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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anarcho-capitalism | 2/12 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T14:56:15.395858+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== On the state === Anarcho-capitalists oppose the state and seek to privatize government services such as education, infrastructure, or law enforcement. They see capitalism and the free market as the basis for a free and prosperous society. Murray Rothbard states 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 "relies on coercive mechanisms that interfere with market processes." Rothbard argues 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.
Maverick Edwards of 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. Anarchist critics such as Peter Sabatini and Bob Black argue that private defense agencies would act as private states, leading to coercion.
In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, libertarian philosopher and proponent of minarchism Robert Nozick argues that anarcho-capitalism would inevitably transform into a minarchist state, even without violating any of its own non-aggression principles. A single locally dominant private defense and judicial agency would eventually emerge with other agencies unable to effectively compete against its advantages. Therefore, even to the extent that the anarcho-capitalist theory is correct, it results in a single, private, protective agency that is itself a de facto "state". Thus, anarcho-capitalism may only exist for a limited period before a minimalist state emerges. To Rothbard and his student Hans-Hermann Hoppe, such a "de facto state", if based on contracts and private property, would not be a true state:Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.Rothbard In The Ethics of Liberty defines coercion as “the invasive use of physical violence or the threat thereof against someone else’s person or (just) property.” Hoppe in Democracy: The God That Failed defined a state as "an agency that exercises a compulsory territorial monopoly of protection and the power to tax". Other variations of anarchists reject anarcho-capitalism's solutions to the state as non-anarchist due to retaining hierarchical structures.
=== Non-aggression principle === Writer Stanisław Wójtowicz suggests 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.
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 previously 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 right of donation, of bequest (and, concomitantly, the right to receive 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 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 (including direct violence, assault, and murder) or property (including fraud, burglary, theft, and taxation). 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, including 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 persons 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 support 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 combine personal and private property. Hans-Hermann Hoppe wrote: