Criticisms of anarcho-capitalism

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Criticisms of anarcho-capitalism fall into different categories: practical criticisms which claim that anarcho-capitalism is unworkable in practice and critiques which claim that a society can be anarchist or capitalist, but not both. There are general critiques of the morality of capitalism and liberalism which may, or may not, also apply to anarcho-capitalism, and a utilitarian critique which claims that anarcho-capitalism would not maximize utility.

It must be noted that there are multiple versions of anarcho-capitalism. For example, according to David D. Friedman's anarcho-capitalism law is produced by the market whereas in Murray Rothbard's version a set libertarian legal code exists. And, Friedman expresses a desire for a society of nearly all self-employed enterpreneurs instead of being based in wage labor^[1], while Rothbard does not express a preference either way. So, a criticism of "anarcho-capitalism" may not apply to all forms of anarcho-capitalism, and a criticism of one form may not apply to another form.

1 Practical questions
2 Moral questions
3 See also
4 References and notes
- 4.1 External links
- 4.2 Criticisms by other radical capitalists

[edit] Practical questions

Objectivists argue that, in a society without a state police force (instead reliant on a system of private security firms) to protect against the initiation of violence and breach of contracts, civil disagreements that lead to violence can be perpetuated by the formation of gangs, creating a fragmented tribal environment of civil wars; and that anarcho-capitalists are too quick to deny the possibility of a constitutionally limited government.

Minarchist and statist critics often argue that the free rider problem makes anarcho-capitalism (and, by extension, any anti-statist political system) fundamentally unworkable in modern societies. They typically argue that there are some vital goods or services — such as civil or military defense, management of common environmental resources, or the provision of public goods such as roads or lighthouses — that cannot be effectively delivered without the backing of a government exercising effective territorial control, and so that abolishing the state as anarcho-capitalists demand will either lead to catastrophe or to the eventual re-establishment of monopoly governments as a necessary means to solving the coordination problems that the abolition of the state created. One counterargument by free market economists, such as Alex Tabarrok, emphasizes the private use of dominant assurance contracts. Some anarcho-capitalists also contend that the "problem" of "public goods" is illusory and its invocation merely misunderstands the potential individual production of such goods. Others, such as David Friedman, point out that problems of market failure are the exception in private markets but the norm in the political markets that control state action. In addition, contemporary anarcho-capitalists state that social ostracism can be an important tool in averting free riders. As such, people who were free riders could find themselves to be socially isolated and denied goods and services as a result of their "free ridership". A need to healthily co-exist with others in society may serve as an effective deterrent against free riders.

Robert Nozick argued in Anarchy, State and Utopia that anarcho-capitalism would inevitably transform into a minarchist state, even without violating any of its own nonaggression principles, through the eventual emergence of a single locally dominant private defense and judicial agency that it is in everyone's interests to align with, because other agencies are unable to effectively compete against the advantages of the agency with majority coverage. Therefore, he felt that, even to the extent that the anarcho-capitalist theory is correct, it results in an unstable system that would not endure in the real world. Similarly, Paul Birch argues that as in the world today, legal disputes involving several jurisdictions and different legal system will be many times more complex and costly to resolve than disputes involving only one legal system. Thus, the largest private protection business in a territory will have lower costs since it will have more internal disputes and will outcompete those private protection business with more external disputes in the territory. In effect, according to Birch, protection business in territory is a natural monopoly.[1]

A criticism of Rothbard's version of anarcho-capitalism, in which certain fundamental natural rights will be followed, is that this, in the absence of a state which guarantee such rights, is merely wishful thinking.[2]

Critics also argue that one can observe private protection organizations in practice in gang wars, where different gangs compete with each other on the same "turf" to "protect" their interests, causing high violence.[3]

Another problem is that of externalities, such as pollution.[4]

