12. What other anarchist viewpoints are there?

          There is definitely another strand of anarchist thought,
          although it is far vaguer and less propositional than the
          views thus far explicated. For some, "anarchist" is just a
          declaration of rebellion against rules and authority of any kind.
          There is little attempt made here to explain how society would
          work without government; and perhaps there is little conviction
          that it could do so. This sort of anarchism is more of an
          attitude or emotion -- a feeling that the corrupt world of today
          should go down in flames, without any definite view about what if
          anything would be preferable and possible. For want of a better
          term, I would call this "emotivist anarchism," whose most
          prominent exponent is almost certainly Max Stirner (although to
          be fair to Stirner he did briefly outline his vision for the
          replacement of existing society by a "Union of Egoists").

          For the emotivist anarchist, opposition to the state is just a
          special case of his or her opposition to almost everything: the
          family, traditional art, bourgeois culture, comfortable
          middle-aged people, the British monarchy, etc. This position,
          when articulated, is often difficult to understand, for it seems
          to seek destruction without any suggestion or argument that
          anything else would be preferable. Closely linked to emotivist
          anarchism, though sometimes a little more theoretical, is
          nihilist anarchism. The anarcho-nihilists combine the emotivist's
          opposition to virtually all forms of order with radical
          subjectivist moral and epistemological theory.

          To see Tracy Harms' criticism of my treatment of Stirner, egoism,
          and nihilism, click here.

          Related to emotivist anarchism is a second strand of less
          intellectual, more emotional anarchist thought. It has been
          called by some "moral anarchism." This view again feels that
          existing statist society is bad; but rather than lay out any
          comprehensive plans for its abolition, this sort of anarchist
          sticks to more immediate reforms. Anarchism of this sort is a
          kind of ideal dream, which is beautiful and inspiring to
          contemplate while we pursue more concrete aims.

          The emotivist anarchist often focuses on action and disdains
          theorizing. In contrast, another breed of anarchists, known as
          "philosophical anarchists," see few practical implications of
          their intellectual position. Best represented by Robert Paul
          Wolff, philosophical anarchism simply denies that the state's
          orders as such can confer any legitimacy whatever. Each
          individual must exercise his moral autonomy to judge right and
          wrong for himself, irrespective of the state's decrees. However,
          insofar as the state's decrees accord with one's private
          conscience, there is no need to change one's behavior. A position
          like Wolff's says, in essence, that the rational person cannot
          and must not offer the blind obedience to authority that
          governments often seem to demand; but this insight need not spark
          any political action if one's government's decrees are not
          unusually immoral.

          Yet another faction, strongly influenced by Leo Tolstoy, refer to
          themselves as "Christian anarchists." (Tolstoy avoided the term
          "anarchist," probably because of its association with violence
          and terrorism in the minds of contemporary Russians.) Drawing on
          the Gospels' themes of nonviolence and the equality of all human
          beings, these anarchists condemn government as contrary to
          Christian teaching. Tolstoy particularly emphasized the
          immorality of war, military service, and patriotism, challenging
          Christians to live up to the radical implications of their faith
          by withdrawing their support from all three of these evils.
          Tolstoy's essay "Patriotism, or Peace?" is particularly notable
          for its early attack upon nationalism and the bloodshed that
          usually accompanies it.

          Finally, many leftist and progressive movements have an anarchist
          interpretation and anarchist advocates. For example, a faction of
          feminists, calling themselves "anarcha- feminists" exists. The
          feminists, calling themselves "anarcha- feminists" exists. The
          Green and environmentalist movements also have strong
          anarchist wings which blend opposition to the state and
          defense of the environment. Their primary theoretician is
          probably Murray Bookchin, who (lately) advocates a society of
          small and fairly autarchic localities. As Bookchin explains, "the
          anarchist concepts of a balanced community, a face-to-face
          democracy, a humanistic technology and a decentralized society --
          these rich libertarian concepts -- are not only desirable, they
          are also necessary." Institutions such as the town meeting of
          classical democratic theory point the way to a radical
          reorganization of society, in which small environmentally
          concerned townships regularly meet to discuss and vote upon their
          communities' production and broader aims. Doubtlessly there are
          many other fusions between anarchism and progressive causes, and
          more spring up as new concerns develop.

      13. What moral justifications have been offered for anarchism?

          Again, there are a great many answers which have been offered.
          Some anarchists, such as the emotivist and (paradoxically) the
          moral anarchists have little interest in high-level moral theory.
          But this has been of great interest to the more intellectual
          sorts of anarchists.

          One popular argument for anarchism is that it is the only way for
          true socialism to exist. State-socialism is unable to actually
          establish human equality; instead it simply creating a new ruling
          class. Bakunin prophetically predicted the results of socialists
          seizing control of the state when he wrote that the socialist
          elite would form a "new class" which would be "the most
          aristocratic, despotic, arrogant, and contemptuous of all
          regimes." Elsewhere Bakunin wrote that "[F]reedom without
          Socialism is privilege and injustice, ... Socialism without
          freedom is slavery and brutality." Of course, socialism itself
          has been defended on both deontological and utilitarian grounds,
          and there is no need to repeat these here.

          On the other hand, anarcho-capitalists have argued that only
          under anarchism can the Lockean rights to person and property so
          loudly championed by more moderate libertarians be fully
          respected. Any attempt to impose a monopolistic government
          necessarily prevents competing police and judicial services from
          providing a legitimate service; moreover, so long as government
          exists taxation will persist. The government's claim to defend
          private property is thus quite ironic, for the state, in
          Rothbard's words, is "an institution that presumes to 'defend'
          person and property by itself subsisting on the unilateral
          coercion against private property known as taxation." Other
          anarcho- capitalists such as David Friedman find these arguments
          from natural Lockean rights unconvincing, and instead take up the
          task of trying to show that Adam Smith's utilitarian case for
          free-market capitalism applies just as well to free markets in
          defense services, making the state useless as well as dangerous.

          Still other anarchists, such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin
          Tucker as well as Proudhon, have argued that anarchism would
          abolish the exploitation inherent in interest and rent simply by
          means of free competition. In their view, only labor income is
          legitimate, and an important piece of the case for anarchism is
          that without government-imposed monopolies, non-labor income
          would be driven to zero by market forces. It is unclear, however,
          if they regard this as merely a desirable side effect, or if they
          would reject anarchism if they learned that the predicted
          economic effect thereof would not actually occur. (Other
          individualist anarchists have argued that contrary to Spooner and
          Tucker, free banking would lead to a much lower rate of inflation
          than we experience today; that rent and interest are not due to
          "monopoly" but to scarcity of land and loanable funds; and that
          there is no moral distinction between labor and rental or
          interest income, all of which depend upon a mixture of scarcity,
          demand, luck, and effort.)

          A basic moral intuition that probably anarchists of all varieties
          share is simply that no one has the right to rule another person.
          The interpretation of "rulership," however, varies: left
          anarchists tend to see the employer-employee relationship as one
          of rulership, and anarcho-capitalists are often dubious of the
          claim that envisaged anarchists communes would be democratic and
          hence voluntary. A closely related moral intuition, again widely
          shared by all sorts of anarchists, is that each person should
          exercise personal autonomy, or self-rule. One should question
          authority, and make up one's mind for oneself rather than simply
          following the herd. Again, the interpretation of "personal
          autonomy" varies: the left-anarchist sees the employer-employee
          relationship as inherently violating personal autonomy, whereas
          the anarcho-capitalist is more likely to see personal autonomy
          disappearing in the commune or collective, regardless of how
          democratically they run themselves.

