof the Spanish Revolution. It is available at: My FAQ is beginning to amass its share of critics who prefer towrite full-length replies. Those that I am aware of are: My only comment is that it is simply untrue that I have ignoredcriticisms of my FAQ. There are numerous points I have altered orexpanded it due to criticism I have received; and when I disagreewith a critic's claim, I frequently ask permission to quote theirreservations verbatim in the next revision. It is however true thatI only respond to private e-mail criticisms; attacks simply postedto Usenet are unlikely to come to my attention. To my knowledge there is no page which contains a broadsurvey along the lines of this FAQ. However, these sourcesin combination should give a good picture of the wide rangeof anarchist opinion, along with more information on historyand current events which I chose not to discuss in detailherein. Examination of these sites can also give areasonable picture of how left-anarchism and anarcho-capitalism intellectually relate to the broader progressiveand libertarian movements, respectively. This list is by no means intended to be exhaustive; nor doesinclusion here necessarily indicate that the work is ofparticularly high quality. In particular, both Heider's andMarshall's works contain a number ofembarrassing factualerrors. (Some of the more glaring errors from Marshall'sDemanding theImpossible appear to have been corrected in thislinked exerpt.) Particularly well-written and canonical expressions ofdifferent anarchist theories are noted with an asterisk (*). Broad surveys of anarchism are noted with a number sign(#). For comments, suggestions, corrections, etc., writebcaplan@gmu.edu. Thanks to Fabio Rojas, JamesDonald, David Friedman, Robert Vienneau, Ken Steube,Ben Haller, Vincent Cook, Bill Woolsey, Conal Smith, JimKalb, Chris Faatz, J. Shamlin, Keith Lynch, Rose Lucas,Bruce Baechler, Jim Cook, Jack Jansen,Tom Wetzel, Steve Koval, Brent Jass, Tracy Harms, Ian Goddard,and I.M. McKay for helpful adviceor other assistance.To be sure, there is a difference between individualistic anarchism andcollectivistic 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 differfrom the anarchistic individualists in their belief that men, if freedfrom coercion, will enter into voluntary associations of a communistictype, while the other wing believes that the free person will prefera high degree of isolation. The communist anarchists repudiate the rightof private property which is maintained through the power of the state.The individualist anarchists are inclined to maintain private propertyas a necessary condition of individual independence, without fully answering the question of how property could be maintained withoutcourts and police.
When we turn to the Anglo-American political culture, thestory is quite different. Virulent anti-socialist anarchism ismuch more common there, and has been from the early19th-century. Great Britain was the home of many intenselyanti-socialist quasi-anarchistic thinkers of the 19th-centurysuch as Auberon Herbert and the earlyHerbert Spencer. The United States has been an even more fertile ground forindividualist anarchism: during the 19th-century, suchfigures as Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, and Benjamin Tuckergained prominence for their vision of an anarchismbased upon freedom of contract and private property. Andin the 20th-century, thinkers residing within the UnitedStates have been the primary developers and exporters ofanarcho-capitalist theory.
The most famous left-anarchists have probably beenMikhailBakunin andPeter Kropotkin.Pierre Proudhon is also oftenincluded although his ideas on the desirability of a modifiedform of private property would lead some to exclude himfrom the leftist camp altogether. (Some of Proudhon's other heterodoxies include his defense of theright of inheritance and his emphasis on the genuine antagonism betweenstate power and property rights.)More recent left-anarchistsincludeEmma Goldman,Murray Bookchin, andNoam Chomsky.
(Some left-anarchists contest the adoption, but overallTucker and Spooner probably have much more in commonwith anarcho-capitalists than with left-anarchists.)Common to both tendencies was the idea that the workingclass 'simply' took over factories and workplaces and ran themcollectively but otherwise as before... Underlying this vision of simplecontinuity was the anarcho-syndicalist concept of the revolution not asa rupture with, the destruction and replacement of, the bourgeois orderbut as the latter'sdisplacement. The taking over of factoriesand workplaces, however violently carried out, was not the beginning ofthe revolution to create a new order but its final goal. This view, inturn was conditioned by a particular view of the state. Any state(bourgeois or working class) was considered an oppressive powertoutcourt - not as the organization of a particular class's coercivepower. The 'state' in consequence, rather than the existence of thecapitalist mode of production which gave rise to its particular form,often appeared as the major enemy. The state did not have to be taken,crushed, and a new - revolutionary -power established. No. Ifit could be swept away, abolished, everything else, includingoppression, disappeared. The capitalist order was simply displaced bythe new-won workers' freedom to administer the workplaces they had takenover. Self-organized in autonomous communes or in all-powerfulsyndicates, the workers, as the primary factor in production,dispensed with the bourgeoisie. The consequences of this wereseen in the 1936 Barcelona revolution; capitalist production and marketrelations continued to exist within collectivizedindustry.
