The Austrian Economics Wiki - User contributions [en]

Bitcoin

2013-03-14T16:05:09Z

Dbabbitt:

[[File:Bitcoinlogo.png|thumb|300px|right|Bitcoin logo.]]
{{Infobox
| Box title = Software
| Row 1 title= name
| Row 1 info= Bitcoin
| Row 2 title=developer
| Row 2 info= Satoshi Nakamoto
| Row 3 title=latest release version
| Row 3 info = 0.3.12
| Row 4 title=latest release date
| Row 4 info= "2010/09/07"
| Row 5 title=programming language
| Row 5 info = [[Wikipedia:C++]]
| Row 6 title=operating system
| Row 6 info = Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
| Row 7 title=status
| Row 7 info = Beta
| Row 8 title=genre
| Row 8 info= [[Wikipedia:Electronic money|Electronic money]]
| Row 9 title=license
| Row 9 info = [[Wikipedia:MIT License|MIT License]]
| Row 10 title=website
| Row 10 info = [http://www.bitcoin.org/ "www.bitcoin.org"]
}}
{{Infobox
|Box title=Currency
| Row 1 title = currency name
| Row 1 info = Bitcoin
| Row 2 title = using countries
|Row 2 info = ''Internet-based (global)''
| Row 3 title=symbol
| Row 3 info = BTC
| Row 4 title=issuing authority
| Row 4 info= Bitcoin network
| Row 5 title =issuing authority website
| Row 5 info www.bitcoin.org
}}
'''Bitcoin''' is an [[open source]] [[Wikipedia:peer-to-peer|peer-to-peer]] system developed by [[Wikipedia:Satoshi Nakamoto|Satoshi Nakamoto]] that aims to provide [[Wikipedia:electronic cash|electronic cash]]. The system has no central server or trusted parties.<ref name="hartford">
{{cite news
|title=Is It Time For Digital-Only Dollars?
|first=Phil
|last=Maymin
|date=2010-07-08
|newspaper=Hartford Advocate
|url=http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/commentary/is-it-time-for-digital-only-dollars-2
|accessdate=2010-07-23
}}</ref> Bitcoin relies on [[Wikipedia:cryptographic|cryptographic]] principles to create unique, unreproducible, and divisible tokens. Users hold the [[Wikipedia:Key (cryptography)|cryptographic keys]] to their own tokens and transact directly with each other, with the help of the network to check for [[Wikipedia:double-spending|double-spending]].<ref name="infoworld_2010">
{{cite news
|date=2010-05-24
|title=Open source innovation on the cutting edge
|first=Neil
|last=McAllister
|newspaper=InfoWorld
|url=http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/open-source-innovation-the-cutting-edge-582?page=0,2
|accessdate=2010-07-23
}}</ref>

==Technical basis==
[[File:Hash_tree.png|thumb|300px|right|Bitcoin uses an ever-growing [[Wikipedia:Hash tree|hash tree]] to store, linearize, and verify transactions.]]

Bitcoin is an implementation of Wei Dai's b-money proposal on [[Wikipedia:Cypherpunks|Cypherpunks]] in 1998 and Nick Szabo's Bitgold proposal.<ref>[http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=342.msg4508#msg4508 Bitcoin author on external references]</ref> The principles of the system are described in the Bitcoin White Paper.<ref name=Whitepaper>[http://www.bitcoin.org/sites/default/files/bitcoin.pdf Bitcoin White Paper]</ref>

A user on the network has one or several cryptographic identifiers ([[Wikipedia:ECDSA|ECDSA]] keypairs), which represent their [[Wikipedia:wallet|wallet]]. The public key counterpart of this wallet is called an ''address''. The private key, stored only on the user's computer, is used to authorize payments from the user. The wallet or address contain no information about their owner, so they are effectively anonymous.<ref>{{cite news |author=Nathan Willis |date=2010-11-10 |title=Bitcoin: Virtual money created by CPU cycles |publisher=[[Wikipedia:LWN.net]] |url=http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/414452/ef58a58a62148050/ }}</ref>

Each coin of the Bitcoin system has its owner's [[Wikipedia:public key|public key]] on it. The owner can transfer it further by adding the recipient's public key on it, signing it with his private key and broadcasting the transaction to the network. This way, each coin contains its cryptographic ownership history from the creator of the coin to its current owner.

To prevent users from double-spending their coins (signing the same coin for many recipients), transactions are [[Wikipedia:timestamp|timestamped]] by the network with a [[Wikipedia:proof-of-work system|proof-of-work system]]. The network collects and records new transactions into a chain of blocks. Nodes of the network are constantly racing to complete these blocks by finding a value, that summed up with the block and the hash of the previous block, produces an [[Wikipedia:SHA-256|SHA-256]] hash containing a certain amount of leading zero bits. The average work required by this operation can be calculated and used to timestamp the block's transactions, so that they cannot be invalidated by later double-spending.

The incentive to use CPU time for running the system is that new coins are created and assigned to the node that manages to complete the new block first. This method of coin creation "was designed to be a digital analogue to gold and silver mining"<ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/luongo7.1.1.html LewRockwell.com article: The FED’s Real Monetary Problem]</ref>. Once a node successfully creates a block, it broadcasts the block to the network. Other nodes receive the block, perform a proof-of-work check, and add it to their chain if it is valid. As more transactions occur, blocks are created and added ad infinitum. The longest proof-of-work block chain is acknowledged to be the oldest and most reliable account of the transaction history.

This mechanism is claimed<ref name=Whitepaper /> to be virtually tamper-proof. For an attacker to manipulate the record, he must outpace all of the other nodes on the network to produce the longest proof-of-work. This becomes exponentially more difficult as time passes, because such "tampered" chains would continuously be rejected by nodes attempting to build a valid chain.

Bitcoin is a completely peer-to-peer network, and every node is able to enter or leave the network at will. When a node joins the network, the longest proof-of-work is automatically accepted as the most reliable one.

==Economic aspects==

The average rate of Bitcoin production is tapered such that over time the total number of Bitcoins will approach 21,000,000. After this point, no further Bitcoin production is possible. In this environment of limited supply and in situations where large numbers of Bitcoins are either lost or destroyed, the electronic divisibility of Bitcoins is argued to be conducive to downward price adjustments with no practical limitations in the actual storage or transport of Bitcoin value.<ref name=Divisiblity>[http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=44.0 Divisibility of Bitcoins]</ref> Rather than relying on the incentive of newly created Bitcoins to package transactions, nodes in this period will likely depend more heavily on their ability to competitively collect transaction fees to process Bitcoin transactions into blocks.<ref>[http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=165.0 Incentive to Collect Transactions]</ref>

==Monetary and financial benefits==

Given the decentralized nature of Bitcoin and the hard coding of rules within the software, potential users claim various monetary and financial benefits<ref name=FAQ>[http://www.bitcoin.org/faq Bitcoin FAQ]</ref>:

* Direct transfer via the internet without a trusted middleman or financial processor.
* Third parties cannot prevent or control transactions.
* Transactions are practically free.
* Bitcoin value is unconnected to possible instability caused by fractional reserve banking and poor central bank policy (see [[Austrian business cycle theory]]).
* Corrupted transactions created by hacked or modified clients are rejected by honest clients.
* The limited inflation of the Bitcoin system’s money supply is distributed evenly by CPU power throughout the network and programmatically created at a rate known to all parties in advance. Inflation cannot therefore be centrally manipulated to effect redistribution of Bitcoin value from general users.
* Given the predetermined rate of Bitcoin creation, the system is further protected against wild swings in supply due to externalities sometimes seen with traditional commodity currencies (see [[Wikipedia:History_of_the_rupee#The_fall_of_the_Rupee|Fall of the Rupee]] due to large discoveries of silver reserves in the New World).
* Bitcoins are potentially divisible to eight decimal points.<ref name=Divisiblity /> There are therefore no practical limitations to downward price adjustments in a deflationary environment.

According to the author, the design also supports a variety of possible transaction types that have yet to be implemented within the currently available client. These include [[Wikipedia:escrow|escrow]] transactions, [[Wikipedia:surety bond|surety bond]] contracts, third party [[Wikipedia:arbitration|arbitration]], and multi-party signatures.<ref>[http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=195.msg1611#msg1611 Predicate Transactions]</ref>

==Acceptance==

As of august 2010 there are roughly 30 sites accepting payment via Bitcoin<ref name=AcceptingSites>[http://www.bitcoin.org/trade List of sites accepting Bitcoin]</ref>, spanning areas such as [[Wikipedia:VOIP|digital telephony]] services<ref>[http://forum.link2voip.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1088 Link2VoIP (www.link2voip.com) accepts Bitcoin as payment.]</ref>, [[Wikipedia:currency trading|currency trading]] systems<ref>[http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=20.msg747#msg747 Bitcoin Trading System.]</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bitcointo.com/|title=Bitcointo, a Bitcoin to physical goods conversion service}}</ref>, online games<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.atitd.com/|title=A Tale in the Desert IV accepts Bitcoin as payment}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sirarthur.net/bitcasino|title=BitCoin Casino}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thefarwilds.com/|title=The Far Wilds, online game accepting Bitcoin as payment}}</ref>, physical goods<ref>{{cite web|url=http://qextracts.ecrater.com/|title=Quiggle extracts, online apothecary accepting bitcoins as payment}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.theoddshot.com.au/|title=The Odd Shot, a print photography business accepting bitcoins as payment}}</ref>, advertising services<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bitads.tk/|title=Bitads, advertising system accepting Bitcoins as payment}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bitlist.tk/|title=Bitlist, advertising system accepting Bitcoins as payment}}</ref>, auction systems<ref>{{cite web|title=Bitmit, a global Bitcoin shopping platform on which people from all over the world can buy and sell goods.|url=https://www.bitmit.net/en/recent}}</ref>, web hosting<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.privacyshark.com/|title=Privacy Shark, anonymous Bitcoin-based domain name and DNS hosting services}}</ref>, computer security auditing<ref>{{cite web|url=http://binarysecurity.webs.com/|title=Binary Security, Bitcoin only web application security auditing services}}</ref> and other online services. The Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF] has stopped accepting donations in Bitcoins.<ref>{{cite web|title=EFF and Bitcoin|first=Cindy|last=Cohen|date=2011-06-20|newspaper=Deeplinks Blog|url=https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/eff-and-bitcoin|accessdate=2011-12-21}}</ref>

Bitcoin

2013-03-14T15:11:16Z

Dbabbitt:

[[File:Bitcoinlogo.png|thumb|300px|right|Bitcoin logo.]]
{{Infobox
| Box title = Software
| Row 1 title= name
| Row 1 info= Bitcoin
| Row 2 title=developer
| Row 2 info= Satoshi Nakamoto
| Row 3 title=latest release version
| Row 3 info = 0.3.12
| Row 4 title=latest release date
| Row 4 info= "2010/09/07"
| Row 5 title=programming language
| Row 5 info = [[Wikipedia:C++]]
| Row 6 title=operating system
| Row 6 info = Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
| Row 7 title=status
| Row 7 info = Beta
| Row 8 title=genre
| Row 8 info= [[Wikipedia:Electronic money|Electronic money]]
| Row 9 title=license
| Row 9 info = [[Wikipedia:MIT License|MIT License]]
| Row 10 title=website
| Row 10 info = [http://www.bitcoin.org/ "www.bitcoin.org"]
}}
{{Infobox
|Box title=Currency
| Row 1 title = currency name
| Row 1 info = Bitcoin
| Row 2 title = using countries
|Row 2 info = ''Internet-based (global)''
| Row 3 title=symbol
| Row 3 info = BTC
| Row 4 title=issuing authority
| Row 4 info= Bitcoin network
| Row 5 title =issuing authority website
| Row 5 info www.bitcoin.org
}}
'''Bitcoin''' is an [[open source]] [[Wikipedia:peer-to-peer|peer-to-peer]] system developed by [[Wikipedia:Satoshi Nakamoto|Satoshi Nakamoto]] that aims to provide [[Wikipedia:electronic cash|electronic cash]]. The system has no central server or trusted parties.<ref name="hartford">
{{cite news
|title=Is It Time For Digital-Only Dollars?
|first=Phil
|last=Maymin
|date=2010-07-08
|newspaper=Hartford Advocate
|url=http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/commentary/is-it-time-for-digital-only-dollars-2
|accessdate=2010-07-23
}}</ref> Bitcoin relies on [[Wikipedia:cryptographic|cryptographic]] principles to create unique, unreproducible, and divisible tokens. Users hold the [[Wikipedia:Key (cryptography)|cryptographic keys]] to their own tokens and transact directly with each other, with the help of the network to check for [[Wikipedia:double-spending|double-spending]].<ref name="infoworld_2010">
{{cite news
|date=2010-05-24
|title=Open source innovation on the cutting edge
|first=Neil
|last=McAllister
|newspaper=InfoWorld
|url=http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/open-source-innovation-the-cutting-edge-582?page=0,2
|accessdate=2010-07-23
}}</ref>

==Technical basis==
[[File:Hash_tree.png|thumb|300px|right|Bitcoin uses an ever-growing [[Wikipedia:Hash tree|hash tree]] to store, linearize, and verify transactions.]]

Bitcoin is an implementation of Wei Dai's b-money proposal on [[Wikipedia:Cypherpunks|Cypherpunks]] in 1998 and Nick Szabo's Bitgold proposal.<ref>[http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=342.msg4508#msg4508 Bitcoin author on external references]</ref> The principles of the system are described in the Bitcoin White Paper.<ref name=Whitepaper>[http://www.bitcoin.org/sites/default/files/bitcoin.pdf Bitcoin White Paper]</ref>

A user on the network has one or several cryptographic identifiers ([[Wikipedia:ECDSA|ECDSA]] keypairs), which represent their [[Wikipedia:wallet|wallet]]. The public key counterpart of this wallet is called an ''address''. The private key, stored only on the user's computer, is used to authorize payments from the user. The wallet or address contain no information about their owner, so they are effectively anonymous.<ref>{{cite news |author=Nathan Willis |date=2010-11-10 |title=Bitcoin: Virtual money created by CPU cycles |publisher=[[Wikipedia:LWN.net]] |url=http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/414452/ef58a58a62148050/ }}</ref>

Each coin of the Bitcoin system has its owner's [[Wikipedia:public key|public key]] on it. The owner can transfer it further by adding the recipient's public key on it, signing it with his private key and broadcasting the transaction to the network. This way, each coin contains its cryptographic ownership history from the creator of the coin to its current owner.

To prevent users from double-spending their coins (signing the same coin for many recipients), transactions are [[Wikipedia:timestamp|timestamped]] by the network with a [[Wikipedia:proof-of-work system|proof-of-work system]]. The network collects and records new transactions into a chain of blocks. Nodes of the network are constantly racing to complete these blocks by finding a value, that summed up with the block and the hash of the previous block, produces an [[Wikipedia:SHA-256|SHA-256]] hash containing a certain amount of leading zero bits. The average work required by this operation can be calculated and used to timestamp the block's transactions, so that they cannot be invalidated by later double-spending.

The incentive to use CPU time for running the system is that new coins are created and assigned to the node that manages to complete the new block first. This method of coin creation "was designed to be a digital analogue to gold and silver mining"<ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/luongo7.1.1.html LewRockwell.com article: The FED’s Real Monetary Problem]</ref>. Once a node successfully creates a block, it broadcasts the block to the network. Other nodes receive the block, perform a proof-of-work check, and add it to their chain if it is valid. As more transactions occur, blocks are created and added ad infinitum. The longest proof-of-work block chain is acknowledged to be the oldest and most reliable account of the transaction history.

This mechanism is claimed<ref name=Whitepaper /> to be virtually tamper-proof. For an attacker to manipulate the record, he must outpace all of the other nodes on the network to produce the longest proof-of-work. This becomes exponentially more difficult as time passes, because such "tampered" chains would continuously be rejected by nodes attempting to build a valid chain.

Bitcoin is a completely peer-to-peer network, and every node is able to enter or leave the network at will. When a node joins the network, the longest proof-of-work is automatically accepted as the most reliable one.

==Economic aspects==

The average rate of Bitcoin production is tapered such that over time the total number of Bitcoins will approach 21,000,000. After this point, no further Bitcoin production is possible. In this environment of limited supply and in situations where large numbers of Bitcoins are either lost or destroyed, the electronic divisibility of Bitcoins is argued to be conducive to downward price adjustments with no practical limitations in the actual storage or transport of Bitcoin value.<ref name=Divisiblity>[http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=44.0 Divisibility of Bitcoins]</ref> Rather than relying on the incentive of newly created Bitcoins to package transactions, nodes in this period will likely depend more heavily on their ability to competitively collect transaction fees to process Bitcoin transactions into blocks.<ref>[http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=165.0 Incentive to Collect Transactions]</ref>

==Monetary and financial benefits==

Given the decentralized nature of Bitcoin and the hard coding of rules within the software, potential users claim various monetary and financial benefits<ref name=FAQ>[http://www.bitcoin.org/faq Bitcoin FAQ]</ref>:

* Direct transfer via the internet without a trusted middleman or financial processor.
* Third parties cannot prevent or control transactions.
* Transactions are practically free.
* Bitcoin value is unconnected to possible instability caused by fractional reserve banking and poor central bank policy (see [[Austrian business cycle theory]]).
* Corrupted transactions created by hacked or modified clients are rejected by honest clients.
* The limited inflation of the Bitcoin system’s money supply is distributed evenly by CPU power throughout the network and programmatically created at a rate known to all parties in advance. Inflation cannot therefore be centrally manipulated to effect redistribution of Bitcoin value from general users.
* Given the predetermined rate of Bitcoin creation, the system is further protected against wild swings in supply due to externalities sometimes seen with traditional commodity currencies (see [[Wikipedia:History_of_the_rupee#The_fall_of_the_Rupee|Fall of the Rupee]] due to large discoveries of silver reserves in the New World).
* Bitcoins are potentially divisible to eight decimal points.<ref name=Divisiblity /> There are therefore no practical limitations to downward price adjustments in a deflationary environment.

According to the author, the design also supports a variety of possible transaction types that have yet to be implemented within the currently available client. These include [[Wikipedia:escrow|escrow]] transactions, [[Wikipedia:surety bond|surety bond]] contracts, third party [[Wikipedia:arbitration|arbitration]], and multi-party signatures.<ref>[http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=195.msg1611#msg1611 Predicate Transactions]</ref>

==Acceptance==

As of august 2010 there are roughly 30 sites accepting payment via Bitcoin<ref name=AcceptingSites>[http://www.bitcoin.org/trade List of sites accepting Bitcoin]</ref>, spanning areas such as [[Wikipedia:VOIP|digital telephony]] services<ref>[http://forum.link2voip.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1088 Link2VoIP (www.link2voip.com) accepts Bitcoin as payment.]</ref>, [[Wikipedia:currency trading|currency trading]] systems<ref>[http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=20.msg747#msg747 Bitcoin Trading System.]</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bitcointo.com/|title=Bitcointo, a Bitcoin to physical goods conversion service}}</ref>, online games<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.atitd.com/|title=A Tale in the Desert IV accepts Bitcoin as payment}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sirarthur.net/bitcasino|title=BitCoin Casino}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thefarwilds.com/|title=The Far Wilds, online game accepting Bitcoin as payment}}</ref>, physical goods<ref>{{cite web|url=http://qextracts.ecrater.com/|title=Quiggle extracts, online apothecary accepting bitcoins as payment}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.theoddshot.com.au/|title=The Odd Shot, a print photography business accepting bitcoins as payment}}</ref>, advertising services<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bitads.tk/|title=Bitads, advertising system accepting Bitcoins as payment}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bitlist.tk/|title=Bitlist, advertising system accepting Bitcoins

==See also==
*[[GoldMoney]]
*[[Wikipedia:Anonymous internet banking|Anonymous internet banking]]
*[[Wikipedia:Crypto-anarchy|Crypto-anarchy]]
*[[Wikipedia:eCache|eCache]]
*[[Wikipedia:HashCash|HashCash]]
*[[Wikipedia:Pecunix|Pecunix]]
*[[Wikipedia:Ripple monetary system|Ripple monetary system]]
*[[Wikipedia:Yodelbank|Yodelbank]]

==References==
{{Reflist|1}}

==Links==
*[http://www.bitcoin.org/ Official website]
*[https://www.bitcoin.org/wiki/doku.php Bitcoin wiki]{{dead link}}
* [http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/ Bitcoin at sourceforge]
*[http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/07/11/1747245/Bitcoin-Releases-Version-03 news.slashdot.org]
*[http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/profiles/blogs/bitcoin-open-source-p2p-ecash p2pfoundation.net]
*''[http://modeledbehavior.com/2010/06/30/bitcoin-and-the-wild-west/ Bitcoin and the Wild West]'', Modeled Behaviour blog.
*[http://dailypaul.com/node/139776 dailypaul.com]
*[http://www.reddit.com/domain/bitcoin.org/ reddit.com]
*[http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/crypto/99100/ Russian blog]
*[http://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/5113340 linux.org.ru]
* [http://lfb.org/today/currencies-of-the-future/ Currencies of the Future] by Douglas French, November 2012
* [https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf Virtual currency schemes] (pdf), ''European Central Bank'', October 2012
* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Alternative Currency‎]]

Costa Rica

2011-03-01T21:47:41Z

Dbabbitt: Added blurbs from http://www.thelibertyunderground.net/2011/03/how-costa-rica-survives-without.html

{{Stub}}

{{Infobox
|Box title = Country summary
|Row 1 title = Capital
|Row 1 info = San Jose
|Row 2 title = Borders
|Row 2 info = [[Nicaragua]] 309 km, [[Panama]] 330 km
|Row 3 title = Government type
|Row 3 info = democratic republic
|Row 4 title = Population
|Row 4 info = 4,253,877 (July 2010 est.)<ref name="CIA_CR">CIA - The World Facebook. [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/countrytemplate_cs.html "Costa Rica"], from The World Facebook. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
|Row 5 title = Population growth
|Row 5 info = 1.356% (2010 est.)<ref name="CIA_CR" />
|Row 6 title = Life expectancy
|Row 6 info = 77.58 years<ref name="CIA_CR" />
|Row 7 title = Unemployment
|Row 7 info = 7.8% (2009 est.)<ref name="CIA_CR" />
|Row 8 title = [[Wikipedia:Index of Economic Freedom|Index of Economic Freedom]]
|Row 8 info = 54<ref name="Heritage_CR">Heritage Foundation. [http://www.heritage.org/Index/Country/CostaRica "Costa Rica"], Economic Freedom Score. A lower ranking is better; but please be careful when comparing between different countries or years. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
|Row 9 title = [[Wikipedia:Corruption Perceptions Index|Corruption Perceptions Index]]
|Row 9 info = 43<ref name="Transparency_CR">Transparency International. [http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009/cpi_2009_table "Costa Rica"], Corruption Perceptions Index 2009. A lower ranking is better; but please note that the numbers cannot be compared between countries or years due to different methodology. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
|Row 10 title = [[Wikipedia:Doing Business Report|Doing Business ranking]]
|Row 10 info = 121<ref name="Business_CR">Doing Business. [http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyrankings/ "Costa Rica"], Doing Business 2010 (part of The World Bank Group). A lower ranking is better; but please be careful when comparing between different countries or years. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
}}

Although explored by the Spanish early in the 16th century, initial attempts at colonizing '''Costa Rica''' proved unsuccessful due to a combination of factors, including: disease from mosquito-infested swamps, brutal heat, resistance by natives, and pirate raids. It was not until 1563 that a permanent settlement of Cartago was established in the cooler, fertile central highlands. The area remained a colony for some two and a half centuries. In 1821, Costa Rica became one of several Central American provinces that jointly declared their independence from Spain. Two years later it joined the United Provinces of Central America, but this federation disintegrated in 1838, at which time Costa Rica proclaimed its sovereignty and independence. Since the late 19th century, only two brief periods of violence have marred the country's democratic development. Although it still maintains a large agricultural sector, Costa Rica has expanded its economy to include strong technology and tourism industries. The standard of living is relatively high. Land ownership is widespread.<ref name="CIA_CR" />

On December 1, 1948, the President of Costa Rica, José Figueres Ferrer, abolished the military of Costa Rica after victory in the civil war in that year, and introduced it in Article 12 of the Costa Rican Constitution. Unlike its neighbors, Nicaragua and Panama, Costa Rica has not endured a civil war since 1948. It does, however, maintain a law enforcement force for internal security, but the country no longer has a permanent standing army. It prefers to devote its resources to education, ecotourism, culture, the protection of its primary resources and land conservation. It's Ministry of Public Security is charged with maintaining national security. Costa Rica is also the first country to have abolished its military.

Costa Rica's primary source of income are tourism, agriculture, and electronics exports. Costa Rica has 4,906 miles of paved high-ways and 17,395 miles of unpaved highways. The United States is Costa Rica's largest trading partner, accounting for 14 percent of its exports and 23 percent of its imports. Moreover, Costa Rica's relative stability and its high literacy rate encourages foreign companies to do business.

Costa Rica's success in creating a stable government, unlike other governments in the region, is attributed a number of factors: educational opportunities, a well-to-do middle class, low infant mortality rates and long life expectancy.

==Economical characteristics==
* '''Currency''': Costa Rican colón (ISO code: CRC)
* Central bank '''[[Wikipedia:Discount rate|discount rate]]''': 25% (31 December 2008)<ref name="CIA_CR" />
* Commercial banks '''lending rate''': 15.83% (31 December 2008)<ref name="CIA_CR" />
* '''Stock of money''' ([[Money supply#M1|M1]]): $4.209 billion (31 December 2008)<ref name="CIA_CR" />
* '''Quasi money''' (with M1 makes [[Money supply#M2|M2]]): $3.143 billion (31 December 2008)<ref name="CIA_CR" />

===Statistics===
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" style="text-align:center"
| Statistic / Year
! 1999
! 2000
! 2001
! 2002
! 2003
! 2004
! 2005
! 2006
! 2007
! 2008
|-
! [[GDP]] (million USD)<ref name="WorldBank_GDP_CR">World Bank. [http://open.worldbank.org/countries/cr/indicators%5BNY.GDP.MKTP.CD%5D?date=1999:2009 "Costa Rica: GDP"], from World Bank [http://data.worldbank.org/ Data]. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
| 15 797
| 15 946
| 16 404
| 16 844
| 17 518
| 18 596
| 19 965
| 22 526
| 26 267
| 29 664
|-
! Govt. debt (% of GDP)<ref name="WorldBank_Debt_CR">World Bank. [http://open.worldbank.org/countries/cr/indicators%5BGC.DOD.TOTL.GD.ZS%5D?date=1999:2009 "Costa Rica: government debt"], from World Bank [http://data.worldbank.org/ Data]. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
| 36.191
| 36.250
| 38.310
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|-
! Govt. revenue (% of GDP)<ref name="WorldBank_Revenue_CR">World Bank. [http://open.worldbank.org/countries/cr/indicators%5BGC.REV.XGRT.GD.ZS%5D?date=1999:2009 "Costa Rica: government revenue"], from World Bank [http://data.worldbank.org/ Data]. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 25.339
|-
! Govt. expenses (% of GDP)<ref name="WorldBank_Expenses_CR">World Bank. [http://open.worldbank.org/countries/cr/indicators%5BGC.XPN.TOTL.GD.ZS%5D?date=1999:2009 "Costa Rica: government expenses"], from World Bank [http://data.worldbank.org/ Data]. Referenced 2010-09-30.</ref>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 22.495
|-
! Debt to revenue (years)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|}

==References==
Note: statistical data was rounded. Different sources may use different methodologies for their estimates. Debt to revenue is calculated by dividing the two variables from their original ('unrounded') values. It represents how long it would a government take to repay its entire debt if it used its whole revenue for this purpose.
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [[Wikipedia:Costa Rica|Costa Rica]] on Wikipedia
* [http://www.bccr.fi.cr Central bank] of Costa Rica
* BBC [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/country_profiles/1166587.stm country profile]
[[Category:Countries]]

Corporatocracy

2010-11-20T19:12:24Z

Dbabbitt: Got the correct version: 397847193

{{wikipedia text||397847193}}
'''Corporatocracy''', in social theories that focus on conflicts and opposing interests within society, denotes a system of government that serves the interest of, and may be run by, corporations and involves ties between government and business. Where corporations, conglomerates, and/or government entities with private components, control the direction and governance of a country, including carrying out economic planning notwithstanding the 'free market' label.<ref>{{cite book|title=Understanding Social Problems|publisher=Cengage Lerning|year=2009|page=256|author8=Linda A. Mooney, David Knox, and Caroline Schacht}}</ref>

==Concept==

The concept of corporatocracy is that corporations, to a significant extent "own" or have massive power over governments, including those governments nominally elected by the people, and that they exercise such power not by back-room conspiracies but by their enormous, concentrated economic power, and by legal in-the-open mechanisms (lobbyists, campaign contributions to office holders and candidates, threats to leave the state or country for another with less oversight and more subsidies etc). As Oliver Stone explained, "Wall Street, you know, you could say... runs the world. Wall Street, the pharmaceutical lobbies, the oil lobbies, they run our government"<ref>[http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/21/academy_award_winning_filmmaker_oliver_stone Academy Award-Winning Filmmaker Oliver Stone Tackles Latin America’s Political Upheaval in "South of the Border", US Financial Crisis in Sequel to Iconic "Wall Street"]</ref>

First, corporations provide financial support to competing political parties and major political party candidates. This allows the corporations to hedge their bets on the outcome of an election so that they are assured to have a winner who is indebted to them. As politicians are increasingly dependent on campaign contributions to become elected, their objectiveness on issues which concern corporate interests is compromised.

Second, in many cases former corporate executives are appointed as powerful decision makers within government institutions. They are often charged with the regulation of their former or future employers. Government employees who collude with corporations often accept high-ranking positions within corporations once they have demonstrated their commitment to serve the corporate interest. These lucrative offers provide incentive for government employees to serve Lobby groups as well as provides their new employers with access to governmental decision makers. This is known as the 'revolving door' between corporations and the institutions established to regulate their behavior; and can lead to regulatory capture.

Finally, the economic regime, while often called 'free market,' involves centralized economic planning and coordination by corporations, with governments playing the role of an assistant to such corporate central planning. Chomsky described this dimension, noting about international trade that "trade" is "a dubious term for a system in which some 40 percent of U.S. trade takes place within companies, centrally managed by the same highly visible hands that control planning, production and investment."<ref>[http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199303--.htm Notes of NAFTA: "The Masters of Man"]</ref> Chomsky also describes the economic regime of the corporatocracy or de factro corporate-run world, citing economists on the centralized coordination and planning underlying the economic sphere:

<blockquote>Herman Daly and Robert Goodland, two World Bank economists, circulated an interesting study: they point out that received economic theory—the standard theory
on which decisions are supposed to be based—pictures a free market sea with tiny little islands of individual firms. These islands, of course, aren't internally free—they're centrally managed. But that's okay, because these are just tiny little islands on the sea. We're supposed to believe that these firms aren't much different than a mom-and-pop store down the street. Daly and Goodland point out that by now the islands are approaching the scale of the sea. A large percentage of cross-border transactions are within a single firm, hardly 'trade' in any meaningful sense. What you have is centrally managed transactions, with a very visible hand—major corporate structures—directing it.<ref>[http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomOdon_GlobEcon.html The new global economy by Noam Chomsky]</ref></blockquote>

==Arguments==

There are currently no governments labeled by any governmental agencies as a corporatocracy. However, a large body of research including the work of many political progressives such as Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism and Noam Chomsky in his book Profit Over People: Neoliberalism & Global Order, has criticized many governments for being ''de facto'' corporatocracies because governments tend to obscure the degree to which corporate interests are entangled in their affairs. An objective standard for declaring a government a corporatocracy is often misdirected from public discussion in-part because these facts are heavily propagandized. However most Western governments based on a capitalist system have been classified by evidential research as being corporatocracies because most media outlets are controlled through corporate ownership and advertising; and, corporations are by far the main contributors to political candidates and causes. Corporate campaign contributions create a dependency of the politician on the corporation - in order to keep his power and wealth (i.e. to continue receiving support for re-election bids), by which they are obliged to "pay back" to the corporation using their political influence. And the domination of media outlets by a select few corporations also eliminates one of the primary systems of checks and balances of a democracy.

Many reporters and researchers have argued that corporations also exert their influence through the World Trade Organisation.<ref>[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5800206429960925518 See the Documentary, "Codex Alimentarius"]</ref> Through this methodology, governments are more in control of their countries at a domestic level, while international corporations rule those nations at a more abstracted level through the control and flow of capital (often including natural resources and populations) across borders; thus creating a manageable and pliable "global corporatocracy" or hegemony.<ref>See Catherine Keller, On The Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process, Fortress Press, Minieapolis, 2008 (page 6-7) [http://books.google.ca/books?id=L2q_eSa_ss8C&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=catherine+keller+on+the+mystery+corporatocracy&source=bl&ots=GKtUcfPvRz&sig=_qPXKADiLkEgwI0c6I4ZSb7loa4&hl=en&ei=_zk4Suj6FNTSlAfbspXnDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1].</ref> This global influence in turn has a great deal of power over the national and trans-national (e.g. the EU, NAFTA) governments, who rely and to a great extent, depend upon these practices.