      14. What are the major debates between anarchists? What are the
          recurring arguments?

          Without a doubt, the most repeated debate among modern anarchists
          is fought between the left-anarchists on one side and the
          anarcho-capitalists on the other. Of course, there are occasional
          debates between different left-anarchist factions, but probably
          most of them would be content with an anarchist society populated
          by some mixture of communes, worker-controlled firms, and
          cooperatives. And similarly there are a few internal debates
          between anarcho- capitalists, notably the tension between
          Rothbard's natural law anarcho-capitalism and David Friedman's
          more economistic anarcho-capitalism. But it is the debate between
          the left-anarchists and the anarcho-capitalists which is the most
          fundamental and the most acrimonious. There are many sub-debates
          within this wider genre, which we will now consider.

            a. "X is not 'true anarchism.'"

               One of the least fruitful of these sub-debates is the
               frequent attempt of one side to define the other out of
               existence ("You are not truly an anarchist, for anarchists
               must favor [abolition of private property, atheism,
               Christianity, etc.]") In addition to being a trivial issue,
               the factual supporting arguments are often incorrect. For
               example, despite a popular claim that socialism and
               anarchism have been inextricably linked since the inception
               of the anarchist movement, many 19th-century anarchists, not
               only Americans such as Tucker and Spooner, but even
               Europeans like Proudhon, were ardently in favor of private
               property (merely believing that some existing sorts of
               property were illegitimate, without opposing private
               property as such).

               As Benjamin Tucker wrote in 1887, "It will probably
               surprise many who know nothing of Proudhon save his
               declaration that 'property is robbery' to learn that he was
               perhaps the most vigorous hater of Communism that ever lived
               on this planet. But the apparent inconsistency vanishes when
               you read his book and find that by property he means simply
               legally privileged wealth or the power of usury, and not at
               all the possession by the laborer of his products."

               Nor did an ardent anarcho-communist like Kropotkin deny
               Proudhon or even Tucker the title of "anarchist." In his
               Modern Science and Anarchism, Kropotkin discusses not only
               Proudhon but "the American anarchist individualists who were
               represented in the fifties by S.P. Andrews and W. Greene,
               later on by Lysander Spooner, and now are represented by
               Benjamin Tucker, the well-known editor of the New York
               Liberty." Similarly in his article on anarchism for the 1910
               edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Kropotkin again
               freely mentions the American individualist anarchists,
               including "Benjamin Tucker, whose journal Liberty was
               started in 1881 and whose conceptions are a combination of
               those of Proudhon with those of Herbert Spencer."

            b. "Anarchism of variant X is unstable and will lead to the
               re-emergence of the state."

               A more substantive variation is to argue that the opposing
               anarchism would be unstable and lead to the swift re-
               emergence of government. Thus, the left-anarchists often
               argue that the defense corporations envisaged by anarcho-
               capitalists would war with one another until one came out as
               the new government; or else they would collude to establish
               themselves as the new capitalist oligarchs. As Noam Chomsky
               says in an interview with Ulrike Heider, "The predatory
               forces of the market would destroy society, would destroy
               community, and destroy the workforce. Nothing would be left
               except people hating each other and fighting each other."
               Anarcho-capitalists reply that this grossly underestimates
               the degree of competition likely to prevail in the defense
               industry; that war is likely to be very unprofitable and
               dangerous, and is more likely to be provoked by ideology
               than sober profit-maximization; and that economic theory and
               economic history show that collusion is quite difficult to
               maintain.

               Anarcho-capitalists for their part accuse the
               left-anarchists of intending to impose their communal vision
               upon everyone; since everyone will not go along voluntarily,
               a government will be needed to impose it. Lest we think that
               this argument is a recent invention, it is interesting to
               find that essentially this argument raged in the 19th-
               century anarchist movement as well. In John MacKay's The
               Anarchists, we see the essential dialogue between
               individualist and collectivist anarchism has a longer
               history than one might think:

                    "Would you, in the system of society which you
                    call 'free Communism' prevent individuals from
                    exchanging their labor among themselves by means
                    of their own medium of exchange? And further:
                    Would you prevent them from occupying land for the
                    purpose of personal use?"... [The] question was
                    not to be escaped. If he answered "Yes!" he
                    admitted that society had the right of control
                    over the individual and threw overboard the
                    autonomy of the individual which he had always
                    zealously defended; if on the other hand he
                    answered "No!" he admitted the right of private
                    property which he had just denied so emphatically
                    ... Then he answered "In Anarchy any number of men
                    must have the right of forming a voluntary
                    association, and so realizing their ideas in
                    practice. Nor can I understand how any one could
                    justly be driven from the land and house which he
                    uses and occupies ... [E]very serious man must
                    declare himself: for Socialism, and thereby for
                    force and against liberty, or for Anarchism, and
                    thereby for liberty and against force."

               There have been several left-anarchist replies. One is to
               readily agree that dissenters would have the right to not
               join a commune, with the proviso that they must not employ
               others or otherwise exploit them. Another is to claim that
               anarchism will change (or cease to warp) human attitudes so
               that they will be more communitarian and less
               individualistic. Finally, some argue that this is simply
               another sophistical argument for giving the rich and
               powerful the liberty to take away the liberty of everyone
               else.

            c. "In an anarchist society in which both systems X and Y
               existed, X would inevitably outcompete Y."

               Again, this argument has been made from several
               perspectives. Left-anarchists have argued that if workers
               had the genuine option to work for a capitalist employer, or
               else work for themselves in a worker cooperative, virtually
               all workers would choose the latter. Moreover, workers in a
               worker-managed firm would have higher morale and greater
               incentive to work hard compared with workers who just worked
               for the benefit of their employer. Hence, capitalists would
               be unable to pay their workers wages competitive with the
               wages of the labor-managed firm, and by force of competition
               would gradually vanish.

               Anarcho-capitalists find that the argument works in
               precisely the opposite direction. For what is a worker-owned
               firm if not a firm in which the workers jointly hold all of
               the stock? Now this is a peculiarly irrational portfolio to
               hold, because it means that workers would, in effect, put
               all their eggs in one basket; if their firm does well, they
               grow rich, but if their firm goes bankrupt, they lose
               everything. It would make much more sense for workers to
               exchange their shares in their own firm to buy shares in
               other firms in order to insure themselves against risk.
               Thus, the probable result of worker-owned firms with
               negotiable shares would be that workers would readily and
               advantageously sell off most of their shares in their own
               firm in order to diversify their portfolios. The end result
               is likely to be the standard form of capitalist
               organization, in which workers receive a fixed payment for
               their services and the owners of the firms' shares earn the
               variable profits. Of course, alienation of shares could be
               banned, but this appears to do nothing except force workers
               to live with enormous financial risk. None of this shows
               that worker-owned firms could not persist if the workers
               were so ideologically committed to worker control that their
               greater productivity outweighed the riskiness of the
               workers' situation; but anarcho-capitalists doubt very much
               that such intense ideology would prevail in more than a
               small portion of the population. Indeed, they expect that
               the egalitarian norms and security from dismissal that
               left-anarchists typically favor would grossly undermine
               everyone's incentive to work hard and kill abler workers'
               desire for advancement.

               Some anarcho-capitalists go further and argue that
               inequality would swiftly re-emerge in an anarcho-syndicalist
               economy. Workers would treat their jobs as a sort of
               property right, and would refuse to hire new workers on
               equal terms because doing so would dilute the current
               workers' shares in the firm's profits. The probable result
               would be that an elite class of workers in capital-intensive
               firms would exploit new entrants into the work force much as
               capitalists allegedly do today. As evidence, they point to
               existing "worker-controlled" firms such as law firms --
               normally they consist of two tiers of workers, one of which
               both works and owns the firm ("the partners"), while the
               remainder are simply employees ("the associates" as well as
               the secretaries, clerks, etc.)

            d. "Anarchism of type X would be worse than the state."

