Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.

Government is a social machine whose function is coercion through monopoly of power... Like a bulldozer, government serves the caprice of any man or group who succeeds in seizing the controls. The purpose of anarchism is to dismantle such institutions and to prevent their reconstruction. Ten thousand years of human history demonstrate that our freedoms cannot be entrusted to those ambitious few who are drawn to power; we must learn--again--to govern ourselves. Anarchism does not mean "no rule"; it means "no rulers". Difficult, but not utopian, anarchy means and requires self-rule, self-discipline, probity, character.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

Libertarianism is fundamentally about advancing human cooperation.

As the word "anarchy" etymologically signifies the negation of governmental authority, the absence of government, it follows that one indissoluble bond unites the anarchists. This is antagonism to all situations regulated by imposition, constraint, violence, governmental oppression, whether these are a product of all, a group, or of one person. In short, whoever denies that the intervention of government is for human relationships is an anarchist. But this definition would have only a negative value did it not possess, as a practical complement, a conscious attempt to live outside this domination and servility which are incompatible with the anarchist conception. An anarchist, therefore, is an individual who, whether he has been brought to it by a process of reasoning or by sentiment, lives to the greatest possible extent in a state of legitimate defence against authoritarian encroachments. From this it follows that anarchist individualism - the tendency which we believe contains the most profound realization of the anarchist idea - is not merely a philosophical doctrine - it is an attitude, an individual way of life.

If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth.

One of the key ways in which states demonstrate the supremacy of their power is by violating their own rules.

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognise no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such individual, I have no absolute faith in any person.

In every State the government is nothing but a permanent conspiracy on the part of the minority against the majority, which it enslaves and fleeces.

The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned to perpetual struggle -- a struggle against their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which can be strong only if the others are weak -- and since the States cannot hold their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their power against their own subjects as well as against the neighborhood States -- it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its power to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice.

I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation. It is the slavery of other men that sets up a barrier to my freedom, or what amounts to the same thing, it is their bestiality which is the negation of my humanity. For my dignity as a man, my human right which consists of refusing to obey any other man, and to determine my own acts in conformity with my convictions is reflected by the equally free conscience of all and confirmed by the consent of all humanity. My personal freedom, confirmed by the liberty of all, extends to infinity.

The State, therefore, is the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of humanity.

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick".

Nothing is more dangerous for man’s private morality than the habit of command. The best man, the most intelligent, disinterested, generous, pure, will infallibly and always be spoiled at this trade. Two sentiments inherent in power never fail to produce this demoralisation; they are: contempt for the masses and the overestimation of one’s own merits. “The masses,” a man says to himself, “recognising their incapacity to govern on their own account, have elected me their chief. By that act they have publicly proclaimed their inferiority and my superiority. Among this crowd of men, recognising hardly any equals of myself, I am alone capable of directing public affairs. The people have need of me; they cannot do without my services, while I, on the contrary, can get along all right by myself: they, therefore, must obey me for their own security, and in condescending to command them, I am doing them a good turn.” Is not there something in all that to make a man lose his head and his heart as well, and become mad with pride? It is thus that power and the habit of command become for even the most intelligent and virtuous men, a source of aberration, both intellectual and moral.

If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?

The State is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.

When plunder has become a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so?

When we defend liberty, we are defending ourselves, our families, our land, and our property.

As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder.

Two quite amazing discoveries await the budding student of polycentric law. The first comes when he realizes that polycentric law has flourished throughout history and across the globe. Once he learns how to recognize it, he sees polycentric law virtually everywhere--in churches, clubs, trades, and countless other settings where people associate freely and regularly. State law begins to look less and less significant. Our student's next shock comes when he observes legal scholars and political philosophers routinely ignoring polycentric alternatives to statist law.

Power only possesses what it takes from the people, and for the citizens to believe that they have to give what they have in order to get welfare, their common sense must have been deeply distorted.

Anarchy is order, government is civil war.

So I hear that liberty without brakes is menacing. Who is she menacing? Who shall fear the untamed horse, but one who would tame it? Who shall fear an avalanche, but one who would stop it? Who trembles in front of liberty, but tyranny? A menacing liberty... one ought to say it's the opposite. What is frightening in her is the sound of her irons. Once those are shattered, she is no more tumultuous; but calm and wise.

