Let the Free Market Eat the Rich!

by Jeremy Weiland
Social Memory Complex
Apr. 07, 2011

Civil society has become so confused with the institution of the State that anarchists often find it difficult to extricate one from the other when positing a voluntary society. The effects of privilege permeate our culture, our infrastructure, our economic relationships, and our thinking. Therefore, the ability to describe a coherent and distinctive picture of a post-state, post-privilege world is crucial in that it throws contemporary constructs of privilege into stark relief. While disputes about proper means towards a stateless society abound in the anarchist milieu, the most striking distinctions can be discovered by examining the varied predictions of the likely ends of anarchism. Perhaps nothing sets these approaches apart and divides efforts more than competing visions of just property distribution.

A long running debate among anarchists, especially between the individualist and collectivist schools, centers around the justice of wealth disparities. Certainly the existence of the State serves to enrich particular interests at the expense of others, but in anarchy would the rich dominate society - just as they do with the State? Should private property be abolished altogether to force an egalitarian society into existence? Or will private property be the basis for a new, voluntary order where the wealth gap will no longer matter? Even if we could immediately switch off the institutions that forcibly manipulate society, many fear that the legacy of privilege and accumulated wealth could persist for some time, distorting markets and continuing the frustrate the balance of power between individuals.

Individualist anarchists have had a variety of responses to the problems of historical property and wealth maldistribution. Even anarcho-capitalists who see large scale social coordination as the natural direction of society have different views, such as Hans Hermann Hoppe's theory of a natural elite and Murray Rothbard's support of syndicalist takeover of State-supported corporations. On the other side of the coin, left-leaning individualists also entertain a variety of approaches: from agorist advocacy of revolutionary entrepreneurship as a leveling force to mutualists such as Benjamin Tucker and Kevin Carson speculating about the possible need for short term State sponsored redistribution and reform.

At the root of all these competing theories, the key question for anarchists remains: what does a stateless society look like? What exactly are we working towards? It is this difference of vision that divides the efforts of anarchists much more than purely strategic differences. Is a more ecumenical anarchism possible - one that can bring the schools together, at least for activist purposes, not by fighting over predictions and visions but by agreeing on the means by which a voluntary society is achieved?

...Continued