               To the left-anarchist, the society envisaged by the anarcho-
               capitalists often seems far worse than what we have now. For
               it is precisely to the inequality, exploitation, and tyranny
               of modern capitalism that they object, and rather than
               abolishing it the anarcho-capitalist proposes to unleash its
               worst features and destroy its safety net. Noam Chomsky, for
               instance, has suggested that anarcho-capitalists focus
               incorrectly on state domination, failing to recognize the
               underlying principle of opposition to all domination,
               including the employer-employee relationship. Overall, since
               anarcho-capitalism relies heavily on laissez-faire economic
               theory, and since left-anarchists see no validity to
               laissez-faire economic theory, it seems to the latter that
               anarcho-capitalism would be a practical disaster. Left-
               anarchists often equate anarcho-capitalism with social
               Darwinism and even fascism, arguing that the cruel idea of
               "survival of the fittest" underlies them all.

               The anarcho-capitalist, in turn, often suspects that the
               left- anarchist's world would be worse than the world of
               today. Under anarcho-capitalism, individuals would still
               have every right to voluntarily pool their property to form
               communes, worker-controlled firms, and cooperatives; they
               would simply be unable to force dissenters to join them.
               Since this fact rarely impresses the left-anarchist, the
               anarcho-capitalist often concludes that the left-anarchist
               will not be satisfied with freedom for his preferred
               lifestyle; he wants to force his communal lifestyle on
               everyone. Not only would this be a gross denial of human
               freedom, but it would (according to the anarcho-capitalist)
               be likely to have disastrous effects on economic incentives,
               and swiftly lead humanity into miserable poverty. The
               anarcho-capitalist is also frequently disturbed by the
               opposition to all order sometimes voiced by left-anarchists;
               for he feels that only coerced order is bad and welcomes the
               promotion of an orderly society by voluntary means.
               Similarly, the left-anarchists' occasional short time
               horizon, emphasis on immediate satisfaction, and low regard
               for work (which can be seen in a number of authors strongly
               influenced by emotivist anarchism) frighten the
               anarcho-capitalist considerably.

            e. Etc.

               A large number of arguments that go back and forth basically
               duplicate the standard socialist vs. capitalist debate. The
               need or lack thereof for incentives, security, equality,
               regulation, protection of the environment, and so on are
               debated extensively on other sources on the Net, and there
               are several FAQs which discuss these issues from a variety
               of viewpoints. FAQs on the broader libertarian movement are
               frequently posted on alt.individualism,
               alt.politics.libertarian, and talk.politics.libertarian.
               FAQs on socialism similarly appear from time to time on
               alt.politics.radical-left and alt.fan.noam-chomsky. Related
               FAQs sometimes appear on talk.politics.theory. Hence, we
               will spend no further space on these broader issues which
               are amply addressed elsewhere.

      15. How would anarchists handle the "public goods" problem?

          Modern neoclassical (or "mainstream") economists -- especially
          those associated with theoretical welfare economics -- have
          several important arguments for the necessity or desirability of
          government. Out of all of these, the so-called "public goods"
          problem is surely the most frequently voiced. In fact, many
          academics consider it a rigorous justification for the existence
          and limits of the state. Anarcho-capitalists are often very
          familiar with this line of thought and spend considerable time
          trying to refute it; left- anarchists are generally less
          interested, but it is still useful to see how the left-anarchist
          might respond.

          We will begin by explaining the concept of Pareto
          optimality, show how the Pareto criterion is used to
          justify state action, and then examine how anarchists might
          object to the underlying assumptions of these economic
          justifications for the state. After exploring the general
          critique, we will turn to the problem of public goods (and the
          closely related externalities issue). After showing how many
          economists believe that these problems necessitate government
          action, we will consider how left-anarchists and
          anarcho-capitalists might reply.

            a. The concept and uses of Pareto optimality in economics

               The most widely-used concept in theoretical welfare
               economics is "Pareto optimality" (also known as "Pareto
               efficiency"). An allocation is Pareto-optimal iff it is
               impossible to make at least one person better off without
               making anyone else worse off; a Pareto improvement is a
               change in an allocation which makes someone better off
               without making anyone else worse off. As Hal Varian's
               Microeconomic Analysis explains, "[A] Pareto efficient
               allocation is one for which each agent is as well off as
               possible, given the utilities of the other agents." "Better"
               and "worse" are based purely upon subjective preferences
               which can be summarized in a "utility function," or ordinal
               numerical index of preference satisfaction.

               While initially it might seem that every situation is
               necessarily Pareto optimal, this is not the case. True, if
               the only good is food, and each agent wants as much food as
               possible, then every distribution is Pareto optimal. But if
               half of the agents own food and the other half own clothes,
               the distribution will not necessarily be Pareto optimal,
               since each agent might prefer either more food and fewer
               clothes or vice versa.

               Normally, economists would expect agents to voluntarily
               trade in any situation which is not Pareto optimal; but
               neoclassical theorists have considered a number of
               situations in which trade would be a difficult route to
               Pareto optimality. For example, suppose that each agent is
               so afraid of the other that they avoid each other, even
               though they could both benefit from interaction. What they
               need is an independent and powerful organization to e.g.
               protect both agents from each other so that they can reach a
               Pareto-optimal allocation. What they need, in short, is the
               state. While economists' examples are usually more
               elaborate, the basic intuition is that government is
               necessary to satisfy the seemingly uncontroversial principle
               of Pareto optimality.

               Anarchists of all sorts would immediately object that the
               very existence of deontological anarchists shows that Pareto
               optimality can never justify state action. If even the
               slightest increase in the level of state activity
               incompensably harms the deontological anarchist, then
               obviously it is never true that state action can make some
               people better off without making any others worse off.
               Moreover, virtually all government action makes some people
               better off and other people worse off, so plainly the
               pursuit of Pareto improvements has little to do with what
               real governments do.

               Due to these difficulties, in practice economists
               must base their judgments upon the far more
               controversial judgments of cost-benefit analysis. (In the
               works of Richard Posner, this economistic cost-benefit
               approach to policy decisions is called
               "wealth-maximization"; a common synonym is "Kaldor-Hicks
               efficiency.") With cost-benefit analysis, there is no
               pretense made that government policy enjoys unanimous
               approval. Thus, it is open to the many objections frequently
               made to e.g. utilitarianism; moreover, since cost-benefit
               analysis is based upon agents' willingness to pay, rather
               than on agents' utility, it runs into even more moral
               paradoxes than utilitarianism typically does.

               In the final analysis, welfare economists' attempt to
               provide a value-free or at least value-minimal justification
               of the state fails quite badly. Nevertheless, economic
               analysis may still inform more substantive moral theories:
               Pareto optimality, for example, is a necessary but not
               sufficient condition for a utilitarian justification of the
               state.

            b. The public goods problem

               The "public goods" argument is certainly the most popular
               economic argument for the state. It allegedly shows that the
               existence of government can be Pareto optimal, and that the
               non-existence of the state cannot be Pareto optimal; or at
               least, it shows that the existence of government is
               justifiable on cost-benefit grounds. Supposedly, there exist
               important services, such as national defense, which benefit
               people whether they pay for them or not. The result is that
               selfish agents refuse to contribute, leading to disaster.
               The only way to solve this problem is to coerce the
               beneficiaries to raise the funds to supply the needed good.
               In order for this coercion to work, it needs to be
               monopolized by a single agency, the state.

               Public goods arguments have been made not only for national
               defense, but for police, roads, education, R&D, scientific
               research, and many other goods and services. The essential
               definitional feature of public goods is "non-
               excludability"; because the benefits cannot be limited to
               contributors, there is no incentive to contribute. (A second
               definitional characteristic often attributed to public goods
               is "non-rivalrousness"; my own view is that this second
               attribute just confuses the issue, since without the non-
               excludability problem, non-rivalrousness would merely be
               another instance of the ubiquitous practice of pricing above
               marginal cost.)