History has described as “anarchic” the condition of a people wherein there are several governments in contention one with another, but the condition of a people desirous of being governed but bereft of government precisely because it has too many is one thing and the condition of a people desirous of governing itself and bereft of government precisely because it wishes none quite another.

Up to now you have believed in the existence of tyrants. Well, you were mistaken. There are only slaves. Where none obeys, none commands.

Governments, whose pupils we are, have naturally found nothing better to devise than to school us in fear and horror of their destruction. But as governments in turn are the negations of individuals or of the people, it is reasonable that the latter, waking up to essential truths, should gradually come to feel a greater horror at its own annihilation than that of its masters.

There is no power that is not the enemy of the people, because, no matter what the attendant conditions, no matter who the man invested with it, no matter how it may be described, power is always power, that is to say, the irrefutable badge of abdication of the people’s sovereignty and consecration of supreme overlordship.

The more enlightened man will become, the less he will employ compulsion and coercion. The really civilized man will divest himself of all fear and authority. He will rise from the dust and stand erect: he will bow to no tsar either in heaven or on earth. He will become fully human when he will scorn to rule and refuse to be ruled. He will be truly free only when there shall be no more masters. Anarchism is the ideal of such a condition; of a society without force and compulsion, where all men shall be equals, and live in freedom, peace, and harmony. The word Anarchy comes from the Greek, meaning without force, without violence or government, because government is the very fountainhead of violence, constraint, and coercion. Anarchy therefore does not mean disorder and chaos, as you thought before. On the contrary, it is the very reverse of it; it means no government, which is freedom and liberty. Disorder is the child of authority and compulsion. Liberty is the mother of order.

All the word "anarchy" means is no rulers. So, if you say you are not an anarchist it means you want a ruler. If you want a ruler, you are a slave. I’m surprised how many people are comfortable publicly identifying themselves as "slaves".

Human beings have a major cognitive dissonance problem when it comes to taxes. For some reason they don't see it as an armed extortion racket.

Political authority is a particular kind of authority. Refusing to grant any other authority over yourself is self-sovereignty. If you admit that morality exists at all, that morality has any validity whatsoever, then you are rationally forced to the conclusion that humans, by default, are self-owned. Self-ownership means that for any moral agent, the will (or mind) has a valid property right over the body. In classic Lockean lingo: Every man has the right of life, liberty, and property, and to pursue happiness in any way he wills, so long as he does not infringe on the like rights of others to do the same. This "law of equal freedom" as Herbert Spencer dubbed it, can be justified in many ways. Historically, it was first taken as a creation of God. Later, as enlightenment and science advanced, the supernatural justification was augmented (and eventually replaced by) natural and empirical considerations. The observation of animals, man, and societies and the scientific method led to the formulation of "natural laws" - principles and heuristics that explain or model human interaction and social patterns. The law of equal freedom was justified by saying this is the kind of creature man is, or these are the necessary conditions for the life of man qua man. Meanwhile, the contractarian theorists added that this is what men implicitly agree to when they join society; it is the rational basis for interacting with fellow men.

Libertarianism is a political philosophy. It is concerned solely with the proper use of force. Its core premise is that it should be illegal to threaten or initiate violence against a person or his property without his permission; force is justified only in defense or retaliation.That is it, in a nutshell. The rest is mere explanation, elaboration, and qualification.

Negative rights are independent of time, space, location, and condition. They apply right now, but they were just as appropriate and pertinent ten thousand years ago. They are completely independent of circumstances. It was a rights violation for one caveman to club another over the head in prehistoric times; this will hold true for spacemen ten thousand years in the future.

Voluntary communism, together with laissez-faire capitalism, has nothing to be ashamed of on moral and economic grounds. They can each hold up their heads, high. Far from enemies, they are merely opposite sides of the same voluntaristic coin. Together, they must battle state coercion, whether called State Capitalism or State Socialism. The point is, "left" vs. "right" is a red herring. The reddest and perhaps most misleading red herring in all political-economic theory.

If we as a society want to cure unemployment, raise real wages, and in other such ways improve this sector of our economy, we will base public policy on private property rights, the non-aggression principle and the law of free association. In the free and prosperous society, everyone may do precisely as he pleases, provided only that he does not initiate violence against non-aggressors.