Kropotkin's lucid essay "Law and Authority" gives athoughtful presentation of the left-anarchist's view of law. Primitive human societies, explains Kropotkin, live by whatlegal thinkers call "customary law": an unwritten but broadlyunderstood body of rules and appropriate behavior backedup primarily by social pressure. Kropotkin considers thissort of behavioral regulation to be unobjectionable, andprobably consistent with his envisaged anarchist society. But when centralized governments codified customary law,they mingled the sensible dictates of tribal conscience withgovernmental sanctions for exploitation and injustice. AsKropotkin writes, "[L]egislators confounded in one code thetwo currents of custom ... the maxims which representprinciples of morality and social union wrought out as aresult of life in common, and the mandates which are meantto ensure external existence to inequality. Customs,absolutely essential to the very being of society, are, in thecode, cleverly intermingled with usages imposed by theruling caste, and both claim equal respect from the crowd. 'Do not kill,' says the code, and hastens to add, 'And paytithes to the priest.' 'Do not steal,' says the code, andimmediately after, 'He who refuses to pay taxes, shall havehis hand struck off.'"
FAQs on the broader libertarian movement are widelyavailable on the Net, so we will only give the necessarybackground here. So-called "minarchist" libertarians suchas Nozick have argued that the largest justified governmentwas one which was limited to the protection of individualsand their private property against physical invasion;accordingly, they favor a government limited to supplyingpolice, courts, a legal code, and national defense. Thisnormative theory is closely linked to laissez-faire economictheory, according to which private property and unregulatedcompetition generally lead to both an efficient allocation ofresources and (more importantly) a high rate of economicprogress. While left-anarchists are often hostile to"bourgeois economics," anarcho-capitalists holdclassicaleconomists such as Adam Smith, David Hume, and Jean-Baptiste Say in high regard, as well as moremoderneconomists such as Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises,F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and JamesBuchanan. The problem with free-market economists, saythe anarcho-capitalists, is not that they defend the freemarket, but merely that their defense is too moderate andcompromising.
(Note however that the left-anarchists' low opinion of thefamous "free-market economists" is not monolithic: NoamChomsky in particular has repeatedly praised some of thepolitical insights of Adam Smith. And Peter Kropotkin alsohad good things to say about Smith as both social scientistand moralist;Conal Smith explains that "In particular heapproved of Smith's attempt to apply the scientific method tothe study of morals and society, his critique of the state inThe Wealth of Nations, and his theory of humansociability inThe Theory of Moral Sentiments.")
Probably the main division between the anarcho-capitalistsstems from the apparent differences between Rothbard'snatural-law anarchism, and David Friedman's moreeconomistic approach. Rothbard puts more emphasis onthe need for a generally recognized libertarian legal code(which he thinks could be developed fairly easily bypurification of the Anglo-American common law), whereasFriedman focuses more intently on the possibility of plurallegal systems co-existing and responding to the consumerdemands of different elements of the population. Thedifference, however, is probably over-stated. Rothbardbelieves that it is legitimate for consumer demand todetermine the philosophically neutral content of the law,such as legal procedure, as well as technical issues ofproperty right definition such as water law, mining law, etc. And Friedman admits that "focal points" including prevalentnorms are likely to circumscribe and somewhat standardizethe menu of available legal codes."An anarchist society, lacking any central coerciveauthority, would quickly degenerate into violent chaos."
The most common criticism, shared by the entire range ofcritics, is basically that anarchism would swiftly degenerateinto a chaotic Hobbesian war of all-against-all. Thus thecommunistFriedrich Engels wonders "[H]ow these peoplepropose to run a factory, operate a railway or steer a shipwithout having in the last resort one deciding will, withoutsingle management, they of course do not tell us." Hecontinues: "The authority of the majority over the minorityalso ceases. Every individual and every community isautonomous; but as to how society, even of only two people,is possible unless each gives up some of his autonomy,Bakunin again maintains silence."