               The concept of externalities is very closely connected to
               the concept of public goods; the main difference is that
               economists usually think of externalities as being both
               "positive" (e.g. R&D spill-overs) and "negative" (e.g.
               pollution), whereas they usually don't discuss "public
               bads." In any case, again we have the problem that agents
               perform actions which harm or benefit other people, and the
               harm/benefit is "non-excludable." Victims of negative
               externalities can't feasibly charge polluters a fee for
               suffering, and beneficiaries of positive externalities can't
               feasibly be charged for their enjoyment. Government is
               supposed to be necessary to correct this inefficiency. (As
               usual, it is the inefficiency rather than the injustice that
               economists focus upon.)

               Left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists would probably have
               remarkably similar replies to this argument, although
               doubtlessly the tone and emphasis would vary.

               Objection #1: The behavorial assumptions of public goods
               theory are false.

               It is simply not true that people always act in their narrow
               self-interest. Charity exists, and there is no reason to
               think that the charitable impulse might not be cultivated to
               handle public goods problems voluntarily on an adequate
               basis. Nor need charity as such be the only motive: in
               Social Contract, Free Ride, Anthony de Jasay lays out an
               "ethics turnpike" of possible voluntary solutions to serious
               public goods problems, moving from motivation from high
               moral principles, to "tribal" motivations, to economic
               motivations. As de Jasay writes, "On the map of the Ethics
               Turnpike ... three main segments are marked off according to
               the basic type of person most likely to find his congenial
               exit along it. The first segment is primarily for the type
               who fears God or acts as if he did. The second segment has
               exits to suit those who are not indifferent to how some or
               all their fellow men are faring, and who value only that
               (but not all that) which people want for themselves or for
               others. The third is for homo oeconomicus, maximizing a
               narrowly defined utility that varies only with the money's
               worth of his own payoffs."

               In short, much of the public goods problem is an artificial
               creation of economists' unrealistic assumptions about human
               nature. Anarchists would surely disagree among themselves
               about human nature, but almost all would agree that there is
               more to the human character than Hobbesian self-interest.
               Some people may be amoral, but most are not. Moreover,
               charitable impulses can even give incentives to uncharitable
               people to behave fairly. If the public boycotts products of
               polluters, the polluters may find that it is cheaper to
               clean up their act than lose the public's business.

               Interestingly, many economists have experimentally tested
               the predictions of public goods theory. (Typically, these
               experiments involve groups of human subjects playing for
               real money.) The almost universal result is that the central
               prediction of public goods theory (i.e., that no one will
               voluntarily contribute to the production of a public good)
               is totally false. While the level of contributions rarely
               equals the Pareto-optimal level, it never even approaches
               the zero- provision level that public goods theory predicts.
               Summarizing the experimental literature, Douglas Davis and
               Charles Holt write "[S]ubjects rather persistently
               contributed 40 to 60 percent of their token endowments to
               the group exchange, far in excess of the 0 percent
               contributions rate..." Subsequent experiments examined the
               conditions under which voluntary provision is most
               successful; see Davis and Holt's Experimental Economics for
               details.

               Objection #2: Government is not the only possible way to
               provide public goods.

               Even if individuals act in their narrow self-interest, it is
               not true that government is the only way to manage public
               goods and externalities problems. Why couldn't a left-
               anarchist commune or an anarcho-capitalist police firm do
               the job that the neoclassical economist assumes must be
               delegated to the government? The left-anarchist would
               probably be particularly insistent on this point, since most
               economists usually assume that government and the market are
               the only ways to do things. But thriving, voluntary
               communities might build roads, regulate pollution, and take
               over other important tasks now handled by government.

               Anarcho-capitalists, for their part, would happily agree:
               while they usually look to the market as a first solution,
               they appreciate other kinds of voluntary organizations too:
               fraternal societies, clubs, family, etc. But
               anarcho-capitalists would probably note that left-anarchists
               overlook the ways that the market might take over government
               services -- indeed, malls and gated communities show how
               roads, security, and externalities can be handled by
               contract rather than coercion.

               Objection #3: Public goods are rarer than you might think.

               Anarcho-capitalists would emphasize that a large number of
               alleged "public goods" and "externalities" could easily be
               handled privately by for-profit business if only the
               government would allow the definition of private property
               rights. If ranchers over-graze the commons, why not
               privatize the commons? If fishermen over-fish the oceans,
               why not parcel out large strips of the ocean by longitude
               and latitude to for profit-making aquaculture? And why is
               education supposed to create externalities any more than any
               other sort of investment? Similarly, many sorts of
               externalities are now handled with private property rights.
               Tort law, for example, can give people an incentive to take
               the lives and property of others into account when they take
               risks.

               Objection #4: Externalities are a result of the
               profit-oriented mentality which would be tamed in an
               anarchist society.

               Left-anarchists would emphasize that many externalities are
               caused by the profit-seeking system which the state
               supports. Firms pollute because it is cheaper than producing
               cleanly; but anarcho-syndicalist firms could pursue many
               aims besides profit. In a way, the state- capitalist system
               creates the problem of externalities by basing all decisions
               upon profit, and then claims that we need the state to
               protect us from the very results of this profit-oriented
               decision-making process.

               While few left-anarchists are familiar with the experimental
               economics literature, it offers some support for this
               general approach. In particular, many experiments have shown
               that subjects' concern for fairness weakens many of the
               harsh predictions of standard economic analysis of
               externalities and bargaining.

               Objection #5: The public goods problem is unavoidable.

               Perhaps most fundamentally: government is not a
               solution to the public goods problem, but rather the
               primary instance of the problem. If you create a government
               to solve your public goods problems, you merely create a new
               public goods problem: the public good of restraining and
               checking the government from abusing its power. "[I]t is
               wholly owing to the constitution of the people, and not to
               the constitution of the government, that the crown is not as
               oppressive in England as in Turkey," wrote Thomas Paine; but
               what material incentive is there for individuals to help
               develop a vigilant national character? After all, surely it
               is a rare individual who appreciably affects the national
               culture during his or her lifetime.

               To rely upon democracy as a counter-balance simply assumes
               away the public goods problem. After all, intelligent,
               informed voting is a public good; everyone benefits if the
               electorate reaches wise political judgments, but there is no
               personal, material incentive to "invest" in political
               information, since the same result will (almost certainly)
               happen whether you inform yourself or not. It should be no
               surprise that people know vastly more about their jobs than
               about their government. Many economists seem to be aware of
               this difficulty; in particular, public choice theory in
               economics emphasizes the externalities inherent in
               government action. But a double standard persists: while
               non-governmental externalities must be corrected by the
               state, we simply have to quietly endure the externalities
               inherent in political process.

               Since there is no incentive to monitor the government,
               democracies must rely upon voluntary donations of
               intelligence and virtue. Because good government depends
               upon these voluntary donations, the public goods argument
               for government falls apart. Either unpaid virtue can make
               government work, in which case government isn't necessary to
               solve the public goods problem; or unpaid virtue is
               insufficient to make government work, in which case the
               government cannot be trusted to solve the public goods
               problem.

