Section F - Is "anarcho"-capitalism a type of anarchism?

F.1 Are "anarcho"-capitalists really anarchists?
	F.1.1 Is "anarcho"-capitalism a new form of individualist anarchism?

F.2 What do "anarcho"-capitalists mean by "freedom?"
	F.2.1 How does private property affect freedom?
	F.2.2 Do Libertarian-capitalists support slavery?

F.3 Why do 'anarcho'-capitalists generally place little or no 
    value on equality?"
	F.3.1 Why is this disregard for equality important?

F.4 What is the right-libertarian position on private property?
	F.4.1 What is wrong with a "homesteading" theory of property?

F.5 Will privatising "the commons" increase liberty?

F.6 Is "anarcho" capitalism against the state?
	F.6.1 What's wrong with this "free market" justice?
 	F.6.2 What are the social consequences of such a system?
 	F.6.3 But surely Market Forces will stop abuse by the rich?
 	F.6.4 Why are these "defence associations" states?

F.7 How does the history of "anarcho"-capitalism show that
    it is not anarchist?
	F.7.1 Are competing governments anarchism?
	F.7.2 Is government compatible with anarchism?
	F.7.3 Can there be a "right-wing" anarchism?

F.8 What role did the state take in the creation of capitalism?
	F.8.1 What social forces lay behind the rise of capitalism?
 	F.8.2 What was the social context of the statement "laissez-faire"?
 	F.8.3 What other forms did state intervention in creating 
 	      capitalism take?
	F.8.4 Aren't the enclosures a socialist myth?
	F.8.5 What about the lack of enclosures in the Americas?
 	F.8.6 How did working people view the rise of capitalism?

Section F - Is "anarcho"-capitalism a type of anarchism?

Anyone who has followed political discussion on the net has probably come
across people calling themselves libertarians but arguing from a right-wing,
pro-capitalist perspective. For most Europeans this is weird, as in Europe
the term "libertarian" is almost always used in conjunction with "socialist" 
or "communist." In the US, though, the Right has partially succeeded in
appropriating this term for itself. Even stranger, however, is that a few of 
these right-wingers have started calling themselves "anarchists" in what 
must be one of the finest examples of an oxymoron in the English language: 
'Anarcho-capitalist'!!

Arguing with fools is seldom rewarded, but to allow their foolishness to go
unchallenged risks allowing them to deceive those who are new to anarchism.
That's what this section of the anarchist FAQ is for, to show why the claims
of these "anarchist" capitalists are false. Anarchism has always been
anti-capitalist and any "anarchism" that claims otherwise cannot be part 
of the anarchist tradition. So this section of the FAQ does not reflect 
some kind of debate within anarchism, as many of these types like to pretend, 
but a debate between anarchism and its old enemy, capitalism. In many ways 
this debate mirrors the one between Peter Kropotkin and Herbert Spencer, an
English pro-capitalist, minimal statist, at the turn the 19th century
and, as such, it is hardly new.

The "anarcho"-capitalist argument hinges on using the dictionary definition 
of "anarchism" and/or "anarchy" - they try to define anarchism as being
"opposition to government," and nothing else. However, dictionaries are
hardly politically sophisticated and their definitions rarely reflect the
wide range of ideas associated with political theories and their history.
Thus the dictionary "definition" is anarchism will tend to ignore its 
consistent views on authority, exploitation, property and capitalism (ideas
easily discovered if actual anarchist texts are read). And, of course, many 
dictionaries "define" anarchy as "chaos" or "disorder" but we never see 
"anarcho"-capitalists use that particular definition!

And for this strategy to work, a lot of "inconvenient" history and ideas 
from all branches of anarchism must be ignored. From individualists 
like Spooner and Tucker to communists like Kropotkin and Malatesta, 
anarchists have always been anti-capitalist (see section G for more on 
the anti-capitalist nature of individualist anarchism). Therefore 
"anarcho"-capitalists are not anarchists in the same sense that 
rain is not dry.

Of course, we cannot stop the "anarcho"-capitalists using the words
"anarcho", "anarchism" and "anarchy" to describe their ideas. The
democracies of the west could not stop the Chinese Stalinist state calling 
itself the People's Republic of China. Nor could the social democrats
stop the fascists in Germany calling themselves "National Socialists".
Nor could the Italian anarcho-syndicalists stop the fascists using the
expression "National Syndicalism". This does not mean that any of these
movements actual name reflected their content -- China is a dictatorship,
not a democracy, the Nazi's were not socialists (capitalists made fortunes
in Nazi Germany because it crushed the labour movement), and the Italian 
fascist state had nothing in common with anarcho-syndicalists ideas of
decentralised, "from the bottom up" unions and the abolition of the
state and capitalism. 

Therefore, just because someone uses a label it does not mean that they
support the ideas associated with that label. And this is the case with 
"anarcho"-capitalism -- its ideas are at odds with the key ideas associated
with all forms of traditional anarchism (even individualist anarchism
which is often claimed as being a forefather of the ideology).

All we can do is indicate *why* "anarcho"-capitalism is not part of the
anarchist tradition and so has falsely appropriated the name. This section
of the FAQ aims to do just that -- present the case why "anarcho"-capitalists
are not anarchists. We do this, in part, by indicating where they differ
from genuine anarchists (on such essential issues as private property, 
equality, exploitation and opposition to hierarchy) In addition, we take 
the opportunity to present a general critique of right-libertarian claims 
from an anarchist perspective. In this way we show up why anarchists reject 
that theory as being opposed to liberty and anarchist ideals.

We are covering this topic in an anarchist FAQ for three reasons. 
Firstly, the number of "libertarian" and "anarcho"-capitalists on the 
net means that those seeking to find out about anarchism may conclude
that they are "anarchists" as well. Secondly, unfortunately, some 
academics and writers have taken their claims of being anarchists at 
face value and have included their ideology into general accounts of 
anarchism. These two reasons are obviously related and hence the need
to show the facts of the matter. As we have extensively documented 
in earlier sections, anarchist theory has always been anti-capitalist. 
There is no relationship between anarchism and capitalism, in any 
form. Therefore, there is a need for this section in order to indicate 
exactly why "anarcho"-capitalism is not anarchist. As will be quickly 
seen from our discussion, almost all anarchists who become aware of 
"anarcho"-capitalism quickly reject it as a form of anarchism (the 
better academic accounts do note that anarchists generally reject 
the claim, though). The last reason is to provide other anarchists 
with arguments and evidence to use against "anarcho"-capitalism and
its claims of being a new form of "anarchism."

So this section of the FAQ does not, as we noted above, represent some kind
of "debate" within anarchism. It reflects the attempt by anarchists to 
reclaim the history and meaning of anarchism from those who are attempting
to steal its name (just as right-wingers in America have attempted to
appropriate the name "libertarian" for their pro-capitalist views, and by
so doing ignore over 100 years of anti-capitalist usage). However, this
section also serves two other purposes. Firstly, critiquing right-libertarian
and "anarcho"-capitalist theories allows us to explain anarchist ones at
the same time and indicate why they are better. Secondly, and more 
importantly, the "ideas" and "ideals" that underlie "anarcho"-capitalism
are usually identical (or, at the very least, similar) to those of 
neo-liberalism. This was noted by Bob Black in the early 1980s, when
a "wing of the Reaganist Right has obviously appropriated, with suspect 
selectivity, such libertarian themes as deregulation and voluntarism. 
Ideologues indignant that Reagan has travestied their principles. Tough 
shit! I notice that it's their principles, not mine, that he found suitable 
to travesty." [_The Libertarian As Conservative_] This was echoed by Noam
Chomsky two decades later when while "nobody takes [right-wing libertarianism] 
seriously" as "everybody knows that a society that worked by . . . [its] 
principles would self-destruct in three seconds" the "only reason" why 
some people "pretend to take it seriously is because you can use it as
a weapon." [_Understanding Power_, p. 200] As neo-liberalism is being 
used as the ideological basis of the current attack on the working class, 
critiquing "anarcho"-capitalism and right-libertarianism also allows use 
to build theoretical weapons to use to resist this attack and aid the 
class struggle.

Anarchism has always been aware of the existence of "free market"
capitalism, particularly its extreme (minimal state) wing, and has
always rejected it. As we discuss in section F.7, anarchists from 
Proudhon onwards have rejected the idea of any similar aims and 
goals (and, significantly, vice versa). As academic Alan Carter 
notes, anarchist concern for equality as a necessary precondition 
for genuine freedom means "that is one very good reason for not 
confusing anarchists with liberals or economic 'libertarians' 
-- in other words, for not lumping together everyone who is in 
some way or another critical of the state. It is why calling the 
likes of Nozick 'anarchists' is highly misleading." ["Some notes 
on 'Anarchism'", pp. 141-5, _Anarchist Studies_, vol. 1, no. 2,
p. 143] So anarchists have evaluated "free market" capitalism and 
rejected it as non-anarchist for over 150 years. Attempts by 
"anarcho"-capitalism to say that their system is "anarchist" flies 
in the face of this long history of anarchist analysis. That some 
academics fall for their attempts to appropriate the anarchist 
label for their ideology is down to a false premise: it "is judged 
to be anarchism largely because some anarcho-capitalists *say* they 
are 'anarchists' and because they criticise the State." [Peter 
Sabatini, _Social Anarchism_, no. 23, p. 100]

More generally, we must stress that most (if not all) anarchists do not 
want to live in a society *just like this one* but without state coercion 
and (the initiation of) force. Anarchists do not confuse "freedom" with 
the "right" to govern and exploit others nor with being able to change 
masters. It is not enough to say we can start our own (co-operative) 
business in such a society. We want the abolition of the capitalist 
system of authoritarian relationships, not just a change of bosses 
or the possibility of little islands of liberty within a sea of 
capitalism (islands which are always in danger of being flooded 
and our activity destroyed). Thus, in this section of the FAQ, 
we analysis many "anarcho"-capitalist claims on their own terms 
(for example, the importance of equality in the market or why
capitalism cannot be reformed away by exchanges on the capitalist 
market) but that does not mean we desire a society nearly identical 
to the current one. Far from it, we want to transform this society 
into one more suited for developing and enriching individuality and
freedom. But before we can achieve that we must critically evaluate
the current society and point out its basic limitations.

Finally, we dedicate this section of the FAQ to those who have seen the 
real face of "free market" capitalism at work: the working men and women 
(anarchist or not) murdered in the jails and concentration camps or on the 
streets by the hired assassins of capitalism. 

For more discussion on this issue, see the appendix "Anarchism and 
'Anarcho'-capitalism."

F.1 Are "anarcho"-capitalists really anarchists?

In a word, no. While "anarcho"-capitalists obviously try to associate
themselves with the anarchist tradition by using the word "anarcho"
or by calling themselves "anarchists", their ideas are distinctly at 
odds with those associated with anarchism. As a result, any claims that 
their ideas are anarchist or that they are part of the anarchist 
tradition or movement are false. 

"Anarcho"-capitalists claim to be anarchists because they say that they 
oppose government. As such, as noted in the last section, they use 
a dictionary definition of anarchism. However, this fails to appreciate
that anarchism is a *political theory*, not a dictionary definition. 
As dictionaries are rarely politically sophisticated things, this means 
that they fail to recognise that anarchism is more than just opposition to
government, it is also marked a opposition to capitalism (i.e. exploitation
and private property). Thus, opposition to government is a necessary
but not sufficient condition for being an anarchist -- you also need 
to be opposed to exploitation and capitalist private property. As 
"anarcho"-capitalists do not consider interest, rent and profits (i.e.
capitalism) to be exploitative nor oppose capitalist property rights,
they are not anarchists.

Moreover, "anarcho"-capitalism is inherently self-refuting. This can be
seen from leading "anarcho"-capitalist Murray Rothbard. he thundered 
against the evil of the state, arguing that it "arrogates to itself a 
monopoly of force, of ultimate decision-making power, over a given area 
territorial area." In and of itself, this definition is unremarkable. 
That a few people (an elite of rulers) claim the right to rule others 
must be part of any sensible definition of the state or government.
However, the problems begin for Rothbard when he notes that 
"[o]bviously, in a free society, Smith has the ultimate decision-making 
power over his own just property, Jones over his, etc." [_The Ethics of 
Liberty_, p. 170 and p. 173] The logical contradiction in this position
should be obvious, but not to Rothbard. It shows the power of ideology,
the ability of means words (the expression "private property") to turn 
the bad ("ultimate decision-making power over a given area") into the 
good ("ultimate decision-making power over a given area"). 

Now, this contradiction can be solved in only *one* way -- the owners
of the "given area" are also its users. In other words, a system of
possession (or "occupancy and use") as favoured by anarchists. However,
Rothbard is a capitalist and supports private property. In other
words, wage labour and landlords. This means that he supports a 
divergence between ownership and use and this means that this 
"ultimate decision-making power" extends to those who *use,* but do 
not own, such property (i.e. tenants and workers). The statist nature 
of private property is clearly indicated by Rothbard's words -- the
property owner in an "anarcho"-capitalist society possesses the 
"ultimate decision-making power" over a given area, which is also what 
the state has currently. Rothbard has, ironically, proved by his own
definition that "anarcho"-capitalism is not anarchist.

Rothbard does try to solve this obvious contradiction, but utterly fails. 
He simply ignores the crux of the matter, that capitalism is based on 
hierarchy and, therefore, cannot be anarchist. He does this by arguing
that the hierarchy associated with capitalism is fine as long as the
private property that produced it was acquired in a "just" manner. In
so doing he yet again draws attention to the identical authority 
structures and social relationships of the state and property. As
he puts it:

"*If* the State may be said too properly *own* its territory, then 
it is proper for it to make rules for everyone who presumes to 
live in that area. It can legitimately seize or control private 
property because there *is* no private property in its area, 
because it really owns the entire land surface. *So long* as 
the State permits its subjects to leave its territory, then, it 
can be said to act as does any other owner who sets down rules 
for people living on his property." [Op. Cit., p. 170] 

Obviously Rothbard argues that the state does not "justly" own its
territory -- but given that the current distribution of property
is just as much the result of violence and coercion as the state,
his argument is seriously flawed. It amounts, as we note in section
F.4, to little more than an "immaculate conception of property" 
unrelated to reality. Even assuming that private property was 
produced by the means Rothbard assumes, it does not justify the 
hierarchy associated with it as the current and future generations 
of humanity have, effectively, been excommunicated from liberty by 
previous ones. If, as Rothbard argues, property is a natural right 
and the basis of liberty then why should the many be excluded from 
their birthright by a minority? In other words, Rothbard denies that 
liberty should be universal. He chooses property over liberty while 
anarchists choose liberty over property.

Even worse, the possibility that private property can result in *worse* 
violations of individual freedom (at least of workers) than the state 
of its citizens was implicitly acknowledged by Rothbard. He uses as a 
hypothetical example a country whose King is threatened by a rising 
"libertarian" movement. The King responses by "employ[ing] a cunning 
stratagem," namely he "proclaims his government to be dissolved, but 
just before doing so he arbitrarily parcels out the entire land area 
of his kingdom to the 'ownership' of himself and his relatives." Rather 
than taxes, his subjects now pay rent and he can "regulate to regulate 
the lives of all the people who presume to live on" his property as he 
sees fit. Rothbard then asks:

"Now what should be the reply of the libertarian rebels to this pert 
challenge? If they are consistent utilitarians, they must bow to this 
subterfuge, and resign themselves to living under a regime no less 
despotic than the one they had been battling for so long. Perhaps, 
indeed, *more* despotic, for now the king and his relatives can claim 
for themselves the libertarians' very principle of the absolute right 
of private property, an absoluteness which they might not have dared 
to claim before." [Op. Cit., pp. 54-5]

So not only does the property owner have the same monopoly of power 
over a given area as the state, it is *more* despotic as it is based 
on the "absolute right of private property"! And remember, Rothbard
is arguing *in favour* of "anarcho"-capitalism ("if you have unbridled
capitalism, you will have all kinds of authority: you will have *extreme* 
authority." [Chomksy, _Understanding Power_, p. 200]). So in practice, 
private property is a major source of oppression and authoritarianism within 
society -- there is little or no freedom within capitalist production 
(as Bakunin noted, "the worker sells his person and his liberty for 
a given time"). So, in stark contrast to anarchists, "anarcho"-capitalists 
have no problem with factory fascism (i.e. wage labour), a position which 
seems highly illogical for a theory calling itself libertarian. If it 
were truly libertarian, it would oppose all forms of domination, not 
just statism. This position flows from the "anarcho"-capitalist 
definition of freedom as the absence of coercion and will be discussed 
in section F.2 in more detail.

Of course, Rothbard has yet another means to escape the obvious, namely
that the market will limit the abuses of the property owners. If workers
do not like their ruler then they can seek another. However, this reply
completely ignores the reality of economic and social power. Thus the
"consent" argument fails because it ignores the social circumstances of 
capitalism which limit the choice of the many. Anarchists have long argued 
that, as a class, workers have little choice but to "consent" to capitalist 
hierarchy. The alternative is either dire poverty or starvation. 

"Anarcho"-capitalists dismiss such claims by denying that there is such a 
thing as economic power. Rather, it is simply freedom of contract. Anarchists 
consider such claims as a joke. To show why, we need only quote (yet again)
Rothbard on the abolition of slavery and serfdom in the 19th century. He 
argued, correctly, that the "*bodies* of the oppressed were freed, but the 
property which they had worked and eminently deserved to own, remained in 
the hands of their former oppressors. With economic power thus remaining 
in their hands, the former lords soon found themselves virtual masters 
once more of what were now free tenants or farm labourers. The serfs and 
slaves had tasted freedom, but had been cruelly derived of its fruits." 
[Op. Cit., p. 74]

To say the least, anarchists fail to see the logic in this position. Contrast 
this with the standard "anarcho"-capitalist claim that if market forces 
("voluntary exchanges") result in the creation of "free tenants or farm 
labourers" then they are free. Yet labourers dispossessed by market forces 
are in exactly the same social and economic situation as the ex-serfs and 
ex-slaves. If the latter do not have the fruits of freedom, neither do 
the former. Rothbard sees the obvious "economic power" in the latter case, 
but denies it in the former. It is only Rothbard's ideology that stops 
him from drawing the obvious conclusion -- identical economic conditions 
produce identical social relationships and so capitalism is marked by 
"economic power" and "virtual masters." The only solution is for 
"anarcho"-capitalists to simply say the ex-serfs and ex-slaves were 
actually free to choose and, consequently, Rothbard was wrong. It might 
be inhuman, but at least it would be consistent!

Rothbard's perspective is alien to anarchism. For example, as 
individualist anarchist William Bailie noted, under capitalism 
there is a class system marked by "a dependent industrial class of 
wage-workers" and "a privileged class of wealth-monopolisers, each
becoming more and more distinct from the other as capitalism advances."
This has turned property into "a social power, an economic force 
destructive of rights, a fertile source of injustice, a means of
enslaving the dispossessed." He concludes: "Under this system equal
liberty cannot obtain." Bailie notes that the modern "industrial
world under capitalistic conditions" have "arisen under the *regime*
of status" (and so "law-made privileges") however, it seems unlikely
that he would have concluded that such a class system would be fine 
if it had developed naturally or the current state was abolished 
while leaving the class structure intact (as we note in section G.4, 
Tucker recognised that even the "freest competition" was powerless 
against the "enormous concentration of wealth" associated with modern 
capitalism). [_The Individualist Anarchists_, p. 121]

Therefore anarchists recognise that "free exchange" or "consent" in 
unequal circumstances will reduce freedom as well as increasing inequality 
between individuals and classes. In other words, as we discuss in 
section F.3, inequality will produce social relationships which are based on 
hierarchy and domination, *not* freedom. As Noam Chomsky put it:

"Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever
implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few
counterparts in human history. There isn't the slightest possibility that
its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would
quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of 'free
contract' between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke,
perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences
of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else." [_Noam Chomsky on 
Anarchism_, interview with Tom Lane, December 23, 1996]

Clearly, then, by its own arguments "anarcho"-capitalism is not anarchist.
This should come as no surprise to anarchists. Anarchism, as a political 
theory, was born when Proudhon wrote _What is Property?_ specifically to 
refute the notion that workers are free when capitalist property forces 
them to seek employment by landlords and capitalists. He was well aware 
that in such circumstances property "violates equality by the rights of 
exclusion and increase, and freedom by despotism . . . [and has] perfect 
identity with robbery." He, unsurprisingly, talks of the "proprietor, to 
whom [the worker] has sold and surrendered his liberty." For Proudhon,
anarchy was "the absence of a master, of a sovereign" while "proprietor"
was "synonymous" with "sovereign" for he "imposes his will as law, and 
suffers neither contradiction nor control." This meant that "property 
engenders despotism," as "each proprietor is sovereign lord within the 
sphere of his property." [_What is Property_, p. 251, p. 130, p. 264
and pp. 266-7] It must also be stressed that Proudhon's classic work is 
a lengthy critique of the kind of apologetics for private property 
Rothbard espouses to salvage his ideology from its obvious contradictions. 

Ironically, Rothbard repeats the same analysis as Proudhon but draws
the *opposite* conclusions and expects to be considered an anarchist! 
Moreover, it seems equally ironic that "anarcho"-capitalism calls itself 
"anarchist" while basing itself on the arguments that anarchism was 
created in opposition to. As shown, "anarcho"-capitalism makes as much 
sense as "anarcho-statism" -- an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. The 
idea that "anarcho"-capitalism warrants the name "anarchist" is simply 
false. Only someone ignorant of anarchism could maintain such a thing.
While you expect anarchist theory to show this to be the case, the 
wonderful thing is that "anarcho"-capitalism itself does the same. 

Little wonder Bob Black argues that "[t]o demonise state authoritarianism 
while ignoring identical albeit contract-consecrated subservient arrangements 
in the large-scale corporations which control the world economy is fetishism 
at its worst." [_Libertarian as Conservative_] The similarities between 
capitalism and statism are clear -- and so why "anarcho"-capitalism cannot 
be anarchist. To reject the authority (the "ultimate decision-making power") 
of the state and embrace that of the property owner indicates not only a 
highly illogical stance but one at odds with the basic principles of anarchism.
This whole-hearted support for wage labour and capitalist property rights 
indicates that "anarcho"-capitalists are not anarchists because they do 
not reject all forms of *archy.* They obviously support the hierarchy 
between boss and worker (wage labour) and landlord and tenant. Anarchism, 
by definition, is against all forms of archy, including the hierarchy 
generated by capitalist property. To ignore the obvious archy associated 
with capitalist property is highly illogical. Stephen L. Newman makes the 
same point:

"The emphasis [right-wing] libertarians place on the opposition of liberty
and political power tends to obscure the role of authority in their 
worldview . . . the authority exercised in private relationships, however
-- in the relationship between employer and employee, for instance --
meets with no objection. . . . [This] reveals a curious insensitivity to
the use of private authority as a means of social control. Comparing public
and private authority, we might well ask of the [right-wing] libertarians:
When the price of exercising one's freedom is terribly high, what practical
difference is there between the commands of the state and those issued
by one's employer? . . . Though admittedly the circumstances are not
identical, telling disgruntled empowers that they are always free to leave
their jobs seems no different in principle from telling political dissidents
that they are free to emigrate." [_Liberalism at Wit's End_, pp. 45-46]

As Bob Black pointed out, right libertarians argue that "'one can at 
least change jobs.' But you can't avoid having a job -- just as under 
statism one can at least change nationalities but you can't avoid 
subjection to one nation-state or another. But freedom means more than 
the right to change masters." [Op. Cit.] Trying to dismiss one form of 
domination as flowing from "just" property while attacking the other 
because it flows from "unjust" property is not seeing the wood for the 
trees.

In addition, we must note that such inequalities in power and wealth 
will need  "defending" from those subject to them ("anarcho"-capitalists 
recognise the need for private police and courts to defend property 
from theft -- and, anarchists add, to defend the theft and despotism 
associated with property!). Due to its support of private property (and 
thus authority), "anarcho"-capitalism ends up retaining a state in its 
"anarchy"; namely a *private* state whose existence its proponents 
attempt to deny simply by refusing to call it a state, like an ostrich 
hiding its head in the sand (see section F.6 for more on this and why 
"anarcho"-capitalism is better described as "private state" capitalism). 
As Albert Meltzer put it:

"Common-sense shows that any capitalist society might dispense with
a 'State' . . . but it could not dispense with organised government,
or a privatised form of it, if there were people amassing money and 
others working to amass it for them. The philosophy of 'anarcho-capitalism'
dreamed up by the 'libertarian' New Right, has nothing to do with 
Anarchism as known by the Anarchist movement proper. It is a lie
. . . Patently unbridled capitalism . . . needs some force at its
disposal to maintain class privileges, either form the State itself
or from private armies. What they believe in is in fact a limited
State -- that us, one in which the State has one function, to protect
the ruling class, does not interfere with exploitation, and comes as
cheap as possible for the ruling class. The idea also serves another 
purpose . . . a moral justification for bourgeois consciences in 
avoiding taxes without feeling guilty about it." [_Anarchism: 
Arguments For and Against_, p. 50]

For anarchists, this need of capitalism for some kind of state is 
unsurprising. For "Anarchy without socialism seems equally as impossible 
to us [as socialism without anarchy], for in such a case it could not be 
other than the domination of the strongest, and would therefore set in 
motion right away the organisation and consolidation of this domination; 
that is to the constitution of government." [Errico Malatesta, _Life and 
Ideas_, p. 148] Because of this, the "anarcho"-capitalist rejection of 
anarchist ideas on capitalist property economics and the need for 
equality, they cannot be considered anarchists or part of the anarchist 
tradition.

Thus anarchism is far more than the common dictionary definition
of "no government" -- it also entails being against all forms of
*archy*, including those generated by capitalist property. This 
is clear from the roots of the word "anarchy." As we noted 
in section A.1, the word anarchy means "no rulers" or "contrary 
to authority." As Rothbard himself acknowledges, the property 
owner is the ruler of their property and, therefore, those who 
use it. For this reason "anarcho"-capitalism cannot be considered as
a form of anarchism -- a real anarchist must logically oppose 
the authority of the property owner along with that of the state.
As "anarcho"-capitalism does not explicitly (or implicitly, for 
that matter) call for economic arrangements that will end wage 
labour and usury it cannot be considered anarchist or part of the 
anarchist tradition.

Political theories should be identified by their actual features and 
history rather than labels. Once we recognise that, we soon find out that 
"anarcho"-capitalism is an oxymoron. Anarchists and "anarcho"-capitalists 
are not part of the same movement or tradition. Their ideas and aims 
are in direct opposition to those of all kinds of anarchists. 

While anarchists have always opposed capitalism, "anarcho"-capitalists 
have embraced it. And due to this embrace their "anarchy" will be marked 
by extensive differences in wealth and power, differences that will show 
themselves up in relationships based upon subordination and hierarchy 
(such as wage labour), *not* freedom (little wonder that Proudhon 
argued that "property is despotism" -- it creates authoritarian and
hierarchical relationships between people in a similar way to statism).

Their support for "free market" capitalism ignores the impact of wealth 
and power on the nature and outcome of individual decisions within the 
market (see sections F.2 and F.3 for further discussion). For example, 
as we indicate in sections J.5.10, J.5.11 and J.5.12, wage labour is less 
efficient than self-management in production but due to the structure and 
dynamics of the capitalist market, "market forces" will actively discourage 
self-management due to its empowering nature for workers. In other words,
a developed capitalist market will promote hierarchy and unfreedom in 
production in spite of its effects on individual workers and their 
wants. Thus "free market" capitalism tends to re-enforce inequalities of 
wealth and power, *not* eliminate them.

Furthermore, any such system of (economic and social) power will require 
extensive force to maintain it and the "anarcho"-capitalist system of 
competing "defence firms" will simply be a new state, enforcing 
capitalist power, property rights and law.

Overall, the lack of concern for meaningful freedom within production and 
the effects of vast differences in power and wealth within society as a 
whole makes "anarcho"-capitalism little better than "anarchism for the rich." 
Emma Goldman recognised this when she argued that "'Rugged individualism' 
has meant all the 'individualism' for the masters . . . in whose name
political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as 
virtues while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom . . . 
is denounced as . . . evil in the name of that same individualism." 
[_Red Emma Speaks_, p. 112] And, as such, is no anarchism at all.

So, unlike anarchists, "anarcho"-capitalists do not seek the "abolition
of the proletariat" (to use Proudhon's expression) via changing capitalist 
property rights and institutions. Thus the "anarcho"-capitalist and the 
anarchist have different starting positions and opposite ends in mind 
and so they cannot be considered part of the same (anarchist) tradition.
As we discuss further in later sections, the "anarcho"-capitalist
claims to being anarchists are bogus simply because they reject so much
of the anarchist tradition as to make what they do accept non-anarchist
in theory and practice. Little wonder Peter Marshall said that "few
anarchists would accept the 'anarcho-capitalists' into the anarchist
camp since they do not share a concern for economic equality and
social justice." [_Demanding the Impossible_, p. 565]

F.1.1 Is "anarcho"-capitalism a new form of individualist anarchism?

Some "anarcho"-capitalists shy away from the term, preferring such
expressions as "market anarchist" or "individualist anarchist." This
suggests that there is some link between their ideology and that of
Tucker. However, the founder of "anarcho"-capitalism, Murray Rothbard,
refused that label for, while "strongly tempted," he could not do so
because "Spooner and Tucker have in a sense pre-empted that name for
their doctrine and that from that doctrine I have certain differences."
Somewhat incredibly Rothbard argued that on the whole politically
"these differences are minor," economically "the differences are 
substantial, and this means that my view of the consequences of 
putting our more of less common system into practice is very far from 
theirs." ["The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View", _Journal 
of Libertarian Studies_, vol. 20, no. 1, p. 7] 

What an understatement! Individualist anarchists advocated an economic 
system in which there would have been very little inequality of wealth 
and so of power (and the accumulation of capital would have been minimal 
without profit, interest and rent). Removing this social and economic 
basis would result in *substantially* different political regimes. In 
other words, politics is not isolated from economics. As David Wieck 
put it, Rothbard "writes of society as though some part of it (government) 
can be extracted and replaced by another arrangement while other things 
go on before, and he constructs a system of police and judicial power 
without any consideration of the influence of historical and economic 
context." ["Anarchist Justice," _Nomos XIX_, Pennock and Chapman, 
eds., p. 227]

Unsurprisingly, the political differences he highlights *are* significant,
namely "the role of law and the jury system" and "the land question."
The former difference relates to the fact that the individualist anarchists 
"allow[ed] each individual free-market court, and more specifically, each 
free-market jury, totally free rein over judicial decision." This horrified 
Rothbard. The reason is obvious, as it allows real people to judge the law 
as well as the facts, modifying the former as society changes and evolves. 
For Rothbard, the idea that ordinary people should have a say in the law is 
dismissed. Rather, "it would not be a very difficult task for Libertarian 
lawyers and jurists to arrive at a rational and objective code of libertarian 
legal principles and procedures." [Op. Cit., p. 7-8] Of course, the fact that 
"lawyers" and "jurists" may have a radically different idea of what is just 
than those subject to their laws is not raised by Rothbard, never mind 
answered. While Rothbard notes that juries may defend the people against 
the state, the notion that they may defend the people against the authority
and power of the rich is not even raised. That is why the rich have tended to 
oppose juries as well as popular assemblies.

Unsurprisingly, the few individualist anarchists that remained pointed this
out. Laurance Labadie, the son of Tucker associate Joseph Labadie, argued
in response to Rothbard as follows:

"Mere common sense would suggest that any court would be influenced 
by experience; and any free-market court or judge would in the very 
nature of things have some precedents guiding them in their instructions 
to a jury. But since no case is exactly the same, a jury would have 
considerable say about the heinousness of the offence in each case, 
realising that circumstances alter cases, and prescribing penalty 
accordingly. This appeared to Spooner and Tucker to be a more flexible 
and equitable administration of justice possible or feasible, human 
beings being what they are.. . .

"But when Mr. Rothbard quibbles about the jurisprudential ideas of 
Spooner and Tucker, and at the same time upholds *presumably in his 
courts* the very economic evils which are at bottom the very reason 
for human contention and conflict, he would seem to be a man who 
chokes at a gnat while swallowing a camel." [quoted by Mildred J. 
Loomis and Mark A. Sullivan, "Laurance Labadie: Keeper Of The Flame",
pp. 116-30, _Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty_, 
Coughlin, Hamilton and Sullivan (eds.), p. 124]

In other words, to exclude the general population from any say in the
law and how it changes is hardly a "minor" difference! Particularly
if you are proposing an economic system which is based on inequalities
of wealth, power and influence and the means of accumulating more.
It is like a supporter of the state saying that it is a "minor"
difference if you favour a dictatorship rather than a democratically 
elected government. As Tucker argued, "it is precisely in the 
tempering of the rigidity of enforcement that one of the chief
excellences of Anarchism consists . . . under Anarchism all rules
and laws will be little more than suggestions for the guidance of
juries, and that all disputes . . . will be submitted to juries 
which will judge not only the facts but the law, the justice of
the law, its applicability to the given circumstances, and the
penalty or damage to be inflicted because of its infraction . . .
under Anarchism the law . . . will be regarded as *just* in 
proportion to its flexibility, instead of now in proportion to 
its rigidity." [_The Individualist Anarchists_, pp. 160-1] In 
others, the law will evolve to take into account changing social
circumstances and, as a consequence, public opinion on specific 
events and rights. Tucker's position is fundamentally *democratic* 
and evolutionary while Rothbard's is autocratic and fossilised.

On the land question, Rothbard opposed the individualist position of
"occupancy and use" as it "would automatically abolish all rent
payments for land."  Which was *precisely* why the individualist 
anarchists advocated it! In a predominantly rural economy, this 
would result in a significant levelling of income and social 
power as well as bolstering the bargaining position of non-land 
workers by reducing unemployment. He bemoans that landlords
cannot charge rent on their "justly-acquired private property"
without noticing that is begging the question as anarchists deny
that this is "justly-acquired" land. Unsurprising, Rothbard
considers "the property theory" of land ownership as John Locke's,
ignoring the fact that the first self-proclaimed anarchist book
was written to refute that kind of theory. His argument simply shows 
how far from anarchism his ideology is. For Rothbard, it goes
without saying that the landlord's "freedom of contract" tops the 
worker's freedom to control their own work and live and, of course, 
their right to life. [Op. Cit., p. 8 and p. 9] However, for 
anarchists, "the land is indispensable to our existence, 
consequently a common thing, consequently insusceptible of
appropriation." [Proudhon, _What is Property?_, p. 107]

The reason question is why Rothbard considers this a *political*
difference rather than an economic one. Unfortunately, he does not
explain. Perhaps because of the underlying *socialist* perspective 
behind the anarchist position? Or perhaps the fact that feudalism
and monarchism was based on the owner of the land being its ruler
suggests a political aspect to the ideology best left unexplored?
Given that the idea of grounding rulership on land ownership receded 
during the Middle Ages, it may be unwise to note that under 
"anarcho"-capitalism the landlord and capitalist would, likewise, 
be sovereign over the land *and* those who used it? As we noted
in section F.1, this is the conclusion that Rothbard does draw.
As such, there *is* a political aspect to this difference. 