Libertarianism is neither of the left nor of the right. It is unique. It is sui generis. It is apart from left and right. The left right political spectrum simply has no room for libertarianism. Think of an equilateral triangle, with libertarianism at one corner, the left at a second corner and the right at the third corner. We are equally distant from both of those misbegotten political economic philosophies. No, better yet, think in terms of an isosceles triangle, with us at the top and the two of them at the bottom, indicating they have more in common with each other than with us.

If it moves, privatize it; if it doesn’t move, privatize it. Since everything either moves or doesn’t move, privatize everything.

The true debate is not between left and right. It is, rather, between voluntarism (whether of left or right) and coercivism (whether of left or right). The sooner this lesson is learned, the sooner can we make sense of our otherwise paradoxical political debates.

To argue that a tax-collecting government can legitimately protect its citizens against aggression is to contradict oneself, since such an entity starts off the entire process by doing the very opposite of protecting those under its control.

In a sense there have always and ever been only two political philosophies: liberty and power. Either people should be free to live their lives as they see fit, as long as they respect the equal rights of others, or some people should be able to use force to make other people act in ways they wouldn’t choose. It’s no surprise, of course, that the philosophy of power has always been more appealing to those in power. It has gone by many names--Caesarism, Oriental despotism, theocracy, socialism, fascism, communism, monarchism, ujamaa, welfare-statism--and the arguments for each of these systems have been different enough to conceal the essential similarity. The philosophy of liberty has also gone by different names, but its defenders have always had a common thread of respect for the individual, confidence in the ability of ordinary people to make wise decisions about their own lives, and hostility to those who would use violence to get what they want.

Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others.

Libertarians defend each person's right to life, liberty, and property - rights that people possess naturally, before governments are created. In the libertarian view, all human relationships should voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have themselves used force - actions like murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and fraud.

Printing up extra money - with no backing - used to be the sort of thing only counterfeiters did. Now it is done by the central bankers and Treasury Secretaries themselves. They don't apologize for it. They don't hang their heads and contemplate blowing their brains out. Instead, they're proud of it... announcing that they 'saved civilization,' or some such claptrap.

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.

The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.

Human beings are not laboratory rats to be controlled and conditioned by some elite of their number who, somehow and without explanation, manage to become higher-order creatures simply by working for government and professing deep concern for the welfare of their lab animals.

Politicians want office, power, and applause - period. And most sell their souls, without the slightest hesitation, in order to increase their prospects of receiving such tacky and ego-bloating 'rewards.' So politicians are neither courageous nor leaders. Instead, they are cowards who pander to crowds and then pretend that their typically idiotic orations to the crowds are evidence of their genius, humanity, and courage. All in all, politicians are a loathsome and disgusting lot.

Philosophers have spent at least 2,500 years trying to produce a good theory of government authority--that is, of the duty to obey the law. But basically all their attempts to justify government authority stink, and stink badly. Every major theory of authority has big gaping holes and is subject to devastating objections. If, after 2,500 years, super-smart people can't produce a decent justification of authority, perhaps government authority is a myth. Perhaps there's no duty to obey the law after all.

Among the political ideologies generally considered to be of continuing significance, anarchism alone has never been implemented. Perhaps its rigors are too strong and its advocates are too weak. That it is still considered worth studying is testimony to its intellectual credibility, particularly its single-minded emphasis on individual liberty.

The theoretical connections between individualist anarchism and liberalism seem obvious. While liberalism called for individual liberty and a limited state, individualist anarchism called for individual sovereignty and no state. In economics as well as in politics, individualist anarchism seemed to be the logical extreme of liberalism. George Bernard Shaw put this succinctly: “laissez-faire, in spite of all the stumblings it has brought upon itself by persistently holding the candle to the devil instead of to its own footsteps, is the torchbearer of Anarchism.” However, this picture is too simplistic for several reasons. First of all, socialism was at least as influential as liberalism on the character of individualist anarchism, particularly in terms of economics.

The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, "See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk".

Whatever the issue, let freedom offer us a hundred choices, instead of having government force one answer on everyone.

Government is force, pure and simple. There's no way to sugar-coat that. And because government is force, it will attract the worst elements of society - people who want to use government to avoid having to earn their living and to avoid having to persuade others to accept their ideas voluntarily.

