Preface
It is difficult to say whether I was a full-blown “anarcho-capitalist” back in my neoliberal days (around 2009-2018). I certainly read everything about it I could–Private Governance, Nation States or Stateless Nations?, The Machinery of Friedman, Defending the Undefendable, Seasteading, Man, Economy and State, For a New Liberty, works by Andrew Napolitano, etc. I also presented at a conference alongside Robert P. Murphy (the Christian anarcho-capitalist and author of Choice), was the founding editor of The Christian Libertarian Review, and perhaps most interesting of all, I appeared as a guest on the popular Tom Woods Show to discuss an entire legal system I had written for a stateless society based on libertarian principles (“Creative Common Law”). I wanted to see if anarcho-capitalism was legally possible based on what American libertarians were saying.
During this period, I held to these ideas provisionally and experimentally, because I felt like something was missing. I knew I hadn’t read large swaths of other views. The talking points about economic history felt cheap. And of course, The Creative Common Law project collapsed: it “worked” in that it could exist, but it was a world that was morally grotesque, profoundly unjust and violent. (The courts were the worst: if justice can be bought, those who can’t afford to buy it will be oppressed.)
My suspicions proved true, particularly as I studied the “anarchism” bit. Anarchism as a concept was simple enough: states are neither necessary (historically, for millions of years), and are often destructive. To learn more, I read economic and social history, specifically the history of anarchism. But that’s where the troubles began.
Reading the history of anarchism is the history of radical leftist socialism. That’s why the first volume of The Cambridge History of Socialism is a history anarchism (see my review of it here and here). Anarchists hated capitalism, across languages and countries, before Marx became a household name in Europe. And, to my shock, they hated capitalism for the same reasons they hated the state: concentrations of power and the problem of legitimate authority. (This is where Rudolph Rocker’s book Anarcho-Syndicalism really blew my mind.) The state was predatory and parasitic on the citizen–but the capitalist/corporation was predatory and parasitic on the worker and on the state.
The typical apologetics and talking points about capitalism being “voluntary exchange” and “consensual agreement between employers and employees” was such nonsense that not even Adam Smith bought into it in the 1700s. States coerce directly through armies and guns, while capitalists coerce (a) less directly (but still effectively) through market power, buying out local politicians, lobbying and changing the law, massive media campaigns and information control, etc. (see Thorstein Veblen and James Galbraith’s work – neither of who are anarchists fyi), and (b) also coerce directly through armies and guns – and have for centuries. So while I was told that capitalism was inherently peaceful, I could not find, anywhere, in any period, a non-violent history of capitalism. Pointing to market exchange does nothing to remedy this problem, since market exchange predates capitalism. And all of the “peaceful capitalist economies” relied on a variety of violences and coercions, whether in overseas colonialism, company towns and sweat shops, government policy, or otherwise.
Whether you agree with that or not, there was no getting around this historical reality: anarchism was generally a progressive movement of anti-state socialism. It just was. That came as a surprise when I first read it in a footnote in Property is Theft!: A Joseph-Pierre Proudhon Reader (McKay); how could the father of anarchism write entire works on how “property is theft” while the anarchists I was familiar with were saying “taxation is theft” and sacralized and idolized individual private property as the centerpiece of virtually everything? This didn’t make any sense. One way or another, right after the Second World War a neofascist, pro-capitalist anarchism, or “anarcho-capitalism” (Rothbard, Hoppe, etc.) was born–and, being entrenched in the American circles I was, that was the meaning of “anarchism.” (It’s like if someone had never had chicken in their whole life except for McDonald’s mcnuggets; that’s “chicken” in their world…)
Today, I reject anarcho-capitalism but still share sympathies with some elements, such as anti-war/anti-imperialism, a rejection of the American two-party system, suspicion of political power, etc. However, I’m realizing that these particular positions have different origins on the right than from the left. That’s a topic for another post.
But it’s the economic history bit that really bothers me anytime I hear people like Dave Smith talking because it’s such a gigantic elephant in the room. Smith is a comedian and rhetorically-sharp anarcho-capitalist that actually reads books (or at least used to). But it’s very obvious when his understanding extends beyond the narrow, literary confines of the Von Mises Institute. (I recently wrote an encyclopedia article on basically this problem: “The West and the Rest: Eurocentrism, Colonialism, and Global Social Problems.”)
The fact is, capitalist history (which is usually the only history that anarcho-capitalists are familiar with) is fictional history. It goes something like this: “Everyone was poor, then capitalism arrived. Now, we just have to keep this system in place – and ‘spread’ it – to continue to eradicated poverty and create wealth and wealthy people. Socialism is just statist communism, which inevitably leads to poverty and social decay; everyone who wants prosperity wants capitalism whether they know it or not.”
Then there’s a million other additions ontop of this fiction, like (in no particular order):
Capitalism was a moral and liberating system that originated in Europe in the 1700-1800s and ended feudalism, created a commercial society of trade and markets and specialized labor and international supply chains, created millions of jobs and improved the living standards of virtually everyone except those who did not accept capitalism. Capitalism originated in Europe because of its superior people, institutions, cultures, religions, legal systems, geography, etc. Those who oppose capitalism are a danger to society. Capitalism invented the middle class. Capitalism and “the west” basically invented economic development. Capitalism eradicates poverty everywhere it is implemented. Societies before capitalism weren’t significantly inventive. Societies before capitalism did not have a middle class. Societies before capitalism did not have stock markets, private property rights like we have today, contract law, transnational trade and burgeoning markets, wage labor, etc. Pre-Capitalist societies weren’t significantly productive; there was no major “wealth production” before capitalism. Pre-capitalist societies suffered from political despotism, lack of rationality and reason. Ancient societies worked on barter systems, not monetary systems or currency systems. Governments don’t invent anything of real value. China is only dominating today because they accepted capitalism. Capitalism was destined to happen – and destined to happen in Europe and then the US. Also, American capitalism is its most triumphant and successful form. Capitalism works best with democratic governments. Capitalism actually has no beginning since it’s perfectly natural and found in nature; it is also eternal, because it will have no end; it’s ‘as good as we can get.’ Capitalism is also inherently peaceful, not violent. Slavery, colonialism, and land theft had nothing to do with capitalism, and it couldn’t have; if there’s coercion, it’s not capitalism. Socialism is what’s violent, because it requires more and more state control, and only the state has a monopoly on violence. Capitalism, because it is free, must be anti-state or non-state in its forms. True capitalism must be stateless capitalism, and anarcho-capitalism is maximum freedom for all…(ad infinitum)
History is also a myth presented as linear, progressive, with a final arrival (see Fukuyama’s famous assertion regarding “the end of history”). History is told in terms of “stages” or “phases” with capitalism as the last stage – as opposed to economic systems in their own right that may not have any reference or relevance to capitalism and the present/modern world. There is also ranking: the “first world” is the capitalist world, the second is the communist world, and the “third world” (the majority of the world’s population), is, well, everyone else to be pitied.
This popular perspective is also universalist: there is no such thing as a radically biased, eurocentric perspective of history. There is only history of objective facts without interpretations–especially interpretations that are determined along lines of economic and social classes. There is no “capitalist history” – history told by those with the most property and wealth. There is also no “working class” history. Competitive narratives are illusory; working class history is just the imaginations of disgruntled employees who have no right to question their employer, and they just don’t see the bigger picture of aggregate GDP and total output. Workers just need to fulfill their role in providing low-cost labor so products can be mass produced cheaply (…and so some dudes can buy a second yacht and fourth vacation home.)
That’s as good as I can quickly summarize this dominant perspective of economic history. Around 95% of it is completely fabricated.
However, it is accepted as fact for many people and groups. For example, Oxford’s A Concise Economic History of the World (Neal and Cameron) is not a concise history of anything but industrial Europe. The latest edition (5th) embarrassingly added material from outside Europe and before modernity because of, well, the title. But it still remains what it is: neither a world history, nor a history that spans economic history, nor even an economic history (since that would consistently include the experience of workers and producers, which is habitually excluded; all that matters is the perspective of producers/suppliers/capitalists, etc.). Books like these are, in the end, highly respectable, neoliberal, neoclassical, peer-reviewed academic trash–as I argued as much in my recent book Religion and Cooperative Economics. If you’re interested and curious at all about this topic, please, buy Lockard’s Societies, Networks, and Transitions instead. (Also mentioned below in the list.)
But you’d never know that unless you intentionally spent time and energy reading from other perspectives, because that academic trash is the air we breathe. I dedicated 2020-2024 to reading economic history full-time, and what was interesting is how many mainline economists who bothered to critically read economic history became radically anti-eurocentric and anti-capitalist by the end of their career (…when they could afford to publicly admit it). Reading history forced them to confront the mythological orthodoxies of their worldview. Theory was confronted by the facts of history. It’s like evangelical inerrantists who have spent their life defending the Bible but have never read a non-Christian book on how the Bible was put together from its earliest phases into a public canon (list) – and when they do, they usually abandon 90% or more of their religion (for a list of such case studies, see my book Deconstructing Evangelicalism). The theory just doesn’t work. And like religious fundamentalists, anarcho-capitalists like Rothbard have all kinds of clever ways of shielding themselves from criticism–from the invention of “praxeology” to the rejection of all historical empirics.
In short, Dave Smith and other anarcho-capitalists desperately need to step outside the bubble and read books on economic history that challenge their views, prejudices, and assumptions instead of affirms them…
Reading List for Anarcho-Capitalists (Willing to be Challenged)
- Historiography and Framing Issues
- James Blaut, The Colonizer’s Model of the World. Blaut (a path-breaking geographer) shows how the vast majority of history is tainted and corrupted by eurocentrism, and how this results in mythologies and fictions about economics, capitalism, historical progress, and society. Pro-capitalists want to disassociate “the rise of the west” from colonialism (500 years of land theft, slavery, and for-profit exploitation) for obvious reasons, so they’re forced to invent a pre-capitalist Europe that is superior to the rest of the world (which is a fiction), and then spread its wings so the whole world could benefit. Blaut explains the implications of this, and “the colonizer’s model of the world” (eurocentrism). (This is one of the top 5 most mind-blowing books I’ve ever read in my career – and I think it had this effect partly because of not only my history in neoliberal circles, but being a descendent of settler colonizers in North America – and direct descendant of the Mayflower, and the attitudes I’ve adopted that I wasn’t even aware of.)
- James Blaut, Eight Eurocentric Historians. Blaut, in his second book of the same series, shows how respected historians depend upon and regularly assert fictions identified earlier. His chapter on David Landes’ The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is particularly devastating. The book concludes with a list of “30 reasons why Europeans are better than everyone else” according to mainline historians. It ties together the racism/white supremacy of capitalism and modern European history (which poses as world, universal history). (Probably the most impressive academic critique I’ve read since encountering James Barr’s work on the fictions of conservative evangelicalism.)
- Immanuel Wallerstein, World Systems Analysis. A brilliant and concise, small work from a leading sociologist of the 20th century who wrote a multi-volume history of the world. Wallerstein modifies Marxist concepts in light of historical observed patterns and anti-eurocentrism (or more properly, actual “world history”). Readers learn about the cycles within capitalism (with more precision and accuracy, in my view, than Harvey’s 17 Contradictions of Capitalism) and how we’ve run into the end of a 500 year cycle, and what might happen after the everything has been “commodified.” Read alongside Lockard’s survey (below) would be complementary.
- History of Economic Thought
- E. K. Hunt and Mark Lautzenheiser, History of Economic Thought, 3rd ed. An excellent introduction to the history of economic thought. If you’re wondering why the works of Adam Smith are publicly hosted on marxists.org, you’ll finally learn why by the end of this volume. Soaked in primary sources and allows the diversity and range of economic thought to speak while also organizing them in a way that reveals who benefits from such theories.
- History of Economic Thought in Relation to Economic History
- Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans. Most economists and people in the west tell a story to themselves about how free trade is an American/western value and how it helps everyone. Chang (Cambridge U prof) lays this nonsense to rest: the west has almost always been radically protectionist; it only now forces other countries (with guns and sanctions) to engage in “free trade” because if benefits themselves, not poorer countries who are forced into even more poverty to benefit the western capitalist core. In other words, capitalist countries extract wealth from other countries by enforcing policies of unequal trade and justify it by textbook neoclassical “free trade” theory (which was virtually created for that purpose; see Yanis Varoufakis, Foundations of Economics and Skidelsky, What’s Wrong With Economics).
- Andre Gunder Frank, Re-Orient: Global Economy in an Asian Age. Economic history is almost always told in terms of the “rise of Europe,” a long, triumphant and inevitable arrival. Frank reminds us that in terms of economic history, European dominance is a blip on the screen against several millennia of Eastern/Chinese dominance. Western capitalism is falling as quickly as it rose, and the world is now re-adjusting back to a longer, historic equilibrium of eastern power.
- J. C. Sharman, Empires of the Weak. Western empires weren’t actually that amazing – at least when compared to others. Another critique of eurocentric socio-economic history.
- Noam Chomsky, People Over Profits. Short, concise essays on how neoliberalism leads to social disaster, exploits workers, and incentivizes war.
- Rudolph Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Thought and Practice. A brilliant work of anarchism and anti-capitalism by a leading progressive thinker and friend of Emma Goldman. (Well, free-lover Emma threatened to “spank” Rudolph if he didn’t write this book, so he wrote it.) This work shows how, more theoretically, statism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin, which explains their long-term relationships of dependence on each other.
- Ruth Kinna, The Government of No One. A leading introduction to anarchism and anarchist thought. It excludes most of “anarcho-capitalism” since it’s almost entirely irrelevant and contradictory to that history. While more political history than economic, it has important implications. Also shows the conflicting roles of democracy, violence, and individualism in anarchism.
- Economic History
- Richard Von Glahn, The Economic History of China. A marvelous book, accessible, and abolishes all kinds of myths about economic thought and history simply by revealing what we know about China’s economic history. Readers learn, for example, how debates about the role of markets/merchants and the state is anything but western; they were debated extensively in publications before the Roman empire. (Note that Glahn also co-edited The Economic History, two volumes that I reviewed for the Economic History Association here and here.)
- Stephen Bown, Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World. This might as well be entitled “a history of anarcho-capitalism.” Marvelous and highly readable. Demonstrates that capitalism’s origins were anything but peaceful. And shows that we don’t have to theorize what societies under the control of capitalists would be like. Such stateless societies have been experimented with for 400 years. And the result is disaster: cities and societies under corporate control (yes, private companies even taxed residents) lead to dystopian control-freak worlds on-par with the west’s worse nightmares about communism, or fail financially and move from the private sector to state control in order to survive. It’s almost like a society built upon short-term profits isn’t sustainable socially or financially…
- Erik Loomis, A History of America in Ten Strikes. This is possibly the most important book for anarcho-capitalists, who are either completely unfamiliar with historical class war or dismiss it as Marxist lingo. Readers learn from one real-life example after another how capitalists habitually rely on either private armies or the police-state to exploit workers. Anarcho-capitalists have to confront a basic question: if workers under capitalism engage in labor for employers via “uncoerced” or “voluntary contracts,” why do worker strikes happen so frequently? And, why must capitalists use violence and death against millions of workers over and over and over again throughout history? (For a larger version of this book that is global instead of American, see the encyclopedias edited or written by Immanuel Ness)
- Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine. A classic work on how neoliberalism and “free markets” actually crushes economies instead of liberates them – and also how, once again, “free-markets” is a cover for profound, innovative violence.
- Jonathan Katz, Gangsters of Capitalism. Shows how capitalism and American imperialism are intertwined, specifically regarding marine missions in the 20th century. (Anarcho-capitalists will appreciate the anti-imperialism of the book, but again be tempted to habitually dismiss “capitalism” as being relevant because their theory requires such an interpretation of the historical realities.)
- Aviva Chomsky, Central America’s Forgotten History. A lucid and fascinating read by a historian about how western companies use governments as puppets to destroy or hold hostage entire societies in order to steal land and resources. Another reminder that modern capitalism works largely and systematically by threats and violence, not “voluntary exchange” and “peaceful competition.” Also shows why the “immigration problem” is caused by western capitalist states. (I reviewed this book for the Economic History Association here.)
- David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. A seminal work of economic history by a leading anarchist anthropologist. Countless tropes and stereotypes of economic history – monetary systems, the origin of “property rights,” “the west,” capitalism, wealth/debt, and finance are debunked. Not a short read, but super-engaging.
