Anarcho-capitalism and Moral Philosophy:
Deontological versus Consequentialist Ethics
Sébastien Caré
Ph.D. in Politics, Assistant Professor at the University of Rennes 1 (France)
sebacare@gmail.com
INTRODUCTION
Anarcho-capitalism is the doctrine that every service, including law enforcements, should be
supplied through the market, and that all of the government’s coercive activities should be replaced
by free market activities. Conceptualized in clandestineness by economists such as Murray
Rothbard and David Friedman in the early 1970, it is nowadays discussed in top economics
journals1 and defended by well-recognized scholars such as the economics Nobel Prize laureate
Vernon Smith and the professor of philosophy emeritus Jan Narveson. Reconciling the individualist
anarchism of Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker with the classical liberalism of John Locke
and Adam Smith, anarcho-capitalism claims to differ from other kinds of anarchism by paying more
attention to human nature as it is, instead of how it should be. Indeed, it seems that left anarchism
involves a spiritual conversion that would make the government and its functions useless.
This point is stated by Murray Rothbard: “In contrast to such utopians as Marxists or left-wing
anarchists (anarchocommunists or anarcho-syndicalists), libertarians do not assume that the
ushering in of the purely free society of their dreams will also bring with it a new, magically
transformed Libertarian Man 2 .” The originality of anarcho-capitalist thinkers is that they take
people as they are, and consider that what the State does is necessary because of human nature. But
as the state is for them neither legitimate nor efficient, anarcho-capitalists propose to entrust its
functions to private institutions. For instance, while left anarchism believes that institutions of law
enforcement would become useless if human changed their nature, anarcho-capitalism considers
that such institutions are necessary since it does not bet on changes in human nature. Somehow,
anarcho-capitalism seems more realistic than left anarchism. But does it mean at the same time that
it is more desirable? More than its possibility, anarcho-capitalism’s attractiveness should be brought
into question.
A way to do so consists in confronting the two versions of anarcho-capitalism and in seeing if
they can withstand their reciprocal assaults. The most important controversy among anarchocapitalist theorists concerns the question of whether their doctrine should be based on deontological
or consequentialist ethics. Right-based anarcho-capitalists, such as Murray Rothbard, claim that a
stateless society is founded on the basis of a natural law, more precisely on a nonaggression axiom
according to which the only justification for the use of force is to deal with aggressive force
initiated by someone else. However, consequentialists such as David Friedman argue that rights are
merely human constructs created through contracts, and that a libertarian system can only come
about by contract between self-interested parties who agree to refrain from initiating coercion
against each other. In that perspective, an anarcho-capitalist society is justified by its advantageous
consequences for parties concerned.
The aim of this paper is to compare the two moral versions of anarcho-capitalism, notably their
implications on the two different types of society they respectively lead to. Doesn’t the
confrontation of these two versions of anarcho-capitalism underline their respective weaknesses,
Cf. Hirshleifer Jack, “Anarchy and its Breakdown”, in Journal of Political Economy, 1995, Number 103, p. 26-52;
Dowd Kevin, “Anarchy, Warfare, and Social Order: Comment on Hirshleifer”, in Journal of Political Economy,
Number 105, 1997, p. 648-51
2
The end of the citation: “We do not assume that the lion will lie down with the lamb, or that no one will have criminal
or fraudulent designs upon his neighbour. The “better” that people will be, of course, the better any social system will
work, in particular the less work any police or courts will have to do. But no such assumption is made by
libertarians.”Murray Rothbard, For a new liberty : The Libertarian manifesto, online edition, 2002,
[http://www.mises.org/rothbard/foranewlb.pdf], 1973, p. 239
1
and the “precariousness” of anarcho-capitalism? After the presentation of the two versions, a
tentative answer to this question will ensue from a dialogue between the two versions.
I. TWO VERSIONS
CONSEQUENCES
OF
ANARCHO-CAPITALISM:
RIGHTS
AGAINST
A. The deontological version of Murray Rothbard
From an objectivist natural-law ethics…
Rothbard’s ethical task starts from a condemnation of Humean ethics. Indeed, reason is not
bound “to be a mere slave to the passions, confined to cranking out the discovery of the means to
arbitrarily chosen ends. For the ends themselves are selected by the use of reason; and right reason
dictates to man his proper ends as well as the means for their attainment 3.” Rothbard endorses the
Thomistic or natural-law tradition according to which all finite things are compelled to move
toward their ends by the development of their potentialities. The ethical standard is thus natural.
Man’s nature is open to examination, and reason must be used to objectively discover how the
individual ought to be treated in accordance with his or her nature. “The natural-law ethic states that
goodness or badness can be determined by what fulfils or thwarts what is best for man’s nature 4”.
Thereby, Rothbard predicates bridging the gap between “Is” and “Ought”.
From that naturalistic perspective, Rothbard first deduces a robust right of self-ownership.
“The individual man, in introspecting the fact of his own consciousness, also discovers the
primordial natural fact of his freedom: his freedom to choose, his freedom to use or not use his
reason about any given subject 5.” Rothbard adds that he then discovers “the natural fact of his
mind's command over his body and its actions: that is, of his natural ownership over his self6.”
Every individual by his or her nature, must then be considered as a full self-owner, having absolute
jurisdiction over his or her own body, in just the same way that she or he can fully own objects. In
other words, ownership over oneself involves ownership over external ressources. Following a
Lockean standpoint, Rothbard holds then that whoever first discovers, first mixes his labor with, or
first claims a natural resource owns that resource. It is his private property that may only exchange
hands by trade or gift.
Rothbard derives from self-ownership a non-aggression principle according to which the
initiation of physical force upon persons is inherently illegitimate. The use of aggressive violence
may be against a man’s property in his person (e.g. bodily assault) or in tangible goods (e.g.
robbery). In either case, the agression must be regarded as a crime if it is not a defensive answer to a
prior aggression from the victim. “In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor 7.”
The only justification for the use of force is to deal with aggressive force initiated by someone else.
3
Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998, 1982), p. 7
Ibidem, p. 11
5
Ibidem, p. 31
6
Ibidem, p. 31
7
Murray Rothbard, The myth of National Defence: Essays on the Theory and History of Security (Auburn: Ludwig von
Mises Institute, 2003), p. 66
4
The first aggressor is considered as a parasite who “instead of living in accordance with the nature
of man, […] feeds unilaterally by exploiting the labor and energy of other men8.”
…to a deontological defence of anarcho-capitalism
Rothbard draws two main conclusions from this natural-law ethics. He first finds in the nonaggression axiom a way to justify the illegitimacy of the state. Indeed, Rothbard considers taxation
as an aggression, for it takes someone else’s property without his or her consent. Every state is thus
illegitimate since it cannot exist without taxation, that is without violating people’s property.
“Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no
acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the
State's inhabitants, or subjects 9 .” A society without state is the only possible translation of the
natural law, and must be considered as a universal model. “Only a rulerless, purely libertarian world
can fulfill the qualifications of natural rights and natural law, or, more important, can fulfill the
conditions of a universal ethic for all mankind10.”
The second implication of such an objectivist ethics is that an anarcho-capitalist society would
be laid on a universal system of rights recognized by everybody, and protected by private law
enforcement agencies. Rothbard holds that this legal code would be based on a widespread
acceptance of libertarian principles such as the sovereignty of the individual and the non-aggression
axiom. Without such a legal code, private courts would be allowed to apply unlibertarian rules: “It
then becomes necessary to have a legal code which would be generally accepted, and which the
courts would pledge themselves to follow11.” This set of rights would spontaneously emerge from
the different decisions of private courts. Particular courts would not compete on the best legal code,
but on the most efficient procedures within a framework of a libertarian code. A natural law ethics,
mixed with a rationalistic epistemology, delivers an objective legal code that enables Rothbard to
claim that, from an anarcho-capitalist framework would actually emerge a libertarian society.
From an objectivist natural-law ethics, Rothbard concludes that every government is
necessarily illegitimate but that a universal set of natural rights would still be enforced even without
any centralized authority. From a completely different ethical standpoint, David Friedman will go
further by dismissing not only any government, but also any universal set of rights.
B. The consequentialist version of David Friedman
From a subjectivist ethics…
David Friedman, faithfully following the perspective of his father, Milton Friedman, seeks to
appraise social rules against the yardstick of their consequences. He thereby rejects any reference to
an objective ethical standard such as the natural law, and rather takes a subjectivist standpoint.
8
Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998, 1982), p. 50
Ibidem,, p. 162
10
Ibidem, p. 43
11
Murray Rothbard, For a new liberty : The Libertarian manifesto, online edition,
[http://www.mises.org/rothbard/foranewlb.pdf], 1973, p. 232
9
2002,
David Friedman endorses a Humean standpoint that considers justice a spontaneously evolved
convenience. He does not pretend to deliver an objective ethics, but indicates the way that would
maximize individual’s unbound preferences. Friedman holds that he can determinate by a costbenefit calculus the rules that would maximize utilities. In that perspective, “if the value of a law to
its supporters is less than its cost to its victims12”, that law must be abandoned. Friedman does not
recognize any natural rights, but argues that rights are merely human constructs created through
contracts. This consequentialist approach hence claims that there is no such thing as a universal set
of rights that would transcend individual preferences. No objective ethical standard could be
derived from the multiplicity of subjective penchants.
… to a consequentialist defence of anarcho-capitalism
Although Friedman adopts a radically different ethical starting point, he reaches an anarchist
destination close to that of Rothbard. Indeed, the state is for Friedman as useless as it was
illegitimate for Rothbard. In The Machinery of Freedom, Friedman states the “law” that anything
done by government costs at least twice as much as a privately provided equivalent. An anarchocapitalist society is justified by its beneficial consequences to the vast majority of parties concerned,
including the poor.
However similar the two moral versions of anarcho-capitalism seem to be, they have different
implications on the two types of society they respectively lead to. According to Friedman, a
libertarian system cannot be deduced from a rational determination of natural rights, but can only
come about by contract between self-interested parties who agree to refrain from initiating coercion
against each other. The content of law cannot be determined by an objective observation of human
nature, but by an individualistic competition. Therefore, Friedman suggests that private courts not
only defend our legal rights, but also supply the actual content of them on the free market. In other
words, private protection agencies will not enforce any objective rights, but laws supplied by
private companies. While Rothbard thinks that private defence agencies may offer the same code of
law and punishment standards, and compete across means of protection, Friedman proposes that
private agencies may offer competing law codes. Indeed Friedman imagines a free law market
where customers would buy a particular law code under which to live. It means that “the systems of
law will be produced for profit on the open market, just as books and bras are produced today13”.
Just as markets provide food, so too should markets provide law. In other words, people would have
the law system they pay for, and laws would differ from place to place depending on the tastes of
the people who would buy them. Where Rothbard wanted one objective natural law enforced by a
multiplicity of private agencies in competition, Friedman demands a multiplicity of laws provided
and enforced by a multiplicity of agencies.
Since people would be free to choose any rules they whish, the resulting outcome would be
determined by net willingness to pay. Friedman has then to aknowledge that unlibertarian laws may
result from an anarcho-capitalist system, such as laws against drugs or homosexuality. But he thinks
this would be rare, given that there would be little market demand for unlibertarian laws. Indeed
such laws would impose to their victims a cost that would be much superior to the value they
12
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism, 2nd ed. (La Salle: Open Court, 1989)
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism, 2nd ed. (La Salle: Open Court, 1989), p.
116
13
represent for their supporters. “People who want to control other people’s lives are rarely eager to
pay for the privilege14”, and their victims “get a lot more pain out of the oppression than their
oppressors get pleasure15”. If some people are willing to pay a much higher price to be left alone
than anyone is willing to pay to control other’s life, Friedman concludes that there won’t be so
many unlibertarian laws in an anarcho-capitalist society.
It is interesting to note that the applications of the two main ethical positions on the virgin land
of anarchy lead to two different kinds of society. It is then important to confront the two versions if
we want to evaluate their respective merits and weaknesses.
II. D. FRIEDMAN VS M. ROTHBARD : RECIPROCAL ASSAULTS ON ANARCHOCAPITALISM
A. Friedman’s criticism of Rothbard’s version
Friedman’s version of anarcho-capitalism raises two challenges to the Rothbardian defence of a
universal natural-rights ethics. First, it underlines the counterintuitive implications of the
Rothbardian ethics. Friedman starts with noticing that simple statements of libertarian rights taken
literally lead to insolvable problems. For instance, does one’s ownership right over a piece of land
entail the right to shine a very bright light from it in the middle of the night16? Do I need to get the
permission of all my neighbours to breath, if carbon dioxide is considered a pollutant, and pollution
a violation of property rights? Even if such difficult questions could receive an answer, the adoption
of natural rights ethics may still be used to prove conclusions that nobody is willing to accept. The
non-aggression principle seems absurd since it opposes the initiation of force even when the results
of such initiation would be better than the results of any other course of action. To take an example
given by Hume, it seems that the rothbardian principle would prevent us from scratching the finger
of another even if, by doing it, we would avoid the destruction of the whole world. Friedman
considers the following example. “A madman is about to open fire on a crowd; if he does so
numerous innocent people will die. The only way to prevent him is to shoot him with a rifle that is
within reach of several members of the crowd. The rifle is on the private property of its legitimate
owner. He is a well known misanthrope who has publicly stated on numerous occasions that he is
opposed to letting anyone use his rifle without his permission, even if it would save hundreds of
lives17”. In that situation, Friedman thinks that the application of the Rothbardian principle would
lead to carnage. He then concludes that “under some circumstances rights violations must be
14
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism, 2nd ed. (La Salle: Open Court, 1989), p.
127
15
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism, 2nd ed. (La Salle: Open Court, 1989), p.
127
16
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism, 2nd ed. (La Salle: Open Court, 1989), p.
168
17
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism, 2nd ed. (La Salle: Open Court, 1989)
evaluated on their merits, rather than rejected a priori on conventional libertarian natural rights
grounds.”
Adherents to a natural law paradigm reply to this criticism in two ways. They first argue that
libertarian principles only apply to a civilized context, and not to “life-boat situations”18. Secondly,
they avoid the objection by opposing legal rights to general morality. To take Friedman’s example,
it would be in consonance with general morality that a member of the crowd takes the rifle and uses
it to shoot the madman even if he would not have any legal right to do it. Virtue does not entail any
rights. To parody Lysander Spooner’s famous sentence that “vices are not crimes”, it could be said
that, for Rothbard, virtues are not necessarily legal.
The second weakness underlined by Friedman is perhaps more redoubtable. Indeed, sample
statements of Rothbardian principles may appear not that compelling. Many people may be in
favour of initiating coercion, or at least are currently doing things that rights-based libertarians
regard as illegitimate. However, as Friedman says, “despite occasional claims to the contrary,
libertarians have not yet produced any proof that our moral position is correct 19.” This criticism
somehow concurs with Thomas Nagel’s statement towards Nozick’s attempt to justify a libertarian
society from a natural rights ethics. “Nozick starts from the unargued premise that individuals have
certain inviolable rights which may not be intentionally transgressed by other individuals or the
state for any purpose. […] He concludes that the only morally permissible state would be the
nightwatchman state. […] The argument is not one which derives a surprising conclusion from a
plausible premise. No one (except perhaps an anarchist) who did not already accept the conclusion
would accept the premise, and the implausibility of each can only serve to reinforce a conviction of
the implausibility of the other20”. In other words, natural rights libertarian’s modus ponens may be
another’s modus tollens. If natural rights of self ownership necessarily lead to anarcho-capitalism,
why not reject these absolute rights rather than embrace anarcho-capitalism?
The problem with Rothbard’s anarchism is that the worst would be justified if it does not
contradict his ethics of capitalism. Norman Barry underlines this point by saying that “what is
interesting are the radical conclusions that Rothbard draws from the ethics of capitalism rather than
his derivation of the ethics themselves21”. Such a drift is evident in the work of Rothbard’s epigone
Walter Block. In his book Defending the Undefendable, Block depicts the pimp, the prostitute, the
scab, the slumlord, the libeler, the moneylender, the blackmailer etc., as heroes just because “they
do not initiate violence against nonaggressors22”. To become really attractive, Rothbard’s utopia
would need something that would reconcile justice and morality, and that would make the possible
acceptable.
B. Rothbard’s criticism of Friedman’s version
The Rothbardian version shows that the Friedmanian defence of anarchocapitalism seems
unlikely to lead to a libertarian society. Friedman begins his book by faithfully portraying what a
18
See Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998, 1982), p. 149-154
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism, 2nd ed. (La Salle: Open Court, 1989), p.
170
20
Thomas Nagel, « Libertarianism without Foundations », in The Yale Law Journal, Volume 85, Number 1, November
1975, p. 138
21
Norman P. Barry, On Classical liberalism and libertarianism (London: Macmillan Press, 1986), p. 176
22
Walter Block, Defending the Undefendable (Auburn: Mises Institute, 2008 [1976]) p. xiv
19
libertarian society would look like. His description seems similar to that of Rothbard. “The central
idea of libertarianism is that people should be permitted to run their own lives as they wish. We
totally reject the idea that people must be forcibly protected from themselves. A libertarian society
would have no laws against drugs, gambling, pornography – and no compulsory seat belts in cars23”.
However, in the course of the reading, we surprisingly find out that such a society has not been
designed to be universal, but was just Friedman’s subjective preference. Indeed, as we have already
claimed, if enough non-libertarians bought enough non-libertarian laws and began using them to
imprison drug dealers, prostitutes and pagans under their jurisdiction, Friedman could make no
moral complaint. If his theory does not defend such laws, it does not condemn them either. People
have the law they pay for, and those who don’t like them have to bear their cost or to move out.
That is why David Friedman asks: “Is Anarcho-capitalism libertarian?”, and earnestly concedes a
possible negative answer.
Does that mean that the desirability of the Friedmanian society depends on the dominant values
of its habitants? Friedman’s answer would be no, arguing that “market demands are in dollars, not
votes”, and that the legality of something would not be determined by how many are for or against,
but by how high cost each side is willing to bear so as to get its way. We have also seen that
Friedman speculates that unlibertarian laws would be discouraged, since the cost they impose to
their victims would be much higher than the benefit they offer to their supporters. The obstacle
drawn by Friedman is rather soft. James Buchanan has indeed shown that « if there is even one
person who thinks it appropriate to constrain others’ freedom to their own life-styles, no anarchistic
order can survive in the strict sense of the term24 ». Buchanan takes a trivial example confronting
one busybody person who is disturbed by long-hairs with others who choose to allow their hair to
grow. In an anarchist society, this situation would be remedied thanks to free exchange among
persons. Money facilitates a comparison of values, and allows people with long hair to buy off their
tranquillity by preventing the busybody from interfering through appropriately settled
compensations. For Friedman, the possibility of these payments introduces a new set of issues.
“There is potential money in it, individuals will find it to their advantage to be recalcitrant, not
because this expresses their internal private preference but because it promises to yield valued
returns. If the man who genuinely dislikes long-hairs so much that he is prompted to interfere in the
absence of payment is "bought off" by monetary reward, others who care not one whit for hair
styles may also commence interfering, motivated by the promise of monetary reward 25.” In other
words, in an anarcho-capitalist society, the violation of liberty may become profitable even to those
who don’t find any personal satisfaction in doing so.
We can stress other problems raised by Friedman’s utopia. The only safeguard provided by
Friedman against the tyranny of the majority is that every one is free to move out if she or he does
not like the laws they get. Allegiance to laws is somehow given by residence. The problem is that
nothing, in Friedman’s theory, can make sure that people would actually be free to leave their
communities. Nothing, except haphazard cost-benefit calculi, can prevent a law to precisely prohibit
such mobility. Moreover, this mobility which guarantees that no one would have to bear the cost of
23
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism, 2nd ed. (La Salle: Open Court, 1989), p.
168, p. xvii
24
James M. Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1977), p. 3
25
James M. Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1977), p. 4
a law he has not chosen, seems to imply sufficient information. And such information can only be
provided by education. In other words, it appears that, to become libertarian, the Friedmanian
anarcho-capitalist society needs to deny itself by using political means that would give everybody a
right to move and a decent education.