Government programs didn’t arise because the people demanded them or because the free market was unable to provide needed services. They arose because the politicians found them to be a convenient way to buy votes with other people’s money, a convenient way to enlarge their own power, a convenient way to reward their political cronies, and a convenient way to keep people dependent on government.

Politicians play cruel jokes on us. They talk of plans to bring peace to the world, when their real interest is in subsidizing military contractors. They speak of “empowering” minorities, when their real interest is in empowering the leaders of special-interest groups. They talk of helping the poor, but eagerly put them out of work with minimum wage laws. Whatever they proclaim publicly, there always seems to be someone in the background with extraordinary political influence who benefits far more than those the politicians claim to help.

The great delusion of political activity is the belief that you can have the government do exactly what you want – that, somehow, you can get it to perform some function for some good purpose, with nothing bad thrown into the bargain – and that the program you envision will be carried out dutifully by thousands of bureaucrats in just the way you think it should be handled.

We should never define Libertarian positions in terms coined by liberals or conservatives — nor as some variant of their positions. We are not fiscally conservative and socially liberal. We are Libertarians, who believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility on all issues at all times.

Taxes are not the price we pay for civilization nor is the “rule of law” the absence of barbarism. Both are hallmarks of the quaintly named politician who is merely a thinly disguised violence broker.

There is no greater moral government than a man’s self-ownership and there is no greater injustice than denying that very thing to a man.

All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity to the reigning interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state. It is a reason which I own I cannot penetrate. What sort of a protection is this of the general right, that is maintained by infringing the rights of particulars? What sort of justice is this, which is enforced by breaches of its own laws? These paradoxes I leave to be solved by the able heads of legislators and politicians. For my part, I say what a plain man would say on such occasion. I can never believe that any institution, agreeable to nature, and proper for mankind, could find it necessary, or even expedient, in any case whatsoever, to do what the best and worthiest instincts of mankind warn us to avoid.

There are two ways you can provide people with what you think is best for them: the humble approach is entrepreneurship, in which you ask them if you're right; the hubristic approach is politics, in which you give it to them no matter what and make them pay for it.

Is a little wet, still wet? It seems like a question with an obvious answer. But, for many, the correct answer—for which they argue vociferously—is that "a little wet is not wet." I am, of course, talking about minarchism and statism. Both are positions with designs for how society must be organized, guaranteed by the monopolization of the use of force and violence. Wherein they differ is "how wet" they are. Yet they want us to believe that there is much more than a difference in their respective degree of wetness. They claim it is a matter of principle, not of magnitude. From my anarchist perspective, this is at the same time funny and sad. A state is a state regardless of how big it is. It has a nature that comes from simply being a state. And this nature applies regardless of how you choose to measure its size or impact. This is important to remember, and it needs to be core to libertarian philosophy.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.

Freedom is not a gift received from a State or a leader but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.

Both bad driving and bad voting are dangerous not merely to the individual who practices them, but to innocent bystanders.

Good intentions are ubiquitous in politics; what is scarce is accurate beliefs.

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.

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.

The government doesn't care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety. It simply doesn't give a fuck about you. It's interested in it's own power. That's the only thing... keeping it, and expanding wherever possible.

The current structure of capital ownership and organization of production in our so-called "market" economy, reflects coercive state intervention prior to and extraneous to the market. From the outset of the industrial revolution, what is nostalgically called "laissez-faire" was in fact a system of continuing state intervention to subsidize accumulation, guarantee privilege, and maintain work discipline.

Any post-state society will include both individuals and communities adhering to many conflicting ideas of just what "freedom," "autonomy" and "rights" entail. Whatever "law code" communities operate by will be worked out, not as obvious logical deductions from axioms, but through constant interaction between individuals and groups asserting their different understandings of what rights and freedom entail. And it will be worked out after the fact of such conflicts, through the practical negotiations of the mediating and adjudicating bodies within communities.

None of these alternative sets of rules for property allocation is self-evidently right. No ownership claim can be deduced logically from the principle of self-ownership alone, without the "'overlay' of a property system," or a system of "allocation rules." No such system, whether Lockean, Georgist, or Mutualist, can be proved correct. Any proof requires a common set of allocation rules, and a particular set of allocation rules for property can only be established by social consensus, not by deduction from the axiom of self-ownership.

A genuine free enterprise system, without state-enforced artificial scarcities, artificial property rights or subsidies, would be like dynamite at the foundations of corporate power.