The most common contradiction of the term "corporatocracy" and its use in the lexicon is the theorem that corporations are primarily superficial entities possessing no real political power. Instead, it is the people behind those corporations that hold the power who act upon their own individual political ideologies. In this sense, a corporatocracy is nothing more than a market segmentation where the class which owns the means for producing wealth is fighting for their own individual-self interests. The direct challenge to this theorem is the fact that a corporation is by definition a 'collection' which is built of private (and more often public) wealth funneled into a vertical hierarchy without the requirement of any democratic controls and designed for the singular cause of maximizing roi (return on investment: i.e. the expansion of the control of capital). And this entity (or institution) has legally been ruled through almost all court systems to be considered a single 'person' and given the inalienable human rights thereto required by most constitutions for human beings. This means that corporations have the ability to use direct democratic channels reserved for citizens (and denied to all other institutions including: religious organizations, non-profits, and universities); and are also represented and protected as an individual within the courts when facing public scrutiny and regulation.<ref>[http://www.thecorporation.com/ The Corporation, 2003]</ref>

====Wealth====

It is also primarily significant that the wealthiest 1 percent globally now own almost 40 percent of the world's capital, and that most of these same people have significant ties to the richest and most influential corporations.
<ref>Sam Pizzigati, [http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3819 Deeply Unequal World] in Foreign Policy in Focus.</ref>
<ref>The United Nations University WIDER study on the, [http://www.wider.unu.edu/events/past-events/2006-events/en_GB/05-12-2006/ World Distribution of Household Wealth].</ref>
<ref>[http://www.iariw.org/papers/2006/davies.pdf The World Distribution of Household Wealth] study by Davies et al.</ref>

====Democracy vs. Corporatocracy====
Alex Carey, the late Australian lecturer in industrial relations, sociology and psychology, wrote that "The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."<ref>[http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/25/006.htmlReview of Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Propaganda in the US and Australia]</ref><ref>[http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/4041 Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda]</ref><ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIk6-4KosE0 Alex Carey Corporations and Propaganda Pt 1]</ref> The Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy states that "Giant corporations govern, even though they are mentioned nowhere in our Constitution or Bill of Rights. So when corporations govern, democracy is nowhere to be found."<ref>[http://www.poclad.org/ POCLAD: Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy]</ref> Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and former Chief Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and Deputy Assistant Attorney General has stated that recent court rulings on increasing corporate power "expand the influence of corporations at the expense of the rights of individuals, and..will not stand the test of time"<ref>[http://www.poclad.org/?pg=Articles Court Decision is "Pearl Harbor for American Democracy"]</ref> Addressing the Harvard Divinity School's Theological Opportunities Program, Mary Zepernick has argued that
"There are two historical streams in U.S. history ..one is about the decentralization of power, public decision-making, self-governance -- about democracy; the other is about the concentration of power, private decision-making, governance by the few and the corporation as their governing institution."<ref>[http://www.poclad.org/?pg=Articles&show=a041021.txt The Impact of Corporations on the Commons ]</ref> According to Christine E. Sleeter:<ref>[http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ825486&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ825486 Teaching for Democracy in an Age of Corporatocracy] by Christine E. Sleeter, Teachers College Record, v110 n1 p139-159 2008, Teachers College, Columbia University.</ref>
<blockquote>A challenge for teachers who support teaching for and about democracy is doing so while being pressed into directives rooted in corporatocracy, a political manifestation of neoliberalism. The accountability movement today, particularly No Child Left Behind, is rooted in much more firmly in corporatocracy than democracy. Democratically minded teachers face two tasks: negotiating increasingly undemocratic systems in order to find space for democratic teaching, and critically examining what democracy is, including gaps between its ideals and actual practice.
</blockquote>

===Buying politicians controversy===

Those who dismiss the idea of a corporatocracy often say the only way it is possible is if it were legal to buy a politician's vote. In such a way, the corporation would, in fact, have a direct vote on major policy matters. However, many legitimate democracies have made vote buying illegal. However, under the terms of at-will employment, corporations can require their employees to vote a certain way in exchange for (continued) employment.<ref>Catherine Keller, On The Mystery, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2008 (chapter 1). [http://books.google.ca/books?id=L2q_eSa_ss8C&pg=PA1&dq=catherine+keller+on+the+mystery+chapter+1]</ref>

However, those who believe there may be corporatocracies argue that no one individual, and perhaps no other groups of individuals, would have that much power, money or influence. Further, they argue the decisions on what to push for and who to support are made by a relatively few from inside the corporation. Therefore, while thousands of people may make up a corporation, only a few have the power to speak for the corporation and advocate issues on behalf of the corporation. That provides those corporations with a substantial amount of power, leading to a corporatocracy.

Further, they argue that it does not take an overt effort to buy a politician's vote. Making a substantial donation to a certain politician's campaign could be seen as sending a signal to that politician that the money is there if they vote in a way the corporation desires. Conversely, the money could be donated to an opponent if the vote does not go the corporation's way.

A politician's entrance into a mainstream political party and selection as a political candidate depend on having views that are in-line with the party, which is largely supported by donations from corporations. In other words, the politicians are pre-screened to some extent, often towards corporate-friendly views. Furthermore, much of the policy analysis in Western countries is carried out in privately funded back offices. This means that policies are under the umbrella of corporations at the design and validation stages. Accusations of foregone conclusions in policy analysis are commonplace. On the flipside, analysis can reveal negative consequences for businesses, which are often negative consequences to the public as well. The definition of democracy in many minds has evolved so much in this direction that when non-corporate-friendly views make their way into government, corruption and/or flawed democracy is a common accusation. For example, the coalition of several populist parties in Venezuela led to the fair election of Hugo Chavez.

==Usage==
*U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself argued against the strengthening corporatocracy in the form of a military-industrial complex that sets national and international financial, economic, political and military policies due to a permanent war economy.

*In his 2004 book ''Confessions of an Economic Hit Man'', John Perkins writes; "corporations, banks, and governments (collectively the corporatocracy)".<ref>John Perkins, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman," page xiii, Berrett-Koehler Publishers (November 9, 2004)</ref>

*The concept of a government run by corporations or instances where governments are actually weaker (politically, financially, and militarily) than corporations is a theme often used in both political fiction and science fiction. In these instances the dominant corporate entity is usually dubbed a megacorporation, such as the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company in ''Final Fantasy VII''.

==See also==
*[[Federal Reserve]]

==Notes==
<references />

==External links==
*John Perkins (author) [http://www.johnperkins.org/?page_id=9 lecture on Corporatocracy]
*Dave Johnson, Huffington Post, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-johnson/monopoly-corporatocracy-r_b_431618.html Monopoly Corporatocracy Replaces Democracy]
*Keith Harrington, Huffington Post, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-harrington/the-bp-spill-corporatocra_b_613734.html The BP Spill: Corporatocracy Ground Zero?]
*John Perkins (author), Huffington Post, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-perkins/battle-the-corporatocracy_b_612954.html?ir=Green Battle the Corporatocracy by Demanding Sustainability]
*Andy Webster, New York Times, [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/movies/15apol.html Thoughts on a ‘Corporatocracy’]
*Prop 14 is 'Corporatocracy' says Green Party candidate, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45I4XfBXCwg&feature=player_embedded Linda Piera-Avila for Santa Monica City Council on issues]
*[http://books.google.com/books?id=1Zb3-2UxHyUC&pg=PT282&dq=Corporatocracy&hl=de&ei=5SceTIrBAdT5_AbUxMGxDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=Corporatocracy&f=false Understanding Social Problems] by Von Linda A. Mooney, David Knox, Caroline Schacht
*[http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ825486&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ825486 Teaching for Democracy in an Age of Corporatocracy] by Christine E. Sleeter, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Corporatocracy

2010-11-20T19:07:20Z

Dbabbitt: Added {{wikipedia text||397180670}}

{{wikipedia text||397180670}}
'''Corporatocracy''', in social theories that focus on conflicts and opposing interests within society, denotes a system of government that serves the interest of, and may be run by, corporations and involves ties between government and business. Where corporations, conglomerates, and/or government entities with private components, control the direction and governance of a country, including carrying out economic planning notwithstanding the 'free market' label.<ref>{{cite book|title=Understanding Social Problems|publisher=Cengage Lerning|year=2009|page=256|author8=Linda A. Mooney, David Knox, and Caroline Schacht}}</ref>

==Concept==

The concept of corporatocracy is that corporations, to a significant extent "own" or have massive power over governments, including those governments nominally elected by the people, and that they exercise such power not by back-room conspiracies but by their enormous, concentrated economic power, and by legal in-the-open mechanisms (lobbyists, campaign contributions to office holders and candidates, threats to leave the state or country for another with less oversight and more subsidies etc). As Oliver Stone explained, "Wall Street, you know, you could say... runs the world. Wall Street, the pharmaceutical lobbies, the oil lobbies, they run our government"<ref>[http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/21/academy_award_winning_filmmaker_oliver_stone Academy Award-Winning Filmmaker Oliver Stone Tackles Latin America’s Political Upheaval in "South of the Border", US Financial Crisis in Sequel to Iconic "Wall Street"]</ref>

First, corporations provide financial support to competing political parties and major political party candidates. This allows the corporations to hedge their bets on the outcome of an election so that they are assured to have a winner who is indebted to them. As politicians are increasingly dependent on campaign contributions to become elected, their objectiveness on issues which concern corporate interests is compromised.

Second, in many cases former corporate executives are appointed as powerful decision makers within government institutions. They are often charged with the regulation of their former or future employers. Government employees who collude with corporations often accept high-ranking positions within corporations once they have demonstrated their commitment to serve the corporate interest. These lucrative offers provide incentive for government employees to serve Lobby groups as well as provides their new employers with access to governmental decision makers. This is known as the 'revolving door' between corporations and the institutions established to regulate their behavior; and can lead to regulatory capture.

Finally, the economic regime, while often called 'free market,' involves centralized economic planning and coordination by corporations, with governments playing the role of an assistant to such corporate central planning. Chomsky described this dimension, noting about international trade that "trade" is "a dubious term for a system in which some 40 percent of U.S. trade takes place within companies, centrally managed by the same highly visible hands that control planning, production and investment."<ref>[http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199303--.htm Notes of NAFTA: "The Masters of Man"]</ref> Chomsky also describes the economic regime of the corporatocracy or de factro corporate-run world, citing economists on the centralized coordination and planning underlying the economic sphere:

<blockquote>Herman Daly and Robert Goodland, two World Bank economists, circulated an interesting study: they point out that received economic theory—the standard theory
on which decisions are supposed to be based—pictures a free market sea with tiny little islands of individual firms. These islands, of course, aren't internally free—they're centrally managed. But that's okay, because these are just tiny little islands on the sea. We're supposed to believe that these firms aren't much different than a mom-and-pop store down the street. Daly and Goodland point out that by now the islands are approaching the scale of the sea. A large percentage of cross-border transactions are within a single firm, hardly 'trade' in any meaningful sense. What you have is centrally managed transactions, with a very visible hand—major corporate structures—directing it.<ref>[http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomOdon_GlobEcon.html The new global economy by Noam Chomsky]</ref></blockquote>

==Arguments==

There are currently no governments labeled by any governmental agencies as a corporatocracy. However, a large body of research including the work of many political progressives such as Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism and Noam Chomsky in his book Profit Over People: Neoliberalism & Global Order, has criticized many governments for being ''de facto'' corporatocracies because governments tend to obscure the degree to which corporate interests are entangled in their affairs. An objective standard for declaring a government a corporatocracy is often misdirected from public discussion in-part because these facts are heavily propagandized. However most Western governments based on a capitalist system have been classified by evidential research as being corporatocracies because most media outlets are controlled through corporate ownership and advertising; and, corporations are by far the main contributors to political candidates and causes. Corporate campaign contributions create a dependency of the politician on the corporation - in order to keep his power and wealth (i.e. to continue receiving support for re-election bids), by which they are obliged to "pay back" to the corporation using their political influence. And the domination of media outlets by a select few corporations also eliminates one of the primary systems of checks and balances of a democracy.

Many reporters and researchers have argued that corporations also exert their influence through the World Trade Organisation.<ref>[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5800206429960925518 See the Documentary, "Codex Alimentarius"]</ref> Through this methodology, governments are more in control of their countries at a domestic level, while international corporations rule those nations at a more abstracted level through the control and flow of capital (often including natural resources and populations) across borders; thus creating a manageable and pliable "global corporatocracy" or hegemony.<ref>See Catherine Keller, On The Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process, Fortress Press, Minieapolis, 2008 (page 6-7) [http://books.google.ca/books?id=L2q_eSa_ss8C&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=catherine+keller+on+the+mystery+corporatocracy&source=bl&ots=GKtUcfPvRz&sig=_qPXKADiLkEgwI0c6I4ZSb7loa4&hl=en&ei=_zk4Suj6FNTSlAfbspXnDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1].</ref> This global influence in turn has a great deal of power over the national and trans-national (e.g. the EU, NAFTA) governments, who rely and to a great extent, depend upon these practices.

The most common contradiction of the term "corporatocracy" and its use in the lexicon is the theorem that corporations are primarily superficial entities possessing no real political power. Instead, it is the people behind those corporations that hold the power who act upon their own individual political ideologies. In this sense, a corporatocracy is nothing more than a market segmentation where the class which owns the means for producing wealth is fighting for their own individual-self interests. The direct challenge to this theorem is the fact that a corporation is by definition a 'collection' which is built of private (and more often public) wealth funneled into a vertical hierarchy without the requirement of any democratic controls and designed for the singular cause of maximizing roi (return on investment: i.e. the expansion of the control of capital). And this entity (or institution) has legally been ruled through almost all court systems to be considered a single 'person' and given the inalienable human rights thereto required by most constitutions for human beings. This means that corporations have the ability to use direct democratic channels reserved for citizens (and denied to all other institutions including: religious organizations, non-profits, and universities); and are also represented and protected as an individual within the courts when facing public scrutiny and regulation.<ref>[http://www.thecorporation.com/ The Corporation, 2003]</ref>

====Wealth====

It is also primarily significant that the wealthiest 1 percent globally now own almost 40 percent of the world's capital, and that most of these same people have significant ties to the richest and most influential corporations.
<ref>Sam Pizzigati, [http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3819 Deeply Unequal World] in Foreign Policy in Focus.</ref>
<ref>The United Nations University WIDER study on the, [http://www.wider.unu.edu/events/past-events/2006-events/en_GB/05-12-2006/ World Distribution of Household Wealth].</ref>
<ref>[http://www.iariw.org/papers/2006/davies.pdf The World Distribution of Household Wealth] study by Davies et al.</ref>

====Democracy vs. Corporatocracy====
Alex Carey, the late Australian lecturer in industrial relations, sociology and psychology, wrote that "The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."<ref>[http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/25/006.htmlReview of Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Propaganda in the US and Australia]</ref><ref>[http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/4041 Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda]</ref><ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIk6-4KosE0 Alex Carey Corporations and Propaganda Pt 1]</ref> The Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy states that "Giant corporations govern, even though they are mentioned nowhere in our Constitution or Bill of Rights. So when corporations govern, democracy is nowhere to be found."<ref>[http://www.poclad.org/ POCLAD: Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy]</ref> Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and former Chief Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and Deputy Assistant Attorney General has stated that recent court rulings on increasing corporate power "expand the influence of corporations at the expense of the rights of individuals, and..will not stand the test of time"<ref>[http://www.poclad.org/?pg=Articles Court Decision is "Pearl Harbor for American Democracy"]</ref> Addressing the Harvard Divinity School's Theological Opportunities Program, Mary Zepernick has argued that
"There are two historical streams in U.S. history ..one is about the decentralization of power, public decision-making, self-governance -- about democracy; the other is about the concentration of power, private decision-making, governance by the few and the corporation as their governing institution."<ref>[http://www.poclad.org/?pg=Articles&show=a041021.txt The Impact of Corporations on the Commons ]</ref> According to Christine E. Sleeter:<ref>[http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ825486&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ825486 Teaching for Democracy in an Age of Corporatocracy] by Christine E. Sleeter, Teachers College Record, v110 n1 p139-159 2008, Teachers College, Columbia University.</ref>
<blockquote>A challenge for teachers who support teaching for and about democracy is doing so while being pressed into directives rooted in corporatocracy, a political manifestation of neoliberalism. The accountability movement today, particularly No Child Left Behind, is rooted in much more firmly in corporatocracy than democracy. Democratically minded teachers face two tasks: negotiating increasingly undemocratic systems in order to find space for democratic teaching, and critically examining what democracy is, including gaps between its ideals and actual practice.
</blockquote>

===Buying politicians controversy===

Those who dismiss the idea of a corporatocracy often say the only way it is possible is if it were legal to buy a politician's vote. In such a way, the corporation would, in fact, have a direct vote on major policy matters. However, many legitimate democracies have made vote buying illegal. However, under the terms of at-will employment, corporations can require their employees to vote a certain way in exchange for (continued) employment.<ref>Catherine Keller, On The Mystery, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2008 (chapter 1). [http://books.google.ca/books?id=L2q_eSa_ss8C&pg=PA1&dq=catherine+keller+on+the+mystery+chapter+1]</ref>

However, those who believe there may be corporatocracies argue that no one individual, and perhaps no other groups of individuals, would have that much power, money or influence. Further, they argue the decisions on what to push for and who to support are made by a relatively few from inside the corporation. Therefore, while thousands of people may make up a corporation, only a few have the power to speak for the corporation and advocate issues on behalf of the corporation. That provides those corporations with a substantial amount of power, leading to a corporatocracy.

Further, they argue that it does not take an overt effort to buy a politician's vote. Making a substantial donation to a certain politician's campaign could be seen as sending a signal to that politician that the money is there if they vote in a way the corporation desires. Conversely, the money could be donated to an opponent if the vote does not go the corporation's way.

A politician's entrance into a mainstream political party and selection as a political candidate depend on having views that are in-line with the party, which is largely supported by donations from corporations. In other words, the politicians are pre-screened to some extent, often towards corporate-friendly views. Furthermore, much of the policy analysis in Western countries is carried out in privately funded back offices. This means that policies are under the umbrella of corporations at the design and validation stages. Accusations of foregone conclusions in policy analysis are commonplace. On the flipside, analysis can reveal negative consequences for businesses, which are often negative consequences to the public as well. The definition of democracy in many minds has evolved so much in this direction that when non-corporate-friendly views make their way into government, corruption and/or flawed democracy is a common accusation. For example, the coalition of several populist parties in Venezuela led to the fair election of Hugo Chavez.

==Usage==
*U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself argued against the strengthening corporatocracy in the form of a military-industrial complex that sets national and international financial, economic, political and military policies due to a permanent war economy.

*In his 2004 book ''Confessions of an Economic Hit Man'', John Perkins writes; "corporations, banks, and governments (collectively the corporatocracy)".<ref>John Perkins, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman," page xiii, Berrett-Koehler Publishers (November 9, 2004)</ref>

*The concept of a government run by corporations or instances where governments are actually weaker (politically, financially, and militarily) than corporations is a theme often used in both political fiction and science fiction. In these instances the dominant corporate entity is usually dubbed a megacorporation, such as the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company in ''Final Fantasy VII''.

==See also==
*[[Federal Reserve]]

==Notes==
<references />

==External links==
*John Perkins (author) [http://www.johnperkins.org/?page_id=9 lecture on Corporatocracy]
*Dave Johnson, Huffington Post, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-johnson/monopoly-corporatocracy-r_b_431618.html Monopoly Corporatocracy Replaces Democracy]
*Keith Harrington, Huffington Post, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-harrington/the-bp-spill-corporatocra_b_613734.html The BP Spill: Corporatocracy Ground Zero?]
*John Perkins (author), Huffington Post, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-perkins/battle-the-corporatocracy_b_612954.html?ir=Green Battle the Corporatocracy by Demanding Sustainability]
*Andy Webster, New York Times, [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/movies/15apol.html Thoughts on a ‘Corporatocracy’]
*Prop 14 is 'Corporatocracy' says Green Party candidate, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45I4XfBXCwg&feature=player_embedded Linda Piera-Avila for Santa Monica City Council on issues]
*[http://books.google.com/books?id=1Zb3-2UxHyUC&pg=PT282&dq=Corporatocracy&hl=de&ei=5SceTIrBAdT5_AbUxMGxDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=Corporatocracy&f=false Understanding Social Problems] by Von Linda A. Mooney, David Knox, Caroline Schacht
*[http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ825486&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ825486 Teaching for Democracy in an Age of Corporatocracy] by Christine E. Sleeter, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Anarcho-capitalism

2010-11-20T19:05:50Z

Dbabbitt: Linkified Corporatocracy

{{wikipedia text|}}

'''Anarcho-capitalism''' (also known as “libertarian anarchy”<ref name=Stringham268>Edward Stringham, ''Anarchy and the law: the political economy of choice,'' Transaction Publishers, 2007, [http://books.google.com/books?id=nft4e62nicsC&pg=PA268&dq=libertarian+anarchy&hl=en&ei=vu9iTNyROYSclge9_ImiCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=libertarian%20anarchy&f=false p. 268], ISBN 1412805791, 9781412805797</ref><ref name=Friedman>David D. Friedman, ''The machinery of freedom: guide to a radical capitalism'', Edition 2, Open Court, 1995, [http://books.google.com/books?id=L_3I21lGS90C&q=anarcho-capitalism+libertarian&dq=anarcho-capitalism+libertarian&hl=en&ei=_d9iTJYMhIGUB-GQ9LYP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA p. 19] ISBN 0812690699, 9780812690699</ref> or “market anarchism”<ref>Roderick T. Long, Tibor R. Machan, ''Anarchism/minarchism: is a government part of a free country?,'' Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2008, [http://books.google.com/books?id=PUev30VZ04kC&pg=PR7&dq=anarcho-capitalism+libertarian&hl=en&ei=DtNiTMzdOIWBlAeZmIiTCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=anarcho-capitalism%20libertarian&f=false Preface], ISBN0754660664, 9780754660668</ref> or “free market anarchism”<ref name=Stringham504>Edward Stringham, ''Anarchy and the law: the political economy of choice,'' [http://books.google.com/books?id=nft4e62nicsC&pg=PA504&dq=anarcho-capitalism+market+anarchism&hl=en&ei=PuBiTOv3MMX7lwfQxc2DAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=anarcho-capitalism%20market%20anarchism&f=false p. 504]</ref>) is a [[libertarianism|libertarian]]<ref>Ronald Hamowy, Editor, ''The encyclopedia of libertarianism,'' SAGE, 2008, [http://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC&pg=PT50&dq=anarcho-capitalism+libertarian&hl=en&ei=guxiTNrmIMP7lweDmPC1Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=anarcho-capitalism%20libertarian&f=false p 10-12], [http://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC&pg=PT50&dq=anarcho-capitalism+libertarian&hl=en&ei=guxiTNrmIMP7lweDmPC1Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=radical%20%20libertarian&f=false p 195], ISBN1412965802, 9781412965804</ref><ref name=Stringham51>Edward Stringham, ''Anarchy and the law: the political economy of choice,'' [http://books.google.com/books?id=nft4e62nicsC&pg=PA51&dq=anarcho-capitalism+libertarian&hl=en&ei=R9JiTMCQOYH6lwfGw-SICg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=anarcho-capitalism%20libertarian&f=false p 51]</ref> and [[individualist anarchism|individualist anarchist]]<ref>Adams, Ian. 2002. Political Ideology Today. p. 135. Manchester University Press; Ostergaard, Geoffrey. 2003. Anarchism. In W. Outwaite (Ed.), ''The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought''. p. 14. [[Blackwell Publishing]]</ref> [[political philosophy]] that advocates the elimination of the [[state (polity)|state]] in favor of [[sovereign individual|individual sovereignty]] in a [[free market]]. Economist [[Murray Rothbard]] is credited with coining the term.<ref>Roberta Modugno Crocetta, [http://mises.org/journals/scholar/roberta.pdf Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism in the contemporary debate. A critical defense], [[Ludwig Von Mises Institute]].</ref><ref>Michael Oliver, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard103.html 'Exclusive Interview With Murray Rothbard], originally published in "The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal", February 25, 1972.</ref> In an anarcho-capitalist society, [[Police|law enforcement]], [[court]]s, and all other security services would be provided by voluntarily-funded competitors such as [[private defense agencies]] rather than through [[tax]]ation, and [[money]] would be [[free banking|privately and competitively provided]] in an open market. According to anarcho-capitalists, personal and [[economic]] activities would be regulated by the [[natural law]]s of the [[market]] and through [[private law]] rather than through [[politics]]. Furthermore, [[victimless crime]]s and [[crime]]s against the state would not exist.

Anarcho-capitalists argue for a society based on the voluntary trade of [[private property]] and [[Service (economics)|services]] (including money, consumer goods, land, and capital goods) in order to maximize individual liberty and prosperity. However, they also recognize [[Charity (practice)|charity]] and communal arrangements as part of the same voluntary ethic.<ref>Hess, Karl. [http://fare.tunes.org/books/Hess/dop.html The Death of Politics]. Interview in Playboy Magazine, March 1969</ref> Though anarcho-capitalists are known for asserting a right to private (individualized or joint non-public) property, some propose that non-state public or community property can also exist in an anarcho-capitalist society.<ref name="Holcombe"/> For them, what is important is that it is acquired and transferred without help or hindrance from the compulsory [[Sovereign state|state]]. Anarcho-capitalist [[Libertarianism|libertarians]] believe that the only just, and/or most economically-beneficial, way to acquire property is through voluntary [[trade]], gift, or labor-based [[homestead principle (ethics)|original appropriation]], rather than through aggression or fraud.<ref>[[Paul Avrich|Avrich, Paul]]. ''Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Abridged Paperback Edition (1996), p. 282</ref>

Anarcho-capitalists see [[free-market]] [[capitalism]] as the basis for a free and prosperous society. [[Murray Rothbard]] said 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.<ref>Rothbard, Murray N., [http://www.mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1559 A Future of Peace and Capitalism]; Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.mises.org/article.aspx?control=910 Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty].</ref> "Capitalism," as anarcho-capitalists employ the term, is not to be confused with [[state monopoly capitalism]], [[crony capitalism]], [[Corporatocracy|corporatism]], or contemporary [[mixed economies]], wherein natural market incentives and disincentives are skewed by state intervention.<ref>Adams, Ian. Political Ideology Today. Manchester University Press 2001. p. 33</ref> So they reject the state, based on the belief that states are aggressive entities which steal property (through [[taxation]] and [[expropriation]]), initiate aggression, are a compulsory monopoly on the use of force, use their coercive powers to benefit some businesses and individuals at the expense of others, create monopolies, restrict [[trade]], and restrict personal freedoms via [[drug laws]], [[compulsory education]], [[conscription]], laws on food and morality, and the like. The embrace of unfettered [[capitalism]] leads to considerable tension between anarcho-capitalists and many [[social anarchists]] that view [[capitalism]] and its [[market]] as just another authority. Anti-capitalist anarchists generally consider anarcho-capitalism a contradiction in terms.<ref>[[David Weick]], ''Anarchist Justice'', pp. 223-224; [[Peter Sabatini]], ''Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy''; Kropotkin, ''Anarchism'';</ref>

==Philosophy==
===Varieties of anarcho-capitalism===
[[File:600pxanarchocapitalismsymbol.png|100px|right|"Circle-A" anarchy symbol with dollar sign]]Various theorists have differing, though similar, legal philosophies which are considered to fall under "anarcho-capitalism." The first well-known version of anarcho-capitalism was formulated by [[Austrian School]] [[economist]] and [[libertarian]] [[Murray Rothbard]] in the mid-twentieth century, synthesizing elements from the [[Austrian School|Austrian School of economics]], [[classical liberalism]], and nineteenth century American [[individualist anarchist]]s [[Lysander Spooner]] and [[Benjamin Tucker]] (rejecting their [[labor theory of value]] and the normative implications they derived from it).<ref>"A student and disciple of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, rothbard combined the laissez-faire economics of his teacher with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the nineteenth century such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker." Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought, 1987, ISBN 0-631-17944-5, p. 290</ref> In Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism, there would first be the implementation of a mutually agreed-upon libertarian "legal code which would be generally accepted, and which the courts would pledge themselves to follow."<ref>Rothbard, Murray. For A New Liberty. [http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newliberty11.asp 12 The Public Sector, III: Police, Law, and the Courts]</ref> This legal code would recognize [[sovereignty of the individual]] and the [[non-aggression principle|principle of non-aggression]]. However, in [[David D. Friedman]]'s anarcho-capitalism, "the systems of law will be produced for profit on the open market",<ref name = "koltwm">Friedman, David. ''The Machinery of Freedom''. Second edition. La Salle, Ill, Open Court, pp. 116–117.</ref> which he believes would lead to a generally libertarian society if not an absolute one.

Rothbard bases his philosophy on absolutist [[natural law]] grounds but also gives economic explanations of why he thinks anarcho-capitalism is preferable on pragmatic grounds. Friedman says he is not an absolutist rights theorist but is also "not a utilitarian", however, he does believe that "utilitarian arguments are usually the best way to defend libertarian views".<ref>Friedman, David D. The Machinery of Freedom. Chapter 42</ref> [[Peter Leeson]] argues that "the case for anarchy derives its strength from empirical evidence, not theory."<ref>Leeson, Peter. "Anarchy Unbound; Or, Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think." ''[[Cato Institute]]'', August 6, 2007. [http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/08/06/peter-t-leeson/anarchy-unbound-or-why-self-governance-works-better-than-you-think/ Cato-Unbound.org]</ref> [[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]], meanwhile, uses "[[discourse ethics#Libertarian approaches|argumentation ethics]]" for his foundation of "private property anarchism",<ref>[http://www.hanshoppe.com/sel-topics.php#arg-ethics Hans-Hermann Hoppe "Argumentation Ethics"]. Retrieved 6 February 2007. {{Wayback | url=http://www.hanshoppe.com/sel-topics.php#arg-ethics  | date=20061213035545 }}</ref> which is closer to Rothbard's natural law approach.

