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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
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| Anarcho-capitalism | 1/12 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T14:56:15.395858+00:00 | kb-cron |
Anarcho-capitalism (colloquially: ANCAP, Ancap, AnCap, or An-Cap) is a political ideology and economic theory that advocates for the abolition of the public state and services and promotes their replacement with private providers. Proponents argue that a society could function without a state through voluntary exchange and private institutions that provide legal and security services. This model envisions a voluntary society, drawing on concepts such as the non-aggression principle, free markets, and self-ownership. In the absence of statutory law, private defense agencies and insurance companies would compete to provide services analogous to those performed by courts and the police under a state system. While the earliest documented use of the term anarcho-capitalism appears in Karl Hess's essay "The Death of Politics", published in Playboy in March 1969, the American economist Murray Rothbard is known for developing and popularizing the concepts of anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-capitalism in the early 1970s. Rothbard, an American libertarian, drew on elements of the Austrian school of economics, Ayn Rand's Objectivism, classical liberalism, and 19th-century American individualist anarchist thinkers Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker. However, he rejected the idividualist anarchist labor theory of value, opposition to non-usufruct property, lack of support for constitutional law and private courts, their economic theories (especially support for mutual credit, land banking, opposition to usury, rent and wage system), views on justice system (such as support for jury nullification), and their opposition to absolute land ownership, including the right of landowners to set rules on their land. Rothbard proposed that an anarcho-capitalist society would operate under a mutually agreed-upon legal code, which he suggested would be generally accepted and adhered to by courts. This legal code would recognize contracts between individuals, private property, self-ownership, and tort law in accordance with the non-aggression principle. Unlike a state system, enforcement in Rothbard's model would apply only to those who initiated force or fraud. Rothbard argued that state power is unjustified, asserting that it violates individual rights, reduces prosperity, and creates social and economic problems. Proponents of anarcho-capitalism cite several historical precedents that they regard as examples of quasi-anarcho-capitalism, including the Republic of Cospaia, Acadia, Anglo-Saxon England, Medieval Iceland, the American Old West, Gaelic Ireland, as well as systems such as merchant law, admiralty law, and early common law.
Anarcho-capitalism is distinguished from minarchism, which advocates for a minimal state (often described as a night-watchman state limited to protecting individuals from aggression and enforcing private property); from Objectivism, a broader philosophy advocating a somewhat limited role for government; and from market anarchism, which opposes capitalism and the state while viewing markets as compatible with socialism.
== Classification ==
Anarcho-capitalism developed from Austrian-style classical liberalism, Ayn Rand's Objectivism and individualist anarchism. Most anarchist movements do not view anarcho-capitalism as anarchist, since they understand anarchism as a system that is incompatible with capitalism. 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 classical liberalism, and is occasionally seen as part of the New Right. According to scholar Pierre Lemieux, anarcho-capitalism diverges from traditional anarchist schools by treating private property as the essential mechanism for coordinating individual actions. While traditional anarchists seek material equality and often reject the wage system, anarcho-capitalism accepts the inequalities produced by market freedom, focusing instead on "formal equality in law." This model effectively marries the social liberty of anarchism with the economic logic of total capitalism. Traditional 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 to be the only true form of anarchism.
== Philosophy ==
A pivotal contribution to the doctrine's early formulation is the concept of "individual sovereignty", emphasized by the Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari. In this framework, sovereignty resides in the individual's absolute ownership of their person and property rather than in the state. Consequently, any social need—including the protection of rights—is viewed as a commodity that the individual has the sovereign right to produce personally or purchase from competing private providers in a free market. 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." Oliver states that anarcho-capitalism is a political theory that follows Objectivism, a philosophical system developed by Ayn Rand. However, he acknowledged that his advocacy of anarcho-capitalism is "quite at odds with Rand's ardent defense of 'limited government". Professor Lisa Duggan also said 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." The ultimate aim of this framework is to achieve what Molinari termed "liberty of government", transitioning society from a forced artificial institution to a "purely natural fact" based on human sociability and needs. In this vision, authority is not abolished but transformed; it shifts from a territorial monopoly imposed by coercion to a service accepted and respected based on its utility. By replacing the "terror" of the state with voluntary associations, anarcho-capitalists argue that peace becomes the natural consequence of liberty, just as war is seen as the natural consequence of monopoly.