The first and chief violation of the right of property, which pervades and disturbs all the natural relations of ownership, confusing, and perplexing the ideas of all men as to the source of the right of property, and what is their own, of which so many actions stigmatized by the law as crimes, are the necessary consequences, and the natural corrections,--the parent theft from which flow all other thefts, is that of the legislator, who, not being a labourer, can make no disposition of any property whatever, without appropriating what does not naturally belong to him.

No man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire.

The law of equal freedom, the essential principle of Anarchism, is a protection to life, liberty and property.

The history of humanity has been largely one long and gradual discovery of the fact that the individual is the gainer by society exactly in proportion as society is free, and of the law that the condition of a permanent and harmonious society is the greatest amount of individual liberty compatible with equality of liberty. The average man of each new generation has said to himself more clearly and consciously than his predecessor: "My neighbor is not my enemy, but my friend, and I am his, if we would but mutually recognize the fact. We help each other to a better, fuller, happier living; and this service might be greatly increased if we would cease to restrict, hamper, and oppress each other. Why can we not agree to let each live his own life, neither of us transgressing the limit that separates our individualities?" It is by this reasoning that mankind is approaching the real social contract, which is not, as Rousseau thought, the origin of society, but rather the outcome of a long social experience, the fruit of its follies and disasters. It is obvious that this contract, this social law, developed to its perfection, excludes all aggression, all violation of equality of liberty, all invasion of every kind. Considering this contract in connection with the Anarchistic definition of the State as the embodiment of the principle of invasion, we see that the State is antagonistic to society; and, society being essential to individual life and development, the conclusion leaps to the eyes that the relation of the State to the individual and of the individual to the State must be one of hostility, enduring till the State shall perish. "But," it will be asked of the Anarchists at this point in the argument, "what shall be done with those individuals who undoubtedly will persist in violating the social law by invading their neighbors?" The Anarchists answer that the abolition of the State will leave in existence a defensive association, resting no longer on a compulsory but on a voluntary basis, which will restrain invaders by any means that may prove necessary.

Human society, must, in freedom, become one large experimental field wherein, according to the law of the survival of the fittest, only those institutions and customs which actually serve human needs can survive. Only by the free and unhampered operation of this great law will folly be eliminated because the absence of paternalism places fools in a position to reap the full rewards of their folly and in doing so become wise, i.e. capable, self-reliant, and responsible. Of course, in the larger view, the law of the survival of the fittest, which, by the way and contrary to the beliefs of many humanitarians, is an amoral law and taxes no cognizance of "good" or "bad" men, is always in operation, We the great mass of people suffer today because, in our ignorance we do not understand how to live. But in the long run, if there is to be any "survival" on this earth, it is within the realm of certainty that it is to come only by the extension of individual liberties through the ultimate abolition of the State, the elimination of all government of man by man.

It’s the exercise of power, not the exercise of freedom, that requires justification.

Government intervention, when it comes down to it, is the power of the gun. It is brute force, pure and simple. Motives here are irrelevant. Whether the government is full of benevolent bureaucrats or pernicious politicians is of no consequence. If a seller charges more than the government-imposed price ceiling allows, he will be jailed or deprived of his property. The same fate befalls anyone who violates government edicts. The opportunities of the market participants to make and attempt to realize their plans have been stymied. The system that makes the harmonizing of divergent plans possible has been distorted into one of inevitable clash due to government distribution.

The free market opens the way for men to operate at their moral best.

My view is that libertarianism is best regarded as an ideology focused on moving from the current state toward a smaller state--for some of us, a state so much smaller that it ultimately disappears completely and gives way to governance via individual, explicit, voluntary contracting between protection agencies and every adult subject to an agency's protection of its subscribers' natural rights.

Statism is a system of intitutionalized violence and perpetual civil war. It leaves men no choice but to fight to seize political power -- to rob or be robbed, to kill or be killed ... Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.

The government is a gang of criminals. It should be a badge of honor to avoid giving them money.

Individuals within tribes no doubt learned that cooperation in robbery was a safer procedure than lone robbery. In time it must have occurred to someone that one tribe could rob another tribe. In such forays the winners would kill the losers. Natural handicaps made women weaker than men, so men became the warriors and the women did the work. Women thus being useful, in subsequent raids they were captured instead of killed. Somewhere along the line a fellow who had been clubbed for his goods survived, and proceeded to gather more goods. When this was observed, probably the greatest humanitarian idea that man has discovered throughout the ages was born—that it was not necessary to kill a man in order to get his goods. This boon was slavery, which at least promised a lease on life. Thus, in conquest between tribes, the conquerors became the rulers and the conquered the slaves. This, in my view, was the origin of the State, which may be defined as an organization of rulers who rob the populace over which it can hold sway, and which uses that populace as soldiers to enlarge the territory and number of people it can exploit. The political history of the world has been the record of internal struggles to grasp State power, and between governments to enlarge their domains. (That governments provide services which citizens want or can be persuaded to want, does not alter the basic concept of nature and origin of the State.) The ruler-ruled relation became in the course of time so ingrained as to become a universal superstition. It is the common belief that no society could exist without government. Indeed, what government will allow anything else to be taught in the schools?

