NDP MP Charlie Angus urges Canadian response to Trump threats
by cpac
February 14, 2025
NDP MP Charlie Angus is joined by Fareed Khan (Canadians United Against Hate) and Anne Lagacé Dowson (Canadian Health Coalition) at a news conference on Parliament Hill. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Canadian flag, they are calling on Canadians to respond to United States President Donald Trump's recent threats concerning possible tariffs on Canadian goods or the possible annexation of Canada by the U.S.
Transcript @ 3:03
[Fareed Khan (Canadians United Against Hate)] Thank you. And thank you Charlie for having me here.
I'd like to acknowledge that we are speaking from the unceded territory of the Algonquin Nishnawbe Aski people. My name is Fareed Khan. I'm a human rights activist, an anti-hate activist, and the founder of the advocacy group Canadians United Against Hate.
Tomorrow, February 15th, is Canada's flag day. It marks the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the red and white Maple Leaf flag, a symbol of Canada recognized around the world, and a symbol that Canadians are very proud to display.
As we mark this occasion, we're reminded of the values that have made Canada a beacon of hope and freedom. But today, we're also reminded of the very real threat hanging over our country, the threat of Donald Trump and his fascist and racist ambitions.
I'm here to speak today as a Canadian citizen, as an immigrant, as a child of refugee parents. I'm here to speak for the millions of Canadians who are watching with alarm as Canada-U.S. relations worsen day by day, with every new word that comes out of the mouth of Donald Trump as he refers to Canada. And because of Trump's threats to wreck Canada's economy, and annex us as the 51st state. I'm here to say to Donald Trump and his MAGA cultists that Canada will never become part of the U.S., and it'll only happen when hell freezes is over and all Canadians are gone from this land.
For my entire life, Canada has stood tall as a nation that values diversity, equity, and inclusion. But with Trump's threats, these values are also under threat. A vision of the future under Trump can be seen in the fascist edicts that have come out of his office which target migrants, refugees, the lgbtq community, women, Muslims, and vulnerable minorities; edicts which perpetuate hate, bigotry, misogyny, transphobia, and xenophobia, and violate fundamental human rights.
And make no mistake, Trump is a fascist. That's not my assessment, but that of 11 former high-ranking officials from his previous administration, including his longest serving chief of staff, and his former chief of defense staff.
My parents, and millions of others, chose to immigrate to Canada because of its values and the economic opportunities it presented. They chose to settle here, over other nations, because they wanted their children to be Canadian -- not American! And so it's only natural that immigrants, along with all patriotic Canadians, stand up and defend our country against Trump's unofficial Declaration of War, which is what his threats to impose 25% tariffs, and annex Canada are. Trump's repeated comments about annexing Canada, and his actions, reveal a sociopathy that was described in detail in the 2017 book "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump." In it, 27 psychiatrists and mental health professionals made it clear that Trump is a sociopath who poses a threat not just to the U.S., but to the entire world. Some of the assessments of Trump's personality in the book include the following -- and mind you, these are assessments made by professionals who work in the area of mental health. "Trump is an impulsive, immature, incompetent person who, when in the position of ultimate power, would easily slide into the role of tyrant. His sociopathic characteristics are undeniable ,and present a profound threat to democracy. He is profoundly an evil man, exhibiting malignant narcissism. And if left unchecked, his pathological narcissism could lead to World War III.
I would encourage members of the media who haven't looked at this book to please take a look at it, and get a real look into the kind of person that Donald Trump is, if you don't know already from the insanity that comes out of his mouth.
To our political leaders I say, Canada cannot engage with him as we do with other normal leaders. He has shown himself to be an enemy to Canada, and we have to treat him as a clear and present danger to our country, and to our allies.
And to the Canadian media I say, "Begin telling the story of the fascist sociopath occupying the White House using that language, so that Canadians in the world know the very real danger he presents to peace and stability.
Dring World War II, over 45,000 Canadian soldiers, sailors, and airmen paid the ultimate price to defend Canada from a fascist threat, as did millions of others from Allied Nations. Let's not let those sacrifices be in vain as we face another fascist threat today.
And as we Mark the 60th anniversary of the Canadian flag, all Canadians who say that they love Canada, who want to continue to build the just society that Pierre Trudeau spoke of over 50 years ago, who want to protect our communities from the fascist, racist, misogynistic, and transphobic demagogue that is trying to destroy Canada, we need to stand together and defend our flag, our country, and our sovereignty. Thank you. [Charlies Angus] Good morning, and happy Valentine's Day. I want to say this morning how much I love my country. We don't tend to do that in Canada. We think that that's kind of gauche. We don't feel we need to say how much we love our country. But when we see the criminal gang that is taking control in Washington telling us we do not have a right to our nation, well, oh yeah, not only am I going to love my country, and its values, and the people from one end of this beautiful Nation to another, but I'm going to work with those ordinary Canadians to defend our right to continue to exist as an independent nation.
And for this, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Canadian flag, I encourage Canadians to reflect what that symbol means; that symbol that has been in war zones; that symbol that has been since Canadians went to fight famines in other countries; that symbol of openness and inclusion that is the direct opposite to the politics of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
This week we saw the shameful actions by Donald Trump to negotiate with Vladimir Putin -- another gangster -- to sell the people of Ukraine out. Mr Putin thinks that Vladimir Putin is a savvy genius, and he detests our country? Well, he's sending us a very clear message of the kind of man he is. Our neighbors are no longer our allies. We are dealing with a regime next door to us that is ignoring the international rule of law. And we have to take this dead serious, as a nation with our political leaders, but with ordinary Canadians.
So what do we do right now? Well, I'm extremely encouraged by the incredible response we've received from this Pledge For Canada that's now, just in the space of two weeks, had over 62,000 people sign up, people from across the political spectrum. Former Prime Minister Kim Campbell, former Attorney General Alan Rock, former Premier Danny Williams, but also the incredible artists and indigenous activists, and labor activists, and ordinary people across this country who said that there's a value to our nation that we're willing to defend.
And I also want to encourage and thank the ordinary people who, on their own, began the boycott of all things American.
Now some might think well, you know, if you just choose not to go down to Tennessee this year, who's going to notice? Well, right now, we're seeing the American tourism industry is in full-on panic. There are now over $2 billion in travel that is at risk. That's 140,000 American jobs. That's if just 10% of Canadians cancel their trips. It's still too early to say how many are cancelling, but from the evidence that we're gathering, it's much much higher than 10%.
And it's about sending a message, sending a message to Texas governor Greg Abbot who said Canada was going to learn a lesson. Oh really? Texas is going to teach Canada a lesson? Well, we've got $400 Million worth of travel that goes to Texas Mr. Abbott. How about we teach you a lesson, and say we got better places to go than Texas? If that's your attitude of Canadians, we will not go. Hell no we will not go.
The boycott is going to target many many areas of the United States that are very vulnerable right now. Kentucky has already started to speak up about the huge losses that they're facing in Kentucky bourbon, and Kentucky whiskey, because their No. 1 market is Canadians. So when Canadians stop buying, it's sending a message. And we know this is the only way right now that Americans are going to be able to put pressure on Donald Trump. Because what's at risk here, is the future of an international order, where we respect the rights of countries to be independent; we respect the international rule of law; we respect our neighbors and borders. And this is something Mr. Trump is saying he will not respect.
So on this Festival where we celebrate Canada as a nation and our flag, I am encouraged. I want to thank Canadians. I want to say we are strong; we do not bend; and we will never ever ever kiss the ring of that gangster from Mar-a-Lago.
So let's celebrate this 60th anniversary for Canada, and our flag, in a way that we have never done before.
Thank you. Merci. We'll take any questions.
Q. Mr. Angus, we've heard from you before this idea that you'd like to see your party continue to be able to work with the Liberals to keep Parliament going. Is that your view still, that you'd like to see whoever becomes the next prime minister to strike a deal with the NDP to keep Parliament moving?
[Charlie Angus] Since January 6th, the world for Canada's turned upside down. We are in completely uncharted territory. And nobody can say they have a plan to deal with this: none of our Comm's teams; none of our political planners; there's not a politician who's ready to deal with the crisis, because this is the biggest crisis we've seen since the 1930s.
So my simple position as a member of Parliament is to encourage all Parliamentarians to say, "Let's go back to Parliament. Let's see if we can put a plan in place to get Canada through this period. There will be lots of time to to bicker and batter as we love to do. But right now I think my focus is Canada.
Q. On the topic that my colleague just brought up, a little bit of a different focus. Is now perhaps the right time for an early election given the uncertainty surrounding Donald Trump and his administration and the threat of tariffs?
[Charlie Angus] I think what people were thinking on January 1st, and what people saw after January 6th, our world has turned upside down. And we see that Mr. Trump is continuing to attack and menace not just Canada, but the international order. I'm just one Parliamentarian, and I'm ready to go back to Parliament and make it work. I'm willing to do whatever I have to to try and put a plan in place to help Canada get through this. Maybe there will be an election, maybe there won't, but I think we all have an obligation right now to try to reassure Canadians that we are there for them, and that we will do our job to get through what is unprecedented turbulence....'
My focus right now is what do we do to go back to Parliament and try and get a plan for Canadians? That is where we have to stay focused right now.
I think we have to go back and say, "What is it going to mean to work as a Parliament to put in place, the measures at the federal level to withstand the threat, not just economic threats, but the threats to the international order; the threats that we're seeing to NATO; the threats to our sovereignty? There's so many things that we could be doing. But to do that we all have to agree that right now Canada's primary focus needs to be Canada.
Q. So the Trump tariff threats kind of spark some conversations that a lot of our oil is flowing north to south rather than east-west, and to ports, I guess, and it's exposed a weakness in Canadian energy. Some complain that NDP standards stood in the way of these pipelines, as well as some First Nations. What you think about that. Would you be willing to work more to get some of these projects going forward?
[Charlie Angus] Well, it's amazing, you know -- never give up a good opportunity to burn the planet when there's a crisis. Canadians paid $34 billion dollars to build a pipeline. Canadians are subsidizing over 50 cents on every dollar for the pipeline. To be told that Canada hasn't done its share? Why aren't we talking about the huge opportunities to reinvest across the board with energy? The idea that we're going to spend 15 years building a pipeline to oppose Pump-Trump, when we've just built a pipeline, I'd like to see what the oil sector is going to do. They're making record profits, and I haven't seen them offer to do anything yet, except we've seen Madame Smith say that any efforts to have oil and the energy sector play their part, is some kind of threat to Canada.
So this is all speculation. But there's huge things that we could do across our regions that we'd get bigger bang for the bucks. So if they want to post trial balloons, go ahead. But I think there's many opportunities we can have to make a resilient economy right now in the short term.
[Hostess] Thank you. This concludes the press conference.
[Charlie Angus] Thank you.
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Jamie Raskin Talks About Silicon Valleys' Techno-Libertarian Fascists
by Brian Tyler Cohen
Feb 15, 2025 Interviews with Brian Tyler Cohen
INTERVIEW - Brian interviews Rep. Jamie Raskin about Elon profiting off the federal government while simultaneously slashing programs for working class Americans.
Transcript @6:40
[Jamie Raskin] We need to be supporting the lawyers and the people who are willing to take Trump to court, because we are winning. And that's going to be a really important part of filling that gap you talk about between what the rule of law says, and then what's actually happening. Because we're dealing with a band of incorrigible, lawless plutocrats who think that they can just control the whole U.S. government. And I keep thinking about what Steve Bannon said about Elon Musk. He said he's a truly evil individual. He knows that whole crowd, so he knows what he's talking about. And so that's quite a statement. But in the Silicon Valley network of right-wing, billionaire, libertarian-turned-authoritarians, they are very open about the fact that they think that democracy is obsolete, we're living in a post-Constitutional America, and the Constitution no longer fits. And they are trying to get everybody ready for a Techno-State Monarchy. And in their writings about it, they suggest that seizure of the control of technology, and computers, and financial payments, is the essence to moving from one form of government to another.
So we're really talking about people who would like to abolish American Constitutional institutions, and representative democracy, and the rights and freedom of the people.
Their guy, Curtis Yarvin, who's their big intellectual hero, has said people have got to overcome their fear of the word "Dictator." He says a Dictator is basically just like a corporate CEO, who are all Dictators in their businesses.
And so we need a Dictator that is the corporation, that's the United States of America. And obviously they have Elon Musk in mind, because he could never run for President, he wasn't born in the United States of America, and he's had citizenship in three different countries. He was actually an undocumented immigrant here for many months before he got work authorization, for all the right-wingers out there who want to kick all the undocumented people out of the country, although that might be an argument in their favor. I don't know. But in any event, these people are talking about supplanting our system of Constitutional democracy with a completely different kind of government controlled by Dictatorship.
******************
Curtis Yarvin
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/16/25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin
Yarvin in 2023
Born: 1973 (age 51–52)
Nationality: American
Other names: Mencius Moldbug
Education: Brown University (BA); University of California, Berkeley
Spouse(s): Jennifer Kollmer (died 2021); Kristine Militello (2024–)
School: Neo-monarchism; Neo-reactionism; Dark Enlightenment; Anti-egalitarianism; Anti-democracy; Anti-liberalism; Neocameralism; Technofeudalism
Website: Unqualified Reservations – his old blog; Gray Mirror – his new blog
Part of a series on Anarcho-capitalism
People
Bruce L. Benson; Walter Block; Bryan Caplan; Gerard Casey; Anthony de Jasay; David D. Friedman; Hans-Hermann Hoppe; Michael Huemer; Stephan Kinsella; Nick Land; Michael Malice; Javier Milei; Robert P. Murphy; Wendy McElroy; Lew Rockwell; Murray Rothbard; Joseph Salerno; Jeffrey Tucker; Tom Woods; Curtis Yarvin
Curtis Guy Yarvin (born 1973), also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, is an American blogger. He is known, along with philosopher Nick Land, for founding the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic philosophical movement known as the Dark Enlightenment or neo-reactionary movement (NRx).[1][2][3][4]
In his blog Unqualified Reservations, which he wrote from 2007 to 2014, and in his later newsletter Gray Mirror, which he started in 2020, he argues that American democracy is a failed experiment[5] that should be replaced by an accountable monarchy, similar to the governance structure of corporations.[6] In 2002, Yarvin began work on a personal software project that eventually became the Urbit networked computing platform. In 2013, he co-founded the company Tlon to oversee the Urbit project and helped lead it until 2019.[7]
Yarvin has been described as a "neo-reactionary", "neo-monarchist" and "neo-feudalist" who "sees liberalism as creating a Matrix-like totalitarian system, and who wants to replace American democracy with a sort of techno-monarchy".[8][9][10][11] He has defended the institution of slavery, and has suggested that certain races may be more naturally inclined toward servitude than others.[12][13] He has claimed that whites have higher IQs than black people, but does not consider himself a white nationalist. He is a critic of US civil rights programs, and has called the civil rights movement a "black-rage industry".[14]
Yarvin has influenced some prominent Silicon Valley investors and Republican politicians, with venture capitalist Peter Thiel described as his "most important connection".[15] Political strategist Steve Bannon has read and admired his work.[16] U.S. Vice President JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence.[17][18][19] Michael Anton, the State Department Director of Policy Planning during Trump's second presidency, has also discussed Yarvin's ideas.[20] In January 2025, Yarvin attended a Trump inaugural gala in Washington; Politico reported he was "an informal guest of honor" due to his "outsize influence over the Trumpian right."[21]
Biography
Early life and education
Curtis Guy Yarvin[22] was born in 1973 to a liberal, secular family.[23] His grandparents on his father's side were Jewish American and communists. His father, Herbert Yarvin, worked for the US government as a diplomat,[24] and his mother was a Protestant from Westchester County.[25] In 1985, he entered Johns Hopkins' longitudinal Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth. In 1988, Yarvin graduated from Wilde Lake High School,[26] a public high school in the planned community of Columbia, Maryland.
He attended Brown University from 1988 to 1992, then was a graduate student in a computer science PhD program at UC Berkeley before dropping out after a year and a half to join a tech company.[27][25] During the 1990s, Yarvin was influenced by the libertarian tech culture of Silicon Valley.[27] Yarvin read right-wing and American conservative works. The libertarian University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds introduced him to writers like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. The rejection of empiricism by Mises and the Austrian School, who favored instead deduction from first principles, influenced Yarvin's mindset.[28]
Yarvin's pen name, Mencius Moldbug, is a combination of the Confucian philosopher "Mencius" and a play on "goldbug."[24]
Urbit
In 2002, Yarvin founded the Urbit computer platform as a decentralized network of personal servers. In 2013, he co-founded the San Francisco-based company Tlön Corp to build out Urbit further with funding from Peter Thiel's venture capital arm, the Founders Fund.[29][30] In 2016, Yarvin was invited to present on the functional programming aspects of Urbit at LambdaConf 2016, which resulted in the withdrawal of five speakers, two sub-conferences, and several sponsors.[31][32] Yarvin left Tlön in January 2019, but retains some intellectual and financial involvement in the development of Urbit.[7]
Neo-reactionary blogging
Yarvin's reading of Thomas Carlyle convinced him that libertarianism was a doomed project without the inclusion of authoritarianism, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe's 2001 book "Democracy: The God That Failed," marked Yarvin's first break with democracy. Another influence was James Burnham, who asserted that real politics occurred through the actions of elites, beneath what he called apparent democratic or socialist rhetoric.[33] In the 2000s, the failures of US-led nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan strengthened Yarvin's anti-democratic views, the federal response to the 2008 financial crisis strengthened his libertarian convictions, and Barack Obama's election as US president later that year reinforced his belief that history inevitably progresses toward left-leaning societies.[34]
In 2007, Yarvin began the blog Unqualified Reservations to promote his political vision.[35] In an early blog post, he adapted a phrase from the movie The Matrix, repurposing "red pill" to mean a shattering of progressive illusions.[25] He largely stopped updating his blog in 2013, when he began to focus on Urbit; in April 2016, he announced that Unqualified Reservations had "completed its mission".[36]
In 2020, Yarvin began blogging his views on under the page name Gray Mirror.[18] His posts, such as "Reflections on the late election" (2020) and "The butterfly revolution" (2022), are thought experiments on how to achieve an American coup and replace democracy with a new form of monarchy, ideas that critics have described as "fascist".[37]
In January 2025, Yarvin attended a Trump inaugural gala in Washington, D.C., hosted by the far-right publishing house Passage Press; Politico reported he was "an informal guest of honor" due to his "outsize[d] influence over the Trumpian right."[38]
Views
Dark Enlightenment
Main article: Dark Enlightenment
Yarvin believes that real political power in the United States is held by something he calls "the Cathedral", an informal amalgam of universities and the mainstream press, which collude to sway public opinion.[39] According to him, a so-called "Brahmin" social class (in reference to the Brahmin class of India's caste system and the American Boston Brahmin) dominates American society, preaching progressive values to the masses. The socio-religious analogy originates from Yarvin's opinion that the progressive ideology of the Cathedral is delivered to and internalized by the general populace much in the same way religious authorities and institutions deliver religious dogma to fanatical worshippers. Yarvin and the Dark Enlightenment (sometimes abbreviated to "NRx") movement assert that the Cathedral's commitment to equality and justice erodes social order.[40] He advocates an American 'monarch' dissolving elite academic institutions and media outlets within the first few months of their reign.[37]
Drawing on computer metaphors, Yarvin contends that society needs a "hard reset" or a "rebooting", not a series of gradual political reforms.[41] Instead of activism, he advocates passivism, claiming that progressivism would fail without right-wing opposition.[42] According to him, NRx adherents should rather design "new architectures of exit" than engage in ineffective political activism.[43]
Yarvin argues for a "neo-cameralist" philosophy based on Frederick the Great of Prussia's cameralism.[44] In Yarvin's view, democratic governments are inefficient and wasteful and should be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations whose "shareholders" (large owners) elect an executive with total power, but who must serve at their pleasure.[41] The executive, unencumbered by liberal-democratic procedures, could rule efficiently much like a CEO-monarch.[41] Yarvin admires Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping for his pragmatic and market-oriented authoritarianism, and the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime. He sees the U.S. as soft on crime, dominated by economic and democratic delusions.[40]
Yarvin supports authoritarianism on right-libertarian grounds, claiming that the division of political sovereignty expands the scope of the state, whereas strong governments with clear hierarchies remain minimal and narrowly focused.[40] According to scholar Joshua Tait, "Moldbug imagines a radical libertarian utopia with maximum freedom in all things except politics."[45] He has favored same-sex marriage, freedom of religion, and private use of drugs, and has written against race- or gender-based discriminatory laws, although, according to Tait, "he self-consciously proposed private welfare and prison reforms that resembled slavery".[41] Tait describes Yarvin's writing as contradictory, saying: "He advocates hierarchy, yet deeply resents cultural elites. His political vision is futuristic and libertarian, yet expressed in the language of monarchy and reaction. He is irreligious and socially liberal on many issues but angrily anti-progressive. He presents himself as a thinker searching for truth but admits to lying to his readers, saturating his arguments with jokes and irony. These tensions indicate broader fissures among the online Right."[27]
Under his Moldbug pseudonym, Yarvin gave a talk about "rebooting" the American government at the 2012 BIL Conference. He used it to advocate the acronym "RAGE", which he defined as "Retire All Government Employees". He described what he felt were flaws in the accepted "World War II mythology", alluding to the idea that Hitler's invasions were acts of self-defense. He argued these discrepancies were pushed by America's "ruling communists", who invented political correctness as an "extremely elaborate mechanism for persecuting racists and fascists". "If Americans want to change their government," he said, "they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia."[46]
In the inaugural article published on Unqualified Reservations in 2007, entitled a formalist manifesto, Yarvin called his concept of aligning property rights with political power "formalism", that is, the formal recognition of realities of the existing power, which should eventually be replaced in his views by a new ideology that rejects progressive doctrines transmitted by the Cathedral.[45][47] Yarvin's first use of the term "neoreactionary" to describe his project occurred in 2008.[48][49] His ideas have also been described by Dylan Matthews of Vox as "neo-monarchist".[9]
Yarvin's ideas have been influential among right-libertarians and paleolibertarians, and the public discourses of prominent investors like Peter Thiel have echoed Yarvin's project of seceding from the United States to establish tech-CEO dictatorships.[50][15] Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, an informal adviser to Donald Trump, has spoken approvingly of Yarvin's thinking.[51] Political strategist Steve Bannon has read and admired his work.[16] Vice-president JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence, saying in 2021, "So there's this guy Curtis Yarvin who has written about these things," which included "Retire All Government Employees," or RAGE, written in 2012. Vance said that if Trump became president again, "I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'"[17][52]
Yarvin suggested in a January 2025 New York Times interview that there was historical precedent to support his reasoning, asserting that in his first inaugural address FDR "essentially says, Hey, Congress, give me absolute power, or I'll take it anyway. So did FDR actually take that level of power? Yeah, he did." The interviewer, David Marchese, remarked that "Yarvin relies on what those sympathetic to his views might see as a helpful serving of historical references — and what others see as a highly distorting mix of gross oversimplification, cherry-picking and personal interpretation presented as fact."[51]
According to Tait, "Moldbug's relationship with the investor-entrepreneur Thiel is his most important connection."[15] Thiel was an investor in Yarvin's startup Tlon and gave $100,000 to Tlon's co-founder John Burnham in 2011.[53][15] In 2016, Yarvin privately asserted to Milo Yiannopoulos that he had been "coaching Thiel" and that he had watched the 2016 US election at Thiel's house.[54] In his writings, Yarvin has pointed to [u]a 2009 essay by Thiel, in which the latter declared: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible... Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron."[/u][55]
Investor Balaji Srinivasan has also echoed Yarvin's ideas of techno-corporate cameralism. He advocated in a 2013 speech a "society run by Silicon Valley [...] an opt-in society, ultimately outside the US, run by technology."[56][15]
Alt-right
Yarvin has been described as part of the alt-right by journalists and commentators.[44][57][10] Journalist Mike Wendling has called Yarvin "the alt-right's favorite philosophy instructor".[58][44] Tait describes Unqualified Reservations as a "'highbrow' predecessor and later companion to the transgressive anti-'politically correct' metapolitics of nebulous online communities like 4chan and /pol/."[15] Yarvin has publicly distanced himself from the alt-right. In a private message, Yarvin counseled Milo Yiannopoulos, then a reporter at Breitbart News, to deal with neo-Nazis "the way some perfectly tailored high-communist NYT reporter handles a herd of greasy anarchist hippies. Patronizing contempt. Your heart is in the right place, young lady, now get a shower and shave those pits."[59]
Writing in Vanity Fair, James Pogue said of Yarvin:
In Commonweal, Matt McManus said of Yarvin:
Yarvin came to public attention in February 2017 when Politico magazine reported that Steve Bannon, who served as White House Chief Strategist under U.S. President Donald Trump, read Yarvin's blog and that Yarvin "has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary."[62] The story was picked up by other magazines and newspapers, including The Atlantic, The Independent, and Mother Jones.[44][63][64] Yarvin denied to Vox that he was in contact with Bannon in any way,[9] but he jokingly told The Atlantic that his White House contact was the Twitter user Bronze Age Pervert.[44] Yarvin later gave a copy of Bronze Age Pervert's book Bronze Age Mindset to Michael Anton, a former senior national security official in the first Trump administration. Trump also named Anton to be the U.S. State Department Director of Policy Planning in his second presidency.[65][66][67]
In a May 2021 conversation, Anton said Yarvin was arguing that a president could "gain power lawfully through an election, and then exercise it unlawfully." Yarvin replied, "It wouldn't be unlawful. You'd simply declare a state of emergency in your inaugural address," adding, "you'd actually have a mandate to do this. Where would that mandate come from? It would come from basically running on it, saying, 'Hey, this is what we're going to do.'" He continued that if a hypothetical authoritarian president were to take office in January 2025, "you can't continue to have a Harvard or a New York Times past since perhaps the start of April" because "the idea that you're going to be a Caesar and take power and operate with someone else's Department of Reality in operation is just manifestly absurd. Machiavelli could tell you right away that that's a stupid idea."[20]
Views on race
Yarvin has alleged that whites have higher IQs than blacks for genetic reasons. He has been described as a modern-day supporter of slavery, a description he disputes.[68][31] He has claimed that some races are more suited to slavery than others.[31] In a post that linked approvingly to Steve Sailer and Jared Taylor, he wrote: "It should be obvious that, although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff. [Anti-anti-White Nationalist]"[44][69] In 2009, he wrote that since US civil rights programs were "applied to populations with recent hunter-gatherer ancestry and no great reputation for sturdy moral fiber", the result was "absolute human garbage."[70]
Yarvin disputes accusations of racism,[68] and in his essays, "Why I am not a White Nationalist" and "Why I am not an Anti-Semite," he offered a somewhat sympathetic analysis of those ideologies before ultimately rejecting them.[25] He has also described the use of IQ tests to determine superiority as "creepy".[31]
Personal life
Yarvin was married to Jennifer Kollmer, who died in 2021 and with whom he had two children.[71] He was briefly engaged to writer Lydia Laurenson, with whom he has one child.[60][72][73] He married Kristine Militello in 2024.[74]
He is an atheist.[24]
See also
• Anarchocapitalism
• Authoritarian capitalism
• Counter-Enlightenment
• Criticism of democracy
• Dark Enlightenment
• Far-right politics
• Fusionism
• Natural order
• Neo-feudalism
• Paleoconservatism
• Paleolibertarianism
• Radical right
• Reactionary
• Reactionary modernism
References
1. Tait 2019, p. 188: "He became the founding theorist of the 'neoreactionary' movement, an online collection of writers determined to theorize a superior alternative to democracy. ... Sometimes called the 'Reactionary Enlightenment', neoreaction is an alchemy of authoritarian and libertarian thought."
2. Smith & Burrows 2021, p. 145: "There are numerous individuals associated with NRx ideas, but four are perhaps key: two – Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land – might be considered the original 'builders' ... of the position."; p. 148: "Yarvin is probably the most important figure in NRx, as it would be fair to regard his UR blog as the foundational text of the movement ... Originally called 'neocameralism', his position soon became known as 'neoreactionary' philosophy (NRx) and then, once passed through Land's nihilist Deleuzian filter, as The Dark Enlightenment."
3. Kindinger, Evangelia; Schmitt, Mark (January 4, 2019). "Conclusion: Digital culture and the afterlife of white supremacist movements". The Intersections of Whiteness. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-11277-2. Retrieved November 29, 2022.
4. Gray, Rosie (February 10, 2017). "The Anti-Democracy Movement Influencing the Right". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 29, 2022.
5. Matthews, Dylan (April 18, 2016). "The alt-right is more than warmed-over white supremacy. It's that, but way way weirder". Vox. Archived from the original on August 31, 2017. Retrieved May 27, 2020.
6. Hawley, George (2017). Making sense of the alt-right. Columbia University Press. pp. 43–45. ISBN 978-0231185127.
7. Smith & Burrows 2021, p. 152.
8. Goldberg, Michelle (April 26, 2022). "Opinion | The Awful Advent of Reactionary Chic". The New York Times.
9. Matthews, Dylan (February 7, 2017). "Neo-monarchist blogger denies he's chatting with Steve Bannon". Vox. Archived from the original on May 20, 2020. Retrieved March 21, 2020.
10. Lecher, Colin (February 21, 2017). "Alt-right darling Mencius Moldbug wanted to destroy democracy. Now he wants to sell you web services". The Verge. Archived from the original on June 13, 2019. Retrieved June 14, 2019.
11. "The Moldbug Variations | Corey Pein". The Baffler. October 9, 2017. Retrieved February 4, 2025.
12. Lehmann, Chris (October 27, 2022). "The Reactionary Prophet of Silicon Valley". ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
13. Townsend, Tess (March 31, 2016). "Controversy Rages Over 'Pro-Slavery' Tech Speaker Curtis Yarvin". Inc. Archived from the original on January 28, 2025. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
14. "Chapter 3: AGW, KFM, and HNU | A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations | Unqualified Reservations by Mencius Moldbug". http://www.unqualified-reservations.org. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
15. Tait 2019, p. 200.
16. Tait 2019, p. 199.
17. Mahler, Jonathan; Mac, Ryan; Schleifer, Theodore (October 18, 2024). "How Tech Billionaires Became the G.O.P.'s New Donor Class". The New York Times.
18. "Curtis Yarvin wants American democracy toppled. He has some prominent Republican fans". October 24, 2022.
19. Ward, Ian (October 24, 2022). "The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance's Unusual Worldview". Politico.
20. WIlson, Jason (December 21, 2024). "He's anti-democracy and pro-Trump: the obscure 'dark enlightenment' blogger influencing the next US administration". The Guardian.
21. Ian, Ward (January 30, 2025). "Curtis Yarvin's Ideas Were Fringe. Now They're Coursing Through Trump's Washington". Politico.
22. Pein 2018, p. 211.
23. Tait 2019, pp. 189–190.
24. "Interview with Curtis Yarvin". Interviews with Max Raskin. Retrieved November 15, 2023.
25. Siegel 2022.
26. Yarvin, Curtis (October 26, 2011). "The Holocaust: A Nazi Perspective". Unqualified Reservations/MenciusMoldbug. Retrieved January 19, 2025.
27. Tait 2019, p. 189.
28. Tait 2019, p. 190.
29. Smith & Burrows 2021, pp. 152–153.
30. Pein, Corey (October 9, 2017) [October 9, 2017]. "The Moldbug Variations | Corey Pein". The Baffler. Archived from the original on July 31, 2024. Retrieved August 27, 2024.
31. Townsend, Tess (March 31, 2016). "Controversy Rages Over 'Pro-Slavery' Tech Speaker Curtis Yarvin". Inc.com. Archived from the original on April 1, 2016. Retrieved March 31, 2016. Yarvin's online writings, many under his pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, convey blatantly racist views. He expresses the belief that white people are genetically endowed with higher IQs than black people. He has suggested race may determine whether individuals are better suited for slavery, and his writing has been interpreted as supportive of the institution of slavery. ... Yarvin disputes that he agrees with the institution of slavery, but many interpret his writings as screeds supportive of bondage of black people. He writes in an email to Inc., 'I don't know if we can say *biologically* that part of the genius of the African-American people is the talent they showed in enduring slavery. But this is certainly true in a cultural and literary sense. In any case, it is easiest to admire a talent when one lacks it, as I do.' ... In Yarvin's Medium blog post, he wrote that while he disagrees with the concept that 'all races are equally smart,' he is not racist because he rejects what he refers to as 'IQism.'
32. Townsend, Tess (April 5, 2016). "Citing 'Open Society,' Racist Programmer's Allies Raise $20K on Indiegogo". Inc.com. Archived from the original on July 13, 2016. Retrieved September 17, 2016.
33. Tait 2019, p. 191.
34. Tait 2019, p. 192.
35. Tait 2019, p. 187.
36. Tait 2019, p. 198.
37. Prokop, Andrew (October 24, 2022). "Curtis Yarvin wants American democracy toppled. He has some prominent Republican fans". Vox. Retrieved July 27, 2024. Shut down elite media and academic institutions: Now, recall that, according to Yarvin's theories, true power is held by 'the Cathedral,' so they have to go, too. The new monarch/dictator should order them dissolved. 'You can't continue to have a Harvard or a New York Times past the start of April,' he told Anton. After that, he says, people should be allowed to form new associations and institutions if they want, but the existing Cathedral power bases must be torn down.
38. Ian, Ward (January 30, 2025). "Curtis Yarvin's Ideas Were Fringe. Now They're Coursing Through Trump's Washington". Politico.
