Talk:Anarcho-capitalism

Somebody had written (!):-o that "Prominent anarcho-capitalists include ... Robert Nozick, ... James Buchanan" etc. And that "The Natural Law approach (see for instance Robert Nozick and his book [Anarchy, the State and Utopia]?) argues that the existence of the state is immoral, and that unlimited capitalism is the only ethical political system, or rather anti-political system."

Who ever wrote this, for his information that neither Robert Nozick nor James Buchanan are anarcho-capitalists! On the contrary, about a third of Nozick's book "Anarchy, State and utopia" is devoted on criticizing anarcho-capitalism. Claiming otherwise proves that the person has never read the book. Already in the preface Nozick writes: " Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified; that any more extensive state will violate persons' rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right. Two noteworthy implications are that the state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others, or in order to prohibit activities to people for their own good or protection."

It should be common knowledge, that James Buchanan is an opponent of Anarcho-capitalism, aswell.

I made the needed corrections.

Someone wrote on another page:

'In case anyone really doesn't know what anarcho-capitalism is supposed to be about, have a look at this article. '

This particular article isn't bad overall, but it might lead the reader to a few misconceptions. First, the anarchocapitalism is not the 'house ideology' of the Libertarian Party. No doubt there are some anarchists in the ranks of the LP, but as far as I know they do not dominate.

It should be noted that the author, MikeHuben, is best known on the Internet for his critique of libertarianism.

Another problem with that article is that Benjamin Tucker is given as an example of an "early" anarcho-capitalist. Tucker's attachment to capitalism is fictional as explained in "Benjamin Tucker: Capitalist or Anarchist?". There were no early anarcho-capitalists; the "movement" was invented out of thin air a mere couple of decades ago. Electioneering experts call this an astro-turf movement. AnarchoCapitalism's styling itself after anarchism is propaganda based on lies.

Nothing wrong with critiques. I find they're usually a better way of evaluating ideas: everyone will defend their own position eloquently, but you can only build a strong counter-attack against an idea with flaws. So looking at how strong criticisms are usually gives you a better idea of how good the original was.

I agree completely. The only point, though, is that Huben may wish to tar libertarianism by association with AnarchoCapitalism.

What does libertarianism mean in the above sentence? Does it refer to the right-libertarianism of the proponents of the Libertarian party or does it also include anarcho-syndicalists as left-libertarians? And what does right-libertarianism mean if one does not take it to be synonymous with AnarchoCapitalism? If Mike Huben does wish to tar left-libertarians by associating them with right-libertarians, he need do no more than recognize the right-libertarians' own claims.

These two claims make no sense to me:

The theory assumes a genuinely free market, independent of geographic distributions and economies of scale, which prevents abuse of monopolies and extreme inequalities in the execution of justice.

A classic argument against cooperatives by anarcho-capitalists is precisely that it is irrational to have all one's stock in one company (your own) and so workers would seek to spread their risk by diversifying their stock portfolio.

--LMS

The first sentence is my mangled synopsis of the perfect free market, and the second one I copied from the anarchism/talk page or something like that.

The point of the first sentence is, for example: it should be better for a protection company to protect the assets of 100 poor men than the assets of one rich man, since the assets of the poor men are already protected by 100 people. But the reality is the geographic factors and economies of scale come into play, so protection companies would rather protect the rich man's assets.

Hey, I don't get it either, but I'm trying.

--The Cunctator

It is hard to "get" what is insane. But you are to be commended for trying. EofT

A lot of useful text was deleted from this revision.

--The Cunctator

I agree some of that info should go back in, my only concern is finding the right place to put it. -- SJK

The fundamental element of the philosophical approach is a belief in absolute private property rights.

No way.

The fundamental element of the philosophical approach is a belief in absolute individual liberty. This includes, but is not limited, to right to effects of one's work. And proporty right for things that aren't effects of somebody's works aren't absolute. --Taw

But what do they mean by "absolute individual liberty"? They mean property rights without any government interference. You can be silenced, you can be starved to death, just so long as no one takes any of your property. -- SJK

That's about right. As if anyone would really put up with that. In real life, course, cornered animals fight back, especially if they see those who prosper by fraud and cheating and influence peddling taking all they own. This is a common experience among those who have been colonized or subjugated to an Empire whose capital is very far away and whose disputes are settled in a language they don't understand, and cannot afford lawyers to argue in. A-C is an inherently and necessarily small scale theory. But it can't work without a lot of unreal assumptions. EofT

Facts:

There are no serious economic arguments against AC.