Whatever promotes the growth of the state also weakens the capacity of individuals in civil society to fend off the state’s depredations and therefore augments the public’s multifaceted victimization at the hands of state functionaries. Nothing promotes the growth of the state as much as national emergency—war and other crises comparable to war in the seriousness of the threats they pose. States, by their very nature, are perpetually at war—not always against foreign foes, of course, but always against their own subjects. The state’s most fundamental purpose, the activity without which it cannot even exist, is robbery. The state gains its very sustenance from robbery, which it pretties up ideologically by giving it a different name (taxation) and by striving to sanctify its intrinsic crime as permissible and socially necessary. State propaganda, statist ideologies, and long-established routine combine to convince many people that they have a legitimate obligation, even a moral duty to pay taxes to the state that rules their society.

Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.

Has nobody noticed that the authorities can't even keep drugs out of prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?

I believe that as long you don't harm another person, or get in the way of their freedom ALL THINGS should be legal and available. As no amount of laws passed seem to prevent people's love of freedom, nor squelch their curiosity, nor their basic humanity, we would do better to look through the eyes of love and compassion, rather than condemnation and fear.

The peoples owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. Governments have employed every means that lay in their power to prevent the attainment of these rights or to render them illusory. Great mass movements among the people and whole revolutions have been necessary to wrest these rights from the ruling classes, who would never have consented to them voluntarily. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has to be wrested inch by inch from the despots.

What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

There is no possible evolution in a totalitarian society. Terror does not evolve except towards a worse terror, the scaffold does not become more liberal, the gallows are not tolerant. Nowhere in the world has there been a party or a man with absolute power who did not use it absolutely.

A question that confronts every society and every political philosophy concerns our obligations to the poor and unfortunate and how we are to extend them help. Probably the most common answer involves an appeal to government to supply them welfare benefits and other entitlements financed through taxation. But free-market advocates maintain that coercing people to assist others is wrong, both pragmatically and in that it violates others' rights. Instead, they appeal to private organizations to provide the necessities for those in need. Pragmatically, free-market advocates argue that a taxed and regulated society is less prosperous with less upward mobility and thereby experiences poverty; the redistribution of wealth can be a strong disincentive for people to earn and so increases the number of people who need help. Moreover, people who are taxed to underwrite the costs of welfare are less likely to give voluntarily. The rise of the welfare state is commonly viewed as the turning point at which the large-scale philanthropy that marked 19th-century society disappeared. If government services were removed, free-market advocates maintain that people would be far more likely to voluntarily contribute to charity and other community causes and in larger amounts.

Variation is the seed of progress. Liberty is the soil and the climate in which the seed will sprout and grow. Human capacity for independent decisions and free choice is the husbandman who nurtures the crop during the period of its growth and harvest.

Modern society, monarchical, parliamentary, and republican alike cries: law and order first and foremost, liberty and progress secondary. Anarchy says: not so; law must not deny liberty, order must not precede progress; they are causes, not results.

The greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." "In 1984", Huxley added, "people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure." In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.

Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong.

Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one is not sanctified when committed by a host.

There is one element that comprises the heart of the statist, an anatomical feature they all share without exception. This element goes by many names, but the one I prefer is intolerance. The statist, at his core, is someone who refuses to tolerate ways of being that are contrary to his own preferences. His motives may be humanitarian, egalitarian, or any of the others listed, but the result is always force, always coercion, always the employment of threats and weapons to control others according to his own desires. To strike at the heart, then, we must loudly and repeatedly call out this intolerance. We must lay bare for the world to see that this person thinks so highly of themselves that they feel it's acceptable and even laudable to impose their enlightened views on others by force. Not only does this get to the crux of the issue, it also highlights the way forward. The path out of statism does not really lie in a technical understanding of the nonaggression principle, though that certainly helps. The path simply consists of humility. Humble yourself, take stock of your ignorance and moral failings, and you will find your statism shedding like skin off a snake. You don't have to understand the intricacies of a stateless society. You don't have to get a master's degree in ethics. You just need to say, "Let's live and let live. You do you, I'll do me, and as long as we leave each other alone, we're cool." Once someone is nodding along with that idea, the battle is already won. Explain what it implies concerning the morality of government, and then watch for the moment when it all suddenly clicks.

Rothbard realized that the limited-government laissez-faire position was "logically untenable" when he was unable to answer the objection raised by left-liberal friends: If people could collectively decide that government should provide police, courts, and military defense, then why couldn’t they decide that government should also operate steel mills or dams? Rothbard's epiphany led him to adopt a pure anarcho-capitalist position.

The power of government in social affairs, like the newly developed atomic power in the physical world, still is an untamed and unharnessed force of great danger; and the supreme danger of our time is that these two forces may be combined somewhere in the world -- even in our own country -- as a force for evil.

Anarchism is just the way people act when they are free to do as they choose, and when they deal with others who are equally free -- and therefore aware of the responsibility to others that entails. This leads to another crucial point: that while people can be reasonable and considerate when they are dealing with equals, human nature is such that they cannot be trusted to do so when given power over others. Give someone such power, they will almost invariably abuse it in some way or another.

