Another Historical Objection to Anarcho-Capitalism

• John Vandivier

This article will cover two more objections from history to anarcho-capitalism.

  1. Anarch-Capitalism can't Historically, anarchist communities have looked more like communities based on socialism, communism, communalism, and so on, rather than communities based on capitalism.
  2. Maybe a small village or community has existed which is anarchistic, but have there been any whole societies or civilizations?
To begin, socialist and communist elements do not imply non-anarchy. Anarchy is simply the absence of government. If the voluntary social arrangement contains communist elements it does not make it not anarchy. The point of anarcho-capitalism is not for the individual structures to be capitalistic, it is for the macro-structure to be capitalistic.

The individual structures can do whatever they like. In fact, the diversity and competition of all types is necessary for a proper market of government.

What would a widespread anarchist civilization look like? It seems to be an impossible question if by civilization you mean a single state or nation, demanding the existence of a state by necessity.

Would you be content with a diaspora of unique, small communities with different internal arrangements? In that case it could be argued perhaps Native American societies and the American frontier, as well as other historical frontiers, were anarchic.

Private law existed in Iceland for a while: <a href="www.freenation.org/a/f13l1.html">www.freenation.org/a/f13l1.html <a href="http://osf1.gmu.edu/~ihs/w91issues.html">http://osf1.gmu.edu/~ihs/w91issues.html

<a href="http://www.schiffradio.com/pg/jsp/verticals/archive.jsp?dispid=310&pid=65932">Pirate society might also fit the definition of anarchic civilization.

Lastly, as pointed out in <a href="http://www.afterecon.com/economics-and-finance/bad-objections-anarchy-historical-objection/">this article under the Anarchy section of After Econ's <a href="http://www.afterecon.com/other/">Other Page, the historical objection is not a good one because:

  1. There are historical examples.
  2. Anarcho-Capitalism is not historical anarchism. It's a recent innovation.
  3. We live in a fundamentally different time in the internet age. New types of anarchy and communication systems including cryptoanarchy and so forth were not even previously conceivable.