Moreover. "the expropriation of the mass of the people from the 
soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production." [Marx, 
_Capital_, vol. 1, p. 934] For there are "two ways of oppressing 
men: either directly by brute force, by physical violence; or 
indirectly by denying them the means of life and this reducing them 
to a state of surrender." In the second case, government is "an 
organised instrument to ensure that dominion and privilege will be 
in the hands of those who . . . have cornered all the means of life,
first and foremost the land, which they make use of to keep the
people in bondage and to make them work for their benefit."
[Malatesta, _Anarchy_, p. 21] Privatising the coercive functions
of said government hardly makes much difference.

Of course, Rothbard is simply skimming the surface. There are two
main ways "anarcho"-capitalists differ from individualist anarchists.
The first one is the fact that the individualist anarchists are 
socialists. The second is on whether equality is essential or not 
to anarchism. Each will be discussed in turn.

Unlike both Individualist (and social) anarchists, "anarcho"-capitalists 
support capitalism (a "pure" free market type, which has never existed 
although it has been approximated occasionally). This means that they 
reject totally the ideas of anarchists with regards to property and 
economic analysis. For example, like all supporters of capitalists 
they consider rent, profit and interest as valid incomes. In contrast, 
all Anarchists consider these as exploitation and agree with the 
Individualist Anarchist Benjamin Tucker when he argued that 
"*[w]hoever* contributes to production is alone entitled. *What* 
has no rights that *who* is bound to respect. *What* is a thing. *Who* 
is a person. Things have no claims; they exist only to be claimed. The 
possession of a right cannot be predicted of dead material, but only a 
living person."[quoted by Wm. Gary Kline, _The Individualist Anarchists_, 
p. 73] 

This, we must note, is the fundamental critique of the capitalist theory 
that capital is productive. In and of themselves, fixed costs do not 
create value. Rather value is creation depends on how investments are 
developed and used once in place. Because of this the Individualist 
Anarchists, like other anarchists, considered non-labour derived income 
as usury, unlike "anarcho"-capitalists. Similarly, anarchists reject 
the notion of capitalist property rights in favour of possession 
(including the full fruits of one's labour). For example, anarchists 
reject private ownership of land in favour of a "occupancy and use" 
regime. In this we follow Proudhon's _What is Property?_ and argue that 
"property is theft". Rothbard, as noted, rejected this perspective.

As these ideas are an *essential* part of anarchist politics, they cannot
be removed without seriously damaging the rest of the theory. This can
be seen from Tucker's comments that "*Liberty* insists. . . [on] the abolition 
of the State and the abolition of usury; on no more government of man by 
man, and no more exploitation of man by man." [cited by Eunice Schuster in 
_Native American Anarchism_, p. 140]. He indicates that anarchism has 
specific economic *and* political ideas, that it opposes capitalism along
with the state. Therefore anarchism was never purely a "political" concept, 
but always combined an opposition to oppression with an opposition to 
exploitation. The social anarchists made exactly the same point.  Which 
means that when Tucker argued that "*Liberty* insists on Socialism. . . - 
true Socialism, Anarchistic Socialism: the prevalence on earth of Liberty, 
Equality, and Solidarity" he knew exactly what he was saying and meant it 
wholeheartedly. [_Instead of a Book_, p. 363] 

So because "anarcho"-capitalists embrace capitalism and reject socialism, 
they cannot be considered anarchists or part of the anarchist tradition.

Which brings us nicely to the second point, namely a lack of concern for
equality. In stark contrast to anarchists of all schools, inequality
is not seen to be a problem with "anarcho"-capitalists (see section F.3). 
However, it is a truism that not all "traders" are equally subject to the 
market (i.e. have the same market power). In many cases, a few have 
sufficient control of resources to influence or determine price and in 
such cases, all others must submit to those terms or not buy the commodity. 
When the commodity is labour power, even this option is lacking -- workers 
have to accept a job in order to live. As we argue in section F.2, 
workers are usually at a disadvantage on the labour market when compared 
to capitalists, and this forces them to sell their liberty in return for 
making profits for others. These profits increase inequality in society
as the property owners receive the surplus value their workers produce. 
This increases inequality further, consolidating market power and so weakens
the bargaining position of workers further, ensuring that even the freest
competition possible could not eliminate class power and society (something 
B. Tucker recognised as occurring with the development of trusts within 
capitalism -- see section G.4). 

By removing the underlying commitment to abolish non-labour income, any
"anarchist" capitalist society would have vast differences in wealth
and so power. Instead of a government imposed monopolies in land, money
and so on, the economic power flowing from private property and capital 
would ensure that the majority remained in (to use Spooner's words) "the 
condition of servants" (see sections F.2 and F.3.1 for more on this). 
The Individualist Anarchists were aware of this danger and so supported
economic ideas that opposed usury (i.e. rent, profit and interest) and
ensured the worker the full value of her labour. While not all of them
called these ideas "socialist" it is clear that these ideas *are* socialist
in nature and in aim (similarly, not all the Individualist Anarchists
called themselves anarchists but their ideas are clearly anarchist in
nature and in aim).

This combination of the political and economic is essential as they mutually
reinforce each other. Without the economic ideas, the political ideas 
would be meaningless as inequality would make a mockery of them. As Kline
notes, the Individualist Anarchists' "proposals were designed to establish
true equality of opportunity . . . and they expected this would result in
a society without great wealth or poverty. In the absence of monopolistic
factors which would distort competition, they expected a society largely
of self-employed workmen with no significant disparity of wealth between
any of them since all would be required to live at their own expense and 
not at the expense of exploited fellow human beings." [Op. Cit., pp. 103-4]

Because of the evil effects of inequality on freedom, both social 
and individualist anarchists desired to create an environment in which 
circumstances would not drive people to sell their liberty to others 
at a disadvantage. In other words, they desired an equalisation of 
market power by opposing interest, rent and profit and capitalist 
definitions of private property. Kline summarises this by saying "the 
American [individualist] anarchists exposed the tension existing in 
liberal thought between private property and the ideal of equal access. 
The Individual Anarchists were, at least, aware that existing conditions 
were far from ideal, that the system itself working against the majority 
of individuals in their efforts to attain its promises. Lack of capital, 
the means to creation and accumulation of wealth, usually doomed a 
labourer to a life of exploitation. This the anarchists knew and they 
abhorred such a system." [Op. Cit., p. 102]

And this desire for bargaining equality is reflected in their economic 
ideas and by removing these underlying economic ideas of the individualist
anarchists, "anarcho"-capitalism makes a mockery of any ideas they 
do appropriate. Essentially, the Individualist Anarchists agreed with
Rousseau that in order to prevent extreme inequality of fortunes you 
deprive people of the means to accumulate in the first place and 
*not* take away wealth from the rich. An important point which 
"anarcho"-capitalism fails to understand or appreciate.

There are, of course, overlaps between individualist anarchism and
"anarcho"-capitalism, just as there are overlaps between it and Marxism
(and social anarchism, of course). However, just as a similar analysis
of capitalism does not make individualist anarchists Marxists, so 
apparent similarities between individualist anarchism does not make
it a forerunner of "anarcho"-capitalism. For example, both schools
support the idea of "free markets." Yet the question of markets is 
fundamentally second to the issue of property rights for what is
exchanged on the market is dependent on what is considered legitimate
property. In this, as Rothbard notes, individualist anarchists and
"anarcho"-capitalists differ and different property rights produce 
different market structures and dynamics. This means that capitalism 
is not the only economy with markets and so support for markets cannot 
be equated with support for capitalism. Equally, opposition to markets 
is *not* the defining characteristic of socialism (as we note in 
section G.2.1). As such, it *is* possible to be a market socialist 
(and many socialist are). This is because "markets" and "property" do
not equate to capitalism:

"Political economy confuses, on principle, two very different kinds of 
private property, one of which rests on the labour of the producers 
himself, and the other on the exploitation of the labour of others. It 
forgets that the latter is not only the direct antithesis of the former, 
but grows on the former's tomb and nowhere else. 

"In Western Europe, the homeland of political economy, the process of 
primitive accumulation is more of less accomplished. . . . 

"It is otherwise in the colonies. There the capitalist regime constantly
comes up against the obstacle presented by the producer, who, as owner 
of his own conditions of labour, employs that labour to enrich himself 
instead of the capitalist. The contradiction of these two diametrically 
opposed economic systems has its practical manifestation here in the 
struggle between them." [Karl Marx, _Capital_, vol. 1, p. 931]

Individualist anarchism is obviously an aspect of this struggle 
between the system of peasant and artisan production of early America 
and the state encouraged system of private property and wage labour.
"Anarcho"-capitalists, in contrast, assume that generalised wage labour 
would remain under their system (while paying lip-service to the possibilities 
of co-operatives -- and if an "anarcho"-capitalist thinks that co-operative
will become the dominant form of workplace organisation, then they are
some kind of market socialist, *not* a capitalist). It is clear that their 
end point (a pure capitalism, i.e. generalised wage labour) is directly 
the opposite of that desired by anarchists. This was the case of the 
Individualist Anarchists who embraced the ideal of (non-capitalist) 
laissez faire competition -- they did so, as noted, to *end* exploitation, 
*not* to maintain it. Indeed, their analysis of the change in American 
society from one of mainly independent producers into one based mainly 
upon wage labour has many parallels with, of all people, Karl Marx's 
presented in chapter 33 of _Capital_. Marx, correctly, argues that "the 
capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and therefore capitalist 
private property, have for their fundamental condition the annihilation 
of that private property which rests on the labour of the individual
himself; in other words, the expropriation of the worker." [Op. Cit., 
p. 940] He notes that to achieve this, the state is used:

"How then can the anti-capitalistic cancer of the colonies be healed? 
. . . Let the Government set an artificial price on the virgin soil,
a price independent of the law of supply and demand, a price that compels 
the immigrant to work a long time for wages before he can earn enough 
money to buy land, and turn himself into an independent farmer." 
[Op. Cit., p. 938]

Moreover, tariffs are introduced with "the objective of manufacturing
capitalists artificially" for the "system of protection was an artificial
means of manufacturing manufacturers, or expropriating independent
workers, of capitalising the national means of production and 
subsistence, and of forcibly cutting short the transition . . . to
the modern mode of production," to capitalism [Op. Cit., p. 932 and 
pp. 921-2]

It is this process which Individualist Anarchism protested against, the use
of the state to favour the rising capitalist class. However, unlike social
anarchists, many individualist anarchists were not consistently against
wage labour. This is the other significant overlap between "anarcho"-capitalism 
and individualist anarchism. However, they were opposed to exploitation and
argued (unlike "anarcho"-capitalism) that in their system workers bargaining
powers would be raised to such a level that their wages would equal the full
product of their labour. However, as we discuss in section G.1.1 the social
context the individualist anarchists lived in must be remembered. America
at the times was a predominantly rural society and industry was not as 
developed as it is now wage labour would have been minimised (Spooner,
for example, explicitly envisioned a society made up mostly entirely of 
self-employed workers). As Kline argues:

"Committed as they were to equality in the pursuit of property, the 
objective for the anarchist became the construction of a society 
providing equal access to those things necessary for creating wealth. 
The goal of the anarchists who extolled mutualism and the abolition of 
all monopolies was, then, a society where everyone willing to work would 
have the tools and raw materials necessary for production in a 
non-exploitative system . . . the dominant vision of the future society 
. . . [was] underpinned by individual, self-employed workers." [Op. Cit., 
p. 95]

As such, a limited amount of wage labour within a predominantly 
self-employed economy does not make a given society capitalist any 
more than a small amount of governmental communities within an
predominantly anarchist world would make it statist. As Marx argued.
when "the separation of the worker from the conditions of labour
and from the soil . . . does not yet exist, or only sporadically,
or on too limited a scale . . . Where, amongst such curious 
characters, is the 'field of abstinence' for the capitalists?
. . . Today's wage-labourer is tomorrow's independent peasant
or artisan, working for himself. He vanishes from the labour-market
-- but not into the workhouse." There is a "constant transformation 
of wage-labourers into independent producers, who work for themselves
instead of for capital" and so "the degree of exploitation of the
wage-labourer remain[s] indecently low." In addition, the 
"wage-labourer also loses, along with the relation of dependence,
the feeling of dependence on the abstemious capitalist." [Op. Cit.,
pp. 935-6]

Saying that, as we discuss in section G.4, individualist anarchist support 
for wage labour is at odds with the ideas of Proudhon and, far more 
importantly, in contradiction to many of the stated principles of the 
individualist anarchists themselves. In particular, wage labour violates 
"occupancy and use" as well as having more than a passing similarity to 
the state. However, these problems can be solved by consistently applying 
the principles of individualist anarchism, unlike "anarcho"-capitalism,
and that is why it is a real school of anarchism. In other words, a 
system of *generalised* wage labour would not be anarchist nor would 
it be non-exploitative. Moreover, the social context these ideas were 
developed in and would have been applied ensure that these contradictions 
would have been minimised. If they had been applied, a genuine anarchist 
society of self-employed workers would, in all likelihood, have been 
created (at least at first, whether the market would increase inequalities 
is a moot point between anarchists).

We must stress that the social situation is important as it shows how 
apparently superficially similar arguments can have radically different 
aims and results depending on who suggests them and in what circumstances. 
As noted, during the rise of capitalism the bourgeoisie were not shy in 
urging state intervention against the masses. Unsurprisingly, working class 
people generally took an anti-state position during this period. The 
individualist anarchists were part of that tradition, opposing what Marx 
termed "primitive accumulation" in favour of the pre-capitalist forms of
property and society it was destroying.

However, when capitalism found its feet and could do without such obvious 
intervention, the possibility of an "anti-state" capitalism could arise.
Such a possibility became a definite once the state started to intervene
in ways which, while benefiting the system as a whole, came into conflict
with the property and power of individual members of the capitalist and
landlord class. Thus social legislation which attempted to restrict the
negative effects of unbridled exploitation and oppression on workers and
the environment were having on the economy were the source of much outrage
in certain bourgeois circles:

"Quite independently of these tendencies [of individualist anarchism] 
. . . the anti-state bourgeoisie (which is also anti-statist, being 
hostile to any social intervention on the part of the State to protect 
the victims of exploitation -- in the matter of working hours, hygienic 
working conditions and so on), and the greed of unlimited exploitation, 
had stirred up in England a certain agitation in favour of
pseudo-individualism, an unrestrained exploitation. To this end, they 
enlisted the services of a mercenary pseudo-literature . . . which 
played with doctrinaire and fanatical ideas in order to project a species 
of 'individualism' that was absolutely sterile, and a species of 
'non-interventionism' that would let a man die of hunger rather than 
offend his dignity." [Max Nettlau, _A Short History of Anarchism_, p. 39]

This perspective can be seen when Tucker denounced Herbert Spencer as
a champion of the capitalistic class for his vocal attacks on social
legislation which claimed to benefit working class people but stays
strangely silent on the laws passed to benefit (usually indirectly)
capital and the rich. "Anarcho"-capitalism is part of that tradition, 
the tradition associated with a capitalism which no longer needs obvious 
state intervention as enough wealth as been accumulated to keep workers 
under control by means of market power. 

In other words, there is substantial differences between the victims of a 
thief trying to stop being robbed and be left alone to enjoy their property 
and the successful thief doing the same! Individualist Anarchist's were
aware of this. For example, Victor Yarros stressed this key difference 
between individualist anarchism and the proto-"libertarian" capitalists 
of "voluntaryism":

"[Auberon Herbert] believes in allowing people to retain all their 
possessions, no matter how unjustly and basely acquired, while getting 
them, so to speak, to swear off stealing and usurping and to promise to 
behave well in the future. We, on the other hand, while insisting on the 
principle of private property, in wealth honestly obtained under the reign 
of liberty, do not think it either unjust or unwise to dispossess the 
landlords who have monopolised natural wealth by force and fraud. We hold 
that the poor and disinherited toilers would be justified in expropriating, 
not alone the landlords, who notoriously have no equitable titles to their 
lands, but *all* the financial lords and rulers, all the millionaires and 
very wealthy individuals. . . . Almost all possessors of great wealth 
enjoy neither what they nor their ancestors rightfully acquired (and if 
Mr. Herbert wishes to challenge the correctness of this statement, we are 
ready to go with him into a full discussion of the subject). . . . 

"If he holds that the landlords are justly entitled to their lands, let 
him make a defence of the landlords or an attack on our unjust proposal."
[quoted by Carl Watner, "The English Individualists As They Appear In 
Liberty," pp. 191-211, _Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty_, 
Coughlin, Hamilton and Sullivan (eds.), pp. 199-200]

Significantly, Tucker and other individualist anarchists saw state intervention
has a result of capital manipulating legislation to gain an advantage on the 
so-called free market which allowed them to exploit labour and, as such, it
benefited the *whole* capitalist class. Rothbard, at best, acknowledges
that *some* sections of big business benefit from the current system and so
fails to have the comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of capitalism
as a *system* (rather as an ideology). This lack of understanding of capitalism
as a historic and dynamic system rooted in class rule and economic power is 
important in evaluating "anarcho"-capitalist claims to anarchism. Needless 
to say, starting from the current (coercively produced) distribution of 
property and then eliminating "force" simply means defending the power and 
privilege of ruling minorities.

As with the original nineteenth century British "anti-state" 
capitalists like Spencer and Herbert, Rothbard "completely overlooks 
the role of the state in building and maintaining a capitalist economy 
in the West. Privileged to live in the twentieth century, long after 
the battles to establish capitalism have been fought and won, Rothbard 
sees the state solely as a burden on the market and a vehicle for 
imposing the still greater burden of socialism. He manifests a kind 
of historical nearsightedness that allows him to collapse many centuries 
of human experience into one long night of tyranny that ended only with 
the invention of the free market and its 'spontaneous' triumph over the
past. It is pointless to argue, as Rothbard seems ready to do, that
capitalism would have succeeded without the bourgeois state; the fact
is that all capitalist nations have relied on the machinery of government
to create and preserve the political and legal environments required
by their economic system." That, of course, has not stopped him "critis[ing]
others for being unhistorical." [Stephen L Newman, _Liberalism at Wit's 
End_, pp. 77-8 and p. 79]

Much the same can be said of claims that "anarcho"-capitalism is a new
form of individualist anarchism -- as well as completely ignoring the actual 
history of capitalism, they ignore the history, social context, arguments, 
aims and spirit of individualist anarchism (for more discussion, see 
section G). So while, in the words of Colin Ward, Rothbard is "the most
aware of the actual anarchist tradition among the anarcho-capitalist
apologists" he may be "aware of a tradition, but he is singularly unaware
of the old proverb that freedom for the pike means death for the minnow."
The individualist anarchists "differed from free-market liberals in 
their absolute mistrust of American capitalism, and in their emphasis on 
mutualism" and were "busy social inventors exploring the potential of 
autonomy." The "American 'libertarians' . . . inventiveness seems to be 
limited to providing an ideology for untrammelled market capitalism." [_Anarchism: A Short Introduction_, p. 67, pp. 2-3 and p. 69]

F.2 What do "anarcho"-capitalists mean by "freedom"?

For "anarcho"-capitalists, the concept of freedom is limited to the idea
of "freedom from."  For them, freedom means simply freedom from the
"initiation of force," or the "non-aggression against anyone's person and
property." [Murray Rothbard, _For a New Liberty_, p. 23] The notion that
real freedom must combine both freedom "to" *and* freedom "from" is
missing in their ideology, as is the social context of the so-called
freedom they defend.

Before starting, it is useful to quote Alan Haworth when he notes that
"[i]n fact, it is surprising how *little* close attention the concept 
of freedom receives from libertarian writers. Once again _Anarchy, 
State, and Utopia_ is a case in point. The word 'freedom' doesn't 
even appear in the index. The word 'liberty' appears, but only to 
refer the reader to the 'Wilt Chamberlain' passage. In a supposedly 
'libertarian' work, this is more than surprising. It is truly 
remarkable." [_Anti-Libertarianism_, p. 95] 

Why this is the case can be seen from how the "anarcho"-capitalist 
defines freedom.

In a right-libertarian or "anarcho"-capitalist society, freedom is
considered to be a product of property. As Murray Rothbard puts it, "the
libertarian defines the concept of 'freedom' or 'liberty'. . .[as a]
condition in which a person's ownership rights in his body and his
legitimate material property rights are not invaded, are not aggressed
against. . . . Freedom and unrestricted property rights go hand in hand."
[Op. Cit., p.41]

This definition has some problems, however. In such a society, one cannot
(legitimately) do anything with or on another's property if the owner
prohibits it.  This means that an individual's only *guaranteed* freedom
is determined by the amount of property that he or she owns. This has the
consequence that someone with no property has no guaranteed freedom at
all (beyond, of course, the freedom not to be murdered or otherwise 
harmed by the deliberate acts of others). In other words, a distribution 
of property is a distribution of freedom, as the right-libertarians 
themselves define it. It strikes anarchists as strange that an ideology 
that claims to be committed to promoting freedom entails the conclusion 
that some people should be more free than others. However, this is the 
logical implication of their view, which raises a serious doubt as to 
whether "anarcho"-capitalists are actually interested in freedom. 

Looking at Rothbard's definition of "liberty" quoted above, we can 
see that freedom is actually no longer considered to be a fundamental,
independent concept.  Instead, freedom is a derivative of something 
more fundamental, namely the "legitimate rights" of an individual, 
which are identified as property rights.  In other words, given that 
"anarcho"-capitalists and right libertarians in general consider the 
right to property as "absolute," it follows that freedom and property 
become one and the same.  This suggests an alternative name for the right
Libertarian, namely "Propertarian." And, needless to say, if we do not 
accept the right-libertarians' view of what constitutes "legitimate" 
"rights," then their claim to be defenders of liberty is weak.

Another important implication of this "liberty as property" concept is
that it produces a strangely alienated concept of freedom. Liberty, as 
we noted, is no longer considered absolute, but a derivative of property 
-- which has the important consequence that you can "sell" your liberty 
and still be considered free by the ideology. This concept of liberty
(namely "liberty as property") is usually termed "self-ownership." But, 
to state the obvious, I do not "own" myself, as if were an object somehow 
separable from my subjectivity -- I *am* myself. However, the concept of 
"self-ownership" is handy for justifying various forms of domination and 
oppression -- for by agreeing (usually under the force of circumstances, 
we must note) to certain contracts, an individual can "sell" (or rent out) 
themselves to others (for example, when workers sell their labour power to 
capitalists on the "free market"). In effect, "self-ownership" becomes the 
means of justifying treating people as objects -- ironically, the very thing 
the concept was created to stop! As L. Susan Brown notes, "[a]t the moment 
an individual 'sells' labour power to another, he/she loses self-determination
and instead is treated as a subjectless instrument for the fulfilment of 
another's will." [_The Politics of Individualism_, p. 4]

Given that workers are paid to obey, you really have to wonder which planet
Murray Rothbard is on when he argues that a person's "labour service is
alienable, but his *will* is not" and that he [sic!] "cannot alienate his 
*will*, more particularly his control over his own mind and body." He 
contrasts private property and self-ownership by arguing that "[a]ll 
physical property owned by a person is alienable . . . I can give away 
or sell to another person my shoes, my house, my car, my money, etc. But 
there are certain vital things which, in natural fact and in the nature 
of man, are *in*alienable . . . [his] will and control over his own 
person are inalienable." [_The Ethics of Liberty_, p. 40, p. 135 and 
pp. 134-5] 

But "labour services" are unlike the private possessions Rothbard lists
as being alienable. As we argued in section B.1 ("Why do anarchists oppose 
hierarchy") a person's "labour services" and "will" cannot be divided -- if 
you sell your labour services, you also have to give control of your body 
and mind to another person! If a worker does not obey the commands of her 
employer, she is fired. That Rothbard denies this indicates a total lack 
of common-sense. Perhaps Rothbard will argue that as the worker can quit at 
any time she does not alienate their will (this seems to be his case against 
slave contracts -- see section F.2.2). But this ignores the fact that between 
the signing and breaking of the contract and during work hours (and perhaps 
outside work hours, if the boss has mandatory drug testing or will fire 
workers who attend union or anarchist meetings or those who have an 
"unnatural" sexuality and so on) the worker *does* alienate his will 
and body. In the words of Rudolf Rocker, "under the realities of the 
capitalist economic form . . . there can be no talk of a 'right over one's
own person,' for that ends when one is compelled to submit to the economic
dictation of another if he does not want to starve." [_Anarcho-Syndicalism_,
p. 17]

Ironically, the rights of property (which are said to flow from an 
individual's self-ownership of themselves) becomes the means, under
capitalism, by which self-ownership of non-property owners is denied. 
The foundational right (self-ownership) becomes denied by the derivative 
right (ownership of things). "To treat others and oneself as property," 
argues anarchist L. Susan Brown, "objectifies the human individual, 
denies the unity of subject and object and is a negation of individual 
will . . . [and] destroys the very freedom one sought in the first place. 
The liberal belief in property, both real and in the person, leads not to
freedom but to relationships of domination and subordination." [_The 
Politics of Individualism_, p. 3] Under capitalism, a lack of property 
can be just as oppressive as a lack of legal rights because of the 
relationships of domination and subjection this situation creates. 
That people "consent" to this hierarchy misses the point. As Alexander 
Berkman put it:

"The law says your employer does not sell anything from you, because it
is done with your consent. You have agreed to work for your boss for 
certain pay, he to have all that you produce . . .

"But did you really consent?

"When the highway man holds his gun to your head, you turn your valuables
over to him. You 'consent' all right, but you do so because you cannot
help yourself, because you are *compelled* by his gun.

"Are you not *compelled* to work for an employer? Your need compels you
just as the highwayman's gun. You must live. . . You can't work for
yourself . . .The factories, machinery, and tools belong to the 
employing class, so you *must* hire yourself out to that class in order
to work and live. Whatever you work at, whoever your employer may be, it
is always comes to the same: you must work *for him*. You can't help
yourself. You are *compelled*." [_What is Communist Anarchism?_, p. 9]

Due to this class monopoly over the means of life, workers (usually) are 
at a disadvantage in terms of bargaining power -- there are more workers
than jobs As was indicated in section B.4, within capitalism there is no 
equality between owners and the dispossessed, and so property is a source 
of *power.* To claim that this power should be "left alone" or is "fair" 
is "to the anarchists. . . preposterous. Once a State has been established, 
and most of the country's capital privatised, the threat of physical force 
is no longer necessary to coerce workers into accepting jobs, even with 
low pay and poor conditions. To use Ayn Rand's term, 'initial force' has 
*already taken place,* by those who now have capital against those who 
do not. . . . In other words, if a thief died and willed his 'ill-gotten 
gain' to his children, would the children have a right to the stolen 
property? Not legally. So if 'property is theft,' to borrow Proudhon's 
quip, and the fruit of exploited labour is simply legal theft, then 
the only factor giving the children of a deceased capitalist a right 
to inherit the 'booty' is the law, the State. As Bakunin wrote, 
'Ghosts should not rule and oppress this world, which belongs only to 
the living'" [Jeff Draughn, _Between Anarchism and Libertarianism_]. 

Or, in other words, right-Libertarianism fails to "meet the charge that 
normal operations of the market systematically places an entire class of 
persons (wage earners) in circumstances that compel them to accept the 
terms and conditions of labour dictated by those who offer work. While 
it is true that individuals are formally free to seek better jobs or 
withhold their labour in the hope of receiving higher wages, in the end 
their position in the market works against them; they cannot live if they 
do not find employment. When circumstances regularly bestow a relative 
disadvantage on one class of persons in their dealings with another class, 
members of the advantaged class have little need of coercive measures to 
get what they want." [Stephen L. Newman, _Liberalism at Wit's End_, 
p. 130]

So Rothbard's argument (as well as being contradictory) misses the point 
(and the reality of capitalism). Yes, *if* we define freedom as "the absence 
of coercion" then the idea that wage labour does not restrict liberty is 
unavoidable, but such a definition is useless. This is because it hides 
structures of power and relations of domination and subordination. As Carole 
Pateman argues, "the contract in which the worker allegedly sells his labour 
power is a contract in which, since he cannot be separated from his 
capacities, he sells command over the use of his body and himself. . . 
To sell command over the use of oneself for a specified period . . . 
is to be an unfree labourer." [_The Sexual Contract_, p. 151]

In other words, contracts about property in the person inevitably create
subordination. "Anarcho"-capitalism defines this source of unfreedom away,
but it still exists and has a major impact on people's liberty. Therefore 
freedom is better described as "self-government" or "self-management" -- 
to be able to govern ones own actions (if alone) or to participate in the 
determination of join activity (if part of a group). Freedom, to put it
another way, is not an abstract legal concept, but the vital concrete 
possibility for every human being to bring to full development all their 
powers, capacities, and talents which nature has endowed them. A key
aspect of this is to govern one own actions when within associations
(self-management). If we look at freedom this way, we see that coercion 
is condemned but so is hierarchy (and so is capitalism for during working 
hours, people are not free to make their own plans and have a say in what 
affects them. They are order takers, *not* free individuals). 

It is because anarchists have recognised the authoritarian nature of 
capitalist firms that they have opposed wage labour and capitalist
property rights along with the state. They have desired to replace 
institutions structured by subordination with institutions constituted 
by free relationships (based, in other words, on self-management) in
*all* areas of life, including economic organisations. Hence Proudhon's 
argument that the "workmen's associations . . . are full of hope both as a
protest against the wage system, and as an affirmation of *reciprocity*"
and that their importance lies "in their denial of the rule of capitalists,
money lenders and governments." [_The General Idea of the Revolution_, 
pp. 98-99]

Unlike anarchists, the "anarcho"-capitalist account of freedom allows an 
individual's freedom to be rented out to another while maintaining that the 
person is still free. It may seem strange that an ideology proclaiming its 
support for liberty sees nothing wrong with the alienation and denial of 
liberty but, in actual fact, it is unsurprising. After all, contract theory 
is a "theoretical strategy that justifies subjection by presenting it as
freedom" and nothing more. Little wonder, then, that contract "creates
a relation of subordination" and not of freedom [Carole Pateman, Op. Cit.,
p. 39, p. 59] 

Any attempt to build an ethical framework starting from the abstract 
individual (as Rothbard does with his "legitimate rights" method) will 
result in domination and oppression between people, *not* freedom. 
Indeed, Rothbard provides an example of the dangers of idealist 
philosophy that Bakunin warned about when he argued that while
"[m]aterialism denies free will and ends in the establishment of 
liberty; idealism, in the name of human dignity, proclaims free 
will, and on the ruins of every liberty founds authority." [_God 
and the State_, p. 48] This is the case with "anarcho"-capitalism 
can be seen from Rothbard's wholehearted support for wage labour 
and the rules imposed by property owners on those who use, but do 
not own, their property. Rothbard, basing himself on abstract
individualism, cannot help but justify authority over liberty.

Overall, we can see that the logic of the right-libertarian definition of 
"freedom" ends up negating itself, because it results in the creation 
and encouragement of *authority,* which is an *opposite* of freedom. For
example, as Ayn Rand points out, "man has to sustain his life by his own
effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means
to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his
product, is a slave." [_The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z_, 
pp. 388-9] But, as was shown in section C, capitalism is based on, as 
Proudhon put it, workers working "for an entrepreneur who pays them and 
keeps their products," and so is a form of *theft.* Thus, by "libertarian"
capitalism's *own* logic, capitalism is based not on freedom, but on
(wage) slavery; for interest, profit and rent are derived from a worker's
*unpaid* labour, i.e. "others dispose of his [sic] product."

And if a society *is* run on the wage- and profit-based system suggested
by the "anarcho" and "libertarian" capitalists, freedom becomes a
commodity. The more money you have, the more freedom you get. Then, since
money is only available to those who earn it, Libertarianism is based on
that classic saying "work makes one free!" (_Arbeit macht frei!_), which
the Nazis placed on the gates of their concentration camps. Of course,
since it is capitalism, this motto is somewhat different for those at the
top. In this case it is "other people's work makes one free!" -- a truism
in any society based on private property and the authority that stems from
it.

Thus it is debatable that a libertarian or "anarcho" capitalist society 
would have less unfreedom or coercion in it than "actually existing 
capitalism." In contrast to anarchism, "anarcho"-capitalism, with its 
narrow definitions, restricts freedom to only a few aspects of social life 
and ignores domination and authority beyond those aspects. As Peter Marshall 
points out, the right-libertarian's "definition of freedom is entirely 
negative.  It calls for the absence of coercion but cannot guarantee the 
positive freedom of individual autonomy and independence." [_Demanding 
the Impossible_, p. 564] By confining freedom to such a narrow range of 
human action, "anarcho"-capitalism is clearly *not* a form of anarchism. 
Real anarchists support freedom in every aspect of an individual's life.

F.2.1 How does private property affect freedom?

The right-libertarian does not address or even acknowledge that the 
(absolute) right of private property may lead to extensive control by 
property owners over those who use, but do not own, property (such as
workers and tenants). Thus a free-market capitalist system leads to a 
very selective and class-based protection of "rights" and "freedoms." 
For example, under capitalism, the "freedom" of employers inevitably 
conflicts with the "freedom" of employees. When stockholders or their 
managers exercise their "freedom of enterprise" to decide how their 
company will operate, they violate their employee's right to decide 
how their labouring capacities will be utilised. In other words, under 
capitalism, the "property rights" of employers will conflict with and 
restrict the "human right" of employees to manage themselves. Capitalism 
allows the right of self-management only to the few, not to all. Or, 
alternatively, capitalism does not recognise certain human rights as 
*universal* which anarchism does.

This can be seen from Austrian Economist W. Duncan Reekie's defence of
wage labour. While referring to "intra-firm labour markets" as "hierarchies",
Reekie (in his best *ex cathedra* tone) states that "[t]here is nothing 
authoritarian, dictatorial or exploitative in the relationship. Employees 
order employers to pay them amounts specified in the hiring contract just 
as much as employers order employees to abide by the terms of the contract." 
[_Markets, Entrepreneurs and Liberty_, p. 136, p. 137] Given that "the 
terms of contract" involve the worker agreeing to obey the employers 
orders and that they will be fired if they do not, its pretty clear that the 
ordering that goes on in the "intra-firm labour market" is decidedly *one 
way*. Bosses have the power, workers are paid to obey. And this begs the 
question, *if* the employment contract creates a free worker, why must 
she abandon her liberty during work hours?

