Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism is a political ideology and economic theory that advocates for the abolition of all government-maintained institutions and services, including law enforcement, in favour of replacing them with private providers. Anarcho-capitalism argues that a society can function without a state through voluntary exchange and private institutions that provide law and security. This would result in a voluntary society, based on concepts such as the non-aggression principle, free markets, and self-ownership. In the absence of statute, private defense agencies and/or insurance companies would operate competitively in a market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police, similar to a state apparatus.
According to its proponents, various historical theorists have espoused philosophies similar to anarcho-capitalism. While the earliest existing attestation of the term anarcho-capitalism is in Karl Hess's essay "The Death of Politics", published by Playboy in March of 1969, American economist Murray Rothbard was credited with coining the terms anarcho-capitalist and anarcho-capitalism in 1971. Rothbard, a prominent American libertarian, synthesized elements from the Austrian school, classical liberalism, 19th-century American individualist anarchists, and mutualists such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, while rejecting the labor theory of value. Rothbard's anarcho-capitalist society would operate under a mutually agreed-upon "legal code which would be generally accepted, and which the courts would pledge themselves to follow". This legal code would recognize contracts between individuals, private property, self-ownership, and tort law, in keeping with the non-aggression principle. Unlike a state, enforcement measures in Rothbard’s version of an anarcho-capitalist society would only apply to those who initiated force or fraud. Rothbard views the power of the state as unjustified, arguing that it violates individual rights, reduces prosperity, and creates social and economic problems.
Anarcho-capitalists and right-libertarians cite several historical precedents of what they believe to be examples of quasi-anarcho-capitalism, including the Republic of Cospaia, Acadia, Anglo-Saxon England, Medieval Iceland, the American Old West, Gaelic Ireland, merchant law, admiralty law, and early common law.
Anarcho-capitalism is distinguished from Minarchism, which advocates a minimal governing body and from objectivism. Anarcho-capitalists consider themselves to be anarchists, despite supporting private property and private institutions.
Classification
Anarcho-capitalism developed from Austrian School-neoliberalism and individualist anarchism. Almost all anarchist movements do not view anarcho-capitalism as anarchist, since they see anarchism as something incompatible with capitalist structures. Anarcho-capitalism lies outside the tradition of the vast majority of anarchist schools of thought and is therefore more closely associated with capitalism, right-libertarianism, and neoliberalism, and is occasionally seen as part of the New Right.Traditionally, anarchists oppose and reject capitalism, and consider "anarcho-capitalism" to be a contradiction in terms. Despite this, anarcho-capitalists and some right-libertarians consider anarcho-capitalism to be a form of anarchism, with some even considering it the only true form of anarchism.
Philosophy
According to author J Michael Oliver, a philosophical movement arose during the 1960s in the United States that championed "reason, ethical egoism, and free-market capitalism". According to Oliver, anarcho-capitalism is a political theory that follows Objectivism, a philosophical system developed by Ayn Rand. However, he acknowledges that his advocacy of anarcho-capitalism is "quite at odds with Rand's ardent defense of 'limited government. Professor Lisa Duggan also says that Rand's anti-statist, pro–free market stances went on to shape the politics of anarcho-capitalism.According to Patrik Schumacher, the political ideology and program of anarcho-capitalism envisages the radicalization of the neoliberal "rollback of the state." It also calls for the extension of "entrepreneurial freedom" and "competitive market rationality" to the point where the scope for private enterprise is all-encompassing and "leaves no space for state action whatsoever".
On the state
Anarcho-capitalists oppose the state and seek to privatize any service the government presently provides, such as education, infrastructure, or the enforcement of law. They see capitalism and the free market as the basis for a free and prosperous society. Murray Rothbard stated that the difference between free-market capitalism and state capitalism is the difference between "peaceful, voluntary exchange" and a "collusive partnership" between business and government that "uses coercion to subvert the free market". Rothbard argued that all government services, including defense, are inefficient because they lack a market-based pricing mechanism regulated by "the voluntary decisions of consumers purchasing services that fulfill their highest-priority needs" and by investors seeking the most profitable enterprises to invest in.Rothbard used the term anarcho-capitalism to distinguish his philosophy from anarchism that opposes private property as well as to distinguish it from individualist anarchism. Other terms sometimes used by proponents of the philosophy include:
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Non-aggression principle
Writer Stanisław Wójtowicz says that although anarcho-capitalists are against centralized states, they believe that all people would naturally share and agree to a specific moral theory based on the non-aggression principle. While the Friedmanian formulation of anarcho-capitalism considers the presence of violence and assumes some degree of violence will occur, anarcho-capitalism as formulated by thinkers such as Rothbard holds strongly to the central libertarian nonaggression axiom, sometimes referred to as the non-aggression principle. Rothbard wrote:Rothbard's defense of the self-ownership principle stems from what he believed to be his falsification of all other alternatives, namely that either a group of people can own another group of people, or that no single person has full ownership over oneself. Rothbard dismisses these two cases on the basis that they cannot result in a universal ethic, i.e. a just natural law that can govern all people, independent of place and time. The only alternative that remains to Rothbard is self-ownership, which he believes is both axiomatic and universal.
