Ideology
Anarcho-CapitalismLibertarian
Seeks to abolish the state and replace it with private property, free markets and voluntary contracts, with security, courts and other services provided by competing private firms in an unregulated economy.
Core ideas
- Private property and voluntary exchange are the basis of social order.
- The state is a coercive monopoly and should be abolished.
- Security and courts can be supplied by competing private providers.
- The non-aggression principle governs all relations.
- Contracts and private law, not government legislation, settle disputes.
Where it sits on the 12 axes
On the Economy axis (Collectivize to Privatize) the profile is at 10, near the Privatize end. Government is at 0, the Freedom end of Security to Freedom. Diplomacy and Society are both at 50, in the middle. The test uses only these four values: it finds the distance from your scores to each ideology's four values, and the nearest profile is your match. This one has the lowest Government value of the batch, so it tends to be matched by answers that are strongly pro-freedom and pro-market.
The bar shows the position on each of the four axes an ideology is matched on; the middle mark is the centre.
History
The earliest documented use of the term appears in Karl Hess's essay "The Death of Politics", published in Playboy in March 1969. Murray Rothbard largely developed and popularized the concepts in the early 1970s, drawing on the Austrian school of economics, Ayn Rand's Objectivism, classical liberalism and the 19th-century individualist anarchists Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker. An earlier formulation is the concept of individual sovereignty emphasized by the Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari, who held that protection could be bought from competing private providers. Most anarchists do not regard anarcho-capitalism as anarchism, because they see anarchism as incompatible with capitalism.
Associated thinkers
- Murray Rothbard
- Gustave de Molinari
Common misunderstandings
- It is not chaos or no rules. Its supporters expect private law, contracts and competing security firms to take over what the state does now.
- Many anarchists do not accept it as anarchism, because the older anarchist tradition is anti-capitalist; whether it counts is a long-running dispute.
Related ideologies
Is Anarcho-Capitalism your closest ideology?
Take the test and see which of the ideologies your answers sit closest to.
Questions
What is Anarcho-Capitalism?
A political philosophy that wants no state and a society run by private property, voluntary contracts and free markets. Courts, police and defence would be supplied by competing private firms.
Is Anarcho-Capitalism left or right?
It is usually placed on the right on economics, but it rejects the state itself, and the test files it as libertarian. Many anarchists call it a right-wing ideology, and its supporters call it a form of anarchism.
Anarcho-Capitalism vs Libertarianism?
Libertarians favour liberty and limited government, from a minimal state to none. Anarcho-capitalism is the stateless end of that range. Many libertarians accept some state, for example for courts or defence, which anarcho-capitalists reject.
How does the 12 Axes test decide I am Anarcho-Capitalism?
The test compares your scores on four of the twelve axes (Economy, Government, Diplomacy, Society) with a stored profile for each of the 38 ideologies. The profile at the shortest distance across those four is your match.