The radical libertarian tradition, founded in its modern form by Murray Rothbard in the mid-20th century, that argues all legitimate social functions including law enforcement, courts, and defense can be provided by voluntary market exchange without any state at all. Often called anarcho-capitalism, the tradition takes the Austrian economic critique of central planning to its logical conclusion, arguing that the state itself is just another form of coerced monopoly that markets could provide more efficiently. It is distinct from other forms of anarchism in its full embrace of private property and market exchange, and it has grown significantly in influence since Rothbard's founding work.
Tradition
Market Anarchism
The radical libertarian tradition that holds that all legitimate social functions, including law and security, can be provided by voluntary market exchange without any state.
Thinkers
Thinker
David Friedman
David Friedman is a leading proponent of anarcho-capitalism whose case for a stateless society rests on consequentialist rather than moral-rights grounds
ThinkerHans-Hermann Hoppe
1949–
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a radical libertarian economist of the Austrian school whose "argumentation ethics" and critique of democracy became foundational to modern anarcho-capitalist thought
ThinkerJustin Raimondo
Justin Raimondo was a paleolibertarian writer and Antiwar.com co-founder who fused free-market anti-statism with fierce noninterventionism, making foreign-policy restraint a defining libertarian cause
ThinkerLysander Spooner
1808–1887
Lysander Spooner was an American abolitionist and individualist anarchist whose case against slavery and the Constitution's authority founded the tradition running through Rothbard to anarcho-capitalism
ThinkerWilliam Godwin
1756–1836
William Godwin was the first systematic philosophical anarchist — the rationalist who argued that government itself was the enemy of human perfection and founded the tradition Proudhon and Bakunin would inherit
ThinkerMurray Rothbard
1926–1995
Murray Rothbard was an American anarcho-capitalist economist who pushed Austrian theory to the complete abolition of the state and built the most systematic libertarian framework of the 20th century
Defining tradition for
Related through shared thinkers