The Libertarian Position on Capital Punishment

https://mises.org/mises-daily/libertarian-position-capital-punishment

"The liberal thesis that capital punishment is brutal because it condones murder is fallacious because it takes the isolated act of killing the murderer out of context.”

[Libertarian Review, June 1978]
 

There are few issues that have gripped the general public more compellingly in recent years than the death penalty. Throughout the country, and especially in urban areas, a rising tide of violent crime, mugging, and murder has led to an outpouring of public sentiment for revival of the death penalty for homicide. If for no other reason than this one, the libertarian movement — especially the Libertarian Party — must address itself directly to the capital-punishment question, for only by addressing squarely the important political issues of the day can we make libertarianism relevant to the public. There is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of the public, regardless of creed or occupation, vehemently supports the return of the death penalty, ending the abolition that had been put over by liberal intellectuals and their judicial sympathizers. In New York, liberal Governor Hugh Carey has risked his political neck by vetoing a bill restoring the death penalty; in California, former Los Angeles Police Chief Ed Davis has taken a leading role in the Republican race for governor by championing the return of the death penalty for murder.

Even the august Supreme Court of the United States has kept its eye on the election returns. In 1972, it banned any capital punishment on the curious new constitutional doctrine that it violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment.” In 1976 and 1977, however, it retreated to the point of allowing the death penalty for murder alone (and not for rape or kidnapping), but only where its imposition had not been mandated by the legislature. Thirty-three states now have death penalty statutes, which continue to be tested in the courts.

The Libertarian Party, including myself on the platform committee, has tended to shy away from the capital punishment question until a broad consensus on punishment theory is attained within the libertarian movement. Opinion within the movement ranges far and wide, from the ultrapacifist view that all punishment must be abandoned, to the “hanging judge” position that any infraction of someone’s private property, however minor, shows that the criminal has no respect for property rights and therefore that this minor aggressor deserves to be executed. But we can afford to wait no longer to come to grips with the capital-punishment question. This has become a pressing question in political life, more than just a fascinating problem in high libertarian theory. We must resolve the issue within our ranks and then advance our views in the public debate.

In my view, it is not an accident that there is very little support among the public for the death penalty except for the crime of murder — even though in 18th-century England, for example, the death penalty was employed in cheerful abandon for numerous crimes. I believe that the instincts of the public are correct on this issue: namely, that the punishment should fit the crime; i.e., that punishment should be proportional to the crime involved. The theoretical justification for this is that an aggressor loses his rights to the extent that he has violated the rights of another human being. If A steals $10,000 from B, he should be forced, not only to return the $10,000 (the “restitutionist” position, with which most libertarians would agree), but he also loses his rights to his own $10,000; that is, he should be forced to pay the victim $10,000 for his aggression.

But if A loses his right to $10,000, should B, the victim, also have the right to have A executed for his crime? Surely not, for then the punishment would be grossly disproportionate. The criminal would then lose an important part of his own rights, and B — the previous victim — and his accomplices, would now be committing their own act of aggression upon A.

It is relatively easy to allot monetary penalties in the case of theft. But what about such a crime as murder? Here, in my view, the murderer loses precisely the right of which he has deprived another human being: the right to have one’s life preserved from the violence of another person. The murderer therefore deserves to be killed in return. Or, to put it more precisely, the victim — in this case his surrogate, in the form of his heir or the executor of his estate should have the right to kill the murderer in return. Libertarians can no longer afford to wait to come to grips with capital punishment. It has become too pressing a problem.

“In all cases, it should be the victim — not ‘society’ or ‘its’ district attorney — who should bring charges and decide on whether or not to exact punishment.”

The liberal thesis that capital punishment is brutal because it condones murder is fallacious because it takes the isolated act of killing the murderer out of context: the context of the previous murder that the aggressor had committed. We are familiar with the common charge that liberals, in weeping over the murderer, willfully ignore the far more tragic violence that he committed on his victim; and this charge is surely correct.

Another common liberal complaint is that the death penalty does not deter murder from being committed. All sorts of statistics are slung back and forth trying to “prove” or disprove this claim. While it is impossible to prove the degree of deterrence, it seems indisputable that some murders would be deterred by the death penalty. Sometimes the liberal argument comes perilously close to maintaining that no punishment deters any crime — a manifestly absurd view that could easily be tested by removing all legal penalties for nonpayment of income tax and seeing if there is any reduction in the taxes paid. (Wanna bet?) Furthermore, the murderer himself is certainly “deterred” from any repetition of his crime — and quite permanently.