               David Friedman has a particularly striking argument
               which goes one step further. Under governmental
               institutions, he explains, good law is a public good and bad
               law is a private good. That is, there is little direct
               personal incentive to lobby for laws that benefit everyone,
               but a strong personal incentive to lobby for laws that
               benefit special interests at the expense of everyone else.
               In contrast, under anarcho-capitalist institutions, good law
               is a private good and bad law is a public good. That is, by
               patronizing a firm which protects oneself, one reinforces
               the existence of socially beneficial law; but there is
               little incentive to "lobby" for the re-introduction of
               government. As Friedman explains, "Good law is still
               expensive - I must spend time and money determining which
               protection agency will best serve me - but having decided
               what I want, I get what I pay for. The benefit of my wise
               purchase goes to me, so I have an incentive to purchase
               wisely. It is now the person who wishes to reintroduce
               government who is caught in a public goods problem. He
               cannot abolish anarchy and reintroduce government for
               himself alone; he must do it for everyone or for no one. If
               he does it for everyone, he himself gets but a tiny fraction
               of the 'benefit' he expects the reintroduction of government
               to provide."
 

      16. Are anarchists pacifists?

          Again, this is a complicated question because "pacifism" has at
          least two distinct meanings. It may mean "opposition to all
          violence," or it may mean "opposition to all war (i.e., organized
          violent conflict between governments)." Some anarchists are
          pacifists in the first sense; a very large majority of anarchists
          are pacifists in the weaker, second sense.

            a. Tolstoyan absolute pacifism

               The primary anarchistic inspiration for pacifism in
               the first sense is probably Leo Tolstoy. Drawing his
               themes from the Gospels, Tolstoy argued that violence is
               always wrong, including defensive violence. This naturally
               leads Tolstoy to bitterly denounce warfare as well, but what
               is distinctive here is opposition to violence as such,
               whether offensive or defensive. Moreover, the stricture
               against defensive violence would appear to rule out not only
               retribution against criminals, but self-defense against an
               imminent attack.

               This Tolstoyan theme appears most strongly in the writings
               of Christian anarchists and pacifist anarchists, but it pops
               up quite frequently within the broader left-anarchist
               tradition. For example, Kropotkin looked upon criminals with
               pity rather than contempt, and argued that love and
               forgiveness rather than punishment was the only moral
               reaction to criminal behavior. With the self-described
               Christian and pacifist anarchists, the Tolstoyan position is
               a firm conviction; within the broader left-anarchist
               tradition, it would be better described as a tendency or
               general attitude.

               Some left-anarchists and virtually all anarcho-capitalists
               would strongly disagree with Tolstoy's absolute opposition
               to violence. (The only anarcho-capitalist to ever indicate
               agreement with the Tolstoyan position was probably Robert
               LeFevre.) Left-anarchist critics include the advocates of
               revolutionary terrorism or "propaganda by the deed"
               (discussed in section 22), as well as more moderate anti-
               Tolstoyans who merely uphold the right to use violence for
               self-defense. Of course, their definition of "self-defense"
               might very well include using violence to hinder immoral
               state actions or the functioning of the capitalist system.

               The anarcho-capitalist critique of Tolstoyan pacifism is

               distinguishes between initiatory force against person or
               property (which he views as wrong), and retaliatory force
               (which he views as acceptable and possibly meritorious). The
               anarcho-capitalist condemns the state precisely because it
               institutionalizes the initiation of force within society.
               Criminals do the same, differing only in their lack of
               perceived legitimacy. In principle, both "private" criminals
               and the "public" criminals who run the government may be
               both resisted and punished. While it may be imprudent or
               counter-productive to openly resist state authority (just as
               it might be foolish to resist a gang of well- armed
               mobsters), there is a right to do so.

            b. Pacifism as opposition to war

               Almost all anarchists, in contrast, would agree in their
               condemnation of warfare, i.e., violent conflict between
               governments. Left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists both
               look upon wars as grotesque struggles between ruling elites
               who treat the lives of "their own" people as expendable and
               the lives of the "other side's" people as worthless. It is
               here that anarchism's strong distinction between society and
               the state becomes clearest: whereas most people see war as a
               struggle between societies, anarchists think that war is
               actually a battle between governments which greatly harms
               even the society whose government is victorious. What is
               most pernicious about nationalist ideology is that is makes
               the members of society identify their interests with those
               of their government, when in fact their interests are not
               merely different but in conflict. In short, anarchists of
               both sorts would readily accede to Randolph Bourne's remark
               that "War is the health of the state."

               Left-anarchists' opposition to war is quite similar
               to the general condemnation of war expressed by more
               mainstream international socialists. On this view, war is
               created by capitalism, in particular the struggle for access
               to markets in the Third World. "Workingmen have no country"
               and should refuse to support these intra-capitalist
               struggles; why should they pay the dire cost of war when
               victory will merely leave them more oppressed and exploited
               than before? Moreover, while Western democracies often
               advocate war in the name of justice and humanitarianism, the
               aim and/or end result is to defend traditional
               authoritarianism and destroy the lives of millions of
               innocent people. Within the Western democracies, the left-
               anarchist's hatred for war is often intensified by some
               sense of sympathy for indigenous revolutionary movements.
               While these movements are often state-socialist in intent,
               the left- anarchist often believes that these movements are
               less bad than the traditional authoritarianism against which
               they struggle. Moreover, the West's policy of propping up
               local dictators leads relatively non-authoritarian socialist
               movements to increasing degrees of totalitarianism. Noam
               Chomsky is almost certainly the most influential
               representative of the left-anarchist approach to foreign
               policy: He sees a consistent pattern of the United States
               proclaiming devotion to human rights while supporting
               dictatorships by any means necessary.

               The anarcho-capitalist critique of war is similar in many
               ways to e.g. Chomsky's analysis, but has a different lineage
               and emphasis. As can be seen particularly in Murray
               Rothbard's writings, the anarcho-capitalist view of war
               draws heavily upon both the anti-war classical liberals of
               the 18th and 19th centuries, and the long-standing American
               isolationist tradition. Early classical liberal theorists
               such as Adam Smith,Richard Cobden, and John Bright (and
               later Norman Angell) argued that warfare was caused by
               mercantilism, by the prevailing alliance between governments
               and their favored business elites. The solution, in their
               view, was to end the incestuous connection between business
               and government. The American isolationists were probably
               influenced by this broader classical liberal tradition, but
               placed more emphasis on the idea that foreign wars were at
               best a silly distraction, and at worst a rationalization for
               tyranny. Both views argued that "balance of power" politics
               lead inevitably to endless warfare and unrestrained military
               spending.

               Building upon these two interrelated traditions, anarcho-
               capitalists have built a multi-layered attack upon warfare.
               Firstly, modern war particularly deserves moral condemnation
               (according to libertarian rights theory) for the widespread
               murderous attacks upon innocent civilians -- whether by bomb
               or starvation blockade. Secondly, the wars waged by the
               Western democracies in the 20th- century had disastrous,
               unforeseen consequences: World War I paved the way for
               Communist, fascist, and Nazi totalitarianism; and World War
               II, by creating power vacuums in Europe and Asia, turned
               over a billion human beings to Stalinist despotism. The
               anarcho-capitalist sees these results as predictable rather
               than merely accidental: just as rulers' hubris leads them to
               try to improve the free- market economy, only to find that
               in their ignorance they have wrecked terrible harm, so too
               does the "fatal conceit" of the national security advisor
               lead Western democracies to spend billions of dollars and
               millions of lives before he finds that he has inadvertently
               paved the way for totalitarianism. The anarcho-capitalist's
               third point against war is that its only sure result is to
               aid the domestic expansion of state power; and predictably,
               when wars end, the state's power never contracts to its
               original limits.

      17. Have there been any historical examples of anarchist societies?

          There have probably been no societies which fully satisfy any
          anarchists' ethical ideals, but there have been a number of
          suggestive examples.

