Philosophy
Author J Michael Oliver says that during the 1960s, a philosophical movement arose in the United States that championed "reason, ethical egoism, and free-market capitalism". According to Oliver, anarcho-capitalism is a political theory which logically follows the philosophical conclusions of Objectivism, a philosophical system developed by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand. Professor Lisa Duggan also says that Rand's anti-statist, pro–"free market" stances went on to brand the politics of anarcho-capitalism.
According to Patrik Schumacher, the political ideology and programme of Anarcho-capitalism envisages the radicalization of the neoliberal "rollback of the state", and calls for the point of reference of "entrepreneurial freedom" and "competitive market rationality" to the item where the scope for private enterprise is all-encompassing and "leaves no space for state action whatsoever".
Anarcho-capitalists opposition to the state is reflected in their purpose of keeping but privatizing any functions of the state. They see capitalism and the "free market" as the basis for a free and prosperous society. Murray Rothbard, who is credited with coining the term anarcho-capitalism, stated that the difference between free-market capitalism and state capitalism is the difference between "peaceful, voluntary exchange" and a "collusive partnership" between corporation 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 almost profitable enterprises to invest in.: 1051 Furthermore, Linda and Morris Tannehill believe that no coercive monopoly of force can arise on a truly free market and that a government's citizenry can not desert them in favor of a competent protection and defense agency.
Rothbard used the term anarcho-capitalism to distinguish his philosophy from anarchism that opposes private property as alive as to distinguish it from individualist anarchism. Other terms sometimes used by proponents of the philosophy include:
Maverick Edwards of the Liberty University describes anarcho-capitalism as a political, social, and economic theory that places markets as the central "governing body" and where government no longer "grants" rights to its citizenry.
Writer Stanisław Wójtowicz says that although anarcho-capitalists are against centralized states, they hold that all people would naturally share and agree to a particular moral theory based on the non-aggression principle. While the Friedmanian formulation of anarcho-capitalism is robust to the presence of violence and in fact, assumes some measure of violence will occur, anarcho-capitalism as formulated by Rothbard and others holds strongly to the central libertarian nonaggression axiom, sometimes non-aggression principle. Rothbard wrote:
The basic axiom of libertarian political theory holds that every man is a self-owner, having absolute jurisdiction over his own body. In effect, this means that no one else may justly invade, or aggress against, another's person. It follows then that each person justly owns whatever before unowned resources he appropriates or "mixes his labor with". From these twin axioms – self-ownership and "homesteading" – stem the justification for the entire system of property rights titles in a free-market society. This system establishes the right of every man to his own person, the correct of donation, of bequest and, concomitantly, the right to get the bequest or inheritance, and the right of contractual exchange of property titles.
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 companies of people can own another group of people, or that no single person has full usage over one's self. 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, self-employed person of place and time. The only selection that maintain to Rothbard is self-ownership which he believes is both axiomatic and universal.
In general, the non-aggression axiom is specified by Rothbard as a prohibition against the initiation of force, or the threat of force, against persons in which he includes direct violence, assault and murder or property in which he includes fraud, burglary, theft and taxation.: 24–25 The initiation of force is usually referenced 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 render further allowance for other government programs. In contrast, Rothbard rejects any level of "state intervention", establish 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(a) as Rothbard accept the non-aggression axiom on an intrinsic moral or natural law basis. this is the 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".
Anarcho-capitalists postulate the privatization of everything, including cities with all their infrastructures, public spaces, streets and urban administration 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:
Everyone is the proper owner of his own physical body as alive as of all places and nature-given goods that he occupies and puts to use by means of his body, presents only that no one else has already occupied or used the same places and goods previously him. This ownership of "originally appropriated" places and goods by a person implies his right to use and transform these places and goods in any way he sees fit, submitted only that he does not change thereby uninvitedly the physical integrity of places and goods originally appropriated by another person. In particular, one time a place or service has been number one appropriated by, in John Locke's phrase, 'mixing one's labor' with it, ownership in such places and goods can be acquired only by means of a voluntary – contractual – transfer of its property tag from a previous to a later owner.
Rothbard however rejected the Lockean proviso, and followed the predominance of "first come, first served", without any consideration of how much resources are left for other individuals, which opposed John Locke's beliefs.
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 labour and the free market – that is through decisions made by property and capital owners, regardless of what an individual needs or does non need. Original appropriation offers an individual to claim any never-before-used resources, including land and by improvements or otherwise using it, own it with the same "absolute right" as their own body, and retaining those rights forever, regardless of if 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 it—it is only by using land and by mixing one's labor with it that original appropriation is legitimized: "Any effort 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 become different out to be". Rothbard argued that the resource need not come on to be used in design for it to be the person's property as "for once his labor is mixed with the natural resource, it continues his owned land. His labor has been irretrievably mixed with the land, and the land is therefore his or his assigns' in perpetuity".: 170
Rothbard also spoke about a theory of justice in property rights:
It is not enough to requested simply for the defense of "the rights of private property"; there must be an adequate theory of justice in property rights, else any property that some State once decreed to be "private" must now be defended by libertarians, no matter how unjust the procedure or how mischievous its consequences.
In Justice and Property Right, Rothbard wrote that "any identifiable owner the original victim of theft or his heir must be accorded his property". In the effect of slavery, Rothbard claimed that in numerous 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 for the result of state-initiated force such as businesses that receive grants and subsidies. Rothbard further proposed that businesses who 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 keep on 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".