Reekie actually recognises this lack of freedom in a "round about" way 
when he notes that "employees in a firm at any level in the hierarchy can 
exercise an entrepreneurial role. The area within which that role can be 
carried out increases the more authority the employee has." [Op. Cit., 
p. 142] Which means workers *are* subject to control from above which 
restricts the activities they are allowed to do and so they are *not* 
free to act, make decisions, participate in the plans of the organisation, 
to create the future and so forth within working hours. And it is strange 
that while recognising the firm as a hierarchy, Reekie tries to deny that 
it is authoritarian or dictatorial -- as if you could have a hierarchy 
without authoritarian structures or an unelected person in authority 
who is not a dictator. His confusion is shared by Austrian guru Ludwig
von Mises, who asserts that the "entrepreneur and capitalist are not
irresponsible autocrats" because they are "unconditionally subject to
the sovereignty of the consumer" while, *on the next page*, admitting
there is a "managerial hierarchy" which contains "the average subordinate
employee." [_Human Action_, p. 809 and p. 810] It does not enter his
mind that the capitalist may be subject to some consumer control while
being an autocrat to their subordinated employees. Again, we find the
right-"libertarian" acknowledging that the capitalist managerial 
structure is a hierarchy and workers are subordinated while denying 
it is autocratic to the workers! Thus we have "free" workers within 
a relationship distinctly *lacking* freedom (in the sense of 
self-government) -- a strange paradox. Indeed, if your personal 
life were as closely monitored and regulated as the work life of 
millions of people across the world, you would rightly consider it 
the worse form of oppression and tyranny.

Ironically, right-wing, "free market" economist Milton Friedman 
contrasts "central planning involving the use of coercion - the 
technique of the army or the modern totalitarian state" with 
"voluntary co-operation between individuals - the technique of the 
marketplace" as two distinct ways of co-ordinating the economic 
activity of large groups ("millions") of people. [_Capitalism and 
Freedom_, p. 13] However, this misses the key issue of the internal
nature of the company. As right-libertarians themselves note, the 
internal structure of a capitalist company is hierarchical.

Indeed, the capitalist company *is* a form of central planning and 
shares the same "technique" as the army. As the pro-capitalist writer
Peter Drucker noted in his history of General Motors, "[t]here is a
remarkably close parallel between General Motors' scheme of organisation
and those of the two institutions most renowned for administrative
efficiency: that of the Catholic Church and that of the modern army . . ."
[quoted by David Enger, _Apostles of Greed_, p. 66] Thus capitalism
is marked by a series of totalitarian organisations. Dictatorship does 
not change much -- nor does it become less fascistic -- when discussing 
economic structures rather than political ones. To state the obvious, 
"the employment contract (like the marriage contract) is not an exchange; 
both contracts create social relations that endure over time - social 
relations of subordination." [Carole Pateman, _The Sexual Contract_, 
p. 148] 

Perhaps Reekie (like most right-libertarians) will maintain that workers
voluntarily agree ("consent") to be subject to the bosses dictatorship 
(he writes that "each will only enter into the contractual agreement 
known as a firm if each believes he will be better off thereby. The 
firm is simply another example of mutually beneficial exchange" 
[Op. Cit., p. 137]). However, this does not stop the relationship 
being authoritarian or dictatorial (and so exploitative as it is 
*highly* unlikely that those at the top will not abuse their power). 
And as we argue further in the next section (and also see sections B.4
and F.3.1), in a capitalist society workers have the option of 
finding a job or facing abject poverty and/or starvation.
 
Little wonder, then, that people "voluntarily" sell their labour and
"consent" to authoritarian structures! They have little option to do 
otherwise. So, *within* the labour market, workers *can* and *do* seek 
out the best working conditions possible, but that does not mean that 
the final contract agreed is "freely" accepted and not due to the 
force of circumstances, that both parties have equal bargaining power 
when drawing up the contract or that the freedom of both parties is 
ensured. Which means to argue (as many right-libertarians do) that 
freedom cannot be restricted by wage labour because people enter 
into relationships they consider will lead to improvements over their 
initial situation totally misses the points. As the initial situation 
is not considered relevant, their argument fails. After all, agreeing
to work in a sweatshop 14 hours a day *is* an improvement over starving
to death -- but it does not mean that those who so agree are free 
when working there or actually *want* to be there. They are not and
it is the circumstances, created and enforced by the law, that have 
ensured that they "consent" to such a regime (given the chance, they 
would desire to *change* that regime but cannot as this would violate 
their bosses property rights and they would be repressed for trying).

So the right-wing "libertarian" right is interested only in a narrow 
concept of freedom (rather than in "freedom" or "liberty" as such).
This can be seen in the argument of Ayn Rand (a leading ideologue of
"libertarian" capitalism) that "*Freedom*, in a political context, means
freedom from government coercion. It does *not* mean freedom from the
landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature
which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from
the coercive power of the state -- and nothing else!" [_Capitalism: The
Unknown Ideal_, p. 192] By arguing in this way, right libertarians ignore
the vast number of authoritarian social relationships that exist in
capitalist society and, as Rand does here, imply that these social
relationships are like "the laws of nature." However, if one looks at the
world without prejudice but with an eye to maximising freedom, the major
coercive institution is seen to be not the state  but capitalist social
relationships (as indicated in section B.4). 

The right "libertarian," then, far from being a defender of freedom, is 
in fact a keen defender of certain forms of authority and domination. As
Peter Kropotkin noted, the "modern Individualism initiated by Herbert
Spencer is, like the critical theory of Proudhon, a powerful indictment
against the dangers and wrongs of government, but its practical solution
of the social problem is miserable -- so miserable as to lead us to
inquire if the talk of 'No force' be merely an excuse for supporting
landlord and capitalist domination." [_Act For Yourselves_, p. 98]

To defend the "freedom" of property owners is to defend authority and 
privilege -- in other words, statism. So, in considering the concept of 
liberty as "freedom from," it is clear that by defending private property 
(as opposed to possession) the "anarcho"-capitalist is defending the power 
and authority of property owners to govern those who use "their" property. 
And also, we must note, defending all the petty tyrannies that make the 
work lives of so many people frustrating, stressful and unrewarding.

However, anarchism, by definition, is in favour of organisations and social 
relationships which are non-hierarchical and non-authoritarian. Otherwise, 
some people are more free than others. Failing to attack hierarchy leads 
to massive contradiction. For example, since the British Army is a 
volunteer one, it is an "anarchist" organisation! (see next section 
for a discussion on why the "anarcho"-capitalism concept of freedom 
also allows the state to appear "libertarian"). 

In other words, "full capitalist property rights" do not protect freedom,
in fact they actively deny it. But this lack of freedom is only inevitable
if we accept capitalist private property rights. If we reject them, we
can try and create a world based on freedom in all aspects of life, 
rather than just in a few.

F.2.2 Do Libertarian-capitalists support slavery? 

Yes. It may come as a surprise to many people, but right-Libertarianism is 
one of the few political theories that justifies slavery. For example, Robert 
Nozick asks whether "a free system would allow [the individual] to sell 
himself into slavery" and he answers "I believe that it would." [_Anarchy,
State and Utopia_, p. 371] While some right-Libertarians do not agree with 
Nozick, there is no logical basis in their ideology for such disagreement.

The logic is simple, you cannot really own something unless you can sell 
it. Self-ownership is one of the cornerstones of laissez-faire capitalist 
ideology. Therefore, since you own yourself you can sell yourself. 

(For Murray Rothbard's claims of the "unenforceability, in libertarian 
theory, of voluntary slave contracts" see _The Ethics of Liberty_, pp. 
134-135 -- of course, *other* libertarian theorists claim the exact 
opposite so "libertarian theory" makes no such claims, but nevermind! 
Essentially, his point revolves around the assertion that a person 
"cannot, in nature, sell himself into slavery and have this sale enforced 
- for this would mean that his future will over his own body was being 
surrendered in advance" and that if a "labourer remains totally subservient 
to his master's will voluntarily, he is not yet a slave since his submission 
is voluntary." [p. 40] However, as we noted in section F.2, Rothbard 
emphasis on quitting fails to recognise that actual denial of will and 
control over ones own body that is explicit in wage labour. It is this 
failure that pro-slave contract "libertarians" stress -- as we will 
see, they consider the slave contract as an extended wage contract. 
Moreover, a modern slave contract would likely take the form of a
"performance bond" [p. 136] in which the slave agrees to perform X 
years labour or pay their master substantial damages. The threat of 
damages that enforces the contract and such a "contract" Rothbard does 
agree is enforceable -- along with "conditional exchange" [p. 141] 
which could be another way of creating slave contracts.)

Nozick's defence of slavery should not come as a surprise to any one 
familiar with classical liberalism. An elitist ideology, its main rationale
is to defend the liberty and power of property owners and justify unfree 
social relationships (such as government and wage labour) in terms of 
"consent." Nozick just takes it to its logical conclusion, a conclusion
which Rothbard, while balking at the label used, does not actually 
disagree with. 

This is because Nozick's argument is not new but, as with so many 
others, can be found in John Locke's work. The key difference is
that Locke refused the term "slavery" and favoured "drudgery" as, 
for him, slavery mean a relationship "between a lawful conqueror 
and a captive" where the former has the power of life and death over
the latter. Once a "compact" is agreed between them, "an agreement 
for a limited power on the one side, and obedience on the other . . .
slavery ceases." As long as the master could not kill the slave, then
it was "drudgery." Like Nozick, he acknowledges that "men did sell 
themselves; but, it is plain, this was only to drudgery, not to slavery: 
for, it is evident, the person sold  was not under an absolute, arbitrary, 
despotical power: for the master could not have power to kill him, at 
any time, whom, at a  certain time, he was obliged to let go free out 
of his service." [Locke, _Second Treatise of Government_, Section 24]
In other words, like Rothbard, voluntary slavery was fine but just call 
it something else.

Not that Locke was bothered by involuntary slavery. He was heavily 
involved in the slave trade. He owned shares in the "Royal Africa 
Company" which carried on the slave trade for England, making a 
profit when he sold them. He also held a significant share in another 
slave company, the "Bahama Adventurers." In the "Second Treatise", 
Locke justified slavery in terms of "Captives taken in a just war." 
[Section 85] In other words, a war waged against aggressors. That, of 
course, had nothing to do with the *actual* slavery Locke profited from 
(slave raids were common, for example). Nor did his "liberal" principles 
stop him suggesting a constitution that would ensure that "every freeman 
of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his Negro slaves." 
The constitution itself was typically autocratic and hierarchical, designed 
explicitly to "avoid erecting a numerous democracy." [_The Works of John 
Locke_, vol. X, p. 196]

So the notion of contractual slavery has a long history within right-wing
liberalism, although most refuse to call it by that name. It is of course
simply embarrassment that stops Rothbard calling a spade a spade. He 
incorrectly assumes that slavery has to be involuntary. In fact, historically,
voluntary slave contracts have been common (David Ellerman's  _Property and 
Contract in Economics_ has an excellent overview). Any new form of voluntary
slavery would be a "civilised" form of slavery and could occur when an 
individual would "agree" to sell themselves to themselves to another (as 
when a starving worker would "agree" to become a slave in return for food).
In addition, the contract would be able to be broken under certain conditions
(perhaps in return for breaking the contract, the former slave would have
pay damages to his or her master for the labour their master would lose - 
a sizeable amount no doubt and such a payment could result in debt slavery,
which is the most common form of "civilised" slavery. Such damages
may be agreed in the contract as a "performance bond" or "conditional
exchange"). 

In summary, right-Libertarians are talking about "civilised" slavery (or, 
in other words, civil slavery) and not forced slavery. While some may have
reservations about calling it slavery, they agree with the basic concept
that since people own themselves they can sell themselves as well as 
selling their labour for a lifetime.

We must stress that this is no academic debate. "Voluntary" slavery has 
been a problem in many societies and still exists in many countries today
(particularly third world ones where bonded labour -- i.e. where debt is
used to enslave people -- is the most common form). With the rise of sweat 
shops and child labour in many "developed" countries such as the USA, 
"voluntary" slavery (perhaps via debt and bonded labour) may become 
common in all parts of the world -- an ironic (if not surprising) result
of "freeing" the market and being indifferent to the actual freedom of 
those within it. 

And it is interesting to note that even Murray Rothbard is not against
the selling of humans. He argued that children are the property of their 
parents. They can (bar actually murdering them by violence) do whatever 
they please with them, even sell them on a "flourishing free child market." 
[_The Ethics of Liberty_, p. 102] Combined with a whole hearted support 
for child labour (after all, the child can leave its parents if it objects 
to working for them) such a "free child market" could easily become a 
"child slave market" -- with entrepreneurs making a healthy profit selling 
infants to other entrepreneurs who could make profits from the toil of 
"their" children (and such a process did occur in 19th century Britain). 
Unsurprisingly, Rothbard ignores the possible nasty aspects of such a 
market in human flesh (such as children being sold to work in factories, 
homes and brothels). And, of course, such a market could see women 
"specialising" in producing children for it (the use of child labour 
during the Industrial Revolution actually made it economically sensible 
for families to have more children) and, perhaps, gluts and scarcities 
of babies due to changing market conditions. But this is besides the 
point.

Of course, this theoretical justification for slavery at the heart of an 
ideology calling itself "libertarianism" is hard for many right-Libertarians
to accept. Some of the "anarcho"-capitalist type argue that such contracts 
would be very hard to enforce in their system of capitalism. This attempt 
to get out of the contradiction fails simply because it ignores the nature
of the capitalist market. If there is a demand for slave contracts to be 
enforced, then companies will develop to provide that "service" (and it would 
be interesting to see how two "protection" firms, one defending slave contracts 
and another not, could compromise and reach a peaceful agreement over whether 
slave contracts were valid). Thus we could see a so-called "anarchist" or 
"free" society producing companies whose specific purpose was to hunt down 
escaped slaves (i.e. individuals in slave contracts who have not paid 
damages to their owners for freedom). Of course, perhaps Rothbard would
claim that such slave contracts would be "outlawed" under his "general
libertarian law code" but this is a denial of market "freedom". If slave 
contracts *are* "banned" then surely this is paternalism, stopping 
individuals from contracting out their "labour services" to whom and 
however long they "desire". You cannot have it both ways.

So, ironically, an ideology proclaiming itself to support "liberty" ends 
up justifying and defending slavery. Indeed, for the right-libertarian the
slave contract is an exemplification, not the denial, of the individual's 
liberty! How is this possible? How can slavery be supported as an expression 
of liberty? Simple, right-Libertarian support for slavery is a symptom of
a *deeper* authoritarianism, namely their uncritical acceptance of contract
theory. The central claim of contract theory is that contract is the means 
to secure and enhance individual freedom. Slavery is the antithesis to freedom
and so, in theory, contract and slavery must be mutually exclusive. However,
as indicated above, some contract theorists (past and present) have included 
slave contracts among legitimate contracts. This suggests that contract 
theory cannot provide the theoretical support needed to secure and enhance 
individual freedom. Why is this?

As Carole Pateman argues, "contract theory is primarily about a way of 
creating social relations constituted by subordination, not about exchange." 
Rather than undermining subordination, contract theorists justify modern 
subjection -- "contract doctrine has proclaimed that subjection to a master 
-- a boss, a husband -- is freedom." [_The Sexual Contract_, p. 40 and 
p. 146] The question central to contract theory (and so right-Libertarianism) 
is not "are people free" (as one would expect) but "are people free to 
subordinate themselves in any manner they please." A radically different 
question and one only fitting to someone who does not know what liberty
means.

Anarchists argue that not all contracts are legitimate and no free individual 
can make a contract that denies his or her own freedom. If an individual 
is able to express themselves by making free agreements then those free 
agreements must also be based upon freedom internally as well. Any agreement 
that creates domination or hierarchy negates the assumptions underlying the 
agreement and makes itself null and void. In other words, voluntary 
government is still government and the defining chararacteristic of 
an anarchy must be, surely, "no government" and "no rulers."

This is most easily seen in the extreme case of the slave contract. John 
Stuart Mill stated that such a contract would be "null and void." He argued
that an individual may voluntarily choose to enter such a contract but
in so doing "he abdicates his liberty; he foregoes any future use of it
beyond that single act. He therefore defeats, in his own case, the
very purpose which is the justification of allowing him to dispose of
himself. . .The principle of freedom cannot require that he should be
free not to be free. It is not freedom, to be allowed to alienate his
freedom." He adds that "these reasons, the force of which is so 
conspicuous in this particular case, are evidently of far wider 
application." [quoted by Pateman, Op. Cit., pp. 171-2]

And it is such an application that defenders of capitalism fear (Mill did
in fact apply these reasons wider and unsurprisingly became a supporter of 
a market syndicalist form of socialism). If we reject slave contracts as 
illegitimate then, logically, we must also reject *all* contracts that 
express qualities similar to slavery (i.e. deny freedom) including wage 
slavery. Given that, as David Ellerman points out, "the voluntary 
slave . . . and the employee cannot in fact take their will out of their 
intentional actions so that they could be 'employed' by the master or 
employer" we are left with "the rather implausible assertion that a 
person can vacate his or her will for eight or so hours a day for weeks, 
months, or years on end but cannot do so for a working lifetime." 
[_Property and Contract in Economics_, p. 58]

The implications of supporting voluntary slavery is quite devastating  
for all forms of right-wing "libertarianism." This was proven by Ellerman
when he wrote an extremely robust defence of it under the  pseudonym 
"J. Philmore" called _The Libertarian Case for Slavery_ (first published
in _The Philosophical Forum_, xiv, 1982). This classic rebuttal takes the 
form of "proof by contradiction" (or *reductio ad absurdum*) whereby he 
takes the arguments of right-libertarianism to their logical end and shows 
how they reach the memorably conclusion that the "time has come for liberal 
economic and political thinkers to stop dodging this issue and to 
critically re-examine their shared prejudices about certain voluntary 
social institutions . . . this critical process will inexorably drive 
liberalism to its only logical conclusion: libertarianism that finally 
lays the true moral foundation for economic and political slavery."</i>

Ellerman shows how, from a right-"libertarian" perspective there is a 
"fundamental contradiction" in a modern liberal society for the state 
to prohibit slave contracts. He notes that there "seems to be a basic 
shared prejudice of liberalism that slavery is inherently involuntary, 
so the issue of genuinely voluntary slavery has received little scrutiny. 
The perfectly valid liberal argument that involuntary slavery is inherently 
unjust is thus taken to include voluntary slavery (in which case, the 
argument, by definition, does not apply).  This has resulted in an 
abridgment of the freedom of contract in modern liberal society." Thus it 
is possible to argue for a "civilised form of contractual slavery." 
["J. Philmore,", Op. Cit.] 

So accurate and logical was Ellerman's article that many of its readers
were convinced it *was* written by a right-libertarian (including, we have
to say, us!). One such writer was Carole Pateman, who correctly noted
that "[t]here is a nice historical irony here. In the American South, 
slaves were emancipated and turned into wage labourers, and now 
American contractarians argue that all workers should have the
opportunity to turn themselves into civil slaves." [Op. Cit., p. 63]).

The aim of Ellerman's article was to show the problems that employment (wage 
labour) presents for the concept of self-government and how contract need
not result in social relationships based on freedom. As "Philmore" put it, 
"[a]ny thorough and decisive critique of voluntary slavery or constitutional 
nondemocratic government would carry over to the employment contract -- 
which is the voluntary contractual basis for the free-market 
free-enterprise system.  Such a critique would thus be a *reductio ad 
absurdum*." As "contractual slavery" is an "extension of the employer-employee 
contract," he shows that the difference between wage labour and slavery is 
the time scale rather than the principle or social relationships involved.
[Op. Cit.] This explains, firstly, the early workers' movement called 
capitalism "wage slavery" (anarchists still do) and, secondly, why 
capitalists like Rothbard support the concept but balk at the name. It 
exposes the unfree nature of the system they support! While it is possible
to present wage labour as "freedom" due to its "consensual" nature, it
becomes much harder to do so when talking about slavery or dictatorship.
Then the contradictions are exposed for all to see and be horrified by.

All this does not mean that we must reject free agreement. Far from it! Free
agreement is *essential* for a society based upon individual dignity and
liberty. There are a variety of forms of free agreement and anarchists
support those based upon co-operation and self-management (i.e. individuals
working together as equals). Anarchists desire to create relationships
which reflect (and so express) the liberty that is the basis of free 
agreement. Capitalism creates relationships that deny liberty. The opposition 
between autonomy and subjection can only be maintained by modifying or
rejecting contract theory, something that capitalism cannot do and so the 
right-wing Libertarian rejects autonomy in favour of subjection (and so 
rejects socialism in favour of capitalism).
 
The real contrast between anarchism and right-Libertarianism is best 
expressed in their respective opinions on slavery. Anarchism is based 
upon the individual whose individuality depends upon the maintenance of 
free relationships with other individuals. If individuals deny their
capacities for self-government from themselves through a contract 
the individuals bring about a qualitative change in their relationship 
to others - freedom is turned into mastery and subordination. For the 
anarchist, slavery is thus the paradigm of what freedom is *not*, instead
of an exemplification of what it is (as right-Libertarians state). As 
Proudhon argued: 

"If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? 
and I should answer in one word, It is murder, my meaning would be 
understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that 
the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a 
power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him." [_What
is Property?_, p. 37]

In contrast, the right-Libertarian effectively argues that "I support slavery 
because I believe in liberty." It is a sad reflection of the ethical and 
intellectual bankruptcy of our society that such an "argument" is actually 
taken seriously by (some) people. The concept of "slavery as freedom" is
far too Orwellian to warrant a critique - we will leave it up to right
Libertarians to corrupt our language and ethical standards with an attempt
to prove it.

From the basic insight that slavery is the opposite of freedom, the anarchist 
rejection of authoritarian social relations quickly follows (the right-wing 
Libertarians fear):

"Liberty is inviolable. I can neither sell nor alienate my liberty; every
contract, every condition of a contract, which has in view the alienation or
suspension of liberty, is null: the slave, when he plants his foot upon the
soil of liberty, at that moment becomes a free man. . . Liberty is the original 
condition of man; to renounce liberty is to renounce the nature of man: after 
that, how could we perform the acts of man?" [P.J. Proudhon, Op. Cit., p. 67]

The employment contract (i.e. wage slavery) abrogates liberty. It is based
upon inequality of power and "exploitation is a consequence of the fact 
that the sale of labour power entails the worker's subordination." [Carole
Pateman, Op. Cit., P. 149] Hence Proudhon's (and Mill's) support of 
self-management and opposition to capitalism - any relationship that 
resembles slavery is illegitimate and no contract that creates a 
relationship of subordination is valid. Thus in a truly anarchistic 
society, slave contracts would be unenforceable -- people in a truly 
free (i.e. non-capitalist) society would *never* tolerate such a 
horrible institution or consider it a valid agreement. If someone was
silly enough to sign such a contract, they would simply have to 
say they now rejected it in order to be free -- such contracts are
made to be broken and without the force of a law system (and private
defence firms) to back it up, such contracts will stay broken.

The right-Libertarian support for slave contracts (and wage slavery) 
indicates that their ideology has little to do with liberty and far more 
to do with justifying property and the oppression and exploitation it 
produces. Their support and theoretical support for slavery indicates 
a deeper authoritarianism which negates their claims to be libertarians.

F.3 Why do anarcho"-capitalists generally place little or no value 
    on "equality," and what do they mean by that term?

Murray Rothbard argues that "the 'rightist' libertarian is not opposed 
to inequality." [_For a New Liberty_, p. 47]In contrast, "leftist" 
libertarians oppose inequality because it has harmful effects on 
individual liberty.

Part of the reason "anarcho"-capitalism places little or no value on 
"equality" derives from their definition of that term. Murray Rothbard 
defines equality as:

"A and B are 'equal' if they are identical to each other with respect to a
given attribute... There is one and only one way, then, in which any two
people can really be 'equal' in the fullest sense: they must be identical
in *all* their attributes." He then points out the obvious fact that "men 
are not uniform,. . . . the species, mankind, is uniquely characterised by a 
high degree of variety, diversity, differentiation: in short, inequality." 
[_Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature and Other Essays_, p. 4, p.5] 

In others words, every individual is unique. Something no egalitarian 
has ever denied. On the basis of this amazing insight, he concludes that 
equality is impossible (except "equality of rights") and that the attempt 
to achieve "equality" is a "revolt against nature" -- as if any anarchist 
had ever advocated such a notion of equality as being identical! 

And so, because we are all unique, the outcome of our actions will not 
be identical and so social inequality flows from natural differences 
and not due to the economic system we live under. Inequality of 
endowment implies inequality of outcome and so social inequality.
As individual differences are a fact of nature, attempts to create
a society based on "equality" (i.e. making everyone identical in terms
of possessions and so forth) is impossible and "unnatural."

Before continuing, we must note that Rothbard is destroying language to 
make his point and that he is not the first to abuse language in this
particular way. In George Orwell's _1984_, the expression "all men are
created equal" could be translated into Newspeak, but it would make as
much sense as saying "all men have red hair," an obvious falsehood
(see "The Principles of Newspeak" Appendix). It's nice to know that 
"Mr. Libertarian" is stealing ideas from Big Brother, and for the same 
reason: to make critical thought impossible by restricting the meaning 
of words.

"Equality," in the context of political discussion, does not mean 
"identical," it usually means equality of rights, respect, worth, power
and so forth. It does not imply treating everyone identically (for example,
expecting an eighty year old man to do identical work to an eighteen 
violates treating both with respect as unique individuals). For anarchists,
as Alexander Berkman writes, "equality does not mean an equal amount but 
equal *opportunity*. . . Do not make the mistake of identifying equality 
in liberty with the forced equality of the convict camp. True anarchist 
equality implies freedom, not quantity. It does not mean that every one 
must eat, drink, or wear the same things, do the same work, or live in 
the same manner. Far from it: the very reverse, in fact. Individual needs 
and tastes differ, as appetites differ. It is *equal* opportunity to satisfy
them that constitutes true equality. Far from levelling, such equality opens 
the door for the greatest possible variety of activity and development. For 
human character is diverse, and only the repression of this free diversity 
results in levelling, in uniformity and sameness. Free opportunity and 
acting out your individuality means development of natural dissimilarities 
and variations. . . . Life in freedom, in anarchy will do more than liberate 
man merely from his present political and economic bondage. That will be 
only the first step, the preliminary to a truly human existence."
[_The ABC of Anarchism_, p. 25]

Thus anarchists reject the Rothbardian-Newspeak definition of equality
as meaningless within political discussion. No two people are identical
and so imposing "identical" equality between them would mean treating
them as *unequals*, i.e. not having equal worth or giving them equal
respect as befits them as human beings and fellow unique individuals.

So what should we make of Rothbard's claim? It is tempting just to quote 
Rousseau when he argued "it is . . . useless to inquire whether there is any
essential connection between the two inequalities [social and natural];
for this would be only asking, in other words, whether those who command
are necessarily better than those who obey, and if strength of body or
of mind, wisdom, or virtue are always found in particular individuals, 
in proportion to their power or wealth: a question fit perhaps to be
discussed by slaves in the hearing of their masters, but highly unbecoming
to reasonable and free men in search of the truth." [_The Social Contract
and Discourses_, p. 49] But a few more points should be raised.

The uniqueness of individuals has always existed but for the vast majority 
of human history we have lived in very egalitarian societies. If social 
inequality did, indeed, flow from natural inequalities then *all*
societies would be marked by it. This is not the case. Indeed, taking
a relatively recent example, many visitors to the early United States 
noted its egalitarian nature, something that soon changed with the rise
of wage labour and industrial capitalism (a rise dependent upon state
action, we must add, -- see section F.8). This implies that the society 
we live in (its rights framework, the social relationships it generates 
and so forth) has a far more of a decisive impact on inequality than
individual differences. Thus certain rights frameworks will tend to 
magnify "natural" inequalities (assuming that is the source of the 
initial inequality, rather than, say, violence and force). As Noam 
Chomsky argues:

"Presumably it is the case that in our 'real world' some combination of
attributes is conducive to success in responding to 'the demands of the
economic system' . . . One might suppose that some mixture of avarice,
selfishness, lack of concern for others, aggressiveness, and similar
characteristics play a part in getting ahead [in capitalism]. . . Whatever
the correct collection of attributes may be, we may ask what follows
from the fact, if it is a fact, that some partially inherited combination
of attributes tends to material success? All that follows . . . is a 
comment on our particular social and economic arrangements . . . The
egalitarian might responds, in all such cases, that the social order
should be changes so that the collection of attributes that tends to
bring success no longer do so . . . " [_The Chomsky Reader_, p. 190]

So, perhaps, if we change society then the social inequalities we see today
would disappear. It is more than probable that natural difference has been 
long ago been replaced with *social* inequalities, especially inequalities 
of property (which will tend to increase, rather than decrease, inequality).
And as we argue in section F.8 these inequalities of property were initially 
the result of force, *not* differences in ability. Thus to claim that social 
inequality flows from natural differences is false as most social inequality 
has flown from violence and force. This initial inequality has been magnified 
by the framework of capitalist property rights and so the inequality within 
capitalism is far more dependent upon, say, the existence of wage labour, 
rather than "natural" differences between individuals. 

If we look at capitalism, we see that in workplaces and across industries
many, if not most, unique individuals receive identical wages for identical 
work (although this often is not the case for women and blacks, who receive
less wages than male, white workers). Similarly, capitalists have 
deliberately introduced wage inequalities and hierarchies for no other
reason that to divide (and so rule) the workforce (see section D.10).
Thus, if we assume egalitarianism *is* a revolt against nature, then 
much of capitalist economic life is in such a revolt (and when it is 
not, the "natural" inequalities have been imposed artificially by those 
in power).

Thus "natural" differences do not necessarily result in inequality as such.
Given a different social system, "natural" differences would be encouraged
and celebrated far wider than they are under capitalism (where, as we
argued in section B.1, hierarchy ensures the crushing of individuality
rather than its encouragement) without any change in social equality.
The claim that "natural" differences generates social inequalities is
question begging in the extreme -- it takes the rights framework of
society as a given and ignores the initial source of inequality in
property and power. Indeed, inequality of outcome or reward is more
likely to be influenced by social conditions rather than individual
differences (as would be the case in a society based on wage labour
or other forms of exploitation).

Another reason for "anarcho"-capitalist lack of concern for equality is 
that they think that "liberty upsets patterns." It is argued that equality 
can only be maintained by restricting individual freedom to make exchanges 
or by taxation of income. However, what this argument fails to acknowledge 
is that inequality also restricts individual freedom (see next section, 
for example) and that the capitalist property rights framework is not
the only one possible. After all, money is power and inequalities
in terms of power easily result in restrictions of liberty and the
transformation of the majority into order takers rather than free
producers. In other words, once a certain level of inequality is
reached, property does not promote, but actually conflicts with,
the ends which render private property legitimate. Moreover, Nozick 
(in his "liberty upsets patterns" argument) "has produced . . . an 
argument for unrestricted private property using unrestricted private 
property, and thus he begs the question he tries to answer." [Andrew 
Kerhohan, "Capitalism and Self-Ownership", from _Capitalism_, p. 71] 
For example, a worker employed by a capitalist cannot freely exchange 
the machines or raw materials they have been provided with to use but 
Nozick does not class this distribution of "restricted" property rights 
as infringing liberty (nor does he argue that wage slavery itself 
restricts freedom, of course). 

So in response to the claim that equality could only be maintained by 
continuously interfering with people's lives, anarchists would say that
the inequalities produced by capitalist property rights also involve 
extensive and continuous interference with people's lives. After all, as 
Bob Black notes "[y]our foreman or supervisor gives you more or-else 
orders in a week than the police do in a decade" nevermind the other 
effects of inequality such as stress, ill health and so on [_Libertarian 
as Conservative_]. Thus claims that equality involves infringing liberty
ignores the fact that inequality also infringes liberty. A reorganisation 
of society could effectively minimise inequalities by eliminating the 
major source of such inequalities (wage labour) by self-management (see 
section  I.5.11 for a discussion of "capitalistic acts" within an anarchist
society). We have no desire to restrict free exchanges (after all, most
anarchists desire to see the "gift economy" become a reality sooner or
later) but we argue that free exchanges need not involve the unrestricted
property rights Nozick assumes. As we argue in sections F.2 and F.3.1, 
inequality can easily led to the situation where self-ownership is used 
to justify its own negation and so unrestricted property rights may 
undermine the meaningful self-determination (what anarchists would 
usually call "freedom" rather than self-ownership) which many people 
intuitively understand by the term "self-ownership".

Thus, for anarchists, the "anarcho"-capitalist opposition to equality
misses the point and is extremely question begging. Anarchists do not 
desire to make humanity "identical" (which would be impossible and a 
total denial of liberty *and* equality) but to make the social 
relationships between individuals equal in *power.* In other words, 
they desire a situation where people interact together without
institutionalised power or hierarchy and are influenced by each other
"naturally," in proportion to how the (individual) *differences* 
between (social) *equals* are applicable in a given context. To quote 
Michael Bakunin, "[t]he greatest intelligence would not be equal to a
comprehension of the whole. Thence results. . . the necessity of the
division and association of labour. I receive and I give -- such is human
life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no
fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual,
temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination." 
[_God and the State_, p. 33]

Such an environment can only exist within self-managed associations, 
for capitalism (i.e. wage labour) creates very specific relations 
and institutions of authority. It is for this reason anarchists are 
socialists (i.e. opposed to wage labour, the existence of a proletariat
or working class). In other words, anarchists support equality precisely
*because* we recognise that everyone is unique. If we are serious about
"equality of rights" or "equal freedom" then conditions must be such
that people can enjoy these rights and liberties. If we assume the right
to develop one's capacities to the fullest, for example, then inequality
of resources and so power within society destroys that right simply because
people do not have the means to freely exercise their capacities (they 
are subject to the authority of the boss, for example, during work hours).