39. Sullivan, Andrew (April 2017). "The Reactionary Temptation". New York. Archived from the original on November 20, 2018. Retrieved November 29, 2018.
40. Tait 2019, p. 195.
41. Tait 2019, p. 197.
42. Tait 2019, pp. 197–198.
43. Smith & Burrows 2021, p. 149.
44. Gray, Rosie (February 10, 2017). "Behind the Internet's Anti-Democracy Movement". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on February 10, 2017. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
45. Tait 2019, p. 196.
46. Pein 2018, pp. 216–217
47. Smith & Burrows 2021, p. 148
48. Hermansson et al. 2020, p. 65.
49. Moldbug, Mencius (June 19, 2008). "Chapter X: A Simple Sovereign Bankruptcy Procedure | An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives". Unqualified Reservations. If I had to choose one word and stick with it, I'd pick "restorationist." If I have to concede one pejorative which fair writers can fairly apply, I'll go with "reactionary." I'll even answer to any compound of the latter—"neoreactionary," "postreactionary," "ultrareactionary," etc.
50. Pein 2018, pp. 228–230.
51. Marchese, David (January 18, 2025). "Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening". The New York Times.
52. Del Valle, Gaby (October 16, 2024). "JD Vance thinks monarchists have some good ideas". The Verge.
53. Pein 2018, p. 228.
54. Tait 2019, p. 200; Hermansson et al. 2020, pp. 95–96; quoting Bernstein 2017 Archived January 25, 2021, at the Wayback Machine.
55. Smith & Burrows 2021, pp. 148–149; quoting Thiel 2009 Archived April 29, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
56. Pein 2018, pp. 278–281.
57. Bernstein, Joseph (October 5, 2017). "Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream". BuzzFeed News.
58. Wendling, Mike (2018). Alt Right: From 4chan to the White House. Pluto Press. pp. 28–29. ISBN 978-0-7453-3795-1.
59. Tait 2019, p. 199; quoting Bernstein 2017 Archived January 25, 2021, at the Wayback Machine.
60. Pogue, James (April 20, 2022). "Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets". Vanity Fair.
61. McManus, Matt (January 27, 2023) "Yarvin's Case Against Democracy." Commonweal. (Retrieved January 27, 2023.)
62. Johnson, Eliana; Stokols, Eli (February 2017). "What Steve Bannon Wants You to Read". Politico. Archived from the original on April 23, 2017. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
63. Revesz, Rachael (February 27, 2017). "Steve Bannon 'connects network of white nationalists' at the White House". The Independent. Archived from the original on April 18, 2017. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
64. Levy, Pema (March 26, 2017). "Stephen Bannon Is a Fan of a French Philosopher...Who Was an Anti-Semite and a Nazi Supporter". Mother Jones. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
65. Anton, Michael (August 14, 2019). "Are the Kids Al(t)right?". Claremont Review of Books. Archived from the original on August 24, 2019. Retrieved August 26, 2019.
66. Schreckinger, Ben (August 23, 2019). "The alt-right manifesto that has Trumpworld talking". Politico. Archived from the original on August 26, 2019. Retrieved August 26, 2019.
67. Irwin, Lauren (December 8, 2024). "Trump names several picks for State Department roles". The Hill.
68. Byars, Mitchell (April 6, 2016). "Speaker Curtis Yarvin's racial views bring controversy to Boulder conference". Daily Camera: Boulder News. Archived from the original on March 10, 2018. Retrieved June 30, 2016. A programming conference in Boulder this May has become surrounded by controversy after organizers decided to let Curtis Yarvin — a programmer who has blogged under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug about his views that white people are genetically smarter than black people — remain a speaker at the event. ... But Yarvin's views, which some have alleged are racist and endorse the institution of slavery, already have led to him being kicked out of a conference in 2015, and there has been pressure on LambdaConf to do the same. ... 'I am not an "outspoken advocate for slavery," a racist, a sexist or a fascist,' he wrote. 'I don't equate anatomical traits (whether sprinting speed or problem-solving efficiency) with moral superiority. ... '
69. Marantz, Andrew (2019). Antisocial: online extremists, techno-utopians, and the hijacking of the American conversation. Penguin. p. 156. ISBN 978-0525522263.
70. Tait 2019, p. 194; quoting Moldbug, 2009 archive.
71. Yarvin, Curtis (April 7, 2021). "Jennifer Kollmer, 1971-2021". Gray Mirror. Retrieved November 15, 2023.
72. "I Am No Longer Engaged To Curtis Yarvin -". archive.ph. September 27, 2022. Archived from the original on September 27, 2022. Retrieved July 16, 2024.
73. Yarvin, Curtis (September 25, 2022). "Podcasts and a personal note". Gray Mirror. Retrieved July 16, 2024.
74. Black, Julia (August 9, 2024). "The Far-Right Guru Who has Befriended Silicon Valley's Extreme Factions". The Information. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
Sources
• Hermansson, Patrik; Lawrence, David; Mulhall, Joe; Murdoch, Simon (2020). The International Alt-Right: Fascism for the 21st Century?. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-62709-5.
• Pein, Corey (2018). Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley. Metropolitan Books. ISBN 978-1-62779-486-2.
• Siegel, Jacob (March 31, 2022). "The Red-Pill Prince: How computer programmer Curtis Yarvin became America's most controversial political theorist". Tablet Magazine.
• Smith, Harrison; Burrows, Roger (2021). "Software, Sovereignty and the Post-Neoliberal Politics of Exit". Theory, Culture & Society. 38 (6): 143–166. doi:10.1177/0263276421999439. hdl:1983/9261276b-8184-482c-b184-915655df6c19. ISSN 0263-2764. S2CID 234839947.
• Tait, Joshua (2019). "Mencius Moldbug and Neoreaction". In Sedgwick, Mark (ed.). Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy. Oxford University Press. pp. 187–203. ISBN 978-0190877606.
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to Curtis Yarvin.
• Unqualified Reservations – his old blog
• Gray Mirror – his new blog
• Interview with Curtis Yarvin, The New York Times, January 2025
by Brian Tyler Cohen
Feb 15, 2025 Interviews with Brian Tyler Cohen
INTERVIEW - Brian interviews Rep. Jamie Raskin about Elon profiting off the federal government while simultaneously slashing programs for working class Americans.
Transcript @6:40
[Jamie Raskin] We need to be supporting the lawyers and the people who are willing to take Trump to court, because we are winning. And that's going to be a really important part of filling that gap you talk about between what the rule of law says, and then what's actually happening. Because we're dealing with a band of incorrigible, lawless plutocrats who think that they can just control the whole U.S. government. And I keep thinking about what Steve Bannon said about Elon Musk. He said he's a truly evil individual. He knows that whole crowd, so he knows what he's talking about. And so that's quite a statement. But in the Silicon Valley network of right-wing, billionaire, libertarian-turned-authoritarians, they are very open about the fact that they think that democracy is obsolete, we're living in a post-Constitutional America, and the Constitution no longer fits. And they are trying to get everybody ready for a Techno-State Monarchy. And in their writings about it, they suggest that seizure of the control of technology, and computers, and financial payments, is the essence to moving from one form of government to another.
So we're really talking about people who would like to abolish American Constitutional institutions, and representative democracy, and the rights and freedom of the people.
Their guy, Curtis Yarvin, who's their big intellectual hero, has said people have got to overcome their fear of the word "Dictator." He says a Dictator is basically just like a corporate CEO, who are all Dictators in their businesses.
The Corporation as Sovereign
by Allison D. Garrett
Maine Law Review
Volume 60 Number 1 Article 4
January 2008
Abstract
In the past two hundred years, sovereignty devolved from the monarch to the people in many countries; in our lifetimes, it has devolved in several significant ways from the people to the corporation. We are witnesses to the erosion of traditional Westphalian concepts of sovereignty, where the chess game of international politics is played out by nation-states, each governing a certain geographic area and group of people. Eulogies for the nation-state often cite globalization as the cause of death. The causa mortis is characterized by the increase in the power and normative influence of supranational organizations, such as the United Nations, World Bank, European Union, International Monetary Fund, and non-governmental organizations. Today, geography lacks the political significance it once had, as valuable commodities instantly pass over, through, and under geographic borders in the world’s most common language, binary code. Telecommunications, when combined with mobile capital and technology, “is viewed as obliterating spatial lines.” All of these changes have made the nation-state, as a geopolitical entity, far less significant than it has been in the past several decades. Corporations have stepped into this power vacuum with a reach and economic influence so broad that some of the duties of sovereign nations have fallen under their aegis. The power and influence of the world’s major corporations continue to grow, and with this growth their similarities to sovereign states increase. As the nation-state is prematurely eulogized, scholars are writing about the privatization of governance and commerce. Many scholars tend to focus on international relations and the extent to which relationships among nations have been transcended or superseded by private actors. For example, the concept of nations acting as private entities has been recognized in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which provides that “a foreign state shall not be immune . . . in any case in which the action is based upon a commercial activity carried on in the United States by a foreign state.” This Article focuses, instead, on how the distinction between corporations and the state is blurring, not only internationally, but also domestically, as corporations act in ways that make them similar to nation-states.
And so we need a Dictator that is the corporation, that's the United States of America. And obviously they have Elon Musk in mind, because he could never run for President, he wasn't born in the United States of America, and he's had citizenship in three different countries. He was actually an undocumented immigrant here for many months before he got work authorization, for all the right-wingers out there who want to kick all the undocumented people out of the country, although that might be an argument in their favor. I don't know. But in any event, these people are talking about supplanting our system of Constitutional democracy with a completely different kind of government controlled by Dictatorship.
******************
Curtis Yarvin
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/16/25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin
Yarvin in 2023
Born: 1973 (age 51–52)
Nationality: American
Other names: Mencius Moldbug
Education: Brown University (BA); University of California, Berkeley
Spouse(s): Jennifer Kollmer (died 2021); Kristine Militello (2024–)
School: Neo-monarchism; Neo-reactionism; Dark Enlightenment; Anti-egalitarianism; Anti-democracy; Anti-liberalism; Neocameralism; Technofeudalism
Website: Unqualified Reservations – his old blog; Gray Mirror – his new blog
Part of a series on Anarcho-capitalism
People
Bruce L. Benson; Walter Block; Bryan Caplan; Gerard Casey; Anthony de Jasay; David D. Friedman; Hans-Hermann Hoppe; Michael Huemer; Stephan Kinsella; Nick Land; Michael Malice; Javier Milei; Robert P. Murphy; Wendy McElroy; Lew Rockwell; Murray Rothbard; Joseph Salerno; Jeffrey Tucker; Tom Woods; Curtis Yarvin
Curtis Guy Yarvin (born 1973), also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, is an American blogger. He is known, along with philosopher Nick Land, for founding the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic philosophical movement known as the Dark Enlightenment or neo-reactionary movement (NRx).[1][2][3][4]
In his blog Unqualified Reservations, which he wrote from 2007 to 2014, and in his later newsletter Gray Mirror, which he started in 2020, he argues that American democracy is a failed experiment[5] that should be replaced by an accountable monarchy, similar to the governance structure of corporations.[6] In 2002, Yarvin began work on a personal software project that eventually became the Urbit networked computing platform. In 2013, he co-founded the company Tlon to oversee the Urbit project and helped lead it until 2019.[7]
Yarvin has been described as a "neo-reactionary", "neo-monarchist" and "neo-feudalist" who "sees liberalism as creating a Matrix-like totalitarian system, and who wants to replace American democracy with a sort of techno-monarchy".[8][9][10][11] He has defended the institution of slavery, and has suggested that certain races may be more naturally inclined toward servitude than others.[12][13] He has claimed that whites have higher IQs than black people, but does not consider himself a white nationalist. He is a critic of US civil rights programs, and has called the civil rights movement a "black-rage industry".[14]
Yarvin has influenced some prominent Silicon Valley investors and Republican politicians, with venture capitalist Peter Thiel described as his "most important connection".[15] Political strategist Steve Bannon has read and admired his work.[16] U.S. Vice President JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence.[17][18][19] Michael Anton, the State Department Director of Policy Planning during Trump's second presidency, has also discussed Yarvin's ideas.[20] In January 2025, Yarvin attended a Trump inaugural gala in Washington; Politico reported he was "an informal guest of honor" due to his "outsize influence over the Trumpian right."[21]
Biography
Early life and education
Curtis Guy Yarvin[22] was born in 1973 to a liberal, secular family.[23] His grandparents on his father's side were Jewish American and communists. His father, Herbert Yarvin, worked for the US government as a diplomat,[24] and his mother was a Protestant from Westchester County.[25] In 1985, he entered Johns Hopkins' longitudinal Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth. In 1988, Yarvin graduated from Wilde Lake High School,[26] a public high school in the planned community of Columbia, Maryland.
He attended Brown University from 1988 to 1992, then was a graduate student in a computer science PhD program at UC Berkeley before dropping out after a year and a half to join a tech company.[27][25] During the 1990s, Yarvin was influenced by the libertarian tech culture of Silicon Valley.[27] Yarvin read right-wing and American conservative works. The libertarian University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds introduced him to writers like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. The rejection of empiricism by Mises and the Austrian School, who favored instead deduction from first principles, influenced Yarvin's mindset.[28]
Yarvin's pen name, Mencius Moldbug, is a combination of the Confucian philosopher "Mencius" and a play on "goldbug."[24]
Urbit
In 2002, Yarvin founded the Urbit computer platform as a decentralized network of personal servers. In 2013, he co-founded the San Francisco-based company Tlön Corp to build out Urbit further with funding from Peter Thiel's venture capital arm, the Founders Fund.[29][30] In 2016, Yarvin was invited to present on the functional programming aspects of Urbit at LambdaConf 2016, which resulted in the withdrawal of five speakers, two sub-conferences, and several sponsors.[31][32] Yarvin left Tlön in January 2019, but retains some intellectual and financial involvement in the development of Urbit.[7]
Neo-reactionary blogging
Yarvin's reading of Thomas Carlyle convinced him that libertarianism was a doomed project without the inclusion of authoritarianism, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe's 2001 book "Democracy: The God That Failed," marked Yarvin's first break with democracy. Another influence was James Burnham, who asserted that real politics occurred through the actions of elites, beneath what he called apparent democratic or socialist rhetoric.[33] In the 2000s, the failures of US-led nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan strengthened Yarvin's anti-democratic views, the federal response to the 2008 financial crisis strengthened his libertarian convictions, and Barack Obama's election as US president later that year reinforced his belief that history inevitably progresses toward left-leaning societies.[34]
In 2007, Yarvin began the blog Unqualified Reservations to promote his political vision.[35] In an early blog post, he adapted a phrase from the movie The Matrix, repurposing "red pill" to mean a shattering of progressive illusions.[25] He largely stopped updating his blog in 2013, when he began to focus on Urbit; in April 2016, he announced that Unqualified Reservations had "completed its mission".[36]
In 2020, Yarvin began blogging his views on under the page name Gray Mirror.[18] His posts, such as "Reflections on the late election" (2020) and "The butterfly revolution" (2022), are thought experiments on how to achieve an American coup and replace democracy with a new form of monarchy, ideas that critics have described as "fascist".[37]
In January 2025, Yarvin attended a Trump inaugural gala in Washington, D.C., hosted by the far-right publishing house Passage Press; Politico reported he was "an informal guest of honor" due to his "outsize[d] influence over the Trumpian right."[38]
Views
Dark Enlightenment
Main article: Dark Enlightenment
Yarvin believes that real political power in the United States is held by something he calls "the Cathedral", an informal amalgam of universities and the mainstream press, which collude to sway public opinion.[39] According to him, a so-called "Brahmin" social class (in reference to the Brahmin class of India's caste system and the American Boston Brahmin) dominates American society, preaching progressive values to the masses. The socio-religious analogy originates from Yarvin's opinion that the progressive ideology of the Cathedral is delivered to and internalized by the general populace much in the same way religious authorities and institutions deliver religious dogma to fanatical worshippers. Yarvin and the Dark Enlightenment (sometimes abbreviated to "NRx") movement assert that the Cathedral's commitment to equality and justice erodes social order.[40] He advocates an American 'monarch' dissolving elite academic institutions and media outlets within the first few months of their reign.[37]
Drawing on computer metaphors, Yarvin contends that society needs a "hard reset" or a "rebooting", not a series of gradual political reforms.[41] Instead of activism, he advocates passivism, claiming that progressivism would fail without right-wing opposition.[42] According to him, NRx adherents should rather design "new architectures of exit" than engage in ineffective political activism.[43]
Yarvin argues for a "neo-cameralist" philosophy based on Frederick the Great of Prussia's cameralism.[44] In Yarvin's view, democratic governments are inefficient and wasteful and should be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations whose "shareholders" (large owners) elect an executive with total power, but who must serve at their pleasure.[41] The executive, unencumbered by liberal-democratic procedures, could rule efficiently much like a CEO-monarch.[41] Yarvin admires Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping for his pragmatic and market-oriented authoritarianism, and the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime. He sees the U.S. as soft on crime, dominated by economic and democratic delusions.[40]
Yarvin supports authoritarianism on right-libertarian grounds, claiming that the division of political sovereignty expands the scope of the state, whereas strong governments with clear hierarchies remain minimal and narrowly focused.[40] According to scholar Joshua Tait, "Moldbug imagines a radical libertarian utopia with maximum freedom in all things except politics."[45] He has favored same-sex marriage, freedom of religion, and private use of drugs, and has written against race- or gender-based discriminatory laws, although, according to Tait, "he self-consciously proposed private welfare and prison reforms that resembled slavery".[41] Tait describes Yarvin's writing as contradictory, saying: "He advocates hierarchy, yet deeply resents cultural elites. His political vision is futuristic and libertarian, yet expressed in the language of monarchy and reaction. He is irreligious and socially liberal on many issues but angrily anti-progressive. He presents himself as a thinker searching for truth but admits to lying to his readers, saturating his arguments with jokes and irony. These tensions indicate broader fissures among the online Right."[27]
Under his Moldbug pseudonym, Yarvin gave a talk about "rebooting" the American government at the 2012 BIL Conference. He used it to advocate the acronym "RAGE", which he defined as "Retire All Government Employees". He described what he felt were flaws in the accepted "World War II mythology", alluding to the idea that Hitler's invasions were acts of self-defense. He argued these discrepancies were pushed by America's "ruling communists", who invented political correctness as an "extremely elaborate mechanism for persecuting racists and fascists". "If Americans want to change their government," he said, "they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia."[46]
In the inaugural article published on Unqualified Reservations in 2007, entitled a formalist manifesto, Yarvin called his concept of aligning property rights with political power "formalism", that is, the formal recognition of realities of the existing power, which should eventually be replaced in his views by a new ideology that rejects progressive doctrines transmitted by the Cathedral.[45][47] Yarvin's first use of the term "neoreactionary" to describe his project occurred in 2008.[48][49] His ideas have also been described by Dylan Matthews of Vox as "neo-monarchist".[9]
Yarvin's ideas have been influential among right-libertarians and paleolibertarians, and the public discourses of prominent investors like Peter Thiel have echoed Yarvin's project of seceding from the United States to establish tech-CEO dictatorships.[50][15] Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, an informal adviser to Donald Trump, has spoken approvingly of Yarvin's thinking.[51] Political strategist Steve Bannon has read and admired his work.[16] Vice-president JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence, saying in 2021, "So there's this guy Curtis Yarvin who has written about these things," which included "Retire All Government Employees," or RAGE, written in 2012. Vance said that if Trump became president again, "I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'"[17][52]
Yarvin suggested in a January 2025 New York Times interview that there was historical precedent to support his reasoning, asserting that in his first inaugural address FDR "essentially says, Hey, Congress, give me absolute power, or I'll take it anyway. So did FDR actually take that level of power? Yeah, he did." The interviewer, David Marchese, remarked that "Yarvin relies on what those sympathetic to his views might see as a helpful serving of historical references — and what others see as a highly distorting mix of gross oversimplification, cherry-picking and personal interpretation presented as fact."[51]
According to Tait, "Moldbug's relationship with the investor-entrepreneur Thiel is his most important connection."[15] Thiel was an investor in Yarvin's startup Tlon and gave $100,000 to Tlon's co-founder John Burnham in 2011.[53][15] In 2016, Yarvin privately asserted to Milo Yiannopoulos that he had been "coaching Thiel" and that he had watched the 2016 US election at Thiel's house.[54] In his writings, Yarvin has pointed to [u]a 2009 essay by Thiel, in which the latter declared: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible... Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron."[/u][55]
Investor Balaji Srinivasan has also echoed Yarvin's ideas of techno-corporate cameralism. He advocated in a 2013 speech a "society run by Silicon Valley [...] an opt-in society, ultimately outside the US, run by technology."[56][15]
Alt-right
Yarvin has been described as part of the alt-right by journalists and commentators.[44][57][10] Journalist Mike Wendling has called Yarvin "the alt-right's favorite philosophy instructor".[58][44] Tait describes Unqualified Reservations as a "'highbrow' predecessor and later companion to the transgressive anti-'politically correct' metapolitics of nebulous online communities like 4chan and /pol/."[15] Yarvin has publicly distanced himself from the alt-right. In a private message, Yarvin counseled Milo Yiannopoulos, then a reporter at Breitbart News, to deal with neo-Nazis "the way some perfectly tailored high-communist NYT reporter handles a herd of greasy anarchist hippies. Patronizing contempt. Your heart is in the right place, young lady, now get a shower and shave those pits."[59]
Writing in Vanity Fair, James Pogue said of Yarvin:
Some of Yarvin's writing from (his blog Unqualified Reservations) is so radically right wing that it almost has to be read to be believed, like the time he critiqued the attacks by the Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik—who killed 77 people, including dozens of children at a youth camp—not on the grounds that terrorism is wrong but because the killings wouldn't do anything effective to overthrow what Yarvin called Norway's 'communist' government. He argued that Nelson Mandela, once head of the military wing of the African National Congress, had endorsed terror tactics and political murder against opponents and said anyone who claimed 'St. Mandela' was more innocent than Breivik might have 'a mother you'd like to fuck.'[60]
In Commonweal, Matt McManus said of Yarvin:
He comes across as a kind of third-rate authoritarian David Foster Wallace, combining post-postmodern bookish eclecticism with a yearning to communicate with and influence young disaffected white men. His writings are full of dubious historical claims usually mixed with thinly veiled bigotry and a powdery kind of middle-class snobbery.[61]
Yarvin came to public attention in February 2017 when Politico magazine reported that Steve Bannon, who served as White House Chief Strategist under U.S. President Donald Trump, read Yarvin's blog and that Yarvin "has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary."[62] The story was picked up by other magazines and newspapers, including The Atlantic, The Independent, and Mother Jones.[44][63][64] Yarvin denied to Vox that he was in contact with Bannon in any way,[9] but he jokingly told The Atlantic that his White House contact was the Twitter user Bronze Age Pervert.[44] Yarvin later gave a copy of Bronze Age Pervert's book Bronze Age Mindset to Michael Anton, a former senior national security official in the first Trump administration. Trump also named Anton to be the U.S. State Department Director of Policy Planning in his second presidency.[65][66][67]
In a May 2021 conversation, Anton said Yarvin was arguing that a president could "gain power lawfully through an election, and then exercise it unlawfully." Yarvin replied, "It wouldn't be unlawful. You'd simply declare a state of emergency in your inaugural address," adding, "you'd actually have a mandate to do this. Where would that mandate come from? It would come from basically running on it, saying, 'Hey, this is what we're going to do.'" He continued that if a hypothetical authoritarian president were to take office in January 2025, "you can't continue to have a Harvard or a New York Times past since perhaps the start of April" because "the idea that you're going to be a Caesar and take power and operate with someone else's Department of Reality in operation is just manifestly absurd. Machiavelli could tell you right away that that's a stupid idea."[20]
Views on race
Yarvin has alleged that whites have higher IQs than blacks for genetic reasons. He has been described as a modern-day supporter of slavery, a description he disputes.[68][31] He has claimed that some races are more suited to slavery than others.[31] In a post that linked approvingly to Steve Sailer and Jared Taylor, he wrote: "It should be obvious that, although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff. [Anti-anti-White Nationalist]"[44][69] In 2009, he wrote that since US civil rights programs were "applied to populations with recent hunter-gatherer ancestry and no great reputation for sturdy moral fiber", the result was "absolute human garbage."[70]
Yarvin disputes accusations of racism,[68] and in his essays, "Why I am not a White Nationalist" and "Why I am not an Anti-Semite," he offered a somewhat sympathetic analysis of those ideologies before ultimately rejecting them.[25] He has also described the use of IQ tests to determine superiority as "creepy".[31]
Personal life
Yarvin was married to Jennifer Kollmer, who died in 2021 and with whom he had two children.[71] He was briefly engaged to writer Lydia Laurenson, with whom he has one child.[60][72][73] He married Kristine Militello in 2024.[74]
He is an atheist.[24]
See also
• Anarchocapitalism
• Authoritarian capitalism
• Counter-Enlightenment
• Criticism of democracy
• Dark Enlightenment
• Far-right politics
• Fusionism
• Natural order
• Neo-feudalism
• Paleoconservatism
• Paleolibertarianism
• Radical right
• Reactionary
• Reactionary modernism
References
1. Tait 2019, p. 188: "He became the founding theorist of the 'neoreactionary' movement, an online collection of writers determined to theorize a superior alternative to democracy. ... Sometimes called the 'Reactionary Enlightenment', neoreaction is an alchemy of authoritarian and libertarian thought."
2. Smith & Burrows 2021, p. 145: "There are numerous individuals associated with NRx ideas, but four are perhaps key: two – Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land – might be considered the original 'builders' ... of the position."; p. 148: "Yarvin is probably the most important figure in NRx, as it would be fair to regard his UR blog as the foundational text of the movement ... Originally called 'neocameralism', his position soon became known as 'neoreactionary' philosophy (NRx) and then, once passed through Land's nihilist Deleuzian filter, as The Dark Enlightenment."
3. Kindinger, Evangelia; Schmitt, Mark (January 4, 2019). "Conclusion: Digital culture and the afterlife of white supremacist movements". The Intersections of Whiteness. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-11277-2. Retrieved November 29, 2022.
4. Gray, Rosie (February 10, 2017). "The Anti-Democracy Movement Influencing the Right". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 29, 2022.
5. Matthews, Dylan (April 18, 2016). "The alt-right is more than warmed-over white supremacy. It's that, but way way weirder". Vox. Archived from the original on August 31, 2017. Retrieved May 27, 2020.
6. Hawley, George (2017). Making sense of the alt-right. Columbia University Press. pp. 43–45. ISBN 978-0231185127.
7. Smith & Burrows 2021, p. 152.
8. Goldberg, Michelle (April 26, 2022). "Opinion | The Awful Advent of Reactionary Chic". The New York Times.
9. Matthews, Dylan (February 7, 2017). "Neo-monarchist blogger denies he's chatting with Steve Bannon". Vox. Archived from the original on May 20, 2020. Retrieved March 21, 2020.
10. Lecher, Colin (February 21, 2017). "Alt-right darling Mencius Moldbug wanted to destroy democracy. Now he wants to sell you web services". The Verge. Archived from the original on June 13, 2019. Retrieved June 14, 2019.
11. "The Moldbug Variations | Corey Pein". The Baffler. October 9, 2017. Retrieved February 4, 2025.
12. Lehmann, Chris (October 27, 2022). "The Reactionary Prophet of Silicon Valley". ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
13. Townsend, Tess (March 31, 2016). "Controversy Rages Over 'Pro-Slavery' Tech Speaker Curtis Yarvin". Inc. Archived from the original on January 28, 2025. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
14. "Chapter 3: AGW, KFM, and HNU | A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations | Unqualified Reservations by Mencius Moldbug". http://www.unqualified-reservations.org. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
15. Tait 2019, p. 200.
16. Tait 2019, p. 199.
17. Mahler, Jonathan; Mac, Ryan; Schleifer, Theodore (October 18, 2024). "How Tech Billionaires Became the G.O.P.'s New Donor Class". The New York Times.
18. "Curtis Yarvin wants American democracy toppled. He has some prominent Republican fans". October 24, 2022.
19. Ward, Ian (October 24, 2022). "The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance's Unusual Worldview". Politico.
20. WIlson, Jason (December 21, 2024). "He's anti-democracy and pro-Trump: the obscure 'dark enlightenment' blogger influencing the next US administration". The Guardian.
21. Ian, Ward (January 30, 2025). "Curtis Yarvin's Ideas Were Fringe. Now They're Coursing Through Trump's Washington". Politico.
22. Pein 2018, p. 211.
23. Tait 2019, pp. 189–190.
24. "Interview with Curtis Yarvin". Interviews with Max Raskin. Retrieved November 15, 2023.
25. Siegel 2022.
26. Yarvin, Curtis (October 26, 2011). "The Holocaust: A Nazi Perspective". Unqualified Reservations/MenciusMoldbug. Retrieved January 19, 2025.
27. Tait 2019, p. 189.
28. Tait 2019, p. 190.
29. Smith & Burrows 2021, pp. 152–153.
30. Pein, Corey (October 9, 2017) [October 9, 2017]. "The Moldbug Variations | Corey Pein". The Baffler. Archived from the original on July 31, 2024. Retrieved August 27, 2024.
31. Townsend, Tess (March 31, 2016). "Controversy Rages Over 'Pro-Slavery' Tech Speaker Curtis Yarvin". Inc.com. Archived from the original on April 1, 2016. Retrieved March 31, 2016. Yarvin's online writings, many under his pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, convey blatantly racist views. He expresses the belief that white people are genetically endowed with higher IQs than black people. He has suggested race may determine whether individuals are better suited for slavery, and his writing has been interpreted as supportive of the institution of slavery. ... Yarvin disputes that he agrees with the institution of slavery, but many interpret his writings as screeds supportive of bondage of black people. He writes in an email to Inc., 'I don't know if we can say *biologically* that part of the genius of the African-American people is the talent they showed in enduring slavery. But this is certainly true in a cultural and literary sense. In any case, it is easiest to admire a talent when one lacks it, as I do.' ... In Yarvin's Medium blog post, he wrote that while he disagrees with the concept that 'all races are equally smart,' he is not racist because he rejects what he refers to as 'IQism.'
32. Townsend, Tess (April 5, 2016). "Citing 'Open Society,' Racist Programmer's Allies Raise $20K on Indiegogo". Inc.com. Archived from the original on July 13, 2016. Retrieved September 17, 2016.
33. Tait 2019, p. 191.
34. Tait 2019, p. 192.
35. Tait 2019, p. 187.
36. Tait 2019, p. 198.
37. Prokop, Andrew (October 24, 2022). "Curtis Yarvin wants American democracy toppled. He has some prominent Republican fans". Vox. Retrieved July 27, 2024. Shut down elite media and academic institutions: Now, recall that, according to Yarvin's theories, true power is held by 'the Cathedral,' so they have to go, too. The new monarch/dictator should order them dissolved. 'You can't continue to have a Harvard or a New York Times past the start of April,' he told Anton. After that, he says, people should be allowed to form new associations and institutions if they want, but the existing Cathedral power bases must be torn down.
38. Ian, Ward (January 30, 2025). "Curtis Yarvin's Ideas Were Fringe. Now They're Coursing Through Trump's Washington". Politico.
39. Sullivan, Andrew (April 2017). "The Reactionary Temptation". New York. Archived from the original on November 20, 2018. Retrieved November 29, 2018.
40. Tait 2019, p. 195.
41. Tait 2019, p. 197.
42. Tait 2019, pp. 197–198.
43. Smith & Burrows 2021, p. 149.
44. Gray, Rosie (February 10, 2017). "Behind the Internet's Anti-Democracy Movement". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on February 10, 2017. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
45. Tait 2019, p. 196.
46. Pein 2018, pp. 216–217
47. Smith & Burrows 2021, p. 148
48. Hermansson et al. 2020, p. 65.
49. Moldbug, Mencius (June 19, 2008). "Chapter X: A Simple Sovereign Bankruptcy Procedure | An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives". Unqualified Reservations. If I had to choose one word and stick with it, I'd pick "restorationist." If I have to concede one pejorative which fair writers can fairly apply, I'll go with "reactionary." I'll even answer to any compound of the latter—"neoreactionary," "postreactionary," "ultrareactionary," etc.
50. Pein 2018, pp. 228–230.
51. Marchese, David (January 18, 2025). "Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening". The New York Times.
52. Del Valle, Gaby (October 16, 2024). "JD Vance thinks monarchists have some good ideas". The Verge.
53. Pein 2018, p. 228.
54. Tait 2019, p. 200; Hermansson et al. 2020, pp. 95–96; quoting Bernstein 2017 Archived January 25, 2021, at the Wayback Machine.
55. Smith & Burrows 2021, pp. 148–149; quoting Thiel 2009 Archived April 29, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
56. Pein 2018, pp. 278–281.
57. Bernstein, Joseph (October 5, 2017). "Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream". BuzzFeed News.
58. Wendling, Mike (2018). Alt Right: From 4chan to the White House. Pluto Press. pp. 28–29. ISBN 978-0-7453-3795-1.
59. Tait 2019, p. 199; quoting Bernstein 2017 Archived January 25, 2021, at the Wayback Machine.
60. Pogue, James (April 20, 2022). "Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets". Vanity Fair.
61. McManus, Matt (January 27, 2023) "Yarvin's Case Against Democracy." Commonweal. (Retrieved January 27, 2023.)
62. Johnson, Eliana; Stokols, Eli (February 2017). "What Steve Bannon Wants You to Read". Politico. Archived from the original on April 23, 2017. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
63. Revesz, Rachael (February 27, 2017). "Steve Bannon 'connects network of white nationalists' at the White House". The Independent. Archived from the original on April 18, 2017. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
64. Levy, Pema (March 26, 2017). "Stephen Bannon Is a Fan of a French Philosopher...Who Was an Anti-Semite and a Nazi Supporter". Mother Jones. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
65. Anton, Michael (August 14, 2019). "Are the Kids Al(t)right?". Claremont Review of Books. Archived from the original on August 24, 2019. Retrieved August 26, 2019.
