The purpose of Analytical Anarchism is to create an open forum for the academic community to promote and discuss research in analytical anarchism.
What is analytical anarchism? As the subtitle says, it is the positive political economy of anarchism, or simply, anarchism from the economic point of view. Anarchism here simply means the absence of government. Peter Boettke divides anarchist thought into three categories:
1. Utopian — following in the tradition of William Godwin’s An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793).
2. Revolutionary — following in the tradition of Mikhail Bakunin and the First International, 1864-76.
3. Analytical — in the tradition of Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty (1973) and David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom (1973).
The analytical anarchism research program has developed out of this last tradition, and is currently being pursued by economists such as Pete Leeson, Ed Stringham, and Chris Coyne.
Why anarchy? Research in anarchism has a fundamental theoretical importance for understanding the mystery of cooperation among strangers, which forms the basis of modern social order. Understanding anarchy also has a critical practical importance for transition economies, Third World development, and post-war reconstruction. Economic analysis of these problems cannot assume a functioning state.
For an introduction to the subject, see Boettke’s “Anarchism as a Progressive Research Program in Political Economy.”
Scholars and students working in this field are invited to submit working papers and posts discussing the literature, general issues, potential research topics, etc.
Defining the free market as anarchy condemns it right from the start. It is not anarchy but a self-governing process, and, interference with it, not government but anti-government, chaos, and anarchy itself.
Was there government or utter anarchy in New Orleans? Could a free market have been any worse, or even as bad; would the private owners of a city have allowed it to be swept away?
It happened because, as usual, the business of the public was the business of no one.
You want utter chaos and anarchy? That’s the state.
You want someone minding the store, government, and civilized human life on Earth?
That’s the free market.
i would not exactly link free markets with government – not even self-government (if there is such a thing as that).
we should probably be more mindful of the distinction between “anarchy” and “anomy”. freemarkets may/could be anarchic, but they certainly require some set of nomoi to guide the cooperative process.
Dave,
I have to ask. Is Chris Coyne really more of an analytical anarchist than say Ben Powell? If so, is it because he is more analytical or more anarchist? I bet he is not as anarchist as the person you listed who once declared von Mises, Hayek, and Milton Friedman to be “communists” during a Rothbard Lecture at the LvM Institute (but not Rothbard), and I am not talking about the guy on the list because of his piratical tendencies,
.
First, this is not David Skarbek’s website. What Boettke meant in his post was that Skarbek pointed him to the site, not that it’s Skarbek’s website (although the way he worded it is ambiguous).
Second, I’m not saying Coyne is “more anarchist” than Powell. Really, I just listed the scholars Boettke talked about in his paper.
Benny,
You wrote,
“i would not exactly link free markets with government.”
Why not? And please be specific.
Michael,
Thanks for the correction. Of course, Boettke is responsible for all confusion in the known universe.
excelente pagina, el concepto de anarquia analitica es muy interesante asi como el programa de investigacion.
What about adding Jan Lester’s “Escape from Leviathan” (2000) to your list of resources?
http://www.the-rathouse.com/shortreviews/Lester-on-Leviathan.html
A brilliant case for the compatability of free markets, liberty and welfare.
Rafe, there’s a link to a submission form at the bottom of the literature page.
A very promising project, and I look forward to seeing as it develops.
I would, however, take issue with how Boettke frames the analytical alternative in his schema. Pointing to Rothbard and Friedman as the main practitioners makes it look like a relatively recent category, and divorced from the mainline, historic anarchist tradition.
But “analytical anarchism” has in fact been practiced far longer, by anarchists much closer to the main historical trunk of anarchism. Both Thomas Hodgskin and Benjamin Tucker, for example, were market-oriented anarchists at the left end of the classical liberal spectrum. Their thought focused heavily on a functional analysis of statist privilege within the political economies of their time, and on the functional effect of creating a free economy with such privilege removed. Proudhon also probably belongs in this category. For that matter, there are some more modern anarchists like Colin Ward and Murray Bookchin who, while not pro-market (Bookchin) or specifically market-oriented (Ward), devoted a great deal of analytical effort to the functioning of proto-anarchist alternatives within the existing system and the ways that statism interacted with and limited their possibilities.