So, in direct contrast to anarchism, right-Libertarianism is unconcerned 
about any form of equality except "equality of rights". This blinds
them to the realities of life; in particular, the impact of economic and 
social power on individuals within society and the social relationships 
of domination they create. Individuals may be "equal" before the law and
in rights, but they may not be free due to the influence of social 
inequality, the relationships it creates and how it affects the law and
the ability of the oppressed to use it. Because of this, all anarchists 
insist that equality is essential for freedom, including those in the 
Individualist Anarchist tradition the "anarcho"-capitalist tries to 
co-opt -- "Spooner and Godwin insist that inequality corrupts freedom. 
Their anarchism is directed as much against inequality as against tyranny" 
and "[w]hile sympathetic to Spooner's individualist anarchism, they 
[Rothbard and David Friedman] fail to notice or conveniently overlook 
its egalitarian implications." [Stephen L. Newman, _Liberalism at Wit's 
End_, p. 74, p. 76] 

Why equality is important is discussed more fully in the next section.
Here we just stress that without social equality, individual freedom is 
so restricted that it becomes a mockery (essentially limiting freedom
of the majority to choosing *which* employer will govern them rather
than being free within and outside work).

Of course, by defining "equality" in such a restrictive manner, Rothbard's 
own ideology is proved to be nonsense. As L.A. Rollins notes, "Libertarianism, 
the advocacy of 'free society' in which people enjoy 'equal freedom' and 
'equal rights,' is actually a specific form of egalitarianism. As such, 
Libertarianism itself is a revolt against nature. If people, by their very 
biological nature, are unequal in all the attributes necessary to achieving, 
and preserving 'freedom' and 'rights'. . . then there is no way that people 
can enjoy 'equal freedom' or 'equal rights'. If a free society is conceived 
as a society of 'equal freedom,' then there ain't no such thing as 'a 
free society'." [_The Myth of Natural Law_, p. 36]

Under capitalism, freedom is a commodity like everything else. The more 
money you have, the greater your freedom. "Equal" freedom, in the 
Newspeak-Rothbardian sense, *cannot* exist! As for "equality before the 
law", its clear that such a hope is always dashed against the rocks of 
wealth and market power (see next section for more on this). As far as 
rights go, of course, both the rich and the poor have an "equal right" to 
sleep under a bridge (assuming the bridge's owner agrees of course!); but 
the owner of the bridge and the homeless have *different* rights, and so 
they cannot be said to have "equal rights" in the Newspeak-Rothbardian 
sense either. Needless to say, poor and rich will not "equally" use the 
"right" to sleep under a bridge, either.
 
Bob Black observes in _The Libertarian as Conservative_ that "[t]he 
time of your life is the one commodity you can sell but never buy 
back. Murray Rothbard thinks egalitarianism is a revolt against 
nature, but his day is 24 hours long, just like everybody else's."

By twisting the language of political debate, the vast differences
in power in capitalist society can be "blamed" not on an unjust
and authoritarian system but on "biology" (we are all unique
individuals, after all). Unlike genes (although biotechnology 
corporations are working on this, too!), human society *can* be 
changed, by the individuals who comprise it, to reflect the basic
features we all share in common -- our humanity, our ability to 
think and feel, and our need for freedom.

F.3.1 Why is this disregard for equality important?

Simply because a disregard for equality soon ends with liberty for the 
majority being negated in many important ways. Most "anarcho"-capitalists 
and right-Libertarians deny (or at best ignore) market power. Rothbard, 
for example, claims that economic power does not exist; what people 
call "economic power" is "simply the right under freedom to refuse to 
make an exchange" [_The Ethics of Liberty_, p. 222] and so the concept 
is meaningless.

However, the fact is that there are substantial power centres in
society (and so are the source of hierarchical power and authoritarian 
social relations) which are *not the state.* The central fallacy of 
"anarcho"-capitalism is the (unstated) assumption that the various 
actors within an economy have relatively equal power. This assumption
has been noted by many readers of their works. For example, Peter Marshall 
notes that "'anarcho-capitalists' like Murray Rothbard assume individuals 
would have equal bargaining power in a [capitalist] market-based society" 
[_Demanding the Impossible_, p. 46] George Walford also makes this clear 
in his comments on David Friedman's _The Machinery of Freedom_:

"The private ownership envisages by the anarcho-capitalists would be very
different from that which we know. It is hardly going too far to say that
while the one is nasty, the other would be nice. In anarcho-capitalism there
would be no National Insurance, no Social Security, no National Health
Service and not even anything corresponding to the Poor Laws; there would be
no public safety-nets at all. It would be a rigorously competitive society:
work, beg or die. But as one reads on, learning that each individual would
have to buy, personally, all goods and services needed, not only food,
clothing and shelter but also education, medicine, sanitation, justice,
police, all forms of security and insurance, even permission to use the
streets (for these also would be privately owned), as one reads about all
this a curious feature emerges: everybody always has enough money to buy 
all these things.

"There are no public casual wards or hospitals or hospices, but neither is
there anybody dying in the streets. There is no public educational system
but no uneducated children, no public police service but nobody unable to
buy the services of an efficient security firm, no public law but nobody
unable to buy the use of a private legal system. Neither is there anybody
able to buy much more than anybody else; no person or group possesses
economic power over others.

"No explanation is offered. The anarcho-capitalists simply take it for
granted that in their favoured society, although it possesses no machinery
for restraining competition (for this would need to exercise authority over
the competitors and it is an *anarcho*- capitalist society) competition
would not be carried to the point where anybody actually suffered from it.
While proclaiming their system to be a competitive one, in which private
interest rules unchecked, they show it operating as a co-operative one, 
in which no person or group profits at the cost of another." [_On the 
Capitalist Anarchists_]

This assumption of (relative) equality comes to the fore in Murray
Rothbard's "Homesteading" concept of property (discussed in section
F.4.1). "Homesteading" paints a picture of individuals and families
doing into the wilderness to make a home for themselves, fighting
against the elements and so forth. It does *not* invoke the idea
of transnational corporations employing tens of thousands of people
or a population without land, resources and selling their labour to
others. Indeed, Rothbard argues that economic power does not exist 
(at least under capitalism; as we saw in section F.1 he does make
-- highly illogical -- exceptions). Similarly, David Friedman's example 
of a pro-death penalty and anti-death penalty "defence" firm coming 
to an agreement (see section F.6.3) assumes that the firms have equal 
bargaining powers and resources -- if not, then the bargaining process 
would be very one-sided and the smaller company would think twice before 
taking on the larger one in battle (the likely outcome if they cannot 
come to an agreement on this issue) and so compromise.

However, the right-libertarian denial of market power is unsurprising. The 
necessity, not the redundancy, of equality is required if the inherent 
problems of contract are not to become too obvious. If some individuals 
*are* assumed to have significantly more power than others, and if they 
are always self-interested, then a contract that creates equal partners 
is impossible -- the pact will establish an association of masters and 
servants. Needless to say, the strong will present the contract as being 
to the advantage of both: the strong no longer have to labour (and become 
rich, i.e. even stronger) and the weak receive an income and so do not 
starve.

If freedom is considered as a function of ownership then it is very
clear that individuals lacking property (outside their own body, of 
course) loses effective control over their own person and labour (which 
was, lets not forget, the basis of their equal natural rights). When 
ones bargaining power is weak (which is typically the case in the 
labour market) exchanges tend to magnify inequalities of wealth 
and power over time rather than working towards an equalisation. 

In other words, "contract" need not replace power if the bargaining 
position and wealth of the would-be contractors are not equal (for, if
the bargainers had equal power it is doubtful they would agree to sell
control of their liberty/time to another). This means that "power" and 
"market" are not antithetical terms. While, in an abstract sense, all 
market relations are voluntary in practice this is not the case within 
a capitalist market. For example, a large company has a comparative 
advantage over small ones and communities which will definitely shape 
the outcome of any contract. For example, a large company or rich person 
will have access to more funds and so stretch out litigations and strikes 
until their opponents resources are exhausted. Or, if a local company is 
polluting the environment, the local community may put up with the damage 
caused out of fear that the industry (which it depends upon) would relocate 
to another area. If members of the community *did* sue, then the company 
would be merely exercising its property rights when it threatened to move
to another location. In such circumstances, the community would "freely" 
consent to its conditions or face massive economic and social disruption. 
And, similarly, "the landlords' agents who threaten to discharge agricultural 
workers and tenants who failed to vote the reactionary ticket" in the 1936 
Spanish election were just exercising their legitimate property rights
when they threatened working people and their families with economic 
uncertainty and distress. [Murray Bookchin, _The Spanish Anarchists_, 
p. 260]

If we take the labour market, it is clear that the "buyers" and "sellers"
of labour power are rarely on an equal footing (if they were, then 
capitalism would soon go into crisis -- see section C.7). In fact, 
competition "in labour markets is typically skewed in favour of 
employers: it is a buyer's market. And in a buyer's market, it is the 
sellers who compromise." [Juliet B. Schor, _The Overworked American_, 
p. 129] Thus the ability to refuse an exchange weights most heavily on
one class than another and so ensures that "free exchange" works to
ensure the domination (and so exploitation) of one party by the other.

Inequality in the market ensures that the decisions of the majority
of within it are shaped in accordance with that needs of the powerful,
not the needs of all. It was for this reason that the Individual Anarchist 
J.K. Ingalls opposed Henry George's proposal of nationalising the land. 
Ingalls was well aware that the rich could outbid the poor for leases
on land and so the dispossession of the working classes would continue.

The market, therefore, does not end power or unfreedom -- they are still 
there, but in different forms. And for an exchange to be truly voluntary, 
both parties must have equal power to accept, reject, or influence its 
terms. Unfortunately, these conditions are rarely meet on the labour market 
or within the capitalist market in general. Thus Rothbard's argument that 
economic power does not exist fails to acknowledge that the rich can 
out-bid the poor for resources and that a corporation generally has 
greater ability to refuse a contract (with an individual, union or 
community) than vice versa (and that the impact of such a refusal is 
such that it will encourage the others involved to "compromise" far 
sooner). And in such circumstances, formally free individuals will 
have to "consent" to be unfree in order to survive. 

As Max Stirner pointed out in the 1840s, free competition "is not 'free,'
because I lack the *things* for competition." Due to this basic inequality 
of wealth (of "things") we find that "[u]nder the *regime* of the commonality 
the labourers always fall into the hands of the possessors . . . of the 
capitalists, therefore. The labourer cannot *realise* on his labour to the 
extent of the value that it has for the customer." [_The Ego and Its Own_, 
p. 262 and p. 115] It is interesting to note that even Stirner recognises 
that capitalism results in exploitation. And we may add that value the 
labourer does not "realise" goes into the hands of the capitalists, who 
invest it in more "things" and which consolidates and increases their 
advantage in "free" competition.

To quote Stephan L. Newman:

"Another disquieting aspect of the libertarians' refusal to acknowledge 
power in the market is their failure to confront the tension between freedom 
and autonomy. . . Wage labour under capitalism is, of course, formally free 
labour. No one is forced to work at gun point. Economic circumstance, however, 
often has the effect of force; it compels the relatively poor to accept work 
under conditions dictated by owners and managers. The individual worker 
retains freedom [i.e. negative liberty] but loses autonomy [positive 
liberty]." [_Liberalism at Wit's End_, pp. 122-123]

If we consider "equality before the law" it is obvious that this also
has limitations in an (materially) unequal society. Brian Morris notes
that for Ayn Rand, "[u]nder capitalism . . .  politics (state) and economics
(capitalism) are separated . . . This, of course, is pure ideology, for
Rand's justification of the state is that it 'protects' private property,
that is, it supports and upholds the economic power of capitalists by
coercive means." [_Ecology & Anarchism_, p. 189] The same can be said
of "anarcho"-capitalism and its "protection agencies" and "general
libertarian law code." If within a society a few own all the resources
and the majority are dispossessed, then any law code which protects 
private property *automatically* empowers the owning class. Workers 
will *always* be initiating force if act against the code and so 
"equality before the law" reinforces inequality of power and wealth.

This means that a system of property rights protects the liberties of
some people in a way which gives them an unacceptable degree of power 
over others. And this cannot be met merely by reaffirming the rights
in question, we have to assess the relative importance of various kinds
of liberty and other values we how dear.

Therefore right-libertarian disregard for equality is important because 
it allows "anarcho"-capitalism to ignore many important restrictions of 
freedom in society. In addition, it allows them to brush over the negative 
effects of their system by painting an unreal picture of a capitalist 
society without vast extremes of wealth and power (indeed, they often 
construe capitalist society in terms of an ideal -- namely artisan 
production -- that is really *pre*-capitalist and whose social 
basis has been eroded by capitalist development). Inequality shapes 
the decisions we have available and what ones we make -- "An 'incentive' 
is always available in conditions of substantial social inequality that 
ensure that the 'weak' enter into a contract. When social inequality 
prevails, questions arises about what counts as voluntary entry into 
a contract . . . Men and women . . . are now juridically free and equal
citizens, but, in unequal social conditions, the possibility cannot be
ruled out that some or many contracts create relationships that bear
uncomfortable resemblances to a slave contract." [Carole Pateman, 
_The Sexual Contract_, p. 62]

This ideological confusion of right-libertarianism can also be seen from 
their opposition to taxation. On the one hand, they argue that taxation 
is wrong because it takes money from those who "earn" it and gives it to 
the poor. On the other hand, "free market" capitalism is assumed to be 
a more equal society! If taxation takes from the rich and gives to the 
poor, how will "anarcho"-capitalism be more egalitarian? That equalisation
mechanism would be gone (of course, it could be claimed that all great
riches are purely the result of state intervention skewing the "free
market" but that places all their "rags to riches" stories in a strange
position). Thus we have a problem, either we have relative equality or
we do not. Either we have riches, and so market power, or we do not.
And its clear from the likes of Rothbard, "anarcho"-capitalism will
not be without its millionaires (there is, after all, apparently nothing
un-libertarian about "organisation, hierarchy, wage-work, granting of
funds by libertarian millionaires, and a libertarian party"). And so
we are left with market power and so extensive unfreedom.

Thus, for a ideology that denounces egalitarianism as a "revolt against
nature" it is pretty funny that they paint a picture of "anarcho"-capitalism
as a society of (relative) equals. In other words, their propaganda is 
based on something that has never existed, and never will, namely an 
egalitarian capitalist society.

F.4 What is the right-libertarian position on private property?

Right libertarians are not interested in eliminating capitalist
private property and thus the authority, oppression and exploitation
which goes with it. It is true that they call for an end to the state, 
but this is not because they are concerned about workers being exploited 
or oppressed but because they don't want the state to impede capitalists' 
"freedom" to exploit and oppress workers even more than is the case now!

They make an idol of private property and claim to defend "absolute",
"unrestricted" property rights. That is, property owners can do anything
they like with their property, as long as it does not damage the property
of others. In particular, taxation and theft are among the greatest evils 
possible as they involve coercion against "justly held" property.

However, in their celebration of property as the source of liberty they 
ignore the fact that private property is a source of "tyranny" in itself 
(see sections B.1 and B.4, for example -- and please note that anarchists 
only object to private property, *not* individual possession, see section 
B.3.1). However, as much anarchists may disagree about other matters, 
they are united in condemning private property. Thus Proudhon argued 
that property was "theft" and "despotism" while Stirner indicated the 
religious and statist nature of private property and its impact on 
individual liberty when he wrote:

"Property in the civic sense means *sacred* property, such that I must 
*respect* your property... Be it ever so little, if one only has somewhat 
of his own - to wit, a *respected* property: The more such owners... the 
more 'free people and good patriots' has the State.

"Political liberalism, like everything religious, counts on *respect,* 
humaneness, the virtues of love. . . . For in practice people respect 
nothing, and everyday the small possessions are bought up again by greater 
proprietors, and the 'free people' change into day labourers." [_The Ego
and Its Own_, p. 248]

Thus "anarcho"-capitalists reject totally one of the common (and so
defining) features of all anarchist traditions -- the opposition to
capitalist property. From Individualist Anarchists like Tucker to
Communist-Anarchists like Bookchin, anarchists have been opposed to
what Godwin termed "accumulated property." This was because it was in 
"direct contradiction" to property in the form of "the produce of his 
[the worker's] own industry" and so it allows "one man. . . [to] dispos[e] 
of the produce of another man's industry." [_The Anarchist Reader_, 
pp. 129-131] Thus, for anarchists, capitalist property is a source 
exploitation and domination, *not* freedom (it undermines the freedom 
associated with possession by created relations of domination between 
owner and employee).

Hardly surprising then the fact that, according to Murray Bookchin, Murray 
Rothbard "attacked me [Bookchin] as an anarchist with vigour because, as 
he put it, I am opposed to private property." [_The Raven_, no. 29, p. 343]
 
We will discuss Rothbard's "homesteading" justification of property in 
the next section. However, we will note here one aspect of right-libertarian
defence of "unrestricted" property rights, namely that it easily generates 
evil side effects such as hierarchy and starvation. As famine expert Amartya 
Sen notes:

"Take a theory of entitlements based on a set of rights of 'ownership, 
transfer and rectification.' In this system a set of holdings of 
different people are judged to be just (or unjust) by looking at past
history, and not by checking the consequences of that set of holdings.
But what if the consequences are recognisably terrible? . . .[R]efer[ing]
to some empirical findings in a work on famines . . . evidence [is
presented] to indicate that in many large famines in the recent past,
in which millions of people have died, there was no over-all decline
in food availability at all, and the famines occurred precisely because
of shifts in entitlement resulting from exercises of rights that are
perfectly legitimate. . . . [Can] famines . . . occur with a system of
rights of the kind morally defended in various ethical theories, including
Nozick's. I believe the answer is straightforwardly yes, since for many
people the only resource that they legitimately possess, viz. their
labour-power, may well turn out to be unsaleable in the market, giving
the person no command over food . . . [i]f results such as starvations
and famines were to occur, would the distribution of holdings still
be morally acceptable despite their disastrous consequences? There is
something deeply implausible in the affirmative answer." [_Resources,
Values and Development_, pp. 311-2]

Thus "unrestricted" property rights can have seriously bad consequences
and so the existence of "justly held" property need not imply a just
or free society -- far from it. The inequalities property can generate 
can have a serious on individual freedom (see section F.3.1). Indeed, 
Murray Rothbard argued that the state was evil not because it restricted 
individual freedom but because the resources it claimed to own were 
not "justly" acquired. Thus right-libertarian theory judges property 
*not* on its impact on current freedom but by looking at past history. 
This has the interesting side effect of allowing its supporters to 
look at capitalist and statist hierarchies, acknowledge their similar 
negative effects on the liberty of those subjected to them but argue 
that one is legitimate and the other is not simply because of their 
history! As if this changed the domination and unfreedom that both 
inflict on people living today.

It is worth quoting Noam Chomsky at length on this subject:

"Consider, for example, the 'entitlement theory of justice'. . . [a]ccording
to this theory, a person has a right to whatever he has acquired by means
that are just. If, by luck or labour or ingenuity, a person acquires
such and such, then he is entitled to keep it and dispose of it as he
wills, and a just society will not infringe on this right.

"One can easily determine where such a principle might lead. It is entirely
possible that by legitimate means - say, luck supplemented by contractual
arrangements 'freely undertaken' under pressure of need - one person
might gain control of the necessities of life. Others are then free to
sell themselves to this person as slaves, if he is willing to accept
them. Otherwise, they are free to perish. Without extra question-begging
conditions, the society is just.

"The argument has all the merits of a proof that 2 + 2 = 5 . . . Suppose
that some concept of a 'just society' is advanced that fails to characterise
the situation just described as unjust. . . Then one of two conclusions
is in order. We may conclude that the concept is simply unimportant and
of no interest as a guide to thought or action, since it fails to
apply properly even in such an elementary case as this. Or we may conclude
that the concept advanced is to be dismissed in that it fails to correspond 
to the pretheorectical notion that it intends to capture in clear cases.
If our intuitive concept of justice is clear enough to rule social
arrangements of the sort described as grossly unjust, then the sole interest
of a demonstration that this outcome might be 'just' under a given 'theory
of justice' lies in the inference by *reductio ad absurdum* to the
conclusion that the theory is hopelessly inadequate. While it may capture
some partial intuition regarding justice, it evidently neglects others.

"The real question to be raised about theories that fail so completely
to capture the concept of justice in its significant and intuitive
sense is why they arouse such interest. Why are they not simply dismissed
out of hand on the grounds of this failure, which is striking in
clear cases? Perhaps the answer is, in part, the one given by Edward 
Greenberg in a discussion of some recent work on the entitlement theory
of justice. After reviewing empirical and conceptual shortcomings, he
observes that such work 'plays an important function in the process of
. . . 'blaming the victim,' and of protecting property against egalitarian
onslaughts by various non-propertied groups.' An ideological defence of
privileges, exploitation, and private power will be welcomed, regardless
of its merits.

"These matters are of no small importance to poor and oppressed people
here and elsewhere." [_The Chomsky Reader_, pp. 187-188]

The defence of capitalist property does have one interesting side 
effect, namely the need arises to defend inequality and the authoritarian 
relationships inequality creates. In order to protect the private property 
needed by capitalists in order to continue exploiting the working class, 
"anarcho"-capitalists propose private security forces rather than state 
security forces (police and military) -- a proposal that is equivalent 
to bringing back the state under another name. 

Due to (capitalist) private property, wage labour would still exist under 
"anarcho"-capitalism (it is capitalism after all). This means that "defensive" 
force, a state, is required to "defend" exploitation, oppression, hierarchy 
and authority from those who suffer them. Inequality makes a mockery of
free agreement and "consent" (see section F.3.1). As Peter Kropotkin 
pointed out long ago:

"When a workman sells his labour to an employer . . . it is a mockery to 
call that a free contract. Modern economists may call it free, but the 
father of political economy -- Adam Smith -- was never guilty of such 
a misrepresentation. As long as three-quarters of humanity are compelled 
to enter into agreements of that description, force is, of course, 
necessary, both to enforce the supposed agreements and to maintain such 
a state of things. Force -- and a good deal of force -- is necessary to 
prevent the labourers from taking possession of what they consider unjustly 
appropriated by the few. . . . The Spencerian party [proto-right-libertarians] 
perfectly well understand that; and while they advocate no force for changing 
the existing conditions, they advocate still more force than is now used 
for maintaining them. As to Anarchy, it is obviously as incompatible with 
plutocracy as with any other kind of -cracy." [_Anarchism and Anarchist 
Communism_, pp. 52-53]

Because of this need to defend privilege and power, "anarcho"-capitalism 
is best called "private-state" capitalism. This will be discussed in more 
detail in section F.6.

By advocating private property, right libertarians contradict many of 
their other claims. For example, they say that they support the right of 
individuals to travel where they like. They make this claim because they
assume that only the state limits free travel. But this is a false
assumption. Owners must agree to let you on their land or property 
("people only have the right to move to those properties and lands where
the owners desire to rent or sell to them." [Murray Rothbard, _The Ethics
of Liberty_, p. 119]. There is no "freedom of travel" onto private property
(including private roads). Therefore immigration may be just as hard under 
"anarcho"-capitalism as it is under statism (after all, the state, like
the property owner, only lets people in whom it wants to let in). People 
will still have to get another property owner to agree to let them in 
before they can travel -- exactly as now (and, of course, they also have
to get the owners of the road to let them in as well). Private property, 
as can be seen from this simple example, is the state writ small.

One last point, this ignoring of ("politically incorrect") economic and 
other views of dead political thinkers and activists while claiming them 
as "libertarians" seems to be commonplace in right-Libertarian circles. For 
example, Aristotle (beloved by Ayn Rand) "thought that only living things
could bear fruit. Money, not a living thing, was by its nature barren, and
any attempt to make it bear fruit (*tokos*, in Greek, the same word used
for interest) was a crime against nature." [Marcello de Cecco, quoted
by Doug Henwood, _Wall Street_, p. 41] Such opposition to interest hardly
fits well into capitalism, and so either goes unmentioned or gets classed 
as an "error" (although we could ask why Aristotle is in error while Rand is 
not). Similarly, individualist anarchist opposition to capitalist property
and rent, interest and profits is ignored or dismissed as "bad economics"
without realising that these ideas played a key role in their politics 
and in ensuring that an anarchy would not see freedom corrupted by 
inequality. To ignore such an important concept in a person's ideas is
to distort the remainder into something it is not.

F.4.1 What is wrong with a "homesteading" theory of property?

So how do "anarcho"-capitalists justify property? Looking at Murray 
Rothbard, we find that he proposes a "homesteading theory of property". 
In this theory it is argued that property comes from occupancy and mixing 
labour with natural resources (which are assumed to be unowned). Thus the 
world is transformed into private property, for "title to an unowned 
resource (such as land) comes properly only from the expenditure of 
labour to transform that resource into use." [_The Ethics of Liberty_, 
p. 63] 

Rothbard paints a conceptual history of individuals and families
forging a home in the wilderness by the sweat of their labour (its 
tempting to rename his theory the "immaculate conception of property" 
as his conceptual theory is somewhat at odds with actual historical 
fact).

Sadly for Murray Rothbard, his "homesteading" theory was refuted 
by Proudhon in _What is Property?_ in 1840 (along with many other 
justifications of property). Proudhon rightly argues that "if the 
liberty of man is sacred, it is equally sacred in all individuals; 
that, if it needs property for its objective action, that is, for its 
life, the appropriation of material is equally necessary for all . . . 
Does it not follow that if one individual cannot prevent another . . . 
from appropriating an amount of material equal to his own, no more can 
he prevent individuals to come." And if all the available resources
are appropriated, and the owner "draws boundaries, fences himself in
. . . Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one
has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends . . . Let
[this]. . . multiply, and soon the people . . . will have nowhere
to rest, no place to shelter, no ground to till. They will die at
the proprietor's door, on the edge of that property which was their
birthright." [_What is Property?_, pp. 84-85, p. 118]

As Rothbard himself noted in respect to the aftermath of slavery
(see section F.1), not having access to the means of life places
one the position of unjust dependency on those who do. Rothbard's 
theory fails because for "[w]e who belong to the proletaire class, 
property excommunicates us!" [P-J Proudhon, Op. Cit., p. 105] and so 
the vast majority of the population experience property as theft and 
despotism rather than as a source of liberty and empowerment (which 
possession gives). Thus, Rothbard's account fails to take into account 
the Lockean Proviso (see section B.3.4) and so, for all its intuitive 
appeal, ends up justifying capitalist and landlord domination.

It also seems strange that while (correctly) attacking social contract
theories of the state as invalid (because "no past generation can bind
later generations" [Op. Cit., p. 145]) he fails to see he is doing
*exactly that* with his support of private property (similarly, Ayn
Rand argued that "[a]ny alleged 'right' of one man, which necessitates
the violation of the right of another, is not and cannot be a right"
[_Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal_, p. 325] but obviously appropriating
land does violate the rights of others to walk, use or appropriate that
land). Due to his support for appropriation and inheritance, he is 
clearly ensuring that future generations are *not* born as free as 
the first settlers were (after all, they cannot appropriate any land, 
it is all taken!). If future generations cannot be bound by past ones, 
this applies equally to resources and property rights. Something 
anarchists have long realised -- there is no defensible reason why 
those who first acquired property should control its use by future 
generations.

However, if we take Rothbard's theory at face value we find numerous
problems with it. If title to unowned resources comes via the "expenditure
of labour" on it, how can rivers, lakes and the oceans be appropriated? 
The banks of the rivers can be transformed, but can the river itself? How
can you mix your labour with water? "Anarcho"-capitalists usually blame
pollution on the fact that rivers, oceans, and so forth are unowned, but
how can an individual "transform" water by their labour? Also, does fencing 
in land mean you have "mixed labour" with it? If so then transnational 
corporations can pay workers to fence in vast tracks of virgin land
(such as rainforest) and so come to "own" it. Rothbard argues that this
is not the case (he expresses opposition to "arbitrary claims"). He notes
that it is *not* the case that "the first discoverer . . . could properly
lay claim to [a piece of land] . . . [by] laying out a boundary for the
area." He thinks that "their claim would still be no more than the boundary
*itself*, and not to any of the land within, for only the boundary will
have been transformed and used by men" [Op. Cit., p. 50f] 

However, if the boundary *is* private property and the owner refuses others 
permission to cross it, then the enclosed land is inaccessible to others! If 
an "enterprising" right-libertarian builds a fence around the only oasis in
a desert and refuses permission to cross it to travellers unless they pay
his price (which is everything they own) then the person *has* appropriated
the oasis without "transforming" it by his labour. The travellers have the
choice of paying the price or dying (and the oasis owner is well within his
rights letting them die). Given Rothbard's comments, it is probable that
he will claim that such a boundary is null and void as it allows "arbitrary"
claims -- although this position is not at all clear. After all, the fence
builder *has* transformed the boundary and "unrestricted" property rights
is what right-libertarianism is all about. 

And, of course, Rothbard ignores the fact of economic power -- a transnational 
corporation can "transform" far more virgin resources in a day than a family 
could in a year. Transnational's "mixing their labour" with the land does
not spring into mind reading Rothbard's account of property growth, but in 
the real world that is what will happen.

Which is another problem with Rothbard's account. It is completely
ahistoric (and so, as we noted above, is more like an "immaculate 
conception of property"). He has transported "capitalist man" into 
the dawn of time and constructed a history of property based upon
what he is trying to justify. What *is* interesting to note, 
though, is that the *actual* experience of life on the US frontier 
(the historic example Rothbard seems to want to claim) was far 
from the individualistic framework he builds upon it and (ironically
enough) it was destroyed by the development of capitalism.

As Murray Bookchin notes, "the independence that the New England yeomanry
enjoyed was itself a function of the co-operative social base from which
it emerged. To barter home-grown goods and objects, to share tools and
implements, to engage in common labour during harvesting time in a
system of mutual aid, indeed, to help new-comers in barn-raising, 
corn-husking, log-rolling, and the like, was the indispensable cement
that bound scattered farmsteads into a united community." [_The Third
Revolution_, vol. 1, p. 233] Bookchin quotes David P. Szatmary (author
of a book on Shay' Rebellion) stating that it was a society based
upon "co-operative, community orientated interchanges" and not a
"basically competitive society." [Ibid.]

Into this non-capitalist society came capitalist elements. Market forces 
and economic power soon resulted in the transformation of this society.
Merchants asked for payment in specie which (and along with taxes) 
soon resulted in indebtedness and the dispossession of the homesteaders 
from their land and goods. In response Shay's rebellion started, 
a rebellion which was an important factor in the centralisation of
state power in America to ensure that popular input and control over 
government were marginalised and that the wealthy elite and their
property rights were protected against the many (see Bookchin, Op. 
Cit., for details). Thus the homestead system was undermined, 
essentially, by the need to pay for services in specie (as demanded
by merchants).

So while Rothbard's theory as a certain appeal (reinforced by watching
too many Westerns, we imagine) it fails to justify the "unrestricted"
property rights theory (and the theory of freedom Rothbard derives
from it). All it does is to end up justifying capitalist and landlord 
domination (which is probably what it was intended to do).

F.5 Will privatising "the commons" increase liberty?

"Anarcho"-capitalists aim for a situation in which "no land areas, 
no square footage in the world shall remain 'public,'" in other words
*everything* will be "privatised." [Murray Rothbard, _Nations by
Consent_, p. 84] They claim that privatising "the commons" (e.g. roads, 
parks, etc.) which are now freely available to all will increase liberty. 
Is this true? We have shown before why the claim that privatisation can
protect the environment is highly implausible (see section E.2). Here we
will concern ourselves with private ownership of commonly used "property" 
which we all take for granted and pay for with taxes.

Its clear from even a brief consideration of a hypothetical society based
on "privatised" roads (as suggested by Murray Rothbard in _For a New 
Liberty_, pp. 202-203 and David Friedman in _The Machinery of Freedom_, 
pp. 98-101) that the only increase of liberty will be for the ruling elite. 
As "anarcho"-capitalism is based on paying for what one uses, privatisation 
of roads would require some method of tracking individuals to ensure that 
they pay for the roads they use. In the UK, for example, during the 1980s 
the British Tory government looked into the idea of toll-based motorways. 
Obviously having toll-booths on motorways would hinder their use and restrict 
"freedom," and so they came up with the idea of tracking cars by satellite. 
Every vehicle would have a tracking device installed in it and a satellite 
would record where people went and which roads they used. They would then 
be sent a bill or have their bank balances debited based on this information
(in the fascist city-state/company town of Singapore such a scheme *has* 
been introduced).

If we extrapolate from this example to a system of *fully* privatised
"commons," it would clearly require all individuals to have tracking
devices on them so they could be properly billed for use of roads,
pavements, etc. Obviously being tracked by private firms would be a
serious threat to individual liberty. Another, less costly, option would
be for private guards to randomly stop and question car-owners and
individuals to make sure they had paid for the use of the road or pavement
in question. "Parasites" would be arrested and fined or locked up. Again,
however, being stopped and questioned by uniformed individuals has more
in common with police states than liberty. Toll-boothing *every* street
would be highly unfeasible due to the costs involved and difficulties for
use that it implies. Thus the idea of privatising roads and charging 
drivers to gain access seems impractical at best and distinctly freedom
endangering if implemented at worse.

Of course, the option of owners letting users have free access to the
roads and pavements they construct and run would be difficult for a 
profit-based company. No one could make a profit in that case. If 
companies paid to construct roads for their customers/employees to use, 
they would be financially hindered in competition with other companies 
that did not, and thus would be unlikely to do so. If they restricted 
use purely to their own customers, the tracking problem appears again.

Some may object that this picture of extensive surveillance of 
individuals would not occur or be impossible. However, Murray 
Rothbard (in a slightly different context) argued that technology 
would be available to collate information about individuals. He 
argued that "[i]t should be pointed out that modern technology 
makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of 
information about people's credit ratings and records of keeping or
violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an 
anarchist [sic!] society would see the expansion of this sort of
dissemination of data." ["Society Without A State", in _Nomos XIX_,
Pennock and Chapman (eds.), p. 199] So, perhaps, with the total
privatisation of society we would also see the rise of private
Big Brothers, collecting information about individuals for use by
property owners. The example of the _Economic League_ (a British 
company who provided the "service" of tracking the political 
affiliations and activities of workers for employers) springs 
to mind.

And, of course, these privatisation suggestions ignore differences in 
income and market power. If, for example, variable pricing is used to 
discourage road use at times of peak demand (to eliminate traffic jams 
at rush-hour) as is suggested both by Murray Rothbard and David Friedman, 
then the rich will have far more "freedom" to travel than the rest of 
the population. And we may even see people having to go into debt just
to get to work or move to look for work.

