Anarchism is defined by The American Heritage College
Dictionary as "The theory or doctrine that all forms of
government are unnecessary, oppressive, and undesirable
and should be abolished." Anarchism is a negative; it holds
that one thing, namely government, is bad and should be
abolished. Aside from this defining tenet, it would be
difficult to list any belief that all anarchists hold. Just as
atheists might support or oppose any viewpoint consistent
with the non-existence of God, anarchists might and indeed
do hold the entire range of viewpoints consistent with the
non-existence of the state.
As might be expected, different groups of anarchists are
constantly trying to define anarchists with different views out
of existence, just as many Christians say that their sect is
the only "true" Christianity and many socialists say that their
socialism is the only "true" socialism. This FAQ takes what
seems to me to be the impartial view that such tactics are
pointless and merely prevent the debate of substantive
issues. (N.B. The preceding definition has been criticized a
number of times. To view my appendix on Defining Anarchism,
click here.)
Unlike many observers of history, anarchists see a common
thread behind most of mankind's problems: the state. In the
20th-century alone, states have murdered well over
100,000,000 human beings, whether in war, concentration
camps, or man-made famine. And this is merely a
continuation of a seemingly endless historical pattern:
almost from the beginning of recorded history, governments
have existed. Once they arose, they allowed a ruling class
to live off the labor of the mass of ordinary people; and
these ruling classes have generally used their ill-gotten
gains to build armies and wage war to extend their sphere of
influence. At the same time, governments have always
suppressed unpopular minorities, dissent, and the efforts of
geniuses and innovators to raise humanity to new
intellectual, moral, cultural, and economic heights. By
transferring surplus wealth from producers to the state's
ruling elite, the state has often strangled any incentive for
long-run economic growth and thus stifled humanity's ascent
from poverty; and at the same time the state has always
used that surplus wealth to cement its power.
If the state is the proximate cause of so much needless
misery and cruelty, would it not be desirable to investigate
the alternatives? Perhaps the state is a necessary evil which
we cannot eliminate. But perhaps it is rather an
unnecessary evil which we accept out of inertia when a
totally different sort of society would be a great
improvement.
By definition, anarchists oppose merely government, not
order or society. "Liberty is the Mother, not the Daughter of
Order" wrote Proudhon, and most anarchists would be
inclined to agree. Normally, anarchists demand abolition of
the state because they think that they have something better
to offer, not out of a desire for rebellion as such. Or as
Kropotkin put it, "No destruction of the existing order is
possible, if at the time of the overthrow, or of the struggle
leading to the overthrow, the idea of what is to take the
place of what is to be destroyed is not always present in the
mind. Even the theoretical criticism of the existing
conditions is impossible, unless the critic has in mind a more
or less distinct picture of what he would have in place of the
existing state. Consciously or unconsciously, the ideal,
the conception of something better is forming in the mind of
everyone who criticizes social institutions."
There is an anti-intellectual strain in anarchism which favors
chaos and destruction as an end-in-itself. While possibly a
majority among people who have called themselves
anarchists, this is not a prominent strand of thought among
those who have actually spent time thinking and writing
about anarchist theory.
Some anarchists have favored the abolition of one or more
of the above, while others have not. To some, all of these
are merely other forms of oppression and domination. To
others, they are the vital intermediary institutions which
protect us from the state. To still others, some of the above
are good and others are bad; or perhaps they are bad
currently, but merit reform.
As should become plain to the reader of alt.society.anarchy
or alt.anarchism,
there are two rather divergent lines of anarchist thought.
The first is broadly known as "left-anarchism," and
encompasses anarcho-socialists, anarcho-syndicalists, and
anarcho-communists. These anarchists believe that in an
anarchist society, people either would or should abandon or
greatly reduce the role of private property rights. The
economic system would be organized around cooperatives,
worker-owned firms, and/or communes. A key value in this
line of anarchist thought is egalitarianism, the view that
inequalities, especially of wealth and power, are
undesirable, 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 only retain private
property, but expand it to encompass the entire social realm.
No anarcho-capitalist has ever denied the right of people to
voluntarily pool their private property and form a
cooperative, worker-owned firm, or commune; but they also
believe that several property, including such organizations
as corporations, are not only perfectly legitimate but likely to
be the predominant form of economic organization under
anarchism. Unlike the left-anarchists, anarcho-capitalists
generally place little or no value on equality, believing that
inequalities along all dimensions -- including income and
wealth -- are not only perfectly legitimate so long as they
"come about in the right way," but are the natural
consequence of human freedom.
A large segment of left-anarchists is extremely skeptical about the
anarchist credentials of anarcho-capitalists, arguing that the
anarchist movement has historically been clearly leftist. In my
own view, it is necessary to re-write a great deal of history to maintain
this claim. In Carl Landauer's European Socialism: A History of
Ideas and Movements (published in 1959 before any important modern
anarcho-capitalist works had been written), this great socialist historian
notes that:
Actually, Tucker and Spooner both wrote about the free market's ability
to provide legal and protection services, so Landauer's remark was not
accurate even in 1959. But the interesting point is that before the
emergence of modern anarcho-capitalism Landauer found it
necessary to distinguish two strands of anarchism, only one of which
he considered to be within the broad socialist tradition.
This is actually a complicated question, because the term
"libertarianism" itself has two very different meanings. In
Europe in the 19th-century, libertarianism was a popular
euphemism for left-anarchism. However, the term did not
really catch on in the United States.
After World War II, many American-based pro-free-market
intellectuals opposed to traditional conservatism were
seeking for a label to describe their position, and eventually
picked "libertarianism." ("Classical liberalism" and "market
liberalism" are alternative labels for the same essential
position.) The result was that in two different political
cultures which rarely communicated with one another, the
term "libertarian" was used in two very different ways. At the
current time, the American use has basically taken over
completely in academic political theory (probably owing to
Nozick's influence), but the European use is still popular
among many left-anarchist activists in both Europe and the
U.S.
The semantic confusion was complicated further when some
of the early post-war American libertarians determined that
the logical implication of their view was, in fact, a variant of
anarchism. They adopted the term "anarcho-capitalism" to
differentiate themselves from more moderate libertarianism,
but were still generally happy to identify themselves with the
broader free-market libertarian movement.
If we accept one traditional definition of socialism --
"advocacy of government ownership of the means of
production" -- it seems that anarchists are not socialists
by definition. But if by socialism we mean something
more inclusive, such as "advocacy of the strong restriction
or abolition of private property," then the question becomes
more complex.
Under the second proffered definition, some anarchists are
socialists, but others are not. Outside of the Anglo-
American political culture, there has been a long and close
historical relationship between the more orthodox socialists
who advocate a socialist government, and the anarchist
socialists who desire some sort of decentralized, voluntary
socialism. The two groups both want to severely limit or
abolish private property and thus both groups fit the
second definition of socialism. However, the anarchists
certainly do not want the government to own the means of
production, for they don't want government to exist in the
first place.
The anarchists' dispute with the traditional socialists -- a
dispute best illustrated by the bitter struggle between
Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin for dominance in the
19th-century European workers' movement -- has often be described as
a disagreement over "means." On this interpretation, the
socialist anarchists and the state-socialists agree that a
communal and egalitarian society is desirable, but accuse
one another of proposing ineffective means of attaining it.
However, this probably understates the conflict, which is
also over more fundamental values: socialist anarchists
emphasize the need for autonomy and the evils of
authoritarianism, while traditional socialists have frequently
belittled such concerns as "bourgeois."
Still, this geographic division should not be over-stated. The
French anarchist Proudhon and the German
Max Stirner
both embraced modified forms of individualism; a number of
left-anarchists (often European immigrants) attained
prominence in the United States; and Noam Chomsky and
Murray Bookchin, two of the most influential theorists of
modern left-anarchism, both reside within the United States.
Anarcho-capitalism has a much more recent origin in the
latter half of the 20th century. The two most famous
advocates of anarcho-capitalism are probably Murray
Rothbard and David Friedman.
There were however some
interesting earlier precursors, notably the Belgian economist
Gustave de Molinari. Two other 19th-century anarchists
who have been adopted by modern anarcho-capitalists with
a few caveats are
Benjamin Tucker and
Lysander Spooner.
More comprehensive listings of anarchist figures may be
found in a number of broad historical works listed later in the
FAQ.
There are many different views on this. Among left-
anarchists, there are some who imagine returning to a much
simpler, even pre-industrial, mode of social organization.
Others seem to intend to maintain modern technology and
civilization (perhaps in a more environmentally sound
manner) but end private ownership of the means of
production.
To be replaced with what? Various suggestions have been
made. Existing firms might simply be turned over to worker
ownership, and then be subject to the democratic control of
the workers. This is the anarcho-syndicalist picture: keeping
an economy based upon a multitude of firms, but with firms
owned and managed by the workers at each firm.
Presumably firms would then strike deals with one another
to secure needed materials; or perhaps firms would continue
to pay money wages and sell products to consumers. It is
unclear how the syndicalist intends to arrange for the
egalitarian care of the needy, or the provision of necessary
but unprofitable products. Perhaps it is supposed that
syndicates would contribute out of social responsibility;
others have suggested that firms would elect
representatives for a larger meta-firm organization which
would carry out the necessary tasks.
It should be noted that
Tom Wetzel disputes my
characterization of anarcho-syndicalism; he argues that very
few anarcho-syndicalists ever imagined that workers would
simply take over their firms, while maintaining the basic
features of the market economy. Rather, the goal has
usually been the establishment of an overarching
democratic structure, rather than a multitude of
uncoordinated firm-centered democracies. Or at Wetzel
states, "Anarcho-syndicalism advocates the development of
a mass workers' movement based on direct democracy as
the vehicle for reorganization of the society on the basis of
direct workers' collective power over social production, thus
eliminating the domination and exploitation of the producing
class by an exploiting class. Workers cannot have collective
power over the system of social production as isolated
groups competing in a market economy; rather, workers self-
management requires structures of democratic control over
social production and public affairs generally. Workers' self-
management thus refers, not just to self-management of the
individual workplace, but of the whole system of social
production. This requires grassroots bodies, such as
workers' congresses or conventions, through which
coordinated policies for the society can be developed in a
democratic manner. This is proposed as a substitute or
replacement for the historical nation-state." On this
interpretation of anarcho-syndicalism, the revolutionary
trade unions are a means for achieving an anarchist
society, rather than a proposed basis for social organization
under anarchy.
Many would observe that there is nothing anarchistic
about this proposal; indeed, names aside, it fits easily into
the orthodox state-socialist tradition. Bakunin would have
probably ridiculed such ideas as authoritarian Marxist
socialism in disguise, and predicted that the leading
anarchist revolutionaries would swiftly become the new
despots. But Wetzel is perhaps right that many or even
most historical anarcho-syndicalists were championing the
system outlined in his preceding quotation. He goes on to
add that "[I]f you look at the concept of 'state' in the very
abstract way it often is in the social sciences, as in Weber's
definition, then what the anarcho-syndicalists were
proposing is not elimination of the state or government, but
its radical democratization. That was not how anarchists
themselves spoke about it, but it can be plausibly argued
that this is a logical consequence of a certain major
stream of left-anarchist thought."