No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me--has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

By voluntary organization and voluntary taxation it is perfectly possible to protect liberty and property and to restrain crime.

Spooner and Tucker advanced libertarian individualism from a protest against existing evils to pointing the way to an ideal society toward which we can move; and what is more, they correctly located that ideal in the free market which already partially existed and was providing vast economic and social benefits. Thus, Spooner, Tucker, and their movement not only furnished a goal toward which to move, but they also greatly surpassed previous "utopians" in locating that goal in already-existing institutions rather than in a coercive or impossible vision of a transformed mankind. Their achievement was truly remarkable, and we have not yet risen to the level of their insights.

We might compare the alliance between government and big business to the alliance between church and state in the Middle Ages. Of course it's in the interest of both parties to maintain the alliance -- but all the same, each side would like to be the dominant partner, so it's no surprise that the history of such alliances will often look like a history of conflict and antipathy, as each side struggles to get the upper hand. But this struggle must be read against a common background framework of cooperation to maintain the system of control.

Regulation in general, far from coming against the wishes of the regulated interests, was openly welcomed by them in nearly every case.

The government can't create jobs; they'll destroy jobs trying to do it. The government doesn't have any money; all they have is a printing press. We need to free markets to create jobs; if the government wants to help, they should reduce their burden on the economy.

When a "nation" is relatively wise politically it requires considerable force, in the shape of police and army, to keep the populace in their place. Where people are steeped in political ignorance, very little force is necessary, especially when the illusion is kept up that when choosing their rulers they are actually ruling themselves.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

No. I don't believe in politics. I'm an anarchist, I guess you could say. I think people could be just fine looking after themselves.

Most people agree nowadays in the view that the growth of bureaucracy and officialism in the modern State is a serious evil, and that the extension of Government interference and the multiplication of Laws are a great danger. We all know that the institution of the Law and the Courts actually creates and gives rise to huge masses of evil--bribery, blackmail, perjury, spying and lying, wrongful accusation, useless and deliberate suffering and cruelty; that it publicly sanctions and organises violence, even in extreme forms; that it quite directly and deliberately supports vast and obvious wrongs in Society--as for instance land-monopoly; that it is absurd and self-contradictory in much of its theory and practice; that (as Herbert Spencer so frequently insists) it paralyses the folk that submit or trust to it; and finally that it is today for the most part so antiquated and out of date that (even if this were thought desirable) it might well seem impracticable to patch it up for real human use. Yet in these cases--though we admit that the things are evil--our defence usually is that they carry some compensations with them, and that anyhow they are necessary evils, which we cannot dispense with, and without which disorder, violence and social disruption would ensue. It may be worth while to consider this defence more closely; for curiously enough the history of nations and peoples is, on the whole, to contrary effect. Not only have all the early tribes of the world got on and cohered together in order and social amity without any rigid and ponderous system of laws; but even among the peasant peoples of today--like the Irish or the Swedes or the Swiss or the Chinese--where they are still living in moderately primitive conditions, we find the same thing. Governmental law and its operations and institutions occupy but a very small part in their lives.

Anarcho-capitalists are thinking of how competing firms would prevent the rise of abusive protection monopolists in a society where most people don't support the existence of such a monopolist. It is one thing to suppress a "criminal firm" when it stands condemned by public opinion and the values internalized by that firm's employees; it is another thing entirely to suppress our current "criminal firms" (i.e., governments) when qua institution enjoy the overwhelming support of the populace and the state's enforcers believe in their own cause. When a governing class loses confidence in its own legitimacy -- from the Ancien Regime in France to the Communist Party in the USSR -- it becomes vulnerable and weak. Market checks on government could indeed establish an anarchist society if the self-confidence of the governing class were severely eroded by anarchist ideas.

The Anarchist does not want to destroy all existing institutions with a crash and then inaugurate the substituting process on their ruins. He simply asks to be let alone in substituting false systems now, so that they may gradually fall to pieces by their own dead weight. He asks the humble privilege of being allowed to set up a free bank in peaceable competition with the government subsidized class bank on the opposite corner. He asks the privilege of establishing a private post office in fair competition with the governmentally established one. He asks to be let alone in establishing his title to the soil by free occupation, cultivation, and use rather than by a title hampered by vested rights which were designed to keep the masses landless ... He asks not to be taxed upon what has been robbed from him under a machine in which he has practically no voice and no choice. In short, the Anarchist asks for free land, free money, free trade, free love, and the right to free competition with the existing order at his own cost and on his own responsibility, - liberty.

Anarchists are opposed to violence; everyone knows that. The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations.

It might be charged that our theory of justice in property titles is deficient because in the real world most landed (and even other) property has a past history so tangled that it becomes impossible to identify who or what has committed coercion and therefore who the current just owner may be. But the point of the “homestead principle” is that if we don’t know what crimes have been committed in acquiring the property in the past, or if we don’t know the victims or their heirs, then the current owner becomes the legitimate and just owner on homestead grounds. In short, if Jones owns a piece of land at the present time, and we don’t know what crimes were committed to arrive at the current title, then Jones, as the current owner, becomes as fully legitimate a property owner of this land as he does over his own person. Overthrow of existing property title only becomes legitimate if the victims or their heirs can present an authenticated, demonstrable, and specific claim to the property. Failing such conditions, existing landowners possess a fully moral right to their property.