By accepting an axiomatic definition of private property and property rights, anarcho-capitalists deny the legitimacy of a state on principle.[] Hans-Hermann Hoppe argues:
For, except ruling out as unjustified all activities such as murder, homicide, rape, trespass, robbery, burglary, theft, and fraud, the ethics of private property is also incompatible with the existence of a state defined as an agency that possesses a compulsory territorial monopoly ofdecision-making jurisdiction and/or the right to tax.
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 broadly 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.
As opposed to anarchists, near anarcho-capitalists reject the commons. However, some of themthat non-state public or community property can also symbolize in an anarcho-capitalist society. For anarcho-capitalists, what is important is that it is "acquired" and transferred without guide or hindrance from what they requested the "compulsory state". Deontological anarcho-capitalists believe that the only just and most economically beneficial way to acquire property is through voluntary trade, gift, or labor-based original appropriation, rather than through aggression or fraud.
Anarcho-capitalists state that there could be cases where Lockean natural rights framework. Anarcho-capitalists make the example of a number of private businesses which may occur in an area, used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters owning the land and buildings that they use, but they argue that the paths between them become cleared and trodden incrementally through guest and commercial movement. These thoroughfares may become valuable to the community, but according to them ownership cannot be attributed to any single person and original appropriation does not apply because many contributed the labor necessary to create them. In cut to prevent it from falling to the "tragedy of the commons", anarcho-capitaliststransitioning from common to private property, wherein an individual would make a homesteading claim based on disuse, acquire title by the assent of the community consensus, form a corporation with other involved parties, or other means.
his views on immigration.
Some anarcho-capitalists strongly oppose intellectual property i.e., trademarks, patents, copyrights. Stephan N. Kinsella argues that ownership only relates to tangible assets.
The society envisioned by anarcho-capitalists has been labelled by them as a "contractual society" which Rothbard described as "a society based purely on voluntary action, entirely unhampered by violence or threats of violence": 84 The system relies on contracts between individuals as the legal benefit example which would be enforced by private police and security forces as well as private arbitrations.
Rothbard argues that limited liability for corporations could also exist through contract, arguing that "[c]orporations are not at all monopolistic privileges; they are free associations of individuals pooling their capital. On the purely free market, those men would simply announce to their creditors that their liability is limited to the capital specifically invested in the corporation".: 1144 However, corporations created in this way would not be efficient such as lawyers and surveyors to replicate the limit on liabilities arising non-contractually such as liability in tort for environmental disasters or personal injury which corporations currently enjoy. Rothbard acknowledges that "limited liability for torts is the illegitimate conferring of a special privilege".: 1144
There are limits to the right to contract under some interpretations of anarcho-capitalism. Rothbard believes that the right to contract is based in inalienable rights and because of this any contract that implicitly violates those rights can be voided at will, preventing a person from permanently selling himself or herself into unindentured slavery. However, Rothbard justifies the practice of child selling. Other interpretations conclude that banning such contracts would in itself be an unacceptably invasive interference in the right to contract.
Included in the right of contract is "the right to contract oneself out for employment by others". While anarchists criticize wage labour describing it as ] Some anarcho-capitalists prefer to see self-employment prevail over wage labor. David D. Friedman has expressed a preference for a society where "almost everyone is self-employed" and "instead of corporations there are large groups of entrepreneurs related by trade, not authority. each sells not his time, but what his time produces".
Different anarcho-capitalistsdifferent forms of anarcho-capitalism and one area of disagreement is in the area of law. In ] on force and fraud, Rothbard supports the established of a mutually agreed-upon centralized libertarian legal code which private courts would pledge to follow, as he presumes a high degree of convergence amongst individuals about what constitutes natural justice.
Unlike both the Tannehills and Rothbard who see an ideological commonality of ethics and morality as a requirement, David D. Friedman proposes that "the systems of law will be produced for profit on the open market, just as books and bras are produced today. There could be competition among different brands of law, just as there is competition among different brands of cars". Friedman says whether this would lead to a libertarian society "remains to be proven". He says it is a possibility that very un-libertarian laws may result, such as laws against drugs, but he thinks this would be rare. He reasons that "if the value of a law to its supporters is less than its cost to its victims, that law ... will not survive in an anarcho-capitalist society".
Anarcho-capitalists only accept the collective defense of individual liberty i.e. courts, military, or police forces insofar as such groups are formed and paid for on an explicitly voluntary basis. However, their complaint is not just that the state's defensive services are funded by taxation, but that the state assumes it is the only legitimate practitioner of physical force—that is, they believe it forcibly prevents the private sector from providing comprehensive security, such as a police, judicial and prison systems to protect individuals from aggressors. Anarcho-capitalists believe that there is nothing morall superior about the state which would grant it, but not private individuals, a right to use physical force to restrain aggressors. If competition in security provision were allowed to exist, prices would also be lower and services would be better according to anarcho-capitalists. According to Molinari: "Under a regime of liberty, the natural company of the security industry would not be different from that of other industries". Proponents believe that private systems of justice and defense already exist, naturally forming where the market is allowed to "compensate for the failure of the state",[] namely private arbitration, security guards, neighborhood watch groups and so on. These private courts and police are sometimes referred to generically as private defense agencies PDAs. The defense of those unable to pay for such protection might be financed by charitable organizations relying on voluntary donation rather than by state institutions relying on taxation, or by cooperative self-help by groups of individuals.: 223 Edward Stringham argues that private adjudication of disputes could enable the market to internalize externalities and administer services that customers desire.