First, to get past a concept that I hope to show is counterintuitive, let’s talk about the first kind of libertarianism ever invented: anarcho-communism. Anarcho-communism says: we have no laws, or even leaders—but no property either. No fences, public or private. And in theory, no violence. Violence is the wrongful attempt to be someone’s boss whether that someone wants a boss or not.
The pros are in fact all theoretical. Anarcho-communism assumes that many things are just lying around waiting for someone to use or consume them with little or no effort. Sing for your supper? Come on, man, just go pick a fruit off a tree! Don’t insist that people pay you in what is essentially free food and such! For that reason anarcho-communism recognizes neither copyright nor patent. Every idea is part of an intellectual common, to go along with the physical common that gives communism its name.
But the problem is: fruit isn’t always available for you to pick off the tree. Fruit is seasonal. And if you’re not allowed to keep any to get you through the no-fruit seasons, you’re out of luck. Remember: common. You don’t prepare for yourself because you’re not allowed to prepare for yourself.
And who will come up with great ideas for great projects if he will get no credit for them?
In fact, anarcho-communism runs headlong into the hard reality that everything is limited and most things are scarce. Anarcho-communism blithely denies scarcity. Result: everyone starves together. Or they kill each other in a scramble for scarce goods. If that does not happen, a group of Big Toughs arises. And what do we call that? Drum roll, please! A state.
Now we turn to the other flavor of libertarianism, that realistically can call itself consistent with freedom on any level. That flavor is anarcho-capitalism.
Anarcho-capitalism requires that no one assert himself as a leader, and his whims as law. Law need not be alien to anarcho-capitalism. Law, indeed, stands athwart anyone’s attempt to steal, on any scale, grand or “petty.”
Rather, the law in anarcho-capitalism is most remarkable for what it forbids, and does not attempt to provide. The ideal law says: no one may take anything from another for any purpose, without agreeable compensation. It conforms to the latter five of the Ten Commandments: do not kill, cheat, steal, lie, or covet.
This system allows the building of wealth through trade. It recognizes that wealth does not lie around for the first person to scarf up and declare to be his. Wealth is produced. Ex nihilo. That’s something communists (including anarcho-communists) never seem to understand. At least some form of agreed-upon law fosters the creation of wealth.
Where anarcho-capitalism breaks down is with the anarchy part. With no one in charge, how does the law enforce itself? And how does the community to whom the law applies, protect itself from external enemies? In fact, too often those who call themselves libertarians fail to recognize external enemies. “No enemies but what you make!” they say. Well, arguably Hannibal made an enemy of Rome, with disastrous results for his society. But the Cimbri and the Teutones were definitely the first aggressors when they began a great migration that would have swept over all Italy, had not Rome stopped them. What threatens all, all must oppose.
More broadly, anarcho-capitalism in its pure form recognizes no such thing as a professional class, not having property of their own, but working for a public salary to perform certain services that allow the community, as a collection of individuals, to thrive. The three most vital professional subclasses in any society are police, military and judiciary.
Ancient Israel had that professional class. For highly specific reasons having to do with the particular services a member of a certain tribe rendered, members of that tribe—the Levites—constituted the professional class in Israelite society. They had no property, either individual or collective. Instead, all other tribes, and their members, paid them a salary to do the work to which they dedicated themselves.
Roman society grew with a military originally limited to the propertied classes. Every soldier, even their equivalent of a private, had to provide all his equipment for himself. That applied also to Rome’s cavalry—hence the Ordo Equester, or the “knights.”
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