This actually says something bad about economics, nothing good about AC. EofT

Some people who oppose AC use social arguments.
ACists don't accept validity of these social arguments.

Could somebody please change these into some statements that adhere to NPOV ? --Taw

The first "fact" you mention here may or may not be a fact, but probably doesn't belong in an encyclopedic presentation. One of the key difference between encyclopedics and polemics is that an encyclopedic tends to refrain from drawing conclusions or making evaluations.

Additionally, I think that there are serious economic arguments against AC. I have made such arguments myself to David Friedman and he conceded that my arguments were, at the least, interesting. He thinks I'm wrong of course, but I think he would concede that my argument is at least serious.

To sum it up in one paragraph: many forms of organized crime involve A violating B's rights in such a fashion that A and B both make money at the expense of C. From economics we know that the only thing that can sustain a cartel is coercion, i.e. the use of force or threat thereof. Sustaining a cartel under AC is possible for a corrupt defense agency which represents only clients in a particular industry.

Like, oh, say, hm, the oil industry? Just a guess. EofT 02:59, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The costs of the cartel are spread widely throughout the population in such a <fashion that non-cartel defense agencies will not find it worthwhile (due to free rider problems) to engage in an expensive fight to "save" B from A.

Thus, it seems likely that AC will lead to some very un-libertarian outcomes.

Now, you may not agree with the argument, but at least it is both economic and serious. --Jimbo Wales

"* Some people who oppose AC use social arguments.

ACists don't accept validity of these social arguments."

-Isn't that the case for any dogma in general? The fact is that there is arguments aginst the dogma, but the supporters of the dogma doesn't accept the validity of the arguments.

Anonymous

"There are no serious economic arguments against AC"? I am not aware of any, but I am sure there are. Most economists reject AC, and I am sure at least some of those opposed to it have come up with at least some arguments against it. -- SJK.

They do ? Really ? If you know some arguments, please list them. --Taw

Fare: indeed, if you do, please list them.

I have a problem with the wording of this sentence that was inserted during Revision 11: Services traditionally provided by governments (police, defense, courts) are provided by private corporations. 'Corporation' is NOT a generic term for any type of business and there is nothing in Anarcho-capitalism that requires these services to be provided by corporations (as opposed to sole proprietorships or whatever). Moreover corporations, as such, would not even exist in a purely free market as they require a charter from the state which shields their CEOs and stockholders from certain kinds of legal liability (by the way the free market equivalent is a 'joint stock company'). I suggest the more neutral: "Private businesses compete to supply services traditionally provided by governments(like police, defense, and courts)".

I removed Wendy McElroy from the list of proponents of Anarcho-capitalism. She is an Individualist Anarchist, not an Anarcho-capitalist. --MemoryHole.com

I'd really like to see a suggested reading list about Anarcho-capitalism but is that appropriate? --MemoryHole.com

What's the difference? Maybe you could explain, and in your explanation cite Wendy McElroy as an example of an individual anarchist. Would she herself consider herself an anarcho-capitalist? --Larry Sanger

There is an interesting essay here: http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/mcelroy1.html by McElroy herself on the various differences between several flavors of anarchism. But the most obvious difference is that "under individualist anarchism, you could have communist communities existing beside capitalist ones so long as membership was voluntary" (a concept also known as Panarchy). While anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-communismare ends oriented (ie resulting in a specific economic system), individualist anarchism is means oriented (anything that's peaceful) with no hard vision of what would result. You can see from her website: http://www.zetetics.com/mac/ she prefers the label individualist anarchist. --MemoryHole.com

Fare: No, anarcho-capitalism, like classical liberalism in general, is not ends-oriented. It predicts general results, and claims several essential liberties. By no way would anarcho-capitalists accept that anyone be forced to work in a company rather than a cooperative. Anarcho-communists seem to be ends-oriented indeed, although I prefer to believe (until given sufficient evidence) that not all left anarchists are. About a classical liberal view on means and ends, I recommend of Henry Hazlitt's Foundations of Morality.

Fare: I removed Brian Giovannini from the list of prominent anarcho-capitalists. I had never heard about him. It turns out he's a cartoonist (see his site), and he's anarcho-capitalist indeed: he wrote one web page about anarcho-capitalism. But I don't think this qualifies to put him in the same list as Murray Rothbard.

Fare: Do quotes fit in here? e.g. Emile Faguet: "[U]n anarchiste est un libéral intransigeant." An anarchist is an uncomprimising liberal. -- Émile Faguet, Politiques et moralistes du dix-neuvième siècle, Vol. 1 (Paris: Société Française d'Imprimerie et de Librairie, c. 1898), p. 226.