Even if we stipulate starting from basic assumptions like the broadest understanding of self-ownership and the nonaggression principle (not that even a majority of the anarchist movement actually comes from the philosophical tradition which regards these as words to conjure with), that means very little in terms of the practical rules that can be deduced from them. There is simply no way, starting from basic axioms like self-ownership and nonaggression, to deduce any particular rules that are both obvious and necessary on issues like (for example) whether I have the right to intervene to stop an animal being tortured by its “owner,” or what the specific rules should be for squatters’ rights and constructive abandonment of a property long left idle. Even the definition of physical aggression against an individual is, to a large extent, culturally defined. The surrounding environment impinges on the physical body in a million different ways, and the boundary between those that are considered aggressive and those not (like photons or sound waves that physically affect the sensory organs and subsequently the nervous system and internal mental state) is somewhat arbitrary. The same is true for varying cultural definitions of the boundary between person and environment, and how much of the surrounding physical environment not actually part of the human body can be regarded as an extension of the self or an envelope of “personal space.” Bear in mind that common law definitions of assault assume such a spatial envelope, and include actions short of physically touching another person’s body with one’s own.

From its origins, the state has been the instrument by which priest-kings, latifundia owners and slave masters, feudal landlords, and capitalists have lived off the labor of the producing classes. In the nineteenth century, with the birth of a large-scale consciousness of this history of class exploitations, the first deliberate movements arose to seize the state and govern in the name of the exploited. But when these workers’ parties came to hold state power, they immediately became a new ruling class. Because that’s all state power is good for: Robbery and exploitation.

The idea that the state is necessary is the biggest scam that has ever been perpetrated on the average person.

The thought of how far the human race would have advanced without government simply staggers the imagination.

Trusting the government with money creation is like trusting a drunk with a whiskey factory.

Government sponsors untold waste, criminality and inequality in every sphere of life it touches, giving little or nothing in return.

Government intervention in the economy - through taxes, regulation and, most importantly, currency inflation - causes distortions and misallocations of capital that must eventually be unwound. The distortions degrade the general standard of living, and the economy goes into a recession (call that an incomplete cleansing). Or it goes into a depression - wherein the entire sickly structure comes unglued.

What keeps a truly civil society together isn’t laws, regulations, and police. It’s peer pressure, social opprobrium, moral approbation, and your reputation. These are the four elements that keep things together. Western Civilization is built on voluntarism. But, as the State grows, that’s being replaced by coercion in every aspect of society.

Throughout history government has served as a vehicle for the organization of hatred and oppression, benefiting no one except those who are ambitious and ruthless enough to gain control of it.

Most "economists" today are only political apologists masquerading as economists. An economist is somebody that describes the way the world works--how people go about producing, consuming, buying, selling, and living their lives. That's not, however, what most of today's PhD economists do. Instead, they prescribe the way they would like the world to work and tailor theories to help politicians demonstrate the virtue and necessity of their quest for more power... Economics has been turned into the handmaiden of government in order to give a scientistic justification for things that the government--which naturally seeks more power for itself--wants to do.

All the world's governments and central banks share a common philosophy, which drives these policies. They believe that you create economic activity by stimulating demand, and you stimulate demand by printing money. And, of course, it's true, in a way. Roughly the same way a counterfeiter can stimulate a local economy. Unfortunately, they ignore that, and completely ignore that the way a person or a society becomes wealthy is by producing more than they consume and saving the difference. That difference, savings, is how you create capital. Without capital you're reduced to subsistence, scratching at the earth with a stick. These people think that by inflating—which is to say destroying—the currency, they can create prosperity. But what they're really doing, is destroying capital: When you destroy the value of the currency, that discourages people from saving it. And when people don't save, they can't build capital, and the vicious cycle goes on. This is destructive for civilization itself, in both the long term and the short term. The more paper money, the more credit, they create, the more society focuses on finance, as opposed to production. It's why there are many times more people studying finance than science. The focus is increasingly on speculation, not production. Financial engineering, not mechanical, electrical, or chemical engineering. And lots of laws and regulations to keep the unstable structure from collapsing.