Ronald Fraser's discussion of the ideology of the Spanish Anarchists
(historically the largest European anarchist movement) strongly
undermines Wetzel's claim, however. There were two well-developed lines
of thought, both of which favored the abolition of the State in the
broad Weberian sense of the word, and which did indeed believe that the
workers should literally have control over their workplaces.
After distinguishing the rural
and the urban tendencies among the Spanish ideologists, Fraser explains:
Overall, the syndicalist is probably the best elaborated of
the left-anarchist systems. But others in the broader
tradition imagine individuals forming communes and
cooperatives which would be less specialized and more self-
sufficient than the typical one-product-line anarcho-
syndicalist firm. These notions are often closely linked to
the idea of creating a more environmentally sound society,
in which small and decentralized collectives redirect their
energies towards a Greener way of life.
Many left-anarchists and anarchist sympathizers have also been
attracted to Guild Socialism in one form or another.
Economist Roger A. McCain thoughtfully explores Guild Socialism
as an alternative to both capitalism and the state in "Guild
Socialism Reconsidered," one of his working papers. To view it,
click here.
So perhaps Kropotkin's ideal society would live under the
guidance of a reformed customary law stripped of the class
legislation with which it is now so closely associated. But
Kropotkin continues to give what appear to be arguments
against even customary law prohibiting e.g. murder. Almost
all violent crime is actually caused by poverty and inequality
created by existing law. A small residual of violent crime
might persist, but efforts to handle it by legal channels are
futile. Why? Because punishment has no effect on crime,
especially such crimes of passion as would survive the
abolition of private property. Moreover, criminals should not
be judged wicked, but rather treated as we now treat the
sick and disadvantaged.
Most left-anarchists probably hold to a mix of Kropotkin's
fairly distinct positions on law and crime. Existing law
should be replaced by sensible and communitarian customs;
and the critic of anarchism underestimates the extent to
which existing crime is in fact a product of the legal system's
perpetuation of inequality and poverty. And since
punishment is not an effective deterrent, and criminals are
not ultimately responsible for their misdeeds, a strictly
enforced legal code may be undesirable anyway.
Some other crucial features of the left-anarchist society are
quite unclear. Whether dissidents who despised all forms of
communal living would be permitted to set up their own
inegalitarian separatist societies is rarely touched upon.
Occasionally left-anarchists have insisted that small farmers
and the like would not be forcibly collectivized, but the limits
of the right to refuse to adopt an egalitarian way of life are
rarely specified.
Most of the prominent anarcho-capitalist writers have been
academic economists, and as such have felt it necessary to
spell out the workings of their preferred society in rather
greater detail than the left-anarchists have. In order to best
grasp the anarcho-capitalist position, it is helpful to realize
that anarcho-capitalists have emerged almost entirely out of
the modern American libertarian movement, and believe that
their view is simply a slightly more extreme version of the
libertarianism propounded by e.g. Robert Nozick.
Now the anarcho-capitalist essentially turns the minarchist's
own logic against him, and asks why the remaining functions
of the state could not be
turned over to the free market. And
so, the anarcho-capitalist imagines that police services
could be sold by freely competitive firms; that a court system
would emerge to peacefully arbitrate disputes between
firms; and that a sensible legal code could be developed
through custom, precedent, and contract. And in fact, notes
the anarcho-capitalist, a great deal of modern law (such as
the Anglo-American common law) originated not in
legislatures, but from the decentralized rulings of judges.
(The anarcho-capitalist shares Kropotkin's interest in
customary law, but normally believes that it requires
extensive modernization and articulation.)
The anarcho-capitalist typically hails modern society's
increasing reliance on private security guards, gated
communities,
arbitration and mediation, and other
demonstrations of the free market's ability to supply the
defensive and legal services normally assumed to be of
necessity a government monopoly. In his ideal society,
these market alternatives to government services would take
over all legitimate security services. One plausible
market structure would involve individuals subscribing to
one of a large number of competing police services; these
police services would then set up contracts or networks for
peacefully handling disputes between members of each
others' agencies. Alternately, police services might be
"bundled" with housing services, just as landlords often
bundle water and power with rental housing, and gardening
and security are today provided to residents in gated
communities and apartment complexes.
The underlying idea is that contrary to popular belief, private
police would have strong incentives to be peaceful and
respect individual rights. For first of all, failure to peacefully
arbitrate will yield to jointly destructive warfare, which will
be bad for profits. Second, firms will want to develop long-
term business relationships, and hence be willing to
negotiate in good faith to insure their long-term profitability.
And third, aggressive firms would be likely to attract only
high-risk clients and thus suffer from extraordinarily high
costs (a problem parallel to the well-known "adverse
selection problem" in e.g. medical insurance -- the problem
being that high-risk people are especially likely to seek
insurance, which drives up the price when riskiness is hard
for the insurer to discern or if regulation requires a uniform
price regardless of risk). Anarcho-capitalists generally give
little credence to the view that their "private police agencies"
would be equivalent to today's Mafia --
the cost advantages
of open, legitimate business would make "criminal police"
uncompetitive. As David Friedman explains in The Machinery of
Freedom, "Perhaps the best way to see why anarcho-capitalism would
be so much more peaceful than our present system is by analogy.
Consider our world as it would be if the cost of moving from one
country to another were zero. Everyone lives in a housetrailer
and speaks the same language. One day, the president of France
announces that because of troubles with neighboring countries, new
military taxes are being levied and conscription will begin shortly.
The next morning the president of France finds himself ruling a
peaceful but empty landscape, the population having been reduced to
himself, three generals, and twenty-seven war correspondents."
(Moreover, anarcho-capitalists argue, the Mafia can only
thrive in the artificial market niche created by the prohibition
of alcohol, drugs, prostitution, gambling, and other
victimless crimes. Mafia gangs might kill each other over
turf, but liquor-store owners generally do not.)
Unlike some left-anarchists, the anarcho-capitalist has no
objection to punishing criminals; and he finds the former's
claim that punishment does not deter crime to be the height
of naivete. Traditional punishment might be meted out after
a conviction by a neutral arbitrator; or a system of monetary
restitution (probably in conjunction with a prison factory
system) might exist instead. A convicted criminal would owe
his victim compensation, and would be forced to work until
he paid off his debt. Overall, anarcho-capitalists probably
lean more towards the restitutionalist rather than the pure
retributivist position.
Critics of anarcho-capitalism sometimes assume that
communal or worker-owned firms would be penalized or
prohibited in an anarcho-capitalist society. It would be more
accurate to state that while individuals would be free to
voluntarily form communitarian organizations, the anarcho-
capitalist simply doubts that they would be widespread or
prevalent. However, in theory an "anarcho-capitalist"
society might be filled with nothing but communes or worker-
owned firms, so long as these associations were formed
voluntarily (i.e., individuals joined voluntarily and capital was
obtained with the consent of the owners) and individuals
retained the right to exit and set up corporations or other
profit-making, individualistic firms.
On other issues, the anarcho-capitalist differs little if at all
from the more moderate libertarian. Services should be
privatized and opened to free competition; regulation of
personal AND economic behavior should be done away
with. Poverty would be handled by work and responsibility
for those able to care for themselves, and voluntary charity
for those who cannot. (Libertarians hasten to add that a
deregulated economy would greatly increase the economic
opportunities of the poor, and elimination of taxation would
lead to a large increase in charitable giving.)
For a detailed discussion of the economics of privatization of
dispute resolution, rule creation, and enforcement, see my
"The Economics of Non-State Legal Systems," which is archived with
my other economics writings.
Anarchism of various breeds has been criticized from an
extremely wide range of perspectives. State-socialists,
classical liberals, and conservatives have each on occasion
examined anarchist theorists and found them wanting. After
considering the unifying argument endorsed by virtually all
of the critics of anarchism, we shall turn to the more specific
attacks of Marxist, moderate libertarian, and conservative
lineage.
Anarchists of all varieties would reject this argument;
sometimes claiming that the critic misunderstands their
position, other times that the critic's assumptions are too
pessimistic. Kropotkin, for example, would seriously dispute
the claim that war is the natural state of ungoverned human
beings; like many other species of animals, cooperation is
more common, natural, and likely. Left- anarchists generally
would normally object that these criticisms rest upon
contingent cultural assumptions arising from a competitive
scarcity economy. Replace these institutions with humane
and egalitarian ones; then poverty, the cause of crime and
aggression, would greatly decrease. Finally, many left-
anarchists envisage cooperatives and communes adopting
and enforcing rules of appropriate conduct for those who
wish to join.
The anarcho-capitalist would likely protest that the critic
misunderstands his view: he does believe that police and
laws are necessary and desirable, and merely holds that
they could be supplied by the free market rather than
government. More fundamentally, he doubts the game-
theoretic underpinnings of Hobbes' argument, for it ignores
the likelihood that aggressive individuals or firms will
provoke retaliation. Just as territorial animals fight when
defending their territory, but yield when confronted on the
territory of another animal, rational self-interested
individuals and firms would usually find aggression a
dangerous and unprofitable practice. In terms of game
theory, the anarcho-capitalist thinks that Hobbes' situation
is a Hawk-Dove game rather than a
Prisoners' Dilemma. (In
the Prisoners' Dilemma, war/non-cooperation would be a
strictly dominant strategy; in a Hawk-Dove game there is
normally a mixed-strategy equilibrium in which
cooperation/peace is the norm but a small percentage of
players continue to play war/non-cooperation.) Self-
interested police firms would gladly make long-term
arbitration contracts with each other to avoid mutually
destructive bloodshed.
(To view an excellent short related essay on
anarchism and game theory,
click here.)
There were at least three distinct arguments that Marx
aimed at his anarchist opponents.
First: the development of socialism had to follow a particular
historical course, whereas the anarchists mistakenly
believed that it could be created by force of will alone. "A
radical social revolution is connected with certain historical
conditions of economic development; the latter are its
presupposition. Therefore it is possible only where the
industrial proletariat, together with capitalist production,
occupies at least a substantial place in the mass of the
people." Marx continues: "He [Bakunin] understands
absolutely nothing about social revolution ... For him
economic requisites do not exist...He wants a European
social revolution, resting on the economic foundation of
capitalist production, to take place on the level of the
Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples ... Will
power and not economic conditions is the basis for his
social revolution." Proudhon, according to Marx, suffered
from the same ignorance of history and its laws: "M.
Proudhon, incapable of following the real movement of
history, produces a phantasmagoria which presumptuously
claims to be dialectical ... From his point of view man is only
the instrument of which the idea or the eternal reason makes
use in order to unfold itself." This particular argument is
probably of historical interest only, in light of the gross
inaccuracy of Marx's prediction of the path of future
civilization; although perhaps the general claim that social
progression has material presuppositions retains some
merit.
Second, Marx ridiculed Bakunin's claim that a socialist
government would become a new despotism by socialist
intellectuals. In light of the prophetic accuracy of Bakunin's
prediction in this area, Marx's reply is almost ironic: "Under
collective ownership the so-called people's will disappears
to make way for the real will of the cooperative." It is on this
point that most left-anarchists reasonably claim complete
vindication; just as Bakunin predicted, the Marxist
"dictatorship of the proletariat" swiftly became a ruthless
"dictatorship over the proletariat."