===Nonaggression axiom===
{{Main|self-ownership|non-aggression axiom}}

{{quotation|"I define [[anarchist]] society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights." -[[Murray Rothbard]] in ''Society and State''}}
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[[Murray Rothbard]] used the term ''anarcho-capitalism'' to distinguish his philosophy from anarchism that opposes private property,<ref>libertarianism. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 30 July 2007, from [http://search.eb.com/eb/article-234237 Encyclopædia Britannica Online]</ref> as well as to distinguish it from other forms of individualist anarchism.<ref name="autogenerated1">Murray Newton Rothbard Egalitarianism As A Revolt Against Nature And Other Essays: and other essays. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000. p.207</ref> Other terms sometimes used for this philosophy, though not necessarily outside anarcho-capitalist circles, include:
*anti-state capitalism
*anti-state marketism
*anarcho-liberalism<ref>Andrew Rutten. "Can Anarchy Save Us from Leviathan?" in ''The Independent Review'' vol. 3 nr. 4 p. 581. [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=1382637655942625437 Scholar.Google.com], [http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_03_4_rutten.pdf Independent.org] "He claims that the only consistent liberal is an anarcho-liberal."</ref>
*capitalist anarchism
*market anarchism
*free market anarchism
*individualist anarchism<ref>"Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995), American economist, historian, and individualist anarchist." [[Paul Avrich|Avrich, Paul]]. Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Abridged Paperback Edition (1996), p. 282 "Although there are many honorable exceptions who still embrace the "socialist" label, most people who call themselves individualist anarchists today are followers of Murray Rothbard's Austrian economics, and have abandoned the labor theory of value." [[Kevin Carson|Carson, Kevin]]. Mutualist Political Economy, [http://www.mutualist.org/id112.html Preface].</ref>
*natural order<ref name="Hoppe-2001"/>
*ordered anarchy<ref name="Hoppe-2001"/>
*polycentric law
*the private-law society<ref name="Hoppe-2001"/>
*private-property anarchy<ref name="Hoppe-2001">[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe|Hoppe, Hans-Hermann]] (2001)[http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe5.html "Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography"] Retrieved 23 May 2005</ref>
*pure capitalism
*radical capitalism<ref name="Hoppe-2001"/>
*stateless capitalism
*stateless society
*stateless liberalism
*voluntaryism
|}

Anarcho-capitalism, as formulated by Rothbard and others, holds strongly to the central [[libertarian]] ''nonaggression axiom'':

:[...] The basic axiom of libertarian political theory holds that every man is a [[self-ownership|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 "[[Homestead principle (ethics)|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.<ref>Rothbard, Murray N. (1982) [http://www.mises.org/rothbard/lawproperty.pdf "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution"] Cato Journal 2, No. 1 (Spring 1982): pp. 55–99. Retrieved 20 May 2005</ref>

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 the other alternative, that no single person has full ownership 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, independent of place and time. The only alternative that remains to Rothbard is self-ownership, which he believes is both axiomatic and universal.<ref name="Rothbard-1982.2">Rothbard, Murray N. (1982) [http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp ''The Ethics of Liberty''] Humanities Press ISBN 0-8147-7506-3:p162 Retrieved 20 May 2005</ref>

In general, the nonaggression axiom can be said to be a prohibition against the initiation of force, or the threat of force, against persons (i.e., direct violence, [[assault]], [[murder]]) or property (i.e., fraud, [[burglary]], theft, taxation).<ref>Rothbard, Murray N. (1973) [http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newliberty.asp ''For a new Liberty''] Collier Books, A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York: pp.24–25. Retrieved 20 May 2005</ref> 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 most people involved in [[List of libertarian political parties|libertarian political parties]], would retain the state in some smaller and less invasive form, retaining at the very least public [[police]], [[court]]s and [[military]]; others, however, might give further allowance for other government programs. In contrast, anarcho-capitalists reject any level of state intervention, defining the state as a [[coercive monopoly]] and, as the only entity in human society that derives its income from legal aggression, an entity that inherently violates the central axiom of libertarianism.<ref name="Rothbard-1982.2"/>

Some anarcho-capitalists, such as Rothbard, accept the nonaggression axiom on an intrinsic moral or [[natural law]] basis. It is in terms of the non-aggression principle that Rothbard defined [[anarchism]]; he defined "anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression ['against person and property']" and said that "what anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the State, i.e. to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion."<ref>Rothbard, Murray N. (1975) [http://www.mises.org/journals/lf/1975/1975_01.pdf ''Society Without A State (pdf)''] ''Libertarian Forum'' newsletter (January 1975)</ref> In an interview with ''New Banner'', Rothbard said that "capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism."<ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard103.html ''Exclusive Interview With Murray Rothbard''] The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal (25 February 1972)</ref>

===Property===
====Private property====
Central to anarcho-capitalism are the concepts of [[self-ownership]] and [[homestead principle (ethics)|original appropriation]]:

<blockquote>Everyone is the proper owner of his own physical body as well as of all places and nature-given goods that he occupies and puts to use by means of his body, provided only that no one else has already occupied or used the same places and goods before 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, provided only that he does not change thereby uninvitedly the physical integrity of places and goods originally appropriated by another person. In particular, once a place or good has been first 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 title from a previous to a later owner.<ref name="Hoppe-2002">Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (2002) [http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe7.html "Rothbardian Ethics"] Retrieved 23 May 2005</ref></blockquote>

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Anarcho-capitalism uses the following terms in ways that may differ from common usage or various anarchist movements.
*'''Anarchism:''' any philosophy that opposes all forms of initiatory coercion (includes opposition to the State)
*'''Contract:''' a voluntary binding agreement between persons
*'''Coercion:''' physical force or threat of such against persons or property
*'''Capitalism:''' economic system where the means of production are privately owned, and where investments, production, distribution, income, and prices are determined through the operation of a free market rather than by government
*'''Free market:''' a market where all decisions regarding transfer of money, goods (including capital goods), and services are voluntary
*'''Fraud:''' inducing one to part with something of value through the use of dishonesty
*'''State:''' an organization that taxes and engages in regularized and institutionalized aggressive coercion
*'''Voluntary:''' any action not influenced by coercion or fraud perpetrated by any human agency
|}

This is the root of anarcho-capitalist [[property rights]], and where they differ from [[collectivism|collectivist]] forms of anarchism such as [[anarcho-communism]] where the means of production are controlled by the whole community and the product of labor is collectivized in a pool of goods and distributed "according to need." Anarcho-capitalists advocate individual or joint (i.e. ''private'') ownership of the means of production and the product of labor regardless of what the individual "needs" or does not need. As Rothbard says, "if every man has the right to own his own body and if he must use and transform material natural objects in order to survive, then he has the right to own the product that he has made." After property is created through labor it may then only exchange hands legitimately by trade or gift; forced transfers are considered illegitimate. 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 his own body. 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 – 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 notes that the resource need not ''continue'' to be used in order for it to be the person's property, "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."<ref name="Rothbard-1962">[[Rothbard, Murray N.]] (1962) [http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap2d.asp] ''[[Man, Economy & State]] with [[Power and Market]]'' [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] ISBN 0-945466-30-7 ch2 Retrieved 19 May 2005</ref> As a practical matter, in terms of the ownership of land, anarcho-capitalists recognize that there are few (if any) parcels of land left on Earth whose ownership was not at some point in time obtained in violation of the homestead principle, through seizure by the state or put in private hands with the assistance of the state. Rothbard says,

<blockquote>It is not enough to call simply for 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.<ref name="autogenerated1" /></blockquote>

Rothbard says in "Justice and Property Right" that "any identifiable owner (the original victim of theft or his heir) must be accorded his property." In the case of slavery, Rothbard says 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." He believes slaves rightfully own any land they were forced to work on under the "[[homestead principle (ethics)|homestead principle]]". If property is held by the state, Rothbard advocates its confiscation and return to the private sector: "any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible." For example, he proposes that [[State university|State universities]] be seized by the students and faculty under the homestead principle. Rothbard also supports expropriation of nominally "private property" if it is the result of state-initiated force, such as businesses who receive grants and subsidies. He proposes that businesses who receive at least 50% of their funding from the state be confiscated by the workers. He says, "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." Likewise, Karl Hess says, "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."<ref>Hess, Karl (1969) ''[http://mises.org/journals/lf/1969/1969_06_15.pdf Letter From Washington]'' The Libertatian Forum Vol. I, No. VI (15 June 1969) Retrieved 5 August 2006</ref> By accepting an axiomatic definition of private property and property rights, anarcho-capitalists deny the legitimacy of a state on principle:

:"For, apart from 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 of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) and/or the right to tax."<ref name="Hoppe-2002"/>

=====Intellectual property=====
The positions on [[intellectual property]] vary according to the anarcho-capitalist theorist. Libertarian views range from support for all, to opposition to all intellectual property rights.<ref name="autogenerated2">Kinsella, Stephen. [http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf Against Intellectual Property]. Journal of Libertarian Studies. Volume 15, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 1–53</ref> Rothbard argues that [[patents]] are coercive monopolistic privileges granted by the state, and says they would not exist in a free society, because they prohibit individuals from independently coming up with the same invention. On the other hand, he holds that [[copyrights]] are in some situations compatible with a free society. His argument is that when a copyright notice is on a piece of literary work this is a signal that the creator of the work does not consent to anyone to using it unless they agree not to copy it, hence if it is used this constitutes a contract.<ref>Rothbard, Murray. Man, Economy & State. [http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap10e.asp#7._Patents_Copyrights Mises.org]</ref> Anarcho-capitalist [[Stephan Kinsella]]<ref>Kinsella, Stephan. [http://www.lewrockwell.com/kinsella/kinsella15.html What It Means to Be an Anarcho-capitalist]. 2004 LewRockwell.com</ref> opposes both patent and copyright intellectual property.<ref name="autogenerated2" />

====Common property====
Though anarcho-capitalists assert a right to private property, some anarcho-capitalists also point out that common, i.e. community, property can exist by right in an anarcho-capitalist system. Just as an individual comes to own that which was unowned by mixing his labor with it or using it regularly, a whole community or society can come to own a thing in common by mixing their labor with it collectively, meaning that no individual may appropriate it as his own. This may apply to roads, parks, rivers, and portions of oceans.<ref name="Holcombe">Holcombe, Randall G., [http://mises.org/journals/jls/19_2/19_2_1.pdf Common Property in Anarcho-Capitalism], Journal of Libertarian Studies, Volume 19, No. 2 (Spring 2005):3–29.</ref> Anarcho-capitalist theorist [[Roderick Long]] gives the following example:

:"Consider a village near a lake. It is common for the villagers to walk down to the lake to go fishing. In the early days of the community it's hard to get to the lake because of all the bushes and fallen branches in the way. But over time the way is cleared and a path forms — not through any coordinated efforts, but simply as a result of all the individuals walking by that way day after day. The cleared path is the product of labor — not any individual's labor, but all of them together. If one villager decided to take advantage of the now-created path by setting up a gate and charging tolls, he would be violating the collective property right that the villagers together have earned."<ref>Long, Roderick T. 199. "A Plea for Public Property." Formulations 5, no. 3 (Spring)</ref>

Nevertheless, since property that is owned collectively tends to lose the level of accountability found in individual ownership to the extent of the number of owners — or make such accountability proportionately more complex, anarcho-capitalists generally distrust and seek to avoid intentional [[communal]] arrangements. [[Privatization]], [[decentralization]], and individualization are often anarcho-capitalist goals. But in some cases, they not only provide a challenge, but are considered next to impossible. Established ocean routes, for example, are generally seen as unavailable for private appropriation.

Anarcho-capitalists tend to concur with [[Free-market environmentalism|free-market environmentalists]] regarding the environmentally destructive tendencies of the state and other communal arrangements. Air, water, and land [[pollution]], for example, are seen as the result of collectivization of ownership. Central governments generally strike down individual or [[class action]] censure of polluters in order to benefit "the many", and legal or economic [[subsidy]] of [[heavy industry]] is justified by many [[politician]]s for [[job creation]] within a political territory.

===Contractual society===
[[Image:Althing-stamp.jpg|200px|thumb|right|A postage stamp celebrating the thousandth anniversary of the [[Althing|Icelandic parliament]]. According to a theory associated with the economist [[David D. Friedman|David Friedman]], [[Icelandic Commonwealth|medieval Icelandic society]] had some features of anarcho-capitalism. Chieftaincies could be bought and sold, and were not geographical monopolies; individuals could voluntarily choose membership in any chieftain's clan.]]

The society envisioned by anarcho-capitalists has been called the ''Contractual Society'' – "... a society based purely on voluntary action, entirely unhampered by violence or threats of violence."<ref name="Rothbard-1962"/> – in which anarcho-capitalists assert the system relies on voluntary agreements ([[contract]]s) between individuals as the legal framework. It is difficult to predict precisely what the particulars of this society will look like because of the details and complexities of contracts.

One particular ramification is that transfer of property and services must be considered voluntary on the part of ''both'' parties. No external entities can force an individual to accept or deny a particular transaction. An employer might offer [[insurance]] and [[Bereavement benefit|death benefits]] to [[same-sex marriage|same-sex couples]]; another might refuse to recognize any union outside his or her own faith. Individuals are free to enter into or reject contractual agreements as they see fit.

Rothbard points out that corporations would exist in a free society, as they are simply the pooling of capital. He says limited liability for corporations could also exist through contract: "Corporations are not at all monopolistic privileges; they are free associations of individuals pooling their capital. On the purely free market, such men would simply announce to their creditors that their liability is limited to the capital specifically invested in the corporation ...."<ref name="Rothbard-1962"/>

Corporations created in this way would not, however, be able 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 himself acknowledges that "limited liability for torts is the illegitimate conferring of a special privilege"<ref>Rothbard, Murray N. (1962) Man, Economy & State with Power and Market, [http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap15d.asp#_ftn11 Mises.org]</ref>

There are limits to the right to contract under some interpretations of anarcho-capitalism. Rothbard himself asserts that the right to contract is based in [[inalienable rights|inalienable human rights]]<ref name="Rothbard-1982.2"/> and therefore any contract that implicitly violates those rights can be voided at will, which would, for instance, prevent a person from permanently selling himself or herself into unindentured [[slavery]]. Other interpretations conclude that banning such contracts would in itself be an unacceptably invasive interference in the right to contract.<ref name="Nozick-1973">[[Robert Nozick|Nozick, Robert]] (1973) ''Anarchy, State, and Utopia''</ref>

Included in the right of contract is the right to contract oneself out for employment by others. Unlike anarcho-communists, anarcho-capitalists support the liberty of individuals to be self-employed or to contract to be employees of others, whichever they prefer and the freedom to pay and receive wages. Some anarcho-capitalists prefer to see self-employment prevail over wage labor. For example, David Friedman has expressed 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."<ref>Friedman, David. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism. Harper & Row. pp. 144–145</ref> Others, such as Rothbard, do not express a preference either way but justify employment as a natural occurrence in a free market that is not immoral in any way.

===Law and order and the use of violence===
Different anarcho-capitalists propose different forms of anarcho-capitalism, and one area of disagreement is in the area of law. Morris and Linda Tannehill, in ''[[The Market for Liberty]]'', object to any [[statute|statutory]] law whatsoever. They assert that all one has to do is ask if one is aggressing against another (see [[tort]] and [[contract]] law) in order to decide if an act is right or wrong.<ref>Brown, Susan Love, ''The Free Market as Salvation from Government: The Anarcho-Capitalist View'', Meanings of the Market: The Free Market in Western Culture, edited by James G. Carrier, Berg/Oxford, 1997, p. 113.</ref> However, Murray Rothbard, while also supporting a natural prohibition on force and fraud, supports the establishment of a mutually agreed-upon centralized [[libertarian]] legal code which private courts would pledge to follow. Such a code for Internet commerce, called ''The Common Economic Protocols'' was developed by Andre Goldman.

Unlike both the Tannehills and Rothbard who see an [[ideological]] commonality of [[ethics]] and [[morality]] as a requirement, David 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."<ref name = "koltwm"/> Friedman says whether this would lead to a libertarian society "remains to be proven." He says it is a possibility that very unlibertarian 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."<ref>Friedman, David. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism. Harper & Row. pp. 127–128</ref>

Anarcho-capitalists only accept 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. But, 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, 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 morally superior about the state which would grant it, but not private individuals, a right to use physical force to restrain aggressors. Also, if competition in security provision were allowed to exist, prices would be lower and services would be better according to anarcho-capitalists. According to Molinari, "Under a regime of liberty, the natural organization of the security industry would not be different from that of other industries."<ref name="Molinari-1849">Molinari, Gustave de (1849) [http://praxeology.net/GM-PS.htm The Production of Security] ''(trans. J. Huston McCulloch)'.' Retrieved 15 July 2006.</ref> Proponents point out that private systems of justice and defense ''already'' exist, naturally forming where the market is allowed to compensate for the failure of the state: private arbitration, security guards, neighborhood watch groups, and so on.<ref name="Friedman-1973">[[David D. Friedman|Friedman, David D.]] (1973) ''[[The Machinery of Freedom|The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism]]'' Harper & Row ISBN 0-06-091010-0 [http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_29.html ch29]</ref> These private courts and police are sometimes referred to generically as [[Private defense agency|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 coercive taxation, or by cooperative self-help by groups of individuals.<ref>Rothbard, Murray N. (1973) [http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newliberty.asp ''For a new Liberty''] Collier Books, A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York: pp.223. Retrieved 5 August 2006.</ref>

[[Image:The death of general warren at the battle of bunker hill.jpg|thumb|right|[[Murray Rothbard]] admired the [[American Revolution]] and believed it is the only U.S. war that can be justified.]]

Like classical liberalism, and unlike [[anarcho-pacifism]], anarcho-capitalism permits the use of force, as long as it is in the defense of persons or property. The permissible extent of this defensive use of force is an arguable point among anarcho-capitalists. [[Retributive justice]], meaning retaliatory force, is often a component of the contracts imagined for an anarcho-capitalist society. Some believe [[prison]]s or [[indentured servitude]] would be justifiable institutions to deal with those who violate anarcho-capitalist property relations, while others believe [[exile]] or forced [[restitution]] are sufficient.<ref>O'Keeffe, Matthew (1989) [http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/legan/legan005.pdf "Retribution versus Restitution"] Legal Notes No.5, Libertarian Alliance ISBN 1-870614-22-4 Retrieved 19 May 2005</ref>

[[Bruce L. Benson]] notes that, in the interest of deterring crime, legal codes may impose punitive damages for intentional torts. For instance, a thief who breaks into a house by picking a lock and is caught before taking anything would still owe the victim for violating the sanctity of his property rights. Benson opines that, despite the lack of objectively measurable losses in such cases, "standardized rules that are generally perceived to be fair by members of the community would, in all likelihood, be established through precedent, allowing judgments to specify payments that are reasonably appropriate for most criminal offenses."<ref>{{cite book|last=Benson|first=Bruce|title=To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice|publisher=[[New York University Press|NYU Press]]|year=1998|pages=235–238|isbn=0814713270}}</ref> The Tannehills raise a similar example, noting that a bank robber who had an attack of conscience and returned the money would still owe reparations for endangering the employees' and customers' lives and safety, in addition to the costs of the defense agency answering the teller's call for help. But the robber's loss of reputation would be even more damaging. Specialized companies would list aggressors so that anyone wishing to do business with a man could first check his record. The bank robber would find insurance companies listing him as a very poor risk, and other firms would be reluctant to enter into contracts with him.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Market for Liberty|url=http://www.mises.org/books/marketforliberty.pdf|pages=105–106|isbn=0-930073-08-8|author=Tannehill, Linda and Morris|year=1993|publisher=Fox & Wilkes|location=San Francisco}}</ref>

One difficult application of defensive aggression is the act of revolutionary violence (including [[anarcho-capitalist revolution]]) against tyrannical regimes. Many anarcho-capitalists admire [[the American Revolution]] as the legitimate act of individuals working together to fight against [[tyranny|tyrannical]] restrictions of their liberties. In fact, according to Murray Rothbard, the American Revolutionary War was the only war involving the United States that could be justified.<ref>Rothbard, Murray N. (1973) [http://www.antiwar.com/orig/rothbard_on_war.html Interview] ''Reason'' February 1973. Retrieved 10 August 2005.</ref> Some anarcho-capitalists, i.e. [[Samuel Edward Konkin III]] feel that violent revolution is counter-productive and prefer voluntary forms of [[economic secession]] to the extent possible.

==History and influences==
===Classical liberalism===
{{Main|Classical liberalism}}
[[Image:molinari.jpg|thumb|left|[[Gustave de Molinari]] (1819–1912).]]

[[Classical liberalism]] is the primary influence with the longest history on anarcho-capitalist theory. Classical liberals have had two main themes since [[John Locke]] first expounded the philosophy: the liberty of man, and limitations of state power. The liberty of man was expressed in terms of [[natural rights]], while limiting the [[Sovereign state|state]] was based (for Locke) on a [[consent theory]].

In the 19th century, classical liberals led the attack against statism. One notable was [[Frederic Bastiat]] (''[[The Law (1849 book)|The Law]]''), who wrote, "The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else." [[Henry David Thoreau]] wrote, "I heartily accept the motto, 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."<ref>Thoreau, Henry David (1849) [http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/civ.dis.html Civil Disobedience]</ref>

The early liberals believed that the state should confine its role to protecting individual liberty and property, and opposed all but the most minimal economic regulations. The "normative core" of classical liberalism is the idea that in an environment of [[laissez-faire]], a [[spontaneous order]] of cooperation in exchanging goods and services emerges that satisfies human wants.<ref>Razeen, Sally. ''Classical Liberalism and International Economic Order: Studies in Theory and Intellectual History'', Routledge (UK) ISBN 0-415-16493-1, 1998, p. 17</ref> Some individualists came to realize that the liberal state itself takes property forcefully through taxation in order to fund its protection services, and therefore it seemed logically inconsistent to oppose theft while also supporting a tax-funded protector. So, they advocated what may be seen as classical liberalism taken to the extreme by only supporting voluntarily funded defense by competing private providers. One of the first liberals to discuss the possibility of privatizing protection of individual liberty and property was France's [[Jakob Mauvillon]] in the 18th century. Later, in the 1840s, [[Julius Faucher]] and [[Gustave de Molinari]] advocated the same. Molinari, in his essay ''The Production of Security'', argued, "No government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity." Molinari and this new type of anti-state liberal grounded their reasoning on liberal ideals and classical economics. Historian and libertarian [[Ralph Raico]] asserts that what these liberal philosophers "had come up with was a form of individualist anarchism, or, as it would be called today, anarcho-capitalism or market anarchism."<ref>Raico, Ralph (2004) [http://www.mises.org/story/1787 ''Authentic German Liberalism of the 19th Century''] Ecole Polytechnique, [http://www.crea.polytechnique.fr/index.htm Centre de Recherce en Epistemologie Appliquee], Unité associée au CNRS</ref> Unlike the liberalism of Locke, which saw the state as evolving from society, the anti-state liberals saw a fundamental conflict between the voluntary interactions of people – society – and the institutions of force – the State. This ''society versus state'' idea was expressed in various ways: natural society vs. artificial society, liberty vs. authority, society of contract vs. society of authority, and industrial society vs. militant society, just to name a few.<ref name="Molinari-1849"/> The anti-state liberal tradition in Europe and the United States continued after Molinari in the early writings of [[Herbert Spencer]], as well as in thinkers such as [[Paul Émile de Puydt]] and [[Auberon Herbert]].

Ulrike Heider, in discussing the "anarcho-capitalists family tree," notes [[Max Stirner]] as the "founder of individualist anarchism" and "ancestor of [[laissez-faire liberalism]]."<ref>Heider, Ulrike. ''Anarchism: Left, Right and Green'', San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1994, pp. 95–96</ref> According to Heider, Stirner wants to "abolish not only the state but also society as an institution responsible for its members" and "derives his identity solely from property" with the question of property to be resolved by a '[[Bellum omnium contra omnes|war of all against all]]'." Stirner argued against the existence of the state in a fundamentally anti-collectivist way, to be replaced by a "Union of Egoists" but was not more explicit than that in his book ''[[The Ego and Its Own]]'' published in 1844.

Later, in the early 20th century, the mantle of anti-state liberalism was taken by the "[[Old Right (United States)|Old Right]]". These were minarchist, antiwar, anti-imperialist, and (later) anti-[[New Deal]]ers. Some of the most notable members of the Old Right were [[Albert Jay Nock]], [[Rose Wilder Lane]], [[Isabel Paterson]], [[Frank Chodorov]], [[Garet Garrett]], and [[H. L. Mencken]]. In the 1950s, the new "fusion conservatism", also called "[[cold war]] conservatism", took hold of the right wing in the U.S., stressing anti-communism. This induced the libertarian Old Right to split off from the right, and seek alliances with the (now left-wing) antiwar movement, and to start specifically libertarian organizations such as the (U.S.) Libertarian Party.

===Nineteenth century individualist anarchism in the United States===

Rothbard was influenced by the work of the 19th-century American individualist anarchists<ref>"...only a few individuals like Murray Rothbard, in Power and Market, and some article writers were influenced by these men. Most had not evolved consciously from this tradition; they had been a rather automatic product of the American environment." DeLeon, David. The American as Anarchist: Reflections on Indigenous Radicalism. [[Johns Hopkins University Press]], 1978, p. 127</ref> (who were also influenced by classical liberalism). [[Anarcho-capitalism#As a form of individualist anarchism| ]] In the winter of 1949, influenced by several nineteenth-century individualists anarchists, Rothbard decided to reject minimal state laissez-faire and embrace individualist anarchism.<ref>Gordon, David. The Essential Rothbard. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007. pp. 12–13.</ref> Rothbard said in 1965<ref name="Spooner-Tucker Doctrine">"The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View." A Way Out. May–June, 1965. Later republished in Egalitarianism As A Revolt Against Nature by Rothbard, 1974. Later published in Journal of Libertarian Studies, 2000. [http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/20_1/20_1_2.pdf The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View]</ref> "Lysander Spooner and Benjamin T. Tucker were unsurpassed as political philosophers and nothing is more needed today than a revival and development of the largely forgotten legacy they left to political philosophy." However, he thought they had a faulty understanding of economics. The 19th century individualists had a [[labor theory of value]], as influenced by the [[classical economics|classical economists]], but Rothbard was a student of [[neoclassical economics]] which does not agree with the labor theory of value. So, Rothbard sought to meld 19th century individualists' advocacy of free markets and private defense with the principles of Austrian economics: "There is, in the body of thought known as 'Austrian economics', a scientific explanation of the workings of the free market (and of the consequences of government intervention in that market) which individualist anarchists could easily incorporate into their political and social Weltanschauung".<ref name="Spooner-Tucker Doctrine">"[http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/20_1/20_1_2.pdf The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View], Journal of Libertarian Studies, vol. 20, no. 1, p. 7 (1965, 2000)</ref> Rothbard held that the economic consequences of the political system they advocate would not result in an economy with people being paid in proportion to labor amounts, nor would profit and interest disappear as they expected. Tucker thought that unregulated banking and money issuance would cause increases in the money supply so that interest rates would drop to zero or near to it. Rothbard disagreed with this, as he explains in ''The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View''. He says that first of all Tucker was wrong to think that that would cause the money supply to increase, because he says that the money supply in a free market would be self-regulating. If it were not, then inflation would occur, so it is not necessarily desirable to increase the money supply in the first place. Secondly, he says that Tucker is wrong to think that interest would disappear regardless, because people in general do not wish to lend their money to others without compensation so there is no reason why this would change just because banking was unregulated. Also, Tucker held a labor theory of value. As a result, he thought that in a free market that people would be paid in proportion to how much labor they exerted and that if they were not then exploitation or "usury" was taking place. As he explains in ''State Socialism and Anarchism'', his theory was that unregulated banking would cause more money to be available and that this would allow proliferation of new businesses, which would in turn raise demand for labor. This led him to believe that the labor theory of value would be vindicated, and equal amounts of labor would receive equal pay. Again, as a neoclassical economist, Rothbard did not agree with the labor theory. He believed that prices of goods and services are proportional to [[marginal utility]] rather than to labor amounts in free market. And he did not think that there was anything exploitative about people receiving an income according to how much others subjectively value their labor or what that labor produces, even if it means people laboring the same amount receive different incomes.

[[Benjamin Tucker]] opposed vast concentrations of [[wealth]], which he believed were made possible by government intervention and state protected monopolies. He believed the most dangerous state intervention was the requirement that individuals obtain charters in order to operate banks and what he believed to be the illegality of issuing private money, which he believed caused capital to concentrate in the hands of a privileged few which he called the "banking monopoly." He believed anyone should be able to engage in banking that wished, without requiring state permission, and issue private money. Though he was supporter of laissez-faire, late in life he said that State intervention had allowed some extreme concentrations of resources to such a degree that even if laissez-faire were instituted, it would be too late for competition to be able to release those resources (he gave Standard Oil as an example).<ref>Tucker, Benjamin. [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tucker/tucker2.html State Socialism and Anarchism]</ref> Anarcho-capitalists also oppose governmental restrictions on banking. They, like all [[Austrian School|Austrian]] economists, believe that monopoly can only come about through government intervention. Individualists anarchists have long argued that monopoly on credit and land interferes with the functioning of a free market economy. Although anarcho-capitalists disagree on the critical topics of [[Profit (economics)|profit]], social egalitarianism, and the proper scope of private property, both schools of thought agree on other issues. Of particular importance to anarcho-capitalists and the individualists are the ideas of "sovereignty of the individual", a market economy, and the opposition to [[collectivism]]. A defining point that they agree on is that defense of liberty and property should be provided in the free market rather than by the State. Tucker said, "[D]efense is a service like any other service; that it is labor both useful and desired, and therefore an economic commodity subject to the law of supply and demand; that in a free market this commodity would be furnished at the cost of production; that, competition prevailing, patronage would go to those who furnished the best article at the lowest price; that the production and sale of this commodity are now monopolized by the State; and that the State, like almost all monopolists, charges exorbitant prices."<ref>Tucker, Benjamin. "Instead of a Book" (1893)</ref> But, again, since anarcho-capitalists disagree with Tucker's labor theory of value, they disagree that free market competition would cause protection (or anything else) to be provided "at cost." Like the individualists, anarcho-capitalists believe that land may be originally appropriated by, and only by, occupation or use; however, most individualists of the nineteenth-century believed it must ''continually'' be in use to retain title. Lysander Spooner was an exception from those who believed in the "occupation and use" theory, and believed in full private property rights in land, like Rothbard.<ref>[[Carl Watner|Watner, Carl]]. [http://www.mises.org/journals/lf/1975/1975_03.pdf Spooner Vs. Liberty] in The Libertarian Forum. March 1975. Volume VII, No 3. ISSN 0047-4517. pp. 5–6.</ref>

===Austrian School===
{{Main|Austrian School}}
The Austrian School of economics was founded with the publication of [[Carl Menger]]'s 1871 book ''[[Principles of Economics]]''. Members of this school approach economics as an ''a priori'' system like logic or mathematics, rather than as an empirical science like geology. It attempts to discover axioms of human action (called "[[praxeology]]" in the Austrian tradition) and make deductions therefrom. Some of these praxeological axioms are:
:*humans act purposefully;
:*humans prefer more of a good to less;
:*humans prefer to receive a good sooner rather than later; and
:*each party to a trade benefits ''[[ex ante]]''.

Even in the early days, Austrian economics was used as a theoretical weapon against socialism and statist socialist policy. [[Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk]], a colleague of Menger, wrote one of the first critiques of socialism ever written in his treatise ''The Exploitation Theory of Socialism-Communism''. Later, [[Friedrich Hayek]] wrote ''[[The Road to Serfdom]]'', asserting that a [[command economy]] destroys the information function of prices, and that authority over the economy leads to [[totalitarianism]]. Another very influential Austrian economist was [[Ludwig von Mises]], author of the praxeological work ''[[Human Action]]''.
[[Image:Murray Rothbard.jpg|thumb|left|[[Murray Rothbard]] (1926–95).]]
Murray Rothbard, a student of Mises, is the man who attempted to meld Austrian economics with classical liberalism and individualist anarchism. He wrote his first paper advocating "private property anarchism" in 1949, and later came up with the alternative name "anarcho-capitalism." He was probably the first to use "libertarian" in its current (U.S.) pro-capitalist sense. He was a trained economist, but also knowledgeable in history and political philosophy. When young, he considered himself part of the [[Old Right (United States)|Old Right]], an anti-statist and anti-[[interventionism (politics)|interventionist]] branch of the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] party. In the late 1950s, he was briefly involved with [[Ayn Rand]], but later had a falling out. When interventionist [[cold warrior]]s of the ''[[National Review]]'', such as [[William F. Buckley, Jr.]], gained influence in the Republican party in the 1950s, Rothbard quit that group and formed an alliance with [[left-wing]] [[antiwar]] groups, noting an antiwar tradition among a number of self-styled left-wingers and to a degree closer to the Old Right conservatives. He believed that the cold warriors were more indebted in theory to the left and imperialist progressives, especially in regards to [[Trotskyist]] theory.<ref name="Rothbard">Rothbard, Murray N. [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard16.html LewRockwell.com]. Retrieved 10 September 2006.</ref> Later, Rothbard initially opposed the founding of the [[Libertarian Party (United States)|Libertarian Party]] but joined in 1973 and became one of its leading activists. Rothbard's books, such as ''[[Man, Economy, and State]]'', ''[[Power and Market]]'', ''[[The Ethics of Liberty]]'', and ''[[For a New Liberty]]'', are considered by some to be classics of natural law libertarian thought.

==Historical precedents similar to anarcho-capitalism==
{{See also|List of anarchist communities}}
[[Image:Law speaker.jpg|right|thumb|19th century interpretation of the [[Althing]] in the [[Icelandic Commonwealth]], which authors such as [[David D. Friedman|David Friedman]] and [[Roderick Long]] believe to have some features of anarcho-capitalist society.]]
To the extent that anarcho-capitalism is thought of as a theory or [[ideology]]—rather than a social process—critics say that it is unlikely ever to be more than a [[utopian]] ideal. Some, however, point to actual situations where protection of individual liberty and property has been voluntarily funded rather than being provided by a state through taxation.

===Medieval Iceland===
According to [[David D. Friedman|David Friedman]], "[[Icelandic Commonwealth|Medieval Icelandic institutions]] have several peculiar and interesting characteristics; they might almost have been invented by a mad economist to test the lengths to which market systems could supplant government in its most fundamental functions."<ref name="Friedman-79">Friedman, David D. (1979) [http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case]. Retrieved 12 August 2005.</ref> While not directly labeling it anarcho-capitalist, he argues that the Icelandic Commonwealth between 930 and 1262 had "some features" of an anarcho-capitalist society – while there was a single legal system, enforcement of law was entirely private and highly capitalist; and so provides some evidence of how such a society would function. "Even where the Icelandic legal system recognized an essentially "public" offense, it dealt with it by giving some individual (in some cases chosen by lot from those affected) the right to pursue the case and collect the resulting fine, thus fitting it into an essentially private system."<ref name="Friedman-79"/>

===American Old West===
According to the research of [[Terry L. Anderson]] and P. J. Hill, the [[Old West]] in the United States in the period of 1830 to 1900 was similar to anarcho-capitalism in that "private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved," and that the common popular perception that the Old West was chaotic with little respect for property rights is incorrect.<ref>Anderson, Terry L. and Hill, P. J. [http://invisiblemolotov.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/wild-west3.pdf An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West], The Journal of Libertarian Studies</ref> Since [[squatter]]s had no claim to western lands under federal law, extra-legal organizations formed to fill the void. Benson explains:<ref>{{cite book|title=To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice|page=101|chapter=Private Justice in America|isbn=0-8147-1327-0|author=Benson, Bruce L.|year=1998|publisher=[[New York University Press]]|location=New York}}</ref>
{{quote|The [[land club]]s and claim associations each adopted their own written contract setting out the laws that provided the means for defining and protecting property rights in the land. They established procedures for registration of land claims, as well as for protection of those claims against outsiders, and for adjudication of internal disputes that arose. The reciprocal arrangements for protection would be maintained only if a member complied with the association's rules and its court's rulings. Anyone who refused would be ostracized. Boycott by a land club meant that an individual had no protection against aggression other than what he could provide himself.}}
According to Anderson, "Defining anarcho-capitalist to mean minimal government with property rights developed from the bottom up, the western frontier was anarcho-capitalistic. People on the frontier invented institutions that fit the resource constraints they faced."<ref>{{Cite document|url=http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/grilling_terry_l_anderson_free_market_environmentalist/C39/L39/|title=Grilling Terry L. Anderson, Free-Market Environmentalist|author=Probasco, Christian|date=6-18-08|publisher=New West|postscript=}}</ref>

===Early Pennsylvania===

Murray Rothbard's history of Colonial America ''[[Conceived in Liberty]]'' discussed a period where [[Pennsylvania]] fell into a state of anarchism and how [[William Penn]] struggled for about a decade to reinstate his government over a people who did not want it.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard81.html |title=Pennsylvania's Anarchist Experiment: 1681–1690 by Murray N. Rothbard |publisher=Lewrockwell.com |date= |accessdate=2009-03-03}}</ref>

==Theoretical and material variance among anarcho-capitalists==
{{See also|Deontological libertarianism|Consequentialist libertarianism}}
A notable dispute within the anarcho-capitalist movement concerns the question of whether anarcho-capitalist society is justified on [[deontological]] or [[consequentialist]] ethics, or both. Natural-law anarcho-capitalism (as advocated by Rothbard) holds that a universal system of rights can be derived from natural law. Some other anarcho-capitalists do not rely upon the idea of natural rights, but instead present economic justifications for a free-market capitalist society. This latter approach, which has been called the [[Chicago school of economics|Chicago School]] version<ref>Tame, Chris R. October 1983. The Chicago School: Lessons from the Thirties for the Eighties. Economic Affairs. p. 56</ref> has been offered by [[David D. Friedman]] in ''[[The Machinery of Freedom]]''. Also unlike other anarcho-capitalists, most notably Rothbard, Friedman has never tried to deny the theoretical cogency of the neoclassical literature on "[[market failure]]", nor has he been inclined to attack economic efficiency as a [[Normative economics|normative]] benchmark.<ref name="Friedman-1973"/>

In addition to differences over justifications, there are differences in regard to the systems proposed. In Friedman's version, private defense or protection agencies and courts not only defend legal rights but supply the actual content of these rights and all claims on the market. People will have the law system they pay for, and because of [[economic efficiency]] considerations resulting from individuals' utility functions, such law will tend to be libertarian in nature but will differ from place to place and from agency to agency depending on the tastes of the people who buy the law.