          Left-anarchists most often cite the anarchist communes of the
          Spanish Civil War as examples of viable anarchist societies. The
          role of the Spanish anarchists in the Spanish Civil War has
          perhaps generated more debate on alt.society.anarchy than any
          other historical issue. Since this FAQ is concerned primarily
          with theoretical rather than purely historical questions, the
          reader will have to search elsewhere for a detailed discussion.
          Suffice it to say that left-anarchists generally believe that:
          (a) The Spanish anarchist political organizations and unions
          began and remained democratic throughout the war; (b) That a
          majority of the citizenry in areas controlled by the anarchists
          was sympathetic to the anarchist movement; (c) That workers
          directly controlled factories and businesses that they
          expropriated, rather than being subject to strict control by
          anarchist leaders; and (d) That the farm collectives in the
          anarchist-controlled regions were largely voluntary, and rarely
          exerted coercive pressure against small farmers who refused to
          join. In contrast, anarcho-capitalist critics such as James
          Donald normally maintain that: (a) The Spanish anarchist
          political organizations and unions, even if they were initially
          democratic, quickly transformed into dictatorial oligarchies with
          democratic trappings once the war started; (b) That the Spanish
          anarchists, even if they initially enjoyed popular support,
          quickly forfeited it with their abuse of power; (c) That in many
          or most cases, "worker" control meant dictatorial control by the
          anarchist elite; and (d) That the farm collectivizations in
          anarchist-controlled regions were usually coercively formed,
          totalitarian for their duration, and marked by a purely nominal
          right to remain outside the collective (since non-joining farmers
          were seriously penalized in a number of ways). For a reply to
          James Donald's piece, click here.

          For my own account of the controversy regarding the Spanish
          Anarchists, see The Anarcho-Statists of Spain: An Historical,
          Economic, and Philosophical Analysis of Spanish Anarchism. For a
          reply to my piece, click here.

          Israeli kibbutzim have also been admired as working examples of
          voluntary socialism. Kropotkin and Bakunin held up the mir, the
          traditional communal farming system in rural Russia, as
          suggestive of the organization and values which would be
          expressed in an anarchist society. Various experimental
          communities have also laid claim to socialist anarchist
          credentials.

          Anarcho-capitalists' favorite example, in contrast, is medieval
          Iceland. David Friedman has written extensively on the
          competitive supply of defense services and anarchistic character
          of a much-neglected period of Iceland's history. Left-anarchists
          have occasionally criticized Friedman's work on medieval Iceland,
          but overall this debate is much sketchier than the debate over
          the Spanish Civil War. See Is Medieval Iceland an example of
          "anarcho"-capitalism working in practice?; for David Friedman's
          reply to an earlier draft of this piece , click here.

          A long stretch of medieval Irish history has also been claimed to
          have pronounced anarcho-capitalist features. Other
          anarcho-capitalists have argued that the American "Wild West"
          offers an excellent illustration of anarcho-capitalist
          institutions springing up only to be later suppressed and crowded
          out by government. Anarcho- capitalists also often note that
          while the United States has never been an anarchist society by
          any stretch of the imagination, that before the 20th-century the
          United States came closer to their pure laissez-faire ideals than
          any other society in history. America's colonial and
          revolutionary period especially interests them. Murray Rothbard
          in particular published a four-volume history of the colonial and
          revolutionary eras, finding delight in a brief period of
          Pennsylvania's history when the state government virtually
          dissolved itself due to lack of interest. (An unpublished fifth
          volume in the series defended the "weak" Articles of the
          Confederation against the strong, centralized state established
          by the U.S. Constitution.)

          One case that has inspired both sorts of anarchists is that of
          the free cities of medieval Europe. The first weak link in the
          chain of feudalism, these free cities became Europe's centers of
          economic development, trade, art, and culture. They provided a
          haven for runaway serfs, who could often legally gain their
          freedom if they avoided re-capture for a year and a day. And they
          offer many examples of how people can form mutual-aid
          associations for protection, insurance, and community. Of course,
          left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists take a somewhat different
          perspective on the free cities: the former emphasize the
          communitarian and egalitarian concerns of the free cities, while
          the latter point to the relatively unregulated nature of their
          markets and the wide range of services (often including defense,
          security, and legal services) which were provided privately or
          semi-privately. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid contains an extensive
          discussion of the free cities of medieval Europe;
          anarcho-capitalists have written less on the subject, but
          strongly praise the historical treatments in Henri Pirenne's
          Medieval Cities and Harold Berman's Law and Revolution.

          The Enclopedia Brittanica article on Anarchism gives at best a
          cursory summary of anarchist theory, but does contain useful
          information on the history of left-anarchist political and labor
          movements. Click here to view the article.

      18. Isn't anarchism utopian?

          Utopianism is perhaps the most popular criticism made of
          anarchism. In an atypically uncharitable passage in his European
          Socialism, socialist historian Carl Landauer states:

               There is certainly one truth in anarchistic beliefs:
               Every large organization contains an element of veiled
               or open force, and every kind of force is an evil, if
               we consider its effects on the human character. But is
               it not the lesser evil? Can we dispense with force?
               When this question is clearly put, the case for
               anarchism seems extremely weak. It is true, that the
               experiment of an entirely forceless society have never
               been made. But such evidence as we have does not
               indicate that ill intentions will cease to exist if
               repressive force disappears, and it is clear enough
               that one ill-intentioned person can upset a large part
               of society if there is no repressive force. The fact
               that some intelligent and highly idealistic men and
               women have believed and still believe in anarchism
               shows that there is a type of sectarianism which
               accepts a belief in spite of, or perhaps because of,
               its apparent absurdity.

          As we have seen, however, virtually all anarcho-capitalists and
          many left-anarchists accept the use of force in some
          circumstances. Landauer's remark would be better directed at
          absolute pacifists rather than anarchists in general.

          Anarchists' supposed unwillingness to use force in any
          circumstance is only one reason why they have been widely
          perceived as utopian. Sometimes the utopian charge is trivial;
          if, for example, any radical change is labelled "utopian." If on
          the other hand "utopian" simply means that anarchism could work
          if and only if all people were virtuous, and thus in practice
          would lead to the imposition of new forms of oppression, then the
          question is more interesting. Interesting, because this is more
          or less the charge that different types of anarchists frequently
          bring against each other.

          To the left-anarchist, for example, anarcho-capitalism is based
          upon a truly fantastic picture of economics, in which free
          competition somehow leads to prosperity and freedom for all. To
          them, the anarcho-capitalists' vision of "economic harmonies" and
          the workings of the "invisible hand" are at best unlikely, and
          probably impossible. Hence, in a sense they accuse the
          anarcho-capitalists of utopianism.

          The anarcho-capitalists charge the left-anarchists similarly. For
          the latter imagine that somehow a communitarian society could
          exist without forcible repression of dissenting individualists;
          think that incentives for production would not be impaired by
          enforced equality; and confusedly equate local democracy with
          freedom. Moreover, they generally have no explanation for how
          crime would be prevented or what safeguards would prevent the
          rise of a new ruling elite. For the anarcho-capitalist, the
          left-anarchist is again hopelessly utopian.

          But in any case, probably most anarchists would offer a similar
          reply to the charge that they are utopians. Namely: what is truly
          utopian is to imagine that somehow the government can hold
          massive power without turning it to monstrous ends. As Rothbard
          succinctly puts it: "the man who puts all the guns and all the
          decision-making power into the hands of the central government
          and then says, 'Limit yourself'; it is he who is truly the
          impractical utopian." Is not the whole history of the 20th
          century an endless list of examples of governments easily
          breaking the weak bonds placed upon their ability to oppress and
          even murder as they see fit?

      19. Don't anarchists assume that all people are innately virtuous?

          This is a perfectly reasonable question, for it is indeed the
          case that some anarchists expect a remarkable change in human
          nature to follow (or precede?) the establishment of an anarchist
          society. This assumption partially explains the frequent lack of
          explanation of how an anarchist society would handle crime,
          dissenting individualists, and so on.