Which raises another problem with notion of total privatisation, the
problem that it implies the end of freedom of travel. Unless you get
permission or (and this seems more likely) pay for access, you will
not be able to travel *anywhere.* As Rothbard *himself* makes clear,
"anarcho"-capitalism means the end of the right to roam or even
travel. He states that "it became clear to me that a totally privatised
country would not have open borders at all. If every piece of land
in a country were owned . . . no immigrant could enter there unless
invited to enter and allowed to rent, or purchase, property." [_Nations
by Consent_, p. 84] What happens to those who cannot *afford* to
pay for access is not addressed (perhaps, being unable to exit a
given capitalist's land they will become bonded labourers? Or be
imprisoned and used to undercut workers' wages via prison labour?
Perhaps they will just be shot as trespassers? Who can tell?). Nor
is it addressed how this situation actually *increases* freedom.
For Rothbard, a "totally privatised country would be as closed as
the particular inhabitants and property owners [*not* the same 
thing, we must point out] desire. It seems clear, then, that the 
regime of open borders that exists *de facto* in the US really 
amounts to a compulsory opening by the central state. . . and does 
not genuinely reflect the wishes of the proprietors." [Op. Cit., 
p. 85] Of course, the wishes of *non*-proprietors (the vast 
majority) do not matter in the slightest. Thus, it is clear, that
with the privatisation of "the commons" the right to roam, to
travel, would become a privilege, subject to the laws and rules
of the property owners. This can hardly be said to *increase*
freedom for anyone bar the capitalist class.

Rothbard acknowledges that "in a fully privatised world, access 
rights would obviously be a crucial part of land ownership." 
[_Nations by Consent_, p. 86] Given that there is no free lunch, 
we can imagine we would have to pay for such "rights." The implications 
of this are obviously unappealing and an obvious danger to individual 
freedom. The problem of access associated with the idea of privatising 
the roads can only be avoided by having a "right of passage" encoded
into the "general libertarian law code."  This would mean that road 
owners would be required, by law, to let anyone use them. But where 
are "absolute" property rights in this case? Are the owners of roads 
not to have the same rights as other owners? And if "right of passage" 
is enforced, what would this mean for road owners when people sue 
them for car-pollution related illnesses? (The right of those injured 
by pollution to sue polluters is the main way "anarcho"-capitalists 
propose to protect the environment. See sections E.2 and E.3). It 
is unlikely that those wishing to bring suit could find, never mind 
sue, the millions of individual car owners who could have potentially 
caused their illness. Hence the road-owners would be sued for letting 
polluting (or unsafe) cars onto "their" roads. The road-owners would 
therefore desire to restrict pollution levels by restricting the 
right to use their property, and so would resist the "right of 
passage" as an "attack" on their "absolute" property rights. If 
the road-owners got their way (which would be highly likely given 
the need for "absolute" property rights and is suggested by the variable 
pricing way to avoid traffic jams mentioned above) and were able to 
control who used their property, freedom to travel would be *very* 
restricted and limited to those whom the owner considered "desirable." 
Indeed, Murray Rothbard supports such a regime ("In the free [sic!] 
society, they [travellers] would, in the first instance, have the 
right to travel only on those streets whose owners agree to have 
them there" [_The Ethics of Liberty_, p. 119]). The threat to 
liberty in such a system is obvious -- to all but Rothbard and 
other right-libertarians, of course.

To take another example, let us consider the privatisation of parks, 
streets and other public areas. Currently, individuals can use these areas
to hold political demonstrations, hand out leaflets, picket and so on.
However, under "anarcho"-capitalism the owners of such property can 
restrict such liberties if they desire, calling such activities "initiation 
of force" (although they cannot explain how speaking your mind is an
example of "force"). Therefore, freedom of speech, assembly and a host 
of other liberties we take for granted would be reduced (if not eliminated)
under a right-"libertarian" regime. Or, taking the case of pickets and 
other forms of social struggle, its clear that privatising "the commons" 
would only benefit the bosses. Strikers or other activists picketing or 
handing out leaflets in shopping centre's are quickly ejected by private 
security even today. Think about how much worse it would become under 
"anarcho"-capitalism when the whole world becomes a series of malls -- it 
would be impossible to hold a picket when the owner of the pavement objects, 
for example (as Rothbard himself argues, Op. Cit., p. 132) and if the owner 
of the pavement also happens to be the boss being picketed, then workers' 
rights would be zero. Perhaps we could also see capitalists suing working 
class organisations for littering their property if they do hand out 
leaflets (so placing even greater stress on limited resources).

The I.W.W. went down in history for its rigorous defence of freedom of 
speech because of its rightly famous "free speech" fights in numerous 
American cities and towns. Repression was inflicted upon wobblies who 
joined the struggle by "private citizens," but in the end the I.W.W. won. 
Consider the case under "anarcho"-capitalism. The wobblies would have 
been "criminal aggressors" as the owners of the streets have refused 
to allow "undesirables" to use them to argue their case. If they 
refused to acknowledge the decree of the property owners, private 
cops would have taken them away. Given that those who controlled 
city government in the historical example were the wealthiest citizens 
in town, its likely that the same people would have been involved in 
the fictional ("anarcho"-capitalist) account. Is it a good thing that 
in the real account the wobblies are hailed as heroes of freedom but 
in the fictional one they are "criminal aggressors"? Does converting 
public spaces into private property *really* stop restrictions on free 
speech being a bad thing?

Of course, Rothbard (and other right-libertarians) are aware that
privatisation will not remove restrictions on freedom of speech,
association and so on (while, at the same time, trying to portray
themselves as supporters of such liberties!). However, for 
right-libertarians such restrictions are of no consequence. As 
Rothbard argues, any "prohibitions would not be state imposed, 
but would simply be requirements for residence or for use of 
some person's or community's land area." [_Nations by Consent_, 
p. 85] Thus we yet again see the blindness of right-libertarians 
to the commonality between private property and the state. The
state also maintains that submitting to its authority is the
requirement for taking up residence in its territory. As Tucker 
noted, the state can be defined as (in part) "the assumption of 
sole authority over a given area and all within it." [_The 
Individualist Anarchists_, p. 24] If the property owners can 
determine "prohibitions" (i.e. laws and rules) for those who use 
the property then they are the "sole authority over a given area 
and all within it," i.e. a state. Thus privatising "the commons" 
means subjecting the non-property owners to the rules and laws 
of the property owners -- in effect, privatising the state and 
turning the world into a series of Monarchies and oligarchies 
without the pretence of democracy and democratic rights. 

These examples can hardly be said to be increasing liberty for society as 
a whole, although "anarcho" capitalists seem to think they would. So far 
from *increasing* liberty for all, then, privatising the commons would 
only increase it for the ruling elite, by giving them yet another monopoly 
from which to collect income and exercise their power over. It would
*reduce* freedom for everyone else. As Peter Marshall notes, "[i]n the name 
of freedom, the anarcho-capitalists would like to turn public spaces into 
private property, but freedom does not flourish behind high fences protected 
by private companies but expands in the open air when it is enjoyed by all." 
[_Demanding the Impossible_, p. 564]

Little wonder Proudhon argued that "if the public highway is nothing but
an accessory of private property; if the communal lands are converted into
private property; if the public domain, in short, is guarded, exploited,
leased, and sold like private property -- what remains for the proletaire?
Of what advantage is it to him that society has left the state of war to 
enter the regime of police?" [_System of Economic Contradictions_, p. 371]

F.6 Is "anarcho"-capitalism against the state?

No. Due to its basis in private property, "anarcho"-capitalism implies a
class division of society into bosses and workers. Any such division
will require a state to maintain it. However, it need not be the same
state as exists now. Regarding this point, "anarcho"-capitalism plainly
advocates "defence associations" to protect property. For the
"anarcho"-capitalist, however, these private companies are not 
states. For anarchists, they most definitely are.

According to Murray Rothbard ["Society Without A State", _Nomos XIX_,
Pennock and Chapman (eds.), p. 192], a state must have one or both of the
following characteristics:

	1) The ability to tax those who live within it.
	2) It asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the
	   provision of defence over a given area.

He makes the same point elsewhere. [_The Ethics of Liberty_, p. 171]

Instead of this, the "anarcho"-capitalist thinks that people should be
able to select their own "defence companies" (which would provide the
needed police) and courts from the free market in "defence" which would
spring up after the state monopoly has been eliminated. These companies 
"all . . . would have to abide by the basic law code." ["Society Without 
A State", Op. Cit., p. 206] Thus a "general libertarian law code" would 
govern the actions of these companies. This "law code" would prohibit 
coercive aggression at the very least, although to do so it would have 
to specify what counted as legitimate property, how said can be owned 
and what actually constitutes aggression. Thus the law code would be 
quite extensive.

How is this law code to be actually specified? Would these laws be 
democratically decided? Would they reflect common usage (i.e. custom)?
"supply and demand"? "Natural law"? Given the strong dislike of
democracy shown by "anarcho"-capitalists, we think we can safely say
that some combination of the last two options would be used. Murray
Rothbard, as noted in section F.1.1, opposed the individualist anarchist
principle that juries would judge both the facts and the law, suggesting
instead that "Libertarian lawyers and jurists" would determine a "rational 
and objective code of libertarian legal principles and procedures." The
judges in his system would "not [be] making the law but finding it on the 
basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason." 
["Society without a State", Op. Cit., p. 206] David Friedman, on the other
hand, argues that different defence firms would sell their own laws. 
[_The Machinery of Freedom_, p. 116] It is sometimes acknowledged
that non-libertarian laws may be demanded (and supplied) in such a 
market.

Around this system of "defence companies" is a free market in "arbitrators"
and "appeal judges" to administer justice and the "basic law code." Rothbard
believes that such a system would see "arbitrators with the best reputation
for efficiency and probity . . . [being] chosen by the various parties in the
market . . . [and] will come to be given an increasing amount of business."
Judges "will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for 
efficiency and impartiality." [Op. Cit., p. 199 and p. 204] Therefore, 
like any other company, arbitrators would strive for profits and wealth, 
with the most successful ones becoming "prosperous." Of course, such 
wealth would have no impact on the decisions of the judges, and if it did, 
the population (in theory) are free to select any other judge (although, of 
course, they would also "strive for profits and wealth" -- which means the 
choice of character may be somewhat limited! -- and the laws which they
were using to guide their judgements would be enforcing capitalist rights). 

Whether or not this system would work as desired is discussed in the 
following sections. We think that it will not. Moreover, we will argue that 
"anarcho"-capitalist "defence companies" meet not only the criteria of 
statehood we outlined in section B.2, but also Rothbard's own criteria 
for the state. 

As regards the anarchist criterion, it is clear that "defence companies" 
exist to defend private property; that they are hierarchical (in that 
they are capitalist companies which defend the power of those who employ 
them); that they are professional coercive bodies; and that they exercise 
a monopoly of force over a given area (the area, initially, being the 
property of the person or company who is employing the "association"). 
Not only that, as we discuss in section F.6.4 these "defence companies"
also matches the right-libertarian and "anarcho"-capitalist definition 
of the state. For this (and other reasons), we should call the 
"anarcho"-capitalist defence firms "private states" -- that is what they 
are -- and "anarcho"-capitalism "private state" capitalism.

Before discussing these points further, it is necessary to point out a
relatively common fallacy of "anarcho"-capitalists. This is the idea that
"defence" under the system they advocate means defending people, not
territorial areas. This, for some, means that defence companies are not
"states." However, as people and their property and possessions do not
exist merely in thought but on the Earth, it is obvious that these
companies will be administering "justice" over a given area of the
planet. It is also obvious, therefore, that these "defence associations" 
will operate over a (property-owner defined) area of land and enforce
the property-owner's laws, rules and regulations. The deeply
anti-libertarian, indeed fascistic, aspects of this "arrangement" 
will be examined in the following sections.

F.6.1 What's wrong with this "free market" justice?

It does not take much imagination to figure out whose interests "prosperous" 
arbitrators, judges and defence companies would defend: their own, as well 
as those who pay their wages -- which is to say, other members of the rich 
elite. As the law exists to defend property, then it (by definition) exists
to defend the power of capitalists against their workers.

Rothbard argues that the "judges" would "not [be] making the law but
finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from
custom or reason" [Rothbard, Op. Cit., p. 206]. However, this begs the
question: *whose* reason? *whose* customs? Do individuals in different
classes share the same customs? The same ideas of right and wrong? Would
rich and poor desire the same from a "basic law code"? Obviously not. The
rich would only support a code which defended their power over the poor.

Although only "finding" the law, the arbitrators and judges still exert
an influence in the "justice" process, an influence not impartial or
neutral. As the arbitrators themselves would be part of a profession, with
specific companies developing within the market, it does not take a
genius to realise that when "interpreting" the "basic law code," such
companies would hardly act against their own interests as companies. In
addition, if the "justice" system was based on "one dollar, one vote," the
"law" would best defend those with the most "votes" (the question of
market forces will be discussed in section F.6.3). Moreover, even if 
"market forces" would ensure that "impartial" judges were dominant, all 
judges would be enforcing a *very* partial law code (namely one that 
defended *capitalist* property rights). Impartiality when enforcing 
partial laws hardly makes judgements less unfair.

Thus, due to these three pressures -- the interests of arbitrators/judges, 
the influence of money and the nature of the law -- the terms of "free 
agreements" under such a law system would be tilted in favour of lenders 
over debtors, landlords over tenants, employers over employees, and in 
general, the rich over the poor, just as we have today. This is what one 
would expect in a system based on "unrestricted" property rights and a 
(capitalist) free market. A similar tendency towards the standardisation 
of output in an industry in response to influences of wealth can be seen 
from the current media system (see section D.3 -- How does wealth 
influence the mass media?)

Some "anarcho"-capitalists, however, claim that just as cheaper cars were
developed to meet demand, so cheaper defence associations and "people's
arbitrators" would develop on the market for the working class. In this
way impartiality will be ensured. This argument overlooks a few key points:

Firstly, the general "libertarian" law code would be applicable to *all*
associations, so they would have to operate within a system determined
by the power of money and of capital. The law code would reflect, 
therefore, property *not* labour and so "socialistic" law codes would
be classed as "outlaw" ones. The options then facing working people
is to select a firm which best enforced the *capitalist* law in their
favour. And as noted above, the impartial enforcement of a biased law
code will hardly ensure freedom or justice for all.

Secondly, in a race between a Jaguar and a Volkswagen Beetle, who is more
likely to win? The rich would have "the best justice money can buy," as
they do now. Members of the capitalist class would be able to select the
firms with the best lawyers, best private cops and most resources. Those
without the financial clout to purchase quality "justice" would simply be
out of luck - such is the "magic" of the marketplace.

Thirdly, because of the tendency toward concentration, centralisation,
and oligopoly under capitalism (due to increasing capital costs for new
firms entering the market, as discussed in section C.4), a few companies
would soon dominate the market -- with obvious implications for "justice."
Different firms will have different resources. In other words, in a
conflict between a small firm and a larger one, the smaller one is at a
disadvantage in terms of resources. They may not be in a position to fight 
the larger company if it rejects arbitration and so may give in simply
because, as the "anarcho"-capitalists so rightly point out, conflict and
violence will push up a company's costs and so they would have to be avoided 
by smaller companies. It is ironic that the "anarcho"-capitalist implicitly 
assumes that every "defence company" is approximately of the same size, with 
the same resources behind it. In real life, this would clearly *not* the case.

Fourthly, it is *very* likely that many companies would make subscription to 
a specific "defence" firm or court a requirement of employment. Just as today 
many (most?) workers have to sign no-union contracts (and face being fired 
if they change their minds), it does not take much imagination to see that 
the same could apply to "defence" firms and courts. This was/is the case 
in company towns (indeed, you can consider unions as a form of "defence"
firm and these companies refused to recognise them). As the labour market
is almost always a buyer's market, it is not enough to argue that workers
can find a new job without this condition. They may not and so have to put 
up with this situation. And if (as seems likely) the laws and rules of the 
property-owner will take precedence in any conflict, then workers and tenants 
will be at a disadvantage no matter how "impartial" the judges.

Ironically, some "anarcho"-capitalists point to current day company/union
negotiations as an example of how different defence firms would work
out their differences peacefully. Sadly for this argument, union rights
under "actually existing capitalism" were created and enforced by the
state in direct opposition to capitalist "freedom of contract." Before
the law was changed, unions were often crushed by force -- the companies
were better armed, had more resources and had the law on their side.
Today, with the "downsizing" of companies we can see what happens to
"peaceful negotiation" and "co-operation" between unions and companies
when it is no longer required (i.e. when the resources of both sides
are unequal). The market power of companies far exceeds those of the 
unions and the law, by definition, favours the companies. As an example 
of how competing "protection agencies" will work in an "anarcho"-capitalist 
society, it is far more insightful than originally intended!

Now let us consider the "basic law code" itself. How the laws in 
the "general libertarian law code" would actually be selected is 
aanyone's guess, although many "anarcho"-capitalists support the 
myth of "natural law," and this would suggest an unchangeable 
law code selected by those considered as "the voice of nature" 
(with obvious authoritarian implications). David Friedman argues 
that as well as a market in defence companies, there will also be 
a market in laws and rights. However, there will be extensive market 
pressure to unify these differing law codes into one standard one 
(imagine what would happen if ever CD manufacturer created a unique 
CD player, or every computer manufacturer different sized floppy-disk 
drivers -- little wonder, then, that over time companies standardise 
their products). Friedman himself acknowledges that this process is 
likely (and uses the example of standard paper sizes to indicate 
such a process).

In any event, the laws would not be decided on the basis of "one person, one
vote"; hence, as market forces worked their magic, the "general" law code 
would reflect vested interests and so be very hard to change. As rights and 
laws would be a commodity like everything else in capitalism, they would soon 
reflect the interests of the rich -- particularly if those interpreting the 
law are wealthy professionals and companies with vested interests of their 
own. Little wonder that the individualist anarchists proposed "trial by jury" 
as the only basis for real justice in a free society. For, unlike professional
"arbitrators," juries are ad hoc, made up of ordinary people and do not
reflect power, authority, or the influence of wealth. And by being able 
to judge the law as well as a conflict, they can ensure a populist revision
of laws as society progresses.

Thus a system of "defence" on the market will continue to reflect the 
influence and power of property owners and wealth and not be subject to 
popular control beyond choosing between companies to enforce the capitalist 
laws.

F.6.2 What are the social consequences of such a system?

The "anarcho" capitalist imagines that there will be police agencies,
"defence associations," courts, and appeals courts all organised on a
free-market basis and available for hire. As David Weick points out,
however, the major problem with such a system would not be the corruption
of "private" courts and police forces (although, as suggested above, this
could indeed be a problem): 

"There is something more serious than the 'Mafia danger', and this other 
problem concerns the role of such 'defence' institutions in a given social 
and economic context.

"[The] context. . . is one of a free-market economy with no restraints
upon accumulation of property. Now, we had an American experience,
roughly from the end of the Civil War to the 1930's, in what were in
effect private courts, private police, indeed private governments. We 
had the experience of the (private) Pinkerton police which, by its spies, 
by its *agents provocateurs,* and by methods that included violence and
kidnapping, was one of the most powerful tools of large corporations 
and an instrument of oppression of working people. We had the experience 
as well of the police forces established to the same end, within
corporations, by numerous companies. . . . (The automobile companies 
drew upon additional covert instruments of a private nature, usually 
termed vigilante, such as the Black Legion). These were, in effect,
private armies, and were sometimes described as such. The territories 
owned by coal companies, which frequently included entire towns and their
environs, the stores the miners were obliged by economic coercion to
patronise, the houses they lived in, were commonly policed by the private
police of the United States Steel Corporation or whatever company owned
the properties. The chief practical function of these police was, of
course, to prevent labour organisation and preserve a certain balance of
'bargaining.'

"These complexes were a law unto themselves, powerful enough to ignore,
when they did not purchase, the governments of various jurisdictions of
the American federal system. This industrial system was, at the time,
often characterised as feudalism. . . ." ["Anarchist Justice", Op. Cit., 
pp. 223-224]

For a description of the weaponry and activities of these private armies,
the economic historian Maurice Dobbs presents an excellent summary in
_Studies in Capitalist Development_ [pp. 353-357]. According to a report on 
"Private Police Systems" cited by Dobbs, in a town dominated by Republican 
Steel, the "civil liberties and the rights of labour were suppressed by 
company police. Union organisers were driven out of town." Company towns 
had their own (company-run) money, stores, houses and jails and many 
corporations had machine-guns and tear-gas along with the usual shot-guns, 
rifles and revolvers. The "usurpation of police powers by privately paid 
'guards and 'deputies', often hired from detective agencies, many with 
criminal records" was "a general practice in many parts of the country."

The local (state-run) law enforcement agencies turned a blind-eye to what
was going on (after all, the workers *had* broken their contracts and
so were "criminal aggressors" against the companies) even when union
members and strikers were beaten and killed. The workers own defence 
organisations were the only ones willing to help them, and if the workers
seemed to be winning then troops were called in to "restore the peace"
(as happened in the Ludlow strike, when strikers originally cheered
the troops as they thought they would defend their civil rights; needless
to say, they were wrong).

Here we have a society which is claimed by many "anarcho"-capitalists
as one of the closest examples to their "ideal," with limited state
intervention, free reign for property owners, etc. What happened? The
rich reduced the working class to a serf-like existence, capitalist
production undermined independent producers (much to the annoyance of
individualist anarchists at the time), and the result was the emergence
of the corporate America that "anarcho"-capitalists say they oppose.

Are we to expect that "anarcho"-capitalism will be different? That, unlike
before, "defence" firms will intervene on behalf of strikers? Given that
the "general libertarian law code" will be enforcing capitalist property
rights, workers will be in exactly the same situation as they were then.
Support of strikers violating property rights would be a violation of
the "general libertarian law code" and be costly for profit making firms
to do (if not dangerous as they could be "outlawed" by the rest). Thus
"anarcho"-capitalism will extend extensive rights and powers to bosses,
but few if any rights to rebellious workers. And this difference in power
is enshrined within the fundamental institutions of the system. 

In evaluating "anarcho"-capitalism's claim to be a form of anarchism,
Peter Marshall notes that "private protection agencies would merely serve
the interests of their paymasters." [_Demanding the Impossible_, p. 653]
With the increase of private "defence associations" under "really existing
capitalism" today (associations that many "anarcho"-capitalists point to
as examples of their ideas), we see a vindication of Marshall's claim.
There have been many documented experiences of protesters being badly
beaten by private security guards. As far as market theory goes, the
companies are only supplying what the buyer is demanding. The rights of
others are *not a factor* (yet more "externalities," obviously). Even
if the victims successfully sue the company, the message is clear -- 
social activism can seriously damage your health. With a reversion 
to "a general libertarian law code" enforced by private companies, 
this form of "defence" of "absolute" property rights can only increase, 
perhaps to the levels previously attained in the heyday of US capitalism, 
as described above by Weick.

F.6.3 But surely market forces will stop abuses by the rich?

Unlikely. The rise of corporations within America indicates exactly how a
"general libertarian law code" would reflect the interests of the rich and
powerful. The laws recognising corporations as "legal persons" were *not*
primarily a product of "the state" but of private lawyers hired by the
rich -- a result with which Rothbard would have no problem. As Howard 
Zinn notes:

"the American Bar Association, organised by lawyers accustomed to
serving the wealthy, began a national campaign of education to reverse 
the [Supreme] Court decision [that companies could not be considered as
a person]. . . . By 1886. . . the Supreme Court had accepted the argument
that corporations were 'persons' and their money was property protected by
the process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. . . . The justices of the
Supreme Court were not simply interpreters of the Constitution. They were
men of certain backgrounds, of certain [class] interests." [_A People's
History of the United States_, p. 255]

Of course it will be argued that the Supreme Court is a monopoly and so
our analysis is flawed. In "anarcho"-capitalism there is no monopoly.
But the corporate laws came about because there was a demand for them.
That demand would still have existed in "anarcho"-capitalism. Now, while
there may be no Supreme Court, Rothbard does maintain that "the basic
Law Code . . .would have to be agreed upon by all the judicial agencies"
but he maintains that this "would imply no unified legal system"! Even
though "[a]ny agencies that transgressed the basic libertarian law
code would be open outlaws" and soon crushed this is *not*, apparently, 
a monopoly. [_The Ethics of Liberty_, p. 234] So, you either agree to 
the law code or you go out of business. And that is *not* a monopoly! 
Therefore, we think, our comments on the Supreme Court decision are 
valid.

If all the available defence firms enforce the same laws, then it can
hardly be called "competitive"! And if this is the case (and it is)
"when private wealth is uncontrolled, then a police-judicial complex
enjoying a clientele of wealthy corporations whose motto is self-interest
is hardly an innocuous social force controllable by the possibility of 
forming or affiliating with competing 'companies.'" [Weick, Op. Cit., 
p. 225] 

This is particularly true if these companies are themselves Big Business 
and so have a large impact on the laws they are enforcing. If the law 
code recognises and protects capitalist power, property and wealth as 
fundamental *any* attempt to change this is "initiation of force" and 
so the power of the rich is written into the system from the start!

(And, we must add, if there is a general libertarian law code to which 
all must subscribe, where does that put customer demand? If people demand 
a non-libertarian law code, will defence firms refuse to supply it? If so, 
will not new firms, looking for profit, spring up that will supply what 
is being demanded? And will that not put them in direct conflict with the
existing, pro-general law code ones? And will a market in law codes not
just reflect economic power and wealth? David Friedman, who is for a market 
in law codes, argues that "[i]f almost everyone believes strongly that 
heroin addiction is so horrible that it should not be permitted anywhere 
under any circumstances anarcho-capitalist institutions will produce laws 
against heroin. Laws are being produced on the market, and that is what the 
market wants." And he adds that "market demands are in dollars, not votes. 
The legality of heroin will be determined, not by how many are for or against 
but how high a cost each side is willing to bear in order to get its way." 
[_The Machinery of Freedom_, p. 127] And, as the market is less than equal 
in terms of income and wealth, such a position will mean that the capitalist 
class will have a higher effective demand than the working class, and more 
resources to pay for any conflicts that arise. Thus any law codes that 
develop will tend to reflect the interests of the wealthy.)

Which brings us nicely on to the next problem regarding market forces.

As well as the obvious influence of economic interests and differences
in wealth, another problem faces the "free market" justice of 
"anarcho"-capitalism. This is the "general libertarian law code" itself. 
Even if we assume that the system actually works like it should in theory, 
the simple fact remains that these "defence companies" are enforcing laws 
which explicitly defend capitalist property (and so social relations). 
Capitalists own the means of production upon which they hire wage-labourers 
to work and this is an inequality established *prior* to any specific 
transaction in the labour market. This inequality reflects itself in 
terms of differences in power within (and outside) the company and 
in the "law code" of "anarcho"-capitalism which protects that power 
against the dispossessed.

In other words, the law code within which the defence companies work
assumes that capitalist property is legitimate and that force can 
legitimately be used to defend it. This means that, in effect, 
"anarcho"-capitalism is based on a monopoly of law, a monopoly which
explicitly exists to defend the power and capital of the wealthy. 
The major difference is that the agencies used to protect that
wealth will be in a weaker position to act independently of their
pay-masters. Unlike the state, the "defence" firm is not remotely
accountable to the general population and cannot be used to equalise
even slightly the power relationships between worker and capitalist.

And, needless to say, it is very likely that the private police forces 
*will* give preferential treatment to their wealthier customers (what 
business does not?) and that the law code will reflect the interests of the 
wealthier sectors of society (particularly if "prosperous" judges administer 
that code) in reality, even if not in theory. Since, in capitalist practice, 
"the customer is always right," the best-paying customers will get their 
way in "anarcho"-capitalist society.

For example, in chapter 29 of _The Machinery of Freedom_, David Friedman 
presents an example of how a clash of different law codes could be resolved 
by a bargaining process (the law in question is the death penalty). This 
process would involve one defence firm giving a sum of money to the other
for them accepting the appropriate (anti/pro capital punishment) court.
Friedman claims that "[a]s in any good trade, everyone gains" but this
is obviously not true. Assuming the anti-capital punishment defence firm
pays the pro one to accept an anti-capital punishment court, then, yes,
both defence firms have made money and so are happy, so are the anti-capital
punishment consumers but the pro-death penalty customers have only (perhaps)
received a cut in their bills. Their desire to see criminals hanged (for
whatever reason) has been ignored (if they were not in favour of the
death penalty, they would not have subscribed to that company). Friedman
claims that the deal, by allowing the anti-death penalty firm to cut its
costs, will ensure that it "keep its customers and even get more" but
this is just an assumption. It is just as likely to loose customers to a 
defence firm that refuses to compromise (and has the resources to back it 
up). Friedman's assumption that lower costs will automatically win over
people's passions is unfounded. As is the assumption that both firms have 
equal resources and bargaining power. If the pro-capital punishment firm
demands more than the anti can provide and has larger weaponry and troops,
then the anti defence firm may have to agree to let the pro one have its
way. 

So, all in all, it is *not* clear that "everyone gains" -- there may be a 
sizeable percentage of those involved who do not "gain" as their desire for 
capital punishment is traded away by those who claimed they would enforce 
it.

In other words, a system of competing law codes and privatised rights 
does not ensure that *all* consumers interests are meet. Given unequal
resources within society, it is also clear that the "effective demand"
of the parties involved to see their law codes enforced is drastically
different. The wealthy head of a transnational corporation will have far 
more resources available to him to pay for *his* laws to be enforced than 
one of his employees on the assembly line. Moreover, as we argue in section
F.3.1, the labour market is usually skewed in favour of capitalists. 
This means that workers have to compromise to get work and such compromises
may involve agreeing to join a specific "defence" firm or not join one
at all (just as workers are often forced to sign non-union contracts 
today in order to get work). In other words, a privatised law system 
is very likely to skew the enforcement of laws in line with the skewing 
of income and wealth in society. At the very least, unlike every other 
market, the customer is *not* guaranteed to get exactly what they demand 
simply because the product they "consume" is dependent on other within
the same market to ensure its supply. The unique workings of the 
law/defence market are such as to deny customer choice (we will 
discuss other aspects of this unique market shortly).

Weick sums up by saying "any judicial system is going to exist in the
context of economic institutions. If there are gross inequalities of
power in the economic and social domains, one has to imagine society as
strangely compartmentalised in order to believe that those inequalities
will fail to reflect themselves in the judicial and legal domain, and that
the economically powerful will be unable to manipulate the legal and
judicial system to their advantage. To abstract from such influences of
context, and then consider the merits of an abstract judicial system. . .
is to follow a method that is not likely to take us far. This, by the
way, is a criticism that applies. . .to any theory that relies on a rule
of law to override the tendencies inherent in a given social and economic
system" [Weick, Op. Cit., p. 225] (For a discussion of this problem 
as it would surface in attempts to protect the environment under
"anarcho"-capitalism, see sections E.2 and E.3.)

There is another reason why "market forces" will not stop abuse by the rich,
or indeed stop the system from turning from private to public statism. This
is due to the nature of the "defence" market (for a similar analysis of
the "defence" market see Tyler Cowen's "Law as a Public Good: The Economics
of Anarchy" in _Economics and Philosophy_, no. 8 (1992), pp. 249-267 and
"Rejoinder to David Friedman on the Economics of Anarchy" in _Economics
and Philosophy_, no. 10 (1994), pp. 329-332). In "anarcho"-capitalist theory
it is assumed that the competing "defence companies" have a vested interest
in peacefully settling differences between themselves by means of arbitration.
In order to be competitive on the market, companies will have to co-operate
via contractual relations otherwise the higher price associated with conflict
will make the company uncompetitive and it will go under. Those companies
that ignore decisions made in arbitration would  be outlawed by others, 
ostracised and their rulings ignored. By this process, it is argued, a 
system of competing "defence" companies will be stable and not turn into 
a civil war between agencies with each enforcing the interests of their 
clients against others by force.

However, there is a catch. Unlike every other market, the businesses in competition in the "defence" industry *must* co-operate with its fellows 
in order to provide its services for its customers. They need to be able 
to agree to courts and judges, agree to abide by decisions and law codes 
and so forth. In economics there are other, more accurate, terms to 
describe co-operative activity between companies: collusion and cartels. 
Collusion and cartels is where companies in a specific market agree to 
work together to restrict competition and reap the benefits of monopoly
power by working to achieve the same ends in partnership with each other.
In other words this means that collusion is built into the system, with 
the necessary contractual relations between agencies in the "protection" 
market requiring that firms co-operate and, by so doing, to behave 
(effectively) as one large firm (and so, effectively, resemble the 
state even more than they already do). Quoting Adam Smith seems appropriate
here: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment 
and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the
public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." [_The Wealth of 
Nations_, p. 117]

For example, when buying food it does not matter whether the supermarkets 
I visit have good relations with each other. The goods I buy are independent 
of the relationships that exist between competing companies. However, in the 
case of private states, this is *not* the case. If a specific "defence" 
company has bad relationships with other companies in the market then 
it is against my self-interest to subscribe to it. Why join a private state 
if its judgements are ignored by the others and it has to resort to violence 
to be heard? This, as well as being potentially dangerous, will also push up 
the prices I have to pay. Arbitration is one of the most important services 
a defence firm can offer its customers and its market share is based upon 
being able to settle interagency disputes without risk of war or uncertainty 
that the final outcome will not be accepted by all parties.

Therefore, the market set-up within the "anarcho"-capitalist "defence" market
is such that private states *have to co-operate* with the others (or go out 
of business fast) and this means collusion can take place. In other words, 
a system of private states will have to agree to work together in order to
provide the service of "law enforcement" to their customers and the result 
of such co-operation is to create a cartel. However, unlike cartels in other
industries, the "defence" cartel will be a stable body simply because its
members *have* to work with their competitors in order to survive.

Let us look at what would happen after such a cartel is formed in a specific
area and a new "defence company" desired to enter the market. This new
company will have to work with the members of the cartel in order to provide 
its services to its customers (note that "anarcho"-capitalists already 
assume that they "will have to" subscribe to the same law code). If the 
new defence firm tries to under-cut the cartel's monopoly prices, the other
companies would refuse to work with it. Having to face constant conflict or
the possibility of conflict, seeing its decisions being ignored by other 
agencies and being uncertain what the results of a dispute would be, few 
would patronise the new "defence company." The new company's prices would 
go up and so face either folding or joining the cartel. Unlike every other 
market, if a "defence company" does not have friendly, co-operative relations 
with other firms in the same industry then it will go out of business. 

This means that the firms that are co-operating have but to agree not to
deal with new firms which are attempting to undermine the cartel in order
for them to fail. A "cartel busting" firm goes out of business in the same 
way an outlaw one does - the higher costs associated with having to solve 
all its conflicts by force, not arbitration, increases its production 
costs much higher than the competitors and the firm faces insurmountable
difficulties selling its products at a profit (ignoring any drop of
demand due to fears of conflict by actual and potential customers). 
Even if we assume that many people will happily join the new firm in spite
of the dangers to protect themselves against the cartel and its taxation
(i.e. monopoly profits), enough will remain members of the cartel (perhaps
they will be fired if they change, perhaps they dislike change and think
the extra money is worth peace, perhaps they fear that by joining the
new company their peace will be disrupted or the outcomes of their problems
with others too unsure to be worth it, perhaps they are shareholders and 
want to maintain their income) so that co-operation will still be needed 
and conflict unprofitable and dangerous (and as the cartel will have more 
resources than the new firm, it could usually hold out longer than the new 
firm could). In effect, breaking the cartel may take the form of an 
armed revolution -- as it would with any state.