Rothbardian anarcho-capitalists lean toward [[libertarian]] political deactivism in which political means are used to speed the obsolescence of the state. Friedmanites, on the other hand, prefer to rely more heavily on market processes in the evolution of [[polycentric law]] by centering on [[tort]] and [[contract]] law, and by exposing the inefficiencies and inconsistencies of [[criminal law]], or crimes against the state.

==Anarcho-capitalism today==
[[Image:RoderickLong2006.jpg|frame|right|[[Roderick Long]], founder of the [[Molinari Institute]], is one of many contemporary anarcho-capitalists.]]
Besides the well-known [[David D. Friedman]], many others carry on and evolve the anarcho-capitalist traditions. They include:

* [[Randy Barnett]] lawyer, law professor at Georgetown University Law Center and legal theorist.
* [[Bruce L. Benson]] DeVoe L. Moore Professor and Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University and Senior Fellow at [[The Independent Institute]].
* [[Ian Bernard]] (now known as Ian Freeman) host of the internationally-syndicated talk show [[Free Talk Live]].
* [[Walter Block]] Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair in Economics at [[Loyola University New Orleans]], Senior Faculty member and speaker of the [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] and a prolific writer.
* [[Per Bylund]] economist, writer, and founder of web site Anarchism.net.
* [[Bryan Caplan]] blogger, professor of economics at [[George Mason University]] and an Adjunct Scholar of the [[Cato Institute]].
* [[Thomas DiLorenzo]] author, historian, professor of economics at [[Loyola College in Maryland]] and senior faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
* [[Douglas E. French]] president of the [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]], author, frequent writer for mises.org<ref>[http://mises.org Mises.org]</ref> and [[LewRockwell.com]].
* [[Patri Friedman]] Executive Director of the [[Seasteading Institute]].
* [[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]] former economics professor at the [[University of Nevada, Las Vegas|University of Nevada]], Las Vegas, president and founder of [http://www.propertyandfreedom.org The Property and Freedom Society.]
* [[Scott Horton (radio host)|Scott Horton]] host of [[Antiwar.com]].<ref>[http://antiwar.com/radio Antiwar Radio.]</ref>
* [[Mark D. Hughes]], Austrian School Economist; Executive Director of the British Columbia based Institute for the Study of Privacy Issues (ISPI).<ref>[http://www.PrivacyNews.com PrivacyNews.com]</ref><ref>[http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/mark-d-hughes/14/457/34A Linkedin.com]</ref>
* [[Penn Jillette]] illusionist of the team [[Penn & Teller]].
* [[Stephan Kinsella]] intellectual property lawyer and libertarian legal theorist.
* [[Peter Leeson]] BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at George Mason University and author of the new book The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates.<ref>[http://www.peterleeson.com PeterLeeson.com]</ref>
* [[Roderick Long]] professor of philosophy at [[Auburn University]], blogger and founder of the [[Molinari Institute]].<ref>[http://praxeology.net/molinari.htm Praxeology.net]</ref>
* [[Carlo Lottieri]] director of the Political Theory department of the [[Bruno Leoni Institute]], a libertarian think-tank based in Turin and Adjunct Faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
* [[Wendy McElroy]] author, columnist and individualist feminist.
* [[Stefan Molyneux]] blogger, essayist, author, and host of [http://freedomainradio.com Freedomain Radio].
* [[Robert P. Murphy]] Austrian School economist and free market-oriented best-selling author, senior fellow in business and economic studies at the [[Pacific Research Institute]], adjunct scholar and frequent speaker at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
* [[Jan Narveson]] professor of philosophy emeritus at the [[University of Waterloo]], Officer of the [[Order of Canada]] and president of the [[Institute for Liberal Studies]].
* [[Justin Raimondo]] author and editorial director of Antiwar.com.<ref name="Antiwar.com">[http://antiwar.com Antiwar.com]</ref>
* [[Lew Rockwell]] past-president and founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and lewrockwell.com.
* [[Mary Ruwart]] a libertarian speaker, writer, activist and was a leading candidate for the 2008 [[Libertarian Party]] presidential nomination. She is the author of the bestselling 1992 book [[Healing Our World: The Other Piece of the Puzzle]].
* [[Joseph Salerno]] professor of economics at [[Pace University]]. He is also the chair of the economics graduate program. He is also a senior faculty member of the [[Mises Institute]].
* [[Jeremy Sapienza]] assistant webmaster and senior editor of Antiwar.com.<ref name="Antiwar.com"/>
* [[George H. Smith]] libertarian author and educator.
* [[Joseph Sobran]] journalist and writer, formerly with [[National Review]] and currently a syndicated columnist, spent 21 years as a commentator on the [[CBS Radio]] "Spectrum" program series, and is still a syndicated columnist, first with the [[Los Angeles Times]], and later with the [[Universal Press Syndicate]].
* [[Marc Stevens (radio host)]] [[voluntaryist]] essayist, talk radio host, author and lawyer<ref>[http://marcstevens.net Marcstevens.net]</ref>
* [[Mark Thornton]] economist of the Austrian School, taught economics at Auburn University. Thornton has been described by the [[Advocates for Self-Government]] as "one of America's experts on the economics of illegal drugs." He is also a senior fellow and resident faculty member at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
* [[Jeffrey Tucker]] editorial vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and current webmaster for the institute's website, Mises.org. Tucker is also an adjunct scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and an Acton University faculty member.
* [[Thomas Woods]] American historian and New York Times bestselling author, now resident scholar and senior faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, member of the editorial board for the institute's [[Journal of Libertarian Studies]] and Libertarian Papers.<ref>[http://www.libertarianpapers.org Libertarian Papers]</ref> He is also an associate scholar of the [[Abbeville Institute]].
* Hundreds of [[activists]] of the [[Free State Project]] in [[New Hampshire]] also champion the idea of anarcho-capitalism.

==Criticisms of anarcho-capitalism==
{{Main|Criticisms of anarcho-capitalism}}

Criticisms of anarcho-capitalism fall into several categories: [[statist]] criticisms that hold that anarcho-capitalism is unworkable in practice; critiques that hold that capitalism requires a coercive force (public or private) to exist and that a society can be anarchist or capitalist, but not both; general critiques of the morality of capitalism and liberalism, which also apply to anarcho-capitalism; and a utilitarian critique, which asserts that anarcho-capitalism would not maximize utility.

Another critique is that an anarcho-capitalist society would degenerate into a "[[Bellum omnium contra omnes|war of all against all]]". Other critics argue that the [[free rider problem]] makes the provision of protection services in an anarcho-capitalist society impractical.

===Another state would replace the first===
It can be argued that a [[private defense agency]] would inevitably gain a military monopoly through [[economy of scale]] thus securing significant market power and undermining potential entrants into the market. Anarcho-capitalists cite the power of market competition as a check on monopoly, the defensive nature of private security, and the level of offensive force that is required to prevent competition.

On page 41 of ''[[The Market for Liberty]]'', [[Linda & Morris Tannehill]] write that "[Government] attracts the worst kind of men to its ranks, shackles progress, forces its citizens to act against their own judgment, and causes recurring internal and external strife by its coercive existence. In view of all this, the question becomes not, “Who will protect us from aggression?” but “Who will protect us from the governmental ‘protectors’?” The contradiction of hiring an agency of institutionalized violence to protect us from violence is even more foolhardy than buying a cat to protect one’s parakeet."<ref>[[Linda & Morris Tannehill]]. ''[http://www.mises.org/books/marketforliberty.pdf The Market for Liberty]'' (San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1993), p. 41. Originally published 1970.</ref>

The Tannehills, however, maintain that no coercive monopoly of force can arise on a truly free market. They write on page 81 that "A private defense service company, competing in an open market, couldn’t use force to hold onto its customers—if it tried to compel people to deal with it, it would compel them to buy protection from its competitors and drive itself out of business. The only way a private defense service company can make money is by protecting its customers from aggression, and the [[profit motive]] guarantees that this will be its only function and that it will perform this function well."<ref>[[Linda & Morris Tannehill]]. ''[http://www.mises.org/books/marketforliberty.pdf The Market for Liberty]'', p. 81.</ref> They go on to write: <blockquote>Private defense service employees would not have the legal immunity which so often protects governmental policemen. If they committed an aggressive act, they would have to pay for it, just the same as would any other individual. A defense service detective who beat a suspect up wouldn’t be able to hide behind a government uniform or take refuge in a position of superior political power. Defense service companies would be no more immune from having to pay for acts of initiated force and fraud than would bakers or shotgun manufacturers. ... Because of this, managers of defense service companies would quickly fire any employee who showed any tendency to initiate force against anyone, including prisoners. To keep such an employee would be too dangerously expensive for them. A job with a defense agency wouldn’t be a position of power over others, as a police force job is, so it wouldn't attract the kind of people who enjoy wielding power over others, as a police job does. In fact, a defense agency would be the worst and most dangerous possible place for sadists!

Government police can afford to be brutal—they have immunity from prosecution in all but the most flagrant cases, and their “customers” can’t desert them in favor of a competent protection and defense agency. But for a free-market defense service company to be guilty of brutality would be disastrous. Force—even retaliatory force—would always be used only as a last resort; it would never be used first, as it is by governmental police.<ref>[[Linda & Morris Tannehill]]. ''[http://www.mises.org/books/marketforliberty.pdf The Market for Liberty]'', p. 84.</ref></blockquote>

Nonetheless, critics like [[Randall G. Holcombe]] point out that PDAs much like cartels such as [[OPEC]] and international mafia groups such as [[Cosa Nostra]], would eventually engage in the same business model in order to maximize profit. Holcombe, in an essay titled ''Is Government Inevitable?'', argues that:
<blockquote> Firms might prey on their competitors' customers, as competing mafia groups do, to show those customers that their current protective firm is not doing the job and thus to induce them to switch protection firms. This action seems to be a profit-maximizing strategy; hence, protection firms that do not prey on noncustomers may not survive.</blockquote>

Holcombe states that "the [[mafia]] offers protection for a fee, but it also uses its resources for predation; and thus profit-maximizing firms could be expected to employ them in the dual roles of protection and predation."<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Government: Unnecessary but Inevitable|author=Holcombe, Randall G.}}</ref>

Minarchist critics argue that, if monopolies of force are inevitable, community-controlled monopolies are preferable to privately controlled ones. Anarchist critics of private defense agencies state that community militias should exist alongside or instead of private defense agencies. Other critics, both anarchist and minarchist, argue that formal police forces, whether community controlled or privately controlled, have institutional flaws which informal defense arrangements do not.<ref>Malatesta, Errico, 1921, in a letter to Venturini.</ref>

===Anarcho-capitalism and other anarchist schools===
{{Main|Anarchism and anarcho-capitalism}}
[[Anarcho-capitalism#Sources that do not consider anarcho-capitalism to be a form of anarchism|Some scholars]] do not consider anarcho-capitalism to be a form of anarchism, while [[Anarcho-capitalism#Sources that consider anarcho-capitalism a form of anarchism|others]] do. Some communist anarchists argue that anarcho-capitalism is not a form of anarchism due to their understanding of capitalism as inherently authoritarian. In particular they argue that certain capitalist transactions are not voluntary, and that maintaining the class structure of a capitalist society requires coercion, which is incompatible with an anarchist society. Moreover, capitalistic market activity is essentially dependent on private ownership and a particular form of exchange of goods, selling and buying.

On the other hand, anarcho-capitalists such as Per Bylund, webmaster of the [[anarchism without adjectives]] website ''[[anarchism.net]]'', note that the disconnect among non-anarcho-capitalist anarchists is likely the result of an "unfortunate situation of fundamental misinterpretation of anarcho-capitalism." Bylund asks, "How can one from this historical heritage claim to be both anarchist and advocate of the exploitative system of capitalism?" and answers it by pointing out that "''no one can'', and ''no one does''. There are no anarchists approving of such a system, even anarcho-capitalists (for the most part) do not."<ref name="bylund">Bylund, Per. [http://anarchism.net/anarchism_anarchismcapitalismandanarchocapitalism.htm Anarchism, Capitalism, and Anarcho-Capitalism], anarchism.net. July 6, 2004.</ref> Bylund explains this as follows:
{{Quote|Capitalism in the sense of wealth accumulation as a result of oppressive and exploitative wage slavery must be abandoned. The enormous differences between the wealthy and the poor do not only cause tensions in society or personal harm to those exploited, but is essentially unjust. Most, if not all, property of today is generated and amassed through the use of force. This cannot be accepted, and no anarchists accept this state of inequality and injustice.

As a matter of fact, anarcho-capitalists share this view with other anarchists. Murray N. Rothbard, one of the great philosophers of anarcho-capitalism, used a lot of time and effort to define legitimate property and the generation of value, based upon a notion of “natural rights” (see Murray N. Rothbard’s ''[[The Ethics of Liberty]]''). The starting point of Rothbard’s argumentation is every man’s sovereign and full right to himself and his labor. This is the position of property creation shared by both socialists and classical liberals, and is also the shared position of anarchists of different colors. Even the statist capitalist libertarian [[Robert Nozick]] wrote that contemporary property was unjustly accrued and that a free society, to him a “minimalist state,” needs to make up with this injustice (see Robert Nozick’s “[[Anarchy, State, Utopia]]”).{{Citation needed|date=October 2010}}

Thus it seems anarcho-capitalists agree with Proudhon in that “[[property is theft]],” where it is acquired in an illegitimate manner. But they also agree with Proudhon in that “property is liberty” (See Albert Meltzer’s short analysis of Proudhon’s “property is liberty” in Anarchism: Arguments For and Against, p. 12-13) in the sense that without property, i.e. being robbed of the fruits of one’s actions, one is a slave. Anarcho-capitalists thus advocate the freedom of a stateless society, where each individual has the sovereign right to his body and labor and through this right can pursue his or her own definition of happiness.<ref name="bylund"/>}}

Murray N. Rothbard notes that the capitalist system of today is, indeed, not properly anarchistic because it is so often in collusion with the state. According to Rothbard, "what Marx and later writers have done is to lump together two extremely different and even contradictory concepts and actions under the same portmanteau term. These two contradictory concepts are what I would call 'free-market capitalism' on the one hand, and 'state capitalism' on the other."<ref name="fpc">Rothbard, Murray N. [http://www.mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1559|A Future of Peace and Capitalism], James H. Weaver, ed., ''Modern Political Economy'' (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1973), pp. 419–430</ref>

"The difference between free-market capitalism and state capitalism," writes Rothbard, "is precisely the difference between, on the one hand, peaceful, voluntary exchange, and on the other, violent expropriation." He goes on to point out that he is "very optimistic about the future of free-market capitalism. I’m ''not'' optimistic about the future of state capitalism—or rather, I ''am'' optimistic, because I think it will eventually come to an end. State capitalism inevitably creates all sorts of problems which become insoluble."<ref name="fpc"/>

Murray Rothbard maintains that anarcho-capitalism is the only true form of anarchism<ref>Rothbard, Murray N. [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard103.html Exclusive Interview With Murray Rothbard]. ''The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal''. 25 February 1972.</ref> – the only form of anarchism that could possibly exist in reality, as, he argues, any other form presupposes an authoritarian enforcement of political ideology (redistribution of private property, ''etc.''). In short, while granting that certain non-coercive hierarchies will exist under an anarcho-capitalist system, they will have no real authority except over their ''own'' property: a worker existing within such a 'hierarchy' (answerable to management, bosses, ''etc.'') is free at all times to abandon this voluntary 'hierarchy' and 1) create an organization within which he/she is at (or somewhere near) the top of the 'hierarchy' (entrepreneurship), 2) join an existing 'hierarchy' (wherein he/she will likely be lower in the scheme of things), or 3) abandon these hierarchies altogether and join/form a non-hierarchical association such as a cooperative, commune, ''etc.''. Since there will be no taxes, such cooperative organizations (labour unions, communes, voluntary socialist associations wherein the product of the labour and of the capital goods of those who join which they were able to peaceably acquire would be shared amongst all who joined, ''etc.'') would, under anarcho-capitalism, enjoy the freedom to do as they please (provided, of course that they set up their operation on their own -or un-owned- property, in other words so long as they do so without force).

According to this argument, the free market is simply the natural situation that would result from people being free from authority, and entails the establishment of all voluntary associations in society: cooperatives, non-profit organizations (which would, just as today, be funded by individuals for their existence), businesses, etc. (in short, a free market does not equal the end of civil society, which continues to be a critique of anarcho-capitalism). Moreover, anarcho-capitalists (as well as classical liberal minarchists and others) argue that the application of so-called "leftist" anarchist ideals (''e.g.'' the forceful redistribution of wealth from one set of people to another) requires an authoritarian body of some sort that will impose this ideology. ([[Voluntaryism|Voluntaryist]] socialism, of course, is completely compatible with anarcho-capitalism.) Some also argue that human beings are motivated primarily by the fulfillment of their own needs and wants. Thus, to forcefully prevent people from accumulating private capital, which could result in further fulfillment of human desires, there would necessarily be a redistributive organization of some sort which would have the authority to, in essence, exact a tax and re-allocate the resulting resources to a larger group of people. This body would thus inherently have political power and would be nothing short of a state. The difference between such an arrangement and an anarcho-capitalist system is precisely the voluntary nature of organization within anarcho-capitalism contrasted with a centralized ideology and a paired enforcement mechanism which would be necessary under a coercively 'egalitarian'-anarchist system.

===Stability of anarcho-capitalist legal institutions===

Two of the more prominent academics who have given some serious thought to essentially anarcho-capitalist legal institutions are [[Richard Posner]], who is now a Federal Appeals Judge and a prolific legal scholar, and economist [[William Landes]]. In their 1975 paper "The Private Enforcement of Law",<ref>William Landes and Richard Posner. [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=12598851504784974688 The Private Enforcement of Law] ''4 Journal of Legal Studies 1''.</ref> they discuss a previous [[thought experiment]] undertaken by Becker and Stigler in which it was proposed that law enforcement could be privatized, and they explain why they believe such a system would not be economically efficient. According to [[David D. Friedman]]'s later rebuke "Efficient Institutions for the Private Enforcement of Law",<ref>David D. Friedman. [http://daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Efficient_Inst_For_Priv_Enf/Private_Enforcement.html Efficient Institutions for the Private Enforcement of Law] also available as [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=15612883692165763455 an article on Google Scholar]''13 Journal of Legal Studies 379''.</ref>
{{quote|[Landes and Posner argued] that the private system has essential flaws that make it inferior to an ideal public system except for offenses that can be detected and punished at near zero cost. They concede that the private system might still be preferable to the less than ideal public system that we observe. However they argue that the prevalence of private enforcement for offenses that are easily detected (most civil offenses) and its rarity for offenses that are difficult to detect (most criminal offenses) suggest that our legal system is, at least in broad outline, efficient, using in each case the most efficient system of enforcement.}} Friedman, however, proceeds to argue that "the inefficiency Landes and Posner have demonstrated in the particular private enforcement institutions they describe can be eliminated by minor changes in the institutions."

==Anarcho-capitalist literature==
{{Main|Anarcho-capitalist literature}}

===Nonfiction===
The following is a partial list of notable nonfiction works discussing anarcho-capitalism.
*[[Murray Rothbard]] founder of anarcho-capitalism:
**''[[Man, Economy, and State]]'' Austrian micro– and macroeconomics,
**''[[Power and Market]]'' Classification of State economic interventions,
**''[[The Ethics of Liberty]]'' Moral justification of a free society
**''[[For a New Liberty]]'' An outline of how an anarcho-capitalist society could work
*[[Frederic Bastiat]], ''[[The Law (1849 book)|The Law]]'' Radical classical liberalism
* [[Bruce L. Benson]]: ''The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without The State''
**''To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice''
*Davidson & Rees-Mogg, ''The Sovereign Individual'' Historians look at technology and its implications
*[[David D. Friedman]], ''[[The Machinery of Freedom]]'' Classic consequentialist defense of anarchism
*[[Auberon Herbert]], ''[http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0146.php The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State]''
* [[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]], ''[[The Economics and Ethics of Private Property]]''
**''[[A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism]]''
**''[[Democracy: The God That Failed]]''
*[[Albert Jay Nock]], ''[http://www.mises.org/etexts/ourenemy.pdf Our Enemy the State]'' Oppenheimer's thesis applied to early US history
*John Frederic Kosanke, ''[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003VTZWZA Instead of Politics]''
*[[Stefan Molyneux]], ''[http://www.freedomainradio.com/free/books/FDR_2_PDF_UPB.pdf Universally Preferable Behavior: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics]''
**''[http://www.freedomainradio.com/free/books/FDR_4_PDF_Everyday_Anarchy.pdf Everyday Anarchy]''
**''[http://www.freedomainradio.com/free/books/FDR_5_PDF_Practical_Anarchy_Audiobook.pdf Practical Anarchy]''
*[[Franz Oppenheimer]], ''[[The State (book)|The State]]'' Analysis of State; political means vs. economic means
*[[Herbert Spencer]], ''[http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Spencer0236/SocialStatics/0331_Bk.html Social Statics]'' Includes the essay "The Right to Ignore the State"
*Linda and Morris Tannehill, ''[[The Market for Liberty]]'' Classic on [[private defense agency|Private defense agencies]]
*George H Smith, ''[http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/3_4/3_4_4.pdf Justice Entrepreneurship in a Free Market]'' Examines the Epistemic and entrepreneurial role of Justice agencies.
*Edward P Stringham, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=nft4e62nicsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=anarchy+and+the+law&ei=mHD2SOhKmPgw7bCB6wU Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice]'' 700 page book presenting the major arguments historical studies about anarcho capitalism.

===Fiction===
Anarcho-capitalism has been examined in certain works of literature, particularly [[science fiction]]. An early example is [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s 1966 novel ''[[The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress]]'', in which he explores what he terms "rational anarchism". A contemporary anarcho-capitalistic work of [[science fiction]] is [[John C. Wright (author)|John C. Wright]]'s ''[[The Golden Age (John C. Wright novel)|The Golden Age]]''.

In ''[[The Illuminatus! Trilogy]]'' by [[Robert Anton Wilson]] the [[Discordian Society]] headed by the character [[Hagbard Celine]] is anarcho-capitalist. The manifesto of the society in the novel 'Never Whistle While You're Pissing' contains [[Celine's Laws]], three laws regarding government and social interaction.

[[Cyberpunk]] and [[postcyberpunk]] authors have been particularly fascinated by the idea of the break-down of the nation-state. Several stories of [[Vernor Vinge]], including ''[[Marooned in Realtime]]'', feature anarcho-capitalist societies, often portrayed in a favorable light. [[Neal Stephenson]]'s ''[[Snow Crash]]'' and ''[[The Diamond Age]]'', [[Max Barry]]'s ''[[Jennifer Government]]'', [[Cory Doctorow]]'s ''[[Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom]],'' and [[L. Neil Smith]]'s ''[[The Probability Broach]]'' all explore anarcho-capitalist ideas. The cyberpunk portrayal of anarchy varies from the downright grim to the cheerfully optimistic, and it need not imply anything specific about the writer's political views. Neal Stephenson, in particular, refrains from sweeping political statements when deliberately provoked.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.reason.com/news/show/36481.html |title=Neal Stephenson's Past, Present, and Future; The author of the widely praised Baroque Cycle on science, markets, and post-9/11 America. |accessdate=2007-08-11 |last=Godwin |first=Mike |authorlink=Mike Godwin |coauthors=[[Neal Stephenson]] |year=2005 |month=February |format=print article |work= |publisher=Reason (magazine) }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/20/1518217 |title=Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor. |accessdate=2007-08-11 |author=Roblimo |authorlink= |coauthors=Neal Stephenson |date=2004-10-20 |format=email exchange |work= |publisher=Slashdot }}</ref>

[[Ken MacLeod]]'s Fall Revolution series explores the future consequences of the breakdown of current political systems within a revolutionary context. The second novel of the series ''[[The Stone Canal]]'' deals specifically with an anarcho-capitalist society and explores issues of self-ownership, privatization of police and courts of law, and the consequences of a contractual society.

In Matt Stone's (Richard D. Fuerle) novelette ''On the Steppes of Central Asia''<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.anarchism.net/steppes.htm |title=On the Steppes of Central Asia |accessdate=2008-02-10 }}</ref> an American grad student is invited to work for a newspaper in Mongolia, and discovers that the Mongolian society is indeed stateless in a semi-anarcho-capitalist way. The novelette was originally written to advertise Fuerle's 1986 economics treatise ''The Pure Logic of Choice''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.purelogic.us/ |title=The Pure Logic of Choice |accessdate=2008-02-10 }}</ref>

[[J. Neil Schulman]]'s novel ''[[Alongside Night]]'' involves the occurrence of the achievement of a market anarchist society through [[Agorism]].

==See also==
*[[Voluntaryism]]

==References==
{{Reflist|colwidth=30em}}

==Further reading==
;Sources that consider anarcho-capitalism a form of anarchism
;As a form of individualist anarchism====
* Alan and Trombley, Stephen (Eds.) Bullock, ''The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought'', W. W. Norton & Company (1999), p. 30
* Outhwaite, William. ''The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought'', entrada: ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=E8KUQCMGyssC&q=anarchism&hl=es&source=gbs_word_cloud_r&cad=3#v=snippet&q=anarchism&f=false Anarchism]'', p. 21 & pp. 13–14, 2002
* Bottomore, Tom. Entrada: ''Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Anarchism'', p. 21 1991.
* Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought, 1991, ISBN 0-631-17944-5, p. 11
* Barry, Norman. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=hHRxQkO2WNwC&pg=PA1&dq=Modern+Political+Theory&ei=b3u-Ssm0GpKwNKqqyPcP&hl=es#v=onepage&q=&f=false Modern Political Theory]'', 2000, Palgrave, p. 79
* Adams, Ian. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=apstK1qIvvMC&pg=PA131&dq=anarcho-capitalism&lr=&hl=es#v=onepage&q=anarcho-capitalism&f=false Political Ideology Today]'', Manchester University Press (2002) ISBN 0-7190-6020-6, p. 135
* Grant, Moyra. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=Ml1Wn6S54n4C&pg=PP1&dq=Key+Ideas+in+Politics&ei=KHq-SvXZF4vUNOnh2foP&hl=es#v=onepage&q=anarcho-capitalism&f=false Key Ideas in Politics]'', Nelson Thomas 2003 ISBN 0-7487-7096-8, p. 91
* Heider, Ulrike. ''Anarchism: Left, Right, and Green'', City Lights, 1994. p. 3.
* [[Geoffrey Ostergaard|Ostergaard, Geoffrey]]. ''Resisting the Nation State — the anarchist and pacifist tradition, [http://www.ppu.org.uk/e_publications/dd-trad6.html#anarch%20and%20pol%20thought Anarchism As A Tradition of Political Thought]''. Peace Pledge Union Publications
* [[Paul Avrich|Avrich, Paul]]. ''Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Abridged Paperback Edition (1996), p. 282
* Brooks, Frank H. (ed) (1994) ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=gHyUj9HFYBIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Individualist+Anarchists:+An+Anthology+of+Liberty&ei=E32-SuSFM434Nanr0fIP&hl=es#v=onepage&q=&f=false The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty]'' (1881–1908), Transaction Publishers, Prefacio p. xi
* Sheehan, Sean. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=G0PnKy_W2IwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Sheehan,+Sean+Anarchism&lr=&ei=Am--SpGGCILyMoKykf4P&hl=es#v=onepage&q=&f=false Anarchism]'', Reaktion Books, 2004, p. 39
* Avrich, Paul. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=gHyUj9HFYBIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Individualist+Anarchists:+An+Anthology+of+Liberty&lr=&ei=GnC-SqeSLYWyNpuDsOsP&hl=es#v=onepage&q=&f=false Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America], Abridged Paperback Edition (1996), p. 282
* Tormey, Simon. ''Anti-Capitalism'', One World, 2004, pp. 118–119
* [[Ralph Raico|Raico, Ralph]]. ''[http://mises.org/story/1787 Authentic German Liberalism of the 19th Century]'', Ecole Polytechnique, Centre de Recherce en Epistemologie Appliquee, Unité associée au CNRS, 2004
* Offer, John. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=-50STJ-fH-wC&dq=Herbert+Spencer:+Critical+Assessments&lr=&hl=es&source=gbs_navlinks_s Herbert Spencer: Critical Assessments]'', Routledge (UK) (2000), p. 243
* Busky, Donald. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=3joQKjDtn4wC&pg=PP4&dq=#v=onepage&q=&f=false Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey]'', Praeger/Greenwood (2000), p. 4
* [[Fred E. Foldvary|Foldvary, Fred E.]] ''[http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/001869.html What Aren't You an Anarchist?]'', Progress Report, reprinted en ''The Free Liberal'', 14 February 2006
* Levy, Carl. [http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761568770/Anarchism.html ''Anarchism''] ([http://www.webcitation.org/5kwKJFdot Archived] 2009-10-31), Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2006. [http://uk.encarta.msn.com MS Encarta (UK)].
* Heywood, Andrew. ''Politics: Second Edition'', Palgrave (2002), p. 61
* ''[http://books.google.com.ec/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC&pg=PA13&dq=anarcho-capitalism&lr=&client=firefox-a#v=onepage&q=anarcho-capitalism&f=false Anarcho-capitalism. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism]'' p. 13, Ronald Hamowy, SAGE

;Sources holding that individualist anarchism was reborn as anarcho-capitalism
* ''[http://books.google.com.ec/books?id=NIZfQTd3nSMC&dq=Blackwell+Encyclopaedia+of+Political+Thought&source=gbs_navlinks_s Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought]'', 1991, ISBN 0-631-17944-5, p. 11
* Levy, Carl. [http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761568770/Anarchism.html "Anarchism"], ''[[Encarta|Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia]]'' 2006 MS Encarta (UK).
* [[Susan Brown|Brown, Susan Love]], ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=b8XHahfS0VsC&pg=PA99&dq=The+Free+Market+as+Salvation+from+Government:+The+Anarcho-Capitalist+View&lr=&ei=0XO-Sv_jHYbgNYnR5PcP&hl=es#v=onepage&q=The%20Free%20Market%20as%20Salvation%20from%20Government%3A%20The%20Anarcho-Capitalist%20View&f=false The Free Market as Salvation from Government: The Anarcho-Capitalist View]'', ''Meanings of the Market: The * Free Market in Western Culture'', editado por James G. Carrier, Berg/Oxford, 1997, p. 99
*''[http://books.google.com/books?id=PUev30VZ04kC&pg=PP1&dq=Anarchism/Minarchism&ei=EHm-SsG-IoPYNZuD3Bo&hl=es#v=onepage&q=&f=false Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country?]'' Ed., [[Roderick T. Long]] y [[Tibor R. Machan]]. Ashgate
* ''[http://books.google.com.ec/books?id=nft4e62nicsC&dq= Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice]'', Edward Stringham. Transaction Publishers, 2007.