Finally, Marx stated that the anarchists erroneously believed
that the government supported the capitalist system rather
than the other way around. In consequence, they were
attacking the wrong target and diverting the workers'
movement from its proper course. Engels delineated the
Marxist and left-anarchist positions quite well: "Bakunin
maintains that it is the state which has created capital,
that the capitalist has his capital only by the grace of the
state. As, therefore, the state is the chief evil, it is above
all the state which must be done away with and then
capitalism will go to blazes of itself. We, on the contrary,
say: Do away with capital, the concentration of the means of
production in the hands of the few, and the state will fall of
itself." The left-anarchist would probably accept this as a
fair assessment of their disagreement with the Marxists, but
point out how in many historical cases since (and before)
Marx's time governments have steered their countries
towards very different aims and policies, whereas capitalists
are often fairly adaptive and passive.
There have been literally dozens of anarchist attacks on
Nozick's derivation of the minimal state. To begin with, no
state arose in the manner Nozick describes, so all
existing states are illegitimate and still merit abolition.
Secondly, anarcho-capitalists dispute Nozick's assumption
that defense is a natural monopoly, noting that the modern
security guard and arbitration industries are extremely
decentralized and competitive. Finally, they reject Nozick's
principles of risk and compensation, charging that they lead
directly to the despotism of preventive law.
Burke would probably say that, like other radical ideologues,
the anarchists place far too much reliance on their imperfect
reason and not enough on the accumulated wisdom of
tradition. Society functions because we have gradually
evolved a system of workable rules. It seems certain that
Burke would apply his critique of the French revolutionaries
with equal force to the anarchists: "They have no respect for
the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full
measure of confidence in their own. With them it is a
sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things,
because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no sort
of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in
haste; because duration is no object to those who think little
or nothing has been done before their time, and who place
all their hopes in discovery." To attempt to replace the
wisdom of the ages with a priori theories of justice is sure to
lead to disaster, because functional policies must be
judicious compromises between important competing ends.
Or in Burke's words, "The science of constructing a
commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every
other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is
it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical
science; because the real effects of moral causes are not
always immediate." The probable result of any attempt to
realize anarchist principles would be a brief period of
revolutionary zeal, followed by chaos and social breakdown
resulting from the impracticality of the revolutionary policies,
and finally ending in a brutal dictator winning widespread
support by simply restoring order and rebuilding the
people's sense of social stability.
Many anarchists would in fact accept Burke's critique of
violent revolution, which is why they favor advancing their
views gradually through education and nonviolent protest.
In fact, Bakunin's analysis of Marxism as the ideology (i.e.,
rationalization for the class interests of) middle-class
intellectuals in fact differs little from Burke's analysis:
Bakunin, like Burke, perceived that no matter how
oppressive the current system may be, there are always
power-hungry individuals who favor violent revolution as
their most practical route to absolute power. Their protests
against actual injustices must be seen in light of their
ultimate aim of imposing even more ruthless despotism upon
the people.
On other issues, anarchists would disagree strongly with
several of Burke's claims. Many forms of misery stem from
the blind adherence to tradition; and rational thinking has
sparked countless improvements in human society ever
since the decline of traditional despotism. Moreover,
anarchists do not propose to do away with valuable
traditions, but simply request evidence that particular
traditions are valuable before they lend them their
support. And what is to be done when -- as is usually the
case -- a society harbors a wide range of mutually
incompatible traditions?
Anarchists might also object that the Burkean analysis relies
too heavily upon tradition as a result rather than a
process. Cultural evolution may constantly weed out
foolish ideas and practices, but it hardly follows that such
follies have already perished; for the state to defend
tradition is to strangle the competitive process which tends
to make tradition sensible. As
Vincent Cook explains: "[I]t is
precisely because wisdom has to be accumulated in
incremental steps that it cannot be centrally planned by any
single political or religious authority, contrary to the
aspirations of conservatives and collectivists alike. While
the collectivists are indeed guilty of trying to rationalistically
reconstruct society in defiance of tradition (a valid criticism
of left-anarchists), conservatives on the other hand are
guilty of trying to freeze old traditions in place.
Conservatives have forgotten that the process of wisdom
accumulation is an on-going one, and instead have opted
for the notion that some existing body of traditions (usually
Judeo-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 deny
the existence of a "transcendent moral order." Second,
order is prior to liberty, and liberty is possible only after
government establishes a constitutional order. Third,
libertarians assume that self-interest is the only possible
social bond, ignoring the broader communitarian vision of
human nature found in both the Aristotelian and Judeo-
Christian traditions. Fourth, libertarians erroneously
assume that human beings are naturally good or at least
perfectible. Fifth, the libertarian foolishly attacks the state
as such, rather than merely its abuses. Sixth and last, the
libertarian is an arrogant egoist who disregards valuable
ancient beliefs and customs.
Left-anarchists would perhaps agree with Kirk on points
three and six. So if Kirk were to expand his attack on
anarchism to encompass the left-anarchists as well, he
might acquit them of these two charges. The remaining
four, however, Kirk would probably apply equally to
anarchists of both varieties.
How would anarchists reply to Kirk's criticisms? On the
"moral transcendence" issue, they would point out there
have been religious as well as non-religious anarchists; and
moreover, many non-religious anarchists still embrace moral
objectivism (notably anarchists in the broader natural law
tradition). Most anarchists would deny that they make self-
interest the only possible social bond; and even those who
would affirm this (such as anarcho-capitalists influenced by
Ayn Rand) have a broad conception of self-interest
consistent with the Aristotelian tradition.
As to the priority of order over liberty, many anarchists
influenced by e.g. Kropotkin would reply that as with other
animal species, order and cooperation emerge as a
result, not a consequence of freedom; while anarcho-
capitalists would probably refer Kirk to the theorists of
"spontaneous order" such as Hayek, Hume, Smith, and even
Edmund Burke himself.
The FAQ addresses the questions of human perfectibility
and utopianism in sections 20 and 21. As for Kirk's final
point, most anarchists would reply that they happily accept
valuable customs and traditions, but believe that they
have 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 gang
might use its superior might to coerce everyone else to do
as they wish. With nothing more powerful than the gang,
there would (definitionally) be nothing to stop them. But how
does this differ from what we have now? Governments rule
because they have the might to maintain their power; in
short, because there is no superior agency to restrain them.
Hence, reason some critics of anarchism, the goal of
anarchists is futile because we are already in a state of
anarchy.
This argument is confused on several levels.
First, it covertly defines anarchy as unrestrained rule of the
strongest, which is hardly what most anarchists have in
mind. (Moreover, it overlooks the definitional differences
between government and other forms of organized
aggression; Weber in particular noted that governments
claim a monopoly over the legitimate use of force in a
given geographical region.) In fact, while anarchism is
logically compatible with any viewpoint which rejects the
existence of the state, there have been extremely few
(perhaps no) anarchists who combined their advocacy of
anarchism with support for domination by those most skilled
in violence.
Second, it seems to assume that all that particular
anarchists advocate is the abolition of the state; but as we
have seen, anarchism is normally combined with additional
normative views about what ought to replace the state.
Thus, most anarchist theorists believe more than merely that
the state should not exist; they also believe that e.g. society
should be based upon voluntary communes, or upon strict
private property rights, etc.
Third, the argument sometimes confuses a definitional with
a causal claim. It is one thing to argue that anarchy would
lead to the rule by the strongest; this is a causal claim
about the likely results of the attempt to create an anarchist
society. It is another thing entirely to argue that anarchy
means rule by the strongest. This is simply a linguistic
confusion, best illustrated by noting that under this definition
anarchy and the state are logically compatible.
A related but more sophisticated argument, generally
leveled against anarcho- capitalists, runs as follows. If
competing protection agencies could prevent the
establishment of an abusive, dominant firm, while don't they
do so now? In short, if market checks against the abuse
of power actually worked, we wouldn't have a state in the
first place.
There are two basic replies to this argument. First of all, it
completely ignores the ideological factor. Anarcho-
capitalists are thinking of how competing firms would
prevent the rise of abusive protection monopolists in a
society where most people don't support the existence of
such a monopolist. It is one thing to suppress a "criminal
firm" when it stands condemned by public opinion and the
values internalized by that firm's employees; it is another
thing entirely to suppress our current "criminal firms" (i.e.,
governments) when qua institution enjoy the overwhelming
support of the populace and the state's enforcers believe in
their own cause. When a governing class loses confidence
in its own legitimacy -- from the Ancien Regime in France to
the Communist Party in the USSR -- it becomes vulnerable
and weak. Market checks on government could indeed
establish an anarchist society if the self-confidence of the
governing class were severely eroded by anarchist ideas.
Secondly, the critique ignores the possibility of
multiple social equilibria.
If everyone drives on the right side of the
road, isolated attempts to switch to the left side will be
dangerous and probably unsuccessful. But if everyone
drives on the left side of the road, the same danger exists
for those who believe that the right side is superior and plan
to act on their believe. Similarly, it is quite possible that
given that a government exists, the existence of
government is a stable equilibrium; but if a system of
competitive protection firms existed, that too would be a
stable equilibrium. In short, just because one equilibrium
exists and is stable doesn't mean that it is the only possible
equilibrium. Why then is the state so pervasive if it is just
one possible equilibrium? The superiority of this equilibrium
is one possible explanation; but it could also be due to
ideology, or an inheritance from our barbarous ancestors.
For the emotivist anarchist, opposition to the state is just a
special case of his or her opposition to almost everything:
the family, traditional art, bourgeois culture, comfortable
middle-aged people, the British monarchy, etc. This
position, when articulated, is often difficult to understand, for
it seems to seek destruction without any suggestion or
argument that anything else would be preferable. Closely
linked to emotivist anarchism, though sometimes a little
more theoretical, is nihilist anarchism. The anarcho-nihilists
combine the emotivist's opposition to virtually all forms of
order with radical subjectivist moral and epistemological
theory.
To see Tracy Harms' criticism of my treatment of Stirner, egoism, and
nihilism, click here.
Related to emotivist anarchism is a second strand of less
intellectual, more emotional anarchist thought. It has been
called by some "moral anarchism." This view again feels
that existing statist society is bad; but rather than lay out any
comprehensive plans for its abolition, this sort of anarchist
sticks to more immediate reforms. Anarchism of this sort is
a kind of ideal dream, which is beautiful and inspiring to
contemplate while we pursue more concrete aims.
The emotivist anarchist often focuses on action and disdains
theorizing. In contrast, another breed of anarchists, known
as "philosophical anarchists," see few practical implications
of their intellectual position. Best represented by Robert
Paul Wolff, philosophical anarchism simply denies that the
state's orders as such can confer any legitimacy
whatever. Each individual must exercise his moral
autonomy to judge right and wrong for himself, irrespective
of the state's decrees. However, insofar as the state's
decrees accord with one's private conscience, there is no
need to change one's behavior. A position like Wolff's says,
in essence, that the rational person cannot and must not
offer the blind obedience to authority that governments often
seem to demand; but this insight need not spark any political
action if one's government's decrees are not unusually
immoral.
Yet another faction, strongly influenced by Leo Tolstoy,
refer to themselves as "Christian anarchists." (Tolstoy avoided
the term "anarchist," probably because of its association
with violence and terrorism in the minds of contemporary
Russians.) Drawing on the Gospels' themes of nonviolence
and the equality of all human beings, these anarchists
condemn government as contrary to Christian teaching.