          The belief in innate human virtue is normally found only among
          left-anarchist thinkers, but of course it does not follow, nor is
          it true, that all left-anarchist thinkers believe in humanity's
          innate human virtue.

          Anarcho-capitalists have a very different picture of human
          nature. While they normally believe that people have a strong
          capacity for virtuous action (and it is to people's moral sense
          that they frequently appeal when they favor the abolition of the
          state), they believe that it is wise and necessary to cement
          moral virtue with material incentives. Capitalism's system of
          unequal wages, profits and losses, rent and interest, is not only
          morally justified but vitally necessary for the preservation and
          expansion of the economy. In short, anarcho-capitalists believe
          in and indeed must depend on some reasonable level of human
          morality, but prefer to rely on material incentives when
          feasible. (Similarly, they morally condemn crime and believe that
          most people have no desire to commit crimes, but strongly favor
          some sort of criminal justice system to deter the truly amoral.)

      20. Aren't anarchists terrorists?

          Aren't statists terrorists? Well, some of the them are; in fact,
          the overwhelming majority of non-governmental groups who murder
          and destroy property for political aims believe that government
          ought to exist (and that they ought to run it). And just as the
          existence of such statist terrorists is a poor argument for
          anarchism, the existence of anarchist terrorists is a poor
          argument against anarchism. For any idea whatever, there will
          always be those who advocate advancing it by violence.

          It is however true that around the turn of the century, a certain
          segment of anarchists advocated what they called "propaganda by
          the deed." Several heads of state were assassinated by
          anarchists, along with businessmen, industrialists,
          stock-brokers, and so on. One of the most famous instances was
          when the young Alexander Berkman tried to murder the steel
          industrialist Henry Frick. During this era, the left-anarchists
          were divided as to the permissibility of terrorism; but of course
          many strongly opposed it. And individualist anarchists such as
          Benjamin Tucker almost always saw terrorist activities as both
          counter-productive and immoral when innocents were injured (as
          they often were).

          The basic argument of the advocates of "propaganda by the deed"
          was that anarchist terrorism would provoke governments -- even
          avowedly liberal and democratic governments -- to resort to
          increasingly harsh measures to restore order. As governments'
          ruthlessness increased, their "true colors" would appear for all
          to see, leading to more immediate results than mere education and
          theorizing. As E.V. Zenker notes in his Anarchism: A Criticism
          and History of the Anarchist Theory, a number of Western
          governments were driven to adopt anti-terrorist laws as a result
          of anarchist terrorism. (Zenker goes on to note that Great
          Britain remained true to its liberal heritage by refusing to
          punish individuals merely for espousing anarchist ideas.) But as
          one might expect, contrary to the terrorists' hopes, it was the
          reputation of anarchism -- peaceful and violent alike -- which
          suffered rather than the reputation of the state.

          Undoubtedly the most famous modern terrorist in the tradition of
          "propaganda by the deed" is the so-called Unabomber, who
          explicitly labels himself an anarchist in his now-famous
          manifesto. In his manifesto, the Unabomber makes relatively
          little attempt to link himself to any particular figures in the
          anarchist tradition, but professes familiarity and general
          agreement with the anarchistic wing of the radical
          environmentalist movement. A large proportion of this
          wide-ranging manifesto criticizes environmentalists' cooperation
          with socialists, minority rights activists, and other broadly
          left-wing groups; the point of this criticism is not of course to
          propose an alliance with conservatives, but to reject alliance
          with people who fail to reject technology as such. The more
          positive portion of the manifesto argues that freedom and
          technology are inherently incompatible, and outlines a program
          for the destruction of both modern industry and the scientific
          knowledge necessary to sustain it.

          The large majority of anarchists -- especially in modern
          times -- fervently oppose the killing of innocents on
          purely moral grounds (just as most non-anarchists presumably do,
          though anarchists would often classify those killed in war as
          murder victims of the state). Nonviolence and pacifism now
          inspire far more anarchist thinkers than visions of random
          terror. Anarchists from many different perspectives have been
          inspired by the writings of the 16th-century Frenchman Etienne de
          la Boetie, whose quasi-anarchistic The Discourse of Voluntary
          Servitude spelled out a detailed theory of nonviolent revolution.
          La Boetie explained that since governments depend upon the
          widespread belief in their legitimacy in order to rule, despotism
          could be peacefully overthrown by refusing to cooperate with the
          state. Henry David Thoreau influenced many nonviolent protest
          movements with a similar theme in "On the Duty of Civil
          Disobedience." As Thoreau put it: "If the alternative is to keep
          all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State
          will not hesitate which to choose." The success of the nonviolent
          anti-communist revolutions lends new support to the tactical
          insight of la Boetie and Thoreau.

          But anarchists have a more instrumental reason to oppose the use
          of violence. Terrorism has been very effective in establishing
          new and more oppressive regimes; but it is nearly impossible to
          find any instance where terrorism led to greater freedom. For the
          natural instinct of the populace is to rally to support its
          government when terrorism is on the rise; so terrorism normally
          leads to greater brutality and tighter regulation by the existing
          state. And when terrorism succeeds in destroying an existing
          government, it merely creates a power vacuum without
          fundamentally changing anyone's mind about the nature of power.
          The predictable result is that a new state, worse than its
          predecessor, will swiftly appear to fill the void. Thus, the
          importance of using nonviolent tactics to advance anarchist ideas
          is hard to overstate.

      21. How might an anarchist society be achieved?

          On one level, most modern anarchists agree fully that
          education and persuasion are the most effective way to
          move society towards their ultimate destination. There is the
          conviction that "ideas matter"; that the state exists because
          most people honestly and firmly believe that the state is just,
          necessary, and beneficial, despite a few drawbacks. Winston
          Churchill famously remarked that, "It has been said that
          democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others
          that have been tried." The anarchist's goal is to disprove
          Churchill's claim: to show that contrary to popular belief,
          Western democracy is not only bad but inferior to a very
          different but realistic alternative.

          Aside from this, the similarity between anarchist approaches
          breaks down. In particular, what should the "transitional" phase
          look like? Anarcho-capitalists generally see every reduction in
          government power and activity as a step in the right direction.
          In consequence, they usually support any measure to deregulate,
          repeal laws, and cut taxation and spending (naturally with the
          caveat that the cuts do not go nearly far enough). Similarly,
          they can only hail the spread of the underground economy or
          "black market," tax evasion, and other acts of defiance against
          unjust laws.

          The desirable transitional path for the left-anarchist is more
          problematic. It is hard to support expansion of the state when it
          is the state that one opposes so fervently. And yet, it is
          difficult to advocate the abolition of e.g. welfare programs when
          they are an important means of subsistence for the oppressed
          lower classes of capitalist society. Perhaps the most viable
          intermediate step would be to expand the voluntary alternatives
          to capitalist society: voluntary communes, cooperatives,
          worker-owned firms, or whatever else free people might establish
          to fulfill their own needs while they enlighten others.

      22. What are some addresses for anarchist World Wide Web sites?

          To begin with, there is my homepage at:
             + Bryan Caplan Archives
               http://www.princeton.edu/~bdcaplan

               I keep the list of addresses short because the sites
               provided allow easy access to a large number of related
               sites.

               Some starting points for discussion of left-anarchism are:

             + Anarchist Archives
               http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/
               faculty/dward/Anarchist_Archives/archivehome.html
               The best page of its type, in my view.