;As a form of anarchism in general
* [[Richard Sylvan|Sylvan, Richard]]. ''[http://books.google.com.ec/books?id=OuhiqIB_Vw0C&pg=PA231&dq=#v=onepage&q=&f=false Anarchism. A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy]'', editores Goodin, Robert E. and Pettit, Philip. Blackwell Publishing, 1995, p. 231
* Perlin, Terry M. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=mppLKlwHx7oC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false Contemporary Anarchism]''. Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ 1979, p. 7
* [[David DeLeon|DeLeon, David]]. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=w63aAAAAMAAJ&q=The+American+as+Anarchist:+Reflections+of+Indigenous+Radicalism&dq=The+American+as+Anarchist:+Reflections+of+Indigenous+Radicalism&ei=uXe-SpSrIYyUNcm79PoP&hl=es The American as Anarchist: Reflections of Indigenous Radicalism]'', Chapter: The Beginning of Another Cycle, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979, p. 117 & 123
* Kearney, Richard. ''Continental Philosophy in the 20th Century'', Routledge (UK) (2003), p. 336
* Sargent, Lyman Tower. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=sjxD8lGus9kC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Extremism+in+America:+A+Reader&ei=ena-SsK3MYTWNMLBqPQP&hl=es#v=onepage&q=&f=false Extremism in America: A Reader]'', NYU Press (1995), p. 11
* Sanders, John T.; [[Jan Narveson|Narveson, Jan]], ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=7k_gBlYQwOcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=For+and+Against+the+State&ei=CXe-SrLWEZTQNKywwZ8M&hl=es#v=onepage&q=&f=false For and Against the State]'', Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1996, ISBN 0-8476-8165-3
* Goodwin, Barbara. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=KGJYLTvSAa0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Using+Political+Ideas&lr=&ei=EXO-SvbpI4HENZz83Bc&hl=es#v=onepage&q=&f=false Using Political Ideas]'', fourth edition, John Wiley & Sons (1987), p. 141

;Sources that do not consider anarcho-capitalism to be a form of anarchism
* [[Albert Meltzer|Meltzer, Albert]]. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=CJhCvx_Z0CAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Anarchism:+Arguments+For+and+Against&ei=GHi-StvuEo6MNfKjyZMD&hl=es#v=onepage&q=&f=false Anarchism: Arguments For and Against]'' [[AK Press]], (2000) p. 50

;Other readings
*[[Murray Rothbard]] Father of modern anarcho-capitalism:
**{{Cite book|author=Murray Rothbard |year=1962 |title=[[Man, Economy, and State; A Treatise on Economic Principles]]|publisher=Van Nostrand|location=Princeton, N.J.}}, A general book on [[Austrian economics]].
**{{Cite book|author=Murray Rothbard |year=1970|title=[[Power & Market|Power & Market; Government and the Economy]] |publisher=[[Institute for Humane Studies]] |location=Menlo Park, Calif.}}, Classification of economic interventions by the state.
**{{Cite book|author=Murray Rothbard |year=1978 |title=[[For a New Liberty|For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto]] |publisher=Collier Books |location=New York, New York |isbn=0-02-074690-3}}
**{{cite book|url=http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp| author=Murray Rothbard |year=1998 |origyear=1982 |title=[[The Ethics of Liberty]] |publisher=University Press |location=New York, New York |isbn=0-8147-7506-3}}, Moral justification of a free society.
*[[Frederic Bastiat]], ''[http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/library/thelaw.html The Law]'' Radical classical liberalism
*Davidson & Rees-Mogg, ''The Sovereign Individual'' Historians look at technology & implications
*[[David D. Friedman]], ''[[The Machinery of Freedom]]'' Classic utilitarian defense of anarchism
*[[Auberon Herbert]], ''[http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0146.php The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State]''
*[[Albert Jay Nock]], ''[http://www.barefootsworld.net/nockoets0.html Our Enemy the State]'' Oppenheimer's thesis applied to early US history
*John Frederic Kosanke, ''[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003VTZWZA Instead of Politics]''
*[[Franz Oppenheimer]], ''[http://www.opp.uni-wuppertal.de/oppenheimer/st/state0.htm The State]'' Analysis of State; political means vs. economic means
*[[Robert Nozick]], ''[[Anarchy, State, and Utopia]]'' Seminal work of 20th century academic political philosophy concerning libertarianism
*[[Herbert Spencer]], ''[http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Spencer0236/SocialStatics/0331_Bk.html Social Statics]'' Includes the essay "The Right to Ignore the State"
*Morris and Linda Tannehill, ''[[The Market for Liberty]]'' Classic on [[Private defense agency|private defense agencies]] (PDAs)
*[[Robert Paul Wolff]], ''[[In Defense of Anarchism]]'', influential defence of [[analytical anarchism|anarchism]] within contemporary [[analytical philosophy]]
*[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]], ''[http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe5.html Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography]''
*Hans-Hermann Hoppe, ''[[The Economics and Ethics of Private Property]]''

==External links==
{{Sisterlinks}}
* [http://www.strike-the-root.com/ Strike The Root] is an anarcho-capitalist website featuring essays, news, and a forum.
* [http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/faq.html Anarcho-capitalist FAQ].

Anarchism

2010-11-20T19:04:27Z

Dbabbitt: /* Anarcho-capitalism */ Linkified Corporatocracy

{{wikipedia text||397180670}}
'''Anarchism''' is a [[political philosophy]] which considers the [[Sovereign state|state]] undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or [[anarchy]].<ref name="definition">
{{cite journal|last=Malatesta|first=Errico|title=Towards Anarchism|journal=MAN!|publisher=International Group of San Francisco|location=Los Angeles|oclc=3930443|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/malatesta/1930s/xx/toanarchy.htm|authorlink=Errico Malatesta}}
{{cite journal |url=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070514.wxlanarchist14/BNStory/lifeWork/home/
|title=Working for The Man |journal=[[The Globe and Mail]] |accessdate=2008-04-14 |last=Agrell |first=Siri |date=2007-05-14}}
{{cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9117285|title=Anarchism|year=2006|work=Encyclopædia Britannica|publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service|accessdate=2006-08-29}}
{{cite journal|year=2005|title=Anarchism|journal=The Shorter [[Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]|page=14|quote=Anarchism is the view that a society without the state, or government, is both possible and desirable.}}
The following sources cite anarchism as a political philosophy:
{{cite book | last = Mclaughlin | first = Paul | title = Anarchism and Authority | publisher = Ashgate | location = Aldershot | year = 2007 | isbn = 0754661962 |page=59}}
{{cite book | last = Johnston | first = R. | title = The Dictionary of Human Geography | publisher = Blackwell Publishers | location = Cambridge | year = 2000 | isbn = 0631205616 |page=24}}</ref><ref name=slevin>Slevin, Carl. "Anarchism." ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics''. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford University Press, 2003.</ref> It seeks to diminish or even abolish coercive [[authority]] in the conduct of human relations.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.panarchy.org/ward/organization.1966.html|last=Ward|first=Colin|year=1966|title=Anarchism as a Theory of Organization|accessdate=1 March 2010}}</ref> Anarchists may widely disagree on what additional criteria are required in anarchism. ''[[The Oxford Companion to Philosophy]]'' says, "there is no single defining position that all anarchists hold, and those considered anarchists at best share a certain [[family resemblance]]."<ref name=oxcom>"Anarchism." ''[[The Oxford Companion to Philosophy]]'', [[Oxford University Press]], 2007, p. 31.</ref>

There are many types and traditions of anarchism, not all of which are mutually exclusive.<ref>{{cite book|last=Sylvan |first=Richard |chapter=Anarchism |title=A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy |editors=Goodwin, Robert E. and Pettit |publisher=Philip. Blackwell Publishing |year=1995 |page=231}}</ref> Strains of anarchism have been divided into the categories of [[social anarchism|social]] and [[individualist anarchism]] or similar dual classifications.<ref name="black dict">[[Geoffrey Ostergaard|Ostergaard, Geoffrey]]. "Anarchism". ''The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought''. Blackwell Publishing. p. 14.</ref><ref name=socind>{{cite book|authorlink=Peter Kropotkin |last=Kropotkin |first=Peter |title=Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings |publisher=Courier Dover Publications |year=2002 |page=5|isbn=048641955X}}{{cite journal|author=R.B. Fowler|title=The Anarchist Tradition of Political Thought|year=1972|journal=Western Political Quarterly|volume=25|issue=4|pages=738–752|doi=10.2307/446800|url=http://jstor.org/stable/446800|publisher=University of Utah|jstor=10.2307/446800}}</ref> Anarchism is often considered to be a radical left-wing ideology,<ref name=brooks>{{cite book|quote=Usually considered to be an extreme left-wing ideology, anarchism has always included a significant strain of radical individualism, from the hyperrationalism of Godwin, to the egoism of Stirner, to the [[libertarians]] and [[anarcho-capitalist]]s of today |last=Brooks |first=Frank H. |year=1994 |title=The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty (1881–1908) |publisher=Transaction Publishers |page=xi|isbn=1560001321}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|author=Joseph Kahn|title= Anarchism, the Creed That Won’t Stay Dead; The Spread of World Capitalism Resurrects a Long-Dormant Movement |year=2000|journal=[[The New York Times]]|issue=5 August}}{{cite journal|author=Colin Moynihan |title=Book Fair Unites Anarchists. In Spirit, Anyway|year=2007|journal=New York Times|issue=16 April}}</ref> and much of [[anarchist economics]] and [[anarchist law|anarchist legal philosophy]] reflect [[anti-statism|anti-statist]] interpretations of [[anarcho-communism|communism]], [[collectivist anarchism|collectivism]], [[anarcho-syndicalism|syndicalism]] or [[participatory economics]]. However, anarchism has always included an individualist strain (identified by libertarian writer and economist [[Murray Rothbard]] as "[[anarcho-capitalism]]") which includes support of [[free markets]]<ref>{{cite book|last=Stringham |first=Edward |chapter= |title=[http://www.amazon.com/dp/1412805791 Anarchy and the Law. The Political Economy of Choice.] |editors=Stringham, Edward |publisher=Transaction Publishers |year=2007 |page=720}}</ref> the [[market economy]] and [[private property]], or, in some versions, unfettered [[egoist anarchism|egoism]].<ref name=brooks>[[Jan Narveson|Narveson, Jan]] (2002). [http://books.google.es/books?id=a6hBXZOepB4C&pg=PA186&dq=free-market+anarchism&as_brr=3 Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice. Chapter 11: Anarchist's Case]. "To see this, of course, we must expound the moral outlook underlying anarchism. To do this we must first make an important distinction between two general options in anarchist theory [...] The two are what we may call, respectively, the socialist versus the free-market, or capitalist, versions."</ref><ref name="tormey">Tormey, Simon, Anti-Capitalism, A Beginner's Guide, Oneworld Publications, 2004, pp. 118-119.</ref> Some individualist anarchists are also [[socialist]]s<ref>"This stance puts him squarely in the libertarian socialist tradition and, unsurprisingly, Tucker referred to himself many times as a socialist and considered his philosophy to be "Anarchistic socialism." "''[[An Anarchist FAQ]]''by Various Authors]</ref><ref>"Because revolution is the fire of our will and a need of our solitary minds; it is an obligation of the libertarian aristocracy. To create new ethical values. To create new aesthetic values. To communalize material wealth. To individualize spiritual wealth." [http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Renzo_Novatore__Toward_the_Creative_Nothing.html [[Renzo Novatore]]. ''Toward the Creative Nothing'']</ref>. Differing fundamentally, some [[anarchist schools of thought]] support anything from extreme [[individualism]] to complete [[collectivism]].<ref name=slevin/> In the end, for anarchist historian [[Daniel Guerin]] "Some anarchists are more [[Individualistic anarchism|individualistic]] than [[Social anarchism|social]], some more [[Social anarchism|social]] than [[Individualist anarchism|individualistic]]. However, one cannot conceive of a libertarian who is not an [[individualism|individualist]]."<ref>[http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Daniel_Guerin__Anarchism__From_Theory_to_Practice.html Daniel Guérin Anarchism: From Theory to Practice]</ref>

Others, such as [[Panarchism|panarchists]] and [[anarchists without adjectives]], neither advocate nor object to any particular form of organization as long as it is not compulsory. The central tendency of anarchism as a mass social movement has been represented by [[anarcho-communism]] and [[anarcho-syndicalism]], with [[individualist anarchism]] being primarily a [[philosophical anarchism|philosophical or literary phenomenon]].<ref>[[Alexandre Skirda|Skirda, Alexandre]]. Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968. AK Press, 2002, p. 191.</ref> Some anarchists fundamentally [[non-aggression principle|oppose all forms of aggression]], supporting [[self-defense]] or [[non-violence]] ([[anarcho-pacifism]])<ref name="ppu.org.uk">[http://www.ppu.org.uk/e_publications/dd-trad8.html#anarch%20and%20violence "Resiting the Nation State, the pacifist and anarchist tradition" by Geoffrey Ostergaard]</ref><ref>[[George Woodcock]]. ''Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements'' (1962)</ref>, while others have supported the use of some [[coercion|coercive]] measures, including violent [[revolution]] and [[terrorism]], on the path to an anarchist society.<ref>Fowler, R.B. "The Anarchist Tradition of Political Thought." ''The Western Political Quarterly'', Vol. 25, No. 4. (December, 1972), pp. 743–744.</ref>

==Etymology and terminology==
The term ''[[wikt:anarchism|anarchism]]'' derives from the [[Greek language|Greek]] ἄναρχος, ''anarchos'', meaning "without rulers",<ref>[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anarchy Anarchy]. [[Merriam-Webster]] online.</ref><ref>[[Henry Liddell|Liddell, Henry George]], & [[Robert Scott (philologist)|Scott, Robert]], "[[A Greek-English Lexicon]]"[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%237439].</ref> from the prefix ἀν- (''an-'', "without") + ἀρχή (''archê'', "sovereignty, realm, magistracy")<ref>{{cite book|last=Liddell |first=Henry George |coauthors=Scott, Robert |title=A Greek-English Lexicon |url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2315894|isbn=0199102058}}</ref> + -ισμός (''-ismos'', from the [[Suffix (linguistics)|suffix]] -ιζειν, ''-izein'' "-izing"). There is some ambiguity with the use of the terms "[[Libertarianism (disambiguation)|libertarianism]]" and "libertarian" in writings about anarchism. Since the 1890s from France,<ref>{{cite book |title=A Short History of Anarchism |last=Nettlau |first=Max |authorlink=Max Nettlau |year=1996 |publisher=Freedom Press |isbn=0900384891 |page=162}}</ref> the term "libertarianism" has often been used as a synonym for anarchism and was used almost exclusively in this sense until the 1950s in the United States;<ref>Russell, Dean. [http://www.boogieonline.com/revolution/politics/name.html ''Who is a Libertarian?''], [[Foundation for Economic Education]], "Ideas on Liberty," May, 1955.</ref> its use as a synonym is still common outside the United States.<ref>
* Ward, Colin. Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press 2004 p. 62
* Goodway, David. Anarchists Seed Beneath the Snow. Liverpool Press. 2006, p. 4
* MacDonald, Dwight & Wreszin, Michael. Interviews with [[Dwight Macdonald]]. University Press of Mississippi, 2003. p. 82
* Bufe, Charles. The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations. See Sharp Press, 1992. p. iv
* Gay, Kathlyn. Encyclopedia of Political Anarchy. ABC-CLIO / University of Michigan, 2006, p. 126
* [[George Woodcock|Woodcock, George]]. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. Broadview Press, 2004. (Uses the terms interchangeably, such as on page 10)
* [[Alexandre Skirda|Skirda, Alexandre]]. Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968. AK Press 2002. p. 183.
* Fernandez, Frank. Cuban Anarchism. The History of a Movement. See Sharp Press, 2001, page 9.</ref> Accordingly, "[[libertarian socialism]]" is sometimes used as a synonym for [[socialist anarchism]],<ref>{{cite book|last=Perlin |first=Terry M. |title=Contemporary Anarchism |publisher=Transaction Publishers |year=1979 |page=40|isbn=0878550976}}</ref><ref>Noam Chomsky, Carlos Peregrín Otero. Language and Politics. AK Press, 2004, p. 739.</ref> to distinguish it from "individualist libertarianism" (individualist anarchism). On the other hand, some use "[[libertarianism]]" to refer to individualistic free-market philosophy only, referring to free-market anarchism as "[[libertarian anarchism]]".<ref>Morris, Christopher. 1992. ''An Essay on the Modern State''. Cambridge University Press. p. 61. (Using "libertarian anarchism" synonymously with "individualist anarchism" when referring to individualist anarchism that supports a [[market economy|market society]]).</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Burton |first=Daniel C. |title= [http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/polin/polin168.pdf Libertarian anarchism] |publisher=[[Libertarian Alliance]] |year= |page=}}</ref>

==Origins==
{{main|History of anarchism}}
Some claim anarchist themes can be found in the works of [[Taoism|Taoist]] sages [[Laozi]]<ref name="EB1910">Peter Kropotkin, [http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/britanniaanarchy.html "Anarchism"], ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition|Encyclopædia Britannica]]'' 1910.</ref> and [[Zhuangzi]]. The latter has been translated, ''"There has been such a thing as letting mankind alone; there has never been such a thing as governing mankind [with success],"'' and ''"A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes a ruler of a Nation."''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/9_2/9_2_3.pdf|format=PDF|title=Concepts of the role of intellectuals in social change toward laissez faire|author=[[Murray Rothbard]]|accessdate=2008-12-28}}</ref> [[Diogenes of Sinope]] and the [[Cynic]]s, and their contemporary [[Zeno of Citium]], the founder of [[Stoicism]], also introduced similar topics.<ref name="EB1910" />

Modern anarchism, however, sprang from the secular or religious thought of the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]], particularly [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]]'s arguments for the moral centrality of freedom.<ref name=Encarta>"Anarchism", ''[[Encarta]] Online Encyclopedia'' 2006 (UK version).</ref> Although by the turn of the 19th century the term "anarchist" had lost its initial negative connotation,<ref name=bbc/> it first entered the English language in 1642 during the [[English Civil War]] as a [[Pejorative|term of abuse]] used by [[Cavalier|Royalists]] to damn those who were fomenting disorder.<ref name=bbc/> By the time of the [[French Revolution]] some, such as the ''[[Enragés]]'', began to use the term positively,<ref>Sheehan, Sean. ''Anarchism'', London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2004. p. 85.</ref> in opposition to [[Jacobin (politics)|Jacobin]] centralisation of power, seeing "revolutionary government" as [[oxymoron]]ic.<ref name=bbc/>

From this climate [[William Godwin]] developed what many consider the first expression of [[anarchist schools of thought|modern anarchist thought]].<ref name="godwinsep" /> Godwin was, according to [[Peter Kropotkin]], "the first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed in his work",<ref name="EB1910" /> while Godwin attached his anarchist ideas to an early [[Edmund Burke]].<ref>Godwin himself attributed the first anarchist writing to [[Edmund Burke]]'s '' [[A Vindication of Natural Society]]''. "Most of the above arguments may be found much more at large in Burke's ''Vindication of Natural Society''; a treatise in which the evils of the existing political institutions are displayed with incomparable force of reasoning and lustre of eloquence…" – footnote, Ch. 2 ''[[Political Justice]]'' by William Godwin.</ref> [[Benjamin Tucker]] instead credits [[Josiah Warren]], an American who promoted stateless and [[voluntary community|voluntary communities]] where all goods and services were [[privatization|private]], with being "the first man to expound and formulate the doctrine now known as Anarchism."<ref>''Liberty'' XIV (December, 1900:1).</ref> The first to describe himself as an anarchist was [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]],<ref name=bbc>[http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20061207.shtml "Anarchism"], [[BBC Radio 4]] program, [[In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)|In Our Time]], Thursday 7 December 2006. Hosted by [[Melvyn Bragg]] of the BBC, with John Keane, Professor of Politics at [[University of Westminster]], [[Ruth Kinna]], Senior Lecturer in Politics at [[Loughborough University]], and [[Peter Marshall (author)|Peter Marshall]], philosopher and historian.</ref> a French philosopher and politician, which led some to call him the founder of modern anarchist theory.<ref>Daniel Guerin, ''Anarchism: From Theory to Practice'' (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970).</ref>

==Social movement==
Anarchism as a [[social movement]] has regularly endured fluctuations in popularity. Its classical period, which scholars demarcate as from 1860 to 1939, is associated with the working-class movements of the nineteenth century and the [[Spanish Civil War]]-era struggles against [[fascism]].<ref>Jonathan Purkis and James Bowen, "Introduction: Why Anarchism Still Matters", in Jonathan Purkis and James Bowen (eds), ''Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age'' (Manchester: [[Manchester University Press]], 2004), p. 3.</ref>

===The First International===
In Europe, harsh reaction followed the [[revolutions of 1848]], during which ten countries had experienced brief or long-term social upheaval as groups carried out nationalist uprisings. After most of these attempts at systematic change ended in failure, conservative elements took advantage of the divided groups of socialists, anarchists, liberals, and nationalists, to prevent further revolt.<ref>{{cite book |last=Breunig |first=Charles |title=The Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1789–1850 |year=1977 |publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Company]] |location=New York, N.Y |isbn=0-393-09143-0 }}</ref> In 1864 the [[International Workingmen's Association]] (sometimes called the "First International") united diverse revolutionary currents including French followers of [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon|Proudhon]],<ref>{{cite book | last = Blin | first = Arnaud | title = The History of Terrorism | publisher = University of California Press | location = Berkeley | year = 2007 | isbn = 0520247094 |page=116}}</ref> [[Blanquism|Blanquists]], [[Philadelphes]], English trade unionists, [[socialists]] and [[social democrats]].

Due to its links to active workers' movements, the International became a significant organization. [[Karl Marx]] became a leading figure in the International and a member of its General Council. Proudhon's followers, the [[Mutualism (economic theory)|mutualists]], opposed Marx's [[state socialism]], advocating political [[abstentionism]] and small property holdings.<ref>{{cite book | last = Dodson | first = Edward | title = The Discovery of First Principles: Volume 2 | publisher = Authorhouse | page=312 | year = 2002 | isbn = 0595249124 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last = Thomas | first = Paul | title = Karl Marx and the Anarchists | publisher = Routledge & Kegan Paul |ref=harv | location = London | year = 1985 | isbn = 0710206852 |page=187}}</ref>

In 1868, following their unsuccessful participation in the [[League of Peace and Freedom]] (LPF), Russian revolutionary [[Mikhail Bakunin]] and his [[collectivist anarchism|collectivist anarchist]] associates joined the First International (which had decided not to get involved with the LPF).<ref>{{cite book | last = Thomas | first = Paul | title = Karl Marx and the Anarchists | publisher = Routledge and Kegan Paul | location = London | year = 1980 | isbn = 0710206852 |page=304}}</ref> They allied themselves with the [[federalist]] socialist sections of the International,<ref>{{cite book | last = Bak | first = Jǹos | title = Liberty and Socialism | publisher = Rowman & Littlefield Publishers | location = Lanham | year = 1991 | isbn = 0847676803 |page=236}}</ref> who advocated the revolutionary overthrow of the state and the collectivization of property.

At first, the collectivists worked with the Marxists to push the First International in a more revolutionary socialist direction. Subsequently, the International became polarised into two camps, with Marx and Bakunin as their respective figureheads.<ref>{{cite book | last = Engel | first = Barbara | title = Mothers and Daughters | publisher = Northwestern University Press | location = Evanston | year = 2000 | isbn = 0810117401 |page=140}}</ref> Bakunin characterised Marx's ideas as [[centralism|centralist]] and predicted that, if a Marxist party came to power, its leaders would simply take the place of the [[ruling class]] they had fought against.<ref name="bakuninmarx" /><ref>{{cite book|last=Bakunin|first=Mikhail|authorlink=Mikhail Bakunin|origyear=1873|year=1991|title=Statism and Anarchy |publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=0-521-36973-8}}</ref>

In 1872, the conflict climaxed with a final split between the two groups at the [[Hague Congress (1872)|Hague Congress]], where Bakunin and [[James Guillaume]] were expelled from the International and its headquarters were transferred to New York. In response, the federalist sections formed their own International at the [[Anarchist St. Imier International|St. Imier Congress]], adopting a revolutionary anarchist program.<ref name=Graham-05>Graham, Robert '[http://www.blackrosebooks.net/anarism1.htm ''Anarchism''] (Montreal: Black Rose Books 2005) ISBN 1–55164–251–4.</ref>

===Organised labour===
{{main|Anarcho-syndicalism|Anarchism in Spain|Spanish Revolution}}
The anti-authoritarian sections of the First International were the precursors of the anarcho-syndicalists, seeking to "replace the privilege and authority of the State" with the "free and spontaneous organization of labor."<ref>Resolutions from the St. Imier Congress, in ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas'', Vol. 1, p. 100 [http://www.blackrosebooks.net/anarism1.htm]</ref> In 1886, the [[Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions]] (FOTLU) of the United States and Canada unanimously set 1 May 1886, as the date by which the [[Eight-hour day|eight-hour work day]] would become standard.<ref name=foner/>

In response, unions across America prepared a [[general strike]] in support of the event.<ref name=foner/> On 3 May, in Chicago, a fight broke out when [[strikebreaker]]s attempted to cross the picket line, and two workers died when police opened fire upon the crowd.<ref>{{cite book |last=Avrich |first=Paul |title=The Haymarket Tragedy |year=1984 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=0691006008 |page=190}}</ref> The next day, 4 May, anarchists staged a rally at Chicago's Haymarket Square.<ref>{{cite book |last=Avrich |title=The Haymarket Tragedy |page=193 |isbn=0691047111 }}</ref> A bomb was thrown by an unknown party near the conclusion of the rally, killing an officer.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.odmp.org/officer/3972-patrolman-mathias-j.-degan |title=Patrolman Mathias J. Degan |accessdate=2008-01-19 |publisher=The Officer Down Memorial Page, Inc }}</ref> In the ensuing panic, police opened fire on the crowd and each other.<ref>''[[Chicago Tribune]]'', 27 June 1886, quoted in {{cite book |last=Avrich |title=The Haymarket Tragedy |page=209 |isbn=0691047111 }}</ref> Seven police officers and at least four workers were killed.<ref name='the bomb'>{{cite web |url=http://www.chicagohistory.org/dramas/act2/act2.htm |title=Act II: Let Your Tragedy Be Enacted Here |accessdate=2008-01-19 |year=2000 |work=The Dramas of Haymarket |publisher=Chicago Historical Society }}</ref> Eight anarchists directly and indirectly related to the organisers of the rally were arrested and charged with the murder of the deceased officer. The men became international political celebrities among the labour movement. Four of the men were executed and a fifth committed suicide prior to his own execution. The incident became known as the [[Haymarket affair]], and was a setback for the labour movement and the struggle for the eight hour day. In 1890 a second attempt, this time international in scope, to organise for the eight hour day was made.[[File:50anos.jpg|150px|left|thumb|Spanish propaganda poster from 1932 of the [[anarcho-syndicalist]] [[International Workers' Association]] celebrating "50 years of [[direct action]] against the state and capitalism"]]The event also had the secondary purpose of memorializing workers killed as a result of the Haymarket affair.<ref>{{cite book |last=Foner |title=May Day |page=42 |isbn=0717806243 }}</ref> Although it had initially been conceived as a once-off event, by the following year the celebration of [[International Workers' Day]] on [[May Day]] had become firmly established as an international worker's holiday.<ref name=foner>{{cite book | last = Foner | first = Philip Sheldon | title = May day: a short history of the international workers' holiday, 1886-1986 | publisher = International Publishers | location = New York | year = 1986 | isbn = 0717806243 |page=56}}</ref>

In 1907, the [[International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam]] gathered delegates from 14 different countries, among which important figures of the anarchist movement, including [[Errico Malatesta]], [[Pierre Monatte]], [[Luigi Fabbri]], [[Benoît Broutchoux]], [[Emma Goldman]], [[Rudolf Rocker]], and [[Christiaan Cornelissen]]. Various themes were treated during the Congress, in particular concerning the organisation of the anarchist movement, [[popular education]] issues, the [[general strike]] or [[antimilitarism]]. A central debate concerned the relation between anarchism and [[syndicalism]] (or [[trade union]]ism). Malatesta and Monatte were in particular disagreement themselves on this issue, as the latter thought that syndicalism was revolutionary and would create the conditions of a [[social revolution]], while Malatesta did not consider syndicalism by itself sufficient.<ref>[http://www.fondation-besnard.org/article.php3?id_article=225 Extract of Malatesta's declaration]</ref> He thought that the trade-union movement was [[reformism|reformist]] and even [[Conservatism|conservative]], citing as essentially bourgeois and anti-worker the phenomenon of professional union officials. Malatesta warned that the syndicalists aims were in perpetuating syndicalism itself, whereas anarchists must always have anarchy as their end and consequently refrain from committing to any particular method of achieving it.<ref>{{cite book | last = Skirda | first = Alexandre | title = [[Facing the Enemy|Facing the enemy: a history of anarchist organization from Proudhon to May 1968]] | publisher = [[A. K. Press]] | year = 2002 | isbn = 1902593197 |page=89 }}</ref>

The Spanish Workers Federation in 1881 was the first major anarcho-syndicalist movement; anarchist trade union federations were of special importance in Spain. The most successful was the [[Confederación Nacional del Trabajo]] (National Confederation of Labour: CNT), founded in 1910. Before the 1940s, the CNT was the major force in Spanish working class politics, attracting 1.58 million members at one point and playing a major role in the [[Spanish Civil War]].<ref>{{cite book
|last=Beevor
|first=Antony
|authorlink=Antony Beevor
|year=2006
|title=The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
|publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson
|location=London
|isbn=978-0297-848325
|page=24
}}</ref> The CNT was affiliated with the International Workers Association, a federation of anarcho-syndicalist trade unions founded in 1922, with delegates representing two million workers from 15 countries in Europe and Latin America. The largest organised anarchist movement today is in Spain, in the form of the [[Confederación General del Trabajo]] (CGT) and the [[Confederación Nacional del Trabajo|CNT]]. CGT membership was estimated to be around 100,000 for the year 2003.<ref>Carley, Mark "Trade union membership 1993–2003" (International:SPIRE Associates 2004).</ref> Other active syndicalist movements include the US [[Workers Solidarity Alliance]] and the UK [[Solidarity Federation]]. The revolutionary industrial unionist [[Industrial Workers of the World]], claiming 2,000 paying members, and the [[International Workers Association]], an anarcho-syndicalist successor to the First International, also remain active.

=== Propaganda of the deed ===
{{Main|Propaganda of the deed}}
[[Image:German anti-communist poster 1918.jpg|left|thumb|Propaganda poster depicting an angel protecting against a bomb-throwing, knife-wielding [[Bolshevik]] activist: propaganda of the deed was widely viewed negatively]]
Some anarchists, such as [[Johann Most]], advocated publicizing violent acts of retaliation against counter-revolutionaries because "we preach not only action in and for itself, but also action as propaganda."<ref>[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/most/actionprop.html "Action as Propaganda" by Johann Most, July 25, 1885]</ref> By the 1880s, the slogan "propaganda of the deed" had begun to be used both within and outside of the anarchist movement to refer to individual bombings, [[regicide]]s and [[tyrannicide]]s. However, as soon as 1887, important figures in the anarchist movement distanced themselves from such individual acts. [[Peter Kropotkin]] thus wrote that year in ''Le Révolté'' that "a structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of dynamite".<ref>quoted in Billington, James H. 1998. ''Fire in the minds of men: origins of the revolutionary faith'' New Jersey: Transaction Books, p 417.</ref> A variety of anarchists advocated the abandonment of these sorts of tactics in favor of collective revolutionary action, for example through the [[trade union]] movement. The [[anarcho-syndicalism|anarcho-syndicalist]], [[Fernand Pelloutier]], argued in 1895 for renewed anarchist involvement in the labor movement on the basis that anarchism could do very well without "the individual dynamiter."<ref>http://blackrosebooks.net/anarism1.htm</ref>

[[Political repression|State repression]] (including the infamous 1894 French ''[[lois scélérates]]'') of the anarchist and [[labor movement]]s following the few successful bombings and assassinations may have contributed to the abandonment of these kinds of tactics, although reciprocally state repression, in the first place, may have played a role in these isolated acts. The dismemberment of the French [[socialist movement]], into many groups and, following the suppression of the 1871 [[Paris Commune]], the execution and exile of many ''[[communards]]'' to [[penal colonies]], favored individualist political expression and acts.<ref>Historian [[Benedict Anderson]] thus writes: <blockquote> "In March 1871 the Commune took power in the abandoned city and held it for two months. Then [[Adolphe Thiers|Versailles]] seized the moment to attack and, in one horrifying week, executed roughly 20,000 Communards or suspected sympathizers, a number higher than those killed in the recent war or during [[Robespierre]]’s ‘[[Reign of Terror|Terror]]’ of 1793–94. More than 7,500 were jailed or deported to places like New Caledonia. Thousands of others fled to Belgium, England, Italy, Spain and the United States. In 1872, stringent laws were passed that ruled out all possibilities of organizing on the left. Not till 1880 was there a general amnesty for exiled and imprisoned Communards. Meanwhile, the Third Republic found itself strong enough to renew and reinforce [[Napoleon III of France|Louis Napoleon]]’s imperialist expansion– in Indochina, Africa, and Oceania. Many of France’s leading intellectuals and artists had participated in the Commune ([[Gustave Courbet|Courbet]] was its quasi-minister of culture, [[Arthur Rimbaud|Rimbaud]] and [[Pissarro]] were active propagandists) or were sympathetic to it. The ferocious repression of 1871 and thereafter, was probably the key factor in alienating these milieux from the Third Republic and stirring their sympathy for its victims at home and abroad." (in {{cite news |author=Benedict Anderson |title=In the World-Shadow of Bismarck and Nobel |publisher=[[New Left Review]]|date=July -August 2004|url=http://newleftreview.org/?view=2519}}) </blockquote> According to some analysts, in [[History of Germany since 1945|post-war Germany]], the prohibition of the [[Communist Party of Germany|Communist Party]] (KDP) and thus of institutional far-left political organization may also, in the same manner, have played a role in the creation of the [[Red Army Faction]].</ref>

Numerous heads of state were assassinated between 1881 and 1914 by members of the anarchist movement. For example, U.S. [[William McKinley|President McKinley's]] assassin [[Leon Czolgosz]] claimed to have been influenced by anarchist and [[feminist]] [[Emma Goldman]]. This was in spite of Goldman's disavowal of any association with him, his registered membership in the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]], and never having belonged to an anarchist organization. Bombings were associated in the media with anarchists because [[international terrorism]] arose during this time period with the widespread distribution of dynamite. This image remains to this day.