Because the concept of property, for instance, is so basic that everyone seems to have some immediate understanding of it, most people never think about it carefully and can, as a consequence, produce at best a very vague definition. But starting from imprecisely stated or assumed definitions and building a complex network of thought upon them can lead only to intellectual disaster. For the original imprecisions and loopholes will then pervade and distort everything derived from them. To avoid this, the concept of property must first be clarified.

When people speak in an economic or political context, of the dangers and evils of monopoly, what they mean is a coercive monopoly--that is; exclusive control of a given field of production which is closed to and exempt from competition, so that those controlling the field are able to set arbitrary production policies and charge arbitrary prices, independent of the market, immune from the law of supply and demand. Such a monopoly, it is important to note, entails more than the absence of competition; it entails the impossibility of competition. That is a coercive monopoly’s characteristic attribute--and is essential to any condemnation of such a monopoly. In the whole history of capitalism, no one has been able to establish a coercive monopoly by means of competition on a free market. There is only one way to forbid entry into a given field of production: by law. Every single coercive monopoly that exists or ever has existed--in the United States, in Europe or anywhere else in the world--was created and made possible only by an act of government: by special franchises, licenses, subsidies, by legislative actions which granted special privileges (not obtainable on a free market) to a man or a group of men, and forbade all others to enter that particular field. A coercive monopoly is not the result of laissez-faire; it can result only from the abrogation of laissez-faire and from the introduction of the opposite principle--the principle of statism.

I do believe that time will show the extreme importance of libertarianism to future centuries. I feel that generations will look back to the late-twentieth century and marvel at the early libertarian writers and activists. They will wonder how these early libertarians ever conceived such self-evident notions of voluntaryism and non-coercion. They will be astonished at how anyone could survive the daily barrage of statism--regulation, taxation and aggression.

I ascribe to a philosophy of Gentle Anarchy. I believe people are inherently GOOD, and left to their own devices -- with the free exchange of ideas and information -- a joyful lightness would spread across the face of our dour world.

What compels me to fight this society is, of course, outrage over injustice, a love of freedom, and a feeling of responsibility, for perpetuating and enlarging the human spirit -- its beauty, creativity, and latent capacity to improve the world. I do not care to come to terms with an irrational society that corrodes all that is valuable in humanity, that eats away at all that is beautiful and noble in the human experience.

Statism is not a modern religion. Even before Plato, political philosophy concerned itself with the nature, origin, and justification of the State. But, while the thinkers speculated on it, the general public accepted political authority as a fact to be lived with and let it go at that. It is only within recent times (except, perhaps, during periods when Church and State were one, thus endowing political coercion with divine sanction) that the mass of people have consciously or implicitly accepted the Hegelian dictum that "the State is the general substance, whereof individuals are but the accidents." It is this acceptance of the State as "substance," as a suprapersonal reality, and its investment with a competence no individual can lay claim to, that is the special characteristic of the 20th century. In times past, the disposition was to look upon the State as something one had to reckon with, but as a complete outsider. One got along with the State as best one could, feared or admired it, hoped to be taken in by it and to enjoy its perquisites, or held it at arm’s length as an untouchable thing; one hardly thought of the State as the integral of Society. One had to support the State -- there was no way of avoiding taxes -- and one tolerated its interventions as interventions, not as the warp and woof of life. And the State itself was proud of its position apart from, and above, Society. The present disposition is to liquidate any distinction between State and Society, conceptually or institutionally. The State is Society; the social order is indeed an appendage of the political establishment, depending on it for sustenance, health, education, communications, and all things coming under the head of "the pursuit of happiness." In theory, taking college textbooks on economics and political science for authority, the integration is about as complete as words can make it. In the operation of human affairs, despite the fact that lip service is rendered the concept of inherent personal rights, the tendency to call upon the State for the solution of all the problems of life shows how far we have abandoned the doctrine of rights, with its correlative of self-reliance, and have accepted the State as the reality of Society. It is this actual integration, rather than the theory, that marks off the 20th century from its predecessors. One indication of how far the integration has gone is the disappearance of any discussion of the State qua State -- a discussion that engaged the best minds of the 18th and 19th centuries. The inadequacies of a particular regime, or its personnel, are under constant attack, but there is no faultfinding with the institution itself. The State is all right, by common agreement, and it would work perfectly if the "right" people were at its helm ... The idea that this power apparatus is indeed the enemy of Society, that the interests of these institutions are in opposition, is simply unthinkable. If it is brought up, it is dismissed as "old-fashioned," which it is; until the modern era, it was an axiom that the State bears constant watching, that pernicious proclivities are built into it.