Tolstoy particularly emphasized the immorality of war,
military service, and patriotism, challenging Christians to live
up to the radical implications of their faith by withdrawing
their support from all three of these evils. Tolstoy's essay
"Patriotism, or Peace?" is particularly notable for its early
attack upon nationalism and the bloodshed that usually
accompanies it.
Finally, many leftist and progressive movements have an
anarchist interpretation and anarchist advocates. For
example, a faction of feminists, calling themselves "anarcha-
feminists" exists.
Again, there are a great many answers which have been
offered. Some anarchists, such as the emotivist and
(paradoxically) the moral anarchists have little interest in
high-level moral theory. But this has been of great interest to
the more intellectual sorts of anarchists.
One popular argument for anarchism is that it is the only
way for true socialism to exist. State-socialism is unable to
actually establish human equality; instead it simply creating
a new ruling class. Bakunin prophetically predicted the
results of socialists seizing control of the state when he
wrote that the socialist elite would form a "new class" which
would be "the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant, and
contemptuous of all regimes." Elsewhere Bakunin wrote
that "[F]reedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice,
... Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality." Of
course, socialism itself has been defended on both
deontological and utilitarian grounds, and there is no need
to repeat these here.
On the other hand, anarcho-capitalists have argued that
only under anarchism can the Lockean rights to person and
property so loudly championed by more moderate
libertarians be fully respected. Any attempt to impose a
monopolistic government necessarily prevents competing
police and judicial services from providing a legitimate
service; moreover, so long as government exists taxation
will persist. The government's claim to defend private
property is thus quite ironic, for the state, in Rothbard's
words, is "an institution that presumes to 'defend' person
and property by itself subsisting on the unilateral coercion
against private property known as taxation." Other anarcho-
capitalists such as David Friedman find these arguments
from natural Lockean rights unconvincing, and instead take
up the task of trying to show that Adam Smith's utilitarian
case for free-market capitalism applies just as well to free
markets in defense services, making the state useless as
well as dangerous.
Still other anarchists, such as Lysander Spooner and
Benjamin Tucker as well as Proudhon, have argued that
anarchism would abolish the exploitation inherent in interest
and rent simply by means of free competition. In their view,
only labor income is legitimate, and an important piece of
the case for anarchism is that without government-imposed
monopolies, non-labor income would be driven to zero by
market forces. It is unclear, however, if they regard this as
merely a desirable side effect, or if they would reject
anarchism if they learned that the predicted economic effect
thereof would not actually occur. (Other individualist
anarchists have argued that contrary to Spooner and
Tucker, free banking would lead to a much lower rate of
inflation than we experience today; that rent and interest are
not due to "monopoly" but to scarcity of land and loanable
funds; and that there is no moral distinction between labor
and rental or interest income, all of which depend upon a
mixture of scarcity, demand, luck, and effort.)
A basic moral intuition that probably anarchists of all
varieties share is simply that no one has the right to rule
another person. The interpretation of "rulership," however,
varies: left anarchists tend to see the employer-employee
relationship as one of rulership, and anarcho-capitalists are
often dubious of the claim that envisaged anarchists
communes would be democratic and hence voluntary. A
closely related moral intuition, again widely shared by all
sorts of anarchists, is that each person should exercise
personal autonomy, or self-rule. One should question
authority, and make up one's mind for oneself rather than
simply following the herd. Again, the interpretation of
"personal autonomy" varies: the left-anarchist sees the
employer-employee relationship as inherently violating
personal autonomy, whereas the anarcho-capitalist is more
likely to see personal autonomy disappearing in the
commune or collective, regardless of how democratically
they run themselves.
Without a doubt, the most repeated debate among modern
anarchists is fought between the left-anarchists on one side
and the anarcho-capitalists on the other. Of course, there
are occasional debates between different left-anarchist
factions, but probably most of them would be content with an
anarchist society populated by some mixture of communes,
worker-controlled firms, and cooperatives. And similarly
there are a few internal debates between anarcho-
capitalists, notably the tension between Rothbard's natural
law anarcho-capitalism and David Friedman's more
economistic anarcho-capitalism. But it is the debate
between the left-anarchists and the anarcho-capitalists
which is the most fundamental and the most acrimonious.
There are many sub-debates within this wider genre, which
we will now consider.
One of the least fruitful of these sub-debates is the frequent
attempt 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.]") In
addition to being a trivial issue, the factual supporting
arguments are often incorrect. For example, despite a
popular claim that socialism and anarchism have been
inextricably linked since the inception of the anarchist
movement, many 19th-century anarchists, not only
Americans such as Tucker and Spooner, but even
Europeans like Proudhon, were ardently in favor of private
property (merely believing that some existing sorts of
property were illegitimate, without opposing private property
as such).
Nor did an ardent anarcho-communist like Kropotkin deny
Proudhon or even Tucker the title of "anarchist." In his
Modern Science and Anarchism, Kropotkin discusses not
only Proudhon but "the American anarchist individualists
who were represented in the fifties by S.P. Andrews and W.
Greene, later on by Lysander Spooner, and now are
represented by Benjamin Tucker, the well-known editor of
the New York Liberty." Similarly in his article on
anarchism for the 1910 edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica, Kropotkin again freely mentions the American
individualist anarchists, including "Benjamin Tucker, whose
journal Liberty was started in 1881 and whose
conceptions are a combination of those of Proudhon with
those of Herbert Spencer."
A more substantive variation is to argue that the opposing
anarchism would be unstable and lead to the swift re-
emergence of government. Thus, the left-anarchists often
argue that the defense corporations envisaged by anarcho-
capitalists would war with one another until one came out as
the new government; or else they would collude to establish
themselves as the new capitalist oligarchs. As Noam
Chomsky says in an interview with
Ulrike 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 fighting
each other." Anarcho-capitalists reply that this grossly
underestimates the degree of competition likely to prevail in
the defense industry; that war is likely to be very
unprofitable and dangerous, and is more likely to be
provoked by ideology than sober profit-maximization; and
that economic theory and economic history show that
collusion is quite difficult to maintain.
Anarcho-capitalists for their part accuse the left-anarchists
of intending to impose their communal vision upon
everyone; since everyone will not go along voluntarily, a
government will be needed to impose it. Lest we think that
this argument is a recent invention, it is interesting to find
that essentially this argument raged in the 19th- century
anarchist movement as well. In John MacKay's The
Anarchists, we see the essential dialogue between
individualist and collectivist anarchism has a longer history
than one might think:
There have been several left-anarchist replies. One is to
readily agree that dissenters would have the right to not join
a commune, with the proviso that they must not employ
others or otherwise exploit them. Another is to claim that
anarchism will change (or cease to warp) human attitudes
so that they will be more communitarian and less
individualistic. Finally, some argue that this is simply
another sophistical argument for giving the rich and powerful
the liberty to take away the liberty of everyone else.
Again, this argument has been made from several
perspectives. Left-anarchists have argued that if workers
had the genuine option to work for a capitalist employer, or
else work for themselves in a worker cooperative, virtually
all workers would choose the latter. Moreover, workers in a
worker-managed firm would have higher morale and greater
incentive to work hard compared with workers who just
worked for the benefit of their employer. Hence, capitalists
would be unable to pay their workers wages competitive with
the wages of the labor-managed firm, and by force of
competition would gradually vanish.
Anarcho-capitalists find that the argument works in precisely
the opposite direction. For what is a worker-owned firm if
not a firm in which the workers jointly hold all of the stock?
Now this is a peculiarly irrational portfolio to hold, because it
means that workers would, in effect, put all their eggs in one
basket; if their firm does well, they grow rich, but if their firm
goes bankrupt, they lose everything. It would make much
more sense for workers to exchange their shares in their
own firm to buy shares in other firms in order to insure
themselves against risk. Thus, the probable result of
worker-owned firms with negotiable shares would be that
workers would readily and advantageously sell off most of
their shares in their own firm in order to diversify their
portfolios. The end result is likely to be the standard form of
capitalist organization, in which workers receive a fixed
payment for their services and the owners of the firms'
shares earn the variable profits. Of course, alienation of
shares could be banned, but this appears to do nothing
except force workers to live with enormous financial risk.
None of this shows that worker-owned firms could not
persist if the workers were so ideologically committed to
worker control that their greater productivity outweighed the
riskiness of the workers' situation; but anarcho-capitalists
doubt very much that such intense ideology would prevail in
more than a small portion of the population. Indeed, they
expect that the egalitarian norms and security from dismissal
that left-anarchists typically favor would grossly undermine
everyone's incentive to work hard and kill abler workers'
desire for advancement.
Some anarcho-capitalists go further and argue that
inequality would swiftly re-emerge in an anarcho-syndicalist
economy. Workers would treat their jobs as a sort of
property right, and would refuse to hire new workers on
equal terms because doing so would dilute the current
workers' shares in the firm's profits. The probable result
would be that an elite class of workers in capital-intensive
firms would exploit new entrants into the work force much as
capitalists allegedly do today. As evidence, they point to
existing "worker-controlled" firms such as law firms --
normally they consist of two tiers of workers, one of which
both works and owns the firm ("the partners"), while the
remainder are simply employees ("the associates" as well as
the 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 tyranny
of modern capitalism that they object, and rather than
abolishing it the anarcho-capitalist proposes to unleash its
worst features and destroy its safety net. Noam Chomsky,
for instance, has suggested that anarcho-capitalists focus
incorrectly on state domination, failing to recognize the
underlying principle of opposition to all domination,
including the employer-employee relationship. Overall,
since anarcho-capitalism relies heavily on laissez-faire
economic theory, and since left-anarchists see no validity to
laissez-faire economic theory, it seems to the latter that
anarcho-capitalism would be a practical disaster. Left-
anarchists often equate anarcho-capitalism with social
Darwinism and even fascism,
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 every
right to voluntarily pool their property to form communes,
worker-controlled firms, and cooperatives; they would simply
be unable to force dissenters to join them. Since this fact
rarely impresses the left-anarchist, the anarcho-capitalist
often concludes that the left-anarchist will not be satisfied
with freedom for his preferred lifestyle; he wants to force his
communal lifestyle on everyone. Not only would this be a
gross denial of human freedom, but it would (according to
the anarcho-capitalist) be likely to have disastrous effects
on economic incentives, and swiftly lead humanity into
miserable poverty. The anarcho-capitalist is also frequently
disturbed by the opposition to all order sometimes voiced
by left-anarchists; for he feels that only coerced order is bad
and welcomes the promotion of an orderly society by
voluntary means. Similarly, the left-anarchists' occasional
short time horizon, emphasis on immediate satisfaction, and
low regard for work (which can be seen in a number of
authors strongly influenced by emotivist anarchism) frighten
the anarcho-capitalist considerably.
Modern neoclassical (or "mainstream") economists --
especially those associated with theoretical welfare
economics -- have several important arguments for the
necessity or desirability of government. Out of all of these,
the so-called
"public goods" problem is surely the most
frequently voiced. In fact, many academics consider it a
rigorous justification for the existence and limits of the state.