But in any case, note that I did not couch my argument in utilitarian terms of deterrence of future crime; my argument was based on basic rights and the requirements of justice. The libertarian takes his stand for individual rights not merely on the basis of social consequences, but more emphatically on the justice that is due to every individual. Some states provide for the death penalty only for murderers of policemen or prison guards, and not for any other cases of homicide. The libertarian can only regard such statutes as an obscenity. To levy capital punishment solely for killers of government officials, but not for murderers of private citizens, can only be considered a grotesque travesty of justice. Does this mean that the government proposes to protect fully only the rights of its own members, and not of anyone else?

So far we have gone all the way with the proponents of the death penalty, ranging ourselves with the instincts of the general public and against the sophistries of the liberal intellectual elite. But there is an important difference. For I have been stressing throughout the right of the victim, not that of “society” or the state. In all cases, it should be the victim — not “society” or “its” district attorney — who should bring charges and decide on whether or not to exact punishment. “Society” has no right and therefore no say in the matter. The state now monopolizes the provision of defense, judicial, and punishment service. So long as it continues to do so, it should act as nothing more and nothing less than an agent for guarding and enforcing the rights of each person — in this case, of the victim.

If, then, a crime is committed, it should be up to the victim to press charges or to decide whether the restitution or punishment due him should be exacted by the state. The victim should be able to order the state not to press charges or not to punish the victim to the full extent that he has the right to do so. Thus, suppose that A aggresses against B; but B is a pacifist or doesn’t believe in punishment for whatever reason; the State should not be able, as it is now, to continue to prosecute A in the name of “society” even though the victim may be urging otherwise. Or, similarly, the criminal should be able to go to the victim and buy his way out of his prosecution or punishment; for in that case, the victim has agreed voluntarily to allow the criminal to pay him monetary restitution in lieu of other sanctions against him.

In short, within the limits of his proportional right of punishment, the victim should have the sole decision how much, if at all, to exercise that right. But, it has been pointed out, how can we leave the decision up to the victim in the case of murder, precisely the one crime which removes the victim totally from the scene? Can we really trust his heir or executor to pursue the victim’s interests fully and wholeheartedly, especially if we allow the criminal to buy his way out of punishment, in dealing directly with the heir? This, however, is not an insuperable problem. The answer is to deal with the problem in the same way as any wishes of a deceased person are obeyed: in his will. The deceased can instruct heirs, courts, and any other interested parties on how he would wish a murderer of his to be treated. In that case, pacifists, liberal intellectuals, et al. can leave clauses in their wills instructing law enforcement authorities not to kill, or even not to press charges against a criminal in the event of their murder; and the authorities would be required to obey.

As a practical matter, in the here and now, and until such wills become a matter of common practice, libertarians can enter the political arena with the following clear-cut position, a position that not only endorses the fervent instincts of the general public, but will also instruct them still further on libertarian principles, namely, that we advocate capital punishment for all cases of murder, except in those cases where the victim has left a will instructing his heirs and assigns not to levy the death penalty on any possible murder. In that way, the possessors of a liberal or pacifist conscience can go about their business assured that they could never be a party to capital punishment; while the rest of us can have the capital punishment we would like to have, free from the interference of liberal busybodies.

This article originally appeared as “The Plumb Line: The Capital Punishment Question” in the Libertarian Review, Vol. 7, No. 5 (June 1978), pp. 13–14.

All Rights Reserved ©

The Political Economy of Pesticides: How to Subsidize a Poison

https://mises.org/mises-wire/political-economy-pesticides-how-subsidize-poison

The “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement is well-known for its skepticism of chemical additives in foods, and of large-scale pesticide-intensive agriculture. With environmentalist and current US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy now leading the movement, many of the long-held concerns of environmentalists about toxins and food quality have found a curious place in the Trump administration. Recent political contests over pesticides have redrawn some of the battle lines. International agrichemical companies, which for many years have promoted policies requiring the use of more of their products, have discovered that Republican support is not a certainty.

Recently, MAHA advocates and some Democrats had reason to celebrate when a provision on pesticide labeling, Section 453, was dropped from a federal funding bill. Section 453 would have granted pesticide manufacturers a federal preemption of state and local restrictions or labeling requirements on pesticides, ensuring that only federal rules apply and shielding pesticide manufacturers from lawsuits alleging harm from their products. Some Republicans who favored the provision had argued that it would avoid “a patchwork of state labeling requirements” and prevent any one state from “establishing the label for the rest of the states,” as Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) contended.