66. Schreckinger, Ben (August 23, 2019). "The alt-right manifesto that has Trumpworld talking". Politico. Archived from the original on August 26, 2019. Retrieved August 26, 2019.
67. Irwin, Lauren (December 8, 2024). "Trump names several picks for State Department roles". The Hill.
68. Byars, Mitchell (April 6, 2016). "Speaker Curtis Yarvin's racial views bring controversy to Boulder conference". Daily Camera: Boulder News. Archived from the original on March 10, 2018. Retrieved June 30, 2016. A programming conference in Boulder this May has become surrounded by controversy after organizers decided to let Curtis Yarvin — a programmer who has blogged under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug about his views that white people are genetically smarter than black people — remain a speaker at the event. ... But Yarvin's views, which some have alleged are racist and endorse the institution of slavery, already have led to him being kicked out of a conference in 2015, and there has been pressure on LambdaConf to do the same. ... 'I am not an "outspoken advocate for slavery," a racist, a sexist or a fascist,' he wrote. 'I don't equate anatomical traits (whether sprinting speed or problem-solving efficiency) with moral superiority. ... '
69. Marantz, Andrew (2019). Antisocial: online extremists, techno-utopians, and the hijacking of the American conversation. Penguin. p. 156. ISBN 978-0525522263.
70. Tait 2019, p. 194; quoting Moldbug, 2009 archive.
71. Yarvin, Curtis (April 7, 2021). "Jennifer Kollmer, 1971-2021". Gray Mirror. Retrieved November 15, 2023.
72. "I Am No Longer Engaged To Curtis Yarvin -". archive.ph. September 27, 2022. Archived from the original on September 27, 2022. Retrieved July 16, 2024.
73. Yarvin, Curtis (September 25, 2022). "Podcasts and a personal note". Gray Mirror. Retrieved July 16, 2024.
74. Black, Julia (August 9, 2024). "The Far-Right Guru Who has Befriended Silicon Valley's Extreme Factions". The Information. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
Sources
• Hermansson, Patrik; Lawrence, David; Mulhall, Joe; Murdoch, Simon (2020). The International Alt-Right: Fascism for the 21st Century?. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-62709-5.
• Pein, Corey (2018). Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley. Metropolitan Books. ISBN 978-1-62779-486-2.
• Siegel, Jacob (March 31, 2022). "The Red-Pill Prince: How computer programmer Curtis Yarvin became America's most controversial political theorist". Tablet Magazine.
• Smith, Harrison; Burrows, Roger (2021). "Software, Sovereignty and the Post-Neoliberal Politics of Exit". Theory, Culture & Society. 38 (6): 143–166. doi:10.1177/0263276421999439. hdl:1983/9261276b-8184-482c-b184-915655df6c19. ISSN 0263-2764. S2CID 234839947.
• Tait, Joshua (2019). "Mencius Moldbug and Neoreaction". In Sedgwick, Mark (ed.). Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy. Oxford University Press. pp. 187–203. ISBN 978-0190877606.
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to Curtis Yarvin.
• Unqualified Reservations – his old blog
• Gray Mirror – his new blog
• Interview with Curtis Yarvin, The New York Times, January 2025
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Part 1 of 2
Anarcho-capitalism
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/16/25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism (colloquially: ancap or an-cap) is a political philosophy and economic theory which posits that all government institutions are unnecessary or harmful and can be abolished or replaced with private ones.[2] Anarcho-capitalists hold that society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through the voluntary exchange of goods and services. This would ideally result in a voluntary society[3][4][5][6] based on concepts such as the non-aggression principle, free markets and self-ownership. In such a society, private property rights would be enforced by private agencies. In the absence of statute, private defence agencies and/or insurance companies would operate competitively in a market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police.
According to its proponents, various historical theorists have espoused philosophies similar to anarcho-capitalism.[7] While the earliest extant attestation of "anarchocapitalism" [sic] is in Karl Hess's essay "The Death of Politics" published by Playboy in March 1969,[8][9] American economist Murray Rothbard was credited with coining the terms anarcho-capitalist[10][11] and anarcho-capitalism in 1971.[12] A leading figure in the 20th-century American libertarian movement,[6] Rothbard synthesized elements from the Austrian School, classical liberalism and 19th-century American individualist anarchists and mutualists Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, while rejecting the labor theory of value.[13][14][15] Rothbard's anarcho-capitalist society would operate under a mutually agreed-upon "legal code which would be generally accepted, and which the courts would pledge themselves to follow".[16] This legal code would recognize contracts between individuals, private property, self-ownership and tort law in keeping with the non-aggression principle.[6][16][17] Unlike a state, enforcement measures would only apply to those who initiated force or fraud.[18] Rothbard views the power of the state as unjustified, arguing that it violates individual rights, reduces prosperity, and creates social and economic problems.[6]
Anarcho-capitalists and right-libertarians cite several historical precedents of what they believe to be examples of quasi-anarcho-capitalism,[23] including the Republic of Cospaia,[24] Acadia,[25] Anglo-Saxon England,[26][3] Medieval Iceland,[25] the American Old West,[25] Gaelic Ireland,[6] and merchant law, admiralty law, and early common law.
Anarcho-capitalism is distinguished from minarchism, which advocates a minimal governing body (typically a night-watchman state limited to protecting individuals from aggression and enforcing private property) and from objectivism (which is a broader philosophy advocating a limited role, yet unlimited size, of said government).[27] Anarcho-capitalists consider themselves to be anarchists whilst supporting private property and private institutions, as opposed to Anarcho-communism, which rejects these ideas.[26]
Classification
See also: Anarchism and capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism developed from Austrian School-neoliberalism and individualist anarchism.[28][29][30][31][32][33][34] Most left wing anarchist movements do not consider anarcho-capitalism to be anarchist because it lacks the historically central anti-capitalist emphasis of older ideas of anarchism. They also argue that anarchism is incompatible with capitalist structures .[35][36][37][38][39][40] According to several scholars, Anarcho-capitalism lies outside the tradition of the vast majority of anarchist schools of thought and is more closely affiliated with capitalism, right-libertarianism and neoliberalism.[35][41][42][43][44][45] Traditionally, left-anarchists oppose and reject capitalism, and consider anarcho-capitalism to be a contradiction in terms,[46][47][48] although anarcho-capitalists and some right-libertarians consider anarcho-capitalism to be a form of anarchism, or even the only legitimate form of anarchism.[49][50][51][52]
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica:[6]
Anarcho-capitalism is occasionally seen as part of the New Right.[53][54]
Philosophy
Murray Rothbard in the 1970s
Author J Michael Oliver says that during the 1960s, a philosophical movement arose in the US that championed "reason, ethical egoism, and free-market capitalism". According to Oliver, anarcho-capitalism is a political theory which logically follows the philosophical conclusions of Objectivism, a philosophical system developed by Ayn Rand, but he acknowledges that his advocacy of anarcho-capitalism is "quite at odds with Rand's ardent defense of 'limited government'".[55] Professor Lisa Duggan also says that Rand's anti-statist, pro–free market stances went on to shape the politics of anarcho-capitalism.[56]
According to Patrik Schumacher, the political ideology and programme of anarcho-capitalism envisages the radicalization of the neoliberal "rollback of the state", and calls for the extension of "entrepreneurial freedom" and "competitive market rationality" to the point where the scope for private enterprise is all-encompassing and "leaves no space for state action whatsoever".[57]
On the state
Anarcho-capitalists oppose the state and seek to privatize any useful service the government presently provides, such as education, infrastructure, or the enforcement of law.[57][58] They see capitalism and the free market as the basis for a free and prosperous society. Murray Rothbard stated that the difference between free-market capitalism and state capitalism is the difference between "peaceful, voluntary exchange" and a "collusive partnership" between business and government that "uses coercion to subvert the free market".[59] Rothbard argued that all government services, including defense, are inefficient because they lack a market-based pricing mechanism regulated by "the voluntary decisions of consumers purchasing services that fulfill their highest-priority needs" and by investors seeking the most profitable enterprises to invest in.[60]: 1051
Maverick Edwards of the Liberty University describes anarcho-capitalism as a political, social, and economic theory that places markets as the central "governing body" and where government no longer "grants" rights to its citizenry.[65]
Non-aggression principle
Writer Stanisław Wójtowicz says that although anarcho-capitalists are against centralized states, they believe that all people would naturally share and agree to a specific moral theory based on the non-aggression principle.[66] While the Friedmanian formulation of anarcho-capitalism is robust to the presence of violence and in fact, assumes some degree of violence will occur,[67] anarcho-capitalism as formulated by Rothbard and others holds strongly to the central libertarian nonaggression axiom,[66] sometimes non-aggression principle. Rothbard wrote:
Rothbard's defense of the self-ownership principle stems from what he believed to be his falsification of all other alternatives, namely that either a group of people can own another group of people, or that no single person has full ownership over one's self. Rothbard dismisses these two cases on the basis that they cannot result in a universal ethic, i.e. a just natural law that can govern all people, independent of place and time. The only alternative that remains to Rothbard is self-ownership which he believes is both axiomatic and universal.[68]
In general, the non-aggression axiom is described by Rothbard as a prohibition against the initiation of force, or the threat of force, against persons (in which he includes direct violence, assault and murder) or property (in which he includes fraud, burglary, theft and taxation).[16]: 24–25 The initiation of force is usually referred to as aggression or coercion. The difference between anarcho-capitalists and other libertarians is largely one of the degree to which they take this axiom. Minarchist libertarians such as libertarian political parties would retain the state in some smaller and less invasive form, retaining at the very least public police, courts, and military. However, others might give further allowance for other government programs. In contrast, Rothbard rejects any level of "state intervention", defining the state as a coercive monopoly and as the only entity in human society, excluding acknowledged criminals, that derives its income entirely from coercion, in the form of taxation, which Rothbard describes as "compulsory seizure of the property of the State's inhabitants, or subjects."[68]
Some anarcho-capitalists such as Rothbard accept the non-aggression axiom on an intrinsic moral or natural law basis. It is in terms of the non-aggression principle that Rothbard defined his interpretation of anarchism, "a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression ['against person and property']"; and wrote that "what anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the State, i.e. to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion".[69] In an interview published in the American libertarian journal The New Banner, Rothbard stated that "capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism".[49]
Property
Private property
Anarcho-capitalists postulate the privatization of everything, including cities with all their infrastructures, public spaces, streets and urban management systems.[57][70]
Central to Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism are the concepts of self-ownership and original appropriation that combines personal and private property. Hans-Hermann Hoppe wrote:
Rothbard however rejected the Lockean proviso, and followed the rule of "first come, first served", without any consideration of how much resources are left for other individuals.[72][73]
Anarcho-capitalists advocate private ownership of the means of production and the allocation of the product of labor created by workers within the context of wage labour and the free market – that is through decisions made by property and capital owners, regardless of what an individual needs or does not need.[74] Original appropriation allows an individual to claim any never-before-used resources, including land and by improving or otherwise using it, own it with the same "absolute right" as their own body, and retaining those rights forever, regardless of whether the resource is still being used by them. According to Rothbard, property can only come about through labor, therefore original appropriation of land is not legitimate by merely claiming it or building a fence around it – it is only by using land and by mixing one's labor with it that original appropriation is legitimized: "Any attempt to claim a new resource that someone does not use would have to be considered invasive of the property right of whoever the first user will turn out to be". Rothbard argued that the resource need not continue to be used in order for it to be the person's property as "for once his labor is mixed with the natural resource, it remains his owned land. His labor has been irretrievably mixed with the land, and the land is therefore his or his assigns' in perpetuity".[75]: 170
Rothbard also spoke about a theory of justice in property rights:
In Justice and Property Rights, Rothbard wrote that "any identifiable owner (the original victim of theft or his heir) must be accorded his property".[76][77] In the case of slavery, Rothbard claimed that in many cases "the old plantations and the heirs and descendants of the former slaves can be identified, and the reparations can become highly specific indeed". Rothbard believed slaves rightfully own any land they were forced to work on under the homestead principle. If property is held by the state, Rothbard advocated its confiscation and "return to the private sector",[78] writing that "any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible".[79] Rothbard proposed that state universities be seized by the students and faculty under the homestead principle. Rothbard also supported the expropriation of nominally "private property" if it is the result of state-initiated force such as businesses that receive grants and subsidies.[80] Rothbard further proposed that businesses who receive at least 50% of their funding from the state be confiscated by the workers,[81][82] writing: "What we libertarians object to, then, is not government per se but crime, what we object to is unjust or criminal property titles; what we are for is not 'private' property per se but just, innocent, non-criminal private property".[79]
Similarly, Karl Hess wrote that "libertarianism wants to advance principles of property but that it in no way wishes to defend, willy nilly, all property which now is called private ... Much of that property is stolen. Much is of dubious title. All of it is deeply intertwined with an immoral, coercive state system".[83]
Common property
As opposed to most other anarchists,[84] most anarcho-capitalists reject the commons.[85] However, some of them propose that non-state public or community property can also exist in an anarcho-capitalist society.[85] For anarcho-capitalists, what is important is that it is "acquired" and transferred without help or hindrance from what they call the "compulsory state". Deontological anarcho-capitalists believe that the only just and most economically beneficial way to acquire property is through voluntary trade, gift, or labor-based original appropriation, rather than through aggression or fraud.[86]
Anarcho-capitalists state that there could be cases where common property may develop in a Lockean natural rights framework. Anarcho-capitalists make the example of a number of private businesses which may arise in an area, each owning the land and buildings that they use, but they argue that the paths between them become cleared and trodden incrementally through customer and commercial movement. These thoroughfares may become valuable to the community, but according to them ownership cannot be attributed to any single person and original appropriation does not apply because many contributed the labor necessary to create them. In order to prevent it from falling to the "tragedy of the commons", anarcho-capitalists suggest transitioning from common to private property, wherein an individual would make a homesteading claim based on disuse, acquire title by the assent of the community consensus, form a corporation with other involved parties, or other means.[85]
American economist Randall G. Holcombe sees challenges stemming from the idea of common property under anarcho-capitalism, such as whether an individual might claim fishing rights in the area of a major shipping lane and thereby forbid passage through it.[85] In contrast, Hoppe's work on anarcho-capitalist theory is based on the assumption that all property is privately held, "including all streets, rivers, airports, and harbors" which forms the foundation of his views on immigration.[85]
Intellectual property
Most anarcho-capitalists strongly oppose intellectual property (i.e., trademarks, patents, copyrights). Stephan N. Kinsella argues that ownership only relates to tangible assets.[87]
Contractual society
The society envisioned by anarcho-capitalists has been labelled by them as a "contractual society" which Rothbard described as "a society based purely on voluntary action, entirely unhampered by violence or threats of violence"[75]: 84 The system relies on contracts between individuals as the legal framework which would be enforced by private police and security forces as well as private arbitrations.[88][89][90]
Rothbard argues that limited liability for corporations could also exist through contract, arguing that "[c]orporations are not at all monopolistic privileges; they are free associations of individuals pooling their capital. On the purely free market, those men would simply announce to their creditors that their liability is limited to the capital specifically invested in the corporation".[60]
There are limits to the right to contract under some interpretations of anarcho-capitalism. Rothbard believes that the right to contract is based in inalienable rights[68] and because of this any contract that implicitly violates those rights can be voided at will, preventing a person from permanently selling himself or herself into unindentured slavery. That restriction aside, the right to contract under anarcho-capitalist order would be pretty broad. For example, Rothbard went as far as to justify stork markets, arguing that a market in guardianship rights would facilitate the transfer of guardianship from abusive or neglectful parents to those more interested or suited to raising children.[91][92] Other anarcho-capitalists have also suggested the legalization of organ markets, as in Iran's renal market. Other interpretations conclude that banning such contracts would in itself be an unacceptably invasive interference in the right to contract.[93]
Included in the right of contract is "the right to contract oneself out for employment by others". While anarchists criticize wage labour describing it as wage slavery, anarcho-capitalists view it as a consensual contract.[94] Some anarcho-capitalists prefer to see self-employment prevail over wage labor. David D. Friedman has expressed a preference for a society where "almost everyone is self-employed" and "instead of corporations there are large groups of entrepreneurs related by trade, not authority. Each sells not his time, but what his time produces".[94]
Law and order and the use of violence
Different anarcho-capitalists propose different forms of anarcho-capitalism and one area of disagreement is in the area of law. In The Market for Liberty, Morris and Linda Tannehill object to any statutory law whatsoever. They argue that all one has to do is ask if one is aggressing against another in order to decide if an act is right or wrong.[95] However, while also supporting a natural prohibition on force and fraud, Rothbard supports the establishment of a mutually agreed-upon centralized libertarian legal code which private courts would pledge to follow, as he presumes a high degree of convergence amongst individuals about what constitutes natural justice.[96]
Unlike both the Tannehills and Rothbard who see an ideological commonality of ethics and morality as a requirement, David D. Friedman proposes that "the systems of law will be produced for profit on the open market, just as books and bras are produced today. There could be competition among different brands of law, just as there is competition among different brands of cars".[97] Friedman says whether this would lead to a libertarian society "remains to be proven". He says it is a possibility that very un-libertarian laws may result, such as laws against drugs, but he thinks this would be rare. He reasons that "if the value of a law to its supporters is less than its cost to its victims, that law ... will not survive in an anarcho-capitalist society".[98]
Anarcho-capitalists only accept the collective defense of individual liberty (i.e. courts, military, or police forces) insofar as such groups are formed and paid for on an explicitly voluntary basis. However, their complaint is not just that the state's defensive services are funded by taxation, but that the state assumes it is the only legitimate practitioner of physical force – that is, they believe it forcibly prevents the private sector from providing comprehensive security, such as a police, judicial and prison systems to protect individuals from aggressors. Anarcho-capitalists believe that there is nothing morally superior about the state which would grant it, but not private individuals, a right to use physical force to restrain aggressors. If competition in security provision were allowed to exist, prices would also be lower and services would be better according to anarcho-capitalists. According to Molinari: "Under a regime of liberty, the natural organization of the security industry would not be different from that of other industries".[99] Proponents believe that private systems of justice and defense already exist, naturally forming where the market is allowed to "compensate for the failure of the state", namely private arbitration, security guards, neighborhood watch groups and so on.[100][101][102][103] These private courts and police are sometimes referred to generically as private defense agencies. The defense of those unable to pay for such protection might be financed by charitable organizations relying on voluntary donation rather than by state institutions relying on taxation, or by cooperative self-help by groups of individuals.[16]: 223 Edward Stringham argues that private adjudication of disputes could enable the market to internalize externalities and provide services that customers desire.[104][105]
The death of General Joseph Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolutionary War, a war which anarcho-capitalists such as Murray Rothbard admired and believed it was the only American war that could be justified[106]
Rothbard stated that the American Revolutionary War and the War of Southern Secession were the only two just wars in American military history.[107] Some anarcho-capitalists such as Rothbard feel that violent revolution is counter-productive and prefer voluntary forms of economic secession to the extent possible.[108] Retributive justice is often a component of the contracts imagined for an anarcho-capitalist society. According to Matthew O'Keefee[who?], some anarcho-capitalists believe prisons or indentured servitude would be justifiable institutions to deal with those who violate anarcho-capitalist property relations while others believe exile or forced restitution are sufficient.[109] Rothbard stressed the importance of restitution as the primary focus of a libertarian legal order[72] and advocated for corporal punishment for petty vandals and the death penalty for murders.
American economist Bruce L. Benson argues that legal codes may impose punitive damages for intentional torts in the interest of deterring crime. Benson gives the example of a thief who breaks into a house by picking a lock. Even if caught before taking anything, Benson argues that the thief would still owe the victim for violating the sanctity of his property rights. Benson opines that despite the lack of objectively measurable losses in such cases, "standardized rules that are generally perceived to be fair by members of the community would, in all likelihood, be established through precedent, allowing judgments to specify payments that are reasonably appropriate for most criminal offenses".[110]
Morris and Linda Tannehill raise a similar example, saying that a bank robber who had an attack of conscience and returned the money would still owe reparations for endangering the employees' and customers' lives and safety, in addition to the costs of the defense agency answering the teller's call for help. However, they believe that the robber's loss of reputation would be even more damaging. They suggest that specialized companies would list aggressors so that anyone wishing to do business with a man could first check his record, provided they trust the veracity of the companies' records. They further theorise that the bank robber would find insurance companies listing him as a very poor risk and other firms would be reluctant to enter into contracts with him.[111]
Influences
Murray Rothbard has listed different ideologies of which his interpretations, he said, have influenced anarcho-capitalism.[13][14] This includes his interpretation of anarchism, and more precisely individualist anarchism; classical liberalism and the Austrian School of economic thought. Scholars additionally associate anarcho-capitalism with neo-classical liberalism, radical neoliberalism and right-libertarianism.[41][44][112]
Anarchism
Main article: Anarchism and capitalism
In both its social and individualist forms, anarchism was usually considered an anti-capitalist[113][114] and radical left-wing or far-left[115][116][52] movement that promotes libertarian socialist economic theories such as collectivism, communism, individualism, mutualism and syndicalism before Rothbard challenged these ideas.[117] Because left-anarchism is usually described alongside libertarian Marxism as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement and as having a historical association with anti-capitalism and socialism, left-anarchists believe that capitalism is incompatible with social and economic equality and therefore do not recognize anarcho-capitalism as an anarchist school of thought.[41][112][44] In particular, left-anarchists argue that capitalist transactions are not voluntary and that maintaining the class structure of a capitalist society requires coercion which is incompatible with an anarchist society.[118][119] The usage of libertarian is also in dispute.[120] While both anarchists and anarcho-capitalists have used it, libertarian was synonymous with anarchist until the mid-20th century, when anarcho-capitalist theory developed.[112][121]
Anarcho-capitalists are distinguished from the historically dominant left-anarchist tradition by their relation to property and capital. While both anarchism and anarcho-capitalism share general antipathy towards government authority, anarcho-capitalism favors free-market capitalism. Left-anarchists, including egoists such as Max Stirner, have supported the protection of an individual's freedom from powers of both government and private property owners.[122] In contrast, while condemning governmental encroachment on personal liberties, anarcho-capitalists support freedoms based on private property rights. Anarcho-capitalist theorist Murray Rothbard argued that protesters should rent a street for protest from its owners. The abolition of public amenities is a common theme in some anarcho-capitalist writings.[123]
Rothbard argued that anarcho-capitalism is the only true form of anarchism – the only form of anarchism that could possibly exist in reality as he maintained that any other form presupposes authoritarian enforcement of a political ideology such as "redistribution of private property", which he attributed to anarchism.[49] According to this argument, the capitalist free market is "the natural situation" that would result from people being free from state authority and entails the establishment of all voluntary associations in society such as cooperatives, non-profit organizations, businesses and so on. Moreover, anarcho-capitalists, as well as classical liberal minarchists, argue that the application of anarchist ideals as advocated by left-anarchists would require an authoritarian body of some sort to impose it. Based on their understanding and interpretation of anarchism, in order to forcefully prevent people from accumulating capital, which is a goal of left-anarchists, there would necessarily be a redistributive organization of some sort which would have the authority to in essence exact a tax and re-allocate the resulting resources to a larger group of people. They conclude that this theoretical body would inherently have political power and would be nothing short of a state. The difference between such an arrangement and an anarcho-capitalist system is what anarcho-capitalists see as the voluntary nature of organization within anarcho-capitalism contrasted with a "centralized ideology" and a "paired enforcement mechanism" which they believe would be necessary under what they describe as a "coercively" egalitarian-anarchist system.[118]
Rothbard also argued that the non-laissez-faire capitalist system of today is not properly anarchistic because it often colludes with the state. According to Rothbard, "what Marx and later writers have done is to lump together two extremely different and even contradictory concepts and actions under the same portmanteau term. These two contradictory concepts are what I would call 'free-market capitalism' on the one hand, and 'state capitalism' on the other". "The difference between free-market capitalism and state capitalism", writes Rothbard, "is precisely the difference between, on the one hand, peaceful, voluntary exchange, and on the other, violent expropriation". He continues: "State capitalism inevitably creates all sorts of problems which become insoluble".[49]
Left-anarchist argue that anarcho-capitalism is not anarchism for several reasons.[124][125][46] Albert Meltzer argued that anarcho-capitalism simply cannot be anarchism because, according to him, capitalism and the state are inextricably interlinked and because capitalism exhibits domineering hierarchical structures such as that between an employer and an employee.[126] Anna Morgenstern approaches this topic from the opposite perspective, claiming that anarcho-capitalists are not really capitalists because "mass concentration of capital is impossible" without the state.[127] According to Jeremy Jennings, "[ i]t is hard not to conclude that these ideas," referring to anarcho-capitalism, have "roots deep in classical liberalism" and "are described as anarchist only on the basis of a misunderstanding of what anarchism is." For Jennings, "anarchism does not stand for the untrammelled freedom of the individual (as the 'anarcho-capitalists' appear to believe) but, as we have already seen, for the extension of individuality and community."[128] Similarly, Barbara Goodwin, Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, argues that anarcho-capitalism's "true place is in the group of right-wing libertarians", not in anarchism, despite the fact that right-wing libertarianism itself is largely Rothbardian and based around a moderated form of Rothbard's ideas in the modern day as opposed to the other way around.[129]
Some right-libertarian scholars like Michael Huemer, who identify with the ideology, describe anarcho-capitalism as a "variety of anarchism".[50] British author Andrew Heywood also believes that "individualist anarchism overlaps with libertarianism and is usually linked to a strong belief in the market as a self-regulating mechanism, most obviously manifest in the form of anarcho-capitalism".[51] Frank H. Brooks, author of The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty (1881–1908), believes that "anarchism has always included a significant strain of radical individualism, from the hyperrationalism of Godwin, to the egoism of Stirner, to the libertarians and anarcho-capitalists of today".[52]
While both anarchism and anarcho-capitalism are in opposition to the state, it is a necessary but not sufficient condition because left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists interpret state-rejection differently.[130][131][132][133] Austrian school economist David Prychitko, in the context of anarcho-capitalism says that "while society without a state is necessary for full-fledged anarchy, it is nevertheless insufficient".[133] In the opinion of Ruth Kinna, anarcho-capitalists are anti-statists who draw more on right-wing liberal theory and the Austrian School than anarchist traditions. Kinna writes that "[ i]n order to highlight the clear distinction between the two positions", anarchists describe anarcho-capitalists as "propertarians".[58] Anarcho-capitalism is usually seen as part of the New Right.[53][54]
Some anarcho-capitalists argue that, according to them, anarchists consider the word "anarchy" as to be the antithesis of hierarchy, and therefore, that "anarcho-capitalism" is sometimes considered to be a term with differences philosophically to what they personally consider to be true anarchism, as an anarcho-capitalist society would inherently contain hierarchy.[5][134][135] Additionally, Rothbard discusses the difference between "government" and "governance"[136] thus, proponents of anarcho-capitalism think the philosophy's common name is indeed consistent, as it promotes private governance, but is vehemently anti-government.[104][105]
Classical liberalism
Main article: Classical liberalism
Historian and libertarian Ralph Raico argued that what liberal philosophers "had come up with was a form of individualist anarchism, or, as it would be called today, anarcho-capitalism or market anarchism".[137] He also said that Gustave de Molinari was proposing a doctrine of the private production of security, a position which was later taken up by Murray Rothbard.[137] Some anarcho-capitalists consider Molinari to be the first proponent of anarcho-capitalism.[138] In the preface to the 1977 English translation by Murray Rothbard called The Production of Security the "first presentation anywhere in human history of what is now called anarcho-capitalism", although admitting that "Molinari did not use the terminology, and probably would have balked at the name".[139] Hans-Hermann Hoppe said that "the 1849 article 'The Production of Security' is probably the single most important contribution to the modern theory of anarcho-capitalism". According to Hans-Hermann Hoppe, one of the 19th century precursors of anarcho-capitalism were philosopher Herbert Spencer, classical liberal Auberon Herbert and liberal socialist Franz Oppenheimer.[7]
Paul Dragos Aligica writes that there is a "foundational difference between the classical liberal and the anarcho-capitalist positions". Classical liberalism, while accepting critical arguments against collectivism, acknowledges a certain level of public ownership and collective governance as necessary to provide practical solutions to political problems. In contrast anarcho-capitalism, according to Aligica, denies any requirement for any form of public administration, and allows no meaningful role for the public sphere, which is seen as sub-optimal and illegitimate.[140]
Individualist anarchism
Main article: Individualist anarchism
Lysander Spooner, an American individualist anarchist and mutualist, who is claimed to have influenced anarcho-capitalism
Murray Rothbard, a student of Ludwig von Mises, stated that he was influenced by the work of the 19th-century American individualist anarchists.[141] In the winter of 1949, Rothbard decided to reject minimal state laissez-faire and embrace his interpretation of individualist anarchism.[142] In 1965, Rothbard wrote that "Lysander Spooner and Benjamin R. Tucker were unsurpassed as political philosophers and nothing is more needed today than a revival and development of the largely forgotten legacy they left to political philosophy".[143] However, Rothbard thought that they had a faulty understanding of economics as the 19th-century individualist anarchists had a labor theory of value as influenced by the classical economists, while Rothbard was a student of Austrian School economics which does not agree with the labor theory of value.[13] Rothbard sought to meld 19th-century American individualist anarchists' advocacy of economic individualism and free markets with the principles of Austrian School economics, arguing that "[t]here is, in the body of thought known as 'Austrian economics', a scientific explanation of the workings of the free market (and of the consequences of government intervention in that market) which individualist anarchists could easily incorporate into their political and social Weltanschauung".[144] Rothbard held that the economic consequences of the political system they advocate would not result in an economy with people being paid in proportion to labor amounts, nor would profit and interest disappear as they expected. Tucker thought that unregulated banking and money issuance would cause increases in the money supply so that interest rates would drop to zero or near to it.[143] Peter Marshall states that "anarcho-capitalism overlooks the egalitarian implications of traditional individualist anarchists like Spooner and Tucker".[41] Stephanie Silberstein states that "While Spooner was no free-market capitalist, nor an anarcho-capitalist, he was not as opposed to capitalism as most socialists were."[74]
In "The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View", Rothbard explained his disagreements. Rothbard disagreed with Tucker that it would cause the money supply to increase because he believed that the money supply in a free market would be self-regulating. If it were not, then Rothbard argued inflation would occur so it is not necessarily desirable to increase the money supply in the first place. Rothbard claimed that Tucker was wrong to think that interest would disappear regardless because he believed people, in general, do not wish to lend their money to others without compensation, so there is no reason why this would change just because banking was unregulated.[143] Tucker held a labor theory of value and thought that in a free market people would be paid in proportion to how much labor they exerted and that exploitation or usury was taking place if they were not. As Tucker explained in State Socialism and Anarchism, his theory was that unregulated banking would cause more money to be available and that this would allow the proliferation of new businesses which would, in turn, raise demand for labor.[145] This led Tucker to believe that the labor theory of value would be vindicated and equal amounts of labor would receive equal pay. As an Austrian School economist, Rothbard did not agree with the labor theory and believed that prices of goods and services are proportional to marginal utility rather than to labor amounts in the free market. As opposed to Tucker he did not think that there was anything exploitative about people receiving an income according to how much "buyers of their services value their labor" or what that labor produces.[143]
Benjamin Tucker, another individualist anarchist, who identified as a socialist and his individualist anarchism as anarchistic socialism versus state socialism, said to have influenced anarcho-capitalism
Without the labor theory of value,[63] some argue that 19th-century individualist anarchists approximate the modern movement of anarcho-capitalism,[13][14][15] although this has been contested[43] or rejected.[146][147][148] As economic theory changed, the popularity of the labor theory of classical economics was superseded by the subjective theory of value of neoclassical economics and Rothbard combined Mises' Austrian School of economics with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the 19th century such as Tucker and Spooner.[149] In the mid-1950s, Rothbard wrote an unpublished article named "Are Libertarians 'Anarchists'?" under the pseudonym "Aubrey Herbert", concerned with differentiating himself from communist and socialistic economic views of anarchists, including the individualist anarchists of the 19th century, concluding that "we are not anarchists and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground and are being completely unhistorical. On the other hand, it is clear that we are not archists either: we do not believe in establishing a tyrannical central authority that will coerce the noninvasive as well as the invasive. Perhaps, then, we could call ourselves by a new name: nonarchist."[150] Joe Peacott, an American individualist anarchist in the mutualist tradition, criticizes anarcho-capitalists for trying to hegemonize the individualist anarchism label and make appear as if all individualist anarchists are in favor of capitalism.[147] Peacott states that "individualists, both past and present, agree with the communist anarchists that present-day capitalism is based on economic coercion, not on voluntary contract. Rent and interest are the mainstays of modern capitalism and are protected and enforced by the state. Without these two unjust institutions, capitalism could not exist".[151]
Historical precedents
Several anarcho-capitalists and right-libertarians have discussed historical precedents of what they believe were examples of anarcho-capitalism.[152]
Free cities of medieval Europe
Economist and libertarian scholar Bryan Caplan considers the free cities of medieval Europe as examples of "anarchist" or "nearly anarchistic" societies,[19] further arguing:
Medieval Iceland
19th-century interpretation of the Althing in the Icelandic Commonwealth which authors such as David D. Friedman believe to have some features of anarcho-capitalist society
According to the libertarian theorist David D. Friedman, "[m]edieval Icelandic institutions have several peculiar and interesting characteristics; they might almost have been invented by a mad economist to test the lengths to which market systems could supplant government in its most fundamental functions".[20] While not directly labeling it anarcho-capitalist, Friedman argues that the legal system of the Icelandic Commonwealth comes close to being a real-world anarcho-capitalist legal system.[153] Although noting that there was a single legal system, Friedman argues that enforcement of the law was entirely private and highly capitalist, providing some evidence of how such a society would function. Friedman further wrote that "[e]ven where the Icelandic legal system recognized an essentially 'public' offense, it dealt with it by giving some individual (in some cases chosen by lot from those affected) the right to pursue the case and collect the resulting fine, thus fitting it into an essentially private system".[20]
Friedman and Bruce L. Benson argued that the Icelandic Commonwealth saw significant economic and social progress in the absence of systems of criminal law, an executive, or bureaucracy. This commonwealth was led by chieftains, whose position could be bought and sold like that of private property. Being a member of the chieftainship was also completely voluntary.[6]
American Old West
According to Terry L. Anderson and P. J. Hill, the Old West in the United States in the period of 1830 to 1900 was similar to anarcho-capitalism in that "private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved" and that the common popular perception that the Old West was chaotic with little respect for property rights is incorrect.[154] Since squatters had no claim to western lands under federal law, extra-legal organizations formed to fill the void. Benson explains:
According to Anderson, "[d]efining anarcho-capitalist to mean minimal government with property rights developed from the bottom up, the western frontier was anarcho-capitalistic. People on the frontier invented institutions that fit the resource constraints they faced".[citation needed]
Gaelic Ireland
Provinces of Ireland in 900
In his work For a New Liberty, Murray Rothbard has claimed ancient Gaelic Ireland as an example of nearly anarcho-capitalist society.[16] In his depiction, citing the work of Professor Joseph Peden,[156] the basic political unit of ancient Ireland was the tuath, which is portrayed as "a body of persons voluntarily united for socially beneficial purposes" with its territorial claim being limited to "the sum total of the landed properties of its members".[16] Civil disputes were settled by private arbiters called "brehons" and the compensation to be paid to the wronged party was insured through voluntary surety relationships. Commenting on the "kings" of tuaths,[16] Rothbard stated:
Law merchant, admiralty law, and early common law
Some libertarians have cited law merchant, admiralty law and early common law as examples of anarcho-capitalism.[157][158][failed verification][159]
In his work Power and Market,[60] Rothbard stated:
Anarcho-capitalism
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/16/25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism (colloquially: ancap or an-cap) is a political philosophy and economic theory which posits that all government institutions are unnecessary or harmful and can be abolished or replaced with private ones.[2] Anarcho-capitalists hold that society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through the voluntary exchange of goods and services. This would ideally result in a voluntary society[3][4][5][6] based on concepts such as the non-aggression principle, free markets and self-ownership. In such a society, private property rights would be enforced by private agencies. In the absence of statute, private defence agencies and/or insurance companies would operate competitively in a market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police.