And similarly, the classical liberalLudwig von Mises states that "Ananarchistic society would be exposed to the mercy of everyindividual. 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 awarre, as is of every man, against every man." Hobbesgoes on to add that "It may peradventure be thought, therewas never such a time, nor condition of warre as this; and Ibelieve it was never generally so, over all the world: butthere are many places, where they live so now. For thesavage people in many places of America, except thegovernment of small Families, the concord whereofdependeth on naturall lust, have no government at all; andlive at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before." Since it is in the interest of the strong to take what they wantfrom the weak, the absence of government lead inexorably to widespread violence and the prevention or destruction ofcivilization itself.
One of the most famous attacks on anarchism was launchedby Karl Marx during his battles with Proudhon and Bakunin. The ultimate result of this protracted battle of words was tosplit the 19th-century workers' movement into two distinctfactions. In the 20th century, the war of words ended inblows: while Marxist-Leninists sometimes cooperated withanarchists during the early stages of the Russian andSpanish revolutions, violent struggle between them was therule rather than the exception.
Probably the earliest minarchist attack on anarcho-capitalism may be found inAyn Rand's essay "The Nature ofGovernment." ("Minarchism" designates the advocacy of a"minimal" or nightwatchman state, supplying only police,courts, a legal system, and national defense.) Her critiquecontained four essential arguments. The first essentiallyrepeated Hobbes' view that society without governmentwould collapse into violent chaos. The second was thatanarcho-capitalist police firms would turn to war as soon asa dispute broke out between individuals employing differentprotection agencies: "[S]uppose Mr. Smith, a customer ofGovernment A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr.Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; asquad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones' house and is metat the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they donot recognize the authority of Government A. Whathappens then? You take it from there." Her third argumentwas that anarcho-capitalism was an expression of anirrational subjectivist epistemology which would allow eachperson to decide for himself or herself whether the use ofphysical force was justified. Finally, her fourth argumentwas that anarcho-capitalism would lack an objective legalcode (meaning, presumably, both publicly known andmorally valid).
Rand's arguments were answered at length inRoy 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 offorce was immoral. In brief, Childs argued that like otherfree-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-marketjudges. Childs strongly contested Rand's claim thatanarcho-capitalism had any relation to irrationalism; anindividual could be rational or irrational in his judgment touse defensive violence, just as a government could berational or irrational in its judgment to do so. As Childsqueried, "By what epistemological criterion is an individual'saction classified as 'arbitrary,' while that of agroupofindividuals is somehow 'objective'?"
Robert Nozick launched the other famous attempt to refutethe anarcho-capitalist on libertarian grounds. Basically,Nozick argued that the supply of police and legal serviceswas a geographic natural monopoly, and that therefore astate would emerge by the "invisible hand" processes of themarket itself. The details of his argument are rathercomplex: Nozick postulated a right, strongly contested byother libertarians, to prohibit activities which wereexceptionally risky to others; he then added that the personswhose actions were so prohibited were entitled tocompensation. Using these two principles, Nozick claimedthat the dominant protection agency in a region couldjustifiably prohibit competition on the grounds that it was"too risky," and therefore become an "ultra-minimal state." But at this point, it would be obligated to compensateconsumers who were prohibited from purchasingcompetitors' services, so it would do soin kind by givingthem access to its own police and legal services -- therebybecoming a minimal state. And none of these steps,according to Nozick, violates libertarian rights.
The conservative critique of anarchism is much lessdeveloped, but can be teased out of the writings of suchauthors asEdmund Burke,Russell Kirk, and Ernest van den Haag. (Interestingly, Burke scholars are still debatingwhether the early Burke's quasi-anarchistic A Vindicationof Natural Society was a serious work or a subtle satire.)
Russell Kirk, noted Burke scholar, has written a brief critiqueof the modern libertarian movement. (Another conservative,Ernest van den Haag, wrote a lengthier essay with a similartheme and perspective.) In all likelihood, Kirk would applymany (but not all) of the same arguments to left-anarchists.
There is definitely another strand of anarchist thought,although it is far vaguer and less propositional than theviews thus far explicated. For some, "anarchist" is just adeclaration of rebellion against rules and authority of anykind. There is little attempt made here to explain howsociety would work without government; and perhaps thereis little conviction that it could do so. This sort of anarchismis more of an attitude or emotion -- a feeling that the corruptworld of today should go down in flames, without anydefinite view about what if anything would be preferable andpossible. For want of a better term, I would call this"emotivist anarchism," whose most prominent exponent isalmost certainlyMax Stirner (although to be fair to Stirner hedid briefly outline his vision for the replacement of existingsociety by a "Union of Egoists").