The forces that break up cartels and monopolies in other industries (such as 
free entry -- although, of course the "defence" market will be subject to 
oligopolistic tendencies as any other and this will create barriers to entry,
see section C.4) do not work here and so new firms have to co-operate or loose 
market share and/or profits. This means that "defence companies" will reap
monopoly profits and, more importantly, have a monopoly of force over a given 
area.

Hence a monopoly of private states will develop in addition to the existing 
monopoly of law and this is a de facto monopoly of force over a given
area (i.e. some kind of public state run by share holders). New companies
attempting to enter the "defence" industry will have to work with the
existing cartel in order to provide the services it offers to its customers. 
The cartel is in a dominant position and new entries into the market either 
become part of it or fail. This is exactly the position with the state,
with "private agencies" free to operate as long as they work to the state's
guidelines. As with the monopolist "general libertarian law code", if
you do not toe the line, you go out of business fast.

It is also likely that a multitude of cartels would develop, with a given
cartel operating in a given locality. This is because law enforcement
would be localised in given areas as most crime occurs where the criminal
lives. Few criminals would live in New York and commit crimes in Portland.
However, as defence companies have to co-operate to provide their services,
so would the cartels. Few people live all their lives in one area and so
firms from different cartels would come into contact, so forming a
cartel of cartels.

A cartel of cartels may (perhaps) be less powerful than a local cartel, but 
it would still be required and for exactly the same reasons a local one
is. Therefore "anarcho"-capitalism would, like "actually existing capitalism,"
be marked by a series of public states covering given areas, co-ordinated by 
larger states at higher levels. Such a set up would parallel the United States
in many ways except it would be run directly by wealthy shareholders without 
the sham of "democratic" elections. Moreover, as in the USA and other states
there will still be a monopoly of rules and laws (the "general libertarian
law code").

Some "anarcho"-capitalists claim that this will not occur, but that the
co-operation needed to provide the service of law enforcement will somehow
*not* turn into collusion between companies. However, they are quick to
argue that renegade "agencies" (for example, the so-called "Mafia
problem" or those who reject judgements) will go out of business because
of the higher costs associated with conflict and not arbitration. However,
these higher costs are ensured because the firms in question do not
co-operate with others. If other agencies boycott a firm but co-operate with 
all the others, then the boycotted firm will be at the same disadvantage
-- regardless of whether it is a cartel buster or a renegade.

The "anarcho"-capitalist is trying to have it both ways. If the punishment 
of non-conforming firms cannot occur, then "anarcho"-capitalism will turn
into a war of all against all or, at the very least, the service of social 
peace and law enforcement cannot be provided. If firms cannot deter others
from disrupting the social peace (one service the firm provides) then
"anarcho"-capitalism is not stable and will not remain orderly as agencies 
develop which favour the interests of their own customers and enforce their 
own law codes at the expense of others. If collusion cannot occur (or is
too costly) then neither can the punishment of non-conforming firms and
"anarcho"-capitalism will prove to be unstable.

So, to sum up, the "defence" market of private states has powerful forces
within it to turn it into a monopoly of force over a given area. From a 
privately chosen monopoly of force over a specific (privately owned) area, 
the market of private states will turn into a monopoly of force over a 
general area. This is due to the need for peaceful relations between 
companies, relations which are required for a firm to secure market 
share. The unique market forces that exist within this market ensure
collusion and monopoly.

In other words, the system of private states will become a cartel and so a 
public state - unaccountable to all but its shareholders, a state of the
wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy. In other words, fascism.

F.6.4 Why are these "defence associations" states?

It is clear that "anarcho"-capitalist defence associations meet the
criteria of statehood outlined in section B.2 ("Why are anarchists 
against the state"). They defend property and preserve authority 
relationships, they practice coercion, and are hierarchical 
institutions which govern those under them on behalf of a 
"ruling elite," i.e. those who employ both the governing forces 
and those they govern. Thus, from an anarchist perspective, these
"defence associations" as most definitely states.

What is interesting, however, is that by their own definitions a very
good case can be made that these "defence associations" as states
in the "anarcho"-capitalist sense too. Capitalist apologists usually
define a "government" (or state) as those who have a monopoly of force 
and coercion within a given area. Relative to the rest of the society,
these defence associations would have a monopoly of force and coercion 
of a given piece of property; thus, by the "anarcho"-capitalists' 
*own definition* of statehood, these associations would qualify! 

If we look at Rothbard's definition of statehood, which requires (a) the 
power to tax and/or (b) a "coerced monopoly of the provision of defence 
over a given area", "anarcho"-capitalism runs into trouble. 

In the first place, the costs of hiring defence associations will be 
deducted from the wealth created by those who use, but do not own, the 
property of capitalists and landlords. Let not forget that a capitalist 
will only employ a worker or rent out land and housing if they make a 
profit from so doing. Without the labour of the worker, there would be 
nothing to sell and no wages to pay for rent. Thus a company's or 
landlord's "defence" firm will be paid from the revenue gathered from 
the capitalists power to extract a tribute from those who use, but do 
not own, a property.  In other words, workers would pay for the agencies 
that enforce their employers' authority over them via the wage system 
and rent -- taxation in a more insidious form.

In the second, under capitalism most people spend a large part of their 
day on other people's property -- that is, they work for capitalists 
and/or live in rented accommodation. Hence if property owners select a 
"defence association" to protect their factories, farms, rental housing, 
etc., their employees and tenants will view it as a "coerced monopoly of 
the provision of defence over a given area." For certainly the employees 
and tenants will not be able to hire their own defence companies to
expropriate the capitalists and landlords. So, from the standpoint of 
the employees and tenants, the owners do have a monopoly of "defence"
over the areas in question. Of course, the "anarcho"-capitalist will
argue that the tenants and workers "consent" to *all* the rules and
conditions of a contract when they sign it and so the property owner's
monopoly is not "coerced." However, the "consent" argument is so weak
in conditions of inequality as to be useless (see sections F.2 and 
F.3.1, for example) and, moreover, it can and has been used to justify 
the state. In other words, "consent" in and of itself does not ensure 
that a given regime is not statist. So an argument along these lines 
is deeply flawed and can be used to justify regimes which are little 
better than "industrial feudalism" (such as, as indicated in section B.4, 
company towns, for example -- an institution which right-libertarianism 
has no problem with). Even the "general libertarian law code," could be 
considered a "monopoly of government over a particular area," particularly 
if ordinary people have no real means of affecting the law code, either 
because it is market-driven and so is money-determined, or because it 
will be "natural" law and so unchangeable by mere mortals.

In other words, *if* the state "arrogates to itself a monopoly of force,
of ultimate decision-making power, over a given area territorial area" 
then its pretty clear that the property owner shares this power. As we
indicated in section F.1, Rothbard agrees that the owner is, after all, 
the "ultimate decision-making power" in their workplace or on their land. 
If the boss takes a dislike to you (for example, you do not follow their 
orders) then you get fired. If you cannot get a job or rent the land 
without agreeing to certain conditions (such as not joining a union or 
subscribing to the "defence firm" approved by your employer) then you 
either sign the contract or look for something else. Rothbard fails
to draw the obvious conclusion and instead refers to "prohibiting the 
voluntary purchase and sale of defence and judicial services." [_The 
Ethics of Liberty_, p. 170 and p. 171] But just as surely as the law 
of contract allows the banning of unions from a property, it can just 
as surely ban the sale and purchase of defence and judicial services 
(it could be argued that market forces will stop this happening, but 
this is unlikely as bosses usually have the advantage on the labour 
market and workers have to compromise to get a job). After all, in 
the company towns, only company money was legal tender and company 
police the only law enforcers.

Therefore, it is obvious that the "anarcho"-capitalist system meets
the Weberian criteria of a monopoly to enforce certain rules in a
given area of land. The "general libertarian law code" is a monopoly
and property owners determine the rules that apply to their property.
Moreover, if the rules that property owners enforce are subject to 
rules contained in the monopolistic "general libertarian law code" (for
example, that they cannot ban the sale and purchase of certain products
-- such as defence -- on their own territory) then "anarcho"-capitalism 
*definitely* meets the right-libertarian definition of the state (as 
described by Ayn Rand as an institution "that holds the exclusive power 
to *enforce* certain rules of conduct in a given geographical area" 
[_Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal_, p. 239]) as its "law code" overrides 
the desires of property owners to do what they like on their own property. 

Therefore, no matter how you look at it, "anarcho"-capitalism and its 
"defence" market promotes a "monopoly of ultimate decision making power" 
over a "given territorial area". It is obvious that for anarchists, the 
"anarcho"-capitalist system is a state system. As, as we note, a reasonable 
case can be made for it also being a state in "anarcho"-capitalist theory 
as well.

So, in effect, "anarcho"-capitalism has a *different* sort of state, one 
in which bosses hire and fire the policeman. As Peter Sabatini notes, 
"[w]ithin Libertarianism, Rothbard represents a minority perspective 
that actually argues for the total elimination of the state. However 
Rothbard's claim as an anarchist is quickly voided when it is shown 
that he only wants an end to the public state. In its place he allows 
countless private states, with each person supplying their own police 
force, army, and law, or else purchasing these services from capitalist 
vendors. . . Rothbard sees nothing at all wrong with the amassing of 
wealth, therefore those with more capital will inevitably have greater 
coercive force at their disposal, just as they do now." [_Libertarianism: 
Bogus Anarchy_]

Far from wanting to abolish the state, then, "anarcho"-capitalists only
desire to privatise it - to make it solely accountable to capitalist wealth. 
Their "companies" perform the same services as the state, for the same
people, in the same manner. However, there is one slight difference.
Property owners would be able to select between competing companies
for their "services." Because such "companies" are employed by the boss,
they would be used to reinforce the totalitarian nature of capitalist firms 
by ensuring that the police and the law they enforce are not even slightly 
accountable to ordinary people.

Looking beyond the "defence association" to the defence market itself (as
we argued in the last section), this will become a cartel and so become 
some kind of public state. The very nature of the private state, its need
to co-operate with others in the same industry, push it towards a
monopoly network of firms and so a monopoly of force over a given
area. Given the assumptions used to defend "anarcho"-capitalism, its
system of private statism will develop into public statism - a state
run by managers accountable only to the share-holding elite.

To quote Peter Marshall again, the "anarcho"-capitalists "claim that 
all would benefit from a free exchange on the market, it is by no means
certain; any unfettered market system would most likely sponsor a
reversion to an unequal society with defence associations perpetuating
exploitation and privilege." [_Demanding the Impossible_, p. 565]
History, and current practice, prove this point.

In short, "anarcho"-capitalists are not anarchists at all, they are just
capitalists who desire to see private states develop -- states which are
strictly accountable to their paymasters without even the sham of
democracy we have today. Hence a far better name for "anarcho"-capitalism
would be "private-state" capitalism. At least that way we get a fairer
idea of what they are trying to sell us. As Bob Black writes in _The
Libertarian as Conservative_, "To my mind a right-wing anarchist is just a 
minarchist who'd abolish the state to his own satisfaction by calling it 
something else. . . . They don't denounce what the state does, they just 
object to who's doing it."

F.7 How does the history of "anarcho"-capitalism show that
    it is not anarchist?

Of course, "anarcho"-capitalism does have historic precedents and
"anarcho"-capitalists spend considerable time trying to co-opt 
various individuals into their self-proclaimed tradition of 
"anti-statist" liberalism. That, in itself, should be enough to
show that anarchism and "anarcho"-capitalism have little in 
common as anarchism developed in opposition to liberalism and
its defence of capitalism. Unsurprisingly, these "anti-state"
liberals tended to, at best, refuse to call themselves anarchists
or, at worse, explicitly deny they were anarchists.

One "anarcho"-capitalist overview of their tradition is presented
by David M. Hart. His perspective on anarchism is typical of the
school, noting that in his essay anarchism or anarchist "are used 
in the sense of a political theory which advocates the maximum 
amount of individual liberty, a necessary condition of which is 
the elimination of governmental or other organised force." [David 
M. Hart, "Gustave de Molinari and the Anti-statist Liberal 
Tradition: Part I",  pp. 263-290, _Journal of Libertarian Studies_, 
vol. V, no. 3, p. 284] Yet anarchism has *never* been solely 
concerned with abolishing the state. Rather, anarchists have always
raised economic and social demands and goals along with their 
opposition to the state. As such, anti-statism may be a necessary 
condition to be an anarchist, but not a sufficient one to count a 
specific individual or theory as anarchist.

Specifically, anarchists have turned their analysis onto private
property noting that the hierarchical social relationships created
by inequality of wealth (for example, wage labour) restricts 
individual freedom. This means that if we do seek "the maximum
of individual liberty" then our analysis cannot be limited to
just the state or government. Consequently, to limit anarchism
as Hart does requires substantial rewriting of history, as can
be seen from his account of William Godwin.

Hart tries to co-opt of William Godwin into the ranks of "anti-state" 
liberalism, arguing that he "defended individualism and the right to 
property." [Op. Cit., p. 265] He, of course, quotes from Godwin to 
support his claim yet strangely truncates Godwin's argument to exclude 
his conclusion that "[w]hen the laws of morality shall be clearly 
understood, their excellence universally apprehended, and themselves 
seen to be coincident with each man's private advantage, the idea of 
property in this sense will remain, but no man will have the least 
desire, for purposes of ostentation or luxury, to possess more than 
his neighbours." [_An Enquiry into Political Justice_, p. 199] In 
other words, personal property (possession) would still exist but 
not private property in the sense of capital or inequality of wealth.

This analysis is confirmed in book 8 of Godwin's classic work 
entitled "On Property." Needless to say, Hart fails to mention 
this analysis, unsurprising as it was later reprinted as a socialist 
pamphlet. Godwin thought that the "subject of property is the 
key-stone that completes the fabric of political justice." Like 
Proudhon, Godwin subjects property as well as the state to an 
anarchist analysis. For Godwin, there were "three degrees" of 
property. The first is possession of things you need to live. 
The second is "the empire to which every man is entitled over 
the produce of his own industry." The third is "that which 
occupies the most vigilant attention in the civilised states 
of Europe. It is a system, in whatever manner established, by 
which one man enters into the faculty of disposing of the produce 
of another man's industry." He notes that it is "clear therefore 
that the third species of property is in direct contradiction to 
the second." [Op. Cit., p. 701 and p. 710-2]

Godwin, unlike classical liberals, saw the need to "point 
out the evils of accumulated property," arguing that the
the "spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the 
spirit of fraud . . . are the immediate growth of the 
established administration of property. They are alike hostile 
to intellectual and moral improvement." Like the socialists
he inspired, Godwin argued that "it is to be considered that 
this injustice, the unequal distribution of property, the 
grasping and selfish spirit of individuals, is to be regarded 
as one of the original sources of government, and, as it rises 
in its excesses, is continually demanding and necessitating new 
injustice, new penalties and new slavery." He stressed, "let it 
never be forgotten that accumulated property is usurpation."
[Op. Cit., p. 732, pp. 717-8, and p. 718]

Godwin argued against the current system of property and in favour 
of "the justice of an equal distribution of the good things of 
life." This would be based on "[e]quality of conditions, or, 
in other words, an equal admission to the means of improvement 
and pleasure" as this "is a law rigorously enjoined upon mankind 
by the voice of justice." [Op. Cit., p. 725 and p. 736] Thus his 
anarchist ideas were applied to private property, noting like 
subsequent anarchists that economic inequality resulted in the 
loss of liberty for the many and, consequently, an anarchist 
society would see a radical change in property and property rights.
As Kropotkin noted, Godwin "stated in 1793 in a quite definite
form the political and economic principle of Anarchism."
Little wonder he, like so many others, argued that Godwin was "the 
first theoriser of Socialism without government -- that is to 
say, of Anarchism." [_Environment and Evolution_, p. 62 and p. 26]
For Kropotkin, anarchism was by definition not restricted to
purely political issues but also attacked economic hierarchy,
inequality and injustice. As Peter Marshall confirms, "Godwin's
economics, like his politics, are an extension of his ethics."
[_Demanding the Impossible_, p. 210]

Godwin's theory of property is significant because it reflected 
what was to become standard nineteenth century socialist thought 
on the matter. In Britain, his ideas influenced Robert Owen and, 
as a result, the early socialist movement in that country. His
analysis of property, as noted, predated Proudhon's classic 
anarchist analysis. As such, to state, as Hart did, that Godwin 
simply "concluded that the state was an evil which had to be 
reduced in power if not eliminated completely" while not noting 
his analysis of property gives a radically false presentation 
of his ideas. [Hart, Op. Cit., p. 265] However, it does fit 
into his flawed assertion that anarchism is purely concerned 
with the state. Any evidence to the contrary is simply ignored.

F.7.1 Are competing governments anarchism?

No, of course not. Yet according to "anarcho"-capitalism, it is.
This can be seen from the ideas of Gustave de Molinari.

Hart is on firmer ground when he argues that the 19th century 
French economist Gustave de Molinari is the true founder of 
"anarcho"-capitalism. With Molinari, he argues, "the two different 
currents of anarchist thought converged: he combined the political 
anarchism of Burke and Godwin with the nascent economic anarchism 
of Adam Smith and Say to create a new forms of anarchism" that 
has been called "anarcho-capitalism, or free market anarchism." 
[Op. Cit., p. 269] Of course, Godwin (like other anarchists) did 
not limit his anarchism purely to "political" issues and so he
discussed "economic anarchism" as well in his critique of private
property (as Proudhon also did later). As such, to artificially 
split anarchism into political and economic spheres is both 
historically and logically flawed. While some dictionaries
limit "anarchism" to opposition to the state, anarchists did 
and do not.

The key problem for Hart is that Molinari refused to call himself 
an anarchist. He did not even oppose government, as Hart himself 
notes Molinari proposed a system of insurance companies to 
provide defence of property and "called these insurance companies 
'governments' even though they did not have a monopoly within a 
given geographical area." As Hart notes, Molinari was the sole 
defender of such free-market justice at the time in France. 
[David M. Hart, "Gustave de Molinari and the Anti-statist Liberal 
Tradition: Part II",  pp. 399-434,_Journal of Libertarian Studies_, 
vol. V, no. 4, p. 415 and p. 411] Molinari was clear that he wanted 
"a regime of free government, "counterpoising "monopolist or communist 
governments" to "free governments." This would lead to "freedom of 
government" rather than its abolition (not freedom *from* government). 
For Molinarie the future would not bring "the suppression of the
state which is the dream of the anarchists . . . It will bring the
diffusion of the state within society. That is . . . 'a free state
in a free society.'" [quoted by Hart, Op. Cit., p. 429, p. 411 and 
p. 422] As such, Molinari can hardly be considered an anarchist,
even if "anarchist" is limited to purely being against government.

Moreover, in another sense Molinari was in favour of the state.
As we discuss in section F.6, these companies would have a monopoly
within a given geographical area -- they have to in order to
enforce the property owner's power over those who use, but do 
not own, the property in question.  The key contradiction can be 
seen in Molinari's advocating of company towns, privately owned 
communities (his term was a "proprietary company"). Instead of 
taxes, people would pay rent and the "administration of the 
community would be either left in the hands of the company itself 
or handled special organisations set up for this purpose." Within
such a regime "those with the most property had proportionally the 
greater say in matters which affected the community." If the poor 
objected then they could simply leave. [Op. Cit., pp. 421-2 and
p. 422] 

Given this, the idea that Molinari was an anarchist in any form can
be dismissed. His system was based on privatising government, not
abolishing it (as he himself admitted). This would be different from
the current system, of course, as landlords and capitalists would be
hiring force directly to enforce their decisions rather than relying 
on a state which they control indirectly. This system, as we proved
in section F.6, would not be anarchist as can be seen from American 
history. There capitalists and landlords created their own private 
police forces and armies, which regularly attacked and murdered union 
organisers and strikers. As an example, there is Henry Ford's Service 
Department (private police force):

"In 1932 a hunger march of the unemployed was planned to march up 
to the gates of the Ford plant at Dearborn. . . The machine guns 
of the Dearborn police and the Ford Motor Company's Service Department 
killed [four] and wounded over a score of others. . . Ford was 
fundamentally and entirely opposed to trade unions. The idea of 
working men questioning his prerogatives as an owner was outrageous
. . . [T]he River Rouge plant. . . was dominated by the autocratic 
regime of Bennett's service men. Bennett . . organise[d] and train[ed] 
the three and a half thousand private policemen employed by Ford. His 
task was to maintain discipline amongst the work force, protect Ford's 
property [and power], and prevent unionisation. . . Frank Murphy, 
the mayor of Detroit, claimed that 'Henry Ford employs some of the 
worst gangsters in our city.' The claim was well based. Ford's 
Service Department policed the gates of his plants, infiltrated 
emergent groups of union activists, posed as workers to spy on 
men on the line. . . Under this tyranny the Ford worker had no 
security, no rights. So much so that any information about the 
state of things within the plant could only be freely obtained 
from ex-Ford workers." [Huw Beynon, _Working for Ford_, pp. 29-30] 

The private police attacked women workers handing out pro-union handbills 
and gave them "a severe beating." At Kansas and Dallas "similar beatings 
were handed out to the union men." This use of private police to control 
the work force was not unique. General Motors "spent one million dollars 
on espionage, employing fourteen detective agencies and two hundred spies 
at one time [between 1933 and 1936]. The Pinkerton Detective Agency found 
anti-unionism its most lucrative activity." [Op. Cit., p. 34 and p. 32] 
We must also note that the Pinkerton's had been selling their private 
police services for decades before the 1930s. For over 60 years the 
Pinkerton Detective Agency had "specialised in providing spies, agent 
provocateurs, and private armed forces for employers combating labour 
organisations." By 1892 it "had provided its services for management 
in seventy major labour disputes, and its 2 000 active agents and 30 000 
reserves totalled more than the standing army of the nation." [Jeremy 
Brecher, _Strike!_, p. 55] With this force available, little wonder 
unions found it so hard to survive in the USA. 

Only an "anarcho"-capitalist would deny that this is a private government,
employing private police to enforce private power. Given that unions could 
be considered as "defence" agencies for workers, this suggests a picture 
of how "anarcho"-capitalism may work in practice radically different from
the pictures painted by its advocates. The reason is simple, it does not
ignore inequality and subjects economics to an anarchist analysis. Little
wonder, then, that Proudhon stressed that it "becomes necessary for the
workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions
for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism." Anarchism, in 
other words, would see "[c]apitalistic and proprietary exploitation 
stopped everywhere, the wage system abolished" and so "the economic 
organisation [would] replac[e] the governmental and military system."
[_The General Idea of the Revolution_, p. 227 and p. 281] Clearly, the
idea that Proudhon shared the same political goal as Molinari is a joke. 
He would have dismissed such a system as little more than an updated form 
of feudalism in which the property owner is sovereign and the workers 
subjects (see section B.4 for more details).

Unsurprisingly, Molinari (unlike the individualist anarchists) attacked 
the jury system, arguing that its obliged people to "perform the duties 
of judges. This is pure communism." People would "judge according to the 
colour of their opinions, than according to justice." [quoted by Hart, 
Op. Cit., p. 409] As the jury system used amateurs (i.e. ordinary people) 
rather than full-time professionals it could not be relied upon to defend 
the power and property rights of the rich. As we noted in section F.1.1,
Rothbard criticised the individualist anarchists for supporting juries
for essentially the same reasons. 

But, as is clear from Hart's account, Molinari had little concern 
that working class people should have a say in their own lives beyond 
consuming goods. His perspective can be seen from his lament about 
those "collonies where slavery has been abolished without the compulsory 
labour being replaced with an equivalent quantity of free [sic!] labour 
[i.e., wage labour], there has occurred the opposite of what happens 
everyday before our eyes. Simple workers have been seen to exploit 
in their turn the industrial *entrepreneurs,* demanding from them 
wages which bear absolutely no relation to the legitimate share in 
the product which they ought to receive. The planters were unable 
to obtain for their sugar a sufficient price to cover the increase 
in wages, and were obliged to furnish the extra amount, at first 
out of their profits, and then out of their very capital. A
considerable number of planters have been ruined as a result . . . 
It is doubtless better that these accumulations of capital should be
destroyed than that generations of men should perish [Marx: 'how
generous of M. Molinari'] but would it not be better if both survived?" 
[quoted by Karl Marx, _Capital_, vol. 1, p. 937f] 

So workers exploiting capital is the "opposite of what happens everyday 
before our eyes"? In other words, it is normal that entrepreneurs 
"exploit" workers under capitalism? Similarly, what is a "legitimate 
share" which workers "ought to receive"? Surely that is determined by 
the eternal laws of supply and demand and not what the capitalists (or 
Molinari) thinks is right? And those poor former slave drivers, they 
really do deserve our sympathy. What horrors they face from the 
impositions subjected upon them by their ex-chattels -- they had to 
reduce their profits! How dare their ex-slaves refuse to obey them 
in return for what their ex-owners think was their "legitimate share 
in the produce"! How "simple" these workers are, not understanding 
the sacrifices their former masters suffer nor appreciating how much 
more difficult it is for their ex-masters to create "the product" 
without the whip and the branding iron to aid them! As Marx so 
rightly comments: "And what, if you please, is this 'legitimate
share', which, according to [Molinari's] own admission, the capitalist 
in Europe daily neglects to pay? Over yonder, in the colonies, where the 
workers are so 'simple' as to 'exploit' the capitalist, M. Molinari 
feels a powerful itch to use police methods to set on the right road 
that law of supply and demand which works automatically everywhere 
else." [Op. Cit., p. 937f]

An added difficulty in arguing that Molinari was an anarchist is that he 
was a contemporary of Proudhon, the first self-declared anarchist, and lived 
in a country with a vigorous anarchist movement. Surely if he was really 
an anarchist, he would have proclaimed his kinship with Proudhon and joined 
in the wider movement. He did not, as Hart notes as regards Proudhon:

"their differences in economic theory were considerable, and it is probably 
for this reason that Molinari refused to call himself an anarchist in spite 
of their many similarities in political theory. Molinari refused to accept 
the socialist economic ideas of Proudhon . . . in Molinari's mind, the term 
'anarchist' was intimately linked with socialist and statist economic views." 
[Op. Cit., p. 415]

Yet Proudhon's economic views, like Godwin's, flowed from his anarchist 
analysis and principles. They cannot be arbitrarily separated as Hart 
suggests. So while arguing that "Molinari was just as much an anarchist 
as Proudhon," Hart forgets the key issue. Proudhon was aware that private 
property ensured that the proletarian did not exercise "self-government" 
during working hours, i.e. was not a self-governing individual. As for 
Hart claiming that Proudhon had "statist economic views" it simply shows 
how far an "anarcho"-capitalist perspective is from genuine anarchism. 
Proudhon's economic analysis, his critique of private property and 
capitalism, flowed from his anarchism and was an integral aspect of it.

To restrict anarchism purely to opposition to the state, Hart is 
impoverishing anarchist theory and denying its history. Given
that anarchism was born from a critique of private property as well 
as government, this shows the false nature of Hart's claim that 
"Molinari was the first to develop a theory of free-market, 
proprietary anarchism that extended the laws of the market and 
a rigorous defence of property to its logical extreme." [Op. Cit., 
p. 415 and p. 416] Hart shows how far from anarchism Molinari was 
as Proudhon had turned his anarchist analysis to property, showing 
that "defence of property" lead to the oppression of the many by
the few in social relationships identical to those which mark 
the state. Moreover, Proudhon, argued the state would always be
required to defend such social relations. Privatising it would
hardly be a step forward.

Unsurprisingly, Proudhon dismissed the idea that the laissez faire 
capitalists shared his goals. "The school of Say," Proudhon argued,
was "the chief focus of counter-revolution next to the Jesuits"
and "has for ten years past seemed to exist only to protect and 
applaud the execrable work of the monopolists of money and necessities, 
deepening more and more the obscurity of a science naturally difficult 
and full of complications." Much the same can be said of "anarcho"-
capitalists, incidentally. For Proudhon, "the disciples of Malthus and 
of Say, who oppose with all their might any intervention of the State 
in matters commercial or industrial, do not fail to avail themselves 
of this seemingly liberal attitude, and to show themselves more 
revolutionary than the Revolution. More than one honest searcher 
has been deceived thereby." However, this apparent "anti-statist" 
attitude of supporters of capitalism is false as pure free market 
capitalism cannot solve the social question, which arises because 
of capitalism itself. As such, it was impossible to abolish the
state under capitalism. Thus "this inaction of Power in economic 
matters was the foundation of government. What need should we have 
of a political organisation, if Power once permitted us to enjoy 
economic order?" Instead of capitalism, Proudhon advocated the 
"constitution of Value," the "organisation of credit," the 
elimination of interest, the "establishment of workingmen's 
associations" and "the use of a just price." [_The General Idea 
of the Revolution, p. 225, p. 226 and p. 233]

Clearly, then, the claims that Molinari was an anarchist fail as
he, unlike his followers, were aware of what anarchism actually
stood for. Hart, in his own way, acknowledges this:

"In spite of his protestations to the contrary, Molinari should
be considered an anarchist thinker. His attack on the state's
monopoly of defence must surely warrant the description of
anarchism. His reluctance to accept this label stemmed from the
fact that the socialists had used it first to describe a form
of non-statist society which Molinari definitely opposed. Like
many original thinkers, Molinari had to use the concepts developed
by others to describe his theories. In his case, he had come to
the same political conclusions as the communist anarchists although
he had been working within the liberal tradition, and it is 
therefore not surprising that the terms used by the two schools 
were not compatible. It would not be until the latter half of the 
twentieth century that radical, free-trade liberals would use the
word 'anarchist' to describe their beliefs." [Op. Cit., p. 416]

It should be noted that Proudhon was *not* a communist-anarchist,
but the point remains. The aims of anarchism were recognised by
Molinari as being inconsistent with his ideology. Consequently,
he (rightly) refused the label. If only his self-proclaimed 
followers in the "latter half of the twentieth century" did the 
same anarchists would not have to bother with them! 

As such, it seems ironic that the founder of "anarcho"-capitalism 
should have come to the same conclusion as modern day anarchists 
on the subject of whether his ideas are a form of anarchism or not!

F.7.2 Is government compatible with anarchism?

Of course not, but ironically this is the conclusion arrived at
by Hart's analyst of the British "voluntaryists," particularly 
Auberon Herbert. Voluntaryism was a fringe part of the right-wing
individualist movement inspired by Herbert Spencer, a spokesman 
for free market capitalism in the later half of the nineteenth 
century. As with Molinari, there is a problem with presenting 
this ideology as anarchist, namely that its leading light, 
Herbert, explicitly rejected the label "anarchist." 

Herbert was clearly aware of individualist anarchism and distanced
himself from it. He argued that such a system would be "pandemonium." 
He thought that people should "not direct our attacks - as the 
anarchists do - *against all government*, against government in 
itself" but "only against the overgrown, the exaggerated, the 
insolent, unreasonable and indefensible forms of government, which 
are found everywhere today." Government should be "strictly limited 
to its legitimate duties in defence of self-ownership and individual 
rights." He stressed that "we are governmentalists . . . formally 
constituted by the nation, employing in this matter of force the 
majority method." Moreover, Herbert knew of, and rejected, 
individualist anarchism, considering it to be "founded on a fatal 
mistake." [_Essay X: The Principles Of Voluntaryism And Free Life_] 
As such, claims that he was an anarchist or "anarcho"-capitalist 
cannot be justified. 

Hart is aware of this slight problem, quoting Herbert's claim that 
he aimed for "regularly constituted government, generally accepted by
all citizens for the protection of the individual." [quoted by Hart, 
Op. Cit., p. 86] Like Molinari, Herbert was aware that anarchism 
was a form of socialism and that the political aims could not be 
artificially separated from its economic and social aims. As such, 
he was right *not* to call his ideas anarchism as it would result 
in confusion (particularly as anarchism was a much larger movement 
than his). As Hart acknowledges, Herbert faced the same problems that 
Molinari had with labelling his philosophy. Like Molinari, he rejected 
the term 'anarchism,' which he associated with the socialism of Proudhon 
and . . . terrorism." While "quite tolerant" of individualist anarchism, 
he thought they "were mistaken in their rejections of 'government.'" 
[Op. Cit., p. 86]

However, Hart knows better than Herbert about his own ideas, arguing 
that his ideology "is in fact a new form of anarchism, since the most 
important aspect of the modern state, the monopoly of the use of force 
in a given area, is rejected in no uncertain terms by both men." [Op.
Cit., p. 86] He does mention that Benjamin Tucker called Herbert a
"true anarchist in everything but name," but Tucker denied that
Kropotkin was an anarchist suggesting that he was hardly a reliable
guide. [quoted by Hart, Op. Cit., p. 87] As it stands, it seems that
Tucker was mistaken in his evaluation of Herbert's politics.

Economically, Herbert was not an anarchist, arguing that the state
should protect Lockean property rights. Of course, Hart may argue
that these economic differences are not relevant to the issue of 
Herbert's anarchism but that is simply to repeat the claim that 
anarchism is simply concerned with government, a claim which is 
hard to support. This position cannot be maintained, given that
both Herbert and Molinari defended the right of capitalists and 
landlords to force their employees and tenants to follow their 
orders. Their "governments" existed to defend the capitalist from 
rebellious workers, to break unions, strikes and occupations. In 
other words, they were a monopoly of the use of force in a given 
area to enforce the monopoly of power in a given area (namely, the 
wishes of the property owner). While they may have argued that this
was "defence of liberty," in reality it is defence of power and
authority.

What about if we just look at the political aspects of his ideas? 
Did Herbert actually advocate anarchism? No, far from it. He clearly
demanded a minimal state based on voluntary taxation. The state 
would not use force of any kind, "except for purposes of restraining 
force." He argued that in his system, while "the state should compel 
no services and exact no payments by force," it "should be free to 
conduct many useful undertakings . . . in competition with all voluntary 
agencies . . . in dependence on voluntary payments." [Herbert, Op. Cit.] 
As such, "the state" would remain and unless he is using the term "state" 
in some highly unusual way, it is clear that he means a system 
where individuals live under a single elected government as their 
common law maker, judge and defender within a given territory. 