According to its proponents, various historical theorists have espoused philosophies similar to anarcho-capitalism.[7] While the earliest extant attestation of "anarchocapitalism" [sic] is in Karl Hess's essay "The Death of Politics" published by Playboy in March 1969,[8][9] American economist Murray Rothbard was credited with coining the terms anarcho-capitalist[10][11] and anarcho-capitalism in 1971.[12] A leading figure in the 20th-century American libertarian movement,[6] Rothbard synthesized elements from the Austrian School, classical liberalism and 19th-century American individualist anarchists and mutualists Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, while rejecting the labor theory of value.[13][14][15] Rothbard's anarcho-capitalist society would operate under a mutually agreed-upon "legal code which would be generally accepted, and which the courts would pledge themselves to follow".[16] This legal code would recognize contracts between individuals, private property, self-ownership and tort law in keeping with the non-aggression principle.[6][16][17] Unlike a state, enforcement measures would only apply to those who initiated force or fraud.[18] Rothbard views the power of the state as unjustified, arguing that it violates individual rights, reduces prosperity, and creates social and economic problems.[6]
Anarcho-capitalists and right-libertarians cite several historical precedents of what they believe to be examples of quasi-anarcho-capitalism,[23] including the Republic of Cospaia,[24] Acadia,[25] Anglo-Saxon England,[26][3] Medieval Iceland,[25] the American Old West,[25] Gaelic Ireland,[6] and merchant law, admiralty law, and early common law.
Anarcho-capitalism is distinguished from minarchism, which advocates a minimal governing body (typically a night-watchman state limited to protecting individuals from aggression and enforcing private property) and from objectivism (which is a broader philosophy advocating a limited role, yet unlimited size, of said government).[27] Anarcho-capitalists consider themselves to be anarchists whilst supporting private property and private institutions, as opposed to Anarcho-communism, which rejects these ideas.[26]
Classification
See also: Anarchism and capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism developed from Austrian School-neoliberalism and individualist anarchism.[28][29][30][31][32][33][34] Most left wing anarchist movements do not consider anarcho-capitalism to be anarchist because it lacks the historically central anti-capitalist emphasis of older ideas of anarchism. They also argue that anarchism is incompatible with capitalist structures .[35][36][37][38][39][40] According to several scholars, Anarcho-capitalism lies outside the tradition of the vast majority of anarchist schools of thought and is more closely affiliated with capitalism, right-libertarianism and neoliberalism.[35][41][42][43][44][45] Traditionally, left-anarchists oppose and reject capitalism, and consider anarcho-capitalism to be a contradiction in terms,[46][47][48] although anarcho-capitalists and some right-libertarians consider anarcho-capitalism to be a form of anarchism, or even the only legitimate form of anarchism.[49][50][51][52]
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica:[6]
Anarcho-capitalism challenges other forms of anarchism by supporting private property and private institutions with significant economic power.
Anarcho-capitalism is occasionally seen as part of the New Right.[53][54]
Philosophy
Murray Rothbard in the 1970s
Author J Michael Oliver says that during the 1960s, a philosophical movement arose in the US that championed "reason, ethical egoism, and free-market capitalism". According to Oliver, anarcho-capitalism is a political theory which logically follows the philosophical conclusions of Objectivism, a philosophical system developed by Ayn Rand, but he acknowledges that his advocacy of anarcho-capitalism is "quite at odds with Rand's ardent defense of 'limited government'".[55] Professor Lisa Duggan also says that Rand's anti-statist, pro–free market stances went on to shape the politics of anarcho-capitalism.[56]
According to Patrik Schumacher, the political ideology and programme of anarcho-capitalism envisages the radicalization of the neoliberal "rollback of the state", and calls for the extension of "entrepreneurial freedom" and "competitive market rationality" to the point where the scope for private enterprise is all-encompassing and "leaves no space for state action whatsoever".[57]
On the state
Anarcho-capitalists oppose the state and seek to privatize any useful service the government presently provides, such as education, infrastructure, or the enforcement of law.[57][58] They see capitalism and the free market as the basis for a free and prosperous society. Murray Rothbard stated that the difference between free-market capitalism and state capitalism is the difference between "peaceful, voluntary exchange" and a "collusive partnership" between business and government that "uses coercion to subvert the free market".[59] Rothbard argued that all government services, including defense, are inefficient because they lack a market-based pricing mechanism regulated by "the voluntary decisions of consumers purchasing services that fulfill their highest-priority needs" and by investors seeking the most profitable enterprises to invest in.[60]: 1051
Rothbard used the term anarcho-capitalism to distinguish his philosophy from anarchism that opposes private property[61] as well as to distinguish it from individualist anarchism.[62] Other terms sometimes used by proponents of the philosophy include:
• Individualist anarchism[63][64]
• Natural order[7]
• Ordered anarchy[7]
• Private-law society[7]
• Private-property anarchy[7]
• Radical capitalism[7]
Maverick Edwards of the Liberty University describes anarcho-capitalism as a political, social, and economic theory that places markets as the central "governing body" and where government no longer "grants" rights to its citizenry.[65]
Non-aggression principle
Writer Stanisław Wójtowicz says that although anarcho-capitalists are against centralized states, they believe that all people would naturally share and agree to a specific moral theory based on the non-aggression principle.[66] While the Friedmanian formulation of anarcho-capitalism is robust to the presence of violence and in fact, assumes some degree of violence will occur,[67] anarcho-capitalism as formulated by Rothbard and others holds strongly to the central libertarian nonaggression axiom,[66] sometimes non-aggression principle. Rothbard wrote:
The basic axiom of libertarian political theory holds that every man is a self-owner, having absolute jurisdiction over his own body. In effect, this means that no one else may justly invade, or aggress against, another's person. It follows then that each person justly owns whatever previously unowned resources he appropriates or "mixes his labor with". From these twin axioms – self-ownership and "homesteading" – stem the justification for the entire system of property rights titles in a free-market society. This system establishes the right of every man to his own person, the right of donation, of bequest (and, concomitantly, the right to receive the bequest or inheritance), and the right of contractual exchange of property titles.[17]
Rothbard's defense of the self-ownership principle stems from what he believed to be his falsification of all other alternatives, namely that either a group of people can own another group of people, or that no single person has full ownership over one's self. Rothbard dismisses these two cases on the basis that they cannot result in a universal ethic, i.e. a just natural law that can govern all people, independent of place and time. The only alternative that remains to Rothbard is self-ownership which he believes is both axiomatic and universal.[68]
In general, the non-aggression axiom is described by Rothbard as a prohibition against the initiation of force, or the threat of force, against persons (in which he includes direct violence, assault and murder) or property (in which he includes fraud, burglary, theft and taxation).[16]: 24–25 The initiation of force is usually referred to as aggression or coercion. The difference between anarcho-capitalists and other libertarians is largely one of the degree to which they take this axiom. Minarchist libertarians such as libertarian political parties would retain the state in some smaller and less invasive form, retaining at the very least public police, courts, and military. However, others might give further allowance for other government programs. In contrast, Rothbard rejects any level of "state intervention", defining the state as a coercive monopoly and as the only entity in human society, excluding acknowledged criminals, that derives its income entirely from coercion, in the form of taxation, which Rothbard describes as "compulsory seizure of the property of the State's inhabitants, or subjects."[68]
Some anarcho-capitalists such as Rothbard accept the non-aggression axiom on an intrinsic moral or natural law basis. It is in terms of the non-aggression principle that Rothbard defined his interpretation of anarchism, "a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression ['against person and property']"; and wrote that "what anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the State, i.e. to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion".[69] In an interview published in the American libertarian journal The New Banner, Rothbard stated that "capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism".[49]
Property
Private property
Anarcho-capitalists postulate the privatization of everything, including cities with all their infrastructures, public spaces, streets and urban management systems.[57][70]
Central to Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism are the concepts of self-ownership and original appropriation that combines personal and private property. Hans-Hermann Hoppe wrote:
Everyone is the proper owner of his own physical body as well as of all places and nature-given goods that he occupies and puts to use by means of his body, provided only that no one else has already occupied or used the same places and goods before him. This ownership of "originally appropriated" places and goods by a person implies his right to use and transform these places and goods in any way he sees fit, provided only that he does not change thereby uninvitedly the physical integrity of places and goods originally appropriated by another person. In particular, once a place or good has been first appropriated by, in John Locke's phrase, 'mixing one's labor' with it, ownership in such places and goods can be acquired only by means of a voluntary – contractual – transfer of its property title from a previous to a later owner.[71]
Rothbard however rejected the Lockean proviso, and followed the rule of "first come, first served", without any consideration of how much resources are left for other individuals.[72][73]
Anarcho-capitalists advocate private ownership of the means of production and the allocation of the product of labor created by workers within the context of wage labour and the free market – that is through decisions made by property and capital owners, regardless of what an individual needs or does not need.[74] Original appropriation allows an individual to claim any never-before-used resources, including land and by improving or otherwise using it, own it with the same "absolute right" as their own body, and retaining those rights forever, regardless of whether the resource is still being used by them. According to Rothbard, property can only come about through labor, therefore original appropriation of land is not legitimate by merely claiming it or building a fence around it – it is only by using land and by mixing one's labor with it that original appropriation is legitimized: "Any attempt to claim a new resource that someone does not use would have to be considered invasive of the property right of whoever the first user will turn out to be". Rothbard argued that the resource need not continue to be used in order for it to be the person's property as "for once his labor is mixed with the natural resource, it remains his owned land. His labor has been irretrievably mixed with the land, and the land is therefore his or his assigns' in perpetuity".[75]: 170
Rothbard also spoke about a theory of justice in property rights:
It is not enough to call simply for the defense of "the rights of private property"; there must be an adequate theory of justice in property rights, else any property that some State once decreed to be "private" must now be defended by libertarians, no matter how unjust the procedure or how mischievous its consequences.[62]
In Justice and Property Rights, Rothbard wrote that "any identifiable owner (the original victim of theft or his heir) must be accorded his property".[76][77] In the case of slavery, Rothbard claimed that in many cases "the old plantations and the heirs and descendants of the former slaves can be identified, and the reparations can become highly specific indeed". Rothbard believed slaves rightfully own any land they were forced to work on under the homestead principle. If property is held by the state, Rothbard advocated its confiscation and "return to the private sector",[78] writing that "any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible".[79] Rothbard proposed that state universities be seized by the students and faculty under the homestead principle. Rothbard also supported the expropriation of nominally "private property" if it is the result of state-initiated force such as businesses that receive grants and subsidies.[80] Rothbard further proposed that businesses who receive at least 50% of their funding from the state be confiscated by the workers,[81][82] writing: "What we libertarians object to, then, is not government per se but crime, what we object to is unjust or criminal property titles; what we are for is not 'private' property per se but just, innocent, non-criminal private property".[79]
Similarly, Karl Hess wrote that "libertarianism wants to advance principles of property but that it in no way wishes to defend, willy nilly, all property which now is called private ... Much of that property is stolen. Much is of dubious title. All of it is deeply intertwined with an immoral, coercive state system".[83]
Common property
As opposed to most other anarchists,[84] most anarcho-capitalists reject the commons.[85] However, some of them propose that non-state public or community property can also exist in an anarcho-capitalist society.[85] For anarcho-capitalists, what is important is that it is "acquired" and transferred without help or hindrance from what they call the "compulsory state". Deontological anarcho-capitalists believe that the only just and most economically beneficial way to acquire property is through voluntary trade, gift, or labor-based original appropriation, rather than through aggression or fraud.[86]
Anarcho-capitalists state that there could be cases where common property may develop in a Lockean natural rights framework. Anarcho-capitalists make the example of a number of private businesses which may arise in an area, each owning the land and buildings that they use, but they argue that the paths between them become cleared and trodden incrementally through customer and commercial movement. These thoroughfares may become valuable to the community, but according to them ownership cannot be attributed to any single person and original appropriation does not apply because many contributed the labor necessary to create them. In order to prevent it from falling to the "tragedy of the commons", anarcho-capitalists suggest transitioning from common to private property, wherein an individual would make a homesteading claim based on disuse, acquire title by the assent of the community consensus, form a corporation with other involved parties, or other means.[85]
American economist Randall G. Holcombe sees challenges stemming from the idea of common property under anarcho-capitalism, such as whether an individual might claim fishing rights in the area of a major shipping lane and thereby forbid passage through it.[85] In contrast, Hoppe's work on anarcho-capitalist theory is based on the assumption that all property is privately held, "including all streets, rivers, airports, and harbors" which forms the foundation of his views on immigration.[85]
Intellectual property
Most anarcho-capitalists strongly oppose intellectual property (i.e., trademarks, patents, copyrights). Stephan N. Kinsella argues that ownership only relates to tangible assets.[87]
Contractual society
The society envisioned by anarcho-capitalists has been labelled by them as a "contractual society" which Rothbard described as "a society based purely on voluntary action, entirely unhampered by violence or threats of violence"[75]: 84 The system relies on contracts between individuals as the legal framework which would be enforced by private police and security forces as well as private arbitrations.[88][89][90]
Rothbard argues that limited liability for corporations could also exist through contract, arguing that "[c]orporations are not at all monopolistic privileges; they are free associations of individuals pooling their capital. On the purely free market, those men would simply announce to their creditors that their liability is limited to the capital specifically invested in the corporation".[60]
There are limits to the right to contract under some interpretations of anarcho-capitalism. Rothbard believes that the right to contract is based in inalienable rights[68] and because of this any contract that implicitly violates those rights can be voided at will, preventing a person from permanently selling himself or herself into unindentured slavery. That restriction aside, the right to contract under anarcho-capitalist order would be pretty broad. For example, Rothbard went as far as to justify stork markets, arguing that a market in guardianship rights would facilitate the transfer of guardianship from abusive or neglectful parents to those more interested or suited to raising children.[91][92] Other anarcho-capitalists have also suggested the legalization of organ markets, as in Iran's renal market. Other interpretations conclude that banning such contracts would in itself be an unacceptably invasive interference in the right to contract.[93]
Included in the right of contract is "the right to contract oneself out for employment by others". While anarchists criticize wage labour describing it as wage slavery, anarcho-capitalists view it as a consensual contract.[94] Some anarcho-capitalists prefer to see self-employment prevail over wage labor. David D. Friedman has expressed a preference for a society where "almost everyone is self-employed" and "instead of corporations there are large groups of entrepreneurs related by trade, not authority. Each sells not his time, but what his time produces".[94]
Law and order and the use of violence
Different anarcho-capitalists propose different forms of anarcho-capitalism and one area of disagreement is in the area of law. In The Market for Liberty, Morris and Linda Tannehill object to any statutory law whatsoever. They argue that all one has to do is ask if one is aggressing against another in order to decide if an act is right or wrong.[95] However, while also supporting a natural prohibition on force and fraud, Rothbard supports the establishment of a mutually agreed-upon centralized libertarian legal code which private courts would pledge to follow, as he presumes a high degree of convergence amongst individuals about what constitutes natural justice.[96]
Unlike both the Tannehills and Rothbard who see an ideological commonality of ethics and morality as a requirement, David D. Friedman proposes that "the systems of law will be produced for profit on the open market, just as books and bras are produced today. There could be competition among different brands of law, just as there is competition among different brands of cars".[97] Friedman says whether this would lead to a libertarian society "remains to be proven". He says it is a possibility that very un-libertarian laws may result, such as laws against drugs, but he thinks this would be rare. He reasons that "if the value of a law to its supporters is less than its cost to its victims, that law ... will not survive in an anarcho-capitalist society".[98]
Anarcho-capitalists only accept the collective defense of individual liberty (i.e. courts, military, or police forces) insofar as such groups are formed and paid for on an explicitly voluntary basis. However, their complaint is not just that the state's defensive services are funded by taxation, but that the state assumes it is the only legitimate practitioner of physical force – that is, they believe it forcibly prevents the private sector from providing comprehensive security, such as a police, judicial and prison systems to protect individuals from aggressors. Anarcho-capitalists believe that there is nothing morally superior about the state which would grant it, but not private individuals, a right to use physical force to restrain aggressors. If competition in security provision were allowed to exist, prices would also be lower and services would be better according to anarcho-capitalists. According to Molinari: "Under a regime of liberty, the natural organization of the security industry would not be different from that of other industries".[99] Proponents believe that private systems of justice and defense already exist, naturally forming where the market is allowed to "compensate for the failure of the state", namely private arbitration, security guards, neighborhood watch groups and so on.[100][101][102][103] These private courts and police are sometimes referred to generically as private defense agencies. The defense of those unable to pay for such protection might be financed by charitable organizations relying on voluntary donation rather than by state institutions relying on taxation, or by cooperative self-help by groups of individuals.[16]: 223 Edward Stringham argues that private adjudication of disputes could enable the market to internalize externalities and provide services that customers desire.[104][105]
The death of General Joseph Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolutionary War, a war which anarcho-capitalists such as Murray Rothbard admired and believed it was the only American war that could be justified[106]
Rothbard stated that the American Revolutionary War and the War of Southern Secession were the only two just wars in American military history.[107] Some anarcho-capitalists such as Rothbard feel that violent revolution is counter-productive and prefer voluntary forms of economic secession to the extent possible.[108] Retributive justice is often a component of the contracts imagined for an anarcho-capitalist society. According to Matthew O'Keefee[who?], some anarcho-capitalists believe prisons or indentured servitude would be justifiable institutions to deal with those who violate anarcho-capitalist property relations while others believe exile or forced restitution are sufficient.[109] Rothbard stressed the importance of restitution as the primary focus of a libertarian legal order[72] and advocated for corporal punishment for petty vandals and the death penalty for murders.
American economist Bruce L. Benson argues that legal codes may impose punitive damages for intentional torts in the interest of deterring crime. Benson gives the example of a thief who breaks into a house by picking a lock. Even if caught before taking anything, Benson argues that the thief would still owe the victim for violating the sanctity of his property rights. Benson opines that despite the lack of objectively measurable losses in such cases, "standardized rules that are generally perceived to be fair by members of the community would, in all likelihood, be established through precedent, allowing judgments to specify payments that are reasonably appropriate for most criminal offenses".[110]
Morris and Linda Tannehill raise a similar example, saying that a bank robber who had an attack of conscience and returned the money would still owe reparations for endangering the employees' and customers' lives and safety, in addition to the costs of the defense agency answering the teller's call for help. However, they believe that the robber's loss of reputation would be even more damaging. They suggest that specialized companies would list aggressors so that anyone wishing to do business with a man could first check his record, provided they trust the veracity of the companies' records. They further theorise that the bank robber would find insurance companies listing him as a very poor risk and other firms would be reluctant to enter into contracts with him.[111]
Influences
Murray Rothbard has listed different ideologies of which his interpretations, he said, have influenced anarcho-capitalism.[13][14] This includes his interpretation of anarchism, and more precisely individualist anarchism; classical liberalism and the Austrian School of economic thought. Scholars additionally associate anarcho-capitalism with neo-classical liberalism, radical neoliberalism and right-libertarianism.[41][44][112]
Anarchism
Main article: Anarchism and capitalism
In both its social and individualist forms, anarchism was usually considered an anti-capitalist[113][114] and radical left-wing or far-left[115][116][52] movement that promotes libertarian socialist economic theories such as collectivism, communism, individualism, mutualism and syndicalism before Rothbard challenged these ideas.[117] Because left-anarchism is usually described alongside libertarian Marxism as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement and as having a historical association with anti-capitalism and socialism, left-anarchists believe that capitalism is incompatible with social and economic equality and therefore do not recognize anarcho-capitalism as an anarchist school of thought.[41][112][44] In particular, left-anarchists argue that capitalist transactions are not voluntary and that maintaining the class structure of a capitalist society requires coercion which is incompatible with an anarchist society.[118][119] The usage of libertarian is also in dispute.[120] While both anarchists and anarcho-capitalists have used it, libertarian was synonymous with anarchist until the mid-20th century, when anarcho-capitalist theory developed.[112][121]
Anarcho-capitalists are distinguished from the historically dominant left-anarchist tradition by their relation to property and capital. While both anarchism and anarcho-capitalism share general antipathy towards government authority, anarcho-capitalism favors free-market capitalism. Left-anarchists, including egoists such as Max Stirner, have supported the protection of an individual's freedom from powers of both government and private property owners.[122] In contrast, while condemning governmental encroachment on personal liberties, anarcho-capitalists support freedoms based on private property rights. Anarcho-capitalist theorist Murray Rothbard argued that protesters should rent a street for protest from its owners. The abolition of public amenities is a common theme in some anarcho-capitalist writings.[123]
Rothbard argued that anarcho-capitalism is the only true form of anarchism – the only form of anarchism that could possibly exist in reality as he maintained that any other form presupposes authoritarian enforcement of a political ideology such as "redistribution of private property", which he attributed to anarchism.[49] According to this argument, the capitalist free market is "the natural situation" that would result from people being free from state authority and entails the establishment of all voluntary associations in society such as cooperatives, non-profit organizations, businesses and so on. Moreover, anarcho-capitalists, as well as classical liberal minarchists, argue that the application of anarchist ideals as advocated by left-anarchists would require an authoritarian body of some sort to impose it. Based on their understanding and interpretation of anarchism, in order to forcefully prevent people from accumulating capital, which is a goal of left-anarchists, there would necessarily be a redistributive organization of some sort which would have the authority to in essence exact a tax and re-allocate the resulting resources to a larger group of people. They conclude that this theoretical body would inherently have political power and would be nothing short of a state. The difference between such an arrangement and an anarcho-capitalist system is what anarcho-capitalists see as the voluntary nature of organization within anarcho-capitalism contrasted with a "centralized ideology" and a "paired enforcement mechanism" which they believe would be necessary under what they describe as a "coercively" egalitarian-anarchist system.[118]
Rothbard also argued that the non-laissez-faire capitalist system of today is not properly anarchistic because it often colludes with the state. According to Rothbard, "what Marx and later writers have done is to lump together two extremely different and even contradictory concepts and actions under the same portmanteau term. These two contradictory concepts are what I would call 'free-market capitalism' on the one hand, and 'state capitalism' on the other". "The difference between free-market capitalism and state capitalism", writes Rothbard, "is precisely the difference between, on the one hand, peaceful, voluntary exchange, and on the other, violent expropriation". He continues: "State capitalism inevitably creates all sorts of problems which become insoluble".[49]
Left-anarchist argue that anarcho-capitalism is not anarchism for several reasons.[124][125][46] Albert Meltzer argued that anarcho-capitalism simply cannot be anarchism because, according to him, capitalism and the state are inextricably interlinked and because capitalism exhibits domineering hierarchical structures such as that between an employer and an employee.[126] Anna Morgenstern approaches this topic from the opposite perspective, claiming that anarcho-capitalists are not really capitalists because "mass concentration of capital is impossible" without the state.[127] According to Jeremy Jennings, "[ i]t is hard not to conclude that these ideas," referring to anarcho-capitalism, have "roots deep in classical liberalism" and "are described as anarchist only on the basis of a misunderstanding of what anarchism is." For Jennings, "anarchism does not stand for the untrammelled freedom of the individual (as the 'anarcho-capitalists' appear to believe) but, as we have already seen, for the extension of individuality and community."[128] Similarly, Barbara Goodwin, Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, argues that anarcho-capitalism's "true place is in the group of right-wing libertarians", not in anarchism, despite the fact that right-wing libertarianism itself is largely Rothbardian and based around a moderated form of Rothbard's ideas in the modern day as opposed to the other way around.[129]
Some right-libertarian scholars like Michael Huemer, who identify with the ideology, describe anarcho-capitalism as a "variety of anarchism".[50] British author Andrew Heywood also believes that "individualist anarchism overlaps with libertarianism and is usually linked to a strong belief in the market as a self-regulating mechanism, most obviously manifest in the form of anarcho-capitalism".[51] Frank H. Brooks, author of The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty (1881–1908), believes that "anarchism has always included a significant strain of radical individualism, from the hyperrationalism of Godwin, to the egoism of Stirner, to the libertarians and anarcho-capitalists of today".[52]
While both anarchism and anarcho-capitalism are in opposition to the state, it is a necessary but not sufficient condition because left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists interpret state-rejection differently.[130][131][132][133] Austrian school economist David Prychitko, in the context of anarcho-capitalism says that "while society without a state is necessary for full-fledged anarchy, it is nevertheless insufficient".[133] In the opinion of Ruth Kinna, anarcho-capitalists are anti-statists who draw more on right-wing liberal theory and the Austrian School than anarchist traditions. Kinna writes that "[ i]n order to highlight the clear distinction between the two positions", anarchists describe anarcho-capitalists as "propertarians".[58] Anarcho-capitalism is usually seen as part of the New Right.[53][54]
Some anarcho-capitalists argue that, according to them, anarchists consider the word "anarchy" as to be the antithesis of hierarchy, and therefore, that "anarcho-capitalism" is sometimes considered to be a term with differences philosophically to what they personally consider to be true anarchism, as an anarcho-capitalist society would inherently contain hierarchy.[5][134][135] Additionally, Rothbard discusses the difference between "government" and "governance"[136] thus, proponents of anarcho-capitalism think the philosophy's common name is indeed consistent, as it promotes private governance, but is vehemently anti-government.[104][105]
"I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights." —Murray Rothbard in Society Without a State[136]
Classical liberalism
Main article: Classical liberalism
Historian and libertarian Ralph Raico argued that what liberal philosophers "had come up with was a form of individualist anarchism, or, as it would be called today, anarcho-capitalism or market anarchism".[137] He also said that Gustave de Molinari was proposing a doctrine of the private production of security, a position which was later taken up by Murray Rothbard.[137] Some anarcho-capitalists consider Molinari to be the first proponent of anarcho-capitalism.[138] In the preface to the 1977 English translation by Murray Rothbard called The Production of Security the "first presentation anywhere in human history of what is now called anarcho-capitalism", although admitting that "Molinari did not use the terminology, and probably would have balked at the name".[139] Hans-Hermann Hoppe said that "the 1849 article 'The Production of Security' is probably the single most important contribution to the modern theory of anarcho-capitalism". According to Hans-Hermann Hoppe, one of the 19th century precursors of anarcho-capitalism were philosopher Herbert Spencer, classical liberal Auberon Herbert and liberal socialist Franz Oppenheimer.[7]
Paul Dragos Aligica writes that there is a "foundational difference between the classical liberal and the anarcho-capitalist positions". Classical liberalism, while accepting critical arguments against collectivism, acknowledges a certain level of public ownership and collective governance as necessary to provide practical solutions to political problems. In contrast anarcho-capitalism, according to Aligica, denies any requirement for any form of public administration, and allows no meaningful role for the public sphere, which is seen as sub-optimal and illegitimate.[140]
Individualist anarchism
Main article: Individualist anarchism
Lysander Spooner, an American individualist anarchist and mutualist, who is claimed to have influenced anarcho-capitalism
Murray Rothbard, a student of Ludwig von Mises, stated that he was influenced by the work of the 19th-century American individualist anarchists.[141] In the winter of 1949, Rothbard decided to reject minimal state laissez-faire and embrace his interpretation of individualist anarchism.[142] In 1965, Rothbard wrote that "Lysander Spooner and Benjamin R. Tucker were unsurpassed as political philosophers and nothing is more needed today than a revival and development of the largely forgotten legacy they left to political philosophy".[143] However, Rothbard thought that they had a faulty understanding of economics as the 19th-century individualist anarchists had a labor theory of value as influenced by the classical economists, while Rothbard was a student of Austrian School economics which does not agree with the labor theory of value.[13] Rothbard sought to meld 19th-century American individualist anarchists' advocacy of economic individualism and free markets with the principles of Austrian School economics, arguing that "[t]here is, in the body of thought known as 'Austrian economics', a scientific explanation of the workings of the free market (and of the consequences of government intervention in that market) which individualist anarchists could easily incorporate into their political and social Weltanschauung".[144] Rothbard held that the economic consequences of the political system they advocate would not result in an economy with people being paid in proportion to labor amounts, nor would profit and interest disappear as they expected. Tucker thought that unregulated banking and money issuance would cause increases in the money supply so that interest rates would drop to zero or near to it.[143] Peter Marshall states that "anarcho-capitalism overlooks the egalitarian implications of traditional individualist anarchists like Spooner and Tucker".[41] Stephanie Silberstein states that "While Spooner was no free-market capitalist, nor an anarcho-capitalist, he was not as opposed to capitalism as most socialists were."[74]
In "The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View", Rothbard explained his disagreements. Rothbard disagreed with Tucker that it would cause the money supply to increase because he believed that the money supply in a free market would be self-regulating. If it were not, then Rothbard argued inflation would occur so it is not necessarily desirable to increase the money supply in the first place. Rothbard claimed that Tucker was wrong to think that interest would disappear regardless because he believed people, in general, do not wish to lend their money to others without compensation, so there is no reason why this would change just because banking was unregulated.[143] Tucker held a labor theory of value and thought that in a free market people would be paid in proportion to how much labor they exerted and that exploitation or usury was taking place if they were not. As Tucker explained in State Socialism and Anarchism, his theory was that unregulated banking would cause more money to be available and that this would allow the proliferation of new businesses which would, in turn, raise demand for labor.[145] This led Tucker to believe that the labor theory of value would be vindicated and equal amounts of labor would receive equal pay. As an Austrian School economist, Rothbard did not agree with the labor theory and believed that prices of goods and services are proportional to marginal utility rather than to labor amounts in the free market. As opposed to Tucker he did not think that there was anything exploitative about people receiving an income according to how much "buyers of their services value their labor" or what that labor produces.[143]
Benjamin Tucker, another individualist anarchist, who identified as a socialist and his individualist anarchism as anarchistic socialism versus state socialism, said to have influenced anarcho-capitalism
Without the labor theory of value,[63] some argue that 19th-century individualist anarchists approximate the modern movement of anarcho-capitalism,[13][14][15] although this has been contested[43] or rejected.[146][147][148] As economic theory changed, the popularity of the labor theory of classical economics was superseded by the subjective theory of value of neoclassical economics and Rothbard combined Mises' Austrian School of economics with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the 19th century such as Tucker and Spooner.[149] In the mid-1950s, Rothbard wrote an unpublished article named "Are Libertarians 'Anarchists'?" under the pseudonym "Aubrey Herbert", concerned with differentiating himself from communist and socialistic economic views of anarchists, including the individualist anarchists of the 19th century, concluding that "we are not anarchists and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground and are being completely unhistorical. On the other hand, it is clear that we are not archists either: we do not believe in establishing a tyrannical central authority that will coerce the noninvasive as well as the invasive. Perhaps, then, we could call ourselves by a new name: nonarchist."[150] Joe Peacott, an American individualist anarchist in the mutualist tradition, criticizes anarcho-capitalists for trying to hegemonize the individualist anarchism label and make appear as if all individualist anarchists are in favor of capitalism.[147] Peacott states that "individualists, both past and present, agree with the communist anarchists that present-day capitalism is based on economic coercion, not on voluntary contract. Rent and interest are the mainstays of modern capitalism and are protected and enforced by the state. Without these two unjust institutions, capitalism could not exist".[151]
Historical precedents
Several anarcho-capitalists and right-libertarians have discussed historical precedents of what they believe were examples of anarcho-capitalism.[152]
Free cities of medieval Europe
Economist and libertarian scholar Bryan Caplan considers the free cities of medieval Europe as examples of "anarchist" or "nearly anarchistic" societies,[19] further arguing:
One case that has inspired both sorts of anarchists is that of the free cities of medieval Europe. The first weak link in the chain of feudalism, these free cities became Europe's centers of economic development, trade, art, and culture. They provided a haven for runaway serfs, who could often legally gain their freedom if they avoided re-capture for a year and a day. And they offer many examples of how people can form mutual-aid associations for protection, insurance, and community. Of course, left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists take a somewhat different perspective on the free cities: the former emphasize the communitarian and egalitarian concerns of the free cities, while the latter point to the relatively unregulated nature of their markets and the wide range of services (often including defense, security, and legal services) which were provided privately or semi-privately.[19]
Medieval Iceland
19th-century interpretation of the Althing in the Icelandic Commonwealth which authors such as David D. Friedman believe to have some features of anarcho-capitalist society
According to the libertarian theorist David D. Friedman, "[m]edieval Icelandic institutions have several peculiar and interesting characteristics; they might almost have been invented by a mad economist to test the lengths to which market systems could supplant government in its most fundamental functions".[20] While not directly labeling it anarcho-capitalist, Friedman argues that the legal system of the Icelandic Commonwealth comes close to being a real-world anarcho-capitalist legal system.[153] Although noting that there was a single legal system, Friedman argues that enforcement of the law was entirely private and highly capitalist, providing some evidence of how such a society would function. Friedman further wrote that "[e]ven where the Icelandic legal system recognized an essentially 'public' offense, it dealt with it by giving some individual (in some cases chosen by lot from those affected) the right to pursue the case and collect the resulting fine, thus fitting it into an essentially private system".[20]
Friedman and Bruce L. Benson argued that the Icelandic Commonwealth saw significant economic and social progress in the absence of systems of criminal law, an executive, or bureaucracy. This commonwealth was led by chieftains, whose position could be bought and sold like that of private property. Being a member of the chieftainship was also completely voluntary.[6]
American Old West
According to Terry L. Anderson and P. J. Hill, the Old West in the United States in the period of 1830 to 1900 was similar to anarcho-capitalism in that "private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved" and that the common popular perception that the Old West was chaotic with little respect for property rights is incorrect.[154] Since squatters had no claim to western lands under federal law, extra-legal organizations formed to fill the void. Benson explains:
The land clubs and claim associations each adopted their own written contract setting out the laws that provided the means for defining and protecting property rights in the land. They established procedures for registration of land claims, as well as for the protection of those claims against outsiders, and for adjudication of internal disputes that arose. The reciprocal arrangements for protection would be maintained only if a member complied with the association's rules and its court's rulings. Anyone who refused would be ostracized. A boycott by a land club meant that an individual had no protection against aggression other than what he could provide himself.[155]
According to Anderson, "[d]efining anarcho-capitalist to mean minimal government with property rights developed from the bottom up, the western frontier was anarcho-capitalistic. People on the frontier invented institutions that fit the resource constraints they faced".[citation needed]
Gaelic Ireland
Provinces of Ireland in 900
In his work For a New Liberty, Murray Rothbard has claimed ancient Gaelic Ireland as an example of nearly anarcho-capitalist society.[16] In his depiction, citing the work of Professor Joseph Peden,[156] the basic political unit of ancient Ireland was the tuath, which is portrayed as "a body of persons voluntarily united for socially beneficial purposes" with its territorial claim being limited to "the sum total of the landed properties of its members".[16] Civil disputes were settled by private arbiters called "brehons" and the compensation to be paid to the wronged party was insured through voluntary surety relationships. Commenting on the "kings" of tuaths,[16] Rothbard stated:
The king was elected by the tuath from within a royal kin group (the derbfine), which carried the hereditary priestly function. Politically, however, the king had strictly limited functions: he was the military leader of the tuath, and he presided over the tuath assemblies. But he could only conduct war or peace negotiations as an agent of the assemblies, and he was in no sense sovereign and had no rights of administering justice over tuath members. He could not legislate, and when he himself was party to a lawsuit, he had to submit his case to an independent judicial arbiter.[16]
Law merchant, admiralty law, and early common law
Some libertarians have cited law merchant, admiralty law and early common law as examples of anarcho-capitalism.[157][158][failed verification][159]
In his work Power and Market,[60] Rothbard stated:
The law merchant, admiralty law, and much of the common law began to be developed by privately competitive judges, who were sought out by litigants for their expertise in understanding the legal areas involved. The fairs of Champagne and the great marts of international trade in the Middle Ages enjoyed freely competitive courts, and people could patronize those that they deemed most accurate and efficient.[60]: 1051
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Somalia from 1991 to 2012
Main article: History of Somalia (1991–2006)
Economist Alex Tabarrok argued that Somalia in its stateless period provided a "unique test of the theory of anarchy", in some aspects near of that espoused by anarcho-capitalists David D. Friedman and Murray Rothbard.[22] Nonetheless, both left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists argue that Somalia was not an anarchist society.[160][161]
Analysis and criticism
State, justice and defense
See also: Corporatocracy
Left-anarchists such as Brian Morris argue that anarcho-capitalism does not in fact get rid of the state. He says that anarcho-capitalists "simply replaced the state with private security firms, and can hardly be described as anarchists as the term is normally understood".[162] In "Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy", anarchist Peter Sabatini notes:
Similarly, Bob Black argues that an anarcho-capitalist wants to "abolish the state to his own satisfaction by calling it something else". He states that they do not denounce what the state does, they just "object to who's doing it".[164]
Paul Birch argues that legal disputes involving several jurisdictions and different legal systems will be too complex and costly. He therefore argues that anarcho-capitalism is inherently unstable, and would evolve, entirely through the operation of free market forces, into either a single dominant private court with a natural monopoly of justice over the territory (a de facto state), a society of multiple city states, each with a territorial monopoly, or a 'pure anarchy' that would rapidly descend into chaos.[165]
Randall G. Holcombe argues that anarcho-capitalism turns justice into a commodity as private defense and court firms would favour those who pay more for their services.[166] He argues that defense agencies could form cartels and oppress people without fear of competition.[166] Philosopher Albert Meltzer argued that since anarcho-capitalism promotes the idea of private armies, it actually supports a "limited State". He contends that it "is only possible to conceive of Anarchism which is free, communistic and offering no economic necessity for repression of countering it".[167]
Libertarian Robert Nozick argues that a competitive legal system would evolve toward a monopoly government – even without violating individuals' rights in the process.[168] In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick defends minarchism and argues that an anarcho-capitalist society would inevitably transform into a minarchist state through the eventual emergence of a monopolistic private defense and judicial agency that no longer faces competition. He argues that anarcho-capitalism results in an unstable system that would not endure in the real world. While anarcho-capitalists such as Roy Childs and Murray Rothbard have rejected Nozick's arguments,[169] with Rothbard arguing that the process described by Nozick, with the dominant protection agency outlawing its competitors, in fact violates its own clients' rights,[170] John Jefferson actually advocates Nozick's argument and states that such events would best operate in laissez-faire.[171] Robert Ellickson presented a Hayekian case against anarcho-capitalism, calling it a "pipe-dream" and stating that anarcho-capitalists "by imagining a stable system of competing private associations, ignore both the inevitability of territorial monopolists in governance, and the importance of institutions to constrain those monopolists' abuses".[172]
Some libertarians argue that anarcho-capitalism would result in different standards of justice and law due to relying too much on the market. Friedman responded to this criticism by arguing that it assumes the state is controlled by a majority group that has similar legal ideals. If the populace is diverse, different legal standards would therefore be appropriate.[6]
Rights and freedom
Negative and positive rights are rights that oblige either action (positive rights) or inaction (negative rights). Anarcho-capitalists believe that negative rights should be recognized as legitimate, but positive rights should be rejected as an intrusion. Many left-anarchists argue that positive rights are just as important if not equal to negative rights.