Hi, folks. I'm Ethan Mitchell, and I'm new here. I am one of these terrible left-anarchists we've been hearing about; I am also an economist and right now I work as a market analyist. I think it is silly for any of us wingnut fringe ideologues (left or right) to make statements like "There are no serious arguments against our crazed scheme." Of course there are. "Your scheme is crazed" is a serious argument all by itself, its called majority rule.

That aside, I want to take a shot at characterizing the problem here. Most (I almost said all) schools of anarchy envision a stateless market. We cannot be entirely sure how people would behave in such a situation. Really we can't. Anarcho-capitalists tend to assume that people would not form cooperatives, labor unions, mutual aid societies, or other collectivist organizations. Left-anarchists (which for some ^*#$ing reason we are calling libertarian socialists)

Left-anarchist is subordinated as a term mostly because no one sees left-anarchism as a legitimate name of a political movement. But there are in fact texts on libertarian socialism. To me left-anarchist is a more extreme form of it, though.

tend to assume that at least a significant number of people *would* form such organizations.  The fact that e.g. labor unions continue to exist in state economies, despite a lot of pressure to eliminate them, is at least evidence for this assumption.  But either way, we are making *assumptions* about how the market would behave in the absence of the state.

Obviously, and they are bad assumptions, given how humans behave in situations without states now: badly, and with a kind of herd mentality that make soldiers look enviously individualistic.

Next, there is relatively little anarcho-capitalist discussion of asset inequality patterns. Yet right now, we see that gini or thiel inequality is increasing over several economic scales, including the global.

Whoa. One step at a time. How about Gini inequality and Thiel inequality and economic scale as articles on the list of economics articles? You can't expect us to assess what we can't read about.

Probably the magic wand of no-more-government would reduce the spread we are currently experiencing, but it is hard to believe that it will *reverse* it. So the question must be asked: Does anarcho-capitalism countenance a free society with drastic imbalances in assets? Forget the moral issue; it is a practical issue. If a small group of people hold all the wealth, and a large group of people are facing extremity, they are very apt to resort to warfare, government, and similar troublemaking. And while we (rich people) might argue that inequality is not our fault, that is unlikely to be a persuasive position.

Reference to "anomy" deleted. From what I've been reading anomie is more a root of some kinds of anarchy than an equivalent to any of them. Eclecticology, Wednesday, May 1, 2002

about anarcho-capitalisms and corporations : some argue that you can have limited liability in a state-less society : by incorporating, you are saying that you accept only limited responsability, so potentials creditors are warned and can take the risk in account before accepting or refusing to contract with you(actually it's a part of the contract). see http://www.anti-state.com/mccracken/mccracken1.html for a more clear and detailled explanation, and a better english ;-) susano 03:40 Sep 2, 2002 (PDT)

A previous editor compared anarcho-capitalism to green anarchism, based on the expression "natural law". I don't think that this expression has quite the same meaning to anarcho-capitalists and green anarchists, so that the comparison is confusing rather than enlightening:

It did require more depth, so, that depth is now there. EofT

to a libertarian, natural law is law as it should be, law such that the violations of it naturally lead to pain, sorrow, destruction, etc. To an ecologist, "natural law" would mean something like letting nature rule, not acting "against nature". While these two interpretations have common roots, they are independent, and variants of them can be construed to be compatible as well as incompatible.

Hoom. Acting "against nature" would seem to "naturally lead to pain, sorrow, destruction, etc". Last I heard libertarians did not advocate allowing someone with property upstream to dump unlimited toxic waste in it to flow downstream. The concept of diversity may or may not favour biodiversity if it is based on delusions, like Ayn Rand's delusion that pollution did not cause any kind of illness, or that one could prosper by ignoring say deforestation as if only human values placed on things mattered. So there is an answer to the anarcho-capitalist from medicine, from environmental sciences, from ecology, from biology, much of which did not exist when the ideology was formed. EofT

I don't think that it is wise to mention a comparison here. But there certainly ought to be an article on natural law to discuss these things. -- Faré 14:06 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Not only does it seem wise to me, but, it seems necessary. As it stands this article is a bald-faced promotion of anarcho-capitalism as the ideal political system, and would simply be deleted without same kind of serious balancing. Thus the Dan Sullivan mention, and more contrasting of different views than just the "bad old left" would help. For instance what do anarcho-capitalists think of feminism? Syndicalism? This article is about to become an NPOV dispute. It needs not less comparison to other recent movements, but more.