[edit] Moral questions

Anarcho-capitalists consider a choice or action to be "voluntary", in a moral sense, so long as that choice or action is not influenced by coercion or fraud perpetrated by another individual. They also believe that maintaining private property claims is always defensive so long as that property was obtained in a way they believe to be legitimate. Thus, so long as an employee and employer agree to terms, employment is regarded as voluntary regardless of the circumstances of property restriction surrounding it. Some critics say this ignores constraints on action due to both human and nonhuman factors, such as the need for food and shelter, and active restriction of both used and unused resources by those enforcing property claims.^{[citation needed]} Thus, if a person requires employment in order to feed and house himself, it is said that the employer-employee relationship cannot be voluntary, because the employer restricts the use of resources from the employee in such a way that he cannot meet his needs. This is essentially a semantic argument over the term "voluntary". Anarcho-capitalists simply do not use the term in that latter sense in their philosophy, believing that sense to be morally irrelevant. Other critics argue that employment is involuntary because the distributions of wealth that make it necessary for some individuals to serve others by way of contract are supported by the enforcement of coercive private property systems.^{[citation needed]} This is a deeper argument relating to distributive justice. Some of these critics appeal to an end-state theory of justice, while anarcho-capitalists (and propertarians in general) appeal to an entitlement theory. Other critics regard private property itself to either be an aggressive institution or a potentially aggressive one, rather than necessarily a defensive one, and thus reject claims that relationships based on unequal private property relations could be "voluntary".^{[citation needed]}

Critics also point out that anarcho-capitalist ethics do not entail any positive moral obligation to help others in need (see altruism, the ethical doctrine). Like other libertarians, anarcho-capitalists may argue that no such moral obligation exists or argue that if a moral obligation to help others does exist that there is an overarching moral obligation to refrain from initiating coercion on individuals to enforce it. Anarcho-capitalists believe that helping others should be a matter of free personal choice, and do not recognize any form of social obligation arising from an individual's presence in a society. They, like all right libertarians, believe in a distinction between negative and positive rights in which negative rights should be recognized as being legitimate, and positive rights rejected. Critics often dismiss this stance as being unethical or selfish, or reject the legitimacy of the distinction between positive and negative rights.^{[citation needed]}

Property ownership rights and their extent are a source of contention among different philosophies. Anarcho-capitalists may be strong or weak propertarians. Many critics see property rights as less absolute than anarcho-capitalists do. The main issues are what kinds of things are valid property, and what constitutes abandonment of property. The first is contentious even among anarcho-capitalists: there is disagreement over the validity of intellectual property^[2] — intangible goods that are not economically scarce. Agorists are one group of anarcho-captitalists who deny the validity of intellectual property. Some supporters of private property but critics of anarcho-capitalism may question how natural resources can be validly converted into private property (Georgism, geolibertarianism, individualist anarchism). The second issue is a common objection among socialists who do not believe in absentee ownership. Anarcho-capitalists have strong abandonment criteria — one maintains ownership (more or less) until one agrees to trade or gift it. The critics of this view tend to have weaker abandonment criteria; for example, one loses ownership (more or less) when one stops personally using it. Also, the idea of perpetually binding original appropriation is anathema to most types of socialism, as well as any philosophy that takes equal human rights to liberty or common ownership of land and natural resources as a premise.^{[citation needed]} There are also philosophies that view any ownership claims on land and natural resources as immoral and illegitimate, thus rejecting anarcho-capitalism as a philosophy that takes private ownership of land as a morally questionable initial premise.

Utilitarian critics simply argue that anarcho-capitalism does not maximize utility, contending that it would fall far short of that goal. This kind of criticism comes from a variety of different political views and ideologies, and different critics have different views on which other system does or would do a better job of bringing the greatest benefits to the greatest number of people. Anarcho-capitalists consider the nonaggression axiom to be a "side-constraint" on civilized human action^[3] or a necessary condition for human society to be beneficial (Herbert Spencer, Murray Rothbard), and thus should not be used as a trade-off for vague utilitarian values. Another response, implied by Austrian economics, is to argue that personal utility is not an additive quantity, therefore concluding that all utilitarian arguments, which invariably rely on aggregation of personal utilities, are logically and mathematically invalid.

[edit] See also

For critiques of anarchism in general: Criticisms of anarchism

For critiques of libertarianism in general: Criticism of libertarianism

For critiques of capitalism in general: Criticisms of capitalism

For critiques of capitalism from an anarchist (libertarian socialist) perspective: Anarchism and capitalism

[edit] References and notes

^ Friedman, David. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism. Harper & Row. pp. 144-145 "Instead of corporation there are large groups of entrepreneurs related by trade, not authority. Each sells, not his time, but what his time produces."
^ McElroy, Wendy (1995) Intellectual Property:The Late Nineteenth Century Libertarian Debate Libertarian Heritage No. 14 ISBN 1-85637-281-2 Retrieved 24 June 2005
^ Nozick, Robert (1973) Anarchy, State, and Utopia