TheGreen and environmentalistmovements also have strong anarchist wings which blendopposition to the state and defense of the environment. Their primary theoretician is probably Murray Bookchin, who(lately) advocates a society of small and fairly autarchiclocalities. As Bookchin explains, "the anarchist concepts ofa balanced community, a face-to-face democracy, ahumanistic technology and a decentralized society -- theserich libertarian concepts -- are not only desirable, they arealso necessary." Institutions such as the town meeting ofclassical democratic theory point the way to a radicalreorganization of society, in which small environmentallyconcerned townships regularly meet to discuss and voteupon their communities' production and broader aims.Doubtlessly there are many other fusions betweenanarchism and progressive causes, and more spring up asnew concerns develop.
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.""Would you, in the system of society which you call 'freeCommunism' prevent individuals from exchanging theirlabor among themselves by means of their own medium ofexchange? And further: Would you prevent them fromoccupying land for the purpose of personal use?"... [The]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 ofprivate 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."
We will begin by explaining the concept ofPareto optimality,show how the Pareto criterion is used to justify state action,and then examine how anarchists might object to theunderlying assumptions of these economic justifications forthe state. After exploring the general critique, we will turn tothe problem of public goods (and the closely relatedexternalities issue). After showing how many economistsbelieve that these problems necessitate government action,we will consider how left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalistsmight reply.
Due to these difficulties, in practice economists must basetheir judgments upon the far more controversial judgmentsofcost-benefit analysis. (In the works ofRichard Posner,this economistic cost-benefit approach to policy decisions iscalled "wealth-maximization"; a common synonym is"Kaldor-Hicks efficiency.") With cost-benefit analysis, thereis no pretense made that government policy enjoysunanimous approval. Thus, it is open to the manyobjections frequently made to e.g. utilitarianism; moreover,since cost-benefit analysis is based upon agents'willingness to pay, rather than on agents' utility, it runs intoeven more moral paradoxes than utilitarianism typicallydoes.Objection #1: The behavorial assumptions of public goodstheory are false.
Objection #2: Government is not the only possible way toprovide public goods.
Objection #3: Public goods are rarer than you might think.
Objection #4: Externalities are a result of the profit-orientedmentality which would be tamed in an anarchist society.
Objection #5: The public goods problem is unavoidable.
Perhaps most fundamentally: government is not a solution tothe public goods problem, butrather the primary instanceof the problem. If you create a government to solve yourpublic goods problems, you merely create a new publicgoods problem: the public good of restraining and checkingthe government from abusing its power. "[I]t is wholly owingto the constitution of the people, and not to the constitutionof the government, that the crown is not as oppressive inEngland as in Turkey," wroteThomas Paine; but what material incentive is there for individuals to help develop avigilant national character? After all, surely it is a rareindividual who appreciably affects the national culture duringhis or her lifetime.
David Friedman has a particularly striking argument which goes onestep further.Under governmental institutions, he explains, good law isa public good and bad law is a private good. That is, there is littledirect personal incentive to lobby for laws that benefit everyone,but a strong personal incentive to lobby for laws that benefit specialinterests at the expense of everyone else. In contrast, underanarcho-capitalist institutions, good law is a private good and bad law is a public good. That is, by patronizing a firm which protectsoneself, one reinforces the existence of socially beneficial law; butthere is little incentive to "lobby" for the re-introduction ofgovernment. As Friedman explains, "Good law is still expensive -I must spend time and money determining which protection agency willbest serve me - but having decided what I want, I get what I pay for.The benefit of my wise purchase goes to me, so I have an incentive topurchase wisely. It is now the person who wishes to reintroducegovernment who is caught in a public goods problem. He cannot abolishanarchy and reintroduce government for himself alone; he must do it foreveryone or for no one. If he does it for everyone, he himself getsbut a tiny fraction of the 'benefit' he expects the reintroduction ofgovernment to provide."
The primary anarchistic inspiration for pacifism in the firstsense is probably Leo Tolstoy. Drawing his themes from theGospels, Tolstoy argued that violence is always wrong,including defensive violence. This naturally leads Tolstoy tobitterly denounce warfare as well, but what is distinctivehere is opposition to violence as such, whether offensive ordefensive. Moreover, the stricture against defensiveviolence would appear to rule out not only retribution againstcriminals, but self-defense against an imminent attack.
