An acquaintance of mine are having a discussion and he referenced me to this as a critique of anarcho-capitalism. I must admit I am a neophyte and I have never had any sort of debate with an leftist anarchist, ideas like property being theft and voluntary exchange, even if hierarchically structured being coercive are so alien to me I was at a loss for words . Does anyone know if an ancap response has been written to this? Or do you have any ideas on how I should reply?
What’s funny about that “critique,” and others like it, is that we would agree with its conclusions, although for different reasons. Rothbard would agree with calling it “'anarcho-'capitalism,” for he didn’t mean “'anarcho-socialist-'capitalism.” Instead, he meant “capitalism,” sans state. Anyway, the author of the “critique”'s reasons are ridiculous. We could easily say that, historically, socialism has been statist, and that, therefore, all socialism must be statist. However, they would disagree with us and throw “anarcho-socialism” at our face. Anyway, since they can’t actually debunk "anarcho-"capitalism, I guess they are left with trying to debunk its name.
“Anarchy” - means “no rulers”. But that doesn’t mean no rules.
Funny how the “anarchists” / “socialists” always end up with rulers trying to implement their utopian & thus impossible system, which naturally leads to tyranny.
The paragraphs on “what’s in a name” amount to a strawman.
For example, leading “anarcho”-capitalist Murray Rothbard thundered against the evil of the state, stressing that it “arrogates to itself a monopoly of force, of ultimate decision-making power, over a given territorial area.” Then, in the chapter’s endnote, he quietly admitted that “[o]bviously, in a free society, Smith has the ultimate decision-making power over his own just property, Jones over his, etc.” [5]
Sorry, I got that far - it was amusing up until then… then it became retarded. Is it even worth a critique? Not likely.
Left anarchists and right anarchists have been arguing for as long as there have been internet discussions. Left anarchists tend to refuse the possibility of change to the term “anarchist”, even as the mainstream still thinks of anarchy as chaos and anarchists as scruffy, wild-eyed bomb-throwers. But language is more anarchistic than most left-anarchists imagine. [:P]
I wish we could just start calling ourselves Panarchists. It would really avoid a lot of confusion. First it would put some space between us and these retards, and it would give us an accurate name which no one has heard of and alienate them less.