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whose principal function is to protect individual rights. Other thinkers, for instance Ayn Rand (see p. 63), Murray Rothbard and David Friedman (1973), have pushed free- market ideas to their limit and developed a form of anarcho-capitalism. They have argued that government can be abolished and be replaced by unregulated market competition. Property should be owned by sovereign individuals, who may choose, if they wish, to enter into voluntary contracts with others in the pursuit of self-interest. The individual thus remains free and the market, beyond the control of any single individual or group, regulates all social interaction.
KEY FIGURE
MURRAY ROTHBARD (1926–95) A US economist and libertarian thinker, Rothbard advocated ‘anarcho-capitalism’ based on combining an extreme form of Lockean liberalism with Austrian School free-market economics. Taking the right of total self-ownership to be a ‘universal ethic’, he argued that economic freedom is incompatible with the power of government and became a fierce enemy of the ‘welfare-warfare’ state, championing non-intervention in both domestic and foreign affairs. Rothbard’s key writings include Man, Economy and State (1962), For a New Liberty (1978) and The Ethics of Liberty (1982).
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TENSIONS WITHIN... ANARCHISM
Individualist anarchism v.
Collectivist anarchism
Ultra-socialism
Ultra-liberalism
Extreme individualism
Extreme collectivism
Sovereign individual
Social solidarity
Civil disobedience
Social revolution
Atomism
Organicism
Egoism
Communalism
Market relations
Social obligations
Private property
Common ownership
Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-communism
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