The focus of anarcho-capitalism as a political philosophy is the autonomy of the individual: everyone should be able to peacefully pursue their life project without suffering unwanted interference. The ethical axis that allows this objective to be achieved is private property. This allows both bodies and external goods to be legitimately assigned and delimited, making it possible to identify and judge transfers of acquired property.
Private property is not an end in itself, but a necessary regulatory framework to guarantee individual autonomy. Its function is to regulate physical interactions, and this, from a political point of view, is summarized in the principle of non-aggression: not to initiate, or threaten to initiate, aggression against those who have not attacked or threatened to attack us.
This principle posits the individual as the basic unit of society, demanding that their wills be left alone as long as it does not involve aggression against third parties. This is usually the cover for anyone who enters libertarianism, and although it is a compass for understanding the direction of the libertarian and anarcho-capitalist position, there is an important nuance that is omitted. Private property only refers to physical relationships, and therefore, to remain solely with the principle of non-aggression is to ignore a very important part of society: social order.
Human beings, as social animals, discover through custom the benefits of exchange and cooperation. They exchange not only economic goods, but also ideas, values, and customs. This fact leads to spontaneous order: the self-organization of individuals through practices that—through a gradual process of trial and error—culminate in the formation of social institutions. These are structured and lasting patterns of behavior, norms, and relationships that aim to achieve both individual goals and social cohesion.
We can classify social institutions into two types according to their function:
- Agency-oriented institutions, which structure conditions of possibility for free action: language, property, contract, law, money, the market, education, etc.
- Belonging-oriented institutions, which organize denser interpersonal relationships: family, church, locality, guild, university, etc.
In a social sense, all these practices involve some degree of authority. In the case of individual-oriented institutions, functional pressures are exerted: Why should I communicate in that language? Why should I sign contracts? On the other hand, membership-oriented institutions—that is, communities—exert normative or hierarchical pressures: Why should I obey my parents? Why should I respect certain customs? Why can’t I walk around naked? As long as these practices do not resort to systematic coercion, their legitimacy lies in voluntary acceptance.
What use can we derive from social institutions from an anarcho-capitalist perspective? With regard to those oriented toward the individual, their necessity is clear: without a common language, without property, and without contracts, society would lack the minimum elements to establish an anarcho-capitalist institutional framework. We affirm that there are institutions that directly serve as conditions for free action.
What is relevant here, however, is to investigate the role of social institutions that are more community-oriented. These are not necessary for free will in strict terms, but they are fundamental for cohesion between individuals. The community, as a social institution, is what ultimately makes the difference between stability and chaos.
This has been highlighted by Misesian anarcho-capitalists such as Murray Rothbard and, more emphatically, Hans-Hermann Hoppe. “Hoppeanism” or conservative anarcho-capitalism is the result of appreciating the importance of traditional communities as institutions necessary for stable coexistence. Positions such as social atomism, nihilism, hedonism, and libertinism are, in principle, logically consistent with the ethics of private property and, therefore, with a society of private law. However, all these positions tend to destabilize the social order due to their relativistic implications. If everyone defines their own rules, if nothing makes sense, if our ultimate criterion is subjective pleasure, and if we can all act without consequences, these are the kinds of positions that lead to ethical relativism and, with it, the destruction of any order of private property.
Communitarian anarcho-capitalism is the explicit recognition of individual autonomy as the main axis of society, but at the same time emphasizing the importance of the link between the individual and their social environment. It does not tell us specifically what a particular society should be like, but rather highlights the relevance of communities as organically emerging institutions that stabilize the social order.
From a political point of view, as Robert Nisbet has developed in his The Quest for Community, communities serve as autonomous centers of loyalty and authority, with varying degrees of impact on social development. All communities involve politics, not in a state sense, but in terms of coordination and regulation of social conflicts, and it is the coexistence of different forms of community—with their respective politics—within the same territory that allows for a balance of authority.
This was historically the case in medieval Europe, which became politically fragmented after the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire. Over time, feudal polycentrism spontaneously established itself: different sources of authority—family, church, nobility, king, free cities, village communities, guilds, universities—competing in the same territory and functioning as mutual counterweights to any absolute power.
Starting in the 14th century, various historical circumstances led to the crisis of the feudal order, allowing different authorities to concentrate more and more power. This stage gradually gave rise to political centralization—with permanent bureaucracies, regular armies, centralized justice, and increasingly systematized tax systems. Two centuries later, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) would formally enshrine the institution that channeled political centralization: the state.
The state—understood as a territorial monopolist of jurisdiction—assumes absolute authority or “sovereignty” over all individuals within its borders, making it a politically-monistic institution. Communities—as autonomous centers of loyalty and authority—pose a threat to the state model, whose successful dominance and loyalty depend, not on technical circumstances, but on ideological ones, under the premise that monopolistic imposition is necessary or inevitable for the harmonious development of society.
The intellectual mission of statism has therefore been, first, to delegitimize the various forms of community as imposed and outdated constraints and, second, to reintegrate them under the control of the state model, progressively emptying them of their capacity as autonomous actors and transferring to the state the functions that these communities once performed. This dynamic culminates in the totalitarian state, in which all relevant forms of community must be subordinated to central power, and any deviation is seen as a threat to authority. As Nisbet explains:
The prime object of totalitarian government thus becomes the incessant destruction of all evidences of spontaneous, autonomous association. For, with this social atomization, must go also a diminution of intensity and a final flickering out of political values that interpose themselves between freedom and despotism.
To destroy or diminish the reality of the smaller areas of society, to abolish or restrict the range of cultural alternatives offered individuals by economic endeavor, religion, and kinship, is to destroy in time the roots of the will to resist despotism in its large forms.
A first step toward separating oneself ideologically from the state is to appreciate how it has historically incorporated various social institutions into state functions at its convenience, moving from the organic to the imposed. We can see this in money, law, the market, and language. All of these predate the state, which has taken it upon itself to normalize a narrative favorable to its maintenance. Concepts such as the state itself, government, regulation, politics, or homeland are now effortlessly assimilated into the cult of the state, but they are pre-existing concepts that—as we understand them today—are simply anachronistic, and all this has been achieved through the progressive displacement of communities into the state sphere.
The synergy between anarcho-capitalism and community is clear. Private property provides a normative framework for interpersonal interactions; community provides mechanisms of social regulation that favor the generational transmission of ideas and values. One operates on an ethical-normative level, the other on a social-moral level.
Defending spontaneous order does not mean being against rules or traditions. Just as there can be bad customs, there are also those that developed organically, that is, without threat or imposition. As long as human beings live with their peers, norms arise naturally to address both internal and environmental insecurity, and these norms—social, moral, and economic—are channeled through communities.
Far from imagining anarcho-capitalism as disorderly, amoral, and absurd, voluntary union between people can also culminate in politics, government, and regulation in their most basic senses. The distinction from our current model is the way in which they are executed. In the free market, these coordination mechanisms are carried out through competition and consent; in the state, through monopolies and physical aggression.