Left-anarchists' opposition to war is quite similar to thegeneral condemnation of war expressed by moremainstream international socialists. On this view, war iscreated by capitalism, in particular the struggle for access tomarkets in the Third World. "Workingmen have no country"and should refuse to support these intra-capitalist struggles;why should they pay the dire cost of war when victory willmerely leave them more oppressed and exploited thanbefore? Moreover, while Western democracies oftenadvocate war in the name of justice and humanitarianism,the aim and/or end result is to defend traditionalauthoritarianism and destroy the lives of millions of innocentpeople. Within the Western democracies, the left-anarchist's hatred for war is often intensified by some senseof sympathy for indigenous revolutionary movements. Whilethese movements are often state-socialist in intent, the left-anarchist often believes that these movements are less badthan the traditional authoritarianism against which theystruggle. Moreover, the West's policy of propping up localdictators leads relatively non-authoritarian socialistmovements to increasing degrees of totalitarianism. NoamChomsky is almost certainly the most influentialrepresentative of the left-anarchist approach to foreignpolicy: He sees a consistent pattern of the United Statesproclaiming devotion to human rights while supportingdictatorships by any means necessary.There is certainly one truth in anarchistic beliefs: Every largeorganization contains an element of veiled or open force, and everykind of force is an evil, if we consider its effects on the humancharacter. But is it not the lesser evil? Can we dispense with force?When this question is clearly put, the case for anarchism seems extremelyweak. It is true, that the experiment of an entirely forceless societyhave never been made. But such evidence as we have does not indicatethat ill intentions will cease to exist if repressive force disappears,and it is clear enough that one ill-intentioned person can upset alarge part of society if there is no repressive force. The fact thatsome intelligent and highly idealistic men and women have believed andstill believe in anarchism shows that there is a type of sectarianismwhich accepts a belief in spite of, or perhaps because of, itsapparent absurdity.
The large majority of anarchists -- especially in moderntimes -- fervently oppose the killing of innocents on purelymoral grounds (just as most non-anarchists presumably do,though anarchists would often classify those killed in war asmurder victims of the state).Nonviolence and pacifism nowinspire far more anarchist thinkers than visions of randomterror. Anarchists from many different perspectives havebeen inspired by the writings of the 16th-century FrenchmanEtienne de la Boetie, whose quasi-anarchisticTheDiscourse of Voluntary Servitude spelled out a detailedtheory of nonviolent revolution. La Boetie explained thatsince governments depend upon the widespread belief intheir legitimacy in order to rule, despotism could bepeacefully overthrown by refusing to cooperate with thestate.Henry David Thoreau influenced many nonviolent protestmovements with a similar theme in "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience."As Thoreau put it: "If the alternative isto keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, theState will not hesitate which to choose." The success of the nonviolent anti-communist revolutions lends new support to the tactical insightof la Boetie and Thoreau.
On one level, most modern anarchists agree fully thateducation and persuasion are the most effective way tomove society towards their ultimate destination. There isthe conviction that "ideas matter"; that the state existsbecause most people honestly and firmly believe that thestate is just, necessary, and beneficial, despite a fewdrawbacks.Winston Churchill famously remarked that, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government,except all the others that have been tried." The anarchist'sgoal is to disprove Churchill's claim: to show that contrary topopular belief, Western democracy is not only bad butinferior to a very different but realistic alternative.
http://www3.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan
http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/faculty/dward/Anarchist_Archives/archivehome.html
The best page of its type, in my view.
http://www.tigerden.com/~berios/libertarians.html
http://www.ee.pdx.edu/~jason/
http://www.duke.edu/~eagle/anarchy/
http://web.cs.city.ac.uk/homes/louise/yearbk.html
http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/people/Jack.Jansen/spunk/cat-us/Toplevel.html
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html
http://burn.ucsd.edu/Welcome.html
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2419/index.html
http://www.free-market.com
http://www.jim.com/jamesd/world.html
http://mason.gmu.edu/~ihs
http://www.math.ku.dk/~buhl
http://lw3.ag.uiuc.edu/liberty/libweb.html
http://www.creative.net/~star/
http://www.digiweb.com/igeldard/LA/
http://www.best.com/~ddfrReturn to Bryan Caplan Homepage
[8]ページ先頭