Economics and property
Social anarchists argue that anarcho-capitalism allows individuals to accumulate significant power through free markets and private property.[3] Friedman responded by arguing that the Icelandic Commonwealth was able to prevent the wealthy from abusing the poor by requiring individuals who engaged in acts of violence to compensate their victims financially.[6]
Left-anarchists argue that certain capitalist transactions are not voluntary and that maintaining the class structure of a capitalist society requires coercion which violates anarchist principles.[173][174][175][176] Anthropologist David Graeber noted his skepticism about anarcho-capitalism along the same lines, arguing:
Some critics argue that the anarcho-capitalist concept of voluntary choice ignores constraints due to both human and non-human factors such as the need for food and shelter as well as active restriction of both used and unused resources by those enforcing property claims.[178] If a person requires employment in order to feed and house himself, the employer-employee relationship could be considered involuntary. Another criticism is that employment is involuntary because the economic system that makes it necessary for some individuals to serve others is supported by the enforcement of coercive private property relations.[178] Some philosophies view any ownership claims on land and natural resources as immoral and illegitimate.[179] Objectivist philosopher Harry Binswanger criticizes anarcho-capitalism by arguing that "capitalism requires government", questioning who or what would enforce treaties and contracts.[180]
Some right-libertarian critics of anarcho-capitalism who support the full privatization of capital such as geolibertarians argue that land and the raw materials of nature remain a distinct factor of production and cannot be justly converted to private property because they are not products of human labor. Some socialists, including market anarchists and mutualists, adamantly oppose absentee ownership. Anarcho-capitalists have strong abandonment criteria, namely that one maintains ownership until one agrees to trade or gift it. Anti-state critics of this view posit comparatively weak abandonment criteria, arguing that one loses ownership when one stops personally occupying and using it as well as the idea of perpetually binding original appropriation is anathema to traditional schools of anarchism.[165]
Propertarianism
Main article: Propertarianism
Critics charge that the Propertarianism perspective prevents freedom from making sense as an independent value in anarcho-capitalist theory:[181]
Literature
The following is a partial list of notable nonfiction works discussing anarcho-capitalism.
• Bruce L. Benson, The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without The State
• To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice
• David D. Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom
• Edward P. Stringham, Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice
• George H. Smith, "Justice Entrepreneurship in a Free Market"
• Gerard Casey, Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State
• Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography
• A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism
• Democracy: The God That Failed
• The Economics and Ethics of Private Property
• Linda and Morris Tannehill, The Market for Liberty
• Michael Huemer, The Problem of Political Authority
• Murray Rothbard, founder of anarcho-capitalism:
• For a New Liberty
• Man, Economy, and State
• Power and Market
• The Ethics of Liberty
See also
• Agorism
• Consequentialist libertarianism
• Counter-economics
• Creative disruption
• Crypto-anarchism
• Definition of anarchism and libertarianism
• Left-wing market anarchism
• Neo-feudalism
• Natural-rights libertarianism
• Privatization in criminal justice
• Voluntaryism
References
1. Rothbard, Murray N., The Betrayal of the American Right Archived 30 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine (2007): 188
2. Geloso, Vincent; Leeson, Peter T. (2020). "Are Anarcho-Capitalists Insane? Medieval Icelandic Conflict Institutions in Comparative Perspective". Revue d'économie politique. 130 (6): 957–974. doi:10.3917/redp.306.0115. ISSN 0373-2630. S2CID 235008718. Archived from the original on 5 August 2022. Retrieved 5 August 2022. Anarcho-capitalism is a variety of libertarianism according to which all government institutions can and should be replaced by private ones.
3. Morriss, Andrew (2008). "Anarcho-Capitalism". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 13–14. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n8. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. OCLC 750831024. Archived from the original on 7 February 2024. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
4. Stringham, Edward (2007). Anarchy and the law: the political economy of choice. Transaction Publishers. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-4128-0579-7. Archived from the original on 7 February 2024. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
5. Marshall, Peter. "Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism – The New Right and Anarcho-capitalism". dwardmac.pitzer.edu. Archived from the original on 19 April 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
6. Costa, Daniel (21 October 2022). "Anarcho-capitalism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 25 October 2022. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
7. Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (31 December 2001). "Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography" Archived 11 January 2014 at the Wayback Machine. Lew Rockwell.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
8. Hess, Karl (2003) [March 1969]. "The Death of Politics". Faré's Home Page. Playboy. Archived from the original on 2 August 2019. Retrieved 9 October 2023. Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism [sic], is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so.
9. Johnson, Charles (28 August 2015). "Karl Hess on Anarcho-Capitalism". Center for a Stateless Society. Archived from the original on 4 October 2023. Retrieved 9 October 2023. In fact, the earliest documented, printed use of the word "anarcho-capitalism" that I can find [6] actually comes neither from Wollstein nor from Rothbard, but from Karl Hess's manifesto "The Death of Politics," which was published in Playboy in March, 1969. [boldface in original]
10. Leeson, Robert (2017). Hayek: A Collaborative Biography, Part IX: The Divine Right of the 'Free' Market. Springer. p. 180. ISBN 978-3-319-60708-5. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 18 March 2023. To the original 'anarchocapitalist' (Rothbard coined the term) [...].
11. Roberta Modugno Crocetta, "Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism in the contemporary debate. A critical defense", Ludwig Von Mises Institute. Archived from the original. quote: "Murray Rothbard suggests the anarcho-capitalist mode, [...]"
12. Flood, Anthony (2010). Untitled preface to Rothbard's "Know Your Rights" Archived 11 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine, originally published in WIN: Peace and Freedom through Nonviolent Action, Volume 7, No. 4, 1 March 1971, 6–10. Flood's quote: "Rothbard's neologism, 'anarchocapitalism,' probably makes its first appearance in print here."
13. Miller, David; et al., eds. (1987). Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 290. ISBN 978-0-631-17944-3. A student and disciple of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, Rothbard combined the laissez-faire economics of his teacher with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the 19th century such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker.
14. Bottomore, Tom (1991). "Anarchism". A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Oxford: Blackwell Reference. p. 21. ISBN 0-63118082-6.
15. Outhwaite, William (2003). "Anarchism". The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-631-22164-7. Their successors today, such as Murray Rothbard, having abandoned the labor theory of value, describe themselves as anarcho-capitalists.
16. Rothbard, Murray (1978). For a New Liberty. Auburn: Mises Institute. p. 282. ISBN 978-1-61016-448-1. Archived from the original on 28 October 2014. Retrieved 26 December 2020.
17. Rothbard, Murray (Spring 1982). "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution" Archived 21 September 2014 at the Wayback Machine. Cato Journal. 2 (1): 55–99.
18. "Role of Personal Justice in Anarcho-capitalism, The | Mises Institute". mises.org. 30 July 2014. Retrieved 7 August 2024.
19. "Anarchist Theory FAQ Version 5.2". George Mason University. Archived from the original on 4 August 2019. Retrieved 23 August 2020.
20. Friedman, David D. (1979). "Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case Archived 18 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine". Retrieved 12 August 2005.
21. Long, Roderick T. (6 June 2002). "Privatization, Viking Style: Model or Misfortune? (The Vikings Were Libertarians)". LewRockwell.com. Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
22. Tabarrok, Alex (21 April 2004). "Somalia and the theory of anarchy". Marginal Revolution. Archived from the original on 31 December 2021. Retrieved 13 January 2008.
23. [16][19][20][21][22]
24. McFarland, Ellie (11 April 2020). "The Republic of Cospaia: An Anarchist Renaissance City". Mises Institute. Archived from the original on 3 September 2022. Retrieved 9 October 2022.
25. Williams, Benjamin (9 August 2022). "The Acadian Community: An Anarcho-Capitalist Success Story". Mises Institute. Archived from the original on 5 December 2022. Retrieved 5 December 2022.
26. Morriss, Andrew P. (15 August 2008). "Anarcho-Capitalism". Libertarianism.org. Archived from the original on 22 September 2020. Retrieved 21 August 2022. Although most anarchists oppose all large institutions, public or private, anarcho-capitalists oppose the state, but not private actors with significant market power.
27. Long, Roderick T.; Machan, Tibor R., eds. (2008). Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country?. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-6066-8.
28. Tormey, Simon (2004). Anti-capitalism: A Beginner's Guide. Oneworld. pp. 118–119. ISBN 978-1851683420.
29. Perlin, Terry M. (1979). Contemporary Anarchism. Transaction Books. p. 7.
30. Raico, Ralph (2004). Authentic German Liberalism of the 19th Century. Ecole Polytechnique, Centre de Recherce en Epistemologie Appliquee, Unité associée au CNRS.
31. Heider, Ulrike (1994). Anarchism: Left, Right, and Green. City Lights. p. 3.
32. Outhwaite, William (2002). "Anarchism". The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought. p. 21.
33. Bottomore, Tom (1991). "Anarchism". Dictionary of Marxist Thought.
34. Ostergaard, Geofrey. "Resisting the Nation State: The Pacifist and Anarchist Tradition". Peace Pledge Union Publications. Archived from the original on 25 July 2008.. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
35. Meltzer, Albert (2000). Anarchism: Arguments For and Against. AK Press. p. 50. The philosophy of "anarcho-capitalism" dreamed up by the "libertarian' New Right, has nothing to do with Anarchism as known by the Anarchist movement proper.
36. Marshall, Peter (2008). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: Harper Perennial. p. 565. In fact, few anarchists would accept the "anarcho-capitalists" into the anarchist camp since they do not share a concern for economic equality and social justice, Their self-interested, calculating market men would be incapable of practising voluntary co-operation and mutual aid. Anarcho-capitalists, even if they do reject the State, might therefore best be called right-wing libertarians rather than anarchists
37. Newman, Saul (2010). The Politics of Postanarchism. Edinburgh University Press. p. 43. ISBN 0748634959. It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism)
38. "Section F – Is "anarcho"-capitalism a type of anarchism?". An Anarchist FAQ. Vol. I. AK Press. 2008. ISBN 978-1902593906. Archived from the original on 9 September 2019.
39. Goodway, David (2006). Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 4. "Libertarian" and "libertarianism" are frequently employed by anarchists as synonyms for "anarchist" and "anarchism", largely as an attempt to distance themselves from the negative connotations of "anarchy" and its derivatives. The situation has been vastly complicated in recent decades with the rise of anarcho-capitalism, "minimal statism" and an extreme right-wing laissez-faire philosophy advocated by such theorists as Murray Rothbard and Robert Nozick and their adoption of the words "libertarian" and "libertarianism". It has therefore now become necessary to distinguish between their right libertarianism and the left libertarianism of the anarchist tradition
40. Sabatini, Peter (1994–95). "Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy". Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed (41). Archived from the original on 7 January 2020. Within Libertarianism, Rothbard represents a minority perspective that actually argues for the total elimination of the state. However Rothbard's claim as an anarchist is quickly voided when it is shown that he only wants an end to the public state. In its place he allows countless private states, with each person supplying their own police force, army, and law, or else purchasing these services from capitalist venders...so what remains is shrill anti-statism conjoined to a vacuous freedom in hackneyed defense of capitalism. In sum, the "anarchy" of Libertarianism reduces to a liberal fraud'
41. Marshall, Peter (1992). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: HarperCollins. pp. 564–565. ISBN 978-0-00-217855-6. "Anarcho-capitalists are against the State simply because they are capitalists first and foremost. [...] They are not concerned with the social consequences of capitalism for the weak, powerless and ignorant. [...] As such, anarcho-capitalism overlooks the egalitarian implications of traditional individualist anarchists like Spooner and Tucker. In fact, few anarchists would accept the 'anarcho-capitalists' into the anarchist camp since they do not share a concern for economic equality and social justice. Their self-interested, calculating market men would be incapable of practising voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. Anarcho-capitalists, even if they do reject the state, might therefore best be called right-wing libertarians rather than anarchists."
42. Jennings, Jeremy (1993). "Anarchism". In Eatwell, Roger; Wright, Anthony (eds.). Contemporary Political Ideologies. London: Pinter. pp. 127–146. ISBN 978-0-86187-096-7. "[...] anarchism does not stand for the untrammelled freedom of the individual (as the 'anarcho-capitalists' appear to believe) but, as we have already seen, for the extension of individuality and community" (p. 143).
43. Franks, Benjamin (August 2013). Freeden, Michael; Stears, Marc (eds.). "Anarchism". The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Oxford University Press: 385–404. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585977.013.0001. "Individualisms that defend or reinforce hierarchical forms such as the economic-power relations of anarcho-capitalism [...] are incompatible with practices of social anarchism. [...] Increasingly, academic analysis has followed activist currents in rejecting the view that anarcho-capitalism has anything to do with social anarchism" (pp. 393–394).
44. Newman, Saul (2010). The Politics of Postanarchism. Edinburgh University Press. p. 43. "It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism)." ISBN 0748634959.
45. Pele, Antonio; Riley, Stephen (2 February 2021). "For a Right to Health Beyond Biopolitics: The Politics of Pandemic and the 'Politics of Life'". Law, Culture and the Humanities. Sage Publications. doi:10.1177/1743872120978201. ISSN 1743-8721. S2CID 234042976. Archived from the original on 8 February 2024. Retrieved 19 June 2023. In his Cours on The Birth of Biopolitics, Foucault has exclusively dedicated his lectures on (neo)liberalism (e.g. German ordoliberalism and the American 'anarcho-capitalism'), offering his apologies for not having examined thoroughly this idea of biopolitics.
46. White, Richard; Williams, Colin (2014). "Anarchist Economic Practices in a 'Capitalist' Society: Some Implications for Organisation and the Future of Work" Archived 15 November 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Ephermera: Theory and Politics in Organization. 14 (4): 947–971. SSRN 2707308.
47. Marshall, Peter H. (2010). Demanding the impossible : a history of anarchism: be realistic! Demand the impossible!. Oakland, CA: PM Press. pp. 564–565. ISBN 978-1-60486-268-3. OCLC 611612065.
48. Gay, Kathlyn; Gay, Martin (1999). Encyclopedia of Political Anarchy. ABC-CLIO. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-87436-982-3. "For many anarchists (of whatever persuasion), anarcho-capitalism is a contradictory term, since 'traditional' anarchists oppose capitalism".
49. Rothbard, Murray (25 February 1972). "Exclusive Interview With Murray Rothbard" Archived 18 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine. The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal. Retrieved 10 September 2020.
50. Michael Huemer (2020). "The Right Anarchy". The Routledge Handbook of Anarchy and Anarchist Thought. Routledge. pp. 342–359. doi:10.4324/9781315185255-24. ISBN 978-1-315-18525-5. S2CID 228838944. Archived from the original on 8 February 2024. Retrieved 4 January 2021. (From abstract): There are two main varieties of anarchism: the socialist variety (aka "social anarchism" or "anarcho-socialism") and the capitalist variety ("anarcho-capitalism")
51. "Political Ideologies: An introduction, fifth edition (Chapter summaries)". Macmillan International. Archived from the original on 16 June 2019.
52. Brooks, Frank H. (1994). The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty (1881–1908). Transaction Publishers. p. xi. ISBN 1-56000-132-1. Usually considered to be an extreme left-wing ideology, anarchism has always included a significant strain of radical individualism, from the hyperrationalism of Godwin, to the egoism of Stirner, to the libertarians and anarcho-capitalists of today.
53. Meltzer, Albert (2000). Anarchism: Arguments for and Against. London: AK Press. p. 50. ISBN 978-1-873176-57-3. The philosophy of 'anarcho-capitalism' dreamed up by the 'libertarian' New Right, has nothing to do with Anarchism as known by the Anarchist movement proper.
54. Vincent, Andrew (2009). Modern Political Ideologies (3rd ed.). Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. p. 66. ISBN 978-1-4443-1105-1. Archived from the original on 12 May 2023. Retrieved 18 March 2023. Whom to include under the rubric of the New Right remains puzzling. It is usually seen as an amalgam of traditional liberal conservatism, Austrian liberal economic theory (Ludwing von Mises and Hayek), extreme libertarianism (anarcho-capitalism), and crude populism.
55. J Michael Oliver (2013). The New Libertarianism: Anarcho-Capitalism. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. pp. 11–12, 173. ISBN 978-1-4910-6862-5.
56. Duggan, Lisa (22 May 2019). "Ayn Rand and the Cruel Heart of Neoliberalism". Dissent Magazine. Archived from the original on 29 October 2021. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
57. Patrik Schumacher (2016). "The Stages of Capitalism and the Styles of Architecture". ASA web-magazine. Archived from the original on 8 February 2020. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
58. Kinna, Ruth, ed. (2012). The Bloomsbury Companion to Anarchism. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 330–331. ISBN 978-1441142702.
59. Rothbard, Murray N., A Future of Peace and Capitalism Archived 16 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine; Murray N. Rothbard, Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty Archived 16 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine.
60. Rothbard, Murray (1977) [1970]. Power and Market (2nd ed.). published in Rothbard, Murray (2009). Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market (2nd ed.). Mises Institute. ISBN 978-1-933550-27-5. Archived from the original on 18 August 2022. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
61. "Libertarianism" Archived 8 February 2024 at the Wayback Machine (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 30 July 2007.
62. Murray Rothbard (2000). "Egalitarianism as A Revolt Against Nature And Other Essays: and other essays". Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000. p. 207.
63. Avrich, Paul (1996). Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (abridged paperback ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 282. ISBN 978-0691044941. "Although there are many honorable exceptions who still embrace the 'socialist' label, most people who call themselves individualist anarchists today are followers of Murray Rothbard's Austrian economics and have abandoned the labor theory of value."
64. Carson, Kevin (2006). Studies in Mutualist Political Economy. "Preface". Archived 15 April 2011 at the Wayback Machine Charleston: BookSurge Publishing. ISBN 978-1419658693. "Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995), American economist, historian, and individualist anarchist."
65. Edwards, Maverick (9 January 2021). "The Failure of Imagination: A Theoretical and Pragmatic Analysis of Utopianism as an Orientation for Human Life". Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy. 1 (2). Archived from the original on 16 January 2022. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
66. Stanisław Wójtowicz (2017). "Anarcho-capitalism, or can we do away with the state". Nauka (4). ISSN 1231-8515. Archived from the original on 29 October 2020. Retrieved 4 January 2021. The last problem is especially vexing, since anarcho-capitalists seem to be caught up in a contradiction here. On one hand, they are proponents of a specific moral theory (based on non-aggression principle), on the other hand, they do not allow for any central, monopolistic agency to impose that moral theory on society.
67. Friedman, David D. (1989) "Chapter 41: Problems" Archived 11 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism (2nd ed.). La Salle: Open Court Press. ISBN 0-8126-9069-9.
68. Rothbard, Murray (1982). The Ethics of Liberty Archived 9 November 2014 at the Wayback Machine. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press. p. 162. ISBN 978-0-8147-7506-6.
69. Rothbard, Murray N. (1975) "Society Without A State" Archived 10 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine Libertarian Forum newsletter (January 1975).
70. Cristóbal Matarán López (2021). "The Austrian school of Madrid". The Review of Austrian Economics. 36: 61–79. doi:10.1007/s11138-021-00541-0. In addition, Professor Huerta de Soto has become one of the most prominent and resolute defenders of the Anarchocapitalism, that is, the full and complete privatisation of all goods and services.
71. Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (20 May 2002). "Rothbardian Ethics". LewRockwell.com. Archived from the original on 13 March 2014. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
72. Hall, Larry M (December 1990). "Anarcho-Capitalist Threads in Modern Libertarianism: The Social Thought of Murray Rothbard". tennessee.edu. p. 140. Archived from the original on 24 March 2023. Retrieved 23 July 2023.
73. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Chapter V, paragraph 27.
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88. Zaheer Kazmi (2012). Polite Anarchy in International Relations Theory. The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought. Palgrave Macmillan US. p. 46. ISBN 978-1-137-02813-6. Notably, in light of latter-day anarcho-capitalism, Tucker had also advocated the privatisation of the policing and security functions of the state to protect people and property and accepted the use of violence as means of enforcing contracts.
89. Nathan W. Schlueter; Nikolai G. Wenzel (2018). Selfish Libertarians and Socialist Conservatives?. Stanford University Press. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-5036-0029-4.
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112. Goodway, David (2006). Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 4. "'Libertarian' and 'libertarianism' are frequently employed by anarchists as synonyms for 'anarchist' and 'anarchism', largely as an attempt to distance themselves from the negative connotations of 'anarchy' and its derivatives. The situation has been vastly complicated in recent decades with the rise of anarcho-capitalism, 'minimal statism' and an extreme right-wing laissez-faire philosophy advocated by such theorists as Rothbard and Nozick and their adoption of the words 'libertarian' and 'libertarianism'. It has therefore now become necessary to distinguish between their right libertarianism and the left libertarianism of the anarchist tradition."
113. Jun, Nathan (September 2009). "Anarchist Philosophy and Working Class Struggle: A Brief History and Commentary". WorkingUSA. 12 (3): 507–508. doi:10.1111/j.1743-4580.2009.00251.x. ISSN 1089-7011. [Anarchists oppose] all centralized and hierarchical forms of government (e.g., monarchy, representative democracy, state socialism, etc.), economic class systems (e.g., capitalism, Bolshevism, feudalism, slavery, etc.), autocratic religions (e.g., fundamentalist Islam, Roman Catholicism, etc.), patriarchy, heterosexism, white supremacy, and imperialism.
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119. McKay, Iain (2008). An Anarchist FAQ. 1. "What are the myths of capitalist economics?" "Is 'anarcho'-capitalism a type of anarchism?" Oakland/Edinburgh: AK Press. ISBN 978-1902593906.
120. Marshall, Peter (1992). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: HarperCollins. p. 641. ISBN 978-0-00-217855-6. "For a long time, libertarian was interchangeable in France with anarchist but in recent years, its meaning has become more ambivalent."
121. Cohn, Jesse (20 April 2009). "Anarchism". In Ness, Immanuel (ed.). The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 1–11 (6). doi:10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0039. ISBN 978-1-4051-9807-3. [...] 'libertarianism' [...] a term that, until the mid-twentieth century, was synonymous with 'anarchism' per se
122. Francis, Mark (December 1983). "Human Rights and Libertarians". Australian Journal of Politics & History. 29 (3): 462. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8497.1983.tb00212.x. ISSN 0004-9522.
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125. Williams, Dana (2012). "From Top to Bottom, a Thoroughly Stratified World: An Anarchist View of Inequality and Domination". Race, Gender & Class. 19 (3/4): 9–34. JSTOR 43497486.
126. Casey, Gerard (2018). Freedom's Progress?. Andrews UK Limited. p. 670. ISBN 978-1-84540-942-5.
127. Jun, Nathan J. (2017). Brill's Companion to Anarchism and philosophy. Brill. p. 293. ISBN 978-90-04-35688-7.
128. Jennings, Jeremy (1999). "Anarchism". In Eatwell, Roger; Wright, Anthony (eds.). Contemporary Political Ideologies (reprinted, 2nd ed.). London: A & C Black. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-8264-5173-6.
129. Goodwin, Barbara (2007). Using Political Ideas. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-470-02552-9.
130. McLaughlin, Paul (2007). Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism. Ashgate. pp. 28 Archived 8 February 2024 at the Wayback Machine–166. ISBN 978-0754661962. "Anarchists do reject the state, as we will see. But to claim that this central aspect of anarchism is definitive is to sell anarchism short. [...] [Opposition to the state] is (contrary to what many scholars believe) not definitive of anarchism."
131. Jun, Nathan (September 2009). "Anarchist Philosophy and Working Class Struggle: A Brief History and Commentary". WorkingUSA. 12 (3): 505–519. doi:10.1111/j.1743-4580.2009.00251.x. ISSN 1089-7011. "One common misconception, which has been rehearsed repeatedly by the few Anglo-American philosophers who have bothered to broach the topic [...] is that anarchism can be defined solely in terms of opposition to states and governments" (p. 507).
132. Franks, Benjamin (August 2013). Freeden, Michael; Stears, Marc (eds.). "Anarchism". The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Oxford University Press: 385–404. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585977.013.0001. "[M]any, questionably, regard anti-statism as the irremovable, universal principle at the core of anarchism. [...] The fact that [anarchists and anarcho-capitalists] share a core concept of 'anti-statism', which is often advanced as [...] a commonality between them [...], is insufficient to produce a shared identity [...] because [they interpret] the concept of state-rejection [...] differently despite the initial similarity in nomenclature" (pp. 386–388).
133. David L. Prychytko (2002). "Chapter 10: Expanding the Anarchist Range: A Critical Reappraisal of Rothbard's Contribution to the Contemporary Theory of Anarchism". Markets, Planning, and Democracy. Edward Elgar Publishing, Incorporated. p. 124. ISBN 978-1-84376-738-1. While society without a state is necessary for full-fledged anarchy, it is nevertheless insufficient.
134. Murphy, Ryan H. (2019). Markets against Modernity: Ecological Irrationality, Public and Private. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 84. ISBN 978-1-4985-9118-8.