For-Profit Regulation

This argument for federal preemption is an old one. As pesticide use—including the controversial DDT—expanded in the 1940s, large pesticide manufacturers sought federal regulation, but not out of a concern for environmental quality. For them, federal regulation would override the hundreds of state-level regulations that complicated their business. It would also position the federal government to “act as gatekeeper and screen out those fly-by-night operators who might sully the industry’s reputation.” (p. 54). In other words, federal regulation would reduce competition, improving profits.

Federal intervention would also reduce exposure to common law tort liability, which could be useful for pesticide manufacturers or users. Just as these firms were pressing for regulation, the federal government was using deeply-flawed arguments based on economists’ theories of “public goods” to justify massive aerial bombardment of DDT. (“Bombardment” seems especially appropriate a term, since some of the first aerial applications of DDT were from modified World War II bombers). If the government is applying pesticides and can say that it is doing so for a valuable public purpose, the usual common law tort arguments tend to be shoved aside.

It is understandable, then, why large agrichemical companies supported the 1947 Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Concentrating power in the federal government was a win for them: in the USDA they had a sympathetic regulator that would suppress other, more troublesome regulators—and the federal government was also a large customer that would buy countless tons of their product directly and subsidize purchases by others.

The Excellent Powder

In the mid-1940s, DDT—or dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane—was big news in the agrichemical world. As the first synthetic insecticide, DDT replaced more toxic chemicals such as arsenic, and it appeared to have only mild side effects in humans. As a bug fighter, DDT seemed to have no equal, and the Allies used it during World War II to help protect troops from insect-borne malaria and typhus. After the war, it was highly effective in preventing malaria and other diseases around the world. India went from almost one million deaths from malaria in 1945 to only a few thousand by 1960. Indeed, in the first two decades of widespread use, DDT may have saved something like ten million lives globally. One resident of Suriname was so pleased with the application of DDT that he named his son “Daydaytay.”

In the mid-twentieth century, such a cheap and highly-effective insecticide was regarded as something of a miracle chemical, described by Winston Churchill as an “excellent powder.” The Swiss scientist who in 1939 discovered its insecticidal properties, Paul Müller, was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. The idea of banning such a substance—as the EPA did in 1972—would have bewildered most 1940s Americans who faced a real risk of malaria, as well as many others worldwide. Farmers, too, were happy to have a broad-spectrum insecticide to deal with many pests other than mosquitoes. In the period from World War II through the 1960s, however, government took this useful chemical and applied it recklessly and without regard for individual rights.

How to Subsidize a Poison

The Malaria Control in War Areas program of the Public Health Service had begun applying DDT in the American southeast in 1944, the year before DDT became available for public sale in the United States. Two years later, the MCWA became the Communicable Disease Center, later to become the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The CDC’s National Malaria Eradication Program, which began in 1947, promoted the use of DDT through subsidies and widespread spraying. Government spraying programs administered through the Department of Agriculture and local governments coated millions of acres in campaigns against pests like gypsy moths, spruce budworm, and fire ants. The Tennessee Valley Authority sprayed DDT for mosquitoes in the 1940s (a problem which the TVA had a hand in creating, since the project created lakes conducive to mosquito breeding). But the government’s enthusiastic use raised concerns even in its early years. Paul Müller, when invited by the US Army in 1945 to visit the US for discussions on DDT, opined that far too much DDT was being used for aerial spraying. Later, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he emphasized how much remained to be learned about how DDT worked and its effects.

At that point, government was undeterred by such scientific reservations. Government spraying provided job security for federal employees, and chemical companies were happy to have the government endorse, encourage, and buy large quantities of their products. More broadly, agricultural policy that paid farmers to take cropland out of production was encouraging farmers to farm the remaining land more intensively, which entailed the profligate use of insecticides and other chemicals (p. 217).