I know of hardly one reformer or any other person proposing any feature for the betterment of mankind, in a hundred thousand, who does not propose or expect to implement his proposition through the coercive power of the government. The method of political thought from Plato down to the technocrats was to prefabricate an ideal society, and then to get governmental power to coercively fit people to their systems. The classic example of this type of thinking and action is the attempt to impose systematic communism on a populace. Communism itself is such an infantile conception of the solution of the social problem that it is no accident of circumstance that it is accompanied by continual liquidations. At the present time, the strongest support for government appears to be habit, a common garden variety of ignorance, credulity, and superstition, sustained by a vast amount of mis-education perpetuated by governmental schools in every quarter of the globe. To this must be added emergencies in which sections of a populace find themselves (such as the present-day farmer), in a predicament, the immediate release from which no other power than government appears to exist. Thus, from the very evils caused by government, do governments find a pretext to come in as succor, and thereby enhance their powers. Irrespective of their relative banefulness (for some governments are worse than others) the present day power struggle between governments threatens the annihilation of mankind in a carnage that can hardly be conceived as possible in the absence of all governments whatsoever.

Probably the first question which presents itself to the mind, when the abolition of the State is suggested, is how crime will be suppressed. It will be apparent to all who understood the last chapter, that actions are only criminal insofar as they directly transgress the freedom of others. Many people still cling to the idea that the main function of the State is to maintain Equal Freedom, an idea which has already been exploded, by showing that the State is the greatest violator of the law -- in other words, the greatest criminal. How then can we expect it to protect us? ... It is surely time private enterprise had a turn. It can hardly do any worse, and I hope to show that it will do much better. In nearly every large city business men either employ special night watchmen, or else subscribe to some merchants' police company, in order to have their stores protected. Here are men who are compelled to pay the State for protection that is so inadequate and worthless, that they voluntarily pay a private institution to perform the same services. The State fails to perform its duty but still continues to collect the money for it by force. Meanwhile private enterprise steps in and does the work properly. Is there any danger that a community, in which the rights of life and property are held in such high regard that men will pay twice over for their protection rather than go without it -- is there much danger that such a community will fail to protect itself from crime if left to do so without State intervention? The work of insurance companies is suggestive of a method by which this might be done. If the State collects taxes from you to save your house when it is on fire, insurance companies will, if you pay your premiums, reimburse you for all your loss. The former thrusts its services on you unasked, and makes you pay for them whether you want them or not. The latter is a purely voluntary arrangement, and is perfectly willing to leave you alone if you do not molest it. There are accident insurance companies which insure elevators. Should any person get hurt while riding in an elevator so insured and sue the owner of the building, the insurance company will settle the whole matter and pay such damages as may be awarded. In Colorado -- I don't know how it may be in other States -- there is no State elevator inspector, consequently insurance companies inspect the elevators themselves and issue proper certificates. These companies have everything depending upon the correctness of their inspection. The loss of large sums of money and the shaking of public confidence are the penalties they must pay for mistakes ... Why cannot such institutions protect our persons and property from theft and assault as well as from accidents, fires, storms, etc.? That they are capable is clearly demonstrated by their past history. The exorbitant prices that they charge will be curtailed as soon as the monopolies of land and money are destroyed.

It is obvious that the ideological root of statism (or collectivism) is the tribal premise of primordial savages who, unable to conceive of individual rights, believed that the tribe is a supreme, omnipotent ruler, that it owns the lives of its members and may sacrifice them whenever it pleases to whatever it deems to be its own "good." Unable to conceive of any social principles, save the rule of brute force, they believed that the tribe's wishes are limited only by its physical power and that other tribes are its natural prey, to be conquered, looted, enslaved or annihilated. The history of all primitive peoples is a succession of tribal wars and intertribal slaughter. That this savage ideology now rules nations armed with nuclear weapons, should give pause to anyone concerned with mankind’s survival.

If men uphold reason, they will be led, ultimately, to conclude that men should deal with one another as free agents, settling their disputes by an appeal to the mind, i.e., by a process of voluntary, rational persuasion. If men reject reason, they will be led, ultimately, to conclude the opposite: that men have no way to deal with one another at all--no way except physical force, wielded by an elite endowed with an allegedly superior, mystic means of cognition.

Freedom can run a monetary system as superbly as it runs the rest of the economy. Contrary to many writers, there is nothing special about money that requires extensive governmental dictation. Here, too, free men will best and most smoothly supply all their economic wants. For money as for all other activities of man, "liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of order."

Very simply, there can't be a more immoral system of money than one based on a banking monopoly that can counterfeit money in secret.

We are so depraved by long-continued slavery that we can hardly imagine administration without violence.

The State is organized exploitation, organized force, and crime.

To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

It is a free market that makes monopolies impossible.

Is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it's only the other fellow who's greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear: that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.

One of the most beautiful aspects of a market economy is that it harnesses some of the most selfish, ambitious, and talented people in society, and makes it in their direct financial interest to worry at night about pleasing others.

Among the most popular and consequential beliefs of our age is the belief in collective security. Nothing less significant than the legitimacy of the modern state rests on this belief. And yet, the idea of a collective security is a myth that provides no justification for the modern state. Private-property owners, cooperation based on the division of labor, and market competition can and should provide defense from aggression.

When the right of property is abrogated, all the other rights of the individual are undermined, and to speak of the sovereign citizen who has no absolute right of property is to talk nonsense.