             + Prominent Anarchists and Left-Libertarians
               http://www.tigerden.com/~berios/libertarians.html

             + The Portland Anarchist Web Page
               http://www.ee.pdx.edu/~jason/

             + An Anarchy Page
               http://www.duke.edu/~eagle/anarchy/

             + Anarchist Yearbook -- Phoenix Press
               http://web.cs.city.ac.uk/homes/louise/yearbk.html

             + Spunk Press Catalog
               http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/people/Jack.Jansen/spunk/cat-us/Toplevel.html

             + Critiques of Libertarianism
               http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html

             + Burn
               http://burn.ucsd.edu/Welcome.html

             + All About Anarchism
               http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2419/index.html

               Some starting points for discussion of anarcho-capitalism
               are:

             + Free-market.com
               http://www.free-market.com

             + James Donald's Liberty Page
               http://www.jim.com/jamesd/world.html

             + Institute for Humane Studies
               http://mason.gmu.edu/~ihs

             + Niels Buhl Homepage
               http://www.math.ku.dk/~buhl

             + Libertarian Web Page
               http://lw3.ag.uiuc.edu/liberty/libweb.html

             + International Society for Individual Liberty
               http://www.creative.net/~star/

             + Libertarian Alliance
               http://www.digiweb.com/igeldard/LA/

             + David Friedman Homepage
               http://www.best.com/~ddfr

               There are several other anarchism FAQs available on the web.
               None of them are to my complete satisfaction; among other
               failings, they normally either ignore anarcho-capitalism
               entirely, or attack a straw man version thereof, and thus do
               little to clarify the most heated of the net-related
               debates. On the positive side, these other FAQs often have
               much more historical information than mine does. See for
               yourself.

             + http://www.ibw.com.ni/~dlabs/anarquismo/every.html
             + http://tigerden.com/~berios/libsoc.html
             + http://www.art.net/Poets/Jennifer/anarchy/archyfaq2.html
             + http://www.vnet.net/users/goodag/birdo/ana.html
             + http://www.wam.umd.edu/~ctmunson/TEXT/sp000284.html

               There does exist a FAQ written by Roger McCain on
               libertarian socialism and left-anarchism of markedly higher
               quality than the preceding five. It is archived at:
             + http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/personal/LSfaq/faq_ToC.html

               A new, highly detailed FAQ from a left-anarchist perspective
               has recently been set up, ostensibly in celebration of the
               60th anniversary of the Spanish Revolution. It is available
               at:
             + http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931

               My FAQ is beginning to amass its share of critics who prefer
               to write full-length replies. Those that I am aware of are:
             + Rebuttal to the Anarchism FAQ of Bryan Caplan by Lamont
               Granquist

             + Replies to Some Errors and Distortions in Bryan Caplan's
               Anarchist Theory FAQ version 4.1.1

               My only comment is that it is simply untrue that I have
               ignored criticisms of my FAQ. There are numerous points I
               have altered or expanded it due to criticism I have
               received; and when I disagree with a critic's claim, I
               frequently ask permission to quote their reservations
               verbatim in the next revision. It is however true that I
               only respond to private e-mail criticisms; attacks simply
               posted to Usenet are unlikely to come to my attention.

          To my knowledge there is no page which contains a broad survey
          along the lines of this FAQ. However, these sources in
          combination should give a good picture of the wide range of
          anarchist opinion, along with more information on history and
          current events which I chose not to discuss in detail herein.
          Examination of these sites can also give a reasonable picture of
          how left-anarchism and anarcho- capitalism intellectually relate
          to the broader progressive and libertarian movements,
          respectively.

      23. What are some major anarchist writings?

          This list is by no means intended to be exhaustive; nor does
          inclusion here necessarily indicate that the work is of
          particularly high quality. In particular, both Heider's and
          Marshall's works contain a number of embarrassing factual errors.
          (Some of the more glaring errors from Marshall's Demanding the
          Impossible appear to have been corrected in this linked exerpt.)

          Particularly well-written and canonical expressions of different
          anarchist theories are noted with an asterisk (*). Broad surveys
          of anarchism are noted with a number sign (#).

             + Mihail Bakunin. God and the State
             + * Mikhail Bakunin. The Political Philosophy of Bakunin
             + Mikhail Bakunin. Statism and Anarchy
             + Bruce Benson. The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the
               State
             + Alexander Berkman. The ABC of Anarchism
             + Etienne de la Boetie. The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude
               (also published as The Politics of Obedience: the Discourse
               of Voluntary Servitude)
             + Burnett Bolloten. The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and
               Counterrevolution
             + Murray Bookchin. Post-Scarcity Anarchism
             + Frank Brooks, ed. The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology
               of Liberty (1881-1908)
             + Roy Childs. Liberty Against Power
             + Frank Chodorov. Fugitive Essays
             + Noam Chomsky. American Power and the New Mandarins
             + Noam Chomsky. The Chomsky Reader
             + Tyler Cowen, ed. The Theory of Market Failure (also
               published as Public Goods and Market Failures)
             + Douglas Davis and Charles Holt. Experimental Economics
             + Ronald Fraser. Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the
               Spanish Civil War
             + * David Friedman. The Machinery of Freedom
             + William Godwin. The Anarchist Writings of William Godwin
             + Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays
             + *# Daniel Guerin. Anarchism: From Theory to Practice
             + # Ulrike Heider. Anarchism: Left, Right, and Green
             + Hans-Hermann Hoppe. A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism
             + Anthony de Jasay. Social Contract, Free Ride
             + Leonard Krimerman and Lewis Perry, eds. Patterns of Anarchy
             + * Peter Kropotkin. The Essential Kropotkin
             + Peter Kropotkin. Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution
             + * Carl Landauer. European Socialism: A History of Ideas and
               Movements
             + Bruno Leoni. Freedom and the Law
             + Wendy McElroy. Freedom, Feminism, and the State
             + # Peter Marshall. Demanding the Impossible: A History of
               Anarchism
             + James Martin. Men Against the State: The Expositors of
               Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827-1908
             + Gustave de Molinari. "The Production of Security"
             + Albert Jay Nock. Our Enemy the State
             + Albert Jay Nock. The State of the Union
             + Robert Nozick. Anarchy, State, and Utopia
             + Franz Oppenheimer. The State
             + David Osterfeld. Freedom, Society, and the State : An
               Investigation into the Possibility of Society without
               Government
             + *# J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman, eds. Anarchism,
               Nomos vol.19
             + Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. What is Property?
             + Murray Rothbard. Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature
             + Murray Rothbard. The Ethics of Liberty
             + * Murray Rothbard. For a New Liberty
             + Murray Rothbard. Power and Market
             + David Schmidtz. The Limits of Government: An Essay on the
               Public Goods Argument
             + Lysander Spooner. The Lysander Spooner Reader
             + * Lysander Spooner. No Treason: The Constitution of No
               Authority
             + Max Stirner. The Ego and Its Own
             + Morris and Linda Tannehill. The Market for Liberty
             + Henry David Thoreau. The Portable Thoreau
             + Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy on Civil Disobedience and Non- Violence
             + Benjamin Tucker. Instead of a Book, by a Man Too Busy to
               Write One
             + Gordon Tullock, ed. Further Explorations in the Theory of
               Anarchy
             + Robert Paul Wolff. In Defence of Anarchism
             + # George Woodcock. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas
               and Movements
             + # E.V. Zenker. Anarchism: A Criticism and History of the
               Anarchist Theory

     ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 

     For comments, suggestions, corrections, etc., write
     bdcaplan@princeton.edu. Thanks to Fabio Rojas, James Donald, David
     Friedman, Robert Vienneau, Ken Steube, Ben Haller, Vincent Cook, Bill
     Woolsey, Conal Smith, Jim Kalb, Chris Faatz, J. Shamlin, Keith Lynch,
     Rose Lucas, Bruce Baechler, Jim Cook, Jack Jansen, Tom Wetzel, Steve
     Koval, Brent Jass, Tracy Harms, Ian Goddard, and I.M. McKay for
     helpful advice or other assistance.