In general, Rothbard describes the non-aggression axiom as a prohibition against initiating force, or the threat of force, against persons or property. The initiation of force is usually referred to as aggression or coercion. The difference between anarcho-capitalists and other libertarians is largely one of the degree to which they take this axiom. Minarchist libertarians such as libertarian political parties would retain the state in some smaller and less invasive form, retaining at the very least public police, courts, and military. However, others might give further allowance for other government programs. In contrast, Rothbard rejects any level of "state intervention", defining the state as a coercive monopoly and as the only entity in human society, excluding acknowledged criminals, that derives its income entirely from coercion, in the form of taxation, which Rothbard describes as "compulsory seizure of the property of the State's inhabitants, or subjects."
Some anarcho-capitalists such as Rothbard accept the non-aggression axiom on an intrinsic moral or natural law basis. It is in terms of the non-aggression principle that Rothbard defined his interpretation of anarchism, "a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression "against person and property" and wrote that "what anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the State, i.e. to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion". In an interview published in the American libertarian journal The New Banner, Rothbard stated that "capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism".
Property
Private property
Anarcho-capitalists postulate the privatization of everything, including cities with all their infrastructures, public spaces, streets, and urban management systems.Central to Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism are the concepts of self-ownership and original appropriation that combines personal and private property. Hans-Hermann Hoppe wrote:
Rothbard however rejected the Lockean proviso and followed the rule of "first come, first served", without any consideration of how much resources are left for other individuals.
Anarcho-capitalists advocate private ownership of the means of production and the allocation of the product of labor created by workers within the context of wage labor and the free market – that is through decisions made by property and capital owners, regardless of what an individual needs or does not need. Original appropriation allows an individual to claim any never-before-used resources, including land, and by improving or otherwise using it, own it with the same "absolute right" as their own body, and retain those rights forever, regardless of whether the resource is still being used by them. According to Rothbard, property can only come about through labor, therefore original appropriation of land is not legitimate by merely claiming it or building a fence around itit is only by using land and by mixing one's labor with it that original appropriation is legitimized: "Any attempt to claim a new resource that someone does not use would have to be considered invasive of the property right of whoever the first user will turn out to be". Rothbard argued that the resource need not continue to be used for it to be the person's property as "for once his labor is mixed with the natural resource, it remains his owned land. His labor has been irretrievably mixed with the land, and the land is therefore his or his assigns' in perpetuity".
Rothbard also spoke about a theory of justice in property rights:
In Justice and Property Rights, Rothbard wrote that "any identifiable owner must be accorded his property". In the case of slavery, Rothbard claimed that in many cases "the old plantations and the heirs and descendants of the former slaves can be identified, and the reparations can become highly specific indeed". Rothbard believed slaves rightfully own any land they were forced to work on under the homestead principle. If property is held by the state, Rothbard advocated its confiscation and "return to the private sector", writing that "any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves and should be liberated as quickly as possible". Rothbard proposed that state universities be seized by the students and faculty under the homestead principle. Rothbard also supported the expropriation of nominally "private property" if it is the result of state-initiated force such as businesses that receive grants and subsidies. Rothbard further proposed that businesses that receive at least 50% of their funding from the state be confiscated by the workers, writing: "What we libertarians object to, then, is not government per se but crime, what we object to is unjust or criminal property titles; what we are for is not 'private' property per se but just, innocent, non-criminal private property".
Similarly, Karl Hess wrote that "libertarianism wants to advance principles of property but that it in no way wishes to defend, willy nilly, all property which now is called private... Much of that property is stolen. Much is of dubious title. All of it is deeply intertwined with an immoral, coercive state system".
Left-wing anarchists view capitalism as an inherently authoritarian and hierarchical system and seek the abolishment of private property. There is disagreement between anarchists and anarcho-capitalists as the former generally rejects anarcho-capitalism as a form of anarchism and considers anarcho-capitalism a contradiction in terms, while the latter holds that the abolishment of private property would require expropriation, which is "counterproductive to order" and would require a state.