A corporate economy is only one among many possibilities for dividing labor and exchanging values. The question is whether it predominates because of economic forces that would persist in markets free of structural privilege, or because of predicaments that would dissipate when competitors are free to offer alternatives with less centralization, less management, and more trade and entrepreneurial independence for ordinary workers ... There are many places in economic life where ordinary people are given a hard shove toward spending money they’d rather not spend with trading partners they wouldn’t otherwise keep. The most pervasive, far-reaching government interventions foster economic concentration, commercialization, hyperthyroidal scale, and the consolidated hierarchy needed to manage it--not because they grow naturally in market economies but because they grow out of control in the hothouse of socialized costs and inhibited competition.

There exists widespread agreement--among liberal-libertarians such as Molinari, Rothbard, and the Tannehills as well as most other commentators on the matter--that defense is a form of insurance, and defense expenditures represent a sort of insurance premium (price). Accordingly, as Rothbard and the Tannehills in particular would emphasize, within the framework of a complex modern economy based on a worldwide division of labor the most likely candidates for offering protection and defense services are insurance agencies. The better the protection of insured property, the lower are the damage claims and hence an insurer's costs. Thus, to provide efficient protection appears to be in every insurer's own financial interest; and in fact even now, although restricted and hampered by the state, insurance agencies provide wide-ranging services of protection and indemnification (compensation) to injured private parties. Insurance companies fulfill a second essential requirement. Obviously, anyone offering protection services must appear able to deliver on his promises in order to find clients. That is, he must possess the economic means--the manpower as well as the physical resources--necessary to accomplish the task of dealing with the dangers, actual or imagined, of the real world. On this count insurance agencies appear to be perfect candidates, too. They operate on a nationwide and even international scale, and they own large property holdings dispersed over wide territories and beyond single state boundaries. Accordingly, they have a manifest self-interest in effective protection, and are big and economically powerful. Furthermore, all insurance companies are connected through a network of contractual agreements of mutual assistance and arbitration as well as a system of international reinsurance agencies, representing a combined economic power which dwarfs that of most if not all existing governments.

Making the case for liberty stick, so that it isn’t simply some short-term rhetorical exercise, is a multi-faceted task. It draws support from a range of intellectual disciplines--economics, political science, sociology, and history, to name a few. It requires a nurturing of many personal virtues--self-reliance, enterprise, respect for others and their property, moral inspiration, and optimism about what free people can accomplish. It encourages a patient, long-term perspective over the instant gratification of short-term obsessions. To this list I add one more ingredient that is worthy of our increased attention--demystifying government. Too many battles are lost to statists because of a misplaced and hard-to-shake faith in government itself. For all its endless failures, now more widely perceived than at any time in decades, government is still regarded as real and tangible while free-market alternatives are often thought of as nebulous and imaginary.

Far back in time Authority stood on thrones and altars, with the plumed sables of despotism waving on his brow, while in his hands he held two iron gyves, the one to fetter thought, the other to fetter action; and these two gyves were called the Church and State. Liberty! Ah, Liberty was then a name scarcely to pass the lips; dreamed of only in solitude, spoken of only in dungeons! Yet out of the blackest mire the whitest lily blooms! Out of the dungeon, out of the sorrow, out of the sacrifice, out of the pain, grew this child of the heart; and pure and strong she grew until the sabled plumes have tottered on the despot’s brow, and a great palsy shakes the hands that once so firmly held the gyves of Church and State. For, ever seeking to overthrow each other, the one for the aggrandizement of self, the other for the love of all mankind, these two powers have contended; and every energy, every passion, every desire, good or evil, has been ranged on this side or on that, blunderingly or wisely, and nations have swung to and fro in their breath as upon a hinge. And one by one the powers of Authority have been crippled, and step by step Liberty has advanced, until to-day mankind is beginning to measure the forces that, struggling blindly together, are yet evolving light, to drink in the sublime ideal of freedom. Yet, oh, how long the struggle with vested ignorance, with greed in power!

For everybody has a natural right, not only to defend his own person and property against aggressors, but also to go to the assistance and defence of everybody else, whose person or property is invaded. The natural right of each individual to defend his own person and property against an aggressor, and to go to the assistance and defence of everyone else whose person or property is invaded, is a right without which men could not exist on the earth.

The identification of anarchy with disorder is not a trivial matter. The power of our conceptions to blind us to the facts of the world around us cannot be gainsaid. I myself have had the experience of eating lunch just outside Temple University’s law school in North Philadelphia with a brilliant law professor who was declaiming upon the absolute necessity of the state provision of police services. He did this just as one of Temple’s uniformed private armed guards passed by escorting a female student to the Metro stop in this crime-ridden neighborhood that is vastly underserved by the Philadelphia police force.

For market anarchists, war in many ways represents the epitome of the state's interaction with human civilization; indeed, I have often suggested that to be consistently and undeviatingly anti-war means to be anti-state. And to reject war and the state, in turn, is to favor a safer world, not the treacherous, entropic nightmare prophesied by today's flag-bearers of military adventurism.

