Center for Libertarian Studies
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Mike Huben: the Net's biggest anti-libertarian agitator
David Friedman: Problems with libertarianism'
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"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 I also
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." -- Henry
David Thoreau |
Anarcho-Capitalism: A Primer
The above quote from Henry Thoreau summarizes my political philosophy as well as any I've ever seen. But since many may not realize that one can, indeed, interpret Thoreau's words literally, I should first clarify from exactly where on the political spectrum I am coming.
Woody Guthrie once said he always strove to be a liberal in a room full of
conservatives, and a 
conservative in a room full of liberals. It's
a feeling I can wholly identify with, as my political philosophy and outlook tend to stand
in direct opposition to just about anyone I meet, regardless of their partisan stripe. And
it's not that I just want to be a contrarian pain in the ass -- though I won't deny that
might be a contributing factor -- but that I value logical consistency in thought above
all else, and my exposure to just about every established ideology has left me feeling it
lacked that. Every ideology but one, that is -- anarcho-capitalism.
If you're like most people, and you haven't been subjected to me droning on and on ad infinitum about the subject, you're probably furrowing your brow right about now and asking "what the (insert expletive) is anarcho-capitalism?" Oh, I'm so glad you asked. :-)
Most people who know me or know my history of political activism are apt to categorize
me as a "conservative" or "right-winger." (Well, at least, those who
aren't conservative right-wingers themselves, who are far more likely to think of me as a
Commie pinko.) After all, I hate taxes and regulation, rail against government spending
and the environmental movement, firmly support the right to keep and bear arms, and have
worked extensively and held leadership positions in both local and national organizations
within the Republican 
Party. (Some would say I sold my soul by
doing so, though I'd contend it's more like I brought it down to the pawn shop and
eventually got it back on the cheap.)
Alas, I must report, I am most certainly not a conservative. My advocacy of the legalization of drugs; of an absolute end to both censorship and corporate welfare (*under which heading I'd include, for instance, patent law and all other forms of monopolistic protection, the Prussian-model public school system that turns potentially supple minds into mindless worker bees for the industrial state, and the legal construct of "corporations" themselves, which grant firms all the rights of people, but none of the responsibilities*); my hatred of both police and the military; and, in some quarters, my position that free trade and immigration are to be enthusiastically welcomed -- all put me at odds with some massive segment or other of the conservative movement.
Rather, I am part of a distinct, radical and populist subgroup that is diametrically
opposed to the stagnant and elitist philosophy of conservatism, even if we have, at times,
found common cause with conservatives in a makeshift anti-government coalition. We are the
libertarians, those who favor a diminished role for the government both in the economy,
and in matters of 
personal choice and freedom. Or, put more
abstractly, we are those who accept and endorse the "non-aggression principle,"
which holds that the non-defensive use of force and coercion, whether initiated by a
government or an individual, is always immoral. It's ultimately not so radical a notion, I
don't think, as it is a concept imbedded deeply both in Judeo-Christian morality and in
the character of American law and institutions. For all intents and purposes, one can say
the Founding Fathers were almost all, to a man, libertarians themselves. While very few
people, either in the U.S. or abroad, actually call themselves libertarians, and probably
even fewer would find themselves in agreement with the full canon of libertarian dogma,
I'd like to think, once given a definition of the word, most people understand what a
libertarian is, and why libertarians believe what they do.
And so, I'm a libertarian. But.....well, even that's not quite right. Most libertarians, following the lead of thinkers like Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek (not to mention Thomas Jefferson), are what would be technically termed "minarchists." They believe "government is best which governs least," and take that to mean government should be limited to providing providing police, courts and a system of national defense. But an important distinction between libertarians and people like myself is that they DO believe in the concept of government as a viable, moral entity. In fact, they believe without limited government -- to enforce contracts, preserve order, and uphold justice -- civilization itself would be impossible.
I don't subscribe to that line of thought, which
puts me out of the "mainstream" of the already politically marginalized movement
of libertarianism. Instead, I am the most radical kind of libertarian there is -- an
anarchist, or one who holds "the theory or doctrine that all forms of government are
unnecessary, oppressive, and undesirable and should be abolished." (American
Heritage College Dictionary)
I must admit to a feeling of release in being able to call myself an "anarchist," so it's my preferred term of choice. At the least, it's definitely a far sexier word than "libertarian." But, of course, there are also problems with choosing this term. Namely, that the word tends to evoke a range of images, from punk rockers like the Sex Pistols and Rage Against the Machine (which I don't necessarily mind so much) to Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber (who provide really poor P.R. images) to those anti-WTO nutcases that raised such a ruckus in Paris and Seattle this past year. Now, I don't like the WTO any more than they do, and I certainly empathize with the urge to burn Seattle to the ground (ahhh, it's a long story) but politically, I have next to nothing in common with such folks, so sharing the name with them is, once again, a confounding experience.
Basically, it's my opinion that these folks aren't really "anarchists" (at least not in the sense I use the term) they are socialists (or, in McVeigh's case -- just plain old-fashioned Oklahoma white trash.) They, like me, want to "smash the state," but they also want to abolish private property, and they see government being replaced by "cooperative communities" that sound an awful lot like governments to me. For those of us who believe the state should crumble, but who also support capitalism and believe that private property both should and would continue in a world without government, the term "anarchist," while technically accurate, is still insufficient and likely to bring about confusion.
And so, we must search for yet another name to
define my political philosophy. While 
"Lehmannism" might seem an appropriate
choice, given the apparent unlikelihood that my views would be shared by many others, shockingly, it turns out that my philosophy is not, indeed, mine alone. Though I didn't
know this as I was developing it, it actually coincides with thoughts shared by a long
tradition of historians, philosophers, and economists that support an individualistic
flavor of anarchism, and is a more or less natural outgrowth of the long history of
classical liberal thought. Elements of this philosophy can be seen in the writings of
thinkers like Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and Herbert Spencer and it was carried on
full-force in the 20th Century through the work of economists like Murray Rothbard and
David Friedman (son of the aforementioned Nobel laureate Milton Friedman.)
And the name of this philosophy? You guessed it -- anarcho-capitalism.
Anarcho-capitalism is a small movement that is,
for now at least, confined to the fringes of libertarianism. We're like the nutty uncle in
the libertarian family that they try to hide away in the back room when conservative and
liberal friends come to visit. As a movement, anarcho-capitalism, perhaps even more than
libertarianism, is overwhelmingly dominated by academics and "court
intellectuals" (a term which describes most of the jobs I've held) and
holds, at this point, only limited interest to the general public. (When an
entire dissertation is required just to explain the name, you might easily see why this is
so.)
Mind you, we agree with "mainstream"
libertarians on the vast majority of issues, so the distinction between the two schools of
thought might seem trivial. And in some senses, it is. Nonetheless, we believe that
minarchist libertarianism doesn't go far enough in its opposition to government, as we
feel there is significant evidence that not only CAN such services as police, courts and a
national defense be bought and sold on an open market, but that, like any other products
or services, these things would benefit greatly from the influence of free enterprise.
Given the difficulties libertarianism has had earning a foothold in the popular
consciousness, one might think anarcho-capitalism has an even tougher row to hoe. While I
won't dispute that this might indeed be the case, we anarcho-capitalists do enjoy at least
one significant advantage over libertarians (indeed, over even conservatives and liberals
as well) -- neither electoral politics nor even political lobbying will be the yardstick
of our success. Instead, we need only work to strengthen and embolden those institutions
-- from privately planned communities to "electronic cash" to for-profit
education -- that offer alternatives to government action. We don't need to win a single
election. We just need to work to make the state irrelevant.