Propaganda of the deed was abandoned by the vast majority of the anarchist movement after [[World War I]] (1914–18) and the [[October Revolution|1917 October Revolution]]. Important factors towards this include state repression, the level of organization of the labour movement, and the influence of the [[October Revolution]]{{citation needed|date=March 2010}}.

===Russian Revolution===
{{main|Anarchism in Russia|Russian Revolution (1917)}}
[[Image:Goldmanberkman.jpeg|thumb|right|Anarchists [[Emma Goldman]] and [[Alexander Berkman]] opposed [[Bolshevik]] consolidation of power following the [[Russian Revolution (1917)]].]]
Anarchists participated alongside the [[Bolshevik]]s in both [[February Revolution|February]] and [[October Revolution|October revolutions]], and were initially enthusiastic about the Bolshevik coup.<ref>{{cite book | last = Dirlik | first = Arif | title = Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution | publisher = University of California Press | location = Berkeley | year = 1991 | isbn = 0520072979 }}</ref> However, the Bolsheviks soon turned against the anarchists and other left-wing opposition, a conflict that culminated in the 1921 [[Kronstadt rebellion]] which the new government repressed. Anarchists in central Russia were either imprisoned, driven underground or joined the victorious Bolsheviks; the anarchists from Petrograd and Moscow fled to the [[Ukraine]].<ref>{{cite book | last = Avrich | first = Paul | title = The Russian Anarchists | publisher = AK Press | location = Stirling | year = 2006 | isbn = 1904859488 |page=204}}</ref> There, in the [[Free Territory (Ukraine)|Free Territory]], they fought in the [[Russian Civil War|civil war]] against the [[White movement|Whites]] (a Western-backed grouping of monarchists and other opponents of the October Revolution) and then the Bolsheviks as part of the [[Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine]] led by [[Nestor Makhno]], who established an anarchist society in the region for a number of months.

Expelled American anarchists [[Emma Goldman]] and [[Alexander Berkman]] were amongst those agitating in response to Bolshevik policy and the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, before they left Russia. Both wrote accounts of their experiences in Russia, criticizing the amount of control the Bolsheviks exercised. For them, [[Mikhail Bakunin|Bakunin's]] predictions about the consequences of Marxist rule that the rulers of the new "socialist” Marxist state would become a new elite had proved all too true.<ref name="bakuninmarx">"[http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1872/karl-marx.htm On the International Workingmen's Association and Karl Marx]" in ''Bakunin on Anarchy'', translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff, 1971.</ref><ref>{{cite book | last = Goldman | first = Emma | title = [[My Disillusionment in Russia]] |chapter=Preface |page=xx | publisher = Dover Publications | location = New York | year = 2003 | isbn = 048643270X |quote= My critic further charged me with believing that "had the Russians made the Revolution à la Bakunin instead of à la Marx" the result would have been different and more satisfactory. I plead guilty to the charge. In truth, I not only believe so; I am certain of it.}}</ref>

The victory of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution and the resulting Russian Civil War did serious damage to anarchist movements internationally. Many workers and activists saw Bolshevik success as setting an example; [[Communist party|Communist parties]] grew at the expense of anarchism and other socialist movements. In France and the United States, for example, members of the major syndicalist movements of the [[Confédération générale du travail|CGT]] and [[Industrial Workers of the World|IWW]] left the organizations and joined the [[Comintern|Communist International]].<ref>{{cite book | editor1-last = Drachkovitch | editor1-first = Milorad M. |first=Max |last=Nomad |contribution=The Anarchist Tradition title = Revolutionary Internationals 1864 1943 | publisher = Stanford University Press |page=88 | year = 1966 | isbn = 0804702934 }}</ref>

In Paris, the [[Dielo Truda]] group of Russian anarchist exiles, which included [[Nestor Makhno]], concluded that anarchists needed to develop new forms of organisation in response to the structures of Bolshevism. Their 1926 manifesto, called the ''[[Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft)]]'',<ref name=Platformtext>{{cite book |last=Dielo Trouda |authorlink=Dielo Truda |title=Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft) |origyear=1926 |url=http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1000 |accessdate=2006-10-24 |year=2006 |publisher=FdCA |location=Italy}}</ref> was supported. [[Platformist]] groups active today include the [[Workers Solidarity Movement]] in Ireland and the [[NEFAC|North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists]] of North America.

[[Image:Members of the Maquis in La Tresorerie.jpg|thumb|left|Anti-fascist [[Maquis (World War II)|Maquis]], who resisted [[Nazism|Nazi]] and [[Francisco Franco|Francoist]] rule in Europe.]]

===Fight against fascism===
{{main|anti-fascism|anarchism and nationalism}}{{See also|anarchism in Italy|anarchism in France|anarchism in Spain}}
In the 1920s and 1930s, the rise of [[fascism]] in Europe transformed anarchism's conflict with the state. Italy saw the first struggles between anarchists and fascists. [[Anarchism in Italy|Italian anarchists]] played a key role in the [[Anti-fascism|anti-fascist]] organisation ''[[Arditi del Popolo]]'', which was strongest in areas with anarchist traditions, and achieved some success in their activism, such as repelling [[Blackshirts]] in the anarchist stronghold of [[Parma]] in August 1922.<ref>Holbrow, Marnie, [http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=8205 "Daring but Divided"] (''Socialist Review'' November 2002).</ref> In France, where the [[far right leagues]] came close to insurrection in the [[6 February 1934 crisis|February 1934 riots]], anarchists divided over a [[united front]] policy.<ref>Berry, David. "Fascism or Revolution." ''Le Libertaire''. August 1936).</ref>

In Spain, the [[Confederación Nacional del Trabajo|CNT]] initially refused to join a popular front electoral alliance, and abstention by CNT supporters led to a right wing election victory. But in 1936, the CNT changed its policy and anarchist votes helped bring the popular front back to power. Months later, the former ruling class responded with an attempted coup causing the [[Spanish Civil War]] (1936–1939).<ref>{{cite book
|last=Beevor
|first=Antony
|authorlink=Antony Beevor
|year=2006
|page=46
|title=The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
|publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson
|location=London
|isbn=978-0297-848325
}}</ref> In response to the army rebellion, an [[Anarchism in Spain|anarchist-inspired]] movement of peasants and workers, supported by armed militias, took control of [[Barcelona]] and of large areas of rural Spain where they [[Collective farming|collectivised]] the land.<ref>{{cite book | last = Bolloten | first = Burnett | authorlink = Burnett Bolloten | coauthors = | title = The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution | publisher = University of North Carolina Press | date = 1984-11-15 | location = | page =1107 | url = | doi = | id = | isbn = 978-0807819067 }}</ref> But even before the fascist victory in 1939, the anarchists were losing ground in a bitter struggle with the [[Stalinism|Stalinists]], who controlled the distribution of military aid to the Republican cause from the [[Soviet Union]]. Stalinist-led troops suppressed the collectives and persecuted both [[Workers' Party of Marxist Unification|dissident Marxists]] and anarchists.<ref>{{cite book|isbn=1571815422 |page=29 |title=Sartre Against Stalinism |first=Ian |last=Birchall |year=2004 |publisher=Berghahn Books}}</ref>

===Contemporary anarchism===
{{main|Contemporary anarchism}}
[[Image:ParcGuellOkupas.jpg|thumb|right|The famous ''okupas'' [[squatting|squat]] near Parc Güell, overlooking [[Barcelona]]. Squatting was a prominent part of the emergence of renewed anarchist movement from the [[counterculture]] of the 1960s and 1970s.]]
A surge of popular interest in anarchism occurred during the 1960s and 1970s.<ref>{{Harvnb|Thomas|1985|page=4}}</ref> In the United Kingdom this was associated with the [[punk rock]] movement, as exemplified by bands such as [[Crass]] and the [[Sex Pistols]].<ref>{{cite book | last = McLaughlin | first = Paul | title = Anarchism and Authority | publisher = Ashgate | location = Aldershot | year = 2007 | isbn = 0754661962 | page = 10 | unused_data = page10}}</ref> The housing and employment crisis in most of Western Europe led to the formation of [[commune (intentional community)|communes]] and [[Squatting|squatter]] movements like that of [[Barcelona]], Spain. In Denmark, squatters occupied a disused military base and declared the [[Freetown Christiania]], an autonomous haven in central Copenhagen.

Since the revival of anarchism in the mid 20th century,<ref name="revival">{{cite journal
|last=Williams
|first=Leonard
|year=2007
|month=September
|title=Anarchism Revived
|journal=New Political Science
|volume=29
|issue=3
|pages=297–312
|doi=10.1080/07393140701510160
|accessdate=2007-12-04
}}
</ref> a number of new movements and schools of thought emerged. Although feminist tendencies have always been a part of the anarchist movement in the form of [[anarcha-feminism]], they returned with vigour during the second wave of feminism in the 1960s. The [[American Civil Rights Movement]] and the movement against the [[Vietnam War|war in Vietnam]] also contributed to the revival of North American anarchism. European anarchism of the late 20th century drew much of its strength from the labour movement, and both have incorporated [[animal rights]] activism. Anarchist anthropologist [[David Graeber]] has posited a rupture between generations of anarchism, with those "who often still have not shaken the sectarian habits" of the nineteenth century contrasted with the younger activists who are "much more informed, among other elements, by [[Traditional knowledge|indigenous]], [[feminism|feminist]], [[ecology|ecological]] and [[counterculture|cultural-critical]] ideas", and who by the turn of the 21st century formed "by far the majority" of anarchists.<ref name="graeber">[[David Graeber]] and [[Andrej Grubacic]], "[http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=4796 Anarchism, Or The Revolutionary Movement Of The Twenty-first Century]", [[ZNet]]. Retrieved 2007-12-13.</ref>

Around the turn of the 21st century, anarchism grew in popularity and influence as part of the anti-war, anti-capitalist, and [[anti-globalisation movement]]s.<ref name=rupert>{{cite book | page=66 |last = Rupert | first = Mark | title = Globalization and International Political Economy | publisher = Rowman & Littlefield Publishers | location = Lanham | year = 2006 | isbn = 0742529436 }}</ref> Anarchists became known for their involvement in protests against the meetings of the [[World Trade Organization]] (WTO), [[G8|Group of Eight]], and the [[World Economic Forum]]. Some anarchist factions at these protests engaged in rioting, property destruction, and violent confrontations with police, and the confrontations were selectively portrayed in mainstream media coverage as violent riots. These actions were precipitated by ad hoc, leaderless, anonymous cadres known as ''[[black bloc]]s''; other organisational tactics pioneered in this time include [[security culture]], [[affinity groups]] and the use of decentralised technologies such as the internet.<ref name=rupert/> A landmark struggle of this period was the confrontations at [[World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity|WTO conference in Seattle in 1999]].<ref name=rupert/>

International anarchist federations in existence include the [[International of Anarchist Federations]], the [[International Workers' Association]], and [[International Libertarian Solidarity]].

==Anarchist schools of thought==
{{main|Anarchist schools of thought}}
[[File:Portrait of Pierre Joseph Proudhon 1865.jpg|thumb|Portrait of philosopher [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]] (1809–1865) by [[Gustave Courbet]]. Proudhon was the primary proponent of anarchist [[Mutualism (economic theory)|mutualism]], and influenced many later [[individualist anarchist]] thinkers.]]
Anarchist ideas have only occasionally inspired political movements of any size, and "the tradition is mainly one of individual thinkers, but they have produced an important body of theory."<ref>Adams, Ian.[http://books.google.com.ec/books?id=apstK1qIvvMC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s Political Ideology Today] p. 115. Manchester University Press, 2001.</ref> Anarchist schools of thought had been generally grouped in two main historical traditions, [[individualist anarchism]] and [[social anarchism]], which have some different origins, values and evolution.<ref name=slevin/><ref name="black dict" /><ref>[http://libertarian-labyrinth.org/archive/Anarchism Anarchism], [http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1855069954 The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform] (1908).</ref> The individualist wing of anarchism emphasises [[negative liberty]], i.e. opposition to state or [[social control]] over the individual, while those in the social wing emphasise [[positive liberty]] to achieve one's potential and argue that humans have needs that society ought to fulfill, "recognizing equality of entitlement".<ref>Harrison, Kevin and Boyd, Tony. ''Understanding Political Ideas and Movements''. Manchester University Press 2003, p. 251.</ref> In chronological and theoretical sense there are classical — those created throughout the 19th century — and post-classical anarchist schools — those created since the mid-20th century and after.

Beyond the specific factions of anarchist thought is [[philosophical anarchism]], which embodies the theoretical stance that the [[Sovereign state|State]] lacks moral legitimacy without accepting the imperative of revolution to eliminate it. A component especially of individualist anarchism<ref>Outhwaite, William & Tourain, Alain (Eds.). (2003). Anarchism. The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought (2nd Edition, p. 12). Blackwell Publishing.</ref><ref>Wayne Gabardi, [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0554%28198603%2980%3A1%3C300%3AA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6 review] of ''Anarchism'' by David Miller, published in ''American Political Science Review'' Vol. 80, No. 1. (Mar., 1986), pp. 300-302.</ref> philosophical anarchism may accept the existence of a [[minarchism|minimal state]] as unfortunate, and usually temporary, "necessary evil" but argue that citizens do not have a [[moral obligation]] to obey the state when its laws conflict with individual autonomy.<ref>Klosko, George. ''Political Obligations''. Oxford University Press 2005. p. 4.</ref> One reaction against sectarianism within the anarchist milieu was "[[anarchism without adjectives]]", a call for [[toleration]] first adopted by [[Fernando Tarrida del Mármol]] in 1889 in response to the "bitter debates" of anarchist theory at the time.<ref>Avrich, Paul. ''[[Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America]]''. Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 6.</ref> In abandoning the hyphenated anarchisms (i.e. collectivist-, communist-, mutualist- and individualist-anarchism), it sought to emphasise the [[anti-authoritarian]] beliefs common to all anarchist schools of thought.<ref>Esenwein, George Richard "Anarchist Ideology and the Working Class Movement in Spain, 1868–1898" [p. 135].</ref>

===Mutualism===
{{main|Mutualism (economic theory)}}
Mutualism began in 18th century English and French labour movements before taking an anarchist form associated with [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]] in France and others in the United States.<ref>"A member of a community," ''The Mutualist''; this 1826 series criticised [[Robert Owen]]'s proposals, and has been attributed to a dissident Owenite, possibly from the Friendly Association for Mutual Interests of Valley Forge; [[Shawn Wilburn|Wilbur, Shawn]], 2006, "More from the 1826 "Mutualist"?".</ref> Proudhon proposed [[spontaneous order]], whereby organization emerges without central authority, a "positive anarchy" where order arises when everybody does “what he wishes and only what he wishes"<ref>Proudhon, ''Solution to the Social Problem'', ed. H. Cohen (New York: Vanguard Press, 1927), p. 45.</ref> and where "business transactions alone produce the social order."<ref>{{cite book |last=Proudhon |first=Pierre-Joseph |authorlink=Pierre-Joseph Proudhon |title=The Principle of Federation |publisher=University of Toronto Press |location=Toronto |year=1979 |isbn=0802054587 |quote=The notion of ''anarchy'' in politics is just as rational and positive as any other. It means that once industrial functions have taken over from political functions, then business transactions alone produce the social order.}}</ref>

Mutualist anarchism is concerned with [[Reciprocity (cultural anthropology)|reciprocity]], free association, voluntary contract, federation, and credit and currency reform. According to William Batchelder Greene, each worker in the mutualist system would receive "just and exact pay for his work; services equivalent in cost being exchangeable for services equivalent in cost, without profit or discount."<ref>"Communism versus Mutualism", ''Socialistic, Communistic, Mutualistic and Financial Fragments''. (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1875) [[William Batchelder Greene]]: "Under the mutual system, each individual will receive the just and exact pay for his work; services equivalent in cost being exchangeable for services equivalent in cost, without profit or discount; and so much as the individual laborer will then get over and above what he has earned will come to him as his share in the general prosperity of the community of which he is an individual member."</ref> Mutualism has been retrospectively characterised as ideologically situated between individualist and collectivist forms of anarchism.<ref>Avrich, Paul. ''Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America'', Princeton University Press 1996 ISBN 0-69-04494-5, p.6 ''Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought'', Blackwell Publishing 1991 ISBN 0-631-17944-5, p. 11.</ref> Proudhon first characterised his goal as a "third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property."<ref>Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. ''What Is Property?'' Princeton, MA: Benjamin R. Tucker, 1876. p. 281.</ref>

===Individualist anarchism===
{{main|Individualist anarchism}}
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the [[anarchist]] movement that emphasise the [[individual]] and their [[will (philosophy)|will]] over any kinds of external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.<ref name="ryner">"What do I mean by individualism?
I mean by individualism the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual conscience."[http://www.marx.org/archive/ryner/1905/mini-manual.htm ''Mini-Manual of Individualism'' by Han Ryner]</ref><ref name="tucker">"I do not admit anything except the existence of the individual, as a condition of his sovereignty. To say that the sovereignty of the individual is conditioned by Liberty is simply another way of saying that it is conditioned by itself.""Anarchism and the State" in ''Individual Liberty''</ref> Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a group of individualistic philosophies that sometimes are in conflict.

[[Image:Max stirner.jpg|thumb|[[19th century philosophy|19th century philosopher]] [[Max Stirner]], usually considered a prominent early [[individualist anarchist]] (sketch by [[Friedrich Engels]]).]]
In 1793, [[William Godwin]], who has often<ref>Everhart, Robert B. The Public School Monopoly: A Critical Analysis of Education and the State in American Society. Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, 1982. p. 115.</ref> been cited as the first anarchist, wrote ''[[Political Justice]]'', which some consider to be the first expression of anarchism.<ref name="godwinsep" /><ref>Adams, Ian. Political Ideology Today. Manchester University Press, 2001. p. 116.</ref> Godwin, a philosophical anarchist, from a [[rationalist]] and [[utilitarian]] basis opposed revolutionary action and saw a [[Limited government|minimal state]] as a present "necessary evil" that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge.<ref name="godwinsep">{{sep entry|godwin|William Godwin|Mark Philip|2006-05-20}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=[[Political Justice|Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners]] |last=Godwin |first=William |authorlink=William Godwin |year=1796 |publisher=G.G. and J. Robinson |oclc=2340417 |origyear=1793}}</ref> Godwin advocated extreme [[individualism]], proposing that all cooperation in labour be eliminated on the premise that this would be most conducive with the general good.<ref>''Britannica Concise Encyclopedia''. Retrieved 7 December 2006, from [http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9037183 Encyclopædia Britannica Online].</ref><ref name=pmcl119>Paul McLaughlin. Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007. p. 119.</ref>

Godwin was a utilitarian who believed that all individuals are not of equal value, with some of us "of more worth and importance" than others depending on our utility in bringing about social good. Therefore he does not believe in equal rights, but the person's life that should be favoured that is most conducive to the general good.<ref name=pmcl119/> Godwin opposed government because he saw it as infringing on the individual's right to "private judgement" to determine which actions most maximise utility, but also makes a critique of all authority over the individual's judgement. This aspect of Godwin's philosophy, stripped of utilitarian motivations, was developed into a more extreme form later by Stirner.<ref>Paul McLaughlin. Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007. p. 123.</ref>

The most extreme form of individualist anarchism, called "egoism,"<ref name="Goodway, David 2006, p. 99">Goodway, David. Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow. Liverpool University Press, 2006, p. 99.</ref> or [[egoist anarchism]], was expounded by one of the earliest and best-known proponents of individualist anarchism, Max Stirner. Stirner's ''[[The Ego and Its Own]]'', published in 1844, is a founding text of the philosophy.<ref name = "SEP-Stirner" /> According to Stirner, the only limitation on the rights of the individual is their power to obtain what they desire,<ref>The Encyclopedia Americana: A Library of Universal Knowledge. Encyclopedia Corporation. p. 176.</ref> without regard for God, state, or morality.<ref>Miller, David. "Anarchism." 1987. ''The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought''. Blackwell Publishing. p. 11.</ref> To Stirner, rights were ''[[Reification (fallacy)|spooks]]'' in the mind, and he held that society does not exist but "the individuals are its reality".<ref>"What my might reaches is my property; and let me claim as property everything I feel myself strong enough to attain, and let me extend my actual property as fas as ''I'' entitle, that is, empower myself to take…" In Ossar, Michael. 1980. ''Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller''. SUNY Press. p. 27.</ref>

Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw [[Egoist anarchism#Union of Egoists|Unions of Egoists]], non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will,<ref name=nonserviam>{{cite web|first=Svein Olav |last=Nyberg |work=Non Serviam|url=http://www.nonserviam.com/stirner/philosophy/index.html|title=max stirner|accessdate=2008-12-04}}</ref> which Stirner proposed as a form of organization in place of the [[Sovereign state|state]].<ref name=karl>{{cite book | last = Thomas | first = Paul | title = Karl Marx and the Anarchists | publisher = [[Routledge]]/[[Kegan Paul]] | location = London | year = 1985 | isbn = 0710206852 |page=142}}</ref> Egoist anarchists claim that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals.<ref name=carlson>{{cite book | last = Carlson | first = Andrew | title = Anarchism in Germany | publisher = Scarecrow Press | location = Metuchen | year = 1972 | isbn = 0810804840 |chapterurl=http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/carlson.html |chapter=Philosophical Egoism: German Antecedents|accessdate=2008-12-04}}</ref> "Egoism" has inspired many interpretations of Stirner's philosophy. It was re-discovered and promoted by German philosophical anarchist and [[LGBT]] activist [[John Henry Mackay]]. Individualist anarchism inspired by Stirner attracted a small following of European bohemian artists and intellectuals (see [[European individualist anarchism]]). Stirner's philosophy has been seen as a precedent of [[existentialism]] with other thinkers like [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] and [[Søren Kierkegaard]].{{cite}}

===Anarcho-capitalism===
{{main|Anarcho-capitalism}}
Related to individualist anarchism but distinct from it, is [[anarcho-capitalism]].

Anarcho-capitalism is an [[individualist anarchism|individualist anarchist]]<ref>Adams, Ian. 2002. Political Ideology Today. p. 135. Manchester University Press; Ostergaard, Geoffrey. 2003. Anarchism. In W. Outwaite (Ed.), ''The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought''. p. 14. [[Blackwell Publishing]]</ref> [[political philosophy]] that advocates the elimination of the [[Sovereign state|state]] and the elevation of the [[sovereign individual]] in a [[free market]]. In an anarcho-capitalist society, [[Police|law enforcement]], [[court]]s, and all other security services would be provided by voluntarily-funded competitors such as [[private defense agencies]] rather than through [[tax]]ation, and [[money]] would be [[free banking|privately and competitively provided]] in an open market. According to anarcho-capitalists, personal and [[economic]] activities would be regulated by the [[natural law]]s of the [[market]] and through [[private law]] rather than through [[politics]]. Furthermore, [[victimless crime]]s and [[crime]]s against the state would not exist.

Anarcho-capitalists argue for a society based on the voluntary trade of [[private property]] and [[Service (economics)|services]] (including money, consumer goods, land, and capital goods) in order to maximize individual liberty and prosperity. However, they also recognize [[Charity (practice)|charity]] and communal arrangements as part of the same voluntary ethic.<ref>Hess, Karl. [http://fare.tunes.org/books/Hess/dop.html The Death of Politics]. Interview in Playboy Magazine, March 1969</ref> Though anarcho-capitalists are known for asserting a right to private (individualized or joint non-public) property, some propose that non-state public/community property can also exist in an anarcho-capitalist society.<ref>Holcombe, Randall G., [http://mises.org/journals/jls/19_2/19_2_1.pdf Common Property in Anarcho-Capitalism], Journal of Libertarian Studies, Volume 19, No. 2 (Spring 2005):3–29.</ref> For them, what is important is that it is acquired and transferred without help or hindrance from the compulsory [[Sovereign state|state]]. Anarcho-capitalist [[Libertarianism|libertarians]] believe that the only just, and/or most economically-beneficial, way to acquire property is through voluntary [[trade]], gift, or labor-based [[homestead principle (ethics)|original appropriation]], rather than through aggression or fraud.<ref>[[Paul Avrich|Avrich, Paul]]. ''Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Abridged Paperback Edition (1996), p. 282</ref>

Anarcho-capitalists see [[free-market]] [[capitalism]] as the basis for a free and prosperous society. [[Murray Rothbard]] said 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.<ref>Rothbard, Murray N., [http://www.mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1559 A Future of Peace and Capitalism]; Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.mises.org/article.aspx?control=910 Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty].</ref> "Capitalism," as anarcho-capitalists employ the term, is not to be confused with [[state monopoly capitalism]], [[crony capitalism]], [[Corporatocracy|corporatism]], or contemporary [[mixed economies]], wherein natural market incentives and disincentives are skewed by state intervention.<ref>Adams, Ian. Political Ideology Today. Manchester University Press 2001. p. 33</ref> So they reject the state, based on the belief that states are aggressive entities which steal property (through [[taxation]] and [[expropriation]]), initiate aggression, are a compulsory monopoly on the use of force, use their coercive powers to benefit some businesses and individuals at the expense of others, create monopolies, restrict [[trade]], and restrict personal freedoms via [[drug laws]], [[compulsory education]], [[conscription]], laws on food and morality, and the like. The embrace of unfettered [[capitalism]] leads to considerable tension between anarcho-capitalists and many [[social anarchists]] that view [[capitalism]] and its [[market]] as just another authority. Anti-capitalist anarchists generally consider anarcho-capitalism a ''[[contradictio in terminis]]''.<ref>[[David Weick]], ''Anarchist Justice'', pp. 223-224; [[Peter Sabatini]], ''Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy''; Kropotkin, ''Anarchism'';</ref>

===Social anarchism===
{{main|Social anarchism}}
Social anarchism calls for a system with public ownership of means of production and democratic control of all organizations, without any government authority or [[coercion]]. It is the largest school of thought in anarchism.<ref>"This does not mean that the majority thread within the anarchist movement is uncritical of individualist anarchism. Far from it! Social anarchists have argued that this influence of non-anarchist ideas means that while its "criticism of the State is very searching, and [its] defence of the rights of the individual very powerful," like Spencer it "opens . . . the way for reconstituting under the heading of 'defence' all the functions of the State." [http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secGint.html Section G - Is individualist anarchism capitalistic? ''[[An Anarchist FAQ]]'']</ref> Social anarchism rejects private property, seeing it as a source of social inequality, and emphasises cooperation and [[mutual aid (organization)|mutual aid]].<ref>[[Geoffrey Ostergaard|Ostergaard, Geoffrey]]. "Anarchism". A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Blackwell Publishing, 1991. p. 21.</ref>
[[File:Kropotkin2.jpg|thumb|left|Russian theorist [[Peter Kropotkin]] (1842–1921), who was influential in the development of [[anarchist communism]].]]
[[Collectivist anarchism]], also referred to as "revolutionary socialism" or a form of such,<ref>Morris, Brian. Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom. Black Rose Books Ltd., 1993. p. 76.</ref><ref>Rae, John. Contemporary Socialism. C. Scribner's sons, 1901, Original from Harvard University. p. 261.</ref> is a revolutionary form of anarchism, commonly associated with [[Mikhail Bakunin]] and [[Johann Most]].<ref name = "Patsouras-p54">Patsouras, Louis. 2005. Marx in Context. iUniverse. p. 54.</ref><ref>Avrich, Paul. 2006. ''Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America''. [[AK Press]]. p. 5.</ref> Collectivist anarchists oppose all private ownership of the means of production, instead advocating that ownership be collectivised. This was to be achieved through violent revolution, first starting with a small cohesive group through acts of violence, or "[[propaganda by the deed]]", which would inspire the workers as a whole to revolt and forcibly collectivise the means of production.<ref name = "Patsouras-p54" />

However, collectivization was not to be extended to the distribution of income, as workers would be paid according to time worked, rather than receiving goods being distributed "according to need" as in anarcho-communism. This position was criticised by [[anarchist communists]] as effectively "uphold[ing] the wages system".<ref>{{cite book |last=Kropotkin |first=Peter |title=The Conquest of Bread |publisher=AK Press |location=Edinburgh |year=2007 |chapter=13 |isbn=9781904859109}}</ref> Collectivist anarchism arose contemporaneously with [[Marxism]] but opposed the Marxist [[dictatorship of the proletariat]], despite the stated Marxist goal of a collectivist stateless society.<ref>{{cite book |last=Bakunin |first=Mikhail |title=Statism and Anarchy |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |year=1990 |isbn=0521361826 |quote=They [the Marxists] maintain that only a dictatorship – their dictatorship, of course – can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.}}</ref> Anarchist communist and collectivist ideas are not mutually exclusive; although the collectivist anarchists advocated compensation for labour, some held out the possibility of a post-revolutionary transition to a communist system of distribution according to need.<ref>{{cite web|authorlink=James Guillaume|last=Guillaume |first=James |url=http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/guillaume/works/ideas.htm |title=Ideas on Social Organization |year=1876}}</ref>

[[Anarchist communism]] proposes that the freest form of [[social organisation]] would be a society composed of [[self-governance|self-managing]] [[Commune (socialism)|communes]] with collective use of the [[means of production]], organised [[democracy|democratically]], and related to other communes through [[federation]].<ref name="LibCom">[[Isaac Puente|Puente, Isaac]].[http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/libcom.html "Libertarian Communism"]. ''The Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review''. Issue 6 Orkney 1982.</ref> While some anarchist communists favour [[direct democracy]], others feel that its [[majority rule|majoritarianism]] can impede individual liberty and favour [[consensus democracy]] instead. In anarchist communism, as money would be abolished, individuals would not receive direct [[Remuneration|compensation]] for labour (through sharing of [[Profit (economics)|profits]] or payment) but would have free access to the resources and surplus of the commune.<ref>Miller. ''Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought'', Blackwell Publishing (1991) ISBN 0-631-17944-5, p. 12.</ref><ref>[[David Graeber|Graeber, David]] and Grubacic, Andrej. ''Anarchism, Or The Revolutionary Movement Of The Twenty-first Century''.</ref> Anarchist communism does not always have a [[communitarian]] philosophy. Some forms of anarchist communism are [[egoist anarchism|egoist]] and strongly influenced by radical individualism,<ref>Christopher Gray, ''Leaving the Twentieth Century'', p. 88.</ref> believing that anarchist communism does not require a communitarian nature at all.

