By Cake Boy

A question in the current anarchist milieu is whether anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-communism are compatible. Is bottom unity ( libertarian unity) possible?

The main topic here is land. Both schools, anarcho-communism and anarcho-capitalism, have different perceptions of what land is and what it should be. To classical anarcho-communists and mutualists, land was something you used, not bought or sold. If the state were gone, then all the land would be free to take, and usufruct could exist again, as it did before industrial capitalism.

For example, the Spanish anarchists in the Civil War were okay with private farmers using their land as long as they did not have more than they could use. This reminds me of the Lockean Proviso (take land, but not more than you can use yourself), the classical liberal perception of land use. Strangely enough, there are more connections between classical liberalism and anarchists, but I digress.

Anarcho-capitalists see land as something you can buy and sell. The problem is that if some capitalists own all the land in the world, then we have just replaced states with capitalists. The words have changed, but the social realities are the same. You are then not ruled by Trump but by Blackrock.

In an anarcho-capitalist world, a mutualist would have to buy land from an anarcho-capitalist. But to the mutualists, this is not a legitimate situation because they don’t acknowledge absentee landownership. Mutualists are okay with markets in goods and services and wage labor relations, but they don’t see natural resources such as land and air as market products. We see that this would lead to some friction.

Anarcho-capitalism could only coexist within a context of what people call ‘anarchism’. This means that there will be different social systems next to each other, and people can choose what system they want to live in. When anarcho-capitalism functions like the capitalism we are used to, it colonizes all the land, and then everyone is forced to live in an anarcho-capitalist world, a world ruled by bankers and landlords.

But for example. Suppose we have a world where there are a lot of commons, huge fields, and lands, where people can homestead and live for free and park their campers. Then, we have places with a specific social model in practice, such as political zones. One zone is anarcho-capitalist, one is Georgist, and one is mutualist. And people can freely move from one zone to another. Then, anarcho-capitalism could coexist peacefully with the other systems. In this futurist vision, anarchism would work and mean pluralism. So, there would be free movement, the possibility to use commons, and no tendencies of the different social models to act imperialist.

Anarchism is the idea that all interactions should be voluntary, as Benjamin Tucker said. There is nothing wrong with capitalism and communism as long as I actually choose to be part of that system. Can I leave your anarcho capitalist ratrace? Can I leave your anarcho-communist, polyamorous commune?

The problem is that the capitalism and the communism we have known in history were never voluntary. You are forced to live in the neoliberal/capitalist system, you were forced to live in the USSR, and you couldn’t even leave the country. So, both words are, in a way, tainted. I would go for a black anarchism, not a red or yellow anarchism. A black flag for the future

In my opinion, anarchism for the future should be a pluralist, anarchist version of anarchism. If this is the goal, then both the libertarian right and the libertarian left can work together.

I’m personally too lazy to actually set up something like that. But if you want anarchism to be professional again, you should try to find a way to connect the Lew Rockwell, the C4SS, and the Libcom people. If these three movements came together, you would have a massive movement.