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136. Rothbard, Murray N. (2016). The Rothbard Reader – Society Without a State. Mises Institute. ISBN 978-1-61016-661-4. Archived from the original on 28 November 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
137. Raico, Ralph (2004). Authentic German Liberalism of the 19th century Archived 10 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine. École Polytechnique, Centre de Recherche en Épistémologie Appliquée. Unité associée au CNRS.
138. Raico, Ralph (29 March 2011) "Neither the Wars Nor the Leaders Were Great" Archived 14 September 2014 at the Wayback Machine. Mises Institute.
139. Molinari, Gustave; Ebeling, Richard M., ed. (1977). The Production of Security Archived 28 November 2019 at the Wayback Machine. "Preface". Translated by McCulloch, J. Huston. Occasional Papers Series (2). New York: The Center for Libertarian Studies.
140. Aligica, Paul Dragos (2017). "Public Administration and the Classical Liberal Perspective: Criticism, Clarifications, and Reconstruction". Administration & Society. 49 (4): 530–551. doi:10.1177/0095399715581044. ISSN 0095-3997. S2CID 144893289. Archived from the original on 12 June 2022. Retrieved 12 June 2022.
141. De Leon, David (1978). The American as Anarchist: Reflections on Indigenous Radicalism. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 127. "[...] Only a few individuals like Murray Rothbard, in Power and Market, and some article writers were influenced by these men. Most had not evolved consciously from this tradition; they had been a rather automatic product of the American environment."
142. Gordon, David (2007). The Essential Rothbard. Mises Institute. pp. 12–13.
143. Rothbard, Murray (2000) [1965]. "The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View" Archived 30 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Journal of Libertarian Studies. 20 (1): 5–15.
144. Rothbard, Murray (2000) [1965]. "The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View" Archived 2 November 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Journal of Libertarian Studies. 20 (1): 7.
145. Tucker, Benjamin (1911). State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree & Wherein They Differ (6th ed.). London: A. C. Fifield.
146. Wieck, David (1978). "Anarchist Justice" Archived 28 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine. In Chapman, John W.; Pennock, J. Roland Pennock, eds. Anarchism: Nomos XIX. New York: New York University Press. pp. 227–228. "Out of the history of anarchist thought and action Rothbard has pulled forth a single thread, the thread of individualism, and defines that individualism in a way alien even to the spirit of a Max Stirner or a Benjamin Tucker, whose heritage I presume he would claim – to say nothing of how alien is his way to the spirit of Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and the historically anonymous persons who through their thoughts and action have tried to give anarchism a living meaning. Out of this thread, Rothbard manufactures one more bourgeois ideology." Retrieved 7 April 2020.
147. Peacott, Joe (18 April 1985). "Reply to Wendy Mc Elroy". New Libertarian (14, June 1985. Archived 7 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 4 September 2020. "In her article on individualist anarchism in October 1984, New Libertarian, Wendy McElroy mistakenly claims that modern-day individualist anarchism is identical with anarchist capitalism. She ignores the fact that there are still individualist anarchists who reject capitalism as well as communism, in the tradition of Warren, Spooner, Tucker, and others. [...] Benjamin Tucker, when he spoke of his ideal 'society of contract,' was certainly not speaking of anything remotely resembling contemporary capitalist society. [...] I do not quarrel with McElroy's definition of herself as an individualist anarchist. However, I dislike the fact that she tries to equate the term with anarchist capitalism. This is simply not true. I am an individualist anarchist and I am opposed to capitalist economic relations, voluntary or otherwise."
148. Baker, J. W. "Native American Anarchism". The Raven. 10 (1): 43‒62. Retrieved 4 September 2020. "It is time that anarchists recognise the valuable contributions of individualist anarchist theory and take advantage of its ideas. It would be both futile and criminal to leave it to the capitalist libertarians, whose claims on Tucker and the others can be made only by ignoring the violent opposition they had to capitalist exploitation and monopolistic 'free enterprise' supported by the state."
149. Miller, David, ed. (1987). The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 290. ISBN 0-631-17944-5.
150. Rothbard, Murray (1950s). "Are Libertarians 'Anarchists'?" Archived 13 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine Lew Rockwell.com. Retrieved 4 September 2020.
151. Peacott, Joe (18 April 1985). "Reply to Wendy Mc Elroy". New Libertarian (14, June 1985). Archived 7 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 4 September 2020. "In her overview of anarchist history, McElroy criticizes the individualists of the past for their belief in the labor theory of value, because it fails to distinguish between profit and plunder. Some anarchist individualists still believe that profit is theft and that living off the labor of others is immoral. And some individualists, both past and present, agree with the communist anarchists that present-day capitalism is based on economic coercion, not on voluntary contract. Rent and interest are the mainstays of modern capitalism and are protected and enforced by the state. Without these two unjust institutions, capitalism could not exist. These two institutions, and the money monopoly of the state, effectively prevent most people from being economically independent and force them into wage labor. Saying that coercion does not exist i[n] capitalist economic relations because workers aren't forced to work by armed capitalists ignores the very real economic coercion caused by this alliance of capitalism and the state. People don't voluntarily work for wages or pay rent, except in the sense that most people 'voluntarily' pay taxes[.] Because one recognizes when she or he is up against superior force and chooses to compromise in order to survive, does not make these activities voluntary; at least, not in the way I envision voluntary relations in an anarchist society."
152. [16][19][20][21][22]
153. Friedman, David D. (28 February 2015). "Private Law Enforcement, Medieval Iceland, and Libertarianism". The Machinery of Freedom (3rd ed.). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. pp. 203–204. ISBN 978-1-5077-8560-7.
154. Anderson, Terry L. and Hill, P. J. "An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West Archived 17 October 2021 at the Wayback Machine", The Journal of Libertarian Studies
155. Benson, Bruce L. (1998). "Private Justice in America". To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice. New York: New York University Press. p. 101. ISBN 978-0-8147-1327-3.
156. Peden Stateless Societies: Ancient Ireland Archived 5 August 2019 at the Wayback Machine
157. Rothbard. "Defense Services on the Free Market Archived 14 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine".
158. Benson. "The Enterprise of Customary Law Archived 19 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine".
159. Hasnas. "The Obviousness of Anarchy Archived 11 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine".
160. Knight, Alex R. III (7 October 2009). "The Truth About Somalia And Anarchy". Center for a Stateless Society. Archived from the original on 15 December 2017. Retrieved 24 December 2016.
161. Block, Walter (1999). "Review Essay" (PDF). The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. 2 (3 (Fall)). Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 28 January 2010. But if we define anarchy as places without governments, and we define governments as the agencies with a legal right to impose violence on their subjects, then whatever else occurred in Haiti, Sudan, and Somalia, it wasn't anarchy. For there were well-organized gangs (e.g., governments) in each of these places, demanding tribute, and fighting others who made similar impositions. Absence of government means absence of government, whether well established ones, or fly-by-nights.
162. Brian Morris, "Global Anti-Capitalism", pp. 170–176, Anarchist Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, p. 175.
163. Peter Sabatini. "Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy". Archived from the original on 30 August 2019. Retrieved 28 June 2019.
164. Bob Black (1992), "The Libertarian As Conservative", The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, p. 144
165. Birch, Paul (1998). "Anarcho-capitalism Dissolves into City States" (PDF). Libertarian Alliance. Legal Notes. 28: 4. ISSN 0267-7083. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 5 July 2010.
166.Holcombe, Randall G. "Government: Unnecessary but Inevitable" (PDF). The Independent Review. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
167. Meltzer, Albert (2000). Anarchism: Arguments For and Against. AK Press. p. 50. ISBN 978-1-873176-57-3.
168. Jeffrey Paul, Fred Dycus Miller (1993). Liberalism and the Economic Order. Cambridge University Press. p. 115.
169. See Childs's incomplete essay, "Anarchist Illusions", Liberty against Power: Essays by Roy A. Childs, Jr., ed. Joan Kennedy Taylor (San Francisco: Fox 1994) 179–183.
170. Rothbard, Murray (5 July 2017), "Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State", Anarchy And the Law, Routledge, pp. 232–249, doi:10.4324/9781315082349-12, ISBN 978-1-315-08234-9
171. Jeffrey Paul, Fred Dycus Miller (1993). Liberalism and the Economic Order. Cambridge University Press. p. 118.
172. Ellickson, Robert C. (26 January 2017). "A Hayekian Case Against Anarcho-Capitalism: Of Street Grids, Lighthouses, and Aid to the Destitute". Yale Law & Economics Research Paper No. 569. SSRN 2906383.
173. Iain McKay; et al. (21 January 2010). "Section F – Are 'anarcho'-capitalists really anarchists?" (PDF). Infoshop.org. An Anarchist FAQ. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 21 August 2013.
174. Andrew Fiala (3 October 2017). "Anarchism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archived from the original on 28 August 2020. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
175. Anthony J. II Nocella; Richard J. White; Erika Cudworth (2015). Anarchism and Animal Liberation: Essays on Complementary Elements of Total Liberation. McFarland & Co. ISBN 978-0-7864-9457-6. Anarchism is a socio-political theory which opposes all systems of domination and oppression such as racism, ableism, sexism, anti-LGBTTQIA, ageism, sizeism, government, competition, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism and punitive justice, and promotes direct democracy, collaboration, interdependence, mutual aid, diversity, peace, transformative justice and equity.
176. Paul McLaughlin (2007). Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism. Ashgate Publishing Ltd. p. 48. ISBN 978-1-138-27614-7. Thus, as David Miller puts it, capitalism is regarded by anarchists as 'both coercive [though this word may be too strong] [sic] and exploitative – it places workers in the power of their bosses, and fails to give them a just return for their contribution to production.'
177. "I am David Graeber, an anthropologist, activist, anarchist and author of Debt. AMA". Reddit. 28 January 2013. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 21 August 2013.
178. Friedman, David D. "Market Failure: The Case for and Against Government". daviddfriedman.com. Do We Need a Government?. Archived from the original on 15 April 2021. Retrieved 14 July 2010.
179. McElroy, Wendy (1995). "Intellectual Property: The Late Nineteenth Century Libertarian Debate Archived 2 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine". Libertarian Heritage No. 14 ISBN 1-85637-281-2. Retrieved 24 June 2005.
180. Harry Binswanger. "Sorry Libertarian Anarchists, Capitalism Requires Government". Forbes. Archived from the original on 16 June 2020. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
181. McKay, Iain. (2008/2012). An Anarchist FAQ-Appendix: Anarchism and "Anarcho"-capitalism. UK: AK Press. 2 What do “anarcho”-capitalists mean by “freedom”? https://anarchism.pageabode.com/book/2- ... y-freedom/
Further reading
• Brown, Susan Love (1997). "The Free Market as Salvation from Government: The Anarcho-Capitalist View". In Carrier, James G., ed. Meanings of the Market: The Free Market in Western Culture (illustrated ed.). Oxford: Berg Publishers. p. 99. ISBN 978-1859731499.
• Doherty, Brian (2009). Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. London: Hachette UK. ISBN 978-0-7867-3188-6.
External links
Anarcho-capitalismat Wikipedia's sister projects
• Definitions from Wiktionary
• Media from Commons
• Quotations from Wikiquote
• Textbooks from Wikibooks
• Anarcho-capitalist FAQ
• LewRockwell.com – website run by Lew Rockwell
• Mises Institute – research and educational center of classical liberalism, including anarcho-capitalism, Austrian School of economics and American libertarian political theory
• Property and Freedom Society – international anarcho-capitalist society
Somalia from 1991 to 2012
Main article: History of Somalia (1991–2006)
Economist Alex Tabarrok argued that Somalia in its stateless period provided a "unique test of the theory of anarchy", in some aspects near of that espoused by anarcho-capitalists David D. Friedman and Murray Rothbard.[22] Nonetheless, both left-anarchists and anarcho-capitalists argue that Somalia was not an anarchist society.[160][161]
Analysis and criticism
State, justice and defense
See also: Corporatocracy
Left-anarchists such as Brian Morris argue that anarcho-capitalism does not in fact get rid of the state. He says that anarcho-capitalists "simply replaced the state with private security firms, and can hardly be described as anarchists as the term is normally understood".[162] In "Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy", anarchist Peter Sabatini notes:
Within Libertarianism, Rothbard represents a minority perspective that actually argues for the total elimination of the state. However, Rothbard's claim as an anarchist is quickly voided when it is shown that he only wants an end to the public state. In its place he allows countless private states, with each person supplying their own police force, army, and law, or else purchasing these services from capitalist vendors. ... Rothbard sees nothing at all wrong with the amassing of wealth, therefore those with more capital will inevitably have greater coercive force at their disposal, just as they do now.[163]
Similarly, Bob Black argues that an anarcho-capitalist wants to "abolish the state to his own satisfaction by calling it something else". He states that they do not denounce what the state does, they just "object to who's doing it".[164]
Paul Birch argues that legal disputes involving several jurisdictions and different legal systems will be too complex and costly. He therefore argues that anarcho-capitalism is inherently unstable, and would evolve, entirely through the operation of free market forces, into either a single dominant private court with a natural monopoly of justice over the territory (a de facto state), a society of multiple city states, each with a territorial monopoly, or a 'pure anarchy' that would rapidly descend into chaos.[165]
Randall G. Holcombe argues that anarcho-capitalism turns justice into a commodity as private defense and court firms would favour those who pay more for their services.[166] He argues that defense agencies could form cartels and oppress people without fear of competition.[166] Philosopher Albert Meltzer argued that since anarcho-capitalism promotes the idea of private armies, it actually supports a "limited State". He contends that it "is only possible to conceive of Anarchism which is free, communistic and offering no economic necessity for repression of countering it".[167]
Libertarian Robert Nozick argues that a competitive legal system would evolve toward a monopoly government – even without violating individuals' rights in the process.[168] In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick defends minarchism and argues that an anarcho-capitalist society would inevitably transform into a minarchist state through the eventual emergence of a monopolistic private defense and judicial agency that no longer faces competition. He argues that anarcho-capitalism results in an unstable system that would not endure in the real world. While anarcho-capitalists such as Roy Childs and Murray Rothbard have rejected Nozick's arguments,[169] with Rothbard arguing that the process described by Nozick, with the dominant protection agency outlawing its competitors, in fact violates its own clients' rights,[170] John Jefferson actually advocates Nozick's argument and states that such events would best operate in laissez-faire.[171] Robert Ellickson presented a Hayekian case against anarcho-capitalism, calling it a "pipe-dream" and stating that anarcho-capitalists "by imagining a stable system of competing private associations, ignore both the inevitability of territorial monopolists in governance, and the importance of institutions to constrain those monopolists' abuses".[172]
Some libertarians argue that anarcho-capitalism would result in different standards of justice and law due to relying too much on the market. Friedman responded to this criticism by arguing that it assumes the state is controlled by a majority group that has similar legal ideals. If the populace is diverse, different legal standards would therefore be appropriate.[6]
Rights and freedom
Negative and positive rights are rights that oblige either action (positive rights) or inaction (negative rights). Anarcho-capitalists believe that negative rights should be recognized as legitimate, but positive rights should be rejected as an intrusion. Many left-anarchists argue that positive rights are just as important if not equal to negative rights.
Economics and property
Social anarchists argue that anarcho-capitalism allows individuals to accumulate significant power through free markets and private property.[3] Friedman responded by arguing that the Icelandic Commonwealth was able to prevent the wealthy from abusing the poor by requiring individuals who engaged in acts of violence to compensate their victims financially.[6]
Left-anarchists argue that certain capitalist transactions are not voluntary and that maintaining the class structure of a capitalist society requires coercion which violates anarchist principles.[173][174][175][176] Anthropologist David Graeber noted his skepticism about anarcho-capitalism along the same lines, arguing:
To be honest, I'm pretty skeptical about the idea of anarcho-capitalism. If a-caps imagine a world divided into property-holding employers and property-less wage laborers, but with no systematic coercive mechanisms[;] well, I just can't see how it would work. You always see a-caps saying "if I want to hire someone to pick my tomatoes, how are you going to stop me without using coercion?" Notice how you never see anyone say "if I want to hire myself out to pick someone else's tomatoes, how are you going to stop me?" Historically nobody ever did wage labor like that if they had pretty much [any] other option.[177]
Some critics argue that the anarcho-capitalist concept of voluntary choice ignores constraints due to both human and non-human factors such as the need for food and shelter as well as active restriction of both used and unused resources by those enforcing property claims.[178] If a person requires employment in order to feed and house himself, the employer-employee relationship could be considered involuntary. Another criticism is that employment is involuntary because the economic system that makes it necessary for some individuals to serve others is supported by the enforcement of coercive private property relations.[178] Some philosophies view any ownership claims on land and natural resources as immoral and illegitimate.[179] Objectivist philosopher Harry Binswanger criticizes anarcho-capitalism by arguing that "capitalism requires government", questioning who or what would enforce treaties and contracts.[180]
Some right-libertarian critics of anarcho-capitalism who support the full privatization of capital such as geolibertarians argue that land and the raw materials of nature remain a distinct factor of production and cannot be justly converted to private property because they are not products of human labor. Some socialists, including market anarchists and mutualists, adamantly oppose absentee ownership. Anarcho-capitalists have strong abandonment criteria, namely that one maintains ownership until one agrees to trade or gift it. Anti-state critics of this view posit comparatively weak abandonment criteria, arguing that one loses ownership when one stops personally occupying and using it as well as the idea of perpetually binding original appropriation is anathema to traditional schools of anarchism.[165]
Propertarianism
Main article: Propertarianism
Critics charge that the Propertarianism perspective prevents freedom from making sense as an independent value in anarcho-capitalist theory:[181]
Looking at Rothbard’s definition of "liberty" quoted above, we can see that freedom is actually no longer considered to be a fundamental, independent concept. Instead, freedom is a derivative of something more fundamental, namely the "legitimate rights" of an individual, which are identified as property rights. In other words, given that "anarcho"-capitalists and right libertarians in general consider the right to property as "absolute," it follows that freedom and property become one and the same. This suggests an alternative name for the right Libertarian, namely "Propertarian." And, needless to say, if we do not accept the right-libertarians’ view of what constitutes "legitimate" "rights," then their claim to be defenders of liberty is weak.
— Iain Mckay.(2008/2012)
Literature
The following is a partial list of notable nonfiction works discussing anarcho-capitalism.
• Bruce L. Benson, The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without The State
• To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice
• David D. Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom
• Edward P. Stringham, Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice
• George H. Smith, "Justice Entrepreneurship in a Free Market"
• Gerard Casey, Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State
• Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography
• A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism
• Democracy: The God That Failed
• The Economics and Ethics of Private Property
• Linda and Morris Tannehill, The Market for Liberty
• Michael Huemer, The Problem of Political Authority
• Murray Rothbard, founder of anarcho-capitalism:
• For a New Liberty
• Man, Economy, and State
• Power and Market
• The Ethics of Liberty
See also
• Agorism
• Consequentialist libertarianism
• Counter-economics
• Creative disruption
• Crypto-anarchism
• Definition of anarchism and libertarianism
• Left-wing market anarchism
• Neo-feudalism
• Natural-rights libertarianism
• Privatization in criminal justice
• Voluntaryism
References
1. Rothbard, Murray N., The Betrayal of the American Right Archived 30 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine (2007): 188
2. Geloso, Vincent; Leeson, Peter T. (2020). "Are Anarcho-Capitalists Insane? Medieval Icelandic Conflict Institutions in Comparative Perspective". Revue d'économie politique. 130 (6): 957–974. doi:10.3917/redp.306.0115. ISSN 0373-2630. S2CID 235008718. Archived from the original on 5 August 2022. Retrieved 5 August 2022. Anarcho-capitalism is a variety of libertarianism according to which all government institutions can and should be replaced by private ones.
3. Morriss, Andrew (2008). "Anarcho-Capitalism". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 13–14. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n8. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. OCLC 750831024. Archived from the original on 7 February 2024. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
4. Stringham, Edward (2007). Anarchy and the law: the political economy of choice. Transaction Publishers. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-4128-0579-7. Archived from the original on 7 February 2024. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
5. Marshall, Peter. "Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism – The New Right and Anarcho-capitalism". dwardmac.pitzer.edu. Archived from the original on 19 April 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
6. Costa, Daniel (21 October 2022). "Anarcho-capitalism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 25 October 2022. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
7. Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (31 December 2001). "Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography" Archived 11 January 2014 at the Wayback Machine. Lew Rockwell.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
8. Hess, Karl (2003) [March 1969]. "The Death of Politics". Faré's Home Page. Playboy. Archived from the original on 2 August 2019. Retrieved 9 October 2023. Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism [sic], is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so.
9. Johnson, Charles (28 August 2015). "Karl Hess on Anarcho-Capitalism". Center for a Stateless Society. Archived from the original on 4 October 2023. Retrieved 9 October 2023. In fact, the earliest documented, printed use of the word "anarcho-capitalism" that I can find [6] actually comes neither from Wollstein nor from Rothbard, but from Karl Hess's manifesto "The Death of Politics," which was published in Playboy in March, 1969. [boldface in original]
10. Leeson, Robert (2017). Hayek: A Collaborative Biography, Part IX: The Divine Right of the 'Free' Market. Springer. p. 180. ISBN 978-3-319-60708-5. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 18 March 2023. To the original 'anarchocapitalist' (Rothbard coined the term) [...].
11. Roberta Modugno Crocetta, "Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism in the contemporary debate. A critical defense", Ludwig Von Mises Institute. Archived from the original. quote: "Murray Rothbard suggests the anarcho-capitalist mode, [...]"
12. Flood, Anthony (2010). Untitled preface to Rothbard's "Know Your Rights" Archived 11 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine, originally published in WIN: Peace and Freedom through Nonviolent Action, Volume 7, No. 4, 1 March 1971, 6–10. Flood's quote: "Rothbard's neologism, 'anarchocapitalism,' probably makes its first appearance in print here."
13. Miller, David; et al., eds. (1987). Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 290. ISBN 978-0-631-17944-3. A student and disciple of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, Rothbard combined the laissez-faire economics of his teacher with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the 19th century such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker.
14. Bottomore, Tom (1991). "Anarchism". A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Oxford: Blackwell Reference. p. 21. ISBN 0-63118082-6.
15. Outhwaite, William (2003). "Anarchism". The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-631-22164-7. Their successors today, such as Murray Rothbard, having abandoned the labor theory of value, describe themselves as anarcho-capitalists.
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26. Morriss, Andrew P. (15 August 2008). "Anarcho-Capitalism". Libertarianism.org. Archived from the original on 22 September 2020. Retrieved 21 August 2022. Although most anarchists oppose all large institutions, public or private, anarcho-capitalists oppose the state, but not private actors with significant market power.
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28. Tormey, Simon (2004). Anti-capitalism: A Beginner's Guide. Oneworld. pp. 118–119. ISBN 978-1851683420.
29. Perlin, Terry M. (1979). Contemporary Anarchism. Transaction Books. p. 7.
30. Raico, Ralph (2004). Authentic German Liberalism of the 19th Century. Ecole Polytechnique, Centre de Recherce en Epistemologie Appliquee, Unité associée au CNRS.
31. Heider, Ulrike (1994). Anarchism: Left, Right, and Green. City Lights. p. 3.
32. Outhwaite, William (2002). "Anarchism". The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought. p. 21.
33. Bottomore, Tom (1991). "Anarchism". Dictionary of Marxist Thought.
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35. Meltzer, Albert (2000). Anarchism: Arguments For and Against. AK Press. p. 50. The philosophy of "anarcho-capitalism" dreamed up by the "libertarian' New Right, has nothing to do with Anarchism as known by the Anarchist movement proper.
36. Marshall, Peter (2008). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: Harper Perennial. p. 565. In fact, few anarchists would accept the "anarcho-capitalists" into the anarchist camp since they do not share a concern for economic equality and social justice, Their self-interested, calculating market men would be incapable of practising voluntary co-operation and mutual aid. Anarcho-capitalists, even if they do reject the State, might therefore best be called right-wing libertarians rather than anarchists
37. Newman, Saul (2010). The Politics of Postanarchism. Edinburgh University Press. p. 43. ISBN 0748634959. It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism)
38. "Section F – Is "anarcho"-capitalism a type of anarchism?". An Anarchist FAQ. Vol. I. AK Press. 2008. ISBN 978-1902593906. Archived from the original on 9 September 2019.
39. Goodway, David (2006). Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 4. "Libertarian" and "libertarianism" are frequently employed by anarchists as synonyms for "anarchist" and "anarchism", largely as an attempt to distance themselves from the negative connotations of "anarchy" and its derivatives. The situation has been vastly complicated in recent decades with the rise of anarcho-capitalism, "minimal statism" and an extreme right-wing laissez-faire philosophy advocated by such theorists as Murray Rothbard and Robert Nozick and their adoption of the words "libertarian" and "libertarianism". It has therefore now become necessary to distinguish between their right libertarianism and the left libertarianism of the anarchist tradition
40. Sabatini, Peter (1994–95). "Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy". Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed (41). Archived from the original on 7 January 2020. Within Libertarianism, Rothbard represents a minority perspective that actually argues for the total elimination of the state. However Rothbard's claim as an anarchist is quickly voided when it is shown that he only wants an end to the public state. In its place he allows countless private states, with each person supplying their own police force, army, and law, or else purchasing these services from capitalist venders...so what remains is shrill anti-statism conjoined to a vacuous freedom in hackneyed defense of capitalism. In sum, the "anarchy" of Libertarianism reduces to a liberal fraud'
41. Marshall, Peter (1992). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: HarperCollins. pp. 564–565. ISBN 978-0-00-217855-6. "Anarcho-capitalists are against the State simply because they are capitalists first and foremost. [...] They are not concerned with the social consequences of capitalism for the weak, powerless and ignorant. [...] As such, anarcho-capitalism overlooks the egalitarian implications of traditional individualist anarchists like Spooner and Tucker. In fact, few anarchists would accept the 'anarcho-capitalists' into the anarchist camp since they do not share a concern for economic equality and social justice. Their self-interested, calculating market men would be incapable of practising voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. Anarcho-capitalists, even if they do reject the state, might therefore best be called right-wing libertarians rather than anarchists."
42. Jennings, Jeremy (1993). "Anarchism". In Eatwell, Roger; Wright, Anthony (eds.). Contemporary Political Ideologies. London: Pinter. pp. 127–146. ISBN 978-0-86187-096-7. "[...] anarchism does not stand for the untrammelled freedom of the individual (as the 'anarcho-capitalists' appear to believe) but, as we have already seen, for the extension of individuality and community" (p. 143).
43. Franks, Benjamin (August 2013). Freeden, Michael; Stears, Marc (eds.). "Anarchism". The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Oxford University Press: 385–404. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585977.013.0001. "Individualisms that defend or reinforce hierarchical forms such as the economic-power relations of anarcho-capitalism [...] are incompatible with practices of social anarchism. [...] Increasingly, academic analysis has followed activist currents in rejecting the view that anarcho-capitalism has anything to do with social anarchism" (pp. 393–394).
44. Newman, Saul (2010). The Politics of Postanarchism. Edinburgh University Press. p. 43. "It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism)." ISBN 0748634959.
45. Pele, Antonio; Riley, Stephen (2 February 2021). "For a Right to Health Beyond Biopolitics: The Politics of Pandemic and the 'Politics of Life'". Law, Culture and the Humanities. Sage Publications. doi:10.1177/1743872120978201. ISSN 1743-8721. S2CID 234042976. Archived from the original on 8 February 2024. Retrieved 19 June 2023. In his Cours on The Birth of Biopolitics, Foucault has exclusively dedicated his lectures on (neo)liberalism (e.g. German ordoliberalism and the American 'anarcho-capitalism'), offering his apologies for not having examined thoroughly this idea of biopolitics.
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86. Avrich, Paul. Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Abridged Paperback Edition (1996), p. 282.
87. Kinsella, N. Stephan (2008). Against Intellectual Property (PDF). Ludwig Von Mises Institute. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
88. Zaheer Kazmi (2012). Polite Anarchy in International Relations Theory. The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought. Palgrave Macmillan US. p. 46. ISBN 978-1-137-02813-6. Notably, in light of latter-day anarcho-capitalism, Tucker had also advocated the privatisation of the policing and security functions of the state to protect people and property and accepted the use of violence as means of enforcing contracts.
89. Nathan W. Schlueter; Nikolai G. Wenzel (2018). Selfish Libertarians and Socialist Conservatives?. Stanford University Press. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-5036-0029-4.
90. Carl Levy; Matthew Adams (2019). The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 558. ISBN 978-3-319-75620-2.
91. Murray Rothbard (4 May 2007). "Children and Rights". Mises Institute. Archived from the original on 31 December 2021. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
92. "Where did Donald Trump get his racialized rhetoric? From libertarians". The Washington Post. 2 September 2016. Archived from the original on 12 October 2016. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
93. Nozick, Robert (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.[pages needed]
94. Friedman, David (1973). The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism. Harper & Row. pp. 144–145. ISBN 978-0-06-091010-5.
95. Brown, Susan Love, The Free Market as Salvation from Government: The Anarcho-Capitalist View, Meanings of the Market: The Free Market in Western Culture, edited by James G. Carrier, Berg/Oxford, 1997, p. 113.
96. Klosko, George (2011). The Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 684.
97. Friedman, David. The Machinery of Freedom. Second edition. La Salle, Ill, Open Court, pp. 116–17.
98. Friedman, David (1973). The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism. Harper & Row. pp. 127–128. ISBN 978-0-06-091010-5.
99. De Molinari, Gustave (1849). The Production of Security. Translated by McCulloch, J. Huston. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 15 July 2006.
100. Stringham, Edward; Curott, Nicholas (2010). Lopez, Edward (ed.). "The Rise of Government Law Enforcement in England". The Pursuit of Justice: Law and Economics of Legal Institutions. Independent Institute. SSRN 1711665.
101. Stringham, Edward (12 December 1999). "Market Chosen Law". Journal of Libertarian Studies. 14 (1998–1999) (1 (Winter)): 53–77. SSRN 1676257.
102. Stringham, Edward; Zywicki, Todd (5 November 2005). "Rivalry and Superior Dispatch: An Analysis of Competing Courts in Medieval and Early Modern England". George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper. 10 (57). doi:10.2139/ssrn.1703598. S2CID 154834118. SSRN 1703598.
103. Friedman, David (1973). "29". The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism. Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-091010-5. Archived from the original on 31 December 2010.
104. Stringham, Edward (2015). Private Governance. Oxford University Press.
105. Caplan, Bryan; Stringham, Edward (2008). "Privatizing the Adjudication of Disputes". Theoretical Inquiries in Law. 9 (2): 503–28. doi:10.2202/1565-3404.1195. S2CID 154304272. SSRN 1674441.
106. "Just War and Rothbardian Libertarianism | Encyclopedia of Military Ethics". http://www.militaryethics.org. Archived from the original on 28 November 2023. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
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108. Rothbard, Murray (1981). "Konkin on Libertarian Strategy" (PDF). Strategy of the New Libertarian Alliance. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
109. O'Keeffe, Matthew (1989). "Retribution Versus Restitution" (PDF). Legal Notes. 5. London: Libertarian Alliance. ISBN 1-870614-22-4. ISSN 0267-7083. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 February 2022.
110. Benson, Bruce (1998). To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice. NYU Press. pp. 235–38. ISBN 978-0-8147-1327-3.
111. Tannehill, Linda and Morris (1993). The Market for Liberty (PDF). San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes. pp. 105–106. ISBN 978-0-930073-08-4. Archived (PDF) from the original on 3 October 2014. Retrieved 30 June 2011.
112. Goodway, David (2006). Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 4. "'Libertarian' and 'libertarianism' are frequently employed by anarchists as synonyms for 'anarchist' and 'anarchism', largely as an attempt to distance themselves from the negative connotations of 'anarchy' and its derivatives. The situation has been vastly complicated in recent decades with the rise of anarcho-capitalism, 'minimal statism' and an extreme right-wing laissez-faire philosophy advocated by such theorists as Rothbard and Nozick and their adoption of the words 'libertarian' and 'libertarianism'. It has therefore now become necessary to distinguish between their right libertarianism and the left libertarianism of the anarchist tradition."
113. Jun, Nathan (September 2009). "Anarchist Philosophy and Working Class Struggle: A Brief History and Commentary". WorkingUSA. 12 (3): 507–508. doi:10.1111/j.1743-4580.2009.00251.x. ISSN 1089-7011. [Anarchists oppose] all centralized and hierarchical forms of government (e.g., monarchy, representative democracy, state socialism, etc.), economic class systems (e.g., capitalism, Bolshevism, feudalism, slavery, etc.), autocratic religions (e.g., fundamentalist Islam, Roman Catholicism, etc.), patriarchy, heterosexism, white supremacy, and imperialism.
114. Williams, Dana M. (2018). "Contemporary Anarchist and Anarchistic Movements". Sociology Compass. Wiley. 12 (6): 4. doi:10.1111/soc4.12582. ISSN 1751-9020.
115. Kahn, Joseph (5 August 2000). "Anarchism, the Creed That Won't Stay Dead; The Spread of World Capitalism Resurrects a Long-Dormant Movement". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 26 September 2023. Retrieved 26 September 2023.
116. Moynihan, Colin (16 April 2007). "Book Fair Unites Anarchists. In Spirit, Anyway". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 14 September 2021. Retrieved 26 September 2023.
117. Guerin, Daniel (1970). Anarchism: From Theory to Practice. Monthly Review Press. pp. 12, 35. ISBN 978-0853451280.
118. Tame, Chris R. (October 1983). The Chicago School: Lessons from the Thirties for the Eighties. Economic Affairs. p. 56.