Unlike many observers of history, anarchists see a common thread behind most of mankind's problems: the state. In the 20th-century alone, states have murdered well over 100,000,000 human beings, whether in war, concentration camps, or man-made famine. And this is merely a continuation of a seemingly endless historical pattern: almost from the beginning of recorded history, governments have existed. Once they arose, they allowed a ruling class to live off the labor of the mass of ordinary people; and these ruling classes have generally used their ill-gotten gains to build armies and wage war to extend their sphere of influence. At the same time, governments have always suppressed unpopular minorities, dissent, and the efforts of geniuses and innovators to raise humanity to new intellectual, moral, cultural, and economic heights. By transferring surplus wealth from producers to the state's ruling elite, the state has often strangled any incentive for long-run economic growth and thus stifled humanity's ascent from poverty; and at the same time the state has always used that surplus wealth to cement its power.

Whoever considers the State necessary, believes aggressive force to be necessary too (without being aware of the consequences), and confuses an aggressive organization with a purely defensive one. It is a platitude that there are things that cannot be regulated by each individual himself but only in community with others. But for all such arrangements there are always two possibilities: on the one hand, aggressive force which forces an arbitrary solution on opponents; and on the other hand, a voluntary settlement which seeks a solution based on the equal freedom of all. The latter means, at the same time, the outlawing of aggressive force and the establishment of defensive organizations against it. Most people mean such a defensive organization when referring to the State because they never seriously reflect upon its nature. For them the State has become self-evident as a customary phenomenon. They can hardly imagine its disappearance. But trials of "witches," torture, the Inquisition, and absolute monarchies once were such traditional phenomena, too, whose abolition could hardly be imagined. That the State must at least be abolished as the creator and protector of monopolies and privileges has become an insight which urges itself more and more upon us, the more the fallacies, false premises, and assumptions of the past are corrected.

Let us consider the first principle: the right to self-ownership. This principle asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to "own" his own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference. Since the nature of man is such that each individual must use his mind to learn about himself and the world, to select values, and to choose ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the right to self-ownership gives each man the right to perform these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation. Consider, then, the alternatives--the consequences of denying each man the right to own his own person. There are only two alternatives: either (1) a certain class of people, A, have the right to own another class, B; or (2) everyone has the right to own his equal quotal share of everyone else. The first alternative implies that, while class A deserves the rights of being human, class B is in reality subhuman and, therefore, deserves no such rights. But since they are indeed human beings, the first alternative contradicts itself in denying natural human rights to one set of humans. Moreover, allowing class A to own class B means that the former is allowed to exploit and, therefore, to live parasitically at the expense of the latter; but, as economics can tell us, this parasitism itself violates the basic economic requirement for human survival: production and exchange. The second alternative, which we might call "participatory communalism" or "communism," holds that every man should have the right to own his equal quotal share of everyone else. If there are three billion people in the world, then everyone has the right to own one-three-billionth of every other person. In the first place, this ideal itself rests upon an absurdity--proclaiming that every man is entitled to own a part of everyone else and yet is not entitled to own himself. Second, we can picture the viability of such a world--a world in which no man is free to take any action whatever without prior approval or indeed command by everyone else in society. It should be clear that in that sort of "communist" world, no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish.

The libertarian view is that human actors are self-owners and these self-owners are capable of appropriating unowned scarce resources by Lockean homesteading -- some type of first use or embordering activity. Obviously, an actor must already own his body if he is to be a homesteader; self-ownership is not acquired by homesteading but rather is presupposed in any act or defense of homesteading. The basis of self-ownership is the fact that each person has direct control over the scarce resource of his body and therefore has a better claim to it than any third party ... So there is a difference in body-ownership and in ownership of external scarce goods. An actor is a self-owner; self-owners are able to acquire property rights in external objects by homesteading unowned resources -- or by contractual acquisition from a previous owner.

Anarchism being neither more nor less than the principle of equal liberty, property, in an Anarchistic society, must accord with this principle. The only form of property which meets this condition is that which secures each in the possession of his own products, or of such products of others as he may have obtained unconditionally without the use of fraud or force, and in the realization of all titles to such products which he may hold by virtue of free contract with others. Possession, unvitiated by fraud or force, of values to which no one else holds a title unvitiated by fraud or force, and the possession of similarly unvitiated titles to values, constitute the Anarchistic criterion of ownership. By fraud I do not mean that which is simply contrary to equity, but deceit and false pretence in all their forms.

See, what we always meant by socialism wasn't something you forced on people, it was people organizing themselves as they pleased into co-ops, collectives, communes, unions ... And if socialism really is better, more efficient than capitalism then it can bloody well compete with capitalism. So we decided, forget all the statist shit and the violence: the best place for socialism is the closest to a free market you can get!

The choice posed by market anarchism -- based on voluntary association and trade -- is not that of rules or no rules, but of individual sovereignty or top-down control. Should individuals and noncompulsory community organizations make decisions for themselves, or should a modern, state-corporate nobility, protected by law from the consequences of its actions, decide for all?

Anarchism is an unraveling of the very fabric of power relations that bind almost every society on earth. And critically: there is no scale at which it does not apply.

I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.