This becomes clearer once we look at how the state would be organised.
In his essay "A Politician in Sight of Haven," Herbert does discuss
the franchise, stating it would be limited to those who paid a
voluntary "income tax," anyone "paying it would have the right 
to vote; those who did not pay it would be -- as is just -- 
without the franchise. There would be no other tax." The law 
would be strictly limited, of course, and the "government . . .
must confine itself simply to the defense of life and property, 
whether as regards internal or external defense." In other words,
Herbert was a minimal statist, with his government elected by a
majority of those who choose to pay their income tax and funded
by that (and by any other voluntary taxes they decided to pay).
Whether individuals and companies could hire their own private 
police in such a regime is irrelevant in determining whether it 
is an anarchy.

This can be best seen by comparing Herbert with Ayn Rand. No one 
would ever claim Rand was an anarchist, yet her ideas were extremely 
similar to Herbert's. Like Herbert, Rand supported laissez-faire 
capitalism and was against the "initiation of force." Like Herbert,
she extended this principle to favour a government funded by voluntary 
means ["Government Financing in a Free Society," _The Virtue of 
Selfishness_, pp. 116-20] Moreover, like Herbert, she explicitly 
denied being an anarchist and, again like Herbert, thought the idea 
of competing defence agencies ("governments") would result in chaos. 
The similarities with Herbert are clear, yet no "anarcho"-capitalist 
would claim that Rand was an anarchist, yet they do claim that Herbert 
was. 

This position is, of course, deeply illogical and flows from the 
non-anarchist nature of "anarcho"-capitalism. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 
when Rothbard discusses the ideas of the "voluntaryists" he fails to 
address the key issue of who determines the laws being enforced in 
society. For Rothbard, the key issue is *who* is enforcing the law, 
not where that law comes from (as long, of course, as it is a law 
code he approves of). The implications of this is significant, as 
it implies that "anarchism" need not be opposed to either the state 
nor government! This can be clearly seen from Rothbard's analysis of 
voluntary taxation.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, when Rothbard discusses the ideas of the
"voluntaryists" he fails to address the key issue of who determines
the laws being enforced in society. For Rothbard, the key issue is
*who* is enforcing the law, not where that law comes from (as long,
of course, as it is a law code he approves of). The implications
of this is significant, as it implies that "anarchism" need not be 
opposed to either the state nor government! This can be clearly seen 
from Rothbard's analysis of Herbert and the "voluntaryist" movement.
 
Rothbard, correctly, notes that Herbert advocated voluntary taxation as 
the means of funding a state whose basic role was to enforce Lockean
property rights. For Rothbard, the key issue was *not* who determines
the law but who enforces it. For Rothbard, it should be privatised 
police and courts and he suggests that the "voluntary taxationists 
have never attempted to answer this problem; they have rather stubbornly 
assumed that no one would set up a competing defence agency within a 
State's territorial limits." If the state *did* bar such firms, then 
that system is not a genuine free market. However, "if the government 
*did* permit free competition in defence service, there would soon no 
longer be a central government over the territory. Defence agencies, 
police and judicial, would compete with one another in the same 
uncoerced manner as the producers of any other service on the market." 
[_Power and Market_, p. 122 and p. 123] 

However, this misses the point totally. The key issue that Rothbard 
ignores is who determines the laws which these private "defence" agencies 
would enforce. If the laws are determined by a central government, then
the fact that citizen's can hire private police and attend private courts
does not stop the regime being statist. We can safely assume Rand, for
example, would have had no problem with companies providing private security 
guards or the hiring of private detectives within the context of her 
minimal state. Ironically, Rothbard stresses the need for such a monopoly 
legal system:

"While 'the government' would cease to exist, the same cannot be said for 
a constitution or a rule of law, which, in fact, would take on in the free 
society a far more important function than at present. For the freely 
competing judicial agencies would have to be guided by a body of absolute 
law to enable them to distinguish objectively between defence and invasion. 
This law, embodying elaborations upon the basic injunction to defend person 
and property from acts of invasion, would be codified in the basic legal code. 
Failure to establish such a code of law would tend to break down the free 
market, for then defence against invasion could not be adequately achieved."
[Op. Cit., p. 123-4]

So if you violate the "absolute law" defending (absolute) property rights
then you would be in trouble. The problem now lies in determining who sets 
that law. Rothbard is silent on how his system of monopoly laws are determined 
or specified. The "voluntaryists" did propose a solution, namely a central 
government elected by the majority of those who voluntarily decided to pay 
an income tax. In the words of Herbert: 

"We agree that there must be a central agency to deal with crime - an 
agency that defends the liberty of all men, and employs force against 
the uses of force; but my central agency rests upon voluntary support, 
whilst Mr. Levy's central agency rests on compulsory support." [quoted 
by Carl Watner, "The English Individualists As They Appear In Liberty," 
pp. 191-211, _Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty_, p. 194]

And all Rothbard is concerned over private cops would exist or not! This
lack of concern over the existence of the state and government flows from 
the strange fact that "anarcho"-capitalists commonly use the term "anarchism" 
to refer to any philosophy that opposes all forms of initiatory coercion. 
Notice that government does not play a part in this definition, thus 
Rothbard can analyse Herbert's politics without commenting on who 
determines the law his private "defence" agencies enforce. For Rothbard,
"an anarchist society" is defined "as one where there is no legal possibility 
for coercive aggression against the person and property of any individual." He 
then moved onto the state, defining that as an "institution which possesses 
one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires 
its income by the physical coercion known as 'taxation'; and (2) it acquires 
and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defence service 
(police and courts) over a given territorial area." ["Society without a State", 
in _Nomos XIX_, Pennock and Chapman (eds.)., p. 192]

This is highly unusual definition of "anarchism," given that it utterly fails to
mention or define government. This, perhaps, is understandable as any attempt
to define it in terms of "monopoly of decision-making power" results in showing
that capitalism is statist (see section F.1 for a summary). The key issue here 
is the term "legal possibility." That suggestions a system of laws which 
determine what is "coercive aggression" and what constitutes what is and what 
is not legitimate "property." Herbert is considered by "anarcho"-capitalists as 
one of them. Which brings us to a strange conclusion, that for 
"anarcho"-capitalists you can have a system of "anarchism" in which there is 
a government and state -- as long  as the state does not impose taxation nor 
stop private police forces from operating! 

As Rothbard argues "if a government based on voluntary taxation permits free 
competition, the result will be the purely free-market system . . . The previous 
government would now simply be one competing defence agency among many on the 
market." [_Power and Market_, p. 124] That the government is specifying what 
is and is not legal does not seem to bother him or even cross his mind. Why 
should it, when the existence of government is irrelevant to his definition 
of anarchism and the state? That private police are enforcing a monopoly law 
determined by the government seems hardly a step in the right direction nor 
can it be considered as anarchism. Perhaps this is unsurprising, for under
his system there would be "a basic, common Law Code" which "all would have to 
abide by" as well as "some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority
consensus in society . . . whose decision will be accepted by the great
majority of the public." ["Society without a State," Op. Cit., p. 205]

At least Herbert is clear that this would be a government system, unlike 
Rothbard who assumes a monopoly law but seems to think that this is not a 
government or a state. As David Wieck argued, this is illogical for 
according to Rothbard "all 'would have to' conform to the same legal 
code" and this can only be achieved by means of "the forceful action 
of adherents to the code against those who flout it" and so "in his 
system *there would stand over against every individual the legal authority
of all the others.* An individual who did not recognise private property as 
legitimate would surely perceive this as a tyranny of law, a tyranny of the 
majority or of the most powerful -- in short, a hydra-headed state. If the 
law code is itself unitary, then this multiple state might be said to have 
properly a single head -- the law . . . But it looks as though one might 
still call this 'a state,' under Rothbard's definition, by satisfying *de 
facto* one of his pair of sufficient conditions: 'It asserts and usually 
obtains a coerced monopoly of provision of defence service (police and
courts) over a given territorial area' . . .  Hobbes's individual sovereign 
would seem to have become many sovereigns -- with but one law, however, and 
in truth, therefore, a single sovereign in Hobbes's more important sense of 
the latter term. One might better, and less confusingly, call this a 
libertarian state than an anarchy." ["Anarchist Justice", in _Nomos XIX_, 
Pennock and Chapman (eds.)., pp. 216-7]

The obvious recipients of the coercion of the new state would be those who
rejected the authority of their bosses and landlords, those who reject the 
Lockean property rights Rothbard and Herbert hold dear. In such cases, the
rebels and any "defence agency" (like, say, a union) which defended them 
would be driven out of business as it violated the law of the land. How 
this is different from a state banning competing agencies is hard to 
determine. This is a "difficulty" argues Wieck, which "results from the 
attachment of a principle of private property, and of unrestricted 
accumulation of wealth, to the principle of individual liberty. This 
increases sharply the possibility that many reasonable people who respect 
their fellow men and women will find themselves outside the law because 
of dissent from a property interpretation of liberty." Similarly, there is 
the economic results of capitalism. "One can imagine," Wieck continues, 
"that those who lose out badly in the free competition of Rothbard's economic 
system, perhaps a considerable number, might regard the legal authority as an 
alien power, state for them, based on violence, and might be quite unmoved by
the fact that, just as under nineteenth century capitalism, a principle of 
liberty was the justification for it all." [Op. Cit., p. 217 and pp. 217-8]

F.7.3 Can there be a "right-wing" anarchism?

Hart, of course, mentions the individualist anarchists, calling Tucker's 
ideas "*laissez faire* liberalism." [Op. Cit., p. 87] However, Tucker
called his ideas "socialism" and presented a left-wing critique of most
aspects of liberalism, particularly its Lockean based private property
rights. Tucker based much of his ideas on property on Proudhon, so if
Hart dismisses the latter as a socialist then this must apply to the
former. Given that he notes that there are "two main kinds of anarchist
thought," namely "communist anarchism which denies the right of an
individual to seek profit, charge rent or interest and to own property"
and a "'right-wing' proprietary anarchism, which vigorously defends 
these rights" then Tucker, like Godwin, would have to be placed in the
"left-wing" camp. ["Gustave de Molinari and the Anti-statist Liberal 
Tradition: Part II", Op. Cit., p. 427] Tucker, after all, argued that 
he aimed for the end of profit, interest and rent and attacked private 
property in land and housing beyond "occupancy and use." 

As can be seen, Hart's account of the history of "anti-state" liberalism
is flawed. Godwin is included only by ignoring his views on property,
views which in many ways reflects the later "socialist" (i.e. 
anarchist) analysis of Proudhon. He then discusses a few individuals
who were alone in their opinions even within extreme free market right
and all of whom knew of anarchism and explicitly rejected the name for
their respective ideologies. In fact, they preferred the term "government"
to describe their systems which, on the face of it, would be hard to
reconcile with the usual "anarcho"-capitalist definition of anarchism
as being "no government." Hart's discussion of individualist anarchism
is equally flawed, failing to discuss their economic views (just as
well, as its links to "left-wing" anarchism would be obvious).

However, the similarities of Molinari's views with what later became 
known as "anarcho"-capitalism are clear. Hart notes that with Molinari's 
death in 1912, "liberal anti-statism virtually disappeared until it was 
rediscovered by the economist Murray Rothbard in the late 1950's" 
["Gustave de Molinari and the Anti-statist Liberal Tradition: Part 
III", Op. Cit., p. 88] While this fringe is somewhat bigger than 
previously, the fact remains that the ideas expounded by Rothbard
are just as alien to the anarchist tradition as Molinari's. It 
is a shame that Rothbard, like his predecessors, did not call
his ideology something other than anarchism. Not only would it have
been more accurate, it would also have lead to much less confusion
and no need to write this section of the FAQ! As it stands, the
only reason why "anarcho"-capitalism is considered a form of "anarchism" 
by some is because one person (Rothbard) decided to steal the
name of a well established and widespread political and social theory
and movement and apply it to an ideology with little, if anything,
in common with it.

As Hart inadvertently shows, it is not a firm base to build a claim.
That anyone can consider "anarcho"-capitalism as anarchist simply 
flows from a lack of knowledge about anarchism. As numerous anarchists
have argued. For example, "Rothbard's conjunction of anarchism with 
capitalism," according to David Wieck, "results in a conception that is 
entirely outside the mainstream of anarchist theoretical writings or social 
movements . . . this conjunction is a self-contradiction." He stressed that 
"the main traditions of anarchism are entirely different. These traditions, 
and theoretical writings associated with them, express the perspectives and 
the aspirations, and also, sometimes, the rage, of the oppressed people in 
human society: not only those economically oppressed, although the major 
anarchist movements have been mainly movements of workers and peasants, 
but also those oppressed by power in all those social dimensions . . . 
including of course that of political power expressed in the state." In 
other words, "anarchism represents . .  . a moral commitment (Rothbard's 
anarchism I take to be diametrically opposite)." ["Anarchist Justice", 
libertarian state than an anarchy." ["Anarchist Justice", in _Nomos XIX_, 
Pennock and Chapman (eds.), p. 215, p. 229 and p. 234] 

It is a shame that some academics consider only the word Rothbard uses
as relevant rather than the content and its relation to anarchist theory
and history. If they did, they would soon realise that the expressed
opposition of so many anarchists to "anarcho"-capitalism is something
which cannot be ignored or dismissed. In other words, a "right-wing"
anarchist cannot and does not exist, no matter how often they use that
word to describe their ideology. 

The reason is simple. Anarchist economics and politics cannot be artificially
separated, they are linked. Godwin and Proudhon did not stop their 
analysis at the state. They extended it the social relationships produced
by inequality of wealth, i.e. economic power as well as political power.
To see why, we need only consult Rothbard's work. As noted in the last
section, for Rothbard the key issue with the "voluntary taxationists"
was not who determined the "body of absolute law" but rather who enforced 
it. In his discussion, he argued that a democratic "defence agency" is 
at a disadvantage in his "free market" system. As he put it:

"It would, in fact, be competing at a severe disadvantage, having been 
established on the principle of 'democratic voting.' Looked at as a 
market phenomenon, 'democratic voting' (one vote per person) is simply 
the method of the consumer 'co-operative.' Empirically, it has been 
demonstrated time and again that co-operatives cannot compete successfully 
against stock-owned companies, especially when both are equal before the 
law. There is no reason to believe that co-operatives for defence would 
be any more efficient. Hence, we may expect the old co-operative government 
to 'wither away' through loss of customers on the market, while joint-stock 
(i.e., corporate) defence agencies would become the prevailing market form."

Notice how he assumes that both a co-operative and corporation would be
"equal before the law." But who determines that law? Obviously *not* a
democratically elected government, as the idea of "one person, one vote"
in determining the common law all are subject to is "inefficient." Nor does
he think, like the individualist anarchists, that the law would be judged
by juries along with the facts. As we note in section F.1.1, he rejects
that in favour of it being determined by "Libertarian lawyers and jurists."
Thus the law is unchangeable by ordinary people and enforced by private
defence agencies hired to protect the liberty and property of the owning
class. In the case of a capitalist economy, this means defending the
power of landlords and capitalists against rebel tenants and workers.

This means that Rothbard's "common Law Code" will be determined, interpreted,
enforced and amended by corporations based on the will of the majority of 
shareholders, i.e. the rich. That hardly seems likely to produce equality 
before the law. As he argues in a footnote:

"There is a strong *a priori* reason for believing that corporations will be 
superior to co-operatives in any given situation. For if each owner receives 
only one vote regardless of how much money he has invested in a project 
(and earnings are divided in the same way), there is no incentive to invest 
more than the next man; in fact, every incentive is the other way. This 
hampering of investment militates strongly against the co-operative form."

So *if* the law is determined by the defence agencies and courts then it
will be determined by those who have invested most in these companies. As
it is unlikely that the rich will invest in defence firms which do not 
support their property rights, power, profits and definition of property
rights, it is clear that agencies which favour the wealthy will survive
on the market. The idea that market demand will counter this class rule
seems unlikely, given Rothbard's own argument. After all, in order to 
compete successfully you need more than demand, you need source of 
investment. If co-operative defence agencies do form, they will be at
a market disadvantage due to lack of investment. As argued in section
J.5.12, even though co-operatives are more efficient than capitalist 
firms lack of investment (caused by the lack of control by capitalists
Rothbard notes) stops them replacing wage slavery. Thus capitalist wealth 
and power inhibits the spread of freedom in production. If we apply his 
own argument to Rothbard's system, we suggest that the market in "defence" 
will also stop the spread of more libertarian associations thanks to 
capitalist power and wealth. In other words, like any market, Rothbard's
"defence" market will simply reflect the interests of the elite, not
the masses.

Moreover, we can expect any democratic defence agency (like a union) to
support, say, striking workers or squatting tenants, to be crushed. This
is because, as Rothbard stresses, *all* "defence" firms would be expected 
to apply the "common" law, as written by "Libertarian lawyers and jurists." 
If they did not they would quickly be labelled "outlaw" agencies and crushed 
by the others. Ironically, Tucker would join Bakunin and Kropotkin in an 
"anarchist" court accused to violating "anarchist" law by practising and 
advocating "occupancy and use" rather than the approved Rothbardian property 
rights. Even if these democratic "defence" agencies could survive and not
be driven out of the market by a combination of lack of investment and
violence due to their "outlaw" status, there is another problem. As we
discussed in section F.1, landlords and capitalists have a monopoly of
decision making power over their property. As such, they can simply refuse 
to recognise any democratic agency as a legitimate defence association and 
use the same tactics perfected against unions to ensure that it does not 
gain a foothold in their domain (see section F.6 for more details).

Clearly, then, a "right-wing" anarchism is impossible as any system based
on capitalist property rights will simply be an oligarchy run by and for
the wealthy. As Rothbard notes, any defence agency based on democratic
principles will not survive in the "market" for defence simply because it
does not allow the wealthy to control it and its decisions. Little 
wonder Proudhon argued that laissez-faire capitalism meant "the victory 
of the strong over the weak, of those who own property over those who own 
nothing." [quoted by Peter Marshall, _Demanding the Impossible_, p. 259]

F.8 What role did the state take in the creation of capitalism?

If the "anarcho"-capitalist is to claim with any plausibility that "real"
capitalism is non-statist or that it can exist without a state, it must
be shown that capitalism evolved naturally, in opposition to state
intervention. However, in reality, the opposite is the case. Capitalism
was born from state intervention and, in the words of Kropotkin, "the State
. . . and capitalism . . . developed side by side, mutually supporting and
re-enforcing each other." [_Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets_, p. 181]

Numerous writers have made this point. For example, in Karl Polanyi's
flawed masterpiece _The Great Transformation_ we read that "the road to 
the free market was opened and kept open by an enormous increase in
continuous, centrally organised and controlled interventionism" by the
state [p. 140]. This intervention took many forms -- for example, state
support during "mercantilism," which allowed the "manufactures" (i.e.
industry) to survive and develop, enclosures of common land, and so forth.
In addition, the slave trade, the invasion and brutal conquest of the
Americas and other "primitive" nations, and the looting of gold, slaves,
and raw materials from abroad also enriched the European economy, giving
the development of capitalism an added boost. Thus Kropotkin:

"The history of the genesis of capital has already been told by socialists
many times. They have described how it was born of war and pillage, of
slavery and serfdom, of modern fraud and exploitation. They have shown
how it is nourished by the blood of the worker, and how little by little
it has conquered the whole world." [Op. Cit., p. 207]

Or, if Kropotkin seems too committed to be fair, we have John Stuart Mill's 
statement that:

"The social arrangements of modern Europe commenced from a distribution
of property which was the result, not of just partition, or acquisition
by industry, but of conquest and violence. . . " [_Principles of Political
Economy_, p. 15]

Therefore, when supporters of "libertarian" capitalism say they are 
against the "initiation of force," they mean only *new* initiations 
of force; for the system they support was born from numerous initiations 
of force in the past. And, as can be seen from the history of the last 
100 years, it also requires state intervention to keep it going (section 
D.1, "Why does  state intervention occur?," addresses this point in some 
detail). Indeed, many thinkers have argued that it was precisely this
state support and coercion (particularly the separation of people from
the land) that played the *key* role in allowing capitalism to develop 
rather than the theory that "previous savings" did so. As the noted
German thinker Franz Oppenheimer argued, "the concept of a 'primitive
accumulation,' or an original store of wealth, in land and in movable
property, brought about by means of purely economic forces" while 
"seem[ing] quite plausible" is in fact "utterly mistaken; it is a
'fairly tale,' or it is a class theory used to justify the privileges
of the upper classes." [_The State_, pp. 5-6]

This thesis will be discussed in the following sections. It is, of course,
ironic to hear right-wing libertarians sing the praises of a capitalism
that never existed and urge its adoption by all nations, in spite of the
historical evidence suggesting that only state intervention made
capitalist economies viable -- even in that Mecca of "free enterprise,"
the United States. As Noam Chomsky argues, "who but a lunatic could have
opposed the development of a textile industry in New England in the early
nineteenth century, when British textile production was so much more 
efficient that half the New England industrial sector would have gone 
bankrupt without very high protective tariffs, thus terminating industrial
development in the United States? Or the high tariffs that radically
undermined economic efficiency to allow the United States to develop steel
and other manufacturing capacities? Or the gross distortions of the
market that created modern electronics?" [_World Orders, Old and New_,
p. 168]. To claim, therefore, that "mercantilism" is not capitalism
makes little sense. Without mercantilism, "proper" capitalism would never
have developed, and any attempt to divorce a social system from its roots
is ahistoric and makes a mockery of critical thought.

Similarly, it is somewhat ironic when "anarcho"-capitalists and right
libertarians claim that they support the freedom of individuals to 
choose how to live. After all, the working class was not given *that*
particular choice when capitalism was developing. Indeed, their right 
to choose their own way of life was constantly violated and denied. So 
to claim that *now* (after capitalism has been created) we get the 
chance to try and live as we like is insulting in the extreme. The 
available options we have are not independent of the society we live 
in and are decisively shaped by the past. To claim we are "free" to 
live as we like (within the laws of capitalism) is basically to argue 
that we are able to "buy" the freedom that every individual is due from 
those who have stolen it from us in the first place! 

Needless to say, some right-libertarians recognise that the state played 
a massive role in encouraging industrialisation (more correct to say 
"proletarianisation" as it created a working class which did not own
the tools they used, although we stress that this process started on 
the land and not in industry). So they contrast "bad" business people 
(who took state aid) and "good" ones. Thus Rothbard's comment that 
Marxists have "made no particular distinction between 'bourgeoisie' 
who made use of the state, and bourgeoisie who acted on the free 
market." [_The Ethics of Liberty_, p. 72]

But such an argument is nonsense as it ignores the fact that the "free 
market" is a network (and defined by the state by the property rights 
it enforces). For example, the owners of the American steel and other 
companies who grew rich and their companies big behind protectionist 
walls are obviously "bad" bourgeoisie. But are the bourgeoisie who supplied 
the steel companies with coal, machinery, food, "defence" and so on not also 
benefiting from state action? And the suppliers of the luxury goods to the 
wealthy steel company owners, did they not benefit from state action? Or the 
suppliers of commodities to the workers that laboured in the steel factories 
that the tariffs made possible, did they not benefit? And the suppliers to 
these suppliers? And the suppliers to these suppliers? Did not the users of
technology first introduced into industry by companies protected by state 
orders also not benefit? Did not the capitalists who had a large and landless
working class to select from benefit from the "land monopoly" even though
they may not have, unlike other capitalists, directly advocated it? It 
increased the pool of wage labour for *all* capitalists and increased their
bargaining position/power in the labour market at the expense of the working
class. In other words, such a policy helped maintain capitalist market power, 
irrespective of whether individual capitalists encouraged politicians to 
vote to create/maintain it. And, similarly, *all* capitalists benefited 
from the changes in common law to recognise and protect capitalist private 
property and rights that the state enforced during the 19th century (see 
section B.2.5). 

It appears that, for Rothbard, the collusion between state and business
is the fault, not of capitalism, but of particular capitalists. The system
is pure; only individuals are corrupt. But, for anarchists, the origins
of the modern state-capitalist system lies not in the individual qualities
of capitalists as such but in the dynamic and evolution of capitalism itself 
-- a complex interaction of class interest, class struggle, social defence
against the destructive actions of the market, individual qualities and
so forth. In other words, Rothbard's claims are flawed -- they fail to 
understand capitalism as a *system* and its dynamic nature.

Indeed, if we look at the role of the state in creating capitalism we
could be tempted to rename "anarcho"-capitalism "marxian-capitalism". 
This is because, given the historical evidence, a political theory 
can be developed by which the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" is
created and that this capitalist state "withers away" into anarchy.
That this means rejecting the economic and social ideas of Marxism
and their replacement by their direct opposite should not mean that
we should reject the idea (after all, that is what "anarcho"-capitalism
has done to Individualist Anarchism!). But we doubt that many 
"anarcho"-capitalists will accept such a name change (even though 
this would reflect their politics far better; after all they do not 
object to past initiations of force, just current ones and many do
seem to think that the modern state *will* wither away due to market
forces).

But this is beside the point. The fact remains that state action was
required to create and maintain capitalism. Without state support it
is doubtful that capitalism would have developed at all.

So, when the right suggests that "we" be "left alone," what they mean by
"we" comes into clear focus when we consider how capitalism developed.
Artisans and peasants were only "left alone" to starve, and the working
classes of industrial capitalism were only "left alone" outside work and
for only as long as they respected the rules of their "betters." As for
the other side of the class divide, they desire to be "left alone" to
exercise their power over others, as we will see. That modern "capitalism"
is, in effect, a kind of "corporate mercantilism," with states providing
the conditions that allow corporations to flourish (e.g. tax breaks, 
subsidies, bailouts, anti-labour laws, etc.) says more about the statist 
roots of capitalism than the ideologically correct definition of capitalism 
used by its supporters.

F.8.1 What social forces lay behind the rise of capitalism?

Capitalist society is a relatively recent development. As Murray Bookchin 
points out, for a "long era, perhaps spanning more than five centuries," 
capitalism "coexisted with feudal and simple commodity relationships"
in Europe. He argues that this period "simply cannot be treated as 
'transitional' without reading back the present into the past." [_From 
Urbanisation to Cities_, p. 179] In other words, capitalism was not
a inevitable outcome of "history" or social evolution.

He goes on to note that capitalism existed "with growing significance
in the mixed economy of the West from the fourteenth century up to the
seventeenth" but that it "literally exploded into being in Europe, 
particularly England, during the eighteenth and especially nineteenth
centuries." [Op. Cit., p. 181] The question arises, what lay behind 
this "growing significance"? Did capitalism "explode" due to its 
inherently more efficient nature or where there other, non-economic, 
forces at work? As we will show, it was most definitely the later one --
capitalism was born not from economic forces but from the political 
actions of the social elites which its usury enriched. Unlike artisan
(simple commodity) production, wage labour generates inequalities 
and wealth for the few and so will be selected, protected and encouraged
by those who control the state in their own economic and social interests.

The development of capitalism in Europe was favoured by two social elites, 
the rising capitalist class within the degenerating medieval cities and 
the absolutist state. The medieval city was "thoroughly changed by the
gradual increase in the power of commercial capital, due primarily to
foreign trade. . . By this the inner unity of the commune was loosened,
giving place to a growing caste system and leading necessarily to a
progressive inequality of social interests. The privileged minorities
pressed ever more definitely towards a centralisation of the political
forces of the community. . . Mercantilism in the perishing city republics
led logically to a demand for larger economic units [i.e. to nationalise
the market]; and by this the desire for stronger political forms was
greatly strengthened. . . . Thus the city gradually became a small
state, paving the way for the coming national state." [Rudolf Rocker,
_Nationalism and Culture_, p. 94]

The rising economic power of the proto-capitalists conflicted with that of
the feudal lords, which meant that the former required help to consolidate
their position. That aid came in the form of the monarchical state. With
the force of absolutism behind it, capital could start the process of
increasing its power and influence by expanding the "market" through
state action. 
 
As far as the absolutist state was concerned, it "was dependent upon the
help of these new economic forces, and vice versa. . . ." "The absolutist
state," Rocker argues, "whose coffers the expansion of commerce filled. . ., 
at first furthered the plans of commercial capital. Its armies and fleets . . .
contributed to the expansion of industrial production because they
demanded a number of things for whose large-scale production the shops 
of small tradesmen were no longer adapted. Thus gradually arose the
so-called manufactures, the forerunners of the later large industries." 
[Op. Cit., p. 117-8]
 
Some of the most important state actions from the standpoint of early
industry were the so-called Enclosure Acts, by which the "commons" -- the
free farmland shared communally by the peasants in most rural villages --
was "enclosed" or incorporated into the estates of various landlords as
private property (see section F.8.3). This ensured a pool of landless
workers who had no option but to sell their labour to capitalists. Indeed,
the widespread independence caused by the possession of the majority of
households of land caused the rising class of merchants to complain
"that men who should work as wage-labourers cling to the soil, and in
the naughtiness of their hearts prefer independence as squatters to
employment by a master." [R.H Tawney, cited by Allan Elgar in _The 
Apostles of Greed_, p. 12]

In addition, other forms of state aid ensured that capitalist firms got
a head start, so ensuring their dominance over other forms of work (such
as co-operatives). A major way of creating a pool of resources that
could be used for investment was the use of mercantilist policies which
used protectionist measures to enrich capitalists and landlords at the
expense of consumers and their workers. For example, one of most common 
complaints of early capitalists was that workers could not turn up to 
work regularly. Once they had worked a few days, they disappeared as
they had earned enough money to live on. With higher prices for food, 
caused by protectionist measures, workers had to work longer and harder 
and so became accustomed to factory labour. In addition, mercantilism
allowed native industry to develop by barring foreign competition and
so allowed industrialists to reap excess profits which they could then
use to increase their investments. In the words of Marian-socialist 
economic historian Maurice Dobbs:

"In short, the Mercantile System was a system of State-regulated exploitation 
through trade which played a highly important rule in the adolescence of 
capitalist industry: it was essentially the economic policy of an age of 
primitive accumulation." [_Studies in Capitalism Development_, p. 209]

As Rocker summarises, "when abolutism had victoriously overcome all 
opposition to national unification, but its furthering of mercantilism 
and economic monopoly it gave the whole social evolution a direction 
which could only lead to capitalism." [Op. Cit., pp. 116-7]

This process of state aid in capitalist development was also seen in the
United States of America. As Edward Herman points out, the "level of 
government involvement in business in the United States from the late 
eighteenth century to the present has followed a U-shaped pattern: There 
was extensive government intervention in the pre-Civil War period (major 
subsidies, joint ventures with active government participation and direct 
government production), then a quasi-laissez faire period between the 
Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century [a period marked by 
"the aggressive use of tariff protection" and state supported railway 
construction, a key factor in capitalist expansion in the USA], followed 
by a gradual upswing of government intervention in the twentieth century, 
which accelerated after 1930." [_Corporate Control, Corporate Power_, 
p. 162]

Such intervention ensured that income was transferred from workers to
capitalists. Under state protection, America industrialised by forcing
the consumer to enrich the capitalists and increase their capital stock.
"According to one study, of the tariff had been removed in the 1830s 
'about half the industrial sector of New England would have been 
bankrupted' . . . the tariff became a near-permanent political 
institution representing government assistance to manufacturing. It 
kept price levels from being driven down by foreign competition and
thereby shifted the distribution of income in favour of owners of 
industrial property to the disadvantage of workers and customers." 
[Richard B. Du Boff, _Accumulation and Power_, p. 56]

This protection was essential, for as Du Boff notes, the "end of the 
European wars in 1814 . . . reopened the United States to a flood of 
British imports that drove many American competitors out of business. 
Large portions of the newly expanded manufacturing base were wiped out, 
bringing a decade of near-stagnation." Unsurprisingly, the "era of
protectionism began in 1816, with northern agitation for higher
tariffs. . . " [Op. Cit., p. 14, p. 55]

Combined with ready repression of the labour movement and government 
"homesteading" acts (see section F.8.5), tariffs were the American
equivalent of mercantilism (which, after all, was above all else a
policy of protectionism, i.e. the use of government to stimulate
the growth of native industry). Only once America was at the top
of the economic pile did it renounce state intervention (just as
Britain did, we must note). 

This is *not* to suggest that government aid was limited to tariffs.
The state played a key role in the development of industry and 
manufacturing. As John Zerzan notes, the "role of the State is 
tellingly reflected by the fact that the 'armoury system' now rivals
the older 'American system of manufactures' term as the more
accurate to describe the new system of production methods" developed
in the early 1800s. [_Elements of Refusal_, p. 100] Moreover, the
"lead in technological innovation [during the US Industrial 
Revolution] came in armaments where assured government orders 
justified high fixed-cost investments in special-pursue machinery
and managerial personnel. Indeed, some of the pioneering effects
occurred in government-owned armouries." [William Lazonick, _Competitive
Advantage on the Shop Floor_, p. 218] The government also "actively 
furthered this process [of "commercial revolution"] with public
works in transportation and communication." [Richard B. Du Boff,
Op. Cit., p. 15]

In addition to this "physical" aid, "state government provided critical
help, with devices like the chartered corporation" [Ibid.] and,
as we noted in section B.2.5, changes in the legal system which 
favoured capitalist interests over the rest of society.

Interestingly, there was increasing inequality between 1840 and 1860 in
the USA This coincided with the victory of wage labour and industrial
capitalism -- the 1820s "constituted a watershed in U.S. life. By
the end of that decade . . .industrialism assured its decisive American
victory, by the end of the 1830s all of its cardinal features were
definitely present." [John Zerzan, Op. Cit., p. 99] This is unsurprising,
for as we have argued many times, the capitalist market tends to 
increase, not reduce, inequalities between individuals and classes.
Little wonder the Individualist Anarchists at the time denounced the
way that property had been transformed into "a power [with which] to 
accumulate an income" (to use the words of J.K. Ingalls).

Over all, as Paul Ormerod puts it, the "advice to follow pure free-market
polices seems . . . to be contrary to the lessons of virtually the whole
of economic history since the Industrial Revolution . . . every country
which has moved into . . . strong sustained growth . . . has done so
in outright violation of pure, free-market principles." "The model of 
entrepreneurial activity in the product market, with judicious state 
support plus repression in the labour market, seems to be a good model 
of economic development."  [_The Death of Economics_, p. 63]

Thus the social forces at work creating capitalism was a combination of
capitalist activity and state action. But without the support of the
state, it is doubtful that capitalist activity would have been enough
to generate the initial accumulation required to start the economic
ball rolling. Hence the necessity of Mercantilism in Europe and its
modified cousin of state aid, tariffs and "homestead acts" in America.

F.8.2 What was the social context of the statement "laissez-faire?"

