Anarchism and Anarcho-capitalism - Anarcho-capitalism and Economics

Anarcho-capitalism and Economics

Murray Rothbard was "a student and disciple of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, combined the laissez-faire economics of his teacher with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the nineteenth century such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker." Rothbard said:

Like the nineteenth century individualists, Rothbard believed that security should be provided by multiple competing businesses rather than by a tax-funded central agency. However, he rejected their labor theory of value in favor of the modern neo-classical marginalist view. Thus, like most modern economists, he did not believe that prices in a free market would, or should, be proportional to labor (nor that "usury" or "exploitation" necessarily occurs where they are disproportionate). Instead, he believed that different prices of goods and services in a market, whether completely free or not, are ultimately the result of goods and services having different marginal utilities rather than of their embodying differing amounts of labor – and that there is nothing unjust about this. Rothbard also disagreed with Tucker that interest would disappear with unregulated banking and money issuance. Rothbard believed that people in general do not wish to lend their money to others without compensation, so there is no reason why this would change where banking is unregulated. Nor, did he agree that unregulated banking would increase the supply of money because he believed the supply of money in a truly free market is self-regulating. And, he believed that it is good that it would not increase the supply or inflation would result. Few individualist anarchists still agree with the labor theory of value of the nineteenth century individualists or their theories on money, and as a result, according to mutualist Kevin Carson, "most people who call themselves 'individualist anarchists' today are followers of Murray Rothbard's Austrian economics."

Though Rothbard said "I am ... strongly tempted to call myself an 'individualist anarchist,' except for the fact that Spooner and Tucker have in a sense preempted that name for their doctrine and that from that doctrine I have certain differences," some scholars classify anarcho-capitalism as a capitalist form of individualist anarchism. Anarcho-capitalist Wendy McElroy does describe herself as a "Rothbardian and an individualist anarchist." Anti-capitalist anti-communist individualist anarchist Joe Peacott concurs that there are significant economic differences: "The anarchist capitalists ... reject a key part of the thought of the individualists ... that rent, interest, and profit are ways to steal this wealth from its rightful owners." However, most anarchists believe that support of free market capitalism disqualifies anarcho-capitalists from being anarchists, individualist or otherwise. Some individualist anarchists have continued to espouse the labor theory of value, finding profit to be unnatural and exploitative. In the mainstream, however, the popularity of the labor theory of value of classical economics was superseded by greater acceptance of the subjective theory of value of neo-classical economics. Eventually, Murray Rothbard coined the term "anarcho-capitalism" to define his anti-statist, laissez-faire capitalist philosophy. Anarcho-capitalism has a theory of legitimacy that supports private property, as long as it is not obtained by coercion. Its leading proponents are Murray Rothbard and David Friedman and it has been influenced by non-anarchist libertarians such as Frederic Bastiat and Robert Nozick, and also by Ayn Rand (although she rejected libertarianism and anarchism).

Some of those who call themselves Anarcho-capitalists say that their views have no relation to what they call social anarchism, other than opposition to the State. Nevertheless many anarchists who oppose capitalism also like to see themselves as individualist and argue that the social classes created by capitalism limit liberty by forcing some individuals to work and receive orders from others above them, and also limiting individual's use of their time and subjectivity. This is in many respects, in their views, as much destruction or more destruction of liberty as the existence of states. Some anarchists have even argued that individualism and communism are not only compatible but even necessary complements in order to protect individual liberty.