Anarchism is a political philosophy that is centered on the rejection of a compulsory state or government. The state as classified by anarchists is a person or institution that uses force and coercion to dominate others, ultimatley leading to heirarchy. Anarchism is derivided from Greek to mean "without archons or without rulers". Everyone being free and equal under Natural Law would be the essence of anarchism. Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds that every individual is the absolute owner of themselves and their lives and should be free to do whatever they want with themselves and their property/possessions, as long as they do not infringe upon the same rights of others. Libertarianism is principly opposed to the individual being subject to anyone other person, authority, or collective. I think we can all see how similar anarchism and libertarianism are. There are however people within both the anarchists and libertarian movement that claim to be anarchists or libertarians but hold beliefs that violates both philosophies. Within anarchism, an example would be the collectivist anarchists of AI (Anarchist International); http://www.anarchy.no/ If you read the philosophy of this organization claiming to be "anarchists", you will find that they do not oppose all forms of compulsory rulership. They maintain no coercion is impossible, and instead strive for "as little possible coercion" to protect the enviroment and provide services. They even advocate prohibition of drugs in their so called "anarchist" society. These type of people are of course not anarchists. To support any amount of force and coercion is un-anarchistic. Of course, within libertarianism there are many unprincipled libertarians as well. An example of these would be minarchist libertarians (such as many objectivists); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchism Minarchists aren't in essence true libertarians because supporting the state is un-libertarian. Libertarianism is opposed to all force and coercion against the persons and property of individuals. Some minarchists believe that the state is a "necessary evil", but this is bullshite. Either you are oppose to all forms of coercion and force and libertarian, or you are not and not libertarian. There is no way around this. If you think about it, anarchism is the highest expression of libertarianism, and libertarianism is the highest expression of anarchism. This is why I call myself an anarcho-libertarian or a libertarian anarchist. "anarcho-communism", "anarcho-capitalism", "anarcha-feminism", "anarcho-primitivism", ect. only describe a certain arrangement once the state is abolished. But anarcho-libertarian includes any libertarian or anarchist philosophy opposed to all forms of force and coercion in order to create a free and equal society. Thoughts?
I think anarchism is a hypothetical utopia, libertarianism is a reality based ideology. Anarchy is purist, theoretical ideal, libertarianism is more pragmatic. You focus on laws - e.g. drugs - but the other question is property rights. Anarchy is still a collectivist ideology is this area. Libertarianism is not. Tell me, could Nike corporation exist in its present form under anarchy?
Anarchism isn't purely a collectivist ideology. There are as many different types of anarchisms as there are statisms. There are individualist forms of anarchisms (which accept private property) and collectivist froms of anarchism which do not. Therefore in many ways Individualist anarchism is a more radical form of anarchism as it gives supreme rights to the individual rather than the community. Anarchist libertarianism is an Individualist anarchist philosophy. The Nike corporation couldn't exist in a pure libertarian society or a pure anarchist society. Corporations are the result of the state. Without all the privelages corporations get from states now (patents, other IP, subsidies, ect.) they would crumble very quickly.
That's not really true, libertarianism does not oppose the existance of a state and a legal system. Patents can absolutely be considered a property right. I oppose some patents, such as software patents, but on the whole I don't think the concept violates libertarian principles. When you say that corporations only exist because of subsidies you are sounding like a collectivist, anti-capitalist again. Its a bit absurd - of course most corporations pay huge amounts of taxes. And corporations are ulimately only legal enitity stand-ins for their ultimate owners, individuals, who pay taxes on income received from their ownership of corporations. You'd have to explain what would happen without Nike in its present form. Would no large corporations exist? Why not? Would brands not exist? Why not?
I have yet to meet a Libertarian who wanted zero government...they simply want a much smaller government.
I don't think corporations would would fare very well in a libertarian society due to many reasons. Corporations exist mainly because of the state, their influence on it, and the laws that favor them while placing a burden on smaller businesses. Without the heavy burden, especially on the tax side, we would see a lot more smaller businesses and self employed people giving a lot more competition to the big corporations. We would see a much more free market. Competition is always good for the consumer and really for the business as well.
Well just think about it for a second. Let's say the state comes to an end right now. What will happen to all their money? It will become worthless! Why? Because all that money they have been making is nothing more than worthless paper. It isn't based on anything......it's just state-enforced currency. In a true libertarian/anarchist society, people wouldn't be able to get as rich as they can. Resources are limited. In our current system people can become very wealthy is because their money has no basis in the natural world. It's just a bunch of printed paper. So massive income differences wouldn't exist if paper money became worthless. And our society will become as close as possible to an equal society through the workings of free market individualism.......as what the individualist anarchists described. Patents and subsidies couldn't exist without the state.......because they are special privelages granted by the state! How could those billion dollar corporations exist without the many privelages they get? Not only that, the unlimited competition of a true free market (free and peaceful exchange of anything among people, whether they be favors or goods) ....as envisioned by Proudhoun, Warren, Tucker, Spooner, and Rothbard would negate the possibilities of a monopoly power. About sounding anti-capitalists and collectivist.......how so? If you are going by the 19th century definition of capitalism then I am very much anti-capitalist and a socialist. HOWEVER, the meaning of capitalism has changed and has been used and abused by many people to mean different things. One definition of capitalism goes perfectly with anarchism, while the definition that is used to favor the wealthy is very un-anarchistic. It's all an issue of semantics here. I suggest you read the works of Per Bylund and Kevin Karson. They more than anyone else are trying to break the bridge between individualist anarchists/anarcho-capitalists and collectivist anarchists/socialists anarchists. The biggest threat to unity is misunderstanding over semantics. It's best not even to use the term "capitalist" and "socialist" when talking about either libertarianism and anarchism, because both terms are so misleading depending on who talks about them. It depends. Many who are affiliated with the Libertarian Party are minarchists. Libertarians outside the LP tend to be more anarchistic. Go to http://www.strike-the-root.com/ http://www.anti-state.com/ and http://www.anarchism.net/ To meet some libertarian anarchists.
They wouldn't just not fare any well, they would collapse into nothing. Corporations are the midwife of statism, though not as bad as the state.
You can just as easily say that the state enforces property rights just as it enforces trademarks and patents. Is property a state construct? I don't think so. I just don't see why Libertarians would be bothered - am i oppressed because i can't make and sell shoes with a Nike swoosh on them? Hardly. Libertarians will always tell you that the state should me minimal, and should primarily concern itself with providing law and order and protection of property rights - whether those property rights extend to intellectual property may not be universally accepted among libertarians, but I'd guess it was the majority view. I'm also not convinced of the currency argument. Libertarians don't object to a nation state's currency - whether it should be backed by a gold standard or not is another issue. You can't just say money doesn't exist, as if that solves everything. People will trade. Will they trade with sea shells? Lumps of gold? Gold coins? Gold backed paper currency? How would any of these change how much wealth you can accumulate, other than the deadweight loss from destroying an efficient financial system. I don't see a Libertarian side to it. What priviliges? This is another left wing resentful anti corporations argument. Some industries are more efficient in large scale. Large does not mean monopoly - what sort of monopoly does McDonalds, Nike, Toyota, Sony, Citibank, or General Motors have? Monopoly capitalism was a left wing bogeyman from a century ago. It didn't happen.