Anarcho-capitalists are often very familiar with this line of
thought and spend considerable time trying to refute it; left-
anarchists are generally less interested, but it is still useful
to see how the left-anarchist might respond.
The most widely-used concept in theoretical welfare
economics is "Pareto optimality" (also known as "Pareto
efficiency"). An allocation is Pareto-optimal iff it is
impossible to make at least one person better off without
making anyone else worse off; a Pareto improvement is a
change in an allocation which makes someone better off
without making anyone else worse off. As Hal Varian's
Microeconomic Analysis explains, "[A] Pareto efficient
allocation is one for which each agent is as well off as
possible, given the utilities of the other agents." "Better"
and "worse" are based purely upon subjective preferences
which can be summarized in a
"utility function," or ordinal
numerical index of preference satisfaction.
While initially it might seem that every situation is
necessarily Pareto optimal, this is not the case. True, if the
only good is food, and each agent wants as much food as
possible, then every distribution is Pareto optimal. But if
half of the agents own food and the other half own clothes,
the distribution will not necessarily be Pareto optimal, since
each agent might prefer either more food and fewer clothes
or vice versa.
Normally, economists would expect agents to voluntarily
trade in any situation which is not Pareto optimal; but
neoclassical theorists have considered a number of
situations in which trade would be a difficult route to Pareto
optimality. For example, suppose that each agent is so
afraid of the other that they avoid each other, even though
they could both benefit from interaction. What they need is
an independent and powerful organization to e.g. protect
both agents from each other so that they can reach a
Pareto-optimal allocation. What they need, in short, is the
state. While economists' examples are usually more
elaborate, the basic intuition is that government is
necessary to satisfy the seemingly uncontroversial principle
of Pareto optimality.
Anarchists of all sorts would immediately object that the very
existence of deontological anarchists shows that Pareto
optimality can never justify state action. If even the
slightest increase in the level of state activity incompensably
harms the deontological anarchist, then obviously it is never
true that state action can make some people better off
without making any others worse off. Moreover, virtually all
government action makes some people better off and other
people worse off, so plainly the pursuit of Pareto
improvements has little to do with what real governments do.
In the final analysis, welfare economists' attempt to provide
a value-free or at least value-minimal justification of the
state fails quite badly. Nevertheless, economic analysis
may still inform more substantive moral theories: Pareto
optimality, for example, is a necessary but not sufficient
condition for a utilitarian justification of the state.
The "public goods" argument is certainly the most popular
economic argument for the state. It allegedly shows that the
existence of government can be Pareto optimal, and that the
non-existence of the state cannot be Pareto optimal; or at
least, it shows that the existence of government is justifiable
on cost-benefit grounds. Supposedly, there exist important
services, such as national defense, which benefit people
whether they pay for them or not. The result is that selfish
agents refuse to contribute, leading to disaster. The only
way to solve this problem is to coerce the beneficiaries to
raise the funds to supply the needed good. In order for this
coercion to work, it needs to be monopolized by a single
agency, the state.
Public goods arguments have been made not only for
national 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 to
contributors, there is no incentive to contribute. (A second
definitional characteristic often attributed to public goods is
"non-rivalrousness"; my own view is that this second
attribute just confuses the issue, since without the non-
excludability problem, non-rivalrousness would merely be
another instance of the ubiquitous practice of pricing above
marginal cost.)
The concept of externalities is very closely connected to the
concept of public goods; the main difference is that
economists 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 perform
actions which harm or benefit other people, and the
harm/benefit is "non-excludable." Victims of negative
externalities can't feasibly charge polluters a fee for
suffering, and beneficiaries of positive externalities can't
feasibly be charged for their enjoyment. Government is
supposed to be necessary to correct this inefficiency. (As
usual, it is the inefficiency rather than the injustice that
economists focus upon.)
Left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists would probably have
remarkably similar replies to this argument, although
doubtlessly the tone and emphasis would vary.
It is simply not true that people always act in their narrow
self-interest. Charity exists, and there is no reason to think
that the charitable impulse might not be cultivated to handle
public goods problems voluntarily on an adequate basis.
Nor need charity as such be the only motive: in Social
Contract, Free Ride, Anthony de Jasay
lays out an "ethics
turnpike" of possible voluntary solutions to serious public
goods problems, moving from motivation from high moral
principles, 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 basic
type of person most likely to find his congenial exit along it.
The first segment is primarily for the type who fears God or
acts as if he did. The second segment has exits to suit
those who are not indifferent to how some or all their fellow
men are faring, and who value only that (but not all that)
which people want for themselves or for others. The third is
for homo oeconomicus, maximizing a narrowly defined
utility that varies only with the money's worth of his own
payoffs."
In short, much of the public goods problem is an artificial
creation of economists' unrealistic assumptions about
human nature. Anarchists would surely disagree among
themselves about human nature, but almost all would agree
that there is more to the human character than Hobbesian
self-interest. Some people may be amoral, but most are not.
Moreover, charitable impulses can even give incentives to
uncharitable people to behave fairly. If the public boycotts
products of polluters, the polluters may find that it is cheaper
to clean up their act than lose the public's business.
Interestingly, many economists have experimentally
tested the predictions of public goods theory. (Typically,
these experiments involve groups of human subjects playing
for real money.) The almost universal result is that the
central prediction of public goods theory (i.e., that no one
will voluntarily contribute to the production of a public good)
is totally false. While the level of contributions rarely equals
the Pareto-optimal level, it never even approaches the zero-
provision level that public goods theory predicts.
Summarizing the
experimental literature, Douglas Davis and
Charles Holt write "[S]ubjects rather persistently contributed
40 to 60 percent of their token endowments to the group
exchange, far in excess of the 0 percent contributions
rate..." Subsequent experiments examined the conditions
under which voluntary provision is most successful; see
Davis and Holt's Experimental Economics for details.
Even if individuals act in their narrow self-interest, it is not
true that government is the only way to manage public
goods and externalities problems. Why couldn't a left-
anarchist commune or an anarcho-capitalist police firm do
the job that the neoclassical economist assumes must be
delegated to the government? The left-anarchist would
probably be particularly insistent on this point, since most
economists usually assume that government and the market
are the only ways to do things. But thriving, voluntary
communities might build roads, regulate pollution, and take
over other important tasks now handled by government.
Anarcho-capitalists, for their part, would happily agree: while
they usually look to the market as a first solution, they
appreciate other kinds of voluntary organizations too:
fraternal societies, clubs, family, etc. But anarcho-capitalists
would probably note that left-anarchists overlook the ways
that the market might take over government services --
indeed, malls and gated communities show how roads,
security, and externalities can be handled by contract rather
than coercion.
Anarcho-capitalists would emphasize that a large number of
alleged "public goods" and "externalities" could easily be
handled privately by for-profit business if only the
government would allow the definition of private property
rights. If ranchers over-graze the commons, why not
privatize the commons? If fishermen over-fish the oceans,
why not parcel out large strips of the ocean by longitude and
latitude to for profit-making
aquaculture? And why is
education supposed to create externalities any more than
any other sort of investment? Similarly, many sorts of
externalities are now handled with private property rights.
Tort law, for example, can give people an incentive to take
the lives and property of others into account when they take
risks.
Left-anarchists would emphasize that many externalities are
caused by the profit-seeking system which the state
supports. Firms pollute because it is cheaper than
producing cleanly; but anarcho-syndicalist firms could
pursue many aims besides profit. In a way, the state-
capitalist system creates the problem of externalities by
basing all decisions upon profit, and then claims that we
need the state to protect us from the very results of this
profit-oriented decision-making process.
While few left-anarchists are familiar with the experimental
economics literature, it offers some support for this general
approach. In particular, many experiments have shown that
subjects' concern for fairness weakens many of the harsh
predictions of standard economic analysis of externalities
and bargaining.
To rely upon democracy as a counter-balance simply
assumes away the public goods problem. After all,
intelligent, informed voting is a public good; everyone
benefits if the electorate reaches wise political judgments,
but there is no personal, material incentive to "invest" in
political information, since the same result will (almost
certainly) happen whether you inform yourself or not. It
should be no surprise that people know vastly more about
their jobs than about their government. Many economists
seem to be aware of this difficulty; in particular, public
choice theory in economics emphasizes the externalities
inherent in government action. But a double standard
persists: while non-governmental externalities must be
corrected by the state, we simply have to quietly endure the
externalities inherent in political process.
Since there is no incentive to monitor the government,
democracies must rely upon voluntary donations of
intelligence and virtue. Because good government depends
upon these voluntary donations, the public goods
argument for government falls apart. Either unpaid virtue
can make government work, in which case government isn't
necessary to solve the public goods problem; or unpaid
virtue is insufficient to make government work, in which case
the government cannot be trusted to solve the public
goods problem.
Again, this is a complicated question because "pacifism" has
at least two distinct meanings. It may mean "opposition to
all violence," or it may mean "opposition to all war (i.e.,
organized violent conflict between governments)." Some
anarchists are pacifists in the first sense; a very large
majority of anarchists are pacifists in the weaker, second
sense.
This Tolstoyan theme appears most strongly in the writings
of Christian anarchists and pacifist anarchists, but it pops up
quite frequently within the broader left-anarchist tradition.
For example, Kropotkin looked upon criminals with pity
rather than contempt, and argued that love and forgiveness
rather than punishment was the only moral reaction to
criminal behavior. With the self-described Christian and
pacifist anarchists, the Tolstoyan position is a firm
conviction; within the broader left-anarchist tradition, it
would be better described as a tendency or general attitude.
Some left-anarchists and virtually all anarcho-capitalists
would strongly disagree with Tolstoy's absolute opposition
to violence. (The only anarcho-capitalist to ever indicate
agreement with the Tolstoyan position was probably Robert
LeFevre.) Left-anarchist critics include the advocates of
revolutionary 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 for
self-defense. Of course, their definition of "self-defense"
might very well include using violence to hinder immoral
state actions or the functioning of the capitalist system.
The anarcho-capitalist critique of Tolstoyan pacifism is
somewhat different. The anarcho-capitalist generally
distinguishes between initiatory force
against person or property (which he views as wrong), and
retaliatory force (which he views as acceptable and
possibly meritorious). The anarcho-capitalist condemns the
state precisely because it institutionalizes the initiation of
force within society. Criminals do the same, differing only in
their lack of perceived legitimacy. In principle, both "private"
criminals and the "public" criminals who run the government
may be both resisted and punished. While it may be
imprudent or counter-productive to openly resist state
authority (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 their
condemnation of warfare, i.e., violent conflict between
governments. Left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists both
look upon wars as grotesque struggles between ruling elites
who treat the lives of "their own" people as expendable and
the lives of the "other side's" people as worthless. It is here
that anarchism's strong distinction between society and the
state becomes clearest: whereas most people see war as a
struggle between societies, anarchists think that war is
actually a battle between governments which greatly
harms even the society whose government is victorious.
What is most pernicious about nationalist ideology is that is
makes the members of society identify their interests with
those of their government, when in fact their interests are
not merely different but in conflict. In short, anarchists of
both sorts would readily accede to
Randolph Bourne's
remark that "War is the health of the state."
