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This article is from the Anarchy FAQ, by Bryan Caplan with numerous contributions by others.

"Anarchism of variant X is unstable and will lead to the re-emergence of the state"

A more substantive variation is to argue that the opposing anarchism would be unstable and lead to the swift re- emergence of government. Thus, the left-anarchists often argue that the defense corporations envisaged by anarcho- capitalists would war with one another until one came out as the new government; or else they would collude to establish themselves as the new capitalist oligarchs. As Noam Chomsky says in an interview with Ulrike Heider, "The predatory forces of the market would destroy society, would destroy community, and destroy the workforce. Nothing would be left except people hating each other and fighting each other." Anarcho-capitalists reply that this grossly underestimates the degree of competition likely to prevail in the defense industry; that war is likely to be very unprofitable and dangerous, and is more likely to be provoked by ideology than sober profit-maximization; and that economic theory and economic history show that collusion is quite difficult to maintain.


Anarcho-capitalists for their part accuse the left-anarchists of intending to impose their communal vision upon everyone; since everyone will not go along voluntarily, a government will be needed to impose it. Lest we think that this argument is a recent invention, it is interesting to find that essentially this argument raged in the 19th- century anarchist movement as well. In John MacKay's The Anarchists, we see the essential dialogue between individualist and collectivist anarchism has a longer history than one might think:


"Would you, in the system of society which you call 'free Communism' prevent individuals from exchanging their labor among themselves by means of their own medium of exchange? And further: Would you prevent them from occupying land for the purpose of personal use?"... [The] question was not to be escaped. If he answered "Yes!" he admitted that society had the right of control over the individual and threw overboard the autonomy of the individual which he had always zealously defended; if on the other hand he answered "No!" he admitted the right of private property which he had just denied so emphatically ... Then he answered "In Anarchy any number of men must have the right of forming a voluntary association, and so realizing their ideas in practice. Nor can I understand how any one could justly be driven from the land and house which he uses and occupies ... [E]very serious man must declare himself: for Socialism, and thereby for force and against liberty, or for Anarchism, and thereby for liberty and against force."


There have been several left-anarchist replies. One is to readily agree that dissenters would have the right to not join a commune, with the proviso that they must not employ others or otherwise exploit them. Another is to claim that anarchism will change (or cease to warp) human attitudes so that they will be more communitarian and less individualistic. Finally, some argue that this is simply another sophistical argument for giving the rich and powerful the liberty to take away the liberty of everyone else.