I think the dispute has its place on Wikipedia, just not in this article.

Of course you don't think so, since you advocate this position yourself, obviously, and don't want to see challenges to the a-c idea of natural law appearing right beside it. But you have to put up with that, since this is about NPOV, and neutrality includes balancing outrageous and absurd statements about natural law from an anarcho-capitalist with reasonable ones from someone who recognizes nature at the root of so-called natural law. EofT

See for instance the article on Anarchism. It had become unreadable because of the disputes that grew and grew, so you couldn't distinguish the main points among the endless disputes in detail; moreover, the disputes where over the editors' various pet questions, giving the reader a distorted sense of what usually appears as relevant to people concerned.

That problem arose because of poor division into incorrectly named subtypes of anarchism, which forced variant that didn't fit directly onto that page. The actual dispute that defines anarchism is not ideological but economic - how big can a social unit get, and how divorced from ecology, before it gets oppressive and anti-ecological? EofT

Nowadays, the page is concise, and any discussion is moved to different articles. The same should be done here.

No, that has become a bad and useless article, and this one need not be. It can be saved by actually answering to challenges to its own core assumptions. The article on capitalism does this very well. That is a better template. EofT

As for feminism, see Wendy McElroy. As for syndicalism, the usual libertarian stance applies, though I haven't a ready reference here, especially not in English. -- Faré 00:15 7 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Try de Paepe versus von Mises or something. EofT

Indeed, it sounds like 'drivel' to me also. Apparently (edited by Kevin- I have removed this in order to make myself less of an obvious target, feel free to contact me by email at kevehs@hotmail.com or my ISP if you feel my actions are inappropriate, please refrain from any further attempts to crash my computer) has gone on a one-person expedition to rid Wikipedia of virtually all reference to "anarcho-capitalism" in a single day. The subject matter's really not my area, so I'm not going to fix it myself; I have little doubt that it will be fixed fairly quickly though, so it's probably not worth editing fine points at this stage. - Hephaestos 00:55, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Since the whole concept is so foolish I assumed that the article had always been pure drivel, but it seems I caught it at an unusually drivelly stage. GrahamN 01:44, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I reverted to the last version before his edit. He basically turned it into an "anarcho-capitalists aren't 'real' anarchists" rant, which I'm sure the anarcho-capitalists themselves would dispute. I'll look through the additions in a bit to see if any of it is salvageable though. --Delirium 01:07, Aug 27, 2003 (UTC)

His version should be a whole section, as it's a legitimate criticism that man herding, ganging and coercion clearly precede the concept of money and markets - no market can exist without property rights and that not without a state. A-C is in this sense a fantasy world made out of pure neoclassical economics - see Principles of Economics for what went both wrong and right with the Austrian School, and monetarism for the history of the "capitalism is all" school.

I've rewritten it again, and I will continue to do so, as I see the use of the term "anarcho-capitalist" as a hostile attempt by liberals to co-opt the anarchist movement and turn it against itself. I'm happy to discuss the matter, I'm happy to respect notions of two seperate sections, one that gives the anarchist POV, and one that give the anti-state capitalist POV. What I will NOT do is sit around and watch capitalists bias readers of wikipedia into thinking that capitalism is even remotely capable of being associated with anarchism without even mentioning the arguments to the contrary, as it existed when I came upon it. Until a clear advisory is made concerning the arguments against the use of the term, and the page is pushed away from a clear bias against anarchism, and the distinction between anarcho-individualists and anti-state capitalists is made clear, I will continue to repost my rewrites. If caps and others want to continue reposting old pages until we all get blue in the face, so be it. And I did not attempt to remove the term "anarcho-capitalist" from all of wikipedia, in fact I left a large number of pages completely intact. What I did attempt to remove was referance to anti-state liberalism as "anarcho-capitalism" on pages that dealt with anarchism, given that it is an unrelated subject. - Kevin/Kevehs - 02:31 CST 28 Aug

I guess no one is interested in discussing this, but someone is interested in reposting the old page everytime it is changed. NPOV dispute. Kevin/Kevehs - Nov 5

I'm duns0014 (my AIM id is the same, you can message me).

we can discuss this, but refering to anarchosocialists as the only anarchists has to stop. I can understand it if you don't like the ancaps, but since it rejects the state, it is still anarchist. refering to left-anarchists as anarchists is a serious bias issue.