Even if those conditions (freedom to leave and sufficient information) were spontaneously
satisfied, the society described by Friedman would still not appear compelling. Indeed, it would
probably lead to a network of closed societies. Tyler Cowen shows how, in Friedman’s utopia,
“each geographical area would possess a dominant protection agency26”. It’s the only way for
Friedman’s utopia to be stable. If not, there would be more cases where the plaintiff and the
defendant would not belong to the same agency and do not subscribe to conflicting law codes. For
instance, difficulties arise when the plaintiff agency promises capital punishment for a murder while
the defendant’s agency promises protection against capital punishment. As Tyler Cowen says,
“private protection agencies may find interagency warfare unprofitable and dangerous, and
subscribe to a common arbitration mechanism for settling disputes27”. Economic forces would then
encourage the formation of a dominant agency on a territorial area. The application of Friedman’s
anarchy would differ from the extra-territorial panarchy described by the Belgium botanist Paul
Emile de Puydt. In 1860, this firm supporter of laissez-faire economics defended the right to choose
the political surroundings in which to live without being forced to move from one’s current locale28.
In Friedman’s utopia, every one would join the community whose laws are to his or her
convenience, and thus live with people with whom he would share the same preferences. This
libertarian communitarism contradicts the classical liberal standpoint that considers pluralism as an
important factor of wealth. The subjective theory of value says that a thing may be more useful in
satisfying the wants of one person than another, or of no use to one person and of use to another. In
exchange, people will give up what they value less in return for what they value more. It follows
that both sides can gain from an exchange if they don’t share the same personal preferences.
Pluralism facilitates exchange and creates value. While classical liberal authors like Friedrich
Hayek or Stuart Mill defended an inclusive pluralism by promoting the meeting and mixing of
different values, Friedman’s version of anarcho-capitalism would lead to an exclusive pluralism by
encouraging the multiplication of separate groupings. The eviction of the political and the refusal to
recognize a set of rights that would transcend individual preferences lead to a society where private
existences remain parallel.
CONCLUSION
The confrontation of these two versions of anarcho-capitalism underlines their respective
weaknesses. Rothbard fails to make a persuasive case for the attractiveness of an anarcho-capitalist
society based on a universal set of natural rights. By drawing an imposing barrier between morality
and justice, he opens the possibility of legalizing the most unacceptable behaviours, also preventing
citizens from publicly formulating their own vision of the good. Friedman fails to make a
persuasive case for the libertarian nature of an anarcho-capitalist society based on efficiency. By
Tyler Cowen, “Law as a Public Good: The Economics of Anarchy”, in Edward P. Stringham (ed.), Anarchy and the
Law: The Political Economy of Choice (New Brunswick: The Independent Institute, 2007) p. 272
27
Ibidem, p. 272
28
Paul Emile De Puydt, "Panarchy", in Revue Trimestrielle, Brussels, July 1860,
online version :
[http://www.panarchy.org/depuydt/1860.eng.html]
26
letting people free to choose unlibertarian laws, he does not provide a sure safeguard against the
tyranny of the rich and paves the way to a world juxtaposing, without any connection, a myriad of
closed societies.
Beyond their differences, both versions share a common weakness by draining the society of
its political substance. By doing so, they literally demonstrate the “precariousness” of anarchocapitalism. Nothing except the “prayer” of its theorists, can ensure that an anarcho-capitalist society
would actually be libertarian and effectively maximize individual liberty. Both open an outsized
realm of possibilities that also contains the possibility of their negation. In such societies,
everything is possible, even the worst. Both contain the germs of their own destruction. That is why
we can conclude that, however realist they should appear, anarcho-capitalist utopias are not
appealing. Surprisingly, the only thing that would make them attractive would be a conversion of
human nature. In Friedman’s utopia, such a conversion would prevent laws to be unlibertarian. In
Rothbard’s utopia, it would accomplish what the law is not allowed to deal with, namely to make
moral behaviours more recurrent. In other words, to be attractive, anarcho-capitalist utopias need to
be unrealistic, just as other strands of anarchism. Without the “magically transformed Libertarian
Man” whose existence was denied by Rothbard, the outcome of such a society is less than attractive,
inferior to what is produced by to an actual democracy. It appears that a philosophy that dismisses
politics is then doomed to be either unrealistic or unappealing. A sense of politics merges in the
background. By giving people a hold over their collective destiny, politics may consist in making
the possible attractive, or in reducing what is realistic to what is acceptable.
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