Talk:Anarcho-capitalism/Archive 2

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

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


Examples of straw-men engaged in this article:

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

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

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

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


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

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

"Anarcho-capitalist criticism of other views:

anarcho-capitalist critique of left-anarchism"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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