In the early 20th century, [[anarcho-syndicalism]] arose as a distinct school of thought within anarchism.<ref>Berry, David, ''A History of the French Anarchist Movement'', 1917–1945 p. 134.</ref> With greater focus on the labour movement than previous forms of anarchism, [[syndicalism]] posits radical [[trade union]]s as a potential force for revolutionary social change, replacing capitalism and the state with a new society, democratically [[Workers' self-management|self-managed by the workers]]. It is often combined with other branches of anarchism, and anarcho-syndicalists often subscribe to [[anarchist communism|anarchist communist]] or [[collectivist anarchist]] [[economic system]]s.<ref name="faq-social">{{cite book |editor=Iain Mckay |title=[[An Anarchist FAQ]] |publisher=[[AK Press]] |location=Stirling |year=2008 |isbn=1902593901 |oclc=182529204|chapter=Are there different types of social anarchism? |url=http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secA3.html#seca32}}</ref> An early leading anarcho-syndicalist thinker was [[Rudolf Rocker]], whose 1938 pamphlet ''Anarchosyndicalism'' outlined a view of the movement's origin, aims and importance to the future of labour.<ref name="faq-social" /><ref>[http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/rocker/sp001495/rocker_as1.html ''Anarchosyndicalism]'' by [[Rudolf Rocker]]. Retrieved 7 September 2006.</ref>

===Post-classical currents===
{{See also|Contemporary anarchism}}
[[File:Jarach and Zerzan.JPG|thumb|right|[[Lawrence Jarach]] (left) and [[John Zerzan]] (right), two prominent contemporary anarchist authors. Zerzan is known as a main theorist of [[anarcho-primitivism]], while Jarach is a noted advocate of [[post-left anarchy]].]]
Anarchism continues to generate many philosophies and movements, at times eclectic, drawing upon various sources, and [[Syncretic politics|syncretic]], combining disparate and contrary concepts to create new philosophical approaches. Since the revival of anarchism in the United States in the 1960s,<ref name="revival">{{cite journal
|last=Williams
|first=Leonard
|year=2007
|month=September
|title=Anarchism Revived
|journal=New Political Science
|volume=29
|issue=3
|pages=297–312
|doi=10.1080/07393140701510160
}}
</ref> a number of new movements and schools have emerged.<ref>Perlin, Terry M. ''[http://books.google.com.ec/books?id=mppLKlwHx7oC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Contemporary+_+Anarchism&ei=vSDBSuXHMo2mM8mu-OsP#v=onepage&q=&f=false Contemporary Anarchism]''. Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ 1979</ref> Although according to [[Murray Rothbard]] it has traditions dating back centuries,<ref>[http://www.mises.org/etexts/austrian.asp What is Austrian economics?], [[Murray Rothbard]]</ref> the contemporary form of [[anarcho-capitalism]] developed from radical anti-state [[libertarianism]] and [[individualist anarchism]], drawing from [[Austrian School]] economics, study of [[law and economics]] and [[public choice theory]],<ref>Edward Stringham, [http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?issueID=53&articleID=686 ''Anarchy, State, and Public Choice''], Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2005.</ref> while the burgeoning [[feminism|feminist]] and [[environmentalism|environmentalist]] movements also produced anarchist offshoots.

[[Anarcha-feminism]] developed as a synthesis of [[radical feminism]] and anarchism that views [[patriarchy]] (male domination over women) as a fundamental manifestation of compulsory government. It was inspired by the late 19th century writings of early feminist anarchists such as [[Lucy Parsons]], [[Emma Goldman]], [[Voltairine de Cleyre]], and [[Dora Marsden]]. Anarcha-feminists, like other radical feminists, criticise and advocate the abolition of traditional conceptions of family, education and [[gender role]]s. [[Green anarchism]] (or eco-anarchism)<ref>David Pepper (1996). [http://books.google.com.ec/books?id=PQOvkB7UoWgC&pg=PA44&dq= Modern Environmentalism] p. 44. Routledge.</ref> is a school of thought within anarchism which puts an emphasis on environmental issues,<ref>Ian Adams (2001). [http://books.google.com.ec/books?id=apstK1qIvvMC&pg=PA130&dq= Political Ideology Today] p. 130. Manchester University Press.</ref> and whose main contemporary currents are [[anarcho-primitivism]] and [[social ecology]]. [[Anarcho-pacifism]] is a tendency which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change<ref>[[George Woodcock]]. ''Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements'' (1962)</ref><ref name="ppu.org.uk">[http://www.ppu.org.uk/e_publications/dd-trad8.html#anarch%20and%20violence "Resiting the Nation State, the pacifist and anarchist tradition" by Geoffrey Ostergaard]</ref>. It developed "mostly in [[Holland]], [[United Kingdom|Britain]], and the [[United States]], before and during the [[Second World War]]"<ref>[[George Woodcock]]. ''Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements'' (1962)</ref>.

[[Post-left anarchy]] is a tendency which seeks to distance itself from traditional [[left-wing politics]] and to escape the confines of [[ideology]] in general. [[Post-anarchism]] is a theoretical move towards a synthesis of classical anarchist theory and [[poststructuralist]] thought drawing from diverse ideas including [[post-modernism]], [[autonomist marxism]], [[post-left anarchy]], [[Situationist International|situationism]] and [[postcolonialism]].

Another recent form of anarchism critical of formal anarchist movements is [[insurrectionary anarchism]]<ref name="joeblack">[http://www.ainfos.ca/06/jul/ainfos00232.html "Anarchism, insurrections and insurrectionalism" by Joe Black]</ref>, which advocates informal organization and active resistance to the state; its proponents include [[Wolfi Landstreicher]] and [[Alfredo M. Bonanno]].
{{-}}

==Topics of interest in anarchist theory==
Intersecting and overlapping between various schools of thought, certain topics of interest and internal disputes have proven perennial within anarchist theory.
===Free love===
{{main|Free love|Anarchism and sex/love|Anarcha-feminism}}
[[File:Emilearmand01.jpg|thumb|300x300px|French [[individualist anarchist]] [[Emile Armand]] (1872–1962), who propounded the virtues of free love in the Parisian anarchist milieu of the early 20th century]]
An important current within anarchism is [[Free love]].<ref name="freelove">[http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle1996/le961210.html The Free Love Movement and Radical Individualism By Wendy McElroy]</ref> Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to [[Josiah Warren]] and to experimental communities, viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed [[women's rights]] since most sexual laws discriminated against women: for example, marriage laws and anti-birth control measures.<ref name="freelove"/> The most important American free love journal was ''[[Lucifer the Lightbearer]]'' (1883–1907) edited by [[Moses Harman]] and [[Lois Waisbrooker]],<ref>Joanne E. Passet, "Power through Print: Lois Waisbrooker and Grassroots Feminism," in: ''Women in Print: Essays on the Print Culture of American Women from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries'', James Philip Danky and Wayne A. Wiegand, eds., Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 2006; pp. 229-50.</ref> but also there existed [[Ezra Heywood]] and Angela Heywood's ''[[The Word (free love)|''The Word'']]'' (1872–1890, 1892–1893).<ref name="freelove"/> Also [[M. E. Lazarus]] was an important American individualist anarchist who promoted free love.<ref name="freelove"/>

In New York's [[Greenwich Village]], [[Bohemianism|bohemian]] feminists and socialists advocated self-realisation and pleasure for women (and also men) in the here and now. They encouraged playing with sexual roles and sexuality,<ref>Sochen, June. 1972. ''The New Woman: Feminism in Greenwich Village 1910-1920.'' New York: Quadrangle.</ref> and the openly bisexual radical [[Edna St. Vincent Millay]] and the lesbian anarchist [[Margaret Anderson]] were prominent among them. Discussion groups organised by the Villagers were frequented by [[Emma Goldman]], among others. Magnus Hirschfeld noted in 1923 that Goldman "has campaigned boldly and steadfastly for individual rights, and especially for those deprived of their rights. Thus it came about that she was the first and only woman, indeed the first and only American, to take up the defense of homosexual love before the general public."<ref>Katz, Jonathan Ned. ''Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.'' (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976)</ref> In fact, before Goldman, [[heterosexual]] anarchist [[Robert Reitzel]] (1849–98) spoke positively of homosexuality from the beginning of the 1890s in his Detroit-based German language journal ''[[Der arme Teufel]]''.

In Europe the main propagandist of free love within individualist anarchism was [[Emile Armand]].<ref name="armandfreelove">[http://www.iisg.nl/womhist/manfreuk.pdf E. Armand and “la camaraderie amoureuse”. Revolutionary sexualism and the struggle against jealousy]</ref> He proposed the concept of ''la camaraderie amoureuse'' to speak of free love as the possibility of voluntary sexual encounter between consenting adults. He was also a consistent proponent of [[polyamory]].<ref name="armandfreelove"/> In Germany the [[stirner]]ists [[Adolf Brand]] and [[John Henry Mackay]] were pioneering campaigners for the acceptance of male [[bisexuality]] and [[homosexuality]].

More recently, the British [[anarcho-pacifist]] [[Alex Comfort]] gained notoriety during the [[sexual revolution]] for writing the bestseller sex manual ''[[The Joy of Sex]]''. The issue of [[free love]] has a dedicated treatment in the work of french anarcho-[[hedonist]] philosopher [[Michel Onfray]] in such works as ''Théorie du corps amoureux : pour une érotique solaire'' (2000) and ''L'invention du plaisir : fragments cyréaniques'' (2002).

===Libertarian education===
[[File:Fransisco Ferrer Guardia.jpg|150px|left|thumb|[[Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia]], [[Catalan people|Catalan]] anarchist pedagogue]][[Max Stirner]] wrote in 1842 a long essay on education called ''[[The False Principle of our Education]]''. In it Stirner names his educational principle "personalist," explaining that self-understanding consists in hourly self-creation. Education for him is to create "free men, sovereign characters," by which he means "eternal characters...who are therefore eternal because they form themselves each moment.".<ref>http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/falseprinciple.html "The False Principle of our Education" by [[Max Stirner]]</ref>

In 1901, Catalan anarchist and [[Freethought|free-thinker]] [[Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia]] established "modern" or [[Progressive education|progressive schools]] in [[Barcelona]] in defiance of an educational system controlled by the Catholic Church.<ref name="Fidler">{{cite journal |author=Geoffrey C. Fidler |year=1985 |month=Spring/Summer |title=The Escuela Moderna Movement of Francisco Ferrer: "Por la Verdad y la Justicia" |journal=History of Education Quarterly |volume=25 |issue=1/2 |pages=103–132 |id= |url=http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-2680%28198521%2F22%2925%3A1%2F2%3C103%3ATEMMOF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage |doi=10.2307/368893 |jstor=10.2307/368893 |publisher=History of Education Society}}</ref> The schools' stated goal was to "[[educate the working class]] in a rational, secular and non-coercive setting". Fiercely anti-clerical, Ferrer believed in "freedom in education", education free from the authority of church and state.<ref>[http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/ferrer.html Francisco Ferrer's Modern School]</ref> [[Murray Bookchin]] wrote: "This period [1890s] was the heyday of libertarian schools and pedagogical projects in all areas of the country where Anarchists exercised some degree of influence. Perhaps the best-known effort in this field was Francisco Ferrer's Modern School (Escuela Moderna), a project which exercised a considerable influence on Catalan education and on experimental techniques of teaching generally." <ref>Chapter 7, ''[[anarcho-syndicalism|Anarchosyndicalism]], The New Ferment''. In Murray Bookchin, ''The Spanish anarchists: the heroic years, 1868-1936''. AK Press, 1998, p.115. ISBN 187317604X</ref> La Escuela Moderna, and Ferrer's ideas generally, formed the inspiration for a series of ''[[Modern School (United States)|Modern Schools]]'' in the [[United States]],<ref name="Fidler"/> [[Cuba]], [[South America]] and [[London]]. The first of these was started in [[New York City]] in 1911. It also inspired the Italian newspaper ''[[Università popolare (Italian newspaper)|Università popolare]]'', founded in 1901.

Another libertarian tradition is that of [[unschooling]] and the [[free school]] in which child-led activity replaces pedagogic approaches. Experiments in Germany led to [[A. S. Neill]] founding what became [[Summerhill School]] in 1921.<ref>{{cite book | last = Purkis | first = Jon | title = Changing Anarchism | publisher = Manchester University Press | location = Manchester | year = 2004 | isbn = 0719066948 }}</ref> Summerhill is often cited as an example of anarchism in practice.<ref>Andrew Vincent (2010) ''Modern Political Ideologies'', 3rd edition, Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell p.129</ref> However, although Summerhill and other free schools are radically libertarian, they differ in principle from those of Ferrer by not advocating an overtly political [[class struggle]]-approach.<ref>{{cite journal|first=Judith |last=Suissa |url=http://newhumanist.org.uk/1288/anarchy-in-the-classroom|title= Anarchy in the classroom |journal=[[The New Humanist]] |volume=120 |issue=5 |month=September/October |year=2005}}</ref>
In addition to organizing schools according to libertarian principles, anarchists have also questioned the concept of schooling per se. The term [[deschooling]] was popularized by [[Ivan Illich]], who argued that the school as an institution is dysfunctional for self-determined learning and serves the creation of a consumer society instead.<ref>{{cite book|last=Illich| first=Ivan |title=Deschooling Society |place= New York|publisher= Harper and Row| year= 1971| isbn= 0-06-012139-4}}</ref>

===Internal issues and debates===
[[File:Gadewar.jpg|thumb|The usage of [[anarchism and violence|violence]] is a subject of much dispute in anarchism.]]
Anarchism is a [[philosophy]] which embodies many diverse attitudes, tendencies and schools of thought; as such, disagreement over questions of values, ideology and tactics is common. The compatibility of [[anarchism and capitalism|capitalism]],<ref name=oxcom/> [[anarchism and nationalism|nationalism]] and [[anarchism and religion|religion]] with anarchism is widely disputed. Similarly, anarchism enjoys complex relationships with ideologies such as [[Anarchism and Marxism|Marxism]], [[Issues in anarchism#Communism|communism]] and [[Anarchism and capitalism|capitalism]]. Anarchists may be motivated by [[humanism]], [[Christian anarchism|divine authority]], [[ethical egoism|enlightened self-interest]] or any number of alternative ethical doctrines.

Phenomena such as [[civilization]], [[technology]] (e.g. within [[anarcho-primitivism]] and [[insurrectionary anarchism]]), and [[Issues in anarchism#Participation in statist democracy|the democratic process]] may be sharply criticised within some anarchist tendencies and simultaneously lauded in others. Anarchist attitudes towards [[Issues in anarchism#Race|race]], [[Issues in anarchism#Gender|gender]] and [[Issues in anarchism#The environment|the environment]] have changed significantly since the modern origin of the philosophy in the 18th century.{{cite}}

On a tactical level, while [[propaganda of the deed]] was a tactic used by anarchists in the 19th century (e.g. the [[Nihilist movement]]), contemporary anarchists espouse alternative [[direct action]] methods such as [[nonviolence]], [[counter-economics]] and [[Crypto-anarchism|anti-state cryptography]] to bring about an anarchist society. About the scope of an anarchist society, some anarchists advocate a global one, while others do so by local ones.<ref>Ted Honderich, Carmen García Trevijano, [http://books.google.es/books?id=s9iwZGv44psC&pg=PA402&dq=Enciclopedia+teor%C3%ADa+pol%C3%ADtica&lr=&as_brr=3#PPA57,M1 ''Oxford Enciclopedy of Philosophy''].</ref> The diversity in anarchism has led to widely different use of identical terms among different anarchist traditions, which has led to many [[Definitional concerns in anarchist theory|definitional concerns in anarchist theory]].

==Related pages==
*[[Anarchist symbolism]]
*[[Lists of anarchism topics]]
*[[List of anarchist communities]]
*[[List of anarchist movements by region]]
{{-}}

==Footnotes==
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

==Further reading==
* ''[[Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas]].'' Robert Graham, editor.
** ''Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE to 1939)'' Black Rose Books, Montréal and London 2005. ISBN 1551642506.
** ''Volume Two: The Anarchist Current (1939–2006)'' Black Rose Books, Montréal 2007. ISBN 9781551643113.
* ''Anarchism'', [[George Woodcock]] (Penguin Books, 1962).
* ''Anarchy: A Graphic Guide'', [[Clifford Harper]] (Camden Press, 1987): An overview, updating Woodcock's classic, and illustrated throughout by Harper's woodcut-style artwork.
* ''The Anarchist Reader'', George Woodcock (ed.) (Fontana/Collins 1977; ISBN 0006340113): An anthology of writings from anarchist thinkers and activists including [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon|Proudhon]], [[Peter Kropotkin|Kropotkin]], [[Mikhail Bakunin|Bakunin]], [[Errico Malatesta|Malatesta]], [[Murray Bookchin|Bookchin]], [[Emma Goldman|Goldman]], and many others.
* ''Anarchism: From Theory to Practice'' by [[Daniel Guerin]]. Monthly Review Press. 1970. ISBN-10: 0853451753
* ''Anarchy through the times'' by [[Max Nettlau]]. Gordon Press. 1979. ISBN-10: 0849013976


==External links==
* [http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnAnarchistFAQ "An Anarchist FAQ Webpage"] –[[An Anarchist FAQ]]
* [http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/anarfaq.htm Anarchist Theory FAQ] –by [[Bryan Caplan]]
* [http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/ The Anarchist Library] large online library with texts from anarchist authors
* [http://www.infoshop.org/ Infoshop.org] –[[Infoshop.org]]; anarchist news, information, and online library
* [http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia] –700+ entries, with short biographies, links and dedicated pages
* [http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/ Anarchy Archives] – information relating to famous anarchists including their writings (see [[Anarchy Archives]]).
* [http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/ KateSharpleyLibrary.net] –website of the [[Kate Sharpley Library]], containing many historical documents pertaining to anarchism
* [http://www.theyliewedie.org/ressources/biblio/index-en.php They Lie We Die] –anarchist virtual library containing 768 books, booklets and texts

[[Category:Ideologies]]

Murray N. Rothbard

2010-11-20T19:03:29Z

Dbabbitt: Linkified Corporatocracy

<blockquote>''"On the free market, everyone earns according to his productive value in satisfying consumer desires. Under statist distribution, everyone earns in proportion to the amount he can plunder from the producers."''

Murray N. Rothbard, Power and Market</blockquote>

'''Murray N. Rothbard''', a scholar of extraordinary range who made major contributions to [[economics]], political philosophy ([[libertarianism]] in particular), economic history and legal theory. He developed and extended the Austrian economics of [[Ludwig von Mises]], in whose seminar he was a main participant for many years. He established himself as the principal Austrian theorist in the latter half of the twentieth century and applied Austrian analysis to historical topics such as the [[Great Depression]] of 1929 and the history of American banking.

Rothbard combined Austrian economics with a fervent commitment to individual liberty. He developed a unique synthesis that combined themes from nineteenth-century American individualist-anarchists such as [[Wikipedia:Lysander Spooner|Lysander Spooner]]<ref name="Rothbard_Spooner">Murray N. Rothbard. [http://mises.org/rothbardintros/spooner.asp "Introduction by Murray N. Rothbard"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref> and [[Wikipedia:Benjamin Tucker|Benjamin Tucker]] with Austrian economics. A new political philosophy was the result, and Rothbard devoted his remarkable intellectual energy, over a period of some forty-five years, to developing and promoting his style of libertarianism. In doing so, he became a major American public intellectual.

Building on the Austrian School's concept of [[spontaneous order]], support for a [[free market]] in [[money creation|money production]] and condemnation of [[central planning]],<ref>[http://www.mises.org/store/Free-Market-Monetary-System-A-P553.aspx?AFID=14 ''Free Market Money System''] by F.A. Hayek</ref> Rothbard advocated abolition of [[coercion|coercive]] government control of the economy. He considered the [[monopoly]] force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term well-being of the populace, labeling [[State (polity)|the State]] as nothing but a "a bandit gang writ large"—the locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.<ref>[http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/twentytwo.asp The Ethics of Liberty], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref name="Hans-Hermann Hoppe">{{cite web|url=http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/hoppeintro.asp|title=The Ethics of Liberty|author=[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]]|publisher=[[Ludwig von Mises Institute]]}}</ref><ref>[http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1423 Repudiating the National Debt], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard200.html To Save Our Economy From Destruction], Murray Rothbard</ref>

Rothbard concluded that all services provided by [[monopoly]] [[government]]s could be provided more efficiently by the private sector. He viewed many regulations and laws ostensibly promulgated for the "public interest" as self-interested power grabs by scheming government bureaucrats engaging in dangerously unfettered self-aggrandizement, as they were not subject to [[price mechanism|market disciplines]]. Rothbard held that there were inefficiencies involved with government services and asserted that [[price mechanism|market disciplines]] would eliminate them, if the services could be provided by competition in the private sector.<ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard40.html The Great Society: A Libertarian Critique], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard53.html The Noble Task of Revisionism], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard37.html The Fallacy of the 'Public Sector'], Murray Rothbard</ref>

Rothbard was equally condemning of state [[Corporatocracy|corporatism]]. He criticized many instances where business elites co-opted government's monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy in a manner benefiting them at the expense of their competitive rivals.<ref>''For a New Liberty'', Chapter 3</ref>

He argued that [[taxation]] represents coercive theft on a grand scale, and "a compulsory [[monopoly]] of force" prohibiting the more efficient voluntary procurement of defense and judicial services from competing suppliers.<ref name="Hans-Hermann Hoppe"/><ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard24.html Tax Day], Murray Rothbard</ref> He also considered [[central bank]]ing and [[fractional reserve banking]] under a monopoly [[fiat money]] system a form of state-sponsored, legalized financial [[embezzlement|fraud]], antithetical to [[Libertarianism|libertarian]] principles and ethics.<ref>Rothbard, Murray. [http://www.mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf ''The Mystery of Banking''] Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2008. p. 111</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-2737288_ITM |title=Has fractional-reserve banking really passed the market test? (Controversy). |date=January 2003 |format= |work= Independent Review|accessdate=}}</ref><ref>[http://www.fff.org/freedom/0999c.asp The Case for the 100% Gold Dollar], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref>See also Murray Rothbard articles: [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard191.html Private Coinage]; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard190.html Repudiate the National Debt]; and [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard181.html Taking Money Back]</ref> Rothbard opposed military, political, and [[economic interventionism]] in the affairs of other nations.<ref name="Rothbard on War">[http://www.antiwar.com/orig/rothbard_on_war.html Rothbard on War], excerpts from a 1973 [[Reason (magazine)|Reason Magazine]] article and other materials, published at [[Antiwar.com]], undated.</ref><ref name="For a New Liberty">Murray N. Rothbard ''[http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p263 For a New Liberty]'', p. 265.</ref>

==Life and career==
Murray Rothbard was born March 2, 1926, the son of David and Rae Rothbard. He was a brilliant student even as a young child; and his academic record at Columbia University, where he majored in mathematics and economics, was stellar. In the Columbia economics department, Rothbard did not receive any instruction in Austrian economics, and Mises was no more than a name to him. In a course on price theory given by [[Wikipedia:George Stigler|George Stigler]], however, he encountered arguments against such then popular measures as price and rent control. These arguments greatly appealed to him; and he wrote to the publisher of a pamphlet that Stigler and [[Milton Friedman]] had written on rent control.

===Economist===
The publisher in question was the [[Wikipedia:Foundation for Economic Education|Foundation for Economic Education]]; and visits to this group’s headquarters led Rothbard to a meeting with Ludwig von Mises. Rothbard was at once attracted to Mises’s laissez-faire economics, and when Mises’s masterwork [[Human Action]] appeared in 1949, it made a great impression on him. He was henceforward a praxeologist: here in Mises’s treatise was the consistent and rigorous defense of a free economy for which he had long been in search. He soon became an active member of Mises’s seminar at [[Wikipedia:New York University|New York University]]. Meanwhile, he continued his graduate studies at Columbia, working toward his Ph.D. His mentor was the eminent economic historian Joseph Dorfman, and Rothbard received the degree in 1956, with a thesis on The Panic of 1819 that remains a standard work ([http://mises.org/books/panic1819.pdf ''The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies''], pdf, is based on it).

As he deepened his understanding of laissez-faire economics, he confronted a dilemma. The arguments for market provision of goods and services applied across the board. If so, should not even protection and defense be offered on the market rather than supplied by a coercive monopoly? Rothbard realized that he would either have to abandon laissez-faire or embrace individualist anarchy. The choice, arrived at in the winter of 1949, was not difficult.

Rothbard soon attracted the attention of the [[Wikipedia:William Volker Fund|William Volker Fund]], the main group that supported classical liberal scholars in the 1950s and early 1960s. He began a project to write a textbook to explain Human Action in a fashion suitable for college students; a sample chapter he wrote on money and credit won Mises’s approval. As Rothbard continued his work, he transformed the project. The result, [[Man, Economy, and State]] (1962), was a central work of Austrian economics.

Rothbard was entirely in accord with Mises’s endeavor to deduce the whole of economics from the axiom of action, combined with a few subsidiary postulates. In much more detail than Mises had done, he carried out the deduction; and in the process, he contributed major theoretical innovations to [[praxeology]]. He showed that the socialist [[Economic calculation|calculation]] argument applies, not only to a governmentally controlled economy, but to a single private firm owning the entire economy as well. It too could not calculate. He also integrated [[Wikipedia:Frank Fetter|Frank Fetter]]’s<ref name="Herbener_Fetter">Jeffrey Herbener. [http://mises.org/about/3231 "Frank A. Fetter (1863-1949): A Forgotten Giant"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref> theory of rent with Austrian capital theory; and argued that a [[monopoly]] price could not exist on the free market. Further, he offered a brilliant criticism of Keynesian economics, and he anticipated much of the "rational expectations" revolution for which [[Wikipedia:Robert Lucas, Jr.|Robert Lucas]] later won a Nobel Prize.

As Rothbard originally planned [[Man, Economy, and State]], it was to include a final part that presented a comprehensive classification and analysis of types of government intervention. The section also subjected to withering criticism the standard canons of justice in taxation; a brief but brilliant passage refuted in advance the anti-market arguments based on "luck" that were to prove so influential in the later work of [[Wikipedia:John Rawls|John Rawls]] and his many successors. Unfortunately, the part appeared in the original edition only in a severely truncated form. Its full publication came only in 1972, under the title ''Power and Market''. The complete version of [[Man, Economy, and State]], as Rothbard originally intended it to appear, is now available from the [[Mises Institute]].

This masterly work was far from exhausting Rothbard’s contributions to economic theory. In a major paper, "Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics" (1956, [http://mises.org/rothbard/toward.pdf pdf]), he showed that if one takes seriously the fact that utility is ordinal and not cardinal, then the anti-market views of most modern welfare economists must be abandoned. Strict application of demonstrated preference allows one to say that the participants to a voluntary exchange expect ex ante to benefit. Further than this, the economist, so long as he remains value-free, cannot go. His main papers on economic theory are available in the posthumously published two-volume collection ''The Logic of Action'' (1997).

Rothbard devoted close attention to monetary theory. Here he emphasized the virtues of the classical [[gold standard]] and supported 100% reserve banking. This system, he held, would prevent the credit expansion that, according to the Austrian theory of the business cycle developed by Mises and [[Friedrich Hayek]], led to inevitable depression. He summarized his views for the general public in the often-reprinted pamphlet [[Wikipedia:What Has Government Done to Our Money?|What Has Government Done to Our Money?]] (1964; [http://mises.org/money.asp text], [http://www.mises.org/books/whathasgovernmentdone.pdf pdf]) and also wrote a textbook, [[Wikipedia:The Mystery of Banking|The Mystery of Banking]] (1983; [http://mises.org/mysteryofbanking/mysteryofbanking.pdf pdf]).

Rothbard showed the illumination that Austrian theory could bring to economic history in [[Wikipedia:America's Great Depression|America’s Great Depression]] (1963; [http://mises.org/books/agd.epub text], [http://mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf pdf]). Far from being a proof of the failures of unregulated capitalism, the 1929 Depression illustrates rather the dangers of government interference with the economy. The economic collapse came as a necessary correction to the artificial boom induced by the [[Federal Reserve System]]’s monetary expansion during the 1920s. The attempts by the government to "cure" the downturn served only to make matters worse.

In making this argument, Rothbard became a pioneer in "Hoover revisionism". Contrary to the myths promoted by [[Wikipedia:Herbert Hoover|Hoover]] himself and his acolytes, Hoover was not an opponent of big government. Quite the contrary, the economic policies of the "Engineer in Politics" prefigured the [[Wikipedia:New Deal|New Deal]]. Rothbard’s view of Hoover is now widely accepted.

For Rothbard, banking policy was a key to American economic history. Like [[Wikipedia:Jules Michelet|Michelet]], he believed that history is a resurrection of the flesh; and his discussions are no dry-as-dust presentations of statistics. He was always concerned to identify the particular actors and interests behind historical decisions. The struggle between the competing [[Wikipedia:J. P. Morgan|Morgan]] and [[Wikipedia:Rockefeller family|Rockefeller]] banking circles figures again and again in his articles in this field, collected in his [[Wikipedia:A History of Money and Banking in the United States (book)|A History of Money and Banking in the United States]] (1999; [http://mises.org/books/historyofmoney.pdf pdf]).

== Austrian School writings ==

The [[Austrian School]] attempts to discover axioms of human action (called "[[praxeology]]" in the Austrian tradition). It supports [[free market economics]] and criticizes [[command economy|command economies]]. Influential advocates were [[Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk]], [[Friedrich Hayek]], and [[Ludwig von Mises]]. Rothbard argued that the entire Austrian economic theory is the working out of the logical implications of the fact that humans engage in purposeful action.<ref>Grimm, Curtis M.; Hunn, Lee; Smith, Ken G. Strategy as Action: Competitive Dynamics and Competitive Advantage. New York Oxford University Press (US). 2006. p. 43</ref> In working out these axioms he came to the position that a monopoly price could not exist on the free market. He also anticipated much of the “[[rational expectations]]” viewpoint in economics.

In accordance with his free market views Rothbard argued that individual protection and national defense also should be offered on the market, rather than supplied by government’s [[coercive monopoly]]. Rothbard was an ardent critic of [[Keynesian]] economic thought<ref>See Robthbard's essay [http://www.mises.org/etexts/keynestheman.pdf Keynes the Man], originally published in ''Dissent on Keynes: A Critical Appraisal of Keynesian Economics'', Edited by Mark Skousen. New York: Praeger, 1992, 171–198; Online edition at The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]].</ref> as well as the [[utilitarian]] theory of [[philosopher]] [[Jeremy Bentham]].<ref>See Rothbard's essay, "Jeremy Bentham: The Utilitarian as Big Brother" published in his work, ''Classical Economics''.</ref>

In ''Man, Economy, and State'' Rothbard divides the various kinds of state intervention in three categories: "autistic intervention", which is interference with private non-exchange activities; "binary intervention", which is forced exchange between individuals and the state; and "triangular intervention", which is state-mandated exchange between individuals. According to [[Sanford Ikeda]], Rothbard's typology "eliminates the gaps and inconsistencies that appear in Mises's original formulation."<ref>Ikeda, Sanford, ''Dyamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism'', Routledge UK, 1997, 245.</ref><ref>Murray Rothbard, [http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap14.asp Chapter 2 "Fundamentals of Intervention"] from ''Man, Economy and State'', [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]].</ref>

Rothbard also was knowledgeable in history and political philosophy. Rothbard's books, such as ''Man, Economy, and State'', ''[[Power and Market]]'', ''[[The Ethics of Liberty]]'', and ''[[For a New Liberty]]'', are considered by some to be classics of [[natural law]] and [[libertarian]] thought, combining [[libertarian]] [[natural rights]] philosophy, anti-government [[anarchism]] and a [[free market]] perspective in analyzing a range of contemporary social and economic issues. He also possessed extensive knowledge of the history of economic thought, studying the pre-[[Adam Smith]] free market economic schools, such as the [[Scholastics]] and the [[Physiocrats]] and discussed them in his unfinished, multi-volume work, ''[[An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought]]''.