State and federal government support for DDT was inconsistent, across and even within (see pp. 262-295) agencies. State and local officials tended to be more conservative in their pesticide use than the federal government, and sometimes protested federal spraying. Spraying programs also faced growing opposition from the public. Aerial spraying overrode the property rights of landowners, and once-broad local support waned. In Georgia, farmer Dorothy Colson worried about harm to humans, as well as chicks and honeybees, and campaigned against the chemical after it began to be used for agricultural purposes in 1945 (pp. 71-80). Colson and her sister, Mamie Plyler, wrote a state official at the Georgia Division of Industrial Hygiene, Lester Petrie, asking for help. It wasn’t right “to kill one man’s bees to make another man’s peanuts,” Colson’s sister wrote. But pleas for state assistance were of little help. Colson and Plyler continued to experience health problems, though the arsenic-based insecticide also being used in the area was implicated in Plyler’s illnesses. Meanwhile, the state continued spraying DDT, including over Colson’s property (pp. 94-98).

On Long Island, New York, the USDA insisted on spraying DDT as part of a gypsy moth eradication program, though there was no infestation on Long Island. Residents complained about the oily film of DDT on their cars and houses, and organic farmers complained that their crops had been rendered non-organic. Marjorie Spock—who had repeatedly asked the USDA not to spray her two-acre plot in Brookville—coordinated a lawsuit against the USDA in 1957. Plaintiffs included J.P. Morgan’s daughter Jane Nichols, Teddy Roosevelt’s son Archibald Roosevelt, and other prominent locals (p. 139). The suit charged that DDT spraying deprived the plaintiffs “of property and possibly lives without due process of laws and [took] their private property for public use without just compensation.”

The plaintiffs lost. In his decision, the judge took it upon himself to weigh the costs and benefits of the use of DDT, though there was no way he could have compared these subjective evaluations. The plaintiffs, he said, “failed to show that there was a threat of irreparable damage to them in excess of that which would probably be visited upon the community in general.” In an appeal, the court again placed itself in the untenable position of weighing costs to the plaintiffs and benefits to the general public. The appeal, too, failed. But as Roger Meiners and Andrew Morriss have pointed out, this was inconsistent with how courts treated private applications of pesticides.

Cases from the 1950s indicate that people who sprayed pesticides were liable for damage caused by pesticide drift.… Completely contrary to what happened to the organic growers on Long Island, farmers won cases when pesticide sprays from neighboring farmers made them ineligible for “organic” certification….

Government, however, could spray pesticides with little reason to worry about legal consequences, even as evidence mounted that indiscriminate and excessive pesticide usage was causing significant harm. When a USDA carpet bombing of dieldrin—an organic pesticide similar to DDT (both are organochlorides)—killed over a hundred cattle in Georgia in 1958, farmers became reluctant to pay even part of the cost of spraying. Undeterred, the USDA began offering the pesticides for free. State governments began withdrawing their support, but for a time, the federal government persisted. USDA employees, after all, had incomes tied to the perpetuation of these programs.

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring was a landmark in the opposition to DDT, and indeed, modern environmentalism. Most memorable is its argument that DDT was interfering with bird reproduction. The book elevated pesticide concerns among the general public, and the challenges to the agrichemical industry became better coordinated. At first, regulatory responses seemed slight. Initially, state and local governments responded, and then the various interest groups gravitated toward federal intervention. There were modest revisions to FIFRA in 1964, removing manufacturers’ ability to sell pesticides that the federal government had rejected, but as Jonathan Adler noted, this was a privilege that manufacturers rarely invoked anyway. It was a small sacrifice, for which manufacturers obtained even greater preemption of state regulation and another avenue for challenging government denial of a product registration (p. 303). Ultimately, the push by national chemical companies for one-size-fits-all regulation and the accompanying competitive advantages led to federalization of pesticide regulation.

Perhaps more importantly, Silent Spring had an impact on the growth of environmentalist interest groups. Organizations which would steer the course of later environmental legislation and litigation were formed in its wake. In 1967, a group of scientists and others formed the Environmental Defense Fund and sued the Suffolk County, New York mosquito control commission after a 5,000 gallon dump of DDT was linked to a fish kill. The case did not succeed in getting an injunction, since it was based on a novel legal argument without foundation in common law or statutory law. But it provided valuable attention for the EDF, which fought DDT until its final ban in 1972 (p. 43, n183).

