анонимный вопрос

To get a vivid idea of anarcho-individualism, I can recommend listening to such an anarcho-individualist as Alexander Tatarkov. He speaks quite a lot about his worldview. As for us, we will discuss the differences with libertarianism.

The main postulate of an anarcho-individualist is that the individual determines for themselves how to build their life and their relationships with others, and any norms coming from the outside have the status of well-wishes for them; they have every right to fulfill them, take note of them, ignore them, demonstratively violate them, and so on. Naturally, the anarcho-individualist agrees that they bear full responsibility for their chosen line of behavior, but reserves the right to avoid this responsibility. The only thing in which an anarcho-individualist limits themselves is that they do not engage in the construction of power institutions; this is a taboo. Violating this taboo turns them into an ordinary Machiavellian.

It is not difficult to see that an anarcho-individualist, without violating their principles, can coexist with others in a state of Hobbesian war of all against all, sit in a lotus position achieving enlightenment, join any cooperative activity, or engage in ancapism as a private entrepreneur.

The main postulate of libertarianism is the principle of self-ownership. A person belongs to themselves, which is quite close to the views of anarcho-individualists. But this also means the recognition of the institution of property, for if property is completely denied, there can be no talk of self-ownership, and if property is partially denied, it implies the permissibility of encroachments on self-ownership, such as coercion. Therefore, a libertarian, unlike an anarcho-individualist, limits themselves not only in the construction of power institutions but also in encroaching on someone else’s property.

Since libertarianism was invented, the phenomenon of property itself has been analyzed and is now usually interpreted as a whole bundle of various rights. A maximalist approach to property, where it is interpreted as an absolute unrestricted right to dispose of an object, is very convenient for drawing caricatures of libertarianism or criticizing it in other ways. There are a vast number of such attempts in the information field; among the most interesting, I would name the text by Laksi Katala, Fundamental Problems of Anarcho-Capitalism.

Anarcho-individualism is a convenient basic framework in which a person acts when building their relationships from scratch with an unfamiliar environment where the rules are unknown to them, or where rules have not yet been developed.

Libertarianism is the next logical step toward building a peaceful, prosperous society, where people generally recognize each other’s legal capacity, and thus can develop frameworks for determining property rights and their transfer.

I should note that libertarianism is not entirely synonymous with anarcho-capitalism. To understand the differences, I refer the reader to the corresponding chapter of Friedman’s Mechanics of Liberty: Is Anarcho-Capitalism Libertarian?