This is ridiculous. This is nothing more than a dispute over terminology, whether anarcho-capitalists are "real" anarchists. The answer is clearly yes as (a) they want to get rid of government, (b) they consider themselves anarchists, (c) there is ample historical precedent for this usage. It is like the No true Scotsman argument; what if someone claimed Lutherans are not real Christians? This quibble over who "owns" the word anarchist does not justify an NPOV notice. I'm just going to pull it in a couple of days unless someone can give a reason not to. In the mean time, I'm going to adjust the article's language some more. -- VV 06:38, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This is not ridiculous. Of course it is an dispute over terminology, but terminology is the basis of our understanding of these concepts. Anarchism, since its very first use, has always meant more than mere anti-statism. To limit it to the rejection of the state is like claiming that Christians believe in nothing more than a monotheistic deity. Even modern dictionaries give far more of a definition to anarchism than mere anti-statism.

Furthermore, capitalism easily pertains to the word government, as most anti-state capitalists still support governance institutions such as courts, police, and even at times prisons or indentured servitude. To say that this is no longer government simply because you call the institutions which fund it "private" or "corporate" instead of "state" is to remove all meaning from the words themselves. This is not a matter of "not liking" anti-state capitalists, it is a matter of not watching the word and its use become erroded under our feet simply because some people don't know enough about history, or the etymology of the word, or simple logic, to know better than to use it to describe things it clearly stands against.

Why should it matter whether or not capitalists consider themselves anarchists? If fascists consider themselves anarchists should we then stand aside and admit that anarcho-fascism is not a contradiction in terms? To call capitalists anarchists, when most of them whole-heartedly support the legitimate violent enforcement of their property mandates upon even peaceful resistors, is about as meaningful as refering to people as anarcho-statists.

This claim of "ample" historical precedent itself flies in the face of history. Anarchism has meant more than anti-statism for more than 150 years by the people who first used the word as a self-description. Just because Rothbard decided to start calling himself an anarchist by denying that entire past does not in itself lend historical precedence to its current misuse. In fact, it simply denies history.

I could care less who is a "real" anarchist and who is not. What I do care about is that this article -still- includes arguments against anarchism itself in the guise of "anarcho-capitalism." It -still- includes straw-men arguments against anarchists themselves, and it -still- claims that capitalism is compatible with the anarchist conception of freedom even when it flies in the face of everything anarchism has always stood for. This is either dishonesty, or ignorance, and either way it needs to be challenged. NPOV dispute is the very least this page requires, but if you want to hold a vote over it go right ahead. - Kevin Nov 6

anarchism means no state, that's all it means from the definition of the word. "Even modern dictionaries give far more of a definition to anarchism than mere anti-statism."

the same dictionaries that define it as chaos and violence?

"Furthermore, capitalism easily pertains to the word government, as most anti-state capitalists still support governance institutions such as courts, police, and even at times prisons or indentured servitude."

if you get a dozen people together, you'll get a dozen definitions of "capitalism". it might be better if we just replaced capitalism with "free market" throughout the entire essay. courts, police, etc are not necessarily govt functions. a group of people could come together to start a community voluntarily and they could agree beforehand that they should have some legal system. since this is entirely voluntary, it's not a state. I believe many ansocs would advocate some sort of legal system as well.

"It -still- includes straw-men arguments against anarchists themselves"

examples please.

how's the voting system work anyway?

"anarchism means no state, that's all it means from the definition of the word."

Plainly not true. www.m-w.com Anarchism 1. a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups

Courts, police, laws, prisons, and indentured servitude all count as governance and authority in my book. Furthermore, restriction from private property claims which is upheld by legitimated enforcement is not my idea of voluntary cooperation.

the same dictionaries that define it as chaos and violence?

Is it really your place to deny one definition of anarchism while dismissing any possible arguments that deny yours?

it might be better if we just replaced capitalism with "free market" throughout the entire essay.

Sure, except that the market advocated by most capitalists is not considered to be "free" by most individualist anarchists, who themselves have always advocated a free market.

courts, police, etc are not necessarily govt functions.

They govern a populace, by definition. How is it then, that they are not governmental institutions?

a group of people could come together to start a community voluntarily and they could agree beforehand that they should have some legal system. since this is entirely voluntary, it's not a state.

First, this is your own personal definition of state, lots of statists would argue that a state can be entered into voluntarily. Second, the moment a single person dissented from such a system it would cease to be voluntary, thus become a state by your own standards. Are you suggesting people would always accept the rulings (that is right, rulings as in rulership) of this legal system?

