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Part of the Politics series on Anarchism

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Market anarchism (or free-market anarchism) is a label commonly used to describe a number of individualist anarchist philosophies that assert that all the institutions necessary for the function of a free market, such as money, police, and courts, should be provided by the market itself.^[1] That is, they oppose a compulsory monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. The term "free market" is used to denote non-coerced and non-fraudulent exchange of goods and services, which market anarchists believe necessitates the elimination of the state. The difference between state-provided defense and market-provided defense is that the former is provided through taxation, while the latter is supported by voluntary payments. Jan Narveson has defined market anarchism as "stateless society in which everything is done by voluntary associations",^[2] while an alternate definition from a natural rights perspective describes it as

… a broad term referring to the theory that voluntary free market relationships can – and should – replace all existing coercive state authority. It is derived from taking the principle of the non-initiation of force to its ultimate conclusion, and accepting that if using violence is wrong for one person, then it is wrong for every person. If stealing is wrong for me as a private citizen, then it is also wrong for everyone – including those in the ‘government’.

—Stefan Molyneux, Market Anarchism: Are You Guys Crazy or Just Nuts?^[3]

Market anarchists include agorists^[4], who are “soft propertarians,” anarcho-capitalists, who are private propertarians, and voluntaryists.

The term "free-market anarchism" is used to label anarcho-capitalism as developed by Murray Rothbard.^[5] Rothbardian free-market anarchists believe that property may only originate by being the product of labor, and may then only legitimately change hands by trade or gift. However, the original market anarchists, such as Benjamin Tucker and Proudhon, believed that land should not be considered to be owned if it is not being used or occupied. As such, they considered both the state and capitalism as incompatible with a "free-market". Unlike anarcho-capitalists, they hold a normative conception of the labor theory of value where it was believed that if prices are not proportional to labor exerted then "usury" is taking place. However, they tended to believe that prices would align with labor in laissez-faire setting, so long as large disparities of wealth created by state interference in the market were first dealt with.

Unlike anarcho-communists, market anarchists do not necessarily believe that the inequality of wealth is a bad thing, though market anarchist do believe that inequalities created through the use of aggressive action from government intervention in the economy is immoral and are harmful to the wealth produced and fairly distributed among people in the markets by voluntarily association and trades. Market anarchist believe that the state has created a social structure of privileges, handed out and enforced by government in a system they call a mixed economy or state monopoly capitalism.

This short section requires expansion.

Most market anarchists hold one of three views of property; property, possession, or geoism. These views derive from similar concerns with personal economic autonomy (or self-ownership), and involve similar standards for the initial acquisition (or homesteading) of unowned land or the initial creation of other goods. These views involve different standards for the abandonment of land (and return of land to the commons or to an unowned condition).^[6]

The first, developed by the classical liberal John Locke, argues that, as people mix their own labor with unowned resources, they make those resources their property. People can acquire new property by labor on unowned resources or trade for created goods. Locke concedes two important limitations on property claims. When people use unowned resources, they must leave "as much and as good" for others, and when people abandon goods, these return to the commons.^{[citation needed]}

The second, developed by the mutualist Pierre Proudhon does not grant that this creates property in land, but holds that when people customarily use given land (and is some versions goods), other people should respect that use or possession. But, when that use stops, ownership is no longer recognized, unlike with property.^{[citation needed]} Most libertarian socialists adopt similar standards.^{[dubious – discuss][citation needed]}

The third, geolibertarian, position, derived from the Lockean proviso^{[citation needed]}, argues that individuals have an equal access right to the land, and that when individuals make exclusive property claims, the communities can charge rent (and distribute this to the excluded individuals, as compensation for the exclusion).^{[citation needed]}

• Agorism
• Voluntaryism

• Homepage of C4SS, Center for a Stateless Society, a market anarchist press service.