Rothbard writes in ''[[Power and Market]]'' that the role of the economist in a free market is limited, but the role and power of the economist in a government which continually intervenes in the market expands, as the interventions trigger problems which require further diagnosis and the need for further policy recommendations. Rothbard argues that this simple self-interest prejudices the views of many economists in favor of increased government intervention.<ref>Peter G. Klein, [http://www.mises.org/story/2318 Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism], [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]], November 15, 2006</ref><ref>[http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap19.asp Man, Economy, and State, Chapter 7-Conclusion: Economics and Public Policy], [[Ludwig Von Mises Institute]].</ref>

Rothbard also created "Rothbard's law" that "people tend to specialize in what they are worst at. [[Henry George]], for example, is great on everything but land, so therefore he writes about land 90% of the time. [[Milton Friedman|Friedman]] is great except on money, so he concentrates on money."<ref>[http://mises.org/journals/aen/aen11_2_1.asp Interview with Murray N. Rothbard], [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]], Summer 1990.</ref>

===Self-ownership===
In ''The Ethics of Liberty'', Rothbard asserts the right of total [[self-ownership]], as the only principle compatible with a moral code that applies to every person—a "universal ethic"—and that it is a [[natural law]] by being what is naturally best for man.<ref>Rothbard, Murray Newton. The Ethics of Liberty. NYU Press. 2003. pp. 45 - 45</ref> He believed that, as a result, individuals owned the fruits of their labor. Accordingly, each person had the right to exchange his property with others. He believed that if an individual mixes his labor with unowned land then he is the proper owner, and from that point on it is private property that may only exchange hands by trade or gift. He also argued that such land would tend not to remain unused unless it makes economic sense to not put it to use.<ref>Kyriazi, Harold. Reckoning With Rothbard (2004). ''American Journal of Economics and Sociology'' 63 (2), 451</ref>

===Egalitarianism===
The title essay of Murray Rothbard’s 1974 book ''[[Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays]]'' held that “Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences.” In it Rothbard wrote, “At the heart of the egalitarian left is the pathological belief that there is no structure of reality; that all the world is a [[tabula rasa]] that can be changed at any moment in any desired direction by the mere exercise of human will.”<ref>George C. Leef, [http://www.thefreemanonline.org/departments/book-review-egalitarianism-as-a-revolt-against-nature-and-other-essays-by-murray-rothbard-edited-by-david-gordon/# Book Review of Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays by Murray Rothbard, edited by David Gordon (2000 edition)], [[The Freeman]], July 2001.</ref><ref>Murray Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard31.html Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays], essay published in full at [[Lewrockwell.com]], 2003. See also Rothbard’s essay [http://mises.org/daily/3007 The Struggle Over Egalitarianism Continues], the 1991 introduction to republication of "Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor", [[Ludwig Von Mises Institute]], 2008.</ref> Rothbard also expressed his views that statists suppressed academic research on race in order to support their goal of using the state to enforce egalitarian goals.<ref>Murary Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch75.html Race! That Murray Book], [[LewRockwell.com]], December 1994.</ref>

In a 1963 article called the “Negro revolution” Rothbard wrote that “the Negro Revolution has some elements that a libertarian must favor, others that he must oppose. Thus, the libertarian opposes compulsory segregation and police brutality, but also opposes compulsory integration and such absurdities as ethnic quota systems in jobs.”<ref>Murray N. Rothbard, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2136&chapter=195367&layout=html&Itemid=27 The Negro Revolution], New Individualist Review, Volume 3, Number 1, Summer 1963.</ref> According to Rothbard biographer [[Justin Raimondo]], Rothbard considered [[Malcolm X]] to be a “great black leader” and [[Martin Luther King]] to be favored by whites because he “was the major restraining force on the developing Negro revolution.” Rothbard also compared [[Lyndon Baines Johnson|U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson]]’s use of troops to crush urban rioters in 1968 after King’s assassination to Johnson’s use of American troops against the [[Vietnam War|Vietnamese]].<ref>[[Justin Raimondo]], ''An Enemy of the State'', p. 167-168, Prometheus Books, 2000.</ref>

===Anarcho-capitalism===
Rothbard began to consider himself a private property anarchist in the 1950s and later began to use "[[anarcho-capitalism|anarcho-capitalist]]".<ref name="Crocetta">Roberta Modugno Crocetta, [http://mises.org/journals/scholar/roberta.pdf Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism in the contemporary debate. A critical defense], [[Ludwig Von Mises Institute]].</ref><ref>Michael Oliver, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard103.html 'Exclusive Interview With Murray Rothbard], originally published in "The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal", February 25, 1972.</ref> He wrote: "Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism."<ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard103.html "Exclusive Interview With Murray Rothbard"] ''The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal'' (February 25, 1972)</ref> In his anarcho-capitalist model, a system of protection agencies compete in a free market and are voluntarily supported by consumers who choose to use their protective and judicial services. Anarcho-capitalism would mean the end of the state [[monopoly on force]].<ref name="Crocetta"/>

Rothbard was equally condemning of relationships he perceived between big business and big government. He cited many instances where business elites co-opted government's monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy in a manner benefiting them at the expense of their competitive rivals. He wrote in criticism of Ayn Rand's "misty devotion to the Big Businessman" that she: "is too committed emotionally to worship of the Big Businessman-as-Hero to concede that it is precisely Big Business that is largely responsible for the twentieth-century march into aggressive statism..."<ref>''For A New Liberty'' (1973), p. 17</ref> According to Rothbard, one example of such cronyism included grants of monopolistic privilege the railroads derived from sponsoring so-called conservation laws.<ref>''For A New Liberty'' (1973), Power and Market ch. 3</ref>

===Free market money===
:''See also [[Free banking]] and [[Gold standard]]''
Rothbard believed the [[monopoly power]] of government over the issuance and distribution of [[money]] was inherently destructive and unethical. The belief derived from [[Ludwig von Mises]] and [[Friedrich Hayek]]'s [[Austrian Business Cycle Theory|Austrian theory]] of the [[business cycle]], which holds that undue [[credit expansion]] inevitably leads to a gross misallocation of capital resources, triggering unsustainable [[credit bubble]]s and, eventually, [[economic depression]]s. He therefore strongly opposed [[central banking]] and [[fractional reserve banking]] under a [[fiat money]] system, labeling it as "legalized counterfeiting"<ref>[http://www.fff.org/freedom/0999c.asp The Case for a 100% Gold Dollar], Murray Rothbard</ref> or a form of institutionalized [[embezzlement]] and therefore inherently [[fraud]]ulent.<ref>"It should be clear that modern [[fractional reserve banking]] is a [[shell game]], a [[Ponzi scheme]], a [[fraud]] in which fake warehouse receipts are issued and circulate as equivalent to the cash supposedly represented by the receipt." Rothbard, Murray. [http://www.mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf ''The Mystery of Banking''], pp. 96-97, 89-94</ref><ref name="What is Money">[http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north769.html What is Money?], [[Gary North]]</ref> He characterized the government-enforced prohibition on citizens using [[gold as money|commodity currencies]] as legal tender a compulsory [[Ponzi scheme]], a [[Ponzi scheme]] from which no citizen could escape.<ref name="What is Money"/><ref>Rothbard, Murray. [http://www.mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf ''The Mystery of Banking''], pp. 96-97, 89-94</ref>

He strongly advocated [[full reserve banking]] ("100 percent banking")<ref>[http://mises.org/story/3480 The Case Against the Fed], Murray Rothbard: 'A [[gold standard|gold-coin standard]], coupled with instant liquidation for any bank that fails to meet its contractual obligations, would bring about a [[free banking]] system so “[[hard currency|hard]]” and sound, that any problem of [[monetary inflation|inflationary]] credit or [[counterfeit money|counterfeiting]] would be minimal. It is perhaps a “second-best” solution to the ideal of treating [[fractional-reserve banking|fractional-reserve bankers]] as [[embezzlement|embezzlers]], but it would suffice at least as an excellent solution for the time being, that is, until people are ready to press on to [[full reserve banking|full 100 percent banking]].'</ref> and a voluntary, nongovernmental [[gold standard]]<ref>See also these Rothbard articles: [http://www.mises.org/money.asp What Has Government Done to Our Money?], [http://www.mises.org/story/1829 The Case for the 100% Gold Dollar]; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/cartelization.pdf The Fed as Cartel], [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard191.html Private Coinage], [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard190.html Repudiate the National Debt]; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard181.html Taking Money Back], [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard163.html Anatomy of the Bank Run], [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard128.html Money and the Individual]</ref> or, as a second best solution, [[free banking]] (which he also called "free market money").<ref>Rothbard, Murray. [http://www.mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf ''The Mystery of Banking''], Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2008. p. 111, 278</ref>

In relation to the current [[central bank]]-managed [[fractional reserve banking|fractional reserve]] [[fiat currency]] [[debt-based monetary system|system]], he stated the following:<ref>Rothbard, Murray. [http://www.mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf ''The Mystery of Banking''], p. 261</ref>

{{quote|Given this dismal monetary and banking situation, given a 39:1 pyramiding of checkable deposits and currency on top of gold, given a Fed unchecked and out of control, given a world of fiat moneys, how can we possibly return to a sound noninflationary market money? The objectives, after the discussion in this work, should be clear: (a) to return to a gold standard, a commodity standard unhampered by government intervention; (b) to abolish the Federal Reserve System and return to a system of free and competitive banking; (c) to separate the government from money; and (d) either to enforce 100 percent reserve banking on the commercial banks, or at least to arrive at a system where any bank, at the slightest hint of nonpayment of its demand liabilities, is forced quickly into bankruptcy and liquidation. While the outlawing of fractional reserve as fraud would be preferable if it could be enforced, the problems of enforcement, especially where banks can continually innovate in forms of credit, make free banking an attractive alternative.}}

==Other pursuits==
Rothbard ranged far beyond economics in his historical work. In a four-volume series, [[Wikipedia:Conceived in Liberty|Conceived in Liberty]] (1975-1979; volumes [http://www.mises.org/books/conceived1.pdf I.], [http://www.mises.org/books/conceived2.pdf II.], [http://www.mises.org/books/conceived3.pdf III.], [http://www.mises.org/books/conceived4.pdf IV.] in pdf), he presented a detailed account of American colonial history that stressed the libertarian antecedents of the [[Wikipedia:American Revolution|American Revolution]]. As usual, he challenged mainstream opinion. He had little use for [[Wikipedia:New England#New England and political thought|New England Puritanism]], and the virtues and military leadership of [[Wikipedia:George Washington|George Washington]] did not impress him. For Rothbard, the [[Wikipedia:Articles of Confederation|Articles of Confederation]] were not an overly weak arrangement that needed to be replaced by the more centrally focused [[Wikipedia:United States Constitution|Constitution]]. Quite the contrary, the Articles themselves allowed too much central control.

Although Rothbard usually found himself in close agreement with Mises, in one area he maintained that Mises was mistaken. Mises contended that ethical judgments were subjective: ultimate ends are not subject to rational assessment. Rothbard dissented, maintaining that an objective ethics could be founded on the requirements of human nature. His approach, based on his study of [[Wikipedia:Aristotelianism|Aristotelian]] and [[Wikipedia:Thomism|Thomist philosophy]], is presented in his major work [[Wikipedia:The Ethics of Liberty|The Ethics of Liberty]] (1982; [http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp text]), his major study of political philosophy.

In his system of political ethics, [[Wikipedia:Self-ownership|self-ownership]] is the basic principle. Given a robust conception of self-ownership, a compulsory government monopoly of protective services is illegitimate; and Rothbard endeavors to refute the arguments to the contrary of supporters of a minimal state, [[Wikipedia:Robert Nozick|Robert Nozick]] chief among them. He contributes important clarifications to problems of libertarian legal theory, such as the nature of contracts and the appropriate standard of punishment. He explains why Mises’s instrumental argument for the market does not fully succeed, though he finds much of value in it; and he criticizes in careful detail Hayek’s view of the rule of law.

===Noninterventionism===
Believing like [[Randolph Bourne]] that "war is the health of the state" Rothbard opposed aggressive foreign policy. He criticized imperialism and the rise of the American empire which needed war to sustain itself and to expand its global control. His dislike of U.S. imperialism even led him to eulogize and lament the [[CIA]]-assisted execution of [[Marxist]] revolutionary [[Che Guevara]] in 1967, proclaiming that "his enemy was our enemy".<ref>[http://mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/3_3/3_3_1.pdf ''Ernesto Che Guevara R.I.P.''] by Murray Rothbard, Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought, Volume 3, Number 3 (Spring-Autumn 1967)</ref> Rothbard believed that stopping new wars was necessary and knowledge of how government had seduced citizens into earlier wars was important. Two essays expanded on these views "War, Peace, and the State" and "The Anatomy of the State". Rothbard used insights of the [[elitism]] theorists [[Vilfredo Pareto]], [[Gaetano Mosca]], and [[Robert Michels]] to build a model of state personnel, goals, and ideology.<ref>Joseph R. Stromberg, [http://antiwar.com/stromberg/?articleid=4296 Murray Rothbard on States, War, and Peace: Part I] (also see [http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/?articleid=4420 Part II]), [[Antiwar.com]], originally published June 2000.</ref><ref>See both essays, Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard26.html War, Peace, and the State], first published 1963; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard62.html Anatomy of the State], first published 1974, both at [[LewRockwell.com]].</ref> In an obituary for historian [[Harry Elmer Barnes]] Rothbard explained why historical knowledge is important:<ref>Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard165.html Harry Elmer Barnes, RIP], from "Left and Right" final issue, 1968, republished at [[LewRockwell.com]].</ref>

{{quote|Our entry into World War II was the crucial act in foisting a permanent militarization upon the economy and society, in bringing to the country a permanent garrison state, an overweening military-industrial complex, a permanent system of conscription. It was the crucial act in creating a mixed economy run by Big Government, a system of state-monopoly capitalism run by the central government in collaboration with Big Business and Big Unionism.}}

Rothbard discussed his views on the principles of a libertarian foreign policy in a 1973 interview: "minimize State power as much as possible, down to zero, and [[isolationism]] is the full expression in foreign affairs of the domestic objective of whittling down State power." He further called for "abstinence from any kind of American military intervention and political and economic intervention."<ref name="Rothbard on War"/> In ''For a New Liberty'' he writes: "In a purely libertarian world, therefore, there would be no 'foreign policy' because there would be no States, no governments with a monopoly of coercion over particular territorial areas."<ref name="For a New Liberty"/>

In "War Guilt in the Middle East" Rothbard details Israel's "aggression against Middle East Arabs," confiscatory policies and its "refusal to let these refugees return and reclaim the property taken from them."<ref>Murray Rothbard, [http://mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/3_3/3_3_4.pdf War Guilt in the Middle East], "Left and Right", Vol. 3 No. 3 (Autumn 1967) ([http://mises.org/rothbard/1967-1969.asp cited here].)</ref> Rothbard also criticized the “organized Anti-Anti-Semitism” that critics of the state of Israel have to suffer.<ref>Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch6.html Pat Buchanan and the Menace of Anti-anti-semitism], December 1990, from ''The Irrepressible Rothbard'', published at [[LewRockwell.com]].</ref> Rothbard criticized as [[state terrorism|terrorism]] the actions of the United States, Israel, and any nation that "retaliates" against innocents because they cannot pinpoint actual perpetrators. He held that no retaliation that injures or kills innocent people is justified, writing "Anything else is an apologia for unremitting and unending mass murder."<ref>Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard110.html Who Are the Terrorists?], first published in the ''[[Libertarian Party (United States)|Libertarian Party]] News'', March/April 1986, reproduced at [[LewRockwell.com]].</ref>

===Political views===
Rothbard modified the famous dictum of [[Wikipedia:Karl Marx|Marx]]: he wished both to understand and change the world. He endeavored to apply the ideas he had developed in his theoretical work to current politics and to bring libertarian views to the attention of the general public. One issue for him stood foremost. Like [[Wikipedia:Randolph Bourne|Randolph Bourne]], he maintained that "war is the health of the state"; he accordingly opposed an aggressive foreign policy.

His support for nonintervention in foreign policy led him to champion the [[Wikipedia:Old Right (United States)|Old Right]]. [[Wikipedia:John T. Flynn|John T. Flynn]]<ref name="Raimondo_Flynn">Justin Raimondo. [http://mises.org/story/2890 "Who is John T. Flynn?"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref>, [[Wikipedia:Garet Garrett|Garet Garrett]]<ref name="Tucker_Garett">Jeffrey A. Tucker. [http://mises.org/story/2751 "Who Is Garet Garrett?"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref> and other pre-World War II "isolationists" shared Rothbard’s belief in the close connection between state power and bellicose foreign policy.

The situation was quite otherwise with postwar conservatism. Although Rothbard was an early contributor to [[Wikipedia:William F. Buckley, Jr.|William Buckley]]’s [[Wikipedia:National Review|National Review]], he rejected the aggressive pursuit of the [[Wikipedia:Cold War]] advocated by Buckley and such members of his editorial staff as [[Wikipedia:James Burnham|James Burnham]] and [[Wikipedia:Frank S. Meyer|Frank S. Meyer]]. He broke with these self-styled conservatives and thereafter became one of their strongest opponents. For similar reasons, he condemned their [[Wikipedia:Neoconservatism|neoconservative]] successors. He followed a pragmatic policy of temporary alliances with whatever groups were, at a given time, opposed to militarism and foreign adventures. He set forward the basis for his political stance in a key essay, "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty" ([http://mises.org/story/910 text]). This appeared in an important scholarly journal, [[Wikipedia:Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought|Left and Right]] ([http://mises.org/journals/left-right.asp main page]), which he established. This contained major essays on revisionist history and foreign policy, but unfortunately lasted only from 1965-1968.

In an effort to widen the influence of libertarian thought in the academic world, Rothbard founded the [[Wikipedia:Journal of Libertarian Studies|Journal of Libertarian Studies]] ([http://mises.org/periodical.aspx?Id=3 main page]) in 1977. The journal began auspiciously with a symposium on Robert Nozick’s [[Wikipedia:Anarchy, State, and Utopia|Anarchy, State, and Utopia]]. Down to the present, it has remained the most important journal hospitable to libertarian ideas.

Rothbard established in 1987 another journal, the Review of Austrian Economics ([http://mises.org/periodical.aspx?Id=5 main page]), to provide a scholarly venue for economists and others interested in Austrian theory. It too is the key journal in its area of specialty. It has continued to the present, after 1997 under the new name [[Wikipedia:Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics|Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics]] ([http://mises.org/periodical.aspx?Id=4 main page]).

In his comments on current events, Rothbard displayed an ability to digest vast quantities of information on whatever subject interested him. Whether, e.g., the question was competing factions in [[Wikipedia:Afghanistan|Afghanistan]] or the sources of investment in oil in the [[Wikipedia:Middle East|Middle East]], he would always have the relevant data at his command. A sample of his columns, taken from the Rockwell Rothbard Report, is available in The Irrepressible Rothbard (2000; [http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=174 review]). Another journal that he founded, [[Wikipedia:The Libertarian Forum|The Libertarian Forum]] ([http://mises.org/journals/libertarianforum.asp main page]), provides his topical comments for the period 1969-1984. He presented a comprehensive popular account of libertarianism in [[Wikipedia:For A New Liberty|For A New Liberty]] (1973; [http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp text], [http://mises.org/books/newliberty.pdf pdf]).

One last academic triumph remained for Rothbard, though sadly it appeared only after his death. In two massive volumes, [[Wikipedia:An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought|Economic Thought Before Adam Smith and Classical Economics]] (1995; volume [http://mises.org/books/histofthought1.pdf I.] and [http://mises.org/books/histofthought2.pdf II.] pdf), he presented a minutely detailed and erudite account of the history of economic theory. [[Adam Smith]]<ref name="Rothbard_Smith">Murray N. Rothbard. [http://mises.org/story/2012 "The Adam Smith Myth"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref>, contrary to general belief, was not the founder of modern economics. His defense of a labor theory of value, modified and continued by his Ricardian successors, shunted economics onto the wrong path. The heroes of Rothbard’s study were the [[Wikipedia:School of Salamanca|Spanish scholastics]], who long before Smith had developed a subjective theory of value, and such later figures as [[Richard Cantillon|Cantillon]], [[Anne Robert Jacques Turgot|Turgot]], and [[Jean-Baptiste Say|Say]]. He dissects the heretical religious thought that prefigured Marxism and gives a mordant portrayal of the personality and thought of [[Wikipedia:John Stuart Mill|John Stuart Mill]].

Rothbard was closely associated with the [[Mises Institute|Ludwig von Mises Institute]] from its founding in 1982 by [[Wikipedia:Lew Rockwell|Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr]]. This organization became the main vehicle for the promotion of his ideas, and he served as its Academic Vice-President.

He taught at [[Wikipedia:Polytechnic Institute of New York University|Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute]] from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s; from 1986 to his death on January 7, 1995, he was S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics at the [[Wikipedia:University of Nevada, Las Vegas|University of Nevada, Las Vegas]].

The "indispensable framework" for the life and work of this creative genius and polymath was his beloved wife, JoAnn Rothbard. His combination of scholarly achievement and engaged advocacy on behalf of freedom is unmatched.

[http://mises.org/about/3249 Original text] written by David Gordon, used with generous permission of the [[Mises Institute]].

==Curriculum Vitae==

=====Academic Degrees=====
*B.A. Mathematics, Columbia University (1945)
*M.A. Economics, Columbia University (1946)
*Ph.D. Economics, Columbia University (1956)

=====Academic Appointments=====
*Instructor, City College of New York (1948-1949)
*Professor of Economics, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (1963-1985)
*Vice President for Academic Affairs, Ludwig von Mises Institute (1982-1995)
*S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1986-1995)

=====Other Positions=====
*Senior Analyst, William Volker Fund (1951-1962)
*Editor, Left and Right (1965-1968)
*Founder, Center for Libertarian Studies (1976)
*Resident Scholar, The Cato Institute (1977)
*Founder, Journal of Libertarian Studies (1977)
*Editor, Journal of Libertarian Studies (1977-1995)
*Consultant, U.S. Commission on Gold (1981-1982)
*Founder, The Review of Austrian Economics (1987)
*Editor, The Review of Austrian Economics (1987-1995)

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://mises.org/content/mnrbib.asp The complete Rohbard bibliography]
* [http://mises.org/literature.aspx?action=author&Id=299 Books and Essays by Rothbard]
* [http://mises.org/content/mnrasidof.asp A Scholar in Defense of Freedom], a bibliographic essay
* Tributes and Essays to Rothbard by [http://mises.org/content/blockonmnr.asp Walter Block], [http://mises.org/etexts/hhhonmnr.asp Hans Hoppe], [http://mises.org/web/2013 Lew Rockwell] and [http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1708 Jeffrey A. Tucker]
* Media: Rothbard's [http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=showname&ID=299 Audio Economics Course] and [http://mises.org/rothspeak/murray.asp Short Clips]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rothbard, Murray N.}}
[[Category:Anarcho-capitalists]]
[[Category:Economists]]
[[Category:Historians]]
[[Category:Political theorists]]

Corporatocracy

2010-11-20T19:01:04Z

Dbabbitt: Plagarized Wikipedia

'''Corporatocracy''', in social theories that focus on conflicts and opposing interests within society, denotes a system of government that serves the interest of, and may be run by, corporations and involves ties between government and business. Where corporations, conglomerates, and/or government entities with private components, control the direction and governance of a country, including carrying out economic planning notwithstanding the 'free market' label.<ref>{{cite book|title=Understanding Social Problems|publisher=Cengage Lerning|year=2009|page=256|author8=Linda A. Mooney, David Knox, and Caroline Schacht}}</ref>

==Concept==

The concept of corporatocracy is that corporations, to a significant extent "own" or have massive power over governments, including those governments nominally elected by the people, and that they exercise such power not by back-room conspiracies but by their enormous, concentrated economic power, and by legal in-the-open mechanisms (lobbyists, campaign contributions to office holders and candidates, threats to leave the state or country for another with less oversight and more subsidies etc). As Oliver Stone explained, "Wall Street, you know, you could say... runs the world. Wall Street, the pharmaceutical lobbies, the oil lobbies, they run our government"<ref>[http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/21/academy_award_winning_filmmaker_oliver_stone Academy Award-Winning Filmmaker Oliver Stone Tackles Latin America’s Political Upheaval in "South of the Border", US Financial Crisis in Sequel to Iconic "Wall Street"]</ref>

First, corporations provide financial support to competing political parties and major political party candidates. This allows the corporations to hedge their bets on the outcome of an election so that they are assured to have a winner who is indebted to them. As politicians are increasingly dependent on campaign contributions to become elected, their objectiveness on issues which concern corporate interests is compromised.

Second, in many cases former corporate executives are appointed as powerful decision makers within government institutions. They are often charged with the regulation of their former or future employers. Government employees who collude with corporations often accept high-ranking positions within corporations once they have demonstrated their commitment to serve the corporate interest. These lucrative offers provide incentive for government employees to serve Lobby groups as well as provides their new employers with access to governmental decision makers. This is known as the 'revolving door' between corporations and the institutions established to regulate their behavior; and can lead to regulatory capture.

Finally, the economic regime, while often called 'free market,' involves centralized economic planning and coordination by corporations, with governments playing the role of an assistant to such corporate central planning. Chomsky described this dimension, noting about international trade that "trade" is "a dubious term for a system in which some 40 percent of U.S. trade takes place within companies, centrally managed by the same highly visible hands that control planning, production and investment."<ref>[http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199303--.htm Notes of NAFTA: "The Masters of Man"]</ref> Chomsky also describes the economic regime of the corporatocracy or de factro corporate-run world, citing economists on the centralized coordination and planning underlying the economic sphere:

<blockquote>Herman Daly and Robert Goodland, two World Bank economists, circulated an interesting study: they point out that received economic theory—the standard theory
on which decisions are supposed to be based—pictures a free market sea with tiny little islands of individual firms. These islands, of course, aren't internally free—they're centrally managed. But that's okay, because these are just tiny little islands on the sea. We're supposed to believe that these firms aren't much different than a mom-and-pop store down the street. Daly and Goodland point out that by now the islands are approaching the scale of the sea. A large percentage of cross-border transactions are within a single firm, hardly 'trade' in any meaningful sense. What you have is centrally managed transactions, with a very visible hand—major corporate structures—directing it.<ref>[http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomOdon_GlobEcon.html The new global economy by Noam Chomsky]</ref></blockquote>

==Arguments==

There are currently no governments labeled by any governmental agencies as a corporatocracy. However, a large body of research including the work of many political progressives such as Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism and Noam Chomsky in his book Profit Over People: Neoliberalism & Global Order, has criticized many governments for being ''de facto'' corporatocracies because governments tend to obscure the degree to which corporate interests are entangled in their affairs. An objective standard for declaring a government a corporatocracy is often misdirected from public discussion in-part because these facts are heavily propagandized. However most Western governments based on a capitalist system have been classified by evidential research as being corporatocracies because most media outlets are controlled through corporate ownership and advertising; and, corporations are by far the main contributors to political candidates and causes. Corporate campaign contributions create a dependency of the politician on the corporation - in order to keep his power and wealth (i.e. to continue receiving support for re-election bids), by which they are obliged to "pay back" to the corporation using their political influence. And the domination of media outlets by a select few corporations also eliminates one of the primary systems of checks and balances of a democracy.

Many reporters and researchers have argued that corporations also exert their influence through the World Trade Organisation.<ref>[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5800206429960925518 See the Documentary, "Codex Alimentarius"]</ref> Through this methodology, governments are more in control of their countries at a domestic level, while international corporations rule those nations at a more abstracted level through the control and flow of capital (often including natural resources and populations) across borders; thus creating a manageable and pliable "global corporatocracy" or hegemony.<ref>See Catherine Keller, On The Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process, Fortress Press, Minieapolis, 2008 (page 6-7) [http://books.google.ca/books?id=L2q_eSa_ss8C&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=catherine+keller+on+the+mystery+corporatocracy&source=bl&ots=GKtUcfPvRz&sig=_qPXKADiLkEgwI0c6I4ZSb7loa4&hl=en&ei=_zk4Suj6FNTSlAfbspXnDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1].</ref> This global influence in turn has a great deal of power over the national and trans-national (e.g. the EU, NAFTA) governments, who rely and to a great extent, depend upon these practices.

The most common contradiction of the term "corporatocracy" and its use in the lexicon is the theorem that corporations are primarily superficial entities possessing no real political power. Instead, it is the people behind those corporations that hold the power who act upon their own individual political ideologies. In this sense, a corporatocracy is nothing more than a market segmentation where the class which owns the means for producing wealth is fighting for their own individual-self interests. The direct challenge to this theorem is the fact that a corporation is by definition a 'collection' which is built of private (and more often public) wealth funneled into a vertical hierarchy without the requirement of any democratic controls and designed for the singular cause of maximizing roi (return on investment: i.e. the expansion of the control of capital). And this entity (or institution) has legally been ruled through almost all court systems to be considered a single 'person' and given the inalienable human rights thereto required by most constitutions for human beings. This means that corporations have the ability to use direct democratic channels reserved for citizens (and denied to all other institutions including: religious organizations, non-profits, and universities); and are also represented and protected as an individual within the courts when facing public scrutiny and regulation.<ref>[http://www.thecorporation.com/ The Corporation, 2003]</ref>

====Wealth====

It is also primarily significant that the wealthiest 1 percent globally now own almost 40 percent of the world's capital, and that most of these same people have significant ties to the richest and most influential corporations.
<ref>Sam Pizzigati, [http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3819 Deeply Unequal World] in Foreign Policy in Focus.</ref>
<ref>The United Nations University WIDER study on the, [http://www.wider.unu.edu/events/past-events/2006-events/en_GB/05-12-2006/ World Distribution of Household Wealth].</ref>
<ref>[http://www.iariw.org/papers/2006/davies.pdf The World Distribution of Household Wealth] study by Davies et al.</ref>

====Democracy vs. Corporatocracy====
Alex Carey, the late Australian lecturer in industrial relations, sociology and psychology, wrote that "The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."<ref>[http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/25/006.htmlReview of Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Propaganda in the US and Australia]</ref><ref>[http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/4041 Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda]</ref><ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIk6-4KosE0 Alex Carey Corporations and Propaganda Pt 1]</ref> The Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy states that "Giant corporations govern, even though they are mentioned nowhere in our Constitution or Bill of Rights. So when corporations govern, democracy is nowhere to be found."<ref>[http://www.poclad.org/ POCLAD: Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy]</ref> Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and former Chief Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and Deputy Assistant Attorney General has stated that recent court rulings on increasing corporate power "expand the influence of corporations at the expense of the rights of individuals, and..will not stand the test of time"<ref>[http://www.poclad.org/?pg=Articles Court Decision is "Pearl Harbor for American Democracy"]</ref> Addressing the Harvard Divinity School's Theological Opportunities Program, Mary Zepernick has argued that
"There are two historical streams in U.S. history ..one is about the decentralization of power, public decision-making, self-governance -- about democracy; the other is about the concentration of power, private decision-making, governance by the few and the corporation as their governing institution."<ref>[http://www.poclad.org/?pg=Articles&show=a041021.txt The Impact of Corporations on the Commons ]</ref> According to Christine E. Sleeter:<ref>[http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ825486&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ825486 Teaching for Democracy in an Age of Corporatocracy] by Christine E. Sleeter, Teachers College Record, v110 n1 p139-159 2008, Teachers College, Columbia University.</ref>
<blockquote>A challenge for teachers who support teaching for and about democracy is doing so while being pressed into directives rooted in corporatocracy, a political manifestation of neoliberalism. The accountability movement today, particularly No Child Left Behind, is rooted in much more firmly in corporatocracy than democracy. Democratically minded teachers face two tasks: negotiating increasingly undemocratic systems in order to find space for democratic teaching, and critically examining what democracy is, including gaps between its ideals and actual practice.
</blockquote>

===Buying politicians controversy===

Those who dismiss the idea of a corporatocracy often say the only way it is possible is if it were legal to buy a politician's vote. In such a way, the corporation would, in fact, have a direct vote on major policy matters. However, many legitimate democracies have made vote buying illegal. However, under the terms of at-will employment, corporations can require their employees to vote a certain way in exchange for (continued) employment.<ref>Catherine Keller, On The Mystery, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2008 (chapter 1). [http://books.google.ca/books?id=L2q_eSa_ss8C&pg=PA1&dq=catherine+keller+on+the+mystery+chapter+1]</ref>

However, those who believe there may be corporatocracies argue that no one individual, and perhaps no other groups of individuals, would have that much power, money or influence. Further, they argue the decisions on what to push for and who to support are made by a relatively few from inside the corporation. Therefore, while thousands of people may make up a corporation, only a few have the power to speak for the corporation and advocate issues on behalf of the corporation. That provides those corporations with a substantial amount of power, leading to a corporatocracy.

Further, they argue that it does not take an overt effort to buy a politician's vote. Making a substantial donation to a certain politician's campaign could be seen as sending a signal to that politician that the money is there if they vote in a way the corporation desires. Conversely, the money could be donated to an opponent if the vote does not go the corporation's way.

A politician's entrance into a mainstream political party and selection as a political candidate depend on having views that are in-line with the party, which is largely supported by donations from corporations. In other words, the politicians are pre-screened to some extent, often towards corporate-friendly views. Furthermore, much of the policy analysis in Western countries is carried out in privately funded back offices. This means that policies are under the umbrella of corporations at the design and validation stages. Accusations of foregone conclusions in policy analysis are commonplace. On the flipside, analysis can reveal negative consequences for businesses, which are often negative consequences to the public as well. The definition of democracy in many minds has evolved so much in this direction that when non-corporate-friendly views make their way into government, corruption and/or flawed democracy is a common accusation. For example, the coalition of several populist parties in Venezuela led to the fair election of Hugo Chavez.

==Usage==
*U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself argued against the strengthening corporatocracy in the form of a military-industrial complex that sets national and international financial, economic, political and military policies due to a permanent war economy.

*In his 2004 book ''Confessions of an Economic Hit Man'', John Perkins writes; "corporations, banks, and governments (collectively the corporatocracy)".<ref>John Perkins, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman," page xiii, Berrett-Koehler Publishers (November 9, 2004)</ref>

*The concept of a government run by corporations or instances where governments are actually weaker (politically, financially, and militarily) than corporations is a theme often used in both political fiction and science fiction. In these instances the dominant corporate entity is usually dubbed a megacorporation, such as the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company in ''Final Fantasy VII''.

==See also==
*[[Federal Reserve]]

==Notes==
<references />

==External links==
*John Perkins (author) [http://www.johnperkins.org/?page_id=9 lecture on Corporatocracy]
*Dave Johnson, Huffington Post, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-johnson/monopoly-corporatocracy-r_b_431618.html Monopoly Corporatocracy Replaces Democracy]
*Keith Harrington, Huffington Post, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-harrington/the-bp-spill-corporatocra_b_613734.html The BP Spill: Corporatocracy Ground Zero?]
*John Perkins (author), Huffington Post, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-perkins/battle-the-corporatocracy_b_612954.html?ir=Green Battle the Corporatocracy by Demanding Sustainability]
*Andy Webster, New York Times, [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/movies/15apol.html Thoughts on a ‘Corporatocracy’]
*Prop 14 is 'Corporatocracy' says Green Party candidate, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45I4XfBXCwg&feature=player_embedded Linda Piera-Avila for Santa Monica City Council on issues]
*[http://books.google.com/books?id=1Zb3-2UxHyUC&pg=PT282&dq=Corporatocracy&hl=de&ei=5SceTIrBAdT5_AbUxMGxDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=Corporatocracy&f=false Understanding Social Problems] by Von Linda A. Mooney, David Knox, Caroline Schacht
*[http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ825486&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ825486 Teaching for Democracy in an Age of Corporatocracy] by Christine E. Sleeter, Teachers College, Columbia University.