Free-market Anarchists

Free-market Anarchists

Free-market anarchism includes several branches of anarchism that advocate an economic system based on the cornerstone of voluntary market agreements unfettered by state intervention. While market anarchists broadly wish to eliminate the state and propose one or another formulation of a purportedly stateless society, positions on property and labor relations may differ significantly. While some anarchists, such as mutualists or anarcho-syndicalists, consider themselves anti-capitalists and oppose private ownership of the means of production, instead insisting on their cooperative or collective ownership and management, anarcho-capitalists stress the legitimacy and priority of private property, describing it as an integral component of individual rights and a free market economy.

The term may be used to describe different and sometimes antithetic economic and political concepts, such as those proposed by anarchist libertarian socialists like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Benjamin Tucker, and Lysander Spooner, or alternately anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard and David D. Friedman. The ideology in favor of capitalism has ancestry in the laissez-faire ideas of Julius Faucher and Gustave de Molinari.