I believe we are free to bind ourselves by entering into informal and contractual relations with others, even relations in which we voluntarily subordinate ourselves to others. I do not accept the common claim of anarchists from the left side of the political spectrum that such relations are necessarily anti-anarchic. If we are not free to bind ourselves then we are not really free, our liberty is compromised. The form of anarchism that accepts this radical notion of freedom, our freedom to bind ourselves, I call libertarian anarchism.

It is undeniable that human beings have killed other human beings for as long as human beings have lived on this planet, but to kill other human beings efficiently and in large numbers takes a state.

Political theory--and, I suggest, most political practice--is dominated by a myth to the effect that the state is necessary, for many things, perhaps, but primarily for the provision of peace and security; without the state (the state being that group of people which wields a territorial monopoly of alleged legitimate force financed by a compulsory levy of the inhabitants of that territory) there would be anarchy--anarchy being understood to be widespread disorder, violence, and chaos… the important rhetorical point of the historical examples of functioning anarchic societies and the contemporary evidence of functionally anarchic elements in Statist societies is, among other things, to emphasize the sheer contingency of what seems like a necessity--to show that it wasn’t always like this, that it isn’t like this everywhere or in every respect even now, and that it doesn’t have to be like this.

Market anarchists are radical advocates of individual liberty and mutual consent in every aspect of social life -- thus rejecting all forms of domination and government as invasions against liberty and violations of human dignity.

People cooperate peacefully and voluntarily when they interact without aggression. A just society, a society rooted in peaceful, voluntary cooperation, is both possible and desirable. Because the state precludes and preempts this kind of cooperation, aggressing or threatening to engage in aggression against those who disobey it, a peaceful, voluntary society must be a stateless society -- an anarchist society.

To reject aggression is to embrace a model of social interaction rooted in peaceful, voluntary cooperation. This kind of cooperation can occur without the state; it can be fostered effectively by a variety of nonaggressive social institutions, including, in particular, institutions upholding consensual legal rules, resolving disputes, and providing protection against aggression... Unlike these institutions, the state is premised on the denial of human moral equality and is inimical to peaceful, voluntary cooperation (and the flourishing such cooperation facilitates) because of the state's nonconsensual character and its inefficiency, destructiveness, rapacity, and penchant for aggression--especially in the service of elite groups.

To a very significant degree, the economic system we have now is one from which peaceful, voluntary exchange is absent. An interlocking web of legal and regulatory privileges benefit the wealthy and well connected at the expense of everyone else (think patents and copyrights, tariffs, restrictions on banking, occupational licensing rules, land-use restrictions, etc.). The military-industrial complex funnels unbelievable amounts of money--at gunpoint--from ordinary people's pockets and into the bank accounts of government contractors and their cronies. Subsidies of all kinds feed a network of privileged businesses and non-profits. And the state protects titles to land taken at gunpoint or engrossed by arbitrary fiat before distribution to favored individuals and groups. No, the economies of the US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, and Australia, at least, aren’t centrally planned. The state doesn’t assert formal ownership of (most of) the means of production. But the state's involvement at multiple levels in guaranteeing and bolstering economic privilege makes it hard to describe the economic system we have now as free.

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 one facet of human nature which, because of its invariability and constancy, we can put down as a natural law is: man always seeks to satisfy his desires with the least effort. It is because of this inner compulsion that man invents labor-saving devices, and it is also because of this inner compulsion that man sometimes turns to exploiting his neighbor, which is a form of robbery. But, robbery is attended with the use of force, which might be met with a contrary and defeating force, and is therefore risky; however, when the government, which has a monopoly of coercion, exercises its power so as to favor one individual or set of individuals to the disadvantage of others, there is nothing to do but to comply with its edicts. And, because its edicts are regularized by law, mental adjustment to the exploitation takes place, while the recipients of the advantages thus gained learn to look upon their loot as a "right." The urgency for something-for-nothing is endemic to the human being; therefore, when the government exploits one group in favor of another, the cry goes up by other groups, in the name of "justice," for some of the same. Thus, a new ethic, a new complex of beliefs and conventions, takes hold of the people; all of them expect society, through the agency of government, to take care of them.

Since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production that it induces by its avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus, in pulling Society down it pulls itself down. Its ultimate collapse is usually occasioned by a disastrous war, but preceding that event is a history of increasing and discouraging levies on the marketplace, causing a decline in the aspirations, hopes, and self-esteem of its victims.

The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum--even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.