Perhaps one of the most optimistic libertarians ever was Murray Rothbard, a happy intellectual warrior if ever there was one. And he was very enthusiastic about the revolution of libertarian ideas, because he understood fundamentally that liberty is the only manner of organizing society that is compatible with human nature and human action. And it was this optimism, this unshakeable belief that we’re right and the statists are wrong, that drove him to produce a staggering body of work in defense of personal liberty. Now let me stress that Rothbard, despite his reputation as an uncompromising intellectual, saw his efforts as pragmatic, not utopian. He understood quite clearly that utopianism was the hallmark of the state’s intellectual champions, not the state’s detractors. He understood that utopianism and statism, not liberty, produced the great monsters and the great wars of the twentieth century. Most of all, he understood that the true utopians are the central planners who believe they can overcome human nature and steer human actors like cattle.

Anarchy refers to a society without a central political authority. But it is also used to refer to disorder or chaos. This constitutes a textbook example of Orwellian newspeak in which assigning the same name to two different concepts effectively narrows the range of thought. For if lack of government is identified with the lack of order, no one will ask whether lack of government actually results in a lack of order. And this uninquisitive mental attitude is absolutely essential to the case for the state. For if people were ever to seriously question whether government is really productive of order, popular support for government would almost instantly collapse.

The doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual -- in one sense itself a principle -- grows out of the still more fundamental principle of "Individuality," which pervades universal nature. Individuality is positively the most fundamental and universal principle which the finite mind seems capable of discovering, and the best image of the Infinite. There are no two objects in the universe which are precisely alike. Each has its own constitution and peculiarities, which distinguish it from every other. Infinite diversity is the universal law. In the multitude of human countenances, for example, there are no two alike, and in the multitude of human characters there is the same variety. The hour which your courtesy has assigned to me would be entirely consumed, if I were to attempt to adduce a thousandth part of the illustrations of this subtile principle of Individuality, which lie patent upon the face of nature, all round me. It applies equally to persons, to things, and to events. There have been no two occurrences which were precisely alike during all the cycling periods of time. No action, transaction, or set of circumstances whatsoever ever corresponded precisely to any other action, transaction, or set of circumstances. Had I a precise knowledge of all the occurrences which have ever taken place up to this hour, it would not suffice to enable me to make a law which would be applicable in all respects to the very next occurrence which shall take place, nor to any one of the infinite millions of events which shall hereafter occur. This diversity reigns throughout every kingdom of nature, and mocks at all human attempts to make laws, or constitutions, or regulations, or governmental institutions of any sort, which shall work justly and harmoniously amidst the unforeseen contingencies of the future.

It is being proposed, as an answer to the questions raised by the civil rights movement, by cybernation, and the prospects of an atomic holocaust, that everyone be given government checks, and presumably the political and economic life of the country be relegated to the tender mercies of power elites who no doubt will be entrusted with our health, education, and welfare, "from cradle to grave." One might comment on the infantile state of mind of the worthies who so propose--a sort of parasitic exploitation in reverse with the State as a full-fitted nursemaid taking care of its victims. But who would expect the members of any institution, school, or study group that had been subsidized by the "powers that be" to come to any conclusion inimical to the privileges of their sponsors?

Things seem to be freest in Nature when no artificial arrangement is interposed to prevent their association in the manner most conducive to their growth and most in harmony with the conditions of their being. If this be so, it will apply to man and to society. Man is the cosmos in miniature. Society has been his greatest curse in one respect. It has coaxed him into selling his individuality, and burying it in collectivity. As soon as a man is prompted to follow some wholesale law of growth, his neighbor stands ready with the warning: "But you must not forget that you are a member of society; you do not own yourself; society owns you." This is the most fatal heresy that ever seduced the race.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

Where the individuals are not corrupt, conflicts and other crises do no harm; where they are corrupt, the best-planned laws are useless.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

The government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn't first take from somebody else.

Once wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled.

Price controls have been imposed repeatedly for more than two thousand years. They have always failed, yet they have been repeatedly resurrected.

One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again.

If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken from its owner.

The Anarchists believe in laissez faire, and their mission to the people is to tell them laissez faire; to cease sending their men into the army and navy and police; to cease supporting the government, which uses the army and navy and police (composed of their brothers) to crush them.

The concept of freedom always refers to social relations between men. True, society cannot realize the illusory concept of the individual's absolute independence. Within society everyone depends on what other people are prepared to contribute to his well-being in return for his own contribution to their well-being. Society is essentially the mutual exchange of services. As far as individuals have the opportunity to choose, they are free; if they are forced by violence or threat of violence to surrender to the terms of an exchange, no matter how they feel about it, they lack freedom. This slave is unfree precisely because the master assigns him his tasks and determines what he has to receive if he fulfills it. As regards the social apparatus of repression and coercion, the government, there cannot be any question of freedom. Government is essentially the negation of liberty. It is the recourse to violence or threat of violence in order to make all people obey the orders of the government, whether they like it or not. As far as the government's jurisdiction extends, there is coercion, not freedom.

No class of men live in such a state of perpetual amazement and alarm at the occurrence of events which they did not foresee, and being quite unprepared to meet, attempt to check by violence, as those statesmen who pretend to direct the march of nations. Notwithstanding, they continue to look on human society as a machine put together and regulated in all its movements by the politician; and they endeavour to make us believe that it would fall in pieces if it were not for the preserving power of his master hand.

Economics is not merely a game to be played by clever professionals, but a discipline that touches upon the most pressing practical issues at any historical juncture.