The anarcho-capitalist critique of war is similar in many
ways to e.g. Chomsky's analysis, but has a different lineage
and emphasis. As can be seen particularly in Murray
Rothbard's writings, the anarcho-capitalist view of war draws
heavily upon both the
anti-war classical liberals of the 18th
and 19th centuries, and the long-standing American
isolationist tradition. Early classical liberal theorists such as
Adam Smith,Richard Cobden, and
John Bright (and later Norman Angell) argued that
warfare was caused by
mercantilism, by the prevailing
alliance between governments and their favored business
elites. The solution, in their view, was to end the incestuous
connection between business and government. The
American isolationists were probably influenced by this
broader classical liberal tradition, but placed more emphasis
on the idea that foreign wars were at best a silly distraction,
and at worst a rationalization for tyranny. Both views argued
that "balance of power" politics lead inevitably to endless
warfare 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 moral
condemnation (according to libertarian rights theory) for the
widespread murderous attacks upon innocent civilians --
whether by bomb or starvation blockade. Secondly, the
wars waged by the Western democracies in the 20th-
century had disastrous, unforeseen consequences: World
War I paved the way for Communist, fascist, and Nazi
totalitarianism; and World War II, by creating power
vacuums in Europe and Asia, turned over a billion human
beings to Stalinist despotism. The anarcho-capitalist sees
these 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 they
have wrecked terrible harm, so too does the "fatal conceit"
of the national security advisor lead Western democracies
to spend billions of dollars and millions of lives before he
finds that he has inadvertently paved the way for
totalitarianism. The anarcho-capitalist's third point against
war is that its only sure result is to aid the domestic
expansion of state power; and predictably, when wars end,
the state's power never contracts to its original limits.
There have probably been no societies which fully satisfy
any anarchists' ethical ideals, but there have been a number
of suggestive examples.
Left-anarchists most often cite the anarchist communes of
the
Spanish Civil War as examples of viable anarchist
societies. The role of the Spanish anarchists in the Spanish
Civil War has perhaps generated more debate on alt.society.anarchy
than any other historical issue. Since this FAQ is concerned
primarily 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 unions
began and remained democratic throughout the war; (b) That a majority
of 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, rather
than being subject to strict control by anarchist leaders; and (d)
That the farm collectives in the anarchist-controlled regions
were largely voluntary, and rarely exerted coercive pressure against
small farmers who refused to join. In contrast, anarcho-capitalist
critics such as
James Donald normally maintain that: (a) The Spanish
anarchist political organizations and unions, even if they were
initially democratic, quickly transformed into dictatorial oligarchies
with democratic trappings once the war started; (b) That the Spanish
anarchists, even if they initially enjoyed popular support, quickly
forfeited 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 regions
were 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 in
a number of ways). For a reply to James Donald's piece,
click here.
For my own account of the controversy regarding the Spanish Anarchists, see
The Anarcho-Statists of Spain: An Historical,
Economic, and Philosophical Analysis of Spanish Anarchism. For a
reply to my piece, click
here.
Israeli
kibbutzim have also been admired as
working examples of voluntary socialism. Kropotkin and
Bakunin held up the mir, the traditional communal farming
system in rural Russia, as suggestive of the organization
and values which would be expressed in an anarchist
society. Various experimental communities have also laid
claim to socialist anarchist credentials.
Anarcho-capitalists' favorite example, in contrast, is
medieval Iceland. David Friedman has written extensively
on the competitive supply of defense services and
anarchistic character of a much-neglected period of
Iceland's history. Left-anarchists have occasionally
criticized Friedman's work on medieval Iceland, but overall this
debate is much sketchier than the debate over the Spanish Civil War.
See
Is Medieval Iceland an example of
"anarcho"-capitalism working in practice?; for David
Friedman's reply to an earlier draft of this piece
, click here.
A long stretch of medieval Irish history has
also been claimed to have pronounced anarcho-capitalist
features. Other anarcho-capitalists have argued that the
American "Wild West" offers an excellent illustration of
anarcho-capitalist institutions springing up only to be later
suppressed and crowded out by government. Anarcho-
capitalists also often note that while the United States has
never been an anarchist society by any stretch of the
imagination, that before the 20th-century the United States
came closer to their pure laissez-faire ideals than any other
society in history.
America's colonial and revolutionary
period especially interests them. Murray Rothbard in
particular published a four-volume history of the colonial and
revolutionary eras, finding delight in a brief period of
Pennsylvania's history when the state government virtually
dissolved itself due to lack of interest. (An unpublished fifth
volume in the series defended the "weak" Articles of the
Confederation against the strong, centralized state
established by the U.S. Constitution.)
One case that has inspired both sorts of anarchists is that of
the free cities of medieval Europe. The first weak link in the
chain of feudalism, these free cities became Europe's
centers of economic development, trade, art, and culture.
They provided a haven for runaway serfs, who could often
legally gain their freedom if they avoided re-capture for a
year and a day. And they offer many examples of how
people can form mutual-aid associations for protection,
insurance, and community. Of course, left-anarchists and
anarcho-capitalists take a somewhat different perspective
on the free cities: the former emphasize the communitarian
and egalitarian concerns of the free cities, while the latter
point to the relatively unregulated nature of their markets
and the wide range of services (often including defense,
security, and legal services) which were provided privately
or semi-privately. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid contains an
extensive discussion of the free cities of medieval Europe;
anarcho-capitalists have written less on the subject, but
strongly praise the historical treatments in Henri Pirenne's
Medieval Cities and Harold Berman's Law and
Revolution.
The Enclopedia Brittanica article on Anarchism gives
at best a cursory summary of anarchist theory, but does contain
useful information on the history of left-anarchist political
and labor movements.
Click here to view the article.
Utopianism is perhaps the most popular criticism made of anarchism.
In an atypically uncharitable passage in his European 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's
remark would be better directed at absolute pacifists rather than
anarchists in general.
Anarchists' supposed unwillingness to use force in any circumstance
is only one reason why they have been widely perceived as utopian.
Sometimes the utopian charge is trivial; if, for example, any
radical change is labelled "utopian."
If on the other hand "utopian" simply means that anarchism could
work if and only if all people were virtuous, and thus in
practice would lead to the imposition of new forms of
oppression, then the question is more interesting.
Interesting, because this is more or less the charge that
different types of anarchists frequently bring against each
other.
To the left-anarchist, for example, anarcho-capitalism is
based upon a truly fantastic picture of economics, in which
free competition somehow leads to prosperity and freedom
for all. To them, the anarcho-capitalists' vision of "economic
harmonies" and the workings of the "invisible hand" are at
best unlikely, and probably impossible. Hence, in a sense
they accuse the anarcho-capitalists of utopianism.
The anarcho-capitalists charge the left-anarchists similarly.
For the latter imagine that somehow a communitarian
society could exist without forcible repression of dissenting
individualists; think that incentives for production would not
be impaired by enforced equality; and confusedly equate
local democracy with freedom. Moreover, they generally
have no explanation for how crime would be prevented or
what safeguards would prevent the rise of a new ruling elite.
For the anarcho-capitalist, the left-anarchist is again
hopelessly utopian.
But in any case, probably most anarchists would offer a
similar reply to the charge that they are utopians. Namely:
what is truly utopian is to imagine that somehow the
government can hold massive power without turning it to
monstrous ends. As Rothbard succinctly puts it: "the man
who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into
the hands of the central government and then says, 'Limit
yourself'; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian." Is
not the whole history of the 20th century an endless list of
examples of governments easily breaking the weak bonds
placed upon their ability to oppress and even murder as
they see fit?
This is a perfectly reasonable question, for it is indeed the
case that some anarchists expect a remarkable change in
human nature to follow (or precede?) the establishment of
an anarchist society. This assumption partially explains the
frequent lack of explanation of how an anarchist society
would handle crime, dissenting individualists, and so on.
The belief in innate human virtue is normally found only
among left-anarchist thinkers, but of course it does not
follow, nor is it true, that all left-anarchist thinkers believe in
humanity's innate human virtue.
Anarcho-capitalists have a very different picture of human
nature. While they normally believe that people have a
strong capacity for virtuous action (and it is to people's
moral sense that they frequently appeal when they favor the
abolition of the state), they believe that it is wise and
necessary 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 vitally
necessary for the preservation and expansion of the
economy. In short, anarcho-capitalists believe in and
indeed must depend on some reasonable level of human
morality, but prefer to rely on material incentives when
feasible. (Similarly, they morally condemn crime and
believe that most people have no desire to commit crimes,
but strongly favor some sort of criminal justice system to
deter the truly amoral.)
Aren't statists terrorists? Well, some of the them are; in fact,
the overwhelming majority of non-governmental groups who
murder and destroy property for political aims believe that
government ought to exist (and that they ought to run it).
And just as the existence of such statist terrorists is a poor
argument for anarchism, the existence of anarchist
terrorists is a poor argument against anarchism. For any
idea whatever, there will always be those who advocate
advancing it by violence.
It is however true that around the turn of the century, a
certain segment of anarchists advocated what they called
"propaganda by the deed." Several heads of state were
assassinated by anarchists, along with businessmen,
industrialists, stock-brokers, and so on. One of the most
famous instances was when the young
Alexander Berkman
tried to murder the steel industrialist Henry Frick.
During this era, the left-anarchists were divided as to the
permissibility of terrorism; but of course many strongly
opposed it. And individualist anarchists such as Benjamin
Tucker almost always saw terrorist activities as both
counter-productive and immoral when innocents were
injured (as they often were).
The basic argument of the advocates of "propaganda by the
deed" was that anarchist terrorism would provoke
governments -- even avowedly liberal and democratic
governments -- to resort to increasingly harsh measures to
restore order. As governments' ruthlessness increased,
their "true colors" would appear for all to see, leading to
more immediate results than mere education and theorizing.
As E.V. Zenker notes in his Anarchism: A Criticism and
History of the Anarchist Theory, a number of Western
governments were driven to adopt anti-terrorist laws as a
result of anarchist terrorism. (Zenker goes on to note that
Great Britain remained true to its liberal heritage by refusing
to punish individuals merely for espousing anarchist ideas.)
But as one might expect, contrary to the terrorists' hopes, it
was 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 explicitly
labels himself an anarchist in his now-famous
manifesto.
In his manifesto, the Unabomber makes relatively little attempt to
link himself to any particular figures in the anarchist tradition,
but professes familiarity and general agreement with the
anarchistic wing of the radical environmentalist movement.
A large proportion of this wide-ranging manifesto criticizes
environmentalists' cooperation with socialists, minority rights
activists, and other broadly left-wing groups; the point of this
criticism 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 and
technology are inherently incompatible, and outlines a program for
the destruction of both modern industry and the scientific knowledge
necessary to sustain it.
But anarchists have a more instrumental reason to oppose
the use of violence. Terrorism has been very effective in
establishing new and more oppressive regimes; but it is
nearly impossible to find any instance where terrorism led to
greater freedom. For the natural instinct of the populace is
to rally to support its government when terrorism is on the
rise; so terrorism normally leads to greater brutality and
tighter regulation by the existing state. And when terrorism
succeeds in destroying an existing government, it merely
creates a power vacuum without fundamentally changing
anyone's mind about the nature of power. The predictable
result is that a new state, worse than its predecessor, will
swiftly appear to fill the void. Thus, the importance of using
nonviolent tactics to advance anarchist ideas is hard to
overstate.