119. McKay, Iain (2008). An Anarchist FAQ. 1. "What are the myths of capitalist economics?" "Is 'anarcho'-capitalism a type of anarchism?" Oakland/Edinburgh: AK Press. ISBN 978-1902593906.
120. Marshall, Peter (1992). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: HarperCollins. p. 641. ISBN 978-0-00-217855-6. "For a long time, libertarian was interchangeable in France with anarchist but in recent years, its meaning has become more ambivalent."
121. Cohn, Jesse (20 April 2009). "Anarchism". In Ness, Immanuel (ed.). The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 1–11 (6). doi:10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0039. ISBN 978-1-4051-9807-3. [...] 'libertarianism' [...] a term that, until the mid-twentieth century, was synonymous with 'anarchism' per se
122. Francis, Mark (December 1983). "Human Rights and Libertarians". Australian Journal of Politics & History. 29 (3): 462. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8497.1983.tb00212.x. ISSN 0004-9522.
123. Francis, Mark (December 1983). "Human Rights and Libertarians". Australian Journal of Politics & History. 29 (3): 462–463. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8497.1983.tb00212.x. ISSN 0004-9522.
124. Funnell, Warwick (2007). "Accounting and the Virtues of Anarchy" Archived 15 November 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Australasian Accounting, Business and Finance Journal. 1 (1) 18–27. doi:10.14453/aabfj.v1i1.2.
125. Williams, Dana (2012). "From Top to Bottom, a Thoroughly Stratified World: An Anarchist View of Inequality and Domination". Race, Gender & Class. 19 (3/4): 9–34. JSTOR 43497486.
126. Casey, Gerard (2018). Freedom's Progress?. Andrews UK Limited. p. 670. ISBN 978-1-84540-942-5.
127. Jun, Nathan J. (2017). Brill's Companion to Anarchism and philosophy. Brill. p. 293. ISBN 978-90-04-35688-7.
128. Jennings, Jeremy (1999). "Anarchism". In Eatwell, Roger; Wright, Anthony (eds.). Contemporary Political Ideologies (reprinted, 2nd ed.). London: A & C Black. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-8264-5173-6.
129. Goodwin, Barbara (2007). Using Political Ideas. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-470-02552-9.
130. McLaughlin, Paul (2007). Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism. Ashgate. pp. 28 Archived 8 February 2024 at the Wayback Machine–166. ISBN 978-0754661962. "Anarchists do reject the state, as we will see. But to claim that this central aspect of anarchism is definitive is to sell anarchism short. [...] [Opposition to the state] is (contrary to what many scholars believe) not definitive of anarchism."
131. Jun, Nathan (September 2009). "Anarchist Philosophy and Working Class Struggle: A Brief History and Commentary". WorkingUSA. 12 (3): 505–519. doi:10.1111/j.1743-4580.2009.00251.x. ISSN 1089-7011. "One common misconception, which has been rehearsed repeatedly by the few Anglo-American philosophers who have bothered to broach the topic [...] is that anarchism can be defined solely in terms of opposition to states and governments" (p. 507).
132. Franks, Benjamin (August 2013). Freeden, Michael; Stears, Marc (eds.). "Anarchism". The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Oxford University Press: 385–404. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585977.013.0001. "[M]any, questionably, regard anti-statism as the irremovable, universal principle at the core of anarchism. [...] The fact that [anarchists and anarcho-capitalists] share a core concept of 'anti-statism', which is often advanced as [...] a commonality between them [...], is insufficient to produce a shared identity [...] because [they interpret] the concept of state-rejection [...] differently despite the initial similarity in nomenclature" (pp. 386–388).
133. David L. Prychytko (2002). "Chapter 10: Expanding the Anarchist Range: A Critical Reappraisal of Rothbard's Contribution to the Contemporary Theory of Anarchism". Markets, Planning, and Democracy. Edward Elgar Publishing, Incorporated. p. 124. ISBN 978-1-84376-738-1. While society without a state is necessary for full-fledged anarchy, it is nevertheless insufficient.
134. Murphy, Ryan H. (2019). Markets against Modernity: Ecological Irrationality, Public and Private. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 84. ISBN 978-1-4985-9118-8.
135. Hatlestad, Luc (19 August 2018). "Is Anarchy the Solution to Our Political Problems?". 5280 Denver's Mile High Magazine. Archived from the original on 4 August 2021. Retrieved 1 January 2021.
136. Rothbard, Murray N. (2016). The Rothbard Reader – Society Without a State. Mises Institute. ISBN 978-1-61016-661-4. Archived from the original on 28 November 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
137. Raico, Ralph (2004). Authentic German Liberalism of the 19th century Archived 10 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine. École Polytechnique, Centre de Recherche en Épistémologie Appliquée. Unité associée au CNRS.
138. Raico, Ralph (29 March 2011) "Neither the Wars Nor the Leaders Were Great" Archived 14 September 2014 at the Wayback Machine. Mises Institute.
139. Molinari, Gustave; Ebeling, Richard M., ed. (1977). The Production of Security Archived 28 November 2019 at the Wayback Machine. "Preface". Translated by McCulloch, J. Huston. Occasional Papers Series (2). New York: The Center for Libertarian Studies.
140. Aligica, Paul Dragos (2017). "Public Administration and the Classical Liberal Perspective: Criticism, Clarifications, and Reconstruction". Administration & Society. 49 (4): 530–551. doi:10.1177/0095399715581044. ISSN 0095-3997. S2CID 144893289. Archived from the original on 12 June 2022. Retrieved 12 June 2022.
141. De Leon, David (1978). The American as Anarchist: Reflections on Indigenous Radicalism. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 127. "[...] Only a few individuals like Murray Rothbard, in Power and Market, and some article writers were influenced by these men. Most had not evolved consciously from this tradition; they had been a rather automatic product of the American environment."
142. Gordon, David (2007). The Essential Rothbard. Mises Institute. pp. 12–13.
143. Rothbard, Murray (2000) [1965]. "The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View" Archived 30 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Journal of Libertarian Studies. 20 (1): 5–15.
144. Rothbard, Murray (2000) [1965]. "The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View" Archived 2 November 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Journal of Libertarian Studies. 20 (1): 7.
145. Tucker, Benjamin (1911). State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree & Wherein They Differ (6th ed.). London: A. C. Fifield.
146. Wieck, David (1978). "Anarchist Justice" Archived 28 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine. In Chapman, John W.; Pennock, J. Roland Pennock, eds. Anarchism: Nomos XIX. New York: New York University Press. pp. 227–228. "Out of the history of anarchist thought and action Rothbard has pulled forth a single thread, the thread of individualism, and defines that individualism in a way alien even to the spirit of a Max Stirner or a Benjamin Tucker, whose heritage I presume he would claim – to say nothing of how alien is his way to the spirit of Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and the historically anonymous persons who through their thoughts and action have tried to give anarchism a living meaning. Out of this thread, Rothbard manufactures one more bourgeois ideology." Retrieved 7 April 2020.
147. Peacott, Joe (18 April 1985). "Reply to Wendy Mc Elroy". New Libertarian (14, June 1985. Archived 7 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 4 September 2020. "In her article on individualist anarchism in October 1984, New Libertarian, Wendy McElroy mistakenly claims that modern-day individualist anarchism is identical with anarchist capitalism. She ignores the fact that there are still individualist anarchists who reject capitalism as well as communism, in the tradition of Warren, Spooner, Tucker, and others. [...] Benjamin Tucker, when he spoke of his ideal 'society of contract,' was certainly not speaking of anything remotely resembling contemporary capitalist society. [...] I do not quarrel with McElroy's definition of herself as an individualist anarchist. However, I dislike the fact that she tries to equate the term with anarchist capitalism. This is simply not true. I am an individualist anarchist and I am opposed to capitalist economic relations, voluntary or otherwise."
148. Baker, J. W. "Native American Anarchism". The Raven. 10 (1): 43‒62. Retrieved 4 September 2020. "It is time that anarchists recognise the valuable contributions of individualist anarchist theory and take advantage of its ideas. It would be both futile and criminal to leave it to the capitalist libertarians, whose claims on Tucker and the others can be made only by ignoring the violent opposition they had to capitalist exploitation and monopolistic 'free enterprise' supported by the state."
149. Miller, David, ed. (1987). The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 290. ISBN 0-631-17944-5.
150. Rothbard, Murray (1950s). "Are Libertarians 'Anarchists'?" Archived 13 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine Lew Rockwell.com. Retrieved 4 September 2020.
151. Peacott, Joe (18 April 1985). "Reply to Wendy Mc Elroy". New Libertarian (14, June 1985). Archived 7 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 4 September 2020. "In her overview of anarchist history, McElroy criticizes the individualists of the past for their belief in the labor theory of value, because it fails to distinguish between profit and plunder. Some anarchist individualists still believe that profit is theft and that living off the labor of others is immoral. And some individualists, both past and present, agree with the communist anarchists that present-day capitalism is based on economic coercion, not on voluntary contract. Rent and interest are the mainstays of modern capitalism and are protected and enforced by the state. Without these two unjust institutions, capitalism could not exist. These two institutions, and the money monopoly of the state, effectively prevent most people from being economically independent and force them into wage labor. Saying that coercion does not exist i[n] capitalist economic relations because workers aren't forced to work by armed capitalists ignores the very real economic coercion caused by this alliance of capitalism and the state. People don't voluntarily work for wages or pay rent, except in the sense that most people 'voluntarily' pay taxes[.] Because one recognizes when she or he is up against superior force and chooses to compromise in order to survive, does not make these activities voluntary; at least, not in the way I envision voluntary relations in an anarchist society."
152. [16][19][20][21][22]
153. Friedman, David D. (28 February 2015). "Private Law Enforcement, Medieval Iceland, and Libertarianism". The Machinery of Freedom (3rd ed.). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. pp. 203–204. ISBN 978-1-5077-8560-7.
154. Anderson, Terry L. and Hill, P. J. "An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West Archived 17 October 2021 at the Wayback Machine", The Journal of Libertarian Studies
155. Benson, Bruce L. (1998). "Private Justice in America". To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice. New York: New York University Press. p. 101. ISBN 978-0-8147-1327-3.
156. Peden Stateless Societies: Ancient Ireland Archived 5 August 2019 at the Wayback Machine
157. Rothbard. "Defense Services on the Free Market Archived 14 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine".
158. Benson. "The Enterprise of Customary Law Archived 19 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine".
159. Hasnas. "The Obviousness of Anarchy Archived 11 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine".
160. Knight, Alex R. III (7 October 2009). "The Truth About Somalia And Anarchy". Center for a Stateless Society. Archived from the original on 15 December 2017. Retrieved 24 December 2016.
161. Block, Walter (1999). "Review Essay" (PDF). The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. 2 (3 (Fall)). Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 28 January 2010. But if we define anarchy as places without governments, and we define governments as the agencies with a legal right to impose violence on their subjects, then whatever else occurred in Haiti, Sudan, and Somalia, it wasn't anarchy. For there were well-organized gangs (e.g., governments) in each of these places, demanding tribute, and fighting others who made similar impositions. Absence of government means absence of government, whether well established ones, or fly-by-nights.
162. Brian Morris, "Global Anti-Capitalism", pp. 170–176, Anarchist Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, p. 175.
163. Peter Sabatini. "Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy". Archived from the original on 30 August 2019. Retrieved 28 June 2019.
164. Bob Black (1992), "The Libertarian As Conservative", The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, p. 144
165. Birch, Paul (1998). "Anarcho-capitalism Dissolves into City States" (PDF). Libertarian Alliance. Legal Notes. 28: 4. ISSN 0267-7083. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 5 July 2010.
166.Holcombe, Randall G. "Government: Unnecessary but Inevitable" (PDF). The Independent Review. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
167. Meltzer, Albert (2000). Anarchism: Arguments For and Against. AK Press. p. 50. ISBN 978-1-873176-57-3.
168. Jeffrey Paul, Fred Dycus Miller (1993). Liberalism and the Economic Order. Cambridge University Press. p. 115.
169. See Childs's incomplete essay, "Anarchist Illusions", Liberty against Power: Essays by Roy A. Childs, Jr., ed. Joan Kennedy Taylor (San Francisco: Fox 1994) 179–183.
170. Rothbard, Murray (5 July 2017), "Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State", Anarchy And the Law, Routledge, pp. 232–249, doi:10.4324/9781315082349-12, ISBN 978-1-315-08234-9
171. Jeffrey Paul, Fred Dycus Miller (1993). Liberalism and the Economic Order. Cambridge University Press. p. 118.
172. Ellickson, Robert C. (26 January 2017). "A Hayekian Case Against Anarcho-Capitalism: Of Street Grids, Lighthouses, and Aid to the Destitute". Yale Law & Economics Research Paper No. 569. SSRN 2906383.
173. Iain McKay; et al. (21 January 2010). "Section F – Are 'anarcho'-capitalists really anarchists?" (PDF). Infoshop.org. An Anarchist FAQ. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 21 August 2013.
174. Andrew Fiala (3 October 2017). "Anarchism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archived from the original on 28 August 2020. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
175. Anthony J. II Nocella; Richard J. White; Erika Cudworth (2015). Anarchism and Animal Liberation: Essays on Complementary Elements of Total Liberation. McFarland & Co. ISBN 978-0-7864-9457-6. Anarchism is a socio-political theory which opposes all systems of domination and oppression such as racism, ableism, sexism, anti-LGBTTQIA, ageism, sizeism, government, competition, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism and punitive justice, and promotes direct democracy, collaboration, interdependence, mutual aid, diversity, peace, transformative justice and equity.
176. Paul McLaughlin (2007). Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism. Ashgate Publishing Ltd. p. 48. ISBN 978-1-138-27614-7. Thus, as David Miller puts it, capitalism is regarded by anarchists as 'both coercive [though this word may be too strong] [sic] and exploitative – it places workers in the power of their bosses, and fails to give them a just return for their contribution to production.'
177. "I am David Graeber, an anthropologist, activist, anarchist and author of Debt. AMA". Reddit. 28 January 2013. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 21 August 2013.
178. Friedman, David D. "Market Failure: The Case for and Against Government". daviddfriedman.com. Do We Need a Government?. Archived from the original on 15 April 2021. Retrieved 14 July 2010.
179. McElroy, Wendy (1995). "Intellectual Property: The Late Nineteenth Century Libertarian Debate Archived 2 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine". Libertarian Heritage No. 14 ISBN 1-85637-281-2. Retrieved 24 June 2005.
180. Harry Binswanger. "Sorry Libertarian Anarchists, Capitalism Requires Government". Forbes. Archived from the original on 16 June 2020. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
181. McKay, Iain. (2008/2012). An Anarchist FAQ-Appendix: Anarchism and "Anarcho"-capitalism. UK: AK Press. 2 What do “anarcho”-capitalists mean by “freedom”? https://anarchism.pageabode.com/book/2- ... y-freedom/
Further reading
• Brown, Susan Love (1997). "The Free Market as Salvation from Government: The Anarcho-Capitalist View". In Carrier, James G., ed. Meanings of the Market: The Free Market in Western Culture (illustrated ed.). Oxford: Berg Publishers. p. 99. ISBN 978-1859731499.
• Doherty, Brian (2009). Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. London: Hachette UK. ISBN 978-0-7867-3188-6.
External links
Anarcho-capitalismat Wikipedia's sister projects
• Definitions from Wiktionary
• Media from Commons
• Quotations from Wikiquote
• Textbooks from Wikibooks
• Anarcho-capitalist FAQ
• LewRockwell.com – website run by Lew Rockwell
• Mises Institute – research and educational center of classical liberalism, including anarcho-capitalism, Austrian School of economics and American libertarian political theory
• Property and Freedom Society – international anarcho-capitalist society
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Part 1 of 4
The Corporation as Sovereign
by Allison D. Garrett
Maine Law Review
Volume 60 Number 1 Article 4
January 2008
https://digitalcommons.mainelaw.maine.e ... ontext=mlr
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at University of Maine School of Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maine Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Maine School of Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected].
CONTENTS:
• INTRODUCTION
• THEORIES OF THE CORPORATION AND THE NATION-STATE
o Theories of the Corporation
o Theories of the Nation-State
• SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE CORPORATION AND THE NATION-STATE
o Permanent Population & Defined Territory
o Economic Power
o Capacity to Engage in Foreign Relations
o Protection of Society
o Administration of Justice
o Monetary Policy
o Public Welfare
• CONCLUSION
I. INTRODUCTION
In the past two hundred years, sovereignty devolved from the monarch to the people in many countries; in our lifetimes, it has devolved in several significant ways from the people to the corporation. We are witnesses to the erosion of traditional Westphalian concepts of sovereignty,1 where the chess game of international politics is played out by nation-states, each governing a certain geographic area and group of people. Eulogies for the nation-state often cite globalization as the cause of death.2 The causa mortis is characterized by the increase in the power and normative influence of supranational organizations, such as the United Nations, World Bank, European Union, International Monetary Fund, and non-governmental organizations. Today, geography lacks the political significance it once had, as valuable commodities instantly pass over, through, and under geographic borders in the world’s most common language, binary code.3 Telecommunications, when combined with mobile capital and technology, “is viewed as obliterating spatial lines.”4 All of these changes have made the nation-state, as a geopolitical entity, far less significant than it has been in the past several decades.
Corporations have stepped into this power vacuum with a reach and economic influence so broad that some of the duties of sovereign nations have fallen under their aegis.5 The power and influence of the world’s major corporations continue to grow, and with this growth their similarities to sovereign states increase. As the nation-state is prematurely eulogized, scholars are writing about the privatization of governance and commerce.6 Many scholars tend to focus on international relations and the extent to which relationships among nations have been transcended or superseded by private actors. For example, the concept of nations acting as private entities has been recognized in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act,7 which provides that “a foreign state shall not be immune . . . in any case in which the action is based upon a commercial activity carried on in the United States by a foreign state.”8 This Article focuses, instead, on how the distinction between corporations and the state is blurring, not only internationally, but also domestically, as corporations act in ways that make them similar to nation-states.
The nation-state is not dead, but it is evolving. A pivotal factor in this evolution is the power of the world’s largest corporations. Like the vassal whose power overshadows the king’s, these companies act similarly to traditional nation-states in some ways. They have tremendous economic power, establish security forces, engage in diplomatic, adjudicatory and “legislative” activities, and influence monetary policy.
However, it is important to recognize that corporations are not mini-nations, and nations are not overgrown corporations; it would be dangerous to conflate the two. Like any theory about the nature of corporations, this analogy between nations and corporations can be taken to an extreme. Although corporations seem to be amassing new powers and taking on new roles, there will always be limits placed on them by governments. Governments conduct investigations and inspections and pass laws and regulations to keep corporations in line. The court system can be used both by the government and by private actors to constrain the activities of corporations. The Fourth Estate also scrutinizes the actions of corporations. Indeed, the press can serve as a powerful check on corporate power, as the “name and shame” process can cause consumers to vote with their wallets, which in turn can affect the actions of the corporation and, ultimately, its survival.
This Article begins in Part II by examining the historical and theoretical advent of the corporation as a legal, social, and political entity, by exploring the various theories regarding the nature of the corporation. Furthermore, Part II surveys the theoretical underpinnings of the social construct known as the nation-state. Part III considers the similarities between modern multinational corporations and nation-states, including the characteristics of permanent population and defined territory, economic power, foreign relations, protection of society, administration of justice, monetary policy, and public welfare. This Article concludes by positing that a comparison between the often analogous social, political, and economic characteristics of nation-states and corporations can provide a new and useful way for scholars to analyze the activities and powers of modern-day corporations.
II. THEORIES ON THE CORPORATION AND THE NATION-STATE
A. Theories of the Corporation
Many of the earliest corporations were granted charters from the Crown that made them both corporations and political entities.9 The corporate form was not widely available and these charters were granted on an ad hoc basis, often in accord with the ebb and flow of political expediency. When Parliament passed the Joint Companies Act10 in 1844, Robert Lowe, then Vice President of Great Britain’s Board of Trade, referred to corporations as “little republics.”11 Specifically, Lowe noted that, “[h]aving given [corporations] a pattern the State leaves them to manage their own affairs and has no desire to force on these little republics any particular constitution.”12
Professor Daniel J.H. Greenwood has explored in detail the rights of early corporations, particularly those rights that are similar to the rights of the sovereign. Professor Greenwood notes that, “in the beginning, everyone understood that corporations were somewhat sovereign” and that “[ i]ndeed, the British East India Company claimed aspects of sovereignty—the right to have its contracts treated as international treaties and the right to make war.”13 These early corporations even minted money.14 Some of these companies governed expansive territories15 and maintained standing armies that, at times, engaged in military action.16 Today’s corporations may never gain the measure of power held by the earliest companies at their apogee, but they seem to be trying.
The ontology of the corporation encompasses a number of theories regarding the nature of corporations. Corporations have been described as a person,17 private property of the shareholders,18 a nexus of contracts,19 an agent for the owners,20 a representative democracy,21 and even a religious entity.22
Currently, corporations are viewed as legal persons, and have been regarded as such for almost 200 years.23 As legal persons, corporations are entitled to some constitutional protections.24 They have the right to hold property,25 to contract,26 and to sue and be sued as a juridical entity distinct from their shareholders, directors and employees.27 Corporate law theorists have more recently come to view the corporation as a special type of legal entity that has been and should be regulated28 and accommodated in unique ways.29
Delaware Chancellor William T. Allen has described the two general schools of thought about the nature of corporations as the “property conception” and the “social entity conception.”30 Under the property conception, the corporation is viewed as the private property of its shareholders, with the ultimate goal of profit maximization on behalf of the shareholders.31 Under the social entity conception, the corporation’s purpose “includ[es] advancement of the general welfare.”32
The view of the corporation as a profit maximization vehicle for the corporation’s shareholders is closely related to two other concepts: agency theory and shareholder primacy. The corporation was first analyzed using agency theory in the 1930s. The bifurcation of ownership and management was identified by Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means33 and then expanded by Ronald Coase.34 The agency theory of the corporation has become one of the most-widely accepted theories of the firm.35 The theory holds that markets and contracts limit the discretion that can be exercised by corporate managers.36 These agents, who are linked by contracts to the firm, influence its actions. A central feature of the agency theory is that agents of corporations, as rational economic actors, will take steps to minimize agency costs.37 However, this view has been criticized.38 Professors Jensen and Meckling argued that “there is good reason to believe that the agent will not always act in the best interests of the principal” and that, consequently, there is an agency loss because a corporation will not be managed as well by an agent for the owners as it would be if the owners themselves managed the corporation.39 For this reason, compensation schemes often attempt to align more closely the interests of executives with those of shareholders.40
More recently, the idea that corporations exist solely to maximize the wealth of their shareholders and the agency theory have evolved into the “shareholder primacy theory” of the corporation, which holds that corporations operate in the interest of the shareholders and that directors owe to them a fiduciary duty.41 Furthermore, the theory stresses that corporations are subject to shareholder control “by electing directors, approving fundamental transactions, and bringing derivative suits.”42 In contrast, some have espoused the “director primacy” theory, articulated by Professor Stephen Bainbridge,43 which assumes that the board of directors wields the power within a corporation.44
The social entity theory posits that successful corporations have a moral imperative, not only to make money for their shareholders, but also to improve the general welfare of society in some significant way.45 Arguably, it is a corporation’s ability to enhance society’s welfare that makes it so successful, whether it is providing lower cost goods to families with limited disposable incomes or creating ways for communities with similar interests to communicate with each other. The social entity theory is compatible with the legal entity approach because, under this view, the corporation is “capable of bearing legal and moral obligations.”46
Additionally, many modern courts and corporate law theorists have come to view the corporation as a nexus of contracts.47 Under this theory, the corporation is really just “an agreement, or a series of agreements, among private parties.”48 The nexus of contracts theory provides a basis for the director primacy theory and the shareholder primacy theory, both of which explain the balance of power within the corporation, rather than the role of corporations as participants in broader governance processes such as foreign relations, adjudication, and law making. A further variation on the contractarian approach abandons the idea that the corporation itself is the nexus.49 The “connected contracts” metaphor “emphasizes the complex interactions among all of the participants in an economic venture.”50 Under this approach, although the term “contract” is used, it is used simply as a way to describe the rights and obligations of these participants, whether they are legally enforceable or not.51
Some commentators have gone so far as to analogize the corporation to a religious entity. Professor Douglas Litowitz argued in a recent article that the corporation is “fundamentally a religious and mythological entity” and “a secular god.”52 He argues that we worship business leaders53 and that the Model Business Corporation Act’s definition of a corporation, which uses the term “corporation,” is not unlike God’s statement to Moses, “I am who I am.”54 Further, he argues, a mythology has developed concerning corporations that can assist in resolving issues of corporate law.55 Professor Litowitz states:
One way to answer these fundamental questions, Litowitz argues, is to view the corporation as a “modern deity.”57
Professors Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout have proposed a “team production” theory of the corporation.58 They examine the agency theory, but note that common law agency should be supplemented with the team production theory drawn from economic literature.59 The team production theory posits that in certain situations, “productive activity requires the combined investment and coordinated effort of two or more individuals or groups.”60
Other scholars have discussed whether corporations are moral persons,61 with many rejecting the notion.62 The moral imperative for corporations is to make money.63 Under this view of the raison d’être for corporations, choosing socially responsible action over profit maximizing action is immoral.64
B. Theories of the Nation-State
Philosophers and political theorists have offered many definitions of the nation. French historian Ernest Renan argued that the nation is a fusion of the various populations that compose them, but rejected strict definitions based on ethnography, language, geography, commerce, or interests.65 Conversely, Joseph Stalin opined that a “nation is a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture.”66 The Italian jurist Pasquale Mancini similarly argued that nations were comprised of groups of people united by several factors, such as language, history and territory.67 John Stuart Mill defined sovereignty more esoterically as the “supreme controlling power.”68 Political theorist Max Weber viewed a nation as “a relation of men dominating men,” a relation supported by means of “legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”69 According to Rousseau, sovereignty rests in a united people rationally considering and deciding its own fate.70 Still others view ethnicity as the key determinant for the existence of a nation-state.71
The United Nations Charter recognizes self-determination as a primary test for nationhood.72 Kofi Annan, in his annual speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1999, said:
Today, a generally accepted view of what constitutes a state is found in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States.74 That document provides that “[t]he State as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with other States.”75
In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith defined a state by its obligations to society, and specifically identified three such obligations of the sovereign.76 These obligations are “protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies,”77 the “administration of justice,”78 and the duty of “erecting and maintaining those public institutions and public works, which though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature, that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals.”79 Later scholars have built on these duties identified by Smith. Ellen Grigsby, for example, noted that[/size][/u][/b]
Steven Spiegel describes the nation-state as “[a] state structure in which a nation resides and exists (ideally) to protect and promote the interests of that nation.”81
Some scholars have noted a technical difference in the terms “state” and “nation.”82 These scholars contend that a state is a legal person capable of passing laws and entering into treaties.83 A nation, on the other hand, can be more broadly defined as a community bound by common factors such as culture, ethnicity, religion, and history.84 Although all of these distinctions may be useful to international law scholars, I do not draw such fine distinctions in this Article. Rather, I look to a variety of characteristics that philosophers, economists, and international law scholars have ascribed to the nation-state. Whether these are immutable characteristics of statehood and whether they still apply with the same force today are important questions, but this Article is limited to reviewing the strong parallels between the state and modern multinational corporations.
The nature of the corporation and its relationship to the state has been explored in literature, as well as in legal and economic scholarship. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World seemed to anticipate this evolution of the corporation: the “T” for the Model T car replaced the cross as a religious symbol, the “Ford” was worshipped and dates were expressed as “A.F.” meaning “after Ford.” 85 Similarly, Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano depicts a dystopia controlled by technology and corporations.86 Edward Bellamy pictured the state as a national corporation in his book Looking Backward, published in 1888, about a young man who falls asleep only to awaken in the year 2000.87
Each metaphor or theory regarding the nature of corporations has some merit, and multiple views can and do coexist. Professor Litowitz, in setting forth his view of the modern corporation as a “modern deity,” wrote that “[h]opefully others will view the corporation through the lens of cultural studies, history, literary criticism, [and] sociology” as a means of “balanc[ing] out the economic approach that so dominates corporate scholarship.”88 In this Article I respond, in part, to that call, and add the following theory: that multinational corporations increasingly operate in many ways like sovereign nations.
The Corporation as Sovereign
by Allison D. Garrett
Maine Law Review
Volume 60 Number 1 Article 4
January 2008
https://digitalcommons.mainelaw.maine.e ... ontext=mlr
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at University of Maine School of Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maine Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Maine School of Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected].
[Jamie Raskin] We need to be supporting the lawyers and the people who are willing to take Trump to court, because we are winning. And that's going to be a really important part of filling that gap you talk about between what the rule of law says, and then what's actually happening. Because we're dealing with a band of incorrigible, lawless plutocrats who think that they can just control the whole U.S. government. And I keep thinking about what Steve Bannon said about Elon Musk. He said he's a truly evil individual. He knows that whole crowd, so he knows what he's talking about. And so that's quite a statement. But in the Silicon Valley network of right-wing, billionaire, libertarian-turned-authoritarians, they are very open about the fact that they think that democracy is obsolete, we're living in a post-Constitutional America, and the Constitution no longer fits. And they are trying to get everybody ready for a Techno-State Monarchy. And in their writings about it, they suggest that seizure of the control of technology, and computers, and financial payments, is the essence to moving from one form of government to another.
So we're really talking about people who would like to abolish American Constitutional institutions, and representative democracy, and the rights and freedom of the people.
Their guy, Curtis Yarvin, who's their big intellectual hero, has said people have got to overcome their fear of the word "Dictator." He says a Dictator is basically just like a corporate CEO, who are all Dictators in their businesses.
And so we need a Dictator that is the corporation, that's the United States of America. And obviously they have Elon Musk in mind, because he could never run for President, he wasn't born in the United States of America, and he's had citizenship in three different countries. He was actually an undocumented immigrant here for many months before he got work authorization, for all the right-wingers out there who want to kick all the undocumented people out of the country, although that might be an argument in their favor. I don't know. But in any event, these people are talking about supplanting our system of Constitutional democracy with a completely different kind of government controlled by Dictatorship.
-- Jamie Raskin Talks About Silicon Valleys' Techno-Libertarian Fascists, by Brian Tyler Cohen, Feb 15, 2025
The International Committee of Jurists, appointed by the Council of the League of Nations, took the view that statehood cannot co-exist with anarchy. Rather, a state does not exist until a situation “is of a definite and normal character.”Sovereignty does not exist in some situations, “either because the state is not yet fully formed or because it is undergoing transformation or dissolution [and in such cases], the situation is obscure and uncertain from a legal point of view, and will not become clear until the period of development is completed and a definite new situation, which is normal in respect to territorial sovereignty, has been established.” Once created, one attribute of the state becomes the protection of minorities, which is often codified in the states’ constitutions. In order to maintain security and stability, governments establish armies to protect themselves from other nations and police forces to keep order internally.
CONTENTS:
• INTRODUCTION
• THEORIES OF THE CORPORATION AND THE NATION-STATE
o Theories of the Corporation
o Theories of the Nation-State
• SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE CORPORATION AND THE NATION-STATE
o Permanent Population & Defined Territory
o Economic Power
o Capacity to Engage in Foreign Relations
o Protection of Society
o Administration of Justice
o Monetary Policy
o Public Welfare
• CONCLUSION
I. INTRODUCTION
In the past two hundred years, sovereignty devolved from the monarch to the people in many countries; in our lifetimes, it has devolved in several significant ways from the people to the corporation. We are witnesses to the erosion of traditional Westphalian concepts of sovereignty,1 where the chess game of international politics is played out by nation-states, each governing a certain geographic area and group of people. Eulogies for the nation-state often cite globalization as the cause of death.2 The causa mortis is characterized by the increase in the power and normative influence of supranational organizations, such as the United Nations, World Bank, European Union, International Monetary Fund, and non-governmental organizations. Today, geography lacks the political significance it once had, as valuable commodities instantly pass over, through, and under geographic borders in the world’s most common language, binary code.3 Telecommunications, when combined with mobile capital and technology, “is viewed as obliterating spatial lines.”4 All of these changes have made the nation-state, as a geopolitical entity, far less significant than it has been in the past several decades.
Corporations have stepped into this power vacuum with a reach and economic influence so broad that some of the duties of sovereign nations have fallen under their aegis.5 The power and influence of the world’s major corporations continue to grow, and with this growth their similarities to sovereign states increase. As the nation-state is prematurely eulogized, scholars are writing about the privatization of governance and commerce.6 Many scholars tend to focus on international relations and the extent to which relationships among nations have been transcended or superseded by private actors. For example, the concept of nations acting as private entities has been recognized in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act,7 which provides that “a foreign state shall not be immune . . . in any case in which the action is based upon a commercial activity carried on in the United States by a foreign state.”8 This Article focuses, instead, on how the distinction between corporations and the state is blurring, not only internationally, but also domestically, as corporations act in ways that make them similar to nation-states.
The nation-state is not dead, but it is evolving. A pivotal factor in this evolution is the power of the world’s largest corporations. Like the vassal whose power overshadows the king’s, these companies act similarly to traditional nation-states in some ways. They have tremendous economic power, establish security forces, engage in diplomatic, adjudicatory and “legislative” activities, and influence monetary policy.