- Craig Lockard, Societies, Networks, and Transitions, 4th ed. This book is not technically economic history, but I promise you will learn 10x more about socio-economic history than any other survey on the topic (whether Neal and Cameron, or Landes, or otherwise). Lockard was a founding member of the World History Association and served as its president. This book – a survey of all of world history – is his life’s work, and is fascinating on every single one of it’s colored pages. Highly underrated textbook and history book – especially since most world history surveys are rarely written by world historians (weird right?). However, it’s dense and cannot be read quickly. Nevertheless, you can shorten the journey by reading the sections on Classical Era (600 BCE-600CE) and Intermediate Era (600CE-1500CE), which are eye-opening with regard to socio-economic history – especially chapters on the Abbasid Caliphate and Song Dynasty. Readers will start to question the very concept of “capitalism” after reading it since virtually everything non-electronic that is uniquely “capitalist” already existed prior to industrial England. You will also realize how simplistic and erroneous the dominant understanding of pre-capitalist societies and economics is.
- Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. A classic work of critical historic economic analysis, showing how western capitalism exploited/exploits Africa. By a brilliant professor. (The state assassinated him at age 36 to ensure his writing career ended.)
- Clara Mattei, The Capital Order. A brilliant work on fascism and austerity in the early 20th century. She demonstrates how capitalism continually bails itself out using taxpayer money – and chooses to discipline workers instead of capitalists using “austerity programs” when money runs out (I reviewed this book here).
- Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson, Slavery, Capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution. The leading book on this subject. Shows that slavery really was a key engine for modern British capitalism – and beyond.
- Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution. A detailed history of anarcho-syndicalism in the Spanish anti-fascist revolution. This demonstrates how leftist/anti-fascists fought capitalism with anarchy as an organizational solution.
- Robert Allen, From Farm to Factory. Shows the remarkable economic successes of the early USSR. Anarcho-capitalists and others entrenched in cold-war rhetoric of western states generally aren’t allowed to discuss or learn about the USSR except in terms of its failures and state terrorism. Allen carries out an extensive empirical analysis to show how the USSR accomplished in a matter of years what took England decades, and became a scientific and innovative powerhouse. The United States was the greatest economy in the world in the early 20th century – and it feared the USSR’s productive capacities and constantly threatened them (and did invade them during the Bolshevik Revolution) for good reasons: they were (rightly) worried capitalism couldn’t keep up.
- John Restakis, Humanizing the Economy. Anarcho-capitalists and neoliberals habitually dismiss and diminish any alternatives to free-market/capitalist economies, which makes them extremely tunnel-visioned. One of the major movements born out of the massive anti-capitalist movements of the 19th century was the cooperative movement. Restakis focuses on contemporary cooperative economics. (Note that I wrote most of the Cooperative Economics Wikipedia page, authored Religion and Cooperative Economics, and co-edited The Routledge Handbook to Cooperative Economics and Management).
- Honorable Mentions
- Jeffrey Sachs, The Age of Sustainable Development and Seven Ages of Globalization. The first one discusses the relationship between economic development and environmental sustainability. The second is a short, world-economic-history survey that, while I have quibbles with, is readable and worth it if you don’t have the intense interest to read Lockard’s work. (I reviewed it here.)
- Ha-Joon Chang, Twenty-Three Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism and Economics: The User’s Guide. The first is a concise, sharp, and learned one-volume critique of neoliberal capitalism by an economic historian. The second is an economic introduction. It is probably the first book that I now go to for teaching economics and recommending a one-volume introduction to the field. (He sadly excluded feminist economics from his list of different schools, but still a good synthesis.)
- Richard C. Williams, The Cooperative Movement. More historical and empirical introduction to cooperative economics.
- Michael Parenti, Democracy for the Few, Blackshirts & Reds, and The Face of Imperialism. Perhaps the best critiques of American fascism and capitalist-imperialism out there in short, readable volumes. Highly illuminating for those who are unaware of both the exceptional destruction of both American imperialism/empire and capitalism. Democracy for the Few is an introduction to American politics (and a very depressing, but honest one; highly recommended). Brilliant works by a Yale PhD, political scientist, and historian. Particularly important for anarcho-capitalists to read, since they will be shocked and very uncomfortable to learn what actual communists think and why they do so.