Aside from this, the similarity between anarchist approaches
breaks down. In particular, what should the "transitional"
phase look like? Anarcho-capitalists generally see every
reduction in government power and activity as a step in the
right direction. In consequence, they usually support any
measure to deregulate, repeal laws, and cut taxation and
spending (naturally with the caveat that the cuts do not go
nearly far enough). Similarly, they can only hail the spread
of 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 more
problematic. It is hard to support expansion of the state
when it is the state that one opposes so fervently. And yet,
it is difficult to advocate the abolition of e.g. welfare
programs when they are an important means of subsistence
for the oppressed lower classes of capitalist society.
Perhaps the most viable intermediate step would be to
expand the voluntary alternatives to capitalist society:
voluntary communes, cooperatives, worker-owned firms, or
whatever else free people might establish to fulfill their own
needs while they enlighten others.
To begin with, there is my homepage at:
I keep the list of addresses short because the sites provided
allow 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. None
of 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 to
clarify the most heated of the net-related debates. On
the positive side, these other FAQs
often have much more historical information than
mine does. See for yourself.
There does exist a FAQ written by Roger McCain
on libertarian socialism and left-anarchism
of markedly higher quality than the preceding five. It is archived
at:
A new, highly detailed FAQ from a left-anarchist perspective has
recently been set up, ostensibly in celebration of the 60th anniversary
of the Spanish Revolution. It is available at:
My FAQ is beginning to amass its share of critics who prefer to
write full-length replies. Those that I am aware of are:
My only comment is that it is simply untrue that I have ignored
criticisms of my FAQ. There are numerous points I have altered or
expanded it due to criticism I have received; and when I disagree
with a critic's claim, I frequently ask permission to quote their
reservations verbatim in the next revision. It is however true that
I only respond to private e-mail criticisms; attacks simply posted
to Usenet are unlikely to come to my attention.
To my knowledge there is no page which contains a broad
survey along the lines of this FAQ. However, these sources
in combination should give a good picture of the wide range
of anarchist opinion, along with more information on history
and current events which I chose not to discuss in detail
herein. Examination of these sites can also give a
reasonable picture of how left-anarchism and anarcho-
capitalism intellectually relate to the broader progressive
and libertarian movements, respectively.
This list is by no means intended to be exhaustive; nor does
inclusion here necessarily indicate that the work is of
particularly high quality. In particular, both Heider's and
Marshall's works contain a number of
embarrassing factual
errors. (Some of the more glaring errors from Marshall's
Demanding the
Impossible appear to have been corrected in this
linked exerpt.)
Particularly well-written and canonical expressions of
different anarchist theories are noted with an asterisk (*).
Broad surveys of anarchism are noted with a number sign
(#).
For comments, suggestions, corrections, etc., write
bcaplan@gmu.edu.
Thanks to Fabio Rojas, James
Donald, David Friedman, Robert Vienneau, Ken Steube,
Ben Haller, Vincent Cook, Bill Woolsey, Conal Smith, Jim
Kalb, 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 advice
or other assistance.
To be sure, there is a difference between individualistic anarchism and
collectivistic or communistic anarchism; Bakunin called himself a
communist anarchist. But the communist anarchists also do not
acknowledge any right of society to force the individual. They differ
from the anarchistic individualists in their belief that men, if freed
from coercion, will enter into voluntary associations of a communistic
type, while the other wing believes that the free person will prefer
a high degree of isolation. The communist anarchists repudiate the right
of private property which is maintained through the power of the state.
The individualist anarchists are inclined to maintain private property
as a necessary condition of individual independence, without fully
answering the question of how property could be maintained without
courts and police.
When we turn to the Anglo-American political culture, the
story is quite different. Virulent anti-socialist anarchism is
much more common there, and has been from the early
19th-century. Great Britain was the home of many intensely
anti-socialist quasi-anarchistic thinkers of the 19th-century
such as Auberon Herbert and the early
Herbert Spencer.
The United States has been an even more fertile ground for
individualist anarchism: during the 19th-century, such
figures as Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner
, and Benjamin Tucker
gained prominence for their vision of an anarchism
based upon freedom of contract and private property. And
in the 20th-century, thinkers residing within the United
States have been the primary developers and exporters of
anarcho-capitalist theory.
The most famous left-anarchists have probably been
Mikhail
Bakunin and
Peter Kropotkin.
Pierre Proudhon is also often
included although his ideas on the desirability of a modified
form of private property would lead some to exclude him
from the leftist camp altogether.
(Some of Proudhon's other heterodoxies include his defense of the
right of inheritance and his emphasis on the genuine antagonism between
state power and property rights.)
More recent left-anarchists
include Emma Goldman,
Murray Bookchin
, and
Noam Chomsky.
(Some left-anarchists contest the adoption, but overall
Tucker and Spooner probably have much more in common
with anarcho-capitalists than with left-anarchists.)
Common to both tendencies was the idea that the working
class 'simply' took over factories and workplaces and ran them
collectively but otherwise as before... Underlying this vision of simple
continuity was the anarcho-syndicalist concept of the revolution not as
a rupture with, the destruction and replacement of, the bourgeois order
but as the latter's displacement. The taking over of factories
and workplaces, however violently carried out, was not the beginning of
the revolution to create a new order but its final goal. This view, in
turn was conditioned by a particular view of the state. Any state
(bourgeois or working class) was considered an oppressive power tout
court - not as the organization of a particular class's coercive
power. The 'state' in consequence, rather than the existence of the
capitalist mode of production which gave rise to 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. If
it could be swept away, abolished, everything else, including
oppression, disappeared. The capitalist order was simply displaced by
the new-won workers' freedom to administer the workplaces they had taken
over. Self-organized in autonomous communes or in all-powerful
syndicates, the workers, as the primary factor in production,
dispensed with the bourgeoisie. The consequences of this were
seen in the 1936 Barcelona revolution; capitalist production and market
relations continued to exist within collectivized
industry.
Kropotkin's lucid essay "Law and Authority" gives a
thoughtful presentation of the left-anarchist's view of law.
Primitive human societies, explains Kropotkin, live by what
legal thinkers call "customary law": an unwritten but broadly
understood body of rules and appropriate behavior backed
up primarily by social pressure. Kropotkin considers this
sort of behavioral regulation to be unobjectionable, and
probably consistent with his envisaged anarchist society.
But when centralized governments codified customary law,
they mingled the sensible dictates of tribal conscience with
governmental sanctions for exploitation and injustice. As
Kropotkin writes, "[L]egislators confounded in one code the
two currents of custom ... the maxims which represent
principles of morality and social union wrought out as a
result of life in common, and the mandates which are meant
to ensure external existence to inequality. Customs,
absolutely essential to the very being of society, are, in the
code, cleverly intermingled with usages imposed by the
ruling caste, and both claim equal respect from the crowd.
'Do not kill,' says the code, and hastens to add, 'And pay
tithes to the priest.' 'Do not steal,' says the code, and
immediately after, 'He who refuses to pay taxes, shall have
his hand struck off.'"
FAQs on the broader libertarian movement are widely
available on the Net, so we will only give the necessary
background here. So-called "minarchist" libertarians such
as Nozick have argued that the largest justified government
was one which was limited to the protection of individuals
and their private property against physical invasion;
accordingly, they favor a government limited to supplying
police, courts, a legal code, and national defense. This
normative theory is closely linked to laissez-faire economic
theory, according to which private property and unregulated
competition generally lead to both an efficient allocation of
resources and (more importantly) a high rate of economic
progress. While left-anarchists are often hostile to
"bourgeois economics," anarcho-capitalists hold classical
economists such as Adam Smith, David Hume,
and Jean-Baptiste Say in high regard, as well as more modern
economists such as Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises,
F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and James
Buchanan. The problem with free-market economists, say
the anarcho-capitalists, is not that they defend the free
market, but merely that their defense is too moderate and
compromising.
(Note however that the left-anarchists' low opinion of the
famous "free-market economists" is not monolithic: Noam
Chomsky in particular has repeatedly praised some of the
political insights of Adam Smith. And Peter Kropotkin also
had good things to say about Smith as both social scientist
and moralist; Conal Smith
explains that "In particular he
approved of Smith's attempt to apply the scientific method to
the study of morals and society, his critique of the state in
The Wealth of Nations, and his theory of human
sociability in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.")
Probably the main division between the anarcho-capitalists
stems from the apparent differences between Rothbard's
natural-law anarchism, and David Friedman's more
economistic approach. Rothbard puts more emphasis on
the need for a generally recognized libertarian legal code
(which he thinks could be developed fairly easily by
purification of the Anglo-American common law), whereas
Friedman focuses more intently on the possibility of plural
legal systems co-existing and responding to the consumer
demands of different elements of the population. The
difference, however, is probably over-stated. Rothbard
believes that it is legitimate for consumer demand to
determine the philosophically neutral content of the law,
such as legal procedure, as well as technical issues of
property right definition such as water law, mining law, etc.
And Friedman admits that "focal points" including prevalent
norms are likely to circumscribe and somewhat standardize
the menu of available legal codes.
"An anarchist society, lacking any central coercive
authority, would quickly degenerate into violent chaos."
The most common criticism, shared by the entire range of
critics, is basically that anarchism would swiftly degenerate
into a chaotic Hobbesian war of all-against-all. Thus the
communist
Friedrich Engels wonders "[H]ow these people
propose to run a factory, operate a railway or steer a ship
without having in the last resort one deciding will, without
single management, they of course do not tell us." He
continues: "The authority of the majority over the minority
also ceases. Every individual and every community is
autonomous; 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
liberal
Ludwig von Mises states that "An
anarchistic society would be exposed to the mercy of every
individual. Society cannot exist if the majority is not ready to
hinder, by the application or threat of violent action,
minorities from destroying the social order. This power is
vested in the state or government."
Or to consider a perhaps less ideological writer, Thomas
Hobbes implicitly criticizes anarchist theory when he
explains that "Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men
live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they
are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a
warre, as is of every man, against every man." Hobbes
goes on to add that "It may peradventure be thought, there
was never such a time, nor condition of warre as this; and I
believe it was never generally so, over all the world: but
there are many places, where they live so now. For the
savage people in many places of America, except the
government of small Families, the concord whereof
dependeth on naturall lust, have no government at all; and
live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before."
Since it is in the interest of the strong to take what they want
from the weak, the absence of government lead inexorably
to widespread violence and the prevention or destruction of
civilization itself.
One of the most famous attacks on anarchism was launched
by Karl Marx during his battles with Proudhon and Bakunin.
The ultimate result of this protracted battle of words was to
split the 19th-century workers' movement into two distinct
factions. In the 20th century, the war of words ended in
blows: while Marxist-Leninists sometimes cooperated with
anarchists during the early stages of the Russian and
Spanish revolutions, violent struggle between them was the
rule rather than the exception.
Probably the earliest minarchist attack on anarcho-
capitalism may be found in
Ayn Rand's essay "The Nature of
Government." ("Minarchism" designates the advocacy of a
"minimal" or nightwatchman state, supplying only police,
courts, a legal system, and national defense.) Her critique
contained four essential arguments. The first essentially
repeated Hobbes' view that society without government
would collapse into violent chaos. The second was that
anarcho-capitalist police firms would turn to war as soon as
a dispute broke out between individuals employing different
protection agencies: "[S]uppose Mr. Smith, a customer of
Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr.
Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a
squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones' house and is met
at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do
not recognize the authority of Government A. What
happens then? You take it from there." Her third argument
was that anarcho-capitalism was an expression of an
irrational subjectivist epistemology which would allow each
person to decide for himself or herself whether the use of
physical force was justified. Finally, her fourth argument
was that anarcho-capitalism would lack an objective legal
code (meaning, presumably, both publicly known and
morally valid).
Rand's arguments were answered at length in Roy Childs'
"Objectivism and the State: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand,"
which tried to convince her that only the anarcho-capitalist
position was consistent with her view that the initiation of
force was immoral. In brief, Childs argued that like other
free-market institutions, private police would have economic
incentives to perform their tasks peacefully and efficiently:
police would negotiate arbitration agreements in advance
precisely to avoid the kind of stand-off that Rand feared, and
an objective legal code could be developed by free-market
judges. Childs strongly contested Rand's claim that
anarcho-capitalism had any relation to irrationalism; an
individual could be rational or irrational in his judgment to
use defensive violence, just as a government could be
rational or irrational in its judgment to do so. As Childs
queried, "By what epistemological criterion is an individual's
action classified as 'arbitrary,' while that of a group of
individuals is somehow 'objective'?"
Robert Nozick launched the other famous attempt to refute
the anarcho-capitalist on libertarian grounds. Basically,
Nozick argued that the supply of police and legal services
was a geographic natural monopoly, and that therefore a
state would emerge by the "invisible hand" processes of the
market itself. The details of his argument are rather
complex: Nozick postulated a right, strongly contested by
other libertarians, to prohibit activities which were
exceptionally risky to others; he then added that the persons
whose actions were so prohibited were entitled to
compensation. Using these two principles, Nozick claimed
that the dominant protection agency in a region could
justifiably 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 compensate
consumers who were prohibited from purchasing
competitors' services, so it would do so in kind by giving
them access to its own police and legal services -- thereby
becoming a minimal state. And none of these steps,
according to Nozick, violates libertarian rights.
The conservative critique of anarchism is much less
developed, but can be teased out of the writings of such
authors as
Edmund Burke,
Russell Kirk, and Ernest van den Haag.
(Interestingly, Burke scholars are still debating
whether the early Burke's quasi-anarchistic A Vindication
of Natural Society was a serious work or a subtle satire.)
Russell Kirk, noted Burke scholar, has written a brief critique
of the modern libertarian movement. (Another conservative,
Ernest van den Haag, wrote a lengthier essay with a similar
theme and perspective.) In all likelihood, Kirk would apply
many (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 the
views thus far explicated. For some, "anarchist" is just a
declaration of rebellion against rules and authority of any
kind. There is little attempt made here to explain how
society would work without government; and perhaps there
is little conviction that it could do so. This sort of anarchism
is more of an attitude or emotion -- a feeling that the corrupt
world of today should go down in flames, without any
definite view about what if anything would be preferable and
possible. For want of a better term, I would call this
"emotivist anarchism," whose most prominent exponent is
almost certainly Max Stirner
(although to be fair to Stirner he
did briefly outline his vision for the replacement of existing
society by a "Union of Egoists").
The
Green and environmentalist
movements also have strong anarchist wings which blend
opposition to the state and defense of the environment.
Their primary theoretician is probably Murray Bookchin, who
(lately) advocates a society of small and fairly autarchic
localities. As Bookchin explains, "the anarchist concepts of
a balanced community, a face-to-face democracy, a
humanistic technology and a decentralized society -- these
rich libertarian concepts -- are not only desirable, they are
also necessary." Institutions such as the town meeting of
classical democratic theory point the way to a radical
reorganization of society, in which small environmentally
concerned townships regularly meet to discuss and vote
upon their communities' production and broader aims.
Doubtlessly there are many other fusions between
anarchism and progressive causes, and more spring up as
new concerns develop.
As Benjamin Tucker wrote in 1887, "It will probably surprise
many who know nothing of Proudhon save his declaration
that 'property is robbery' to learn that he was perhaps the
most vigorous hater of Communism that ever lived on this
planet. But the apparent inconsistency vanishes when you
read his book and find that by property he means simply
legally privileged wealth or the power of usury, and not at all
the possession by the laborer of his products."
"Would you, in the system of society which you call 'free
Communism' prevent individuals from exchanging their
labor among themselves by means of their own medium of
exchange? And further: Would you prevent them from
occupying land for the purpose of personal use?"... [The]
question was not to be escaped. If he answered "Yes!" he
admitted that society had the right of control over the
individual and threw overboard the autonomy of the
individual which he had always zealously defended; if on the
other hand he answered "No!" he admitted the right of
private property which he had just denied so emphatically ...
Then he answered "In Anarchy any number of men must
have the right of forming a voluntary association, and so
realizing their ideas in practice. Nor can I understand how
any one could justly be driven from the land and house
which he uses and occupies ... [E]very serious man must
declare himself: for Socialism, and thereby for force and
against liberty, or for Anarchism, and thereby for liberty and
against force."
We will begin by explaining the concept of
Pareto optimality,
show how the Pareto criterion is used to justify state action,
and then examine how anarchists might object to the
underlying assumptions of these economic justifications for
the state. After exploring the general critique, we will turn to
the problem of public goods (and the closely related
externalities issue). After showing how many economists
believe that these problems necessitate government action,
we will consider how left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists
might reply.
Due to these difficulties, in practice economists must base
their judgments upon the far more controversial judgments
of
cost-benefit analysis. (In the works of Richard Posner,
this economistic cost-benefit approach to policy decisions is
called "wealth-maximization"; a common synonym is
"Kaldor-Hicks efficiency.") With cost-benefit analysis, there
is no pretense made that government policy enjoys
unanimous approval. Thus, it is open to the many
objections 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 into
even more moral paradoxes than utilitarianism typically
does.
Objection #1: The behavorial assumptions of public goods
theory are false.
Objection #2: Government is not the only possible way to
provide public goods.
Objection #3: Public goods are rarer than you might think.
Objection #4: Externalities are a result of the profit-oriented
mentality which would be tamed in an anarchist society.
Objection #5: The public goods problem is unavoidable.
Perhaps most fundamentally: government is not a solution to
the public goods problem, but rather the primary instance
of the problem. If you create a government to solve your
public goods problems, you merely create a new public
goods problem: the public good of restraining and checking
the government from abusing its power. "[I]t is wholly owing
to the constitution of the people, and not to the constitution
of the government, that the crown is not as oppressive in
England as in Turkey," wrote Thomas Paine;
but what material incentive is there for individuals to help develop a
vigilant national character? After all, surely it is a rare
individual who appreciably affects the national culture during
his or her lifetime.
David Friedman has a particularly striking argument which goes one
step further.
Under governmental institutions, he explains, good law is
a public good and bad law is a private good. That is, there is little
direct personal incentive to lobby for laws that benefit everyone,
but a strong personal incentive to lobby for laws that benefit special
interests at the expense of everyone else. In contrast, under
anarcho-capitalist institutions, good law is a private good and bad
law is a public good. That is, by patronizing a firm which protects
oneself, one reinforces the existence of socially beneficial law; but
there is little incentive to "lobby" for the re-introduction of
government. As Friedman explains, "Good law is still expensive -
I must spend time and money determining which protection agency will
best 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 to
purchase wisely. It is now the person who wishes to reintroduce
government who is caught in a public goods problem. He cannot abolish
anarchy and reintroduce government for himself alone; he must do it for
everyone or for no one. If he does it for everyone, he himself gets
but a tiny fraction of the 'benefit' he expects the reintroduction of
government to provide."
The primary anarchistic inspiration for pacifism in the first
sense is probably Leo Tolstoy. Drawing his themes from the
Gospels, Tolstoy argued that violence is always wrong,
including defensive violence. This naturally leads Tolstoy to
bitterly denounce warfare as well, but what is distinctive
here is opposition to violence as such, whether offensive or
defensive. Moreover, the stricture against defensive
violence would appear to rule out not only retribution against
criminals, but self-defense against an imminent attack.
Left-anarchists' opposition to war is quite similar to the
general condemnation of war expressed by more
mainstream international socialists. On this view, war is
created by capitalism, in particular the struggle for access to
markets 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 will
merely leave them more oppressed and exploited than
before? Moreover, while Western democracies often
advocate war in the name of justice and humanitarianism,
the aim and/or end result is to defend traditional
authoritarianism and destroy the lives of millions of innocent
people. Within the Western democracies, the left-
anarchist's hatred for war is often intensified by some sense
of sympathy for indigenous revolutionary movements. While
these movements are often state-socialist in intent, the left-
anarchist often believes that these movements are less bad
than the traditional authoritarianism against which they
struggle. Moreover, the West's policy of propping up local
dictators leads relatively non-authoritarian socialist
movements to increasing degrees of totalitarianism. Noam
Chomsky is almost certainly the most influential
representative of the left-anarchist approach to foreign
policy: He sees a consistent pattern of the United States
proclaiming devotion to human rights while supporting
dictatorships by any means necessary.
There is certainly one truth in anarchistic beliefs: Every large
organization contains an element of veiled or open force, and every
kind of force is an evil, if we consider its effects on the human
character. But is it not the lesser evil? Can we dispense with force?
When this question is clearly put, the case for anarchism seems extremely
weak. It is true, that the experiment of an entirely forceless society
have never been made. But such evidence as we have does not indicate
that ill intentions will cease to exist if repressive force disappears,
and it is clear enough that one ill-intentioned person can upset a
large part of society if there is no repressive force. The fact that
some intelligent and highly idealistic men and women have believed and
still believe in anarchism shows that there is a type of sectarianism
which accepts a belief in spite of, or perhaps because of, its
apparent absurdity.
The large majority of anarchists -- especially in modern
times -- fervently oppose the killing of innocents on purely
moral grounds (just as most non-anarchists presumably do,
though anarchists would often classify those killed in war as
murder victims of the state).
Nonviolence and pacifism now
inspire far more anarchist thinkers than visions of random
terror. Anarchists from many different perspectives have
been inspired by the writings of the 16th-century Frenchman
Etienne de la Boetie, whose quasi-anarchistic The
Discourse of Voluntary Servitude spelled out a detailed
theory of nonviolent revolution. La Boetie explained that
since governments depend upon the widespread belief in
their legitimacy in order to rule, despotism could be
peacefully overthrown by refusing to cooperate with the
state. Henry David Thoreau
influenced many nonviolent protest
movements with a similar theme in "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience."
As Thoreau put it: "If the alternative is
to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the
State will not hesitate which to choose." The success of the nonviolent
anti-communist revolutions lends new support to the tactical insight
of la Boetie and Thoreau.
On one level, most modern anarchists agree fully that
education and persuasion are the most effective way to
move society towards their ultimate destination. There is
the conviction that "ideas matter"; that the state exists
because most people honestly and firmly believe that the
state is just, necessary, and beneficial, despite a few
drawbacks.
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's
goal is to disprove Churchill's claim: to show that contrary to
popular belief, Western democracy is not only bad but
inferior 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/~ddfr
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