However, it is important to recognize that corporations are not mini-nations, and nations are not overgrown corporations; it would be dangerous to conflate the two. Like any theory about the nature of corporations, this analogy between nations and corporations can be taken to an extreme. Although corporations seem to be amassing new powers and taking on new roles, there will always be limits placed on them by governments. Governments conduct investigations and inspections and pass laws and regulations to keep corporations in line. The court system can be used both by the government and by private actors to constrain the activities of corporations. The Fourth Estate also scrutinizes the actions of corporations. Indeed, the press can serve as a powerful check on corporate power, as the “name and shame” process can cause consumers to vote with their wallets, which in turn can affect the actions of the corporation and, ultimately, its survival.
This Article begins in Part II by examining the historical and theoretical advent of the corporation as a legal, social, and political entity, by exploring the various theories regarding the nature of the corporation. Furthermore, Part II surveys the theoretical underpinnings of the social construct known as the nation-state. Part III considers the similarities between modern multinational corporations and nation-states, including the characteristics of permanent population and defined territory, economic power, foreign relations, protection of society, administration of justice, monetary policy, and public welfare. This Article concludes by positing that a comparison between the often analogous social, political, and economic characteristics of nation-states and corporations can provide a new and useful way for scholars to analyze the activities and powers of modern-day corporations.
II. THEORIES ON THE CORPORATION AND THE NATION-STATE
A. Theories of the Corporation
Many of the earliest corporations were granted charters from the Crown that made them both corporations and political entities.9 The corporate form was not widely available and these charters were granted on an ad hoc basis, often in accord with the ebb and flow of political expediency. When Parliament passed the Joint Companies Act10 in 1844, Robert Lowe, then Vice President of Great Britain’s Board of Trade, referred to corporations as “little republics.”11 Specifically, Lowe noted that, “[h]aving given [corporations] a pattern the State leaves them to manage their own affairs and has no desire to force on these little republics any particular constitution.”12
Professor Daniel J.H. Greenwood has explored in detail the rights of early corporations, particularly those rights that are similar to the rights of the sovereign. Professor Greenwood notes that, “in the beginning, everyone understood that corporations were somewhat sovereign” and that “[ i]ndeed, the British East India Company claimed aspects of sovereignty—the right to have its contracts treated as international treaties and the right to make war.”13 These early corporations even minted money.14 Some of these companies governed expansive territories15 and maintained standing armies that, at times, engaged in military action.16 Today’s corporations may never gain the measure of power held by the earliest companies at their apogee, but they seem to be trying.
The advent of new European trading companies also stimulated industrial demand, especially for the cotton textiles – muslins, taffetas, brocades, batiks, ginghams – of Gujarat, Bengal, Golconda and the Tamil country. Founded respectively in 1600 and 1602, the East India Companies of London and the Netherlands had been intended to contest the Portuguese monopoly of the mainly Indonesian spice trade. They soon became equally interested in India’s manufactures. During the reign of Jahangir, Akbar’s immediate successor, both companies set up trading houses in Surat, which was by now the main port in Gujarat. They also began to tap into the ancient trade between India’s east coast ports and south-east Asia. Politically the companies were an irrelevance and would long remain so. But by 1640 they had ended Portugal’s monopoly of the eastern sea-routes; Europe’s domestic markets were discovering the joys of cheaper soft-furnishings and more washable cotton apparel; and sailings, whether regulated by the companies or unregulated, were boosting demand in India and, since payment was usually made in bullion, providing a welcome influx of silver....
Meanwhile in Delhi the succession crisis which followed Bahadur Shah’s death in 1712 was taking its course. Although orchestrated more by senior Mughal officials than by the four contesting sons of Bahadur Shah, it proved no less costly in blood and treasure and it resulted in the accession of a man not unfairly described by Khafi Khan as a frivolous and drunken imbecile. Luckily this Jahandah Shah lasted only eleven months, a short reign if a long debauch. ‘It was a time for minstrels and singers and all the tribes of dancers and actors … Worthy, talented and learned men were driven away, and bold impudent wits and tellers of facetious anecdotes gathered round.’ The anecdotes invariably concerned Lal Kunwar (or Kumari), the emperor’s outrageous mistress, on whose fun-loving relatives were showered jagirs,mansabs, elephants and jewels. So infectious was the mood that ‘it seemed kazis would turn toss-pots and muftis become tipplers.’14
The party ended, and decorum was temporarily restored, when in 1713 Farrukhsiyar, the son of one of Jahandah Shah’s unsuccessful brothers, approached from Bihar with a sizeable army. Jahandah Shah’s forces mostly melted away, and Farrukhsiyar, who had already declared himself emperor, began his six-year reign (1713–19). It was he who was responsible for the bloody repression of Banda Bahadur and his Sikhs, and it was he who would fatefully indulge the ambitions of the English East India Company....
Ever since the days of Akbar the European trading companies had been petitioning the Mughal emperors for farmans, imperial directives. These would theoretically regularise their status, privileges and trading terms throughout the empire and would, as it were, trump the variety of vexatious exactions and demands imposed by local Mughal officials in the ports and provincial capitals. To an organisation like the English East India Company, whose very existence depended on a national monopoly of Eastern trade as solemnly conferred by charter from the English sovereign, the need for some such reciprocal authorisation guaranteeing favourable access to its most important trading partner was self-evident.
Within a decade of the English Company receiving its first royal charter in 1600, a Captain William Hawkins had journeyed from Surat to Agra to petition Jahangir for just such a farman. Provided with more lavish gifts or more impressive accreditation, a procession of hopefuls followed in his wake, amongst them Sir Thomas Roe, the first official ambassador from the Court of St James and the man who was so impressed by Jahangir’s jewellery. With India as a whole Roe was less impressed, dismissing it in much the same terms as had Babur. Prickly to the point of apoplexy about his diplomatic status, Roe also pontificated to his countrymen in India and thus antagonised the Company’s merchants, or ‘factors’, whose interests he was supposed to be representing. ‘If he [Prince Khurram, the future Shah Jahan] should offer me ten [forts] I would not accept one,’ he told the factors, ‘… for without controversy it is an errour to affect garrisons and land warrs in India … Let this be received as a rule, that if you will profitt, seek it at sea and in quiett trade.’ Although Roe’s idea of ‘quiett trade’ included a gratuitous attack on Mughal shipping once every four years – as he explained, ‘we must chasten these people’ – the directors of the East India Company had agreed with him about avoiding garrisons and wars. As a guarantee of favourable trading conditions an imperial farman looked to provide the perfect, because inexpensive, alternative....
But the farman had not been forthcoming, and garrisons and wars had followed. Madras had been acquired from the local nayak in 1640 and its foreshore immediately graced with the four-square Fort St George. Bombay, as noted, had passed to Charles II in 1661 as part of the dowry of his Portuguese bride, Catherine of Braganza. After a disastrous attempt to install a royal garrison it had been leased to the Company, whose employees came to appreciate its greater security when Shivaji and his successors began their raids on Surat. The actual transfer from Crown to Company was by letters patent of 1668 which, presumably for reasons of bureaucratic convenience, described Bombay as being ‘in the Manor of East Greenwich in the County of Kent’; the rent of £10 was to be paid ‘in gold, on the 30th day of September, yearly, for ever’....
Calcutta had been founded twenty years later during the course of one of Aurangzeb’s lesser-known wars. In 1664 Shaista Khan, fresh from the Deccan and minus the thumb lost during that audacious Maratha raid on his Pune home, had been appointed governor of Bengal in succession to Mir Jumla, the conqueror of Assam. When Aurangzeb himself moved to the Deccan in 1682, Shaista Khan was still in Bengal, and in that year he welcomed to his capital of Dacca one William Hedges, a director of the English East India Company. Hedges sought to persuade Shaista Khan to cancel a new tax on the imported bullion with which the Company paid for its Indian exports and to petition Aurangzeb for the long-sought farman. As the brother of Mumtaz Mahal of the Taj, and so Aurangzeb’s uncle, Shaista Khan was believed to have considerable influence. At one point Hedges thought the farman was as good as signed. But in 1684 his diplomacy was undermined by a combination of the Company’s bitching Bengal factors and Sir Josiah Child, its bellicose governor in London. Shaista Khan drew the obvious conclusion: ‘the English are a company of base quarelling people and foul dealers.’ Negotiations were broken off; and a couple of years later – it taking that long for recriminations to reach London and retribution to reach India – two ships carrying exactly 308 Company soldiers sailed up to Hughli to press the Company’s suit and challenge an empire which had at the time at least 100,000 men in the field.20
The Company’s Mughal War, also sometimes known as ‘Child’s War’, figures no more prominently in histories of British India than it does in Mughal histories. It brought glory to no one. In Bengal, after a fracas in the Mughal port of Hughli, the English withdrew downriver, landed themselves at the spot which they later called Calcutta, then next year evacuated it. This performance was repeated in 1688–9 as the ‘war’ took a more serious turn elsewhere. In support of his Bengal brethren, the Company’s senior official in Surat (who was also called Child) had removed to the comparative safety of Bombay. Thence, in accordance with ambassador Roe’s long-remembered dictum, he began attacking Mughal shipping. Child in London applauded; within a year, he announced, ‘the subjects of the Mogoll [would be] starving and dying by thousands for want of our trade’. Meanwhile the Child in Bombay boasted that if Aurangzeb chose to send the admiral of his fleet against him he ‘would blow him off with the wind of his bum’.21 Aurangzeb did so choose, and ‘Child’s War’ – or perhaps ‘the Children’s War’ – thus spread from one extremity of the Mughal empire to the other. In early 1689 Sidi Yakub, the African who commanded a west coast fleet which served as the Mughal marine, took Bombay island completely by surprise. The English were besieged in Bombay Castle for most of the year and eventually capitulated.
The Company’s ‘envoys’, who in 1690 journeyed up to the imperial encampment to plead for pardon, did so with their hands tied in more ways than one. As a further indignity they were made to prostrate themselves before the emperor. But Aurangzeb was not unaware of the value of their trade nor of the danger of their making common cause with the Marathas. For a massive indemnity and promises of better conduct in future, he graciously agreed to the restoration of their trading privileges and the withdrawal of his troops. In the same spirit of forgive and forget, the Company’s Bengal establishment was allowed to return to the Hughli river where in 1690 it made a permanent settlement at Calcutta and began the fortifications of its ‘Fort William’. With the first Anglo–Indian war having been so decisively won by the Mughal empire, there was no mention of the farman....
Of more immediate concern to the directors of the Company were the activities of its employees in a personal capacity. English fortunes were notoriously made in India not by loyal service in the purchase and despatch of the Company’s piece-goods but by private investment in a variety of financial opportunities. Some were concerned with trade. Only over the ‘out and back’ traffic between England and the East was the Company able to enforce its monopoly. Within the East and within India itself, Company men took advantage of the decline in Indian-operated shipping which had begun during Portugal’s sixteenth-century Estado da India to invest heavily in the Indian Ocean trade. They owned or leased ships, freighted cargoes, sold insurance, and above all took advantage of the security and protection of their employer’s flag. Thus from Madras, as employees of the Company, the American-born Yale brothers amassed considerable fortunes in trade with Siam (Thailand) and Canton in China; part of Elihu Yale’s earnings would endow the college, and later university, in Connecticut which bears his name. Some Company men also invested in, and often defected to, shipping interests which did not recognise even the Company’s ‘out and back’ monopoly. These might be other European East India Companies like those of the Dutch or the French. They might be the ‘illegal’ English syndicates usually known as ‘interlopers’. Or they might be a bit of both -– English interlopers sailing under a flag of convenience. Up the Hughli river in search of Bengal produce there sailed in the early eighteenth century vessels which, though largely financed by Englishmen, flew the colours of the Ostend Company, the Swedish Company, the Prussian Company, the Royal Polish Company and the Royal Danish Company.
Thomas Pitt, once an interloper, then a Member of Parliament, had already made and spent one Indian fortune when in 1699 he returned to Madras as governor of its Fort St George. He stayed there for twelve years, amassing a second fortune which included the Pitt diamond (bought for £45,000 and sold to the Regent of France for £135,000); it would comfortably sustain the political careers of his prime ministerial grandson (Chatham) and great-grandson (William Pitt the Younger). Governor Pitt also jealously protected the Company’s interests during the uncertain times before and after Aurangzeb’s death. In 1701 another English ambassador, the first since Roe, had toiled up to the emperor’s peripatetic court in the Deccan with a lavish presentation of cannons, horses and cartloads of glassware and crockery. But Aurangzeb would only entertain the idea of a farman if the English would undertake the expensive task of policing the Indian Ocean and suppressing the piratical activities of mainly European interlopers and renegades. No such undertaking was forthcoming, and nor was the farman. The embassy proved to be the expensive disaster which Pitt had predicted.
Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 and the subsequent succession struggle opened new possibilities. On behalf of Prince Muazzam, an imperial intermediary asked for English assistance in cutting off the retreat of one of the prince’s rivals; in return, Pitt was invited to draw up the terms of a farman. Although the prince’s rival never reached Madras, Muazzam duly ascended the throne as Bahadur Shah and the Company began assembling the elephants, horses, clocks and musical boxes deemed suitable to accompany another mission to the imperial court. When Pitt left India in 1709 he was still sanguine of its prospects, and in 1710 overtures from the same intermediary, who had now been posted to Bengal, were renewed. The clocks and elephants were duly shipped to Calcutta and by 1712 the mission to the Mughal was ready to start. Then news came from Delhi that Bahadur Shah had died.
His ‘imbecilic’ successor barely lasted long enough for an exchange of letters, but with the accession of Farrukhsiyar the Company’s hopes soared again. The new emperor had been brought up in Bengal, where his father had been governor after Shaista Khan. He was known to some of the English in Calcutta, and the Company had supplied his nursery with toys. Evidently the toys had been appreciated, for news that some forty tons of more adult exotica now awaited the emperor’s orders brought an interim confirmation of the Company’s existing privileges plus a request that the mission proceed to Delhi forthwith. In 1715, headed by the unexciting John Surman and guarded by some six hundred troops, a caravan consisting of 160 bullock carts, twelve hundred porters, and a choice assortment of carriages, cannons and camels headed west across the Gangetic plain.
‘Considering the great pomp and state of the kings of Hindustan, we was very well received,’ wrote Surman on arrival in Delhi. He relished the impressive ceremonial and was soon dispensing lavish bribes. Meanwhile the mission’s doctor successfully treated some swellings in the imperial groin. He was handsomely rewarded, but as to the farman Farrukhsiyar remained infuriatingly indifferent. Only when threatened with the withdrawal of the Company from Surat and its other establishments in Gujarat did he relent. Losing the Company’s bullion and trade for the price of a piece of paper was unthinkable. On New Year’s Eve 1716, more than a century since Captain William Hawkins had first applied for it, the farman received the imperial signature.
Explicit as to the territorial and commercial rights enjoyed by the Company throughout India, the farman did indeed ‘indicate such favour as has never before been granted to any European nation’. In Calcutta, Madras and Bombay celebrations were held, toasts were drunk, and salutes fired as the document was paraded through the streets and proclaimed at the cities’ gates. ‘Our dear bought farman’ became ‘the Magna Carta of the Company in India’. It provided imperial confirmation of a host of privileges, some of which had hitherto been more assumed than assured. It inducted the Company into the political hierarchy of Mughal India through a direct relationship with the emperor which bore comparison with that enjoyed by imperial office-holders. And in that it legitimised action against anyone supposedly infringing its terms, it offered great scope for future intervention. Thirty years later it would be on the strength of Farrukhsiyar’s farman that Robert Clive would justify his advance to Plassey and the overthrow of Bengal’s nawab....
The dynamic of the Mughal political economy was as much about troops as money. Military leaders financed their activities by engaging in entrepreneurial ventures, and entrepreneurs secured their investments by supporting military ventures. Thus, even before war broke out with the French in the 1740s, the English Company, through its employees, was already indirectly involved in the hire and maintenance of troops by neighbouring zamindars and revenue collectors. Encouraged by the farman’s confirmation of certain local revenue rights, the Company had also significantly increased the number of troops deemed necessary to defend its own establishments. The Madras garrison, for instance, increased from 360 in 1717 to some twelve hundred in 1742. Most were recruited locally, many being from the Indo-Portuguese community. But Indian troops, known as ‘peons’ or ‘sepoys’ (sipahis, soldiers), were also hired, there being a ready pool of professional soldiers -– Marathas, Deccanis, Afghans, rajputs, Baksaris (from Awadh) –- which Mughal rule had left stranded, and often unpaid, throughout the subcontinent. The existence of this market in troops, like that of the market in offices and revenue farms, positively invited European participation.
But if the farman could be used to provide a legal basis for British interference, and if the lively market in commercial, fiscal and military opportunities encouraged such intervention, it was the Anglo–French wars which precipitated it. They furnished the pretext, demonstrated the method and inspired the confidence for the first British moves towards an Indian dominion....
With French troops under de Bussy now assisting the new nizam against other rivals like the Marathas and so penetrating deep into the Deccan, the British too were not averse to opening a new front. Robert Clive, returning from England after a hero’s reception, reached Bombay in 1755 whence he expected to lead an Anglo-Maratha assault on de Bussy in the Deccan. This was called off. Instead, he joined a Royal Navy squadron under Admiral Charles Watson for an epic assault on what the British called the ‘pirate stronghold of Gheriah’. The ‘pirate’ was Kanhoji Angria’s successor as admiral of the Maratha fleet and ‘Gheriah’ was otherwise Vijayadurg, still today a spectacularly fortified promontory near Ratnagiri to the south of Bombay. Taken and pillaged, Vijayadurg’s fall brought to an end both Maratha sea-power and those premature ‘Indian Wars’ which had so embarrassed Bombay. Clive then sailed on to Madras with Watson. Barely four months later, in July 1756, news reached Madras that Siraj-ud-daula, the Nawab of Bengal, had stormed Calcutta and ejected the British. With Watson, his squadron, a regiment of royal troops, and a thousand sepoys Clive sailed for Bengal.
The next seven months, or ‘the Famous Two Hundred Days’, would witness the British conquest of the richest and possibly the largest of the Mughal provinces. Bengal duly became the ‘bridgehead’, ‘springboard’ and ‘foundation’ of British rule in India. It was not the new front against the French which Clive had expected, but the French presence at Chandernagore did provide a handy pretext for continuing his advance after Calcutta had been recaptured and all rights as per the farman restored. Chandernagore itself would be stormed by Watson’s ships in what was much the most ferocious engagement of the campaign. Thereafter it was the nawab’s supposed intrigues with the French which justified a further advance to Plassey. In the battle which followed, the nawab would be toppled by intrigue and, following Arcot practice, the first of several puppet nawabs installed.
Nine years later rule by proxy in Bengal would become rule by diwani. In a decidedly tacky ceremony the Emperor Shah Alam II, Muhammad Shah’s successor, formally inducted the Company, in the person of Clive, into the Mughal hierarchy. As diwan, or chancellor, for Bengal, the Company received a title which was now tantamount to sovereignty over a province that enjoyed virtual autonomy....
The royal proclamation of 1858 announced a decision of the British Parliament that all rights previously enjoyed by the East India Company in India were being resumed by the British Crown. Victoria thereby became Queen of India as well as of the United Kingdom, and India’s governor-general became her viceroy as well as the British government’s chief executive in India. The fiction of Company rule thus finally ended. Long as irrelevant as the Mughal, the Company now shared his fate as a casualty of the Rebellion. Instead of pining away in Rangoon, it would linger on for a few more years in a London office ‘unhonoured and unsung, but maybe not altogether unwept’.
So India had a new sovereign; and just as in Britain the monarch’s position was buttressed by a hierarchy of hereditary nobles and by the award of honours, so in India similar structures were created. The Star of India, a royal order of Indian knights, was introduced in 1861, and the first tour by a member of the British royal family took place in 1869. Meanwhile India’s aristocracy of ‘feudatory’ princes, chiefs, rajas, nawabs and so on was being further stratified and grouped to conform to British ideas of hierarchy. The grading of gun salutes and other minutiae of protocol provided a ready reckoner of status, status itself being assessed on the basis of historical and territorial credentials, good governance, charitable activities and, of course, demonstrations of loyalty.
Only when this structuring was complete was the keystone installed. In 1876, on the advice of Disraeli, the Queen announced to the British Parliament that, satisfied that her Indian subjects were ‘happy under My rule and loyal to My throne’, she deemed the moment appropriate for her to assume a new ‘Royal Style and Titles’. The style, it was later revealed, was to be imperial and the titles, in English, ‘Empress of India’ and, for the benefit of her Indian subjects, the rather unfortunate ‘Kaiser-i-Hind’.
In January 1877, in a vast tented city around the Ridge whence British forces had recaptured Delhi twenty years earlier, the new imperium was solemnised at an Imperial Assemblage. The official attendance of eighty-four thousand included nearly all of India’s ‘sixty-three ruling princes’ and ‘three hundred titular chiefs and native gentlemen’. Lord Lytton, the presiding viceroy whose arrangements would provide a blueprint for all future imperial durbars, took some delight in listing those present. Here were the princes of Arcot and Tanjore from the deep south, the principal ‘Talukdars of Oudh’, ‘Alor Chiefs of Sindh’, Sikh Sardars, rajputs and Marathas, ‘the semi-independent Chief of Amb’, ‘Arabs from Peshawar’, ‘Biluch Tommduis from Dera Ghazi Khan’, and envoys from Chitral and Yassin in the high Hindu Kush ‘who attended in the train of the Maharajah of Cashmere and Jammu’. Also included in Lytton’s litany were quite a few ex-princes like the grandson of Tipu Sultan, the son of the last Nawab of Awadh and ‘members of the ex-Royal family of Delhi’.
The presence of these descendants of the former great ruling houses of India imparted some of the flavour of a Roman triumph to the assemblage. The British conception of Indian history thereby was realised as a kind of ‘living museum’, with the descendants of both the allies and the enemies of the English displaying the period of the conquest of India.29
Conservation was now the order of the day. The riot of privilege and particularism, once seen as an indictment of British rule, was to be preserved as imperial pageantry. And with the British apparently disclaiming plans for the rapid transformation of Indian society, the initiative now slowly passed from these hereditary representatives of the old dynastic order to a new elite, English-educated and city-based.
-- India A History: From the Earliest Civilisations to the Boom of the Twenty-First Century, by John Keay
The ontology of the corporation encompasses a number of theories regarding the nature of corporations. Corporations have been described as a person,17 private property of the shareholders,18 a nexus of contracts,19 an agent for the owners,20 a representative democracy,21 and even a religious entity.22
Currently, corporations are viewed as legal persons, and have been regarded as such for almost 200 years.23 As legal persons, corporations are entitled to some constitutional protections.24 They have the right to hold property,25 to contract,26 and to sue and be sued as a juridical entity distinct from their shareholders, directors and employees.27 Corporate law theorists have more recently come to view the corporation as a special type of legal entity that has been and should be regulated28 and accommodated in unique ways.29
Delaware Chancellor William T. Allen has described the two general schools of thought about the nature of corporations as the “property conception” and the “social entity conception.”30 Under the property conception, the corporation is viewed as the private property of its shareholders, with the ultimate goal of profit maximization on behalf of the shareholders.31 Under the social entity conception, the corporation’s purpose “includ[es] advancement of the general welfare.”32
The view of the corporation as a profit maximization vehicle for the corporation’s shareholders is closely related to two other concepts: agency theory and shareholder primacy. The corporation was first analyzed using agency theory in the 1930s. The bifurcation of ownership and management was identified by Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means33 and then expanded by Ronald Coase.34 The agency theory of the corporation has become one of the most-widely accepted theories of the firm.35 The theory holds that markets and contracts limit the discretion that can be exercised by corporate managers.36 These agents, who are linked by contracts to the firm, influence its actions. A central feature of the agency theory is that agents of corporations, as rational economic actors, will take steps to minimize agency costs.37 However, this view has been criticized.38 Professors Jensen and Meckling argued that “there is good reason to believe that the agent will not always act in the best interests of the principal” and that, consequently, there is an agency loss because a corporation will not be managed as well by an agent for the owners as it would be if the owners themselves managed the corporation.39 For this reason, compensation schemes often attempt to align more closely the interests of executives with those of shareholders.40
More recently, the idea that corporations exist solely to maximize the wealth of their shareholders and the agency theory have evolved into the “shareholder primacy theory” of the corporation, which holds that corporations operate in the interest of the shareholders and that directors owe to them a fiduciary duty.41 Furthermore, the theory stresses that corporations are subject to shareholder control “by electing directors, approving fundamental transactions, and bringing derivative suits.”42 In contrast, some have espoused the “director primacy” theory, articulated by Professor Stephen Bainbridge,43 which assumes that the board of directors wields the power within a corporation.44
The social entity theory posits that successful corporations have a moral imperative, not only to make money for their shareholders, but also to improve the general welfare of society in some significant way.45 Arguably, it is a corporation’s ability to enhance society’s welfare that makes it so successful, whether it is providing lower cost goods to families with limited disposable incomes or creating ways for communities with similar interests to communicate with each other. The social entity theory is compatible with the legal entity approach because, under this view, the corporation is “capable of bearing legal and moral obligations.”46
Additionally, many modern courts and corporate law theorists have come to view the corporation as a nexus of contracts.47 Under this theory, the corporation is really just “an agreement, or a series of agreements, among private parties.”48 The nexus of contracts theory provides a basis for the director primacy theory and the shareholder primacy theory, both of which explain the balance of power within the corporation, rather than the role of corporations as participants in broader governance processes such as foreign relations, adjudication, and law making. A further variation on the contractarian approach abandons the idea that the corporation itself is the nexus.49 The “connected contracts” metaphor “emphasizes the complex interactions among all of the participants in an economic venture.”50 Under this approach, although the term “contract” is used, it is used simply as a way to describe the rights and obligations of these participants, whether they are legally enforceable or not.51
Some commentators have gone so far as to analogize the corporation to a religious entity. Professor Douglas Litowitz argued in a recent article that the corporation is “fundamentally a religious and mythological entity” and “a secular god.”52 He argues that we worship business leaders53 and that the Model Business Corporation Act’s definition of a corporation, which uses the term “corporation,” is not unlike God’s statement to Moses, “I am who I am.”54 Further, he argues, a mythology has developed concerning corporations that can assist in resolving issues of corporate law.55 Professor Litowitz states:
The pressing issues of corporate law [such as] whether a corporation should resemble a functioning democracy, whether it has duties to a community, whether it should be allowed to move offshore, whether it has a race or gender, whether it has rights to free speech, [and] whether it must favor shareholders over employees . . . [are] questions about the meaning of the modern corporation.56
One way to answer these fundamental questions, Litowitz argues, is to view the corporation as a “modern deity.”57
Professors Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout have proposed a “team production” theory of the corporation.58 They examine the agency theory, but note that common law agency should be supplemented with the team production theory drawn from economic literature.59 The team production theory posits that in certain situations, “productive activity requires the combined investment and coordinated effort of two or more individuals or groups.”60
Other scholars have discussed whether corporations are moral persons,61 with many rejecting the notion.62 The moral imperative for corporations is to make money.63 Under this view of the raison d’être for corporations, choosing socially responsible action over profit maximizing action is immoral.64
B. Theories of the Nation-State
Philosophers and political theorists have offered many definitions of the nation. French historian Ernest Renan argued that the nation is a fusion of the various populations that compose them, but rejected strict definitions based on ethnography, language, geography, commerce, or interests.65 Conversely, Joseph Stalin opined that a “nation is a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture.”66 The Italian jurist Pasquale Mancini similarly argued that nations were comprised of groups of people united by several factors, such as language, history and territory.67 John Stuart Mill defined sovereignty more esoterically as the “supreme controlling power.”68 Political theorist Max Weber viewed a nation as “a relation of men dominating men,” a relation supported by means of “legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”69 According to Rousseau, sovereignty rests in a united people rationally considering and deciding its own fate.70 Still others view ethnicity as the key determinant for the existence of a nation-state.71
The United Nations Charter recognizes self-determination as a primary test for nationhood.72 Kofi Annan, in his annual speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1999, said:
State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined by the forces of globalization and international cooperation. The State is now widely understood to be the servant of its people, and not vice versa. At the same time, individual sovereignty—and by this I mean the human rights and fundamental freedoms of each and every individual as enshrined in our Charter—has been enhanced by a renewed consciousness of the right of every individual to control his or her own destiny. . . . Nothing in the Charter precludes recognition that there are rights beyond borders.73
Today, a generally accepted view of what constitutes a state is found in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States.74 That document provides that “[t]he State as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with other States.”75
In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith defined a state by its obligations to society, and specifically identified three such obligations of the sovereign.76 These obligations are “protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies,”77 the “administration of justice,”78 and the duty of “erecting and maintaining those public institutions and public works, which though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature, that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals.”79 Later scholars have built on these duties identified by Smith. Ellen Grigsby, for example, noted that[/size][/u][/b]
[a] state is an organization that has a number of political functions and tasks, including providing security, extracting revenues, and forming rules for resolving disputes and allocating resources within the boundaries of the territory in which it exercises jurisdiction. That is, states consist of government offices, which have the tasks of providing the ultimate, or primary, security, extraction processes, and rule making within a territory.80
Steven Spiegel describes the nation-state as “[a] state structure in which a nation resides and exists (ideally) to protect and promote the interests of that nation.”81
Some scholars have noted a technical difference in the terms “state” and “nation.”82 These scholars contend that a state is a legal person capable of passing laws and entering into treaties.83 A nation, on the other hand, can be more broadly defined as a community bound by common factors such as culture, ethnicity, religion, and history.84 Although all of these distinctions may be useful to international law scholars, I do not draw such fine distinctions in this Article. Rather, I look to a variety of characteristics that philosophers, economists, and international law scholars have ascribed to the nation-state. Whether these are immutable characteristics of statehood and whether they still apply with the same force today are important questions, but this Article is limited to reviewing the strong parallels between the state and modern multinational corporations.
The nature of the corporation and its relationship to the state has been explored in literature, as well as in legal and economic scholarship. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World seemed to anticipate this evolution of the corporation: the “T” for the Model T car replaced the cross as a religious symbol, the “Ford” was worshipped and dates were expressed as “A.F.” meaning “after Ford.” 85 Similarly, Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano depicts a dystopia controlled by technology and corporations.86 Edward Bellamy pictured the state as a national corporation in his book Looking Backward, published in 1888, about a young man who falls asleep only to awaken in the year 2000.87
Each metaphor or theory regarding the nature of corporations has some merit, and multiple views can and do coexist. Professor Litowitz, in setting forth his view of the modern corporation as a “modern deity,” wrote that “[h]opefully others will view the corporation through the lens of cultural studies, history, literary criticism, [and] sociology” as a means of “balanc[ing] out the economic approach that so dominates corporate scholarship.”88 In this Article I respond, in part, to that call, and add the following theory: that multinational corporations increasingly operate in many ways like sovereign nations.
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Part 2 of 4
III. SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE CORPORATION AND SOVEREIGN STATES
The remainder of this Article discusses the devolution of sovereign powers to private enterprise and the various forms of this devolution. Specifically, the following sections review the traditional characteristics and duties of sovereign nations articulated above and discuss the ways in which corporations have come to embody these characteristics and assume the duties of nations. These sections deal with the characteristics of a permanent population and defined territory, economic power, participation in foreign relations, the protection of society from violence and invasion, the administration of justice, and the creation of public works and public institutions.
A. Permanent Population & Defined Territory
Oppenheim describes one characteristic of the state as a permanent population, that is, as a people who live together as a community.89 Yet, the view that a state has a permanent population has waned in recent decades as populations have become more transient.90 Further, even within the borders of a state, there are often disparate groups of people who cannot be said to comprise a single community. This would be true, for example, of Kurdistan or Cyprus, where groups of people living under a single national flag operate largely autonomously from the national government. There is also the related question of what size population is necessary to qualify a group of people as a state. According to the Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States, “significant” size is necessary.91 Yet Vatican City has a permanent population of only 840,92 while the world’s largest corporations have “populations” of several hundred thousand. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest private employer with almost two million employees around the world, may be the best example of a large corporate population.93
Notions of citizenship are changing rapidly. Fordham Law School sponsored a two-day conference in September of 2006 entitled “New Dimensions of Citizenship.”94 Conference organizers noted that while citizenship theory has relied on the disciplines of law, history, political science, and anthropology, theories of citizenship are evolving to take into account the increasingly transnational nature of citizenship.95 These theories have necessarily moved beyond economic globalization and the convergence of financial markets; international capital may be mobile, but asymmetry exists when the movement of capital is compared to the movement of individuals.96
As these modern notions of citizenship emphasize the decreasing importance of national borders, theories of corporate citizenship have taken root. Individuals today often self-identify more closely with their employer than with their country of birth. In other words, a person’s work identity may transcend his or her national identity. The corporation, like a nation, has its own unique culture. Like immigrants to a new country, new corporate employees go through a process of acculturation. Similar to a capitalist nation in which the strongest entrepreneurs succeed, the corporation is often a meritocracy, allowing deserving employees to climb the corporate ladder and participate in the corporation’s internal governance.
Citizenship in a particular country is the serendipitous accident of birth,97 while association with a corporation is generally an affirmative choice based on market factors. These market factors have begun to affect residence to a large extent, and citizenship to a lesser extent. Individuals employed by multinational corporations often have opportunities to work as expatriates in countries where the corporation has operations. Just as groups of people may, by virtue of these shared experiences or self-determination, coalesce into a nation-state, so, too, may groups of people employed by a corporation coalesce into some larger type of society. Professor Bruno Frey, in writing about citizenship in our global society, explained that:
The concepts of organizational or corporate citizenship originated in the 1990s.99 Much has been written in the last several years about corporate cultures.100 One scholar noted that there now exists “a new breed of men and women for whom religion, culture, and ethnic nationality are marginal elements in a working identity.”