The greatest of all crimes are the wars that are carried on by governments, to plunder, enslave, and destroy mankind.

Anarchism -- a social philosophy which aims at the emancipation (economic, social, political and spiritual) of the human race.

We libertarians defend economic freedom, not big business. We advocate free markets, not the corporate economy. And what would freed markets look like? Nothing like the controlled markets we have today. But how often do we hear mass unemployment, financial crisis, ecological catastrophe, and the economic status quo attributed to the voraciousness of "unfettered free markets"? As if they were all around us!

It is obscene to undermine the glorious operation of the market in producing wealth and abundance by imposing artificial scarcity on human knowledge and learning... Learning, emulation, and information are good. It is good that information can be reproduced, retained, spread, and taught and learned and communicated so easily. Granted, we cannot say that it is bad that the world of physical resources is one of scarcity -- this is the way reality is, after all -- but it is certainly a challenge, and it makes life a struggle. It is suicidal and foolish to try to hamper one of our most important tools -- learning, emulation, knowledge -- by imposing scarcity on it. Intellectual property is theft. Intellectual property is statism. Intellectual property is death. Give us intellectual freedom instead!

Knowing libertarian theory -- the rules of peaceful interactions — is like knowing the rules of logic -- the rules of correct thinking and reasoning. However, just like the knowledge of logic, as indispensable as it is for correct thinking, does not tell us anything about actual human thought, about actual words, concepts, arguments, inferences and conclusions used and made, so the logic of peaceful interaction (libertarianism) does not tell us anything about actual human life and action. Hence: just as every logician who wants to make good use of his knowledge must turn his attention to real thought and reasoning, so a libertarian theorist must turn his attention to the actions of real people. Instead of being a mere theorist, he must also become a sociologist and psychologist and take account of "empirical" social reality, i.e., the world as it really is.

Left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists both look upon wars as grotesque struggles between ruling elites who treat the lives of "their own" people as expendable and the lives of the "other side's" people as worthless. It is here that anarchism's strong distinction between society and the state becomes clearest: whereas most people see war as a struggle between societies, anarchists think that war is actually a battle between governments which greatly harms even the society whose government is victorious. What is most pernicious about nationalist ideology is that is makes the members of society identify their interests with those of their government, when in fact their interests are not merely different but in conflict.

No attempt to hold the arrogance of government in check will work -- because a majority of the people themselves are too easily seduced into abandoning their own institutional protections against tyranny by the false promises and poisonous dreams of statist propaganda.

Not only does the system of private property respect the rights of individuals to the fruits of their labor and good judgments; not only is this system a very useful device for managing scarce resources in society; but the alternative of public control seems to be inherently irrational.

Everyone knows that the State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime ... and that it makes this monopoly as strict as it can. It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien.

Almost anyone, I suppose, can call himself or herself an anarchist, if he or she believed that the society could be managed without the state. And by the state--I don't mean the absence of any institutions, the absence of any form of social organisation--the state really refers to a professional apparatus of people who are set aside to manage society, to preempt the control of society from the people. So that would include the military, judges, politicians, representatives who are paid for the express purpose of legislating, and then an executive body that is also set aside from society. So anarchists generally believe that, whether as groups or individuals, people should directly run society.

Critics of anarcho-capitalism sometimes assume that communal or worker-owned firms would be penalized or prohibited in an anarcho-capitalist society. It would be more accurate to state that while individuals would be free to voluntarily form communitarian organizations, the anarcho-capitalist simply doubts that they would be widespread or prevalent. However, in theory an "anarcho-capitalist" society might be filled with nothing but communes or worker-owned firms, so long as these associations were formed voluntarily (i.e., individuals joined voluntarily and capital was obtained with the consent of the owners) and individuals retained the right to exit and set up corporations or other profit-making, individualistic firms.