The honeymoon of interests between the early capitalists and autocratic
kings did not last long. "This selfsame monarchy, which for weighty
reasons sought to further the aims of commercial capital and was. . .
itself aided in its development by capital, grew at last into a 
crippling obstacle to any further development of European industry." 
[Rudolf Rocker, _Nationalism and Culture_, p. 117] 

This is the social context of the expression "laissez-faire" -- a 
system which has outgrown the supports that protected it in its 
early stages of growth. Just as children eventually rebel against 
the protection and rules of their parents, so the capitalists rebelled
against the over-bearing support of the absolutist state. Mercantilist
policies favoured some industries and harmed the growth of industrial
capitalism in others. The rules and regulations imposed upon those
it did favour reduced the flexibility of capitalists to changing 
environments. As Rocker argues, "no matter how the abolutist state 
strove, in its own interest, to meety the demands of commerce, it
still put on industry countless fetters which became gradually
more and more oppressive . . . [it] became an unbearable burden . . .
which paralysed all economic and social life." [Op. Cit., p. 119] 
All in all, mercantilism became more of a hindrance than a help 
and so had to be replaced. With the growth of economic and
social power by the capitalist class, this replacement was 
made easier.

Errico Malatesta notes, "[t]he development of production, the vast expansion 
of commerce, the immeasurable power assumed by money . . . have guaranteed
this supremacy [of economic power over the political power] to the
capitalist class which, no longer content with enjoying the support of
the government, demanded that government arise from its own ranks. A
government which owed its origin to the right of conquest . . . though
subject by existing circumstances to the capitalist class, went on
maintaining a proud and contemptuous attitude towards its now wealthy
former slaves, and had pretensions to independence of domination. That 
government was indeed the defender, the property owners' gendarme, but
the kind of gendarmes who think they are somebody, and behave in an
arrogant manner towards the people they have to escort and defend, when
they don't rob or kill them at the next street corner; and the capitalist
class got rid of it . . . [and replaced it] by a government [and state] . . .
at all times under its control and specifically organised to defend that
class against any possible demands by the disinherited." [_Anarchy_, 
pp. 19-20]

Malatesta here indicates the true meaning of "leave us alone," or
"laissez-faire." The *absolutist* state (not "the state" per se) began 
to interfere with capitalists' profit-making activities and authority, 
so they determined that it had to go -- as happened, for example, in the
English, French and American revolutions. However, in other ways, state
intervention in society was encouraged and applauded by capitalists. "It
is ironic that the main protagonists of the State, in its political and
administrative authority, were the middle-class Utilitarians, on the other
side of whose Statist banner were inscribed the doctrines of economic
Laissez Faire" [E.P. Thompson, _The Making of the English Working Class_, 
p. 90]. Capitalists simply wanted *capitalist* states to replace
monarchical states, so that heads of government would follow state
economic policies regarded by capitalists as beneficial to their 
class as a whole. And as development economist Lance Taylor argues:

"In the long run, there are no laissez-faire transitions to modern
economic growth. The state has always intervened to create a capitalist
class, and then it has to regulate the capitalist class, and then the
state has to worry about being taken over by the capitalist class,
but the state has always been there." [quoted by Noam Chomsky, _Year
501_, p. 104]

In order to attack mercantilism, the early capitalists had to ignore
the successful impact of its policies in developing industry and
a "store of wealth" for future economic activity. As William Lazonick
points out, "the political purpose of [Adam Smith's] the _Wealth of 
Nations_ was to attack the mercantilist institutions that the British
economy had built up over the previous two hundred years. . . In
his attack on these institutions, Smith might have asked why the
extent of the world market available to Britain in the late eighteenth
century was *so uniquely under British control.* If Smith had
asked this 'big question,' he might have been forced to grant credit
for [it] . . . to the very mercantilist institutions he was 
attacking . . ." Moreover, he "might have recognised the integral
relation between economic and political power in the rise of Britain
to international dominance." Overall, "[w]hate the British advocates
of laissez-faire neglected to talk about was the role that a system
of national power had played in creating conditions for Britain to
embark on its dynamic development path . . . They did not bother to
ask how Britain had attained th[e] position [of 'workshop of the
world'], while they conveniently ignored the on going system of
national power - the British Empire -- that . . . continued to
support Britain's position." [_Business Organisation and the Myth 
of the Market Economy_, p. 2, p. 3, p.5]

Similar comments are applicable to American supporters of laissez
faire who fail to notice that the "traditional" American support for 
world-wide free trade is quite a recent phenomenon. It started only 
at the end of the Second World War (although, of course, *within*
America military Keynesian policies were utilised). While American 
industry was developing, the country had no time for laissez-faire. 
After it had grown strong, the United States began preaching laissez-faire 
to the rest of the world -- and began to kid itself about its own 
history, believing its slogans about laissez-faire as the secret of 
its success. In addition to the tariff, nineteenth-century America 
went in heavily for industrial planning--occasionally under that name 
but more often in the name of national defence. The military was the
excuse for what is today termed rebuilding infrastructure, picking 
winners, promoting research, and co-ordinating industrial growth (as 
it still is, we should add). 

As Richard B. Du Boff points out, the "anti-state" backlash of the 
1840s onwards in America was highly selective, as the general
opinion was that "[h]enceforth, if governments wished to subsidise
private business operations, there would be no objection. But if
public power were to be used to control business actions or if
the public sector were to undertake economic initiatives on its
own, it would run up against the determined opposition of private
capital." [_Accumulation and Power_, p. 26] In other words, the 
state could aid capitalists indirectly (via tariffs, land policy,
repression of the labour movement, infrastructure subsidy and so 
on) and it would "leave them alone" to oppress and exploit workers,
exploit consumers, build their industrial empires and so forth.

So, the expression "laissez-faire" dates from the period when 
capitalists were objecting to the restrictions that helped create
them in the first place. It has little to do with freedom as such and 
far more to do with the needs of capitalist power and profits (as Murray
Bookchin argues, it is an error to depict this "revolutionary era and its
democratic aspirations as 'bourgeois,' an imagery that makes capitalism
a system more committed to freedom, or even ordinary civil liberties,
than it was historically" [_From Urbanisation to Cities_, p. 180f]). 
Takis Fotopoules, in his essay "The Nation-state and the Market", 
indicates that the social forces at work in "freeing" the market 
did not represent a "natural" evolution towards freedom:

"Contrary to what liberals and Marxists assert, marketisation of the
economy was not just an evolutionary process, following the expansion of
trade under mercantilism . . . modern [i.e. capitalist] markets did not
evolve out of local markets and/or markets for foreign goods . . . the
nation-state, which was just emerging at the end of the Middle Ages,
played a crucial role creating the conditions for the 'nationalisation' 
of the market . . . and . . . by freeing the market [i.e. the rich and
proto-capitalists] from effective social control." [_Society and Nature_,
Vol. 3, pp. 44-45]

The "freeing" of the market thus means freeing those who "own" most of 
the market (i.e. the wealthy elite) from "effective social control," but
the rest of society was not as lucky. Peter Kropotkin makes a similar point
in _Modern Science and Anarchism_, "[w]hile giving the capitalist any
degree of free scope to amass his wealth at the expense of the helpless
labourers, the government has *nowhere* and *never*. . .afforded the
labourers the opportunity 'to do as they pleased'." [_Kropotkin's
Revolutionary Pamphlets_, p. 182]

The one essential form of support the "Libertarian" right wants the state 
(or "defence" firms) to provide capitalism is the enforcement of property 
rights -- the right of property owners to "do as they like" on their own 
property, which can have obvious and extensive social impacts. What 
"libertarian" capitalists object to is attempts by others -- workers, 
society as a whole, the state, etc. -- to interfere with the authority 
of bosses. That this is just the defence of privilege and power (and 
*not* freedom) has been discussed in section B and elsewhere in 
section F, so we will not repeat ourselves here.

Samuel Johnson once observed that "we hear the loudest *yelps* for 
liberty among the drivers of Negroes." Our modern "libertarian" 
capitalist drivers of wage-slaves are yelping for exactly the
same kind of "liberty." [Johnson quoted in Noam Chomsky, _Year 501_, 
p. 141] 

F.8.3 What other forms did state intervention in creating capitalism take?

Beyond being a paymaster for new forms of production and social relations
and defending the owners' power, the state intervened economically in
other ways as well. As we noted in section B.2.5, the state played a key
role in transforming the law codes of society in a capitalistic fashion,
ignoring custom and common law to do so. Similarly, the use of tariffs 
and the granting of monopolies to companies played an important role
in accumulating capital at the expense of working people, as did the
breaking of unions and strikes by force. 

However, one of the most blatant of these acts was the enclosure of 
common land. In Britain, by means of the Enclosure Acts, land that 
had been freely used by poor peasants for farming their small family 
plots was claimed by large landlords as private property. As E.P. Thompson
notes, "Parliament and law imposed capitalist definitions to exclusive
property in land" [_Customs in Common_, p. 163]. Property rights, which
exclusively favoured the rich, replaced the use rights and free agreement
that had governed peasant's use of the commons. Unlike use rights, which
rest in the individual, property rights require state intervention to
create and maintain.

This stealing of the land should not be under estimated. Without land, 
you cannot live and have to sell your liberty to others. This places
those with capital at an advantage, which will tend to increase,
rather than decrease, the inequalities in society (and so place the
landless workers at an increasing disadvantage over time). This
process can be seen from early stages of capitalism. With the 
enclosure of the land, an agricultural workforce was created which
had to travel where the work was. This influx of landless ex-peasants 
into the towns ensured that the traditional guild system crumbled 
and was transformed into capitalistic industry with bosses and wage 
slaves rather than master craftsmen and their journeymen. Hence the 
enclosure of land played a key role, for "it is clear that economic 
inequalities are unlikely to create a division of society into an 
employing master class and a subject wage-earning class, unless 
access to the mans of production, including land, is by some means 
or another barred to a substantial section of the community." 
[Maurice Dobbs, _Studies in Capitalist Development_, p. 253]

The importance of access to land is summarised by this limerick 
by the followers of Henry George (a 19th century writer who argued
for a "single tax" and the nationalisation of land). The Georgites 
got their basic argument on the importance of land down these few, 
excellent lines:

		A college economist planned
		To live without access to land
		He would have succeeded
		But found that he needed
		Food, shelter and somewhere to stand.

Thus the Individualist (and other) anarchists' concern over the
"land monopoly" of which the Enclosure Acts were but one part. 
The land monopoly, to use Tucker's words, "consists in the 
enforcement by government of land titles which do not rest upon
personal occupancy and cultivation." [_The Anarchist Reader_,
p. 150] It is important to remember that wage labour first 
developed on the land and it was the protection of land titles
of landlords and nobility, combined with enclosure, that meant
people could not just work their own land. 

In other words, the circumstances so created by enclosing the land 
and enforcing property rights to large estates ensured that capitalists
did not have to point a gun at workers head to get them to work long hours 
in authoritarian, dehumanising conditions. In such circumstances,
when the majority are dispossessed and face the threat of starvation, 
poverty, homelessness and so on, "initiation of force" is *not required.*
But guns *were* required to enforce the system of private property that 
created the labour market in the first place, to enforce the enclosure 
of common land and protect the estates of the nobility and wealthy.

In addition to increasing the availability of land on the market, the
enclosures also had the effect of destroying working-class independence.
Through these Acts, innumerable peasants were excluded from access to
their former means of livelihood, forcing them to migrate to the cities 
to seek work in the newly emerging factories of the budding capitalist 
class, who were thus provided with a ready source of cheap labour. The
capitalists, of course, did not describe the results this way, but
attempted to obfuscate the issue with their usual rhetoric about
civilisation and progress. Thus John Bellers, a 17th-century supporter
of enclosures, claimed that commons were "a hindrance to Industry, and .
. . Nurseries of Idleness and Insolence." The "forests and great Commons
make the Poor that are upon them too much like the *indians.*" [quoted by
Thompson, Op. Cit., p. 163] Elsewhere Thompson argues that the commons
"were now seen as a dangerous centre of indiscipline . . . Ideology was
added to self-interest. It became a matter of public-spirited policy
for gentlemen to remove cottagers from the commons, reduce his labourers
to dependence . . ." [_The Making of the English Working Class_, 
pp. 242-3]

The commons gave working-class people a degree of independence which
allowed them to be "insolent" to their betters. This had to be stopped,
as it undermined to the very roots of authority relationships within
society. The commons *increased* freedom for ordinary people and made
them less willing to follow orders and accept wage labour. The reference
to "Indians" is important, as the independence and freedom of Native
Americans is well documented. The common feature of both cultures was
communal ownership of the means of production and free access to it
(usufruct). This is discussed further in section I.7 (Won't Libertarian 
Socialism destroy individuality?)

As the early American economist Edward Wakefield noted in 1833, "where
land is cheap and all are free, where every one who so pleases can easily
obtain a piece of land for himself, not only is labour dear, as respects
the labourer's share of the product, but the difficulty is to obtain
combined labour at any price." [_England and America_, quoted by 
Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, _Commonsense for Hard Times_, 
p. 24]

The enclosure of the commons (in whatever form it took -- see section
F.8.5 for the US equivalent) solved both problems -- the high cost of
labour, and the freedom and dignity of the worker. The enclosures
perfectly illustrate the principle that capitalism requires a state to
ensure that the majority of people do not have free access to any means
of livelihood and so must sell themselves to capitalists in order to
survive. There is no doubt that if the state had "left alone" the European 
peasantry, allowing them to continue their collective farming practices
("collective farming" because, as Kropotkin shows in _Mutual Aid_, the
peasants not only shared the land but much of the farm labour as well), 
capitalism could not have taken hold (see _Mutual Aid_, pp. 184-189, 
for more on the European enclosures). As Kropotkin notes, "[i]nstances
of commoners themselves dividing their lands were rare, everywhere the
State coerced them to enforce the division, or simply favoured the
private appropriation of their lands" by the nobles and wealthy. 
[_Mutual Aid_, p. 188]

Thus Kropotkin's statement that "to speak of the natural death of the 
village community [or the commons] in virtue of economical law is as
grim a joke as to speak of the natural death of soldiers slaughtered
on a battlefield." [Op. Cit., p. 189]

Like the more recent case of fascist Chile, "free market" capitalism was
imposed on the majority of society by an elite using the authoritarian
state. This was recognised by Adam Smith when he opposed state
intervention in _The Wealth of Nations_. In Smith's day, the government
was openly and unashamedly an instrument of wealth owners. Less than 
10 per cent of British men (and no women) had the right to vote. When 
Smith opposed state interference, he was opposing the imposition of
wealth owners' interests on everybody else (and, of course, how "liberal",
nevermind "libertarian", is a political system in which the many follow 
the rules and laws set-down in the so-called interests of all by the 
few? As history shows, any minority given, or who take, such power *will* 
abuse it in their own interests). Today, the situation is reversed, with 
neo-liberals and right libertarians opposing state interference in the 
economy (e.g. regulation of Big Business) so as to prevent the public 
from having even a minor impact on the power or interests of the elite. 

The fact that "free market" capitalism always requires introduction by an
authoritarian state should make all honest "Libertarians" ask: How "free"
is the "free market"? And why, when it is introduced, do the rich get
richer and the poor poorer? This was the case in Chile (see Section
C.11). For the poverty associated with the rise of capitalism in England
200 years ago, E.P. Thompson's _The Making of the English Working Class_
provides a detailed discussion. Howard Zinn's _A People's History of the
United States_ describes the poverty associated with 19th-century US
capitalism.

F.8.4 Aren't the enclosures a socialist myth?

The short answer is no, they are not. While a lot of historical analysis 
has been spent in trying to deny the extent and impact of the enclosures,
the simple fact is (in the words of noted historian E.P. Thompson) 
enclosure "was a plain enough case of class robbery, played according
to the fair rules of property and law laid down by a parliament of
property-owners and lawyers." [_The Making of the English Working 
Class_, pp. 237-8]

The enclosures were one of the ways that the "land monopoly" was created.
The land monopoly was used to refer to capitalist property rights and 
ownership of land by (among others) the Individualist Anarchists. Instead
of an "occupancy and use" regime advocated by anarchists, the land monopoly
allowed a few to bar the many from the land -- so creating a class of 
people with nothing to sell but their labour. While this monopoly is less
important these days in developed nations (few people know how to farm) 
it was essential as a means of consolidating capitalism. Given the choice,
most people preferred to become independent farmers rather than wage workers
(see next section).

However, the importance of the enclosure movement is downplayed by 
supporters of capitalism. Little wonder, for it is something of an
embarrassment for them to acknowledge that the creation of capitalism
was somewhat less than "immaculate" -- after all, capitalism is portrayed
as an almost ideal society of freedom. To find out that an idol has
feet of clay and that we are still living with the impact of its 
origins is something pro-capitalists must deny. So *is* the enclosures
a socialist myth? Most claims that it is flow from the work of the
historian J.D. Chambers' famous essay "Enclosures and the Labour Supply
in the Industrial Revolution." [_Economic History Review_, 2nd series,
no. 5, August 1953] In this essay, Chambers attempts to refute Karl
Marx's account of the enclosures and the role it played in what Marx
called "primitive accumulation."

We cannot be expected to provide an extensive account of the debate
that has raged over this issue. All we can do is provide a summary 
of the work of William Lazonick who presented an excellent reply to
those who claim that the enclosures were an unimportant historical
event. We are drawing upon his summary of his excellent essay "Karl
Marx and Enclosures in England" [_Review of Radical Political Economy_,
no. 6, Summer, 1974] which can be found in his books _Competitive
Advantage on the Shop Floor_ and _Business Organisation and the Myth 
of the Market Economy_. There are three main claims against the socialist
account of the enclosures. We will cover each in turn.

Firstly, it is often claimed that the enclosures drove the uprooted 
cottager and small peasant into industry. However, this was never
claimed. It is correct that the agricultural revolution associated
with the enclosures *increased* the demand for farm labour as claimed
by Chambers and others. And this is the whole point - enclosures 
created a pool of dispossessed labourers who had to sell their 
time/liberty to survive. The "critical transformation was not the
level of agricultural employment before and after enclosure but
the changes in employment relations caused by the reorganisation
of landholdings and the reallocation of access to land." [_Competitive
Advantage on the Shop Floor_, p. 30] Thus the key feature of the
enclosures was that it created a supply for farm labour, a supply
that had no choice but to work for another. This would drive down
wages and increase demand. Moreover, freed from the land, these 
workers could later move to the towns in search for better work.

Secondly, it is argued that the number of small farm owners increased,
or at least did not greatly decline, and so the enclosure movement was
unimportant. Again, this misses the point. Small farm owners can still
employ wage workers (i.e. become capitalist farmers as opposed to
"yeomen" -- independent peasant proprietor). As Lazonick notes, "[i]t
is true that after 1750 some petty proprietors continued to occupy
and work their own land. But in a world of capitalist agriculture,
the yeomanry no longer played an important role in determining the
course of capitalist agriculture. As a social class that could 
influence the evolution of British economy society, the yeomanry
had disappeared." [Op. Cit., p. 32]

Thirdly, it is often claimed that it was population growth, rather than 
enclosures, that caused the supply of wage workers. So was population
growth more important that enclosures? Maurice Dobbs argues that "the 
centuries in which a proletariat was most rapidly recruited were apt to 
be those of slow rather than of rapid natural increase of population,
and the paucity or plenitude of a labour reserve in different countries
was not correlated with comparable difference in their rates of 
population-growth." [_Studies in Capitalist Development_, p. 223] 
Moreover, the population argument ignores the question of whether 
the changes in society caused by enclosures and the rise of capitalism 
have an impact on the observed trends towards earlier marriage and 
larger families after 1750. Lazonick argues that "[t]here is reason 
to believe that they did." [Op. Cit., p. 33] Also, of course, the use 
of child labour in the factories created an economic incentive to have 
more children, an incentive created by the developing capitalist system. 
Overall, Lazonick notes that "[t]o argue that population growth created 
the industrial labour supply is to ignore these momentous social 
transformations" associated with the rise of capitalism. [_Business 
Organisation and the Myth of the Market Economy_, p. 273]

In other words, there is good reason to think that the enclosures, far
from being some kind of socialist myth, in fact played a key role in
the development of capitalism. As Lazonick himself notes, "Chambers
misunderstood" "the argument concerning the 'institutional creation'
of a proletarianised (i.e. landless) workforce. Indeed, Chamber's
own evidence and logic tend to support the Marxian [and anarchist!]
argument, when it is properly understood." [Op. Cit., p. 273]

F.8.5 What about the lack of enclosures in the Americas?

The enclosure movement was but one way of creating the "land monopoly"
which ensured the creation of a working class. The circumstances facing 
the ruling class in the Americas were distinctly different than in 
the Old World and so the "land monopoly" took a different form there. 
In the Americas, enclosures were unimportant as customary land rights 
did not really exist. Here the problem was that (after the original 
users of the land were eliminated, of course) there were vast tracks 
of land available for people to use. 

Unsurprisingly, there was a movement towards independent farming and 
this pushed up the price of labour, by reducing the supply. Capitalists
found it difficult to find workers willing to work for them at wages
low enough to provide them with sufficient profits. It was due the
difficulty in finding cheap enough labour that capitalists in America
turned to slavery. All things being equal, wage labour *is* more
productive than slavery. But in early America all things were *not*
equal. Having access to cheap (indeed, free) land meant that working
people had a choice, and few desired to become wage slaves. Because 
of this, capitalists turned to slavery in the South and the "land
monopoly" in the North and West. 

This was because, in the words of Maurice Dobbs, it "became clear to
those who wished to reproduce capitalist relations of production in 
the new country that the foundation-stone of their endeavour must be
the restriction of land-ownership to a minority and the exclusion of
the majority from any share in [productive] property." [_Studies in
Capitalist Development_, pp. 221-2] As one radical historian puts
it, "[w]hen land is 'free' or 'cheap'. as it was in different regions 
of the United States before the 1830s, there was no compulsion for 
farmers to introduce labour-saving technology. As a result, 
'independent household production' . . . hindered the development 
of capitalism . . . [by] allowing large portions of the population 
to escape wage labour." [Charlie Post, "The 'Agricultural Revolution' 
in the United States", pp. 216-228, _Science and Society_, vol. 61, 
no. 2, p. 221]

It was precisely this option (i.e. of independent production) that
had to be destroyed in order for capitalist industry to develop. 
The state had to violate the holy laws of "supply and demand"
by controlling the access to land in order to ensure the normal
workings of "supply and demand" in the labour market (i.e. that 
the bargaining position on the labour market favoured employer 
over employee). Once this situation became the typical one (i.e.
when the option of self-employment was effectively eliminated)
a (protectionist based) "laissez-faire" approach could be adopted 
and state action used only to protect private property from the 
actions of the dispossessed.

So how was this transformation of land ownership achieved?

Instead of allowing settlers to appropriate their own farms as was
the case before the 1830s, the state stepped in once the army had 
cleared out the original users. Its first major role was to enforce 
legal rights of property on unused land. Land stolen from the Native 
Americans was sold at auction to the highest bidders, namely speculators, 
who then sold it on to farmers. This process started right "after
the revolution, [when] huge sections of land were bought up by rich
speculators" and their claims supported by the law [Howard Zinn, _A 
People's History of the United States_, p. 125] Thus land which should
have been free was sold to land-hungry farmers and the few enriched
themselves at the expense of the many. Not only did this increase
inequality within society, it also encouraged the development of wage
labour -- having to pay for land would have ensured that many immigrants 
remained on the East Coast until they had enough money. Thus a pool of 
people with little option but to sell their labour was increased due to 
state protection of unoccupied land. That the land usually ended up in 
the hands of farmers did not (could not) countermand the shift in class
forces that this policy created.

This was also the essential role of the various "Homesteading Acts" and, 
in general, the "Federal land law in the 19th century provided for the 
sale of most of the public domain at public auction to the higher bidder 
. . . Actual settlers were forced to buy land from speculators, at 
prices considerably above the federal minimal price" (which few people 
could afford anyway) [Charlie Post, Op. Cit., p. 222]. Little wonder 
the Individualist Anarchists supported an "occupancy and use" system 
of land ownership as a key way of stopping capitalist and landlord
usury as well as the development of capitalism itself.

This change in the appropriation of land had significant effects on
agriculture and the desirability of taking up farming for immigrants.
As Post notes, "[w]hen the social conditions for obtaining and maintaining
possession of land change, as they did in the midwest between 1830 and 
1840, pursuing the goal of preserving [family ownership and control] . . .
produced very different results. In order to pay growing mortgages, 
debts and taxes, family farmers were compelled to specialise production
toward cash crops and to market more and more of their output." 
[Op. Cit., p. 221-2]

So, in order to pay for land which was formerly free, farmers got 
themselves into debt and increasingly turned to the market to pay it
off. Thus, the "Federal land system, by transforming land into a commodity
and stimulating land speculation, made the midwestern farmers dependent
upon markets for the continual possession of their farms." [Charlie
Post, Op. Cit., p. 223] Once on the market, farmers had to invest in
new machinery and this also got them into debt. In the face of a bad 
harvest or market glut, they could not repay their loans and their 
farms had to be sold to so do so. By 1880, 25% of all farms were 
rented by tenants, and the numbers kept rising. 

This means that Murray Rothbard's comments that "once the land was 
purchased by the settler, the injustice disappeared" are nonsense -- the 
injustice was transmitted to other parts of society and this, along 
with the legacy of the original injustice, lived on and helped transform 
society towards capitalism. In addition, his comments about "the 
establishment in North America of a truly libertarian land system" 
would be one the Individualist Anarchists would have seriously 
disagreed with! [_The Ethics of Liberty_, p. 73]

Thus state action, in restricting free access to the land, ensured that 
workers were dependent on wage labour. In addition, the  "transformation 
of social property relations in northern agriculture set the stage for 
the 'agricultural revolution' of the 1840s and 1850s . . . [R]ising 
debts and taxes forced midwestern family farmers to compete as 
commodity producers in order to maintain their land-holding . . . 
The transformation . . . was the central precondition for the 
development of industrial capitalism in the United States." 
[Charlie Post, Ibid., p. 226]

In addition to seizing the land and distributing it in such a way
as to benefit capitalist industry, the "government played its part 
in helping the bankers and hurting the farmers; it kept the amount 
of money - based in the gold supply - steady while the population
rose, so there was less and less money in circulation. The farmer 
had to pay off his debts in dollars that were harder to get. The 
bankers, getting loans back, were getting dollars worth more than 
when they loaned them out - a kind of interest on top of interest. 
That was why . . . farmers' movements [like the Individualist 
Anarchists, we must add] . . . [talked about] putting more money 
in circulation." [Howard Zinn, Op. Cit., p. 278]

Overall, therefore, state action ensured the transformation of
America from a society of independent workers to a capitalist one.
By creating and enforcing the "land monopoly" (of which state
ownership of unoccupied land and its enforcement of landlord
rights were the most important) the state ensured that the 
balance of class forces tipped in favour of the capitalist
class. By removing the option of farming your own land, the
US government created its own form of enclosure and the creation
of a landless workforce with little option but to sell its 
liberty on the "free market". This, combined with protectionism,
ensured the transformation of American society from a pre-capitalist
one into a capitalist one. They was nothing "natural" about it.

Little wonder the Individualist Anarchist J.K. Ingalls attacked
the "land monopoly" in the following words:

"The earth, with its vast resources of mineral wealth, its spontaneous
productions and its fertile soil, the free gift of God and the common
patrimony of mankind, has for long centuries been held in the grasp of
one set of oppressors by right of conquest or right of discovery; and
it is now held by another, through the right of purchase from them.
All of man's natural possessions . . . have been claimed as property;
nor has man himself escaped the insatiate jaws of greed. The invasion
of his rights and possessions has resulted . . . in clothing property
with a power to accumulate an income." [quoted by James Martin, _Men 
Against the State_, p. 142]

F.8.6 How did working people view the rise of capitalism?

The best example of how hated capitalism was can be seen by the rise 
and spread of the socialist movement, in all its many forms, across the
world. It is no coincidence that the development of capitalism also saw
the rise of socialist theories. However, in order to fully understand how 
different capitalism was from previous economic systems, we will consider 
early capitalism in the US, which for many "Libertarians" is *the* example 
of the "capitalism-equals-freedom" argument.

Early America was pervaded by artisan production -- individual ownership
of the means of production. Unlike capitalism, this system is *not*
marked by the separation of the worker from the means of life. Most
people did not have to work for another, and so did not. As Jeremy
Brecher notes, in 1831 the "great majority of Americans were farmers
working their own land, primarily for their own needs. Most of the rest
were self-employed artisans, merchants, traders, and professionals. 
Other classes - employees and industrialists in the North, slaves and
planters in the South - were relatively small. The great majority of
Americans were independent and free from anybody's command." [_Strike!_,
p. xxi] These conditions created the high cost of combined (wage) 
labour which ensured the practice of slavery existed.

However, toward the middle of the 19th century the economy began to 
change. Capitalism began to be imported into American society as the 
infrastructure was improved, which allowed markets for manufactured 
goods to grow. Soon, due to (state-supported) capitalist competition, 
artisan production was replaced by wage labour. Thus "evolved" modern 
capitalism. Many workers understood, resented, and opposed their 
increasing subjugation to their employers ("the masters", to use Adam 
Smith's expression), which could not be reconciled with the principles 
of freedom and economic independence that had marked American life and 
sunk deeply into mass consciousness during the days of the early economy. 
In 1854, for example, a group of skilled piano makers wrote that "the day 
is far distant when they [wage earners] will so far forget what is due to 
manhood as to glory in a system forced upon them by their necessity and in 
opposition to their feelings of independence and self-respect. May the 
piano trade be spared such exhibitions of the degrading power of the day 
[wage] system." [quoted by Brecher and Costello, _Common Sense for Hard 
Times_, p. 26]

Clearly the working class did not consider working for a daily wage, in
contrast to working for themselves and selling their own product, to be 
a step forward for liberty or individual dignity. The difference between 
selling the product of one's labour and selling one's labour (i.e.
oneself) was seen and condemned ("[w]hen the producer . . . sold his
product, he retained himself. But when he came to sell his labour, he
sold himself . . . the extension [of wage labour] to the skilled
worker was regarded by him as a symbol of a deeper change" [Norman
Ware, _The Industrial Worker, 1840-1860_, p. xiv]). Indeed, one group
of workers argued that they were "slaves in the strictest sense of
the word" as they had "to toil from the rising of the sun to the going
down of the same for our masters - aye, masters, and for our daily
bread" [Quoted by Ware, Op. Cit., p. 42] and another argued that "the
factory system contains in itself the elements of slavery, we think
no sound reasoning can deny, and everyday continues to add power to 
its incorporate sovereignty, while the sovereignty of the working
people decreases in the same degree." [quoted by Brecher and Costello,
Op. Cit., p. 29]

Almost as soon as there were wage workers, there were strikes, machine
breaking, riots, unions and many other forms of resistance. John Zerzan's 
argument that there was a "relentless assault on the worker's historical 
rights to free time, self-education, craftsmanship, and play was at 
the heart of the rise of the factory system" is extremely accurate 
[_Elements of Refusal_, p. 105]. And it was an assault that workers 
resisted with all their might. In response to being subjected to the
"law of value," workers rebelled and tried to organise themselves to 
fight the powers that be and to replace the system with a co-operative 
one. As the printer's union argued, "[we] regard such an organisation 
[a union] not only as an agent of immediate relief, but also as an 
essential to the ultimate destruction of those unnatural relations at 
present subsisting between the interests of the employing and the 
employed classes. . . .[W]hen labour determines to sell itself no
longer to speculators, but to become its own employer, to own and 
enjoy itself and the fruit thereof, the necessity for scales of 
prices will have passed away and labour will be forever rescued 
from the control of the capitalist." [quoted by Brecher and Costello, 
Op. Cit., pp. 27-28]

Little wonder, then, why wage labourers considered capitalism as a 
form of "slavery" and why the term "wage slavery" became so popular 
in the anarchist movement. It was just reflecting the feelings of those
who experienced the wages system at first hand and joined the socialist
and anarchist movements. As labour historian Norman Ware notes, the 
"term 'wage slave' had a much better standing in the forties [of the 
19th century] than it has today. It was not then regarded as an empty
shibboleth of the soap-box orator. This would suggest that it has
suffered only the normal degradation of language, has become a *cliche*,
not that it is a grossly misleading characterisation." [Op. Cit., p. xvf]

These responses of workers to the experience of wage labour is important
to show that capitalism is by no means "natural." The fact is the first
generation of workers tried to avoid wage labour is at all possible as
they hated the restrictions of freedom it imposed upon them. They were
perfectly aware that wage labour was wage slavery -- that they were
decidedly *unfree* during working hours and subjected to the will of
another. While many working people now are accustomed to wage labour
(while often hating their job) the actual process of resistance to
the development of capitalism indicates well its inherently authoritarian
nature. Only once other options were closed off and capitalists given 
an edge in the "free" market by state action did people accept and 
become accustomed to wage labour. 

Opposition to wage labour and factory fascism was/is widespread and seems
to occur wherever it is encountered. "Research has shown", summarises
William Lazonick, "that the 'free-born Englishman' of the eighteenth
century - even those who, by force of circumstance, had to submit to
agricultural wage labour - tenaciously resisted entry into the
capitalist workshop." [_Business Organisation and the Myth of the 
Market Economy_, p. 37] British workers shared the dislike of wage
labour of their American cousins. A "Member of the Builders' Union"
in the 1830s argued that the trade unions "will not only strike
for less work, and more wages, but will ultimately *abolish wages,*
become their own masters and work for each other; labour and capital
will no longer be separate but will be indissolubly joined together
in the hands of workmen and work-women." [quoted by Geoffrey Ostergaard,
_The Tradition of Workers' Control_, p. 133] This is unsurprising,
for as Ostergaard notes, "the workers then, who had not been swallowed
up whole by the industrial revolution, could make critical comparisons
between the factory system and what preceded it." [Op. Cit., p. 134]
While wage slavery may seem "natural" today, the first generation of
wage labourers saw the transformation of the social relationships they
experienced in work, from a situation in which they controlled their
own work (and so themselves) to one in which *others* controlled them,
and they did not like it. However, while many modern workers instinctively
hate wage labour and having bosses, without the awareness of some other
method of working, many put up with it as "inevitable." The first 
generation of wage labourers had the awareness of something else
(although, of course, a flawed something else) and this gave then
a deep insight into the nature of capitalism and produced a deeply
radical response to it and its authoritarian structures.

Far from being a "natural" development, then, capitalism was imposed on 
a society of free and independent people by state action. Those workers
alive at the time viewed it as "unnatural relations" and organised to
overcome it. These feelings and hopes still exist, and will continue to
exist until such time as we organise and "abolish the wage system" (to
quote the IWW preamble) and the state that supports it.
