Criticisms of anarchism

Criticisms of anarchism originate from groups it opposes as well as related theories such as Marxism. Criticisms include moral criticisms and practical criticisms.

Allegation of utopianism

Anarchism is often labeled by some of its critics as unfeasible or utopian. European history professor Carl Landauer, in his book European Socialism argued that social anarchism is unrealistic and that government is a "lesser evil" than a society without "repressive force." He also argued that "ill intentions will cease if repressive force disappears" is an "absurdity."

Anarchists often counter this assertion by arguing that it is merely a misconception. An Anarchist FAQ states the following: "Anarchy is not a utopia [...] anarchists make no claims about human perfection [...] disputes would be solved by reasonable methods, for example, the use of juries, mutual third parties, or community and workplace assemblies [...] some sort of "court" system would still be necessary to deal with the remaining crimes and to adjudicate disputes between citizens [...]"

Tacit authoritarianism

In recent decades, some schools of anarchism have been criticized by Situationists and others of preserving tacitly statist, authoritarian or bureaucratic tendencies. The anarcho-capitalist economist Bryan Caplan argues that the treatment of fascists and fascist sympathizers by Spanish anarchists in the Spanish Civil War was a form of illegitimate coercion, making the anarchists "ultimately just a third faction of totalitarians," alongside the communists and fascists. He also criticizes the willingness of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) to join the Republican government during the civil war, and references Stanley G. Payne's book on the Franco regime which claims that the CNT entered negotiations with the government of Spain six years after the war. Many anarcho-syndicalists, anarcho-communists, and other types of anarchists have criticized the CNT's mistakes during and since the events of the Spanish Civil War.

Anarcho-Capitalism

See also: Criticisms of anarcho-capitalism

Moral criticisms

Some critics argue that anarcho-capitalism is immoral because it turns justice into a commodity, thereby conflating justice with economic power. Some critics who support the non-aggression principle argue that anarcho-capitalism is immoral. They argue that it implies that the non-aggression principle is optional because the enforcement of laws is open to competition. Many anarcho-captialists argue that government violates the non-aggression principle by its nature because governments use force against those who have not stolen private property, vandalized private property, assaulted anyone, or committed fraud.

Practical criticisms

Some critics argue that private defense and court firms would tend to represent the interests of those who pay them enough. Some anarchists agree with this argument, but argue that it is futile to eliminate the potential concentration of power by concentrating power in the hands of the state. Many also argue that monopolies tend to be corrupt and inefficient.

Murray Rothbard argues that all government services, including defense, are inefficient because they lack a market-based pricing mechanism regulated by the voluntary decisions of consumers purchasing services that fulfill their highest-priority needs and by investors seeking the most profitable enterprises to invest in. Therefore, the state's monopoly on the use of force is a violation of natural rights. He wrote, "The defense function is the one reserved most jealously by the State. It is vital to the State's existence, for on its monopoly of force depends its ability to exact taxes from the citizens. If citizens were permitted privately owned courts and armies, then they would possess the means to defend themselves against invasive acts by the government as well as by private individuals." In his book Power and Market, he argued that geographically large minarchist states are indifferent from a unified minarchist world monopoly government. Rothbard wrote governments were not inevitable, noting that it often took hundreds of years for aristocrats to set up a state out of anarchy. He also argued that if a minimal state allows individuals to freely secede from the current jurisdiction to join a competing jurisdiction, then it does not by definition constitute a state.

Many anarchists argue that private defense and court agencies would have to have a good reputation in order to stay in business. Furthermore, Linda & Morris Tannehill argue that no coercive monopoly of force can arise on a truly free market and that a government's citizenry can’t desert them in favor of a competent protection and defense agency. In response, Randall G. Holcombe argues that defense agencies could form cartels and oppress people without fear of competition. Some anarchists concede this point and respond that one cannot justify a concentration of power out of a fear of a concentration of power, and that a market system is the best checks and balances system.

Criticism of the concept

Robert Nozick argues in Anarchy, State and Utopia that an anarcho-capitalist society 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 thought that, even to the extent that the anarchist theory is correct, it results in an unstable system that would not endure in the real world. 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 out-compete those private protection business with more external disputes in the territory. In effect, according to Birch, protection business in territory is a natural monopoly.

Social anarchist criticisms

Most social anarchists argue that anarcho-capitalism is not a form of anarchism due to their understanding of capitalism as inherently authoritarian. In particular they argue that certain capitalist transactions are not voluntary, and that maintaining the class structure of a capitalist society requires coercion, which is incompatible with an anarchist society. Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt, in their book Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, make the claim that "'class struggle' anarchism, sometimes called revolutionary or communist anarchism, is not a type of anarchism ... it is the only anarchism."

Some critics argue that anarcho-capitalist ethics do not entail any positive moral obligation to help others in need. Anarcho-capitalists 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. Libertarian socialist Noam Chomsky writes: "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." Some 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 to either be an aggressive institution or a potentially aggressive one, rather than a defensive one, and thus reject claims that relationships based on unequal private property relations could be voluntary.

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 believe that maintaining private property claims is always defensive, as long as that property was obtained in a way they believe to be legitimate. They argue that as 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. 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; thus the choice is not an actual choice at all and the agreement in not actually voluntary at all. 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.

Some critics of anarcho-capitalism who support private property question how natural resources can be validly converted into private property. 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 outcomes or common ownership of land and natural resources as a premise. 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.

See also

• Criticism of libertarianism

External links

• Anarchism/Antianarchism A survey and a criticism.
• "What criticisms have been made of anarchism?" from Bryan Caplan's Anarchy F.A.Q.