Because there would be rulings, made by rulers, and according to the greek root of the word anarchism means literally "without rulers."

I believe many ansocs would advocate some sort of legal system as well.

There is no such thing as an "ansoc" that is a word made up by caps to describe anarchists. All of the original anarchists considered themselves socialist to one degree or another, and even those today who distinguish anti-capitalism from socialism are still themselves anti-capitalist.

Further, today it is a small number of people who call themselves anarchists that support legal systems. Even amongst that minority, none of them support prisons, none of them support police, and all of them advocate that this "legal" system be entered into equally by all participants, not some joke of a justice system which automatically legitmates the position of private property claimants while over-ruling any dissent against it.

Examples of straw-men engaged in this article:

"But individualist anarchists don't care for authorities who decide who has the right to declare oneself an anarchist."

The implication here is that anarchists are relying on some authority figure or institution to claim that capitalism is incompatible with anarchism. But I have never seen any anarchist, prominent or not, make any such claim. The arguments I have seen are all based on the etymology of the word, the historical origin, the historical precedence, the coherence of the philosophy, and the occasional populist fallacy.

"For instance, left-anarchists consider all property as institutionalized enforced privilege"

A number of individualists consider themselves to be on the left, and some of those individualists advocate a form of possession that is akin to or by some standards identical to a particular narrow kind of property. Thus it is fallacious to claim that left-anarchists in general consider all property to be institutionalized enforced priviledge, even if most believe as much.

"More generally, when talking about governments, justice systems, etc., left-anarchists often think in collectivist terms, and may not understand the stance of anarcho-capitalists, who consider any kind of collectivist decision as oppression of the political minority by the political majority."

The implication here being that anarchists (what are misleadingly refered to as left-anarchists) all support some kind of democratic enforcement. However, the vast majority of anarchists reject legitimate enforced group decisions, relying instead on consensus, arbitration, disassociation, direct action, and dead-lock. Thus the claim that "any" collective decision is the oppression of the political minority is ridiculous, when such "decisions," if there are any, are not necessarily even enforced.

"Anarcho-capitalist criticism of other views:

anarcho-capitalist critique of left-anarchism"

This article is one gigantic straw-man, it shouldn't even be linked to in its current state.

And then there are the representations of "anarcho-capitalism" that are questionable in themselves:

"that considers all forms of express government unnecessary and harmful, including (or especially) in matters of justice and protection. "

Yet capitalists often do support governance institutions such as courts, police, and prisons, even while claiming to be against government. There should be an explaination about why one of these governing bodies is considered to be government while the other is not.

"They reject any kind of government control, taxation or regulation."

Which is entirely misleading, since they endorse the exact same control mechanisms in the hands of businesses, including border enforcement, rent, and policy enforcement. This is identical to government, the fact that you call it a "business" doesn't change the qualitative aspects of the institution itself. A society made up of a series of mini-states, some of them fascist )private business), some of them partially democratic or oligarchic (corporate business) would be qualitatively identical to the "anarcho-capitalist" vision, yet few would claim such states to be anarchist.

"Due to the rejection of any explicit state institutions, Anarcho-capitalism is a form of anarchism,"

Rather, anarcho-capitalism is claimed to be a form of anarchism.

"anarcho-capitalism is based on the notions of individual liberty (including private property)"

This assumes that private property is compatible with individual liberty. Many would claim that the opposite is true.

"Anti-statism is an essential part of the classical liberal tradition"

Not all classical liberals are against the state, even if they are weary of it, so anti-statism can hardly be an essential part of the theory.

"Anarcho-capitalists consider themselves as part of the individualist anarchist tradition."

It must be noted here that a large number of individualists reject this claim. This without mentioning the fact that all the original individualist anarchists themselves explicitly rejected capitalism.

" and defends "negative rights" (such as the "right not to be attacked by anyone else", the "right to not have one's food stolen by anyone else", and the "right not to have any part of one's salary confiscated by anyone")."

These "rights" are only defended insofar as they are in perfect agreement with capitalist values. If an individual freely rejects property relations, and in their free movement through a particular geography they are forcefully restricted, no capitalist is going to "defend their right not to be attacked by anyone else" if the person(s) doing the restricting are themselves so-called legitimate property owners. So it should be made clear that capitalists only support negative rights insofar as the actors are themselves capitalists or hold values identical to capitalists.

"Anarcho-capitalists, like classical liberals in general, think that violence should be reserved purely for self-defense of person and property."

"defense" of property is only self-defense according to a propertarian ethic. To non-propertarians "defense" of property is often actually aggression.