The criminal essence of the State is found in the means that it uses, not in the services that it performs. Certain goods and services are essential to life, but it is not imperative that they be provided by the State. People individually or together in associations will provide for their own needs. History amply demonstrates that people provide the goods and services that they need and desire. Keeping time is one of those essential services that, fortunately, was never controlled to any great extent by the State. If it had been, private clocks and wristwatches probably would have never evolved, or if they had, they would have been exorbitantly expensive. Timekeeping, precisely because it was primarily left in private hands, has today evolved to a high art. State intervention would only have impeded its progress. If people had been raised with the idea that the State should be responsible for keeping time, it would be difficult for them to imagine how the free enterprise system would provide people with digital clocks and the many other gadgets people have to assist them in telling time.

The roots of copyright lie in censorship. It was easy for state and church to control thought by controlling the scribes, but then the printing press came along and the authorities worried that they couldn't control official thought as easily. So Queen Mary created the Stationer's Company in 1557, with the exclusive franchise over book publishing, to control the press and what information the people could access. When the charter of the Stationer's Company expired, the publishers lobbied for an extension, but in the Statute of Anne (1710) Parliament gave copyright to authors instead. Authors liked this because it freed their works from state control. Nowadays they use copyright much as the state originally did: to censor and ban books -- or their publishers do, who have gained a quasi-oligopolistic gatekeeper function, courtesy copyright law.

In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. If the road between two villages is impassable, the peasant says: -- "There should be a law about parish roads." If a park-keeper takes advantage of the want of spirit in those who follow him with servile observance and insults one of them, the insulted man says: -- "There should be a law to enjoin more politeness upon park-keepers." If there is stagnation in agriculture or commerce, the husbandman, cattle-breeder, or corn speculator argues, "It is protective legislation that we require." Down to the old clothesman there is not one who does not demand a law to protect his own little trade. If the employer lowers wages or increases the hours of labour, the politician in embryo exclaims, "We must have a law to put all that to rights," instead of telling the workers that there are other, and much more effectual means of settling these things straight ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything! A law about fashions, a law about mad dogs, a law about virtue, a law to put a stop to all the vices and all the evils which result from human indolence and cowardice.

There is a battle shaping up in the world - a battle between the forces of archy - of statism, of political rule and authority - and its only alternative - anarchy, the absence of political rule. This battle is the necessary and logical consequence of the battle between individualism and collectivism, between liberty and the state, between freedom and slavery. As in ethics there are only two sides to any question - the good and the evil - so too are there only two logical sides to the political question of the state: either you are for it, or you are against it. Any attempt at a middle ground is doomed to failure, and the adherents of any middle course are doomed likewise to failure and frustration - or the blackness of psychological destruction, should they blank out and refuse to identify the causes of such failure, or the nature of reality as it is.

The state pretends that all its demands, however arbitrary, are moral obligations, even though those demands rest on force. If it were confined to demanding only what decent people do anyway -- refraining from murder, robbery, et cetera -- it might be bearable. But it never stops with reasonable moral demands; at a minimum, even the most "humane" and "democratic" states use the taxing power to extort staggering amounts of money from their subjects. The predatory tendency of the state is inherent and expansive, and nobody has found a way to control it. No control can long withstand the monopolistic "right" to demand obedience in every area of human activity the state may choose to invade. Systematized force -- which is all the state really is -- follows its own logic. Legal forms, moral rhetoric, and propaganda may disguise force as something it is not. The idea of "democracy" has persuaded countless gullible people that they are somehow "consenting" when they are being coerced.

Although I sincerely believe that a stateless world would be better than the present world in countless ways, such as better health, greater wealth, and enhanced material well-being, I am not a libertarian anarchist primarily on consequentialist grounds, but instead primarily because I believe it is wrong for anyone–including those designated the rulers and their functionaries–to engage in fraud, extortion, robbery, torture, and murder. I do not believe that I have a defensible right to engage in such acts; nor do I believe that I, or anyone else, may delegate to government officials a just right to do what it is wrong for me–or you or anyone–to do as a private person.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

Liberty, not the daughter of order, but the mother of order.

Anarchy is precisely the reverse of chaos. Libertarian anarchists contend that the free market is the best way to produce a peaceful and prosperous social order.