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

"An anarchist society, lacking any central coercive authority, would quickly degenerate into violent chaos."

The most common criticism, shared by the entire range of critics, is basically that anarchism would swiftly degenerate into a chaotic Hobbesian war of all-against-all. Thus the communist Friedrich Engels wonders "[H]ow these people propose to run a factory, operate a railway or steer a ship without having in the last resort one deciding will, without single management, they of course do not tell us." He continues: "The authority of the majority over the minority also ceases. Every individual and every community is autonomous; but as to how society, even of only two people, is possible unless each gives up some of his autonomy, Bakunin again maintains silence." And similarly, the classical liberal Ludwig von Mises states that "An anarchistic society would be exposed to the mercy of every individual. Society cannot exist if the majority is not ready to hinder, by the application or threat of violent action, minorities from destroying the social order. This power is vested in the state or government."


Or to consider a perhaps less ideological writer, Thomas Hobbes implicitly criticizes anarchist theory when he explains that "Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man." Hobbes goes on to add that "It may peradventure be thought, there was never such a time, nor condition of warre as this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the world: but there are many places, where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small Families, the concord whereof dependeth on naturall lust, have no government at all; and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before." Since it is in the interest of the strong to take what they want from the weak, the absence of government lead inexorably to widespread violence and the prevention or destruction of civilization itself.


Anarchists of all varieties would reject this argument; sometimes claiming that the critic misunderstands their position, other times that the critic's assumptions are too pessimistic. Kropotkin, for example, would seriously dispute the claim that war is the natural state of ungoverned human beings; like many other species of animals, cooperation is more common, natural, and likely. Left- anarchists generally would normally object that these criticisms rest upon contingent cultural assumptions arising from a competitive scarcity economy. Replace these institutions with humane and egalitarian ones; then poverty, the cause of crime and aggression, would greatly decrease. Finally, many left- anarchists envisage cooperatives and communes adopting and enforcing rules of appropriate conduct for those who wish to join.


The anarcho-capitalist would likely protest that the critic misunderstands his view: he does believe that police and laws are necessary and desirable, and merely holds that they could be supplied by the free market rather than government. More fundamentally, he doubts the game- theoretic underpinnings of Hobbes' argument, for it ignores the likelihood that aggressive individuals or firms will provoke retaliation. Just as territorial animals fight when defending their territory, but yield when confronted on the territory of another animal, rational self-interested individuals and firms would usually find aggression a dangerous and unprofitable practice. In terms of game theory, the anarcho-capitalist thinks that Hobbes' situation is a Hawk-Dove game rather than a Prisoners' Dilemma. (In the Prisoners' Dilemma, war/non-cooperation would be a strictly dominant strategy; in a Hawk-Dove game there is normally a mixed-strategy equilibrium in which cooperation/peace is the norm but a small percentage of players continue to play war/non-cooperation.) Self- interested police firms would gladly make long-term arbitration contracts with each other to avoid mutually destructive bloodshed.