"They tend to loathe violent action and revolutions as a "normal" way to promote or impose their views"

Yet capitalists freely engage in violent enforcement to impose their economic views on dissenters whenever that dissent clashes with their property claims. Given that, the above statement is meaningless.

"However, even though they might approve of violence as necessary in certain cases; even though they may concede that governments, having monopolized the means of violence,"

This is also misleading. Within a capitalist system property owners are given legitimate recourse to enforce whatever policy they dictate within the sphere of their property. This is identical to having a monopoly on violence in that sphere of control, thus identical to a state.

"There is no history of violence, terrorist or otherwise, perpetrated by anarcho-capitalists to impose their system upon others."

Shooting a non-propertarian "trespasser" is a form of violence used to impose ones economic system upon others. Another meaningless claim.

Finally, I have no idea how the NPOV voting works, I have just seen it done on other NPOV pages. Since you declared that you would simply remove the dissenting notice full stop, I suggested a vote instead.

Recent dispute

First of all, I want to note that attacks on anarcho-capitalism belong in the criticisms/arguments sections, not in the definition or introduction, which should describe the beliefs of anarcho-capitalists, regardless of whether you consider such views incoherent or wrong. Besides this point, here are a few other responses:

See Landauer quote here for precedent on anarcho-capitalism as anarchism.

I suspect most left-anarchists also favor violence in defense of property. An outsider starts destroying the (collectively owned) factory, what then? The notion of self-defense means different things in different systems (e.g., in English common law one cannot use deadly force to avert a minor beating, while some might think this is "self-defense"). I think "self-defense of person and property" is a fair description of ancap beliefs.

"History of violence" refers not to the system itself but to the behavior of its ideological adherents; your statement confuses these.

Re: objection that a powerful business is like a government. Yes, this is a valid objection to ancap, and similar objections can be made to ansoc (a convenient abbreviation). But others have replies to this objection. Your edits assume that you've won this argument.

I'm removing your inlined comments. Perhaps you could contribute to the criticisms. -- VV 02:51, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm not "attacking" anarcho-capitalism, I am asserting that the descriptions of it should be honest, and that this page should not be used as a covert attempt to attack anarchism itself under the guise of a non-existent "branch" of anarchism.

The Landauer quote is irrelevant. Not only because Landauer is no authority who decides for everyone else what anarchism is an is not, but more importantly because all he was doing was distinguishing between communist anarchism and individualist anarchism. But individualist and communist anarchists have always done this. It is Caplan that imports the assumption that this must be a distinction between socialist and individualist anarchism, and it is Caplan and you who mistake individualist anarchism for the misnomer that is anarcho-capitalism. The individualists are not capitalists, they said so themselves dozens of times, and a lot of modern day individualists who have studied history will tell you this themselves. Don't believe me? Ask Wendy McElroy.

The discussion of supposed violence in defense of property is also irrelevant. First, because almost all anarchists oppose property, but more importantly because this would at best be a criticism of attempts at anarchism, not a reason to consider capitalists to be anarchists. The most such a criticism could point out, assuming it was valid (a big assumption imho), would be that many of those socialists who consider themselves anarchists actually are not anarchists according to their own assertions.

As to the history of violence, are you telling me that no one who has considered themselves an anarcho-capitalist has ever used violence to uphold their property claims?

My edits did not assume that I have "won" anything. I'm not trying to win anything. I'm trying to clarify the issue and let capitalism be portrayed honestly. To remove the points that I bring up about the similarity between states and capitalist business is to simply pretend that no such similitarity exists, or that it is irrelevant.

Oh well, it is clear that an honest portrayal of anarcho-capitalism is not what you want. I will edit the page whenever I feel the urge, but so long as the NPOV dispute warning remains it is not a priority for me. I'm happy so long as visitors understand that the description here does not stand undisputed in terms of its neutrality. - Kevin 11/12/03

I already responded to most of these points. Anarchism means no state. Self-defense almost always refers to the right to defend one's home, and believing in this does not make one "pro-violence". Ancaps do not favor corporate control; they do accept that hiring corporations to provide self-defense service is a possibility. No one is attacking anarchism; the articles makes it clear there are different groups which oppose the state, and both views are described on their respective pages. Using violence to uphold the property claims is not the same as using violence to impose an ancap order; I'm sure those who want to abolish property have also defended their property while waiting for the Revolution. Your points about state vs. business is a criticism of the position, not the position itself, which does hold that there is a distinction. Adding in your own opinion on these matters is not appropriate. -- VV 11:23, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

(note this was written simultaneous with below, edit conflict)

I think the term leftist anarchist is POV - that is what anarchism is, as far as I am aware. The only people who use the term 'leftist anarchist' are those who think that the libertarian right are anarchists and add the leftist to differentiate between the two. As these libertarian rightists are a tiny minority (I think they only exist in the US) could we use the normal meaning of anarchism? Secretlondon 11:20, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

I don't know much about the terminology debate (such as the history of left-anarchist), but it seems both groups regard themselves as anarchists (and this is consistent with the word's formal meaning), so both claims should be respected. Adding "left-" as a specifier allows us to be specific about which kind we mean in a certain context, in the same way that saying (e.g.) "Russian conservatism" and "American conservatism" might spare us from wars over which are the real conservatives (or "neo-" and "paleo-", etc.). I will try to accommodate this by adding more text to the intro about the terminology issues. I think this is a reasonable compromise. -- VV 22:45, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

"I already responded to most of these points. Anarchism means no state."

And you are just going to ignore my response? Anarchism from its conception has meant more than just "no state," and anarchism currently means more than just "no state" and the very root of the word literally translates to more than just "no state." For evidence, note proudhon's use of the word, modern dictionary definitions of the word, and the greek basis of it. You didn't respond to any of these points, you just glanced over them and edited anything that disagreed with your position.

"Self-defense almost always refers to the right to defend one's home, and believing in this does not make one "pro-violence"."

That is debatable, but also irrelevant. Property includes far more than ones home. It can include a field of hay half way around the world, a toothbrush in the sink, or a pound of titanium in a vault in Switzerland. Obviously defending all of these things regardless of how they were acquired is not considered by all people to be "self-defense." Indeed, not even capitalists would view all property claims as self-defense. These needs to be expanded or rewritten to be accounted for. And I never wrote anything that suggested that capitalists were pro-violent, only that they support violence to uphold their property claims.

"Ancaps do not favor corporate control; they do accept that hiring corporations to provide self-defense service is a possibility."

Clearly many capitalists do favor corporate control over the state. If you want to include the fact that some of them prefer private control, rent, and policy over corporate, then do so. That is not a reason to delete my edits.

"No one is attacking anarchism; the articles makes it clear there are different groups which oppose the state, and both views are described on their respective pages."

If we accepted your definition of anarchism from the outset, then sure, no one is attacking anarchism. But the whole point of dissent in this case is that as anarchists we are under no obligation to accept your definition. Anarchism does not mean merely what it is presented to mean in this page, it need to be presented openly and honestly, and that includes describing it as anarchists themselves would.

"Using violence to uphold the property claims is not the same as using violence to impose an ancap order; I'm sure those who want to abolish property have also defended their property while waiting for the Revolution."

This is a non-sequitor. Just because individuals have upheld their property claims using violence in both cases doesn't mean that doing so is not imposing a particular economic order upon those who dissent.

"Your points about state vs. business is a criticism of the position, not the position itself, which does hold that there is a distinction."

Then you have to explicitly tell what that distinction is. As it is, a reader might incorrectly think that there is no similarity. There is a similarity, and it is our burden to demonstrate the anarcho-capitalist position on this matter.

"Adding in your own opinion on these matters is not appropriate."

Deleting everything that disagrees with your opinion is not appropriate either. And lets be clear, you are the one deleting passages here, I am merely adding to them or changing the wording to provide a more neutral POV.

Secretlondon is correct to assert that left-anarchist is a misnomer. However, it is obvious that the biased capitalists on this board will not admit to such, and since this is their page I suggest that they be refered to as libertarian socialists unless there are any anarchists who disagree. Doing this will allow you to side-step the debate about whether or not left-anarchist is an appropriate title for a group of people who universally reject it.

Kevin 11/14/03

"(and this is consistent with the word's formal meaning)"

For the third time, the only way you can continue to claim that is by ignoring all the evidence to the contrary, evidence which I have supplied and you have ignored. It is not a compromise to refer to anarchists as something they are not. What is your problem with refering to them as libertarian socialists anyway? Most of them would agree with that far more than "left-anarchis." Many of them in fact refer to themselves as "post-left" anarchists, are you going to try to claim that they are left-anarchists as well?

Kevin 11/15/03

Edit war

Guys, please stop the edit war. And VV, I don't see what is wrong with Anon's edits; they seem to be reasonable to me and in fact read more NPOV than the version you keep reverting to. Please explain. --mav 03:15, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)~