Anarchist-capitalism

The anarchist-capitalism is a political theory inspired by the philosophical liberalism, according to which the existence of the State is illegitimate and useless. This current is very close to the Libertarianisme, with the difference close some libertariens can wish the existence of a " state veilleur" and not its complete suppression.

It separates on this point from the traditional liberalism which recognizes the need for a State and only aims at limiting in a strict way its field and its modes of intervention. It is also distinguished from the socialist Anarchisme by its support for the Private property.

Anarchist-capitalism and liberalism

See also: Liberalism

The anarchist-capitalists apply in a strict way the theses of liberalism to draw from it a political philosophy which they only judge coherent to organize the company.

Like traditional liberalism, anarchist-capitalism asserts a system where each human being is fully owner of itself, of the fruits of its work and what it obtained from the voluntary co-operation of others per exchange or gift. Any human being is as accountant of his acts, held by engagements as it takes, person in charge of the losses of his work and debtor for the wrongs which it caused with thirds not agreeing.

The anarchist-capitalists consider that only the interactions between agreeing adults are legitimate. Very reached with the person and the property perpetrated without assent an aggression constitutes consequently, and any form of coercive organization is illegitimate, including the State and its multiple substitutes.

For the anarchist-capitalists, a State, like any other organization, could have legitimacy only near those which individually and voluntarily accepted it. In particular, the obligatory contributions (direct taxes and indirect, etc) and the imposed regulations (legislation, decrees, administrative measures, etc) are regarded as illegitimate.

The support for the private property

For the anarchist-capitalists as for the traditional liberals, the private property is an essential component of the Liberté.

The pooling of the Capital , the allocation of the functions and the responsibilities, the specialization of competences and the exchange of the services are means complementary to produce more satisfactions. The guarantee that these means profit with the greatest number is than each one can freely decide to take part or not to take part under agreement, and to use or not the fruits of them. It is the voluntary character of an agreement which is guaranteeing all at the same time and of its legitimacy and its beneficial nature.

That does not prevent at all the existence of communities practitioner a voluntary socialism with common property, as long as this one is not coercive, but is a system of exchanges between agreeing individuals or voluntary organizations (a company being seen like a “whole of contracts”).

The anarchist-capitalists challenge the need for the State to guarantee the private property, indicator on the contrary in him the first and the largest criminal against the private property. On the other hand, they point out that, in any form of collective ownership, an institution is necessary to exert the property rights. If all is collective ownership, the authority of this institution extends by definition with all and all, and it has of this fact all the attributes of a totalitarian State, whatever the name that one gives him and whatever its procedure. In addition they compare any violation of freedom to a violation of a property right (property of oneself during arbitrary arrests, property of its means of communication at the time of censure, etc…). For these two reasons, they show the socialist anarchism of inconsistency.

Tendencies

One can distinguish at least two tendencies anarchist-capitalists:

Each tendency follows the same step, which consists in establishing the indissociability between the Propriété and the Liberté, the desirability of these rights, and the practical possibility to arrive to an organization of the company respecting these rights. But they show major disparities in the practical application their principles, and this same inside each one of these tendencies.

The approach jusnaturalist currently calls in question the legitimacy of the property rights of use by limiting them to the only acquired rights in accordance with the " homesteading" developed originally by John Locke, methods to revise these rights on a case-by-case basis to restore property with the detriment of the current owners legitimates it proposes, and sets up his definition of freedom and the property as universal (the natural right is priority on the positive Droit).

The utilitarian approach generally leaves the actual position of the property rights without seeking to establish basic absolute and universal like origin of these rights, preserving the possibility of justifying in a utilitarian way certain violations of these same rights (the utilitarian step is then priority on freedom and the property).

A consequence of these divergences is that the first approach does not allow the application of any contract, but only of those which are valid exchanges of titles of property. Thus, contractual slavery is impossible in this interpretation, because the human free-referee is inalienable and inseparable from the body of the individual. The second approach does not have these limits, but rests on the Catallaxie to make emerge acceptable common rules by all as regards contracts.

In a situation where the violation of the rights of a person would undoubtedly make it possible to bring more in return to another person, the utilitarian approach allows such a violation, when the approach jusnaturalist is opposed to it. Thus the first step can justify the sacrifice of a person to save some several, but not the second.

The utilitarian ones thus justify the model of company anarchist-capitalist by the fact that it would be most effective economically and consequently most desirable, while the jusnaturalists justify it by the fact that it would be only able to respect all the basic rights of the individuals. Another basic difference is found in their designs of justice:

  • utilitarianism aims at the total economic efficiency of justice, and thus applies sorrows proportional in value to the crime divided by the rate of capture. The crime is integrated into the company through its economic implications.
  • the jusnaturalism aims at the rational coherence of justice with the remainder of the Natural Right, and thus applies the doubled equal restitution of a right of remuneration, pertaining to the victim, exactly equal to the crime. The crime is seen like a renouncement partial of its own rights with respect to the victim by the criminal, insofar as he violates the rights of this one. Certain movements claiming jusnaturalism have a different vision however, for example the agorists do not consider a double sorrow, but an equal restitution and the assumption of responsibility of the operation of the legal mechanisms, which returns to the utilitarian position with its economic integration of the crime.

Program

Which program the anarchist-capitalists do they propose concretely? Here some ideas coming from two emblematic figures from anarchist-capitalism, David Friedman (in Towards a company without state ), and Murray Rothbard (in the Ethics of Freedom ):

  • Friedman and Rothbard defends the right to achieve certain acts which are considered to be illicit or immoral in the majority of the countries, namely: right for an individual to have, use, produce and sell freely drug; right to organize and take part in money plays; right to produce or consume pornography; right to produce, to be equipped and sell firearms, etc

  • Friedman and Rothbard preaches the privatization of all the services which currently fall on the States: the management of the roads, teaching, justice (according to Friedman, the rules of the Right would be produced on an open market , whereas according to Rothbard, they rise from the theory of the natural Right), safety, defense, the currency.

  • Friedman and Rothbard defends the right to the abortion, the suicide, the prostitution, the gift and the sale of bodies, etc the thinkers anarchist-capitalists also oppose any form not-volunteer of distribution of the richnesses, because it is based on a flight operated by the State.

  • to fight against the State, Rothbard is secessionist, Friedman is reformist.

  • Friedman as Rothbard considers that the children have the right to work, to leave the residence of their parents and to even be of another parents if they wish it.

  • Rothbard preaches the revision of all the existing property rights to restore legitimates it property according to its definition Lockéenne, in particular the land ownership, while Friedman eludes the question of the land ownership because of low economic importance which it represents (… with the the United States of America).

Frequent objections

A frequent objection with regard to anarchist-capitalism is that one does not know concrete experiments of this type of company (" anarcapie"), and thus that anarchist-capitalism would be impossible in practice.

The anarchist-capitalists retort by asking that one not reverse the burden of proof: it is to the etatists to prove that the State is necessary, and not with themselves to prove that they can do without a Master. In addition, of the examples companies deprived of official capacity were studied, within the meaning of an entity employing the force for its own institution: the Iceland is quoted by David Friedman (with the Althing, annual National Assembly also filling of the legal functions, institution installation into 930), the operation of the medieval communes and their emancipation of the feudal capacity, the Pennsylvania of the Quaker S, and many other examples of companies minarchists where the capacity of the State was or is extremely limited (They were not however capitalist companies).

According to the anarchist-capitalists, the etatists militate in fact for the need for having people who decide in the place others, the institution of the State leading to the right, for some - statesmen - to decide in the place others what those must do. The personal Responsabilité according to them is thus replaced by a collective irresponsibility, symbolized by the State.

Others reproach to the anarchist-capitalists their a little blind faith in the man who would make them imagine a company only based on competition and the spontaneous Ordre; those retort that on the contrary, their vision of a company of Liberté does not make them close the eyes on the human nature: police force (private) and courts (private) would also exist in " anarcapie" , and the Droit according to them much would undoubtedly more strictly be respected there than in the current society. Moreover, much doubt that the companies decide they-even to make beneficial decisions at the community, like reducing pollution or offering social benefit. It is finally necessary to quote the idea according to which sociological realities bring to a " naturelle" inequality and domination of the men by others, the market having only one end of profit and not of General interest, while in our companies the State has also often as a function to minimize these perverse effects somewhat. The company anarchist-capitalist would carry out thus, for his objectors, with inequalities and reinforced dominations, creative of many sufferings. For the “anarcaps”, the State can only gear down, by its coercive capacity, the inequalities between the men while offering to those which dominate already a means of reinforcing and of perennializing their situation, and that consequently a company anarchist-capitalist, without abolishing any inequality, would however offer a guarantee to keep these inequalities on their minimal level.

Anarchist-capitalism and anarchism

The anarchists anticapitalists consider that the position anarchist-capitalist is incoherent for two reasons; on the one hand the private property of the means of production would give according to them to the capitalists a capacity of comparable nature that of a State and must be rejected for the same reasons; in addition, the private property would not be a natural Right, but a social construction which requires the action of a State to be maintained. For these reasons, the anarchists anticapitalists refuse the use of the word “anarchy” by the anarchist-capitalists. It is also reproached to them for accepting so much the individual freedom which the individuals would have the right to give up their rights, which would legitimate slavery initially authorized (this reproach cannot apply to the tendency jusnaturalist). Some as reproach them for not adopting as part of the points of view of the other anarchists - that is to say the anti-state control and the freedom - and to omit others of them, like the principle of refusal of any hierarchy, or the basic principle of equality, which could not, according to them, being respected in a company which accepts (and develops!) the private property of the means of production. Some as Noam Chomsky goes even until saying that anarchist-capitalism tends more towards the Anomie than towards the Anarchie

For the anarchist-capitalists, only the equal rights are possible and desirable, the equality of the goods being able to be realized only by measurements which are necessarily opposed to freedom: consequently only the hierarchy of right can and must be abolished, the hierarchies of different nature (hierarchy sporting, cultural, social, etc…) not being caused by the human will but by nature. For this reason, they consider that they are the anarchist-Socialists who are incoherent and do not deserve to be called anarchist.

Lastly, whereas the anarchists anticapitalists are violently opposed to anarchist-capitalism, the reverse is not true. In a company which would function in accordance with the principles anarchist-capitalists, the individuals which would like to live according to the anarchistic principles could do it. It would be enough for them for that to refuse to enter any organization which would present in their eyes a hierarchical character. On the other hand, they could join in organizations which would respect the principles of anarchism collectivist.

Authors

Quotations

  • “If the tax, paid under the constraint, is impossible to distinguish from the flight, it follows that the State, which remains by the tax, is vast a Criminal organization, much more significant and effective that any Mafia “private” was it never. ” (Murray Rothbard)
  • “In the long run, it is we who will carry it… The boot will cease one day hammering the face of the man, and the spirit of freedom burns with as well force in its chest as no washing of brain, no totalitarianism can choke it. ” (Murray Rothbard)
  • “a liberal is an anarchist who defends the private property. ” (Saline Pascal)

References

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