The line between minarchism and anarcho-capitalism

[VParkh]

I would like to clarify distinction between minarchism and anarcho-capitalism. 

What if all the governments of the world will reduce in size to only protecting of citizens life and property, without any taxation, regulation and other forms of coersion,

wouldn't it be just 200 (number of countries) different organisations on Earth, providing services to people? Wouldn't it already be anarcho-capitalism?

In this way consistently appliing ideas of minarchism we'll get anarcho-capitalism, right? 

[MrCapitalism]

What if all the governments of the world will reduce in size to only protecting of citizens life and property, without any taxation, regulation and other forms of coercion,

 

Then there really wouldn't be any point in calling such a thing a 'government.'

[jacbot]

What gives anyone the right to meddle with me shit, even if it is for free (=no taxation)

[Magnus]

The defining feature of the state is the claim of being the final arbiter on the use of legitimate force. This is sometimes called a monopoly, but it's really just a claim of finality.

 

It is that finality/monopoly of force that begets the expansion of state power above and beyond the mere protection of life and property. The statist's irrational rules (allowing its own aggression, such as taxes) are merely an effect of its claimed finality on the use of force. So, that claim is the root cause of the problem.

 

This is the reason that it's impossible to have a minarchist state -- by being the final arbiter, its power inevitably grows beyond protection of life and property.

 

Creating a state of any kind is like giving world-wide fame and unlimited wealth to a 12 year-old who has no parents, and expecting him to grow up into a normal, balanced, well-adjusted adult. It just can't happen. It would be nice if it did. But it doesn't.

[StylesGrant]

 

I claim that minarchists cannot consistently offer the kind of theory that they need to offer, because no possible theory can connect sovereign authority to legitimacy, without breaking the connection between legal right and individual liberty. My case for this claim consists of three challenges, each developed in the anarchist literature, which demonstrate a conflict between individual liberty and one of the forms of special authority that minarchists have traditionally wanted governments to exercise.[12] Since the clearest expression of the first, and most basic, challenge is in Roy Childs’s “Open Letter to Ayn Rand,” we might call it the Childs challenge. Rand argues that a government must be strictly limited to the defensive use of force in order to be morally distinguishable from a robber gang.[13] She holds that even the legitimate functions of a properly limited government must be funded voluntarily by the governed, condemning taxation in any form.[14] However, she insists on the legitimacy of sovereignty and explicitly rejects individualist anarchism.[15] Childs, accepting Rand’s description of a government as “an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area,”[16] argues that no institution can claim that authority and remain limited to the defensive use of force at the same time:

 

Suppose that I were distraught with the service of a government in an Objectivist society. Suppose that I judged, being as rational as I possibly could, that I could secure the protection of my contracts and the retrieval of stolen goods at a cheaper price and with more efficiency. Suppose I either decide to set up an institution to attain these ends, or patronize one which a friend or a business colleague has established. Now, if he [sic] succeeds in setting up the agency, which provides all the services of the Objectivist government, and restricts his more efficient activities to the use of retaliation against aggressors, there are only two alternatives as far as the “government” is concerned: (a) It can use force or the threat of it against the new institution, in order to keep its monopoly status in the given territory, thus initiating the use or threat of physical force against one who has not himself initiated force. Obviously, then, if it should choose this alternative, it would have initiated force. Q.E.D. Or: (b) It can refrain from initiating force, and allow the new institution to carry on its activities without interference. If it did this, then the Objectivist “government” would become a truly marketplace institution, and not a “government” at all. There would be competing agencies of protection, defense and retaliation—in short, free market anarchism. (Childs 1969, ¶ 8)

 

 

 

Rand’s theory of limited government posits an institution with sovereign authority over the use of force, but her theory of individual rights only allows for the use of force in defense against invasions of rights. As long as private defense agencies limit themselves to the defense of their clients’ rights, Rand cannot justify using force to suppress them. But if citizens are free to cut their ties to the “government” and turn to private agencies for the protection of their rights, then the so-called “government” no longer holds sovereign authority to enforce its citizens’ rights; it becomes only one defense agency among many.[17] Childs formulated his argument as an internal critique of Ayn Rand’s political theory, but his dilemma challenges any theory combining libertarian rights with government sovereignty. Any “limited government” must either be ready to forcibly suppress private defense agencies—in which case it ceases to be limited, by initiating violence against peaceful people—or else it must be ready to coexist with them—abdicating its claim to sovereignty and ceasing to be a government. Since maintaining sovereignty requires an act of aggression, any government, in order to remain a government, must be ready to trample the liberty of its citizens, in order to establish and enforce a coercive monopoly over the protection of rights.[18]

http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/03/02/liberty-equality-solidarity-toward-a-dialectical-anarchism/

 

Liberty, Equality, Solidarity: Toward a Dialectical Anarchism

 

Charles Johnson (2006/2008

Reprinted with permission of the Publishers from Liberty, Equality, Solidarity: Toward a Dialectical Anarchism in Anarchism/Minarchism, ed. Roderick T. Long and Tibor R. Machan (Ashgate, 2008). pp. 155-188. If you reprint this article, please retain this attribution.