It may seem odd, but the chemical industry may have had reason to look back fondly on Silent Spring. Environmentalist opposition to DDT might have concerned firms worried about a broad attack on their industry, but there was also an opportunity. DDT was cheap and displaced sales of other insecticides that had been developed. As three scientists pointed out in the prominent medical journal The Lancet, the,

…insistence of environmental advocacy seems to have won approval of powerful pesticide companies because it allows them to sell their more expensive insecticides. The replacement of DDT by organophosphate, carbamate, or pyrethroid insecticides is commonly proposed even though price, efficacy, duration or effectiveness, and side-effects (e.g., an unpleasant smell), are major barriers to use in poor countries. (p. 331)

Some organophosphates, which are related to chemical warfare nerve agents like sarin or VX, are arguably worse for human health than DDT. As the FDA lowered DDT limits on food products in 1968, organophosphate poisonings rose (p. 184). And in some countries, the abandonment of DDT corresponded to a resurgence of malaria. But a “bootleggers and Baptists” convergence of interests between the chemical industry and activist environmentalist organizations could benefit both groups. Just as sellers of illegal alcohol benefited from morally-motivated campaigns to restrict legal liquor sales, the chemical industry might have enjoyed overall gains from those concerned about DDT.

What DDT Teaches Us about Intervention

Environmental and public health concerns have long provided moral cover for government intervention. But a clear-eyed view of government also shows that it frequently works against environmental quality and public health. Which direction will the MAHA movement go? So far, it has been a mixed bag, as far as its approach to government. As Robert Malone has pointed out, “at its core, MAHA is predominantly proregulation.” For example, regardless of what one may think of the effects of food dyes on health, a ban on certain dyes is a regulatory approach to a solution. But, Malone says, “there’s also a deregulatory aspect to the MAHA movement,” as with the acceptance of unpasteurized milk or the opposition to vaccine mandates. There is some understanding in the movement that bureaucracies may be part of the problem.

The DDT story shows us that government intervention to limit toxins or improve environmental quality does not fit a “public interest” view of government. In this view, government acts in good faith to competently protect people and the environment. Though we should ask questions about the science of pesticides, we can have little confidence that good scientific inquiry is driving policy. And whatever the chemists tell us, that information cannot determine what human preferences are or what they should be. Government, in any case, responds to interest groups according to how well these groups can mobilize politically, not according to what best promotes human well-being—which, as Ludwig von Mises pointed out, government planners are not able to determine anyway. The rights of individuals are of little concern to governments that have bureaucracy budgets to protect or industries to subsidize. Harms committed by governments will tend to be immune from the threat of tort liability that would restrain private parties. And decentralization—such as preferring state authority to federal authority—can enhance political competition and slow the erosion of liberty.

Dropping Section 453 means that smaller, more local governments were—for now—able to stave off federal monopolization of regulation, and that lawsuits (a liberty-friendly approach to disputes over damages) remain useful to compensate victims. It may be a win to celebrate, but the interest groups that created FIFRA in 1947, that bombarded cities and fields with DDT, and that steered agricultural policy to benefit bureaucracies and boardrooms have not gone away.

The Libertarian Case Against Abortion

https://libertariansforlife.com/about-libertarians-for-life/

The Libertarian Case Against Abortion

One popular misconception is that libertarianism as a political principle supports choice on abortion. And major elements within the libertarian movement (the Libertarian Party, for example) take abortion-choice stands.

Nonetheless, libertarianism’s basic principle is that each of us has the obligation not to aggress against (violate the rights of) anyone else — for any reason (personal, social, or political), however worthy. That is a clearly pro-life principle.

Recognizing that, and seeing the abortion-choice drift within the libertarian movement, Libertarians for Life was founded in 1976 to show why abortion is a wrong under justice, not a right.

Defending Abortion Abolition from Libertarianism

1. Human offspring are human beings, persons from conception, whether that takes place as natural or artificial fertilization, by cloning, or by any other means.

2. Abortion is homicide — the killing of one person by another.

3. One’s right to control one’s own body does not allow violating the obligation not to aggress. There is never a right to kill an innocent person. Prenatally, we are all innocent persons.

4. A prenatal child has the right to be in the mother’s body. Parents have no right to evict their children from the crib or from the womb and let them die. Instead both parents, the father as well as the mother, owe them support and protection from harm.

5. No government, nor any individual, has a just power to legally “de-person” any one of us, born or preborn.

6. The proper purpose of the law is to side with the innocent, not against them.

Libertarians & the Consistent Life Ethic

https://www.rehumanizeintl.org/libertarian

 

Communitarian Anarcho-Capitalism

https://mises.org/mises-wire/communitarian-anarcho-capitalism

 09/12/2025

•Mises Wire•Agustín Toptschij

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.

The Classical Liberal/Right Wing Libertarian defense of Israel

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/review-the-liberal-case-for-israel-by-walter-block-and-alan-futerman/

 

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What is anarcho-conservatism?

Anarcho-conservatism is a political ideology that combines elements of anarchism and conservatism, advocating for a society without a state while maintaining traditional values and social norms. 

It emphasizes individual freedom and voluntary associations, often opposing state intervention in personal and cultural matters.

Anarcho-Conservatism, or Conservative Anarchism, shortened to AnCon, is an ideology occupying a variable position in bottom two quadrants that advocates for a stateless society that upholds Traditional values and respects traditional hierarchies.

The term 'conservative anarchism' has been used in regard to a number of Religious Anarchists who support conservative cultural doctrines and norms out of religious belief. The core of these types of thinkers have been Fundamentalist Christians. 

The term was later used again in a similar sense to describe the  Old Right Libertarian author Albert Jay Nock, who favoured a form of  Philosophical Anarchism while also being a staunch supporter of  Classical Liberalism, believing the so-called ' Liberalism' of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a betrayal of the doctrine. Nock was the first person to use the term ' libertarian' within a right-wing context.

One of the most well-known supporters of this type of Anarcho-Conservatism is the German economist of the  Austrian school of economics,  Hans-Hermann Hoppe. One of Hoppe's central points is that the 'traditional bourgeois family life' is one of the historically best and most prosperous lifestyles (as well as the best for the continual sustenance of a libertarian social order) which should be encouraged, especially via ostracism, employing covenant communities which may exclude those who violate common values. Hoppe believes that the existance of this lifestyle allows the existance of other lifestyles and therefore 'deviants' should not be aggressive towards those who share the bourgeois lifestyle:

"All other people, by and large, only imitated what they had invented and constructed first. All others inherited the knowledge embodied in the inventors’ products for free. And isn’t it the typical white hierarchical family household of father, mother, their common children and prospective heirs, and their ‘bourgeois’ conduct and lifestyle — i.e., everything the Left disparages and maligns — that is the economically most successful model of social organization the world has ever seen, with the greatest accumulation of capital goods (wealth) and the highest average standards of living? And isn’t it only on account of the great economic achievements of this minority of ‘victimizers’ that a steadily increasing number of ‘victims’ could be integrated and partake in the advantages of a worldwide network of the division of labour?"

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Getting Libertarianism Right (2018)

A political philosophy and ideology that combines anarchist politics and conservative values. Anarcho-conservatism opposes the state and all government control, while supporting social conservative policies. Anarcho-conservatives advocate the abolition of the state and the wholesale replacement of state law by moral laws. Differently from social anarchists and individualist anarchists, anarcho-conservatives don't oppose all authority, but in consonance with them, they oppose the authority of the modern nation state, which they deem artificial.

For instance, conservative anarchists might oppose drug use and pornography, on moral grounds, while at the same time opposing their prohibition through government. This absolute rejection of the state legislation is what differentiates anarcho-conservatism from libertarianism conservatism. 

As conservatives typically do, conservative anarchists support traditional family structures and, much like all right-libertarian orientations, support gun and property rights. These however take a backseat to traditional and religious morality, if a conflict between them arises. 

In particular, this differentiates anarcho-conservatism from anarcho-capitalism.

Like all libertarians, conservative anarchists oppose state coercion, and like all right-libertarians, they don't oppose natural, traditional or socioeconomic hierarchies.

In fact, they typically welcome them. Anarcho-conservatism has much in common with paleolibertarianism, except for the support of right wing populists in political elections.

Anarcho-conservatism is closely associated with libertarian conservatism and anarcho-capitalism.Writing in the World Policy Journal, NYU professor James Nolt noted that anarcho-conservatism is becoming "increasingly fashionable."

https://discoursesonliberty.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/images-of-freedom-anarchism-and-conservatism-the-inevitability-of-anarcho-conservatism/

https://c4ss.org/content/53268--- I disagree with this article on not letting the State to defend the right of the developing fetuses life. Other than that great article. 

https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2019/09/why-arent-there-more-conservative-anarchists-on-recovering-a-consistent-philosophy-of-conservative-anti-statism/

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/why-true-conservatism-means-anarchy/

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2001/07/daniel-mccarthy/anarcho-conservatism/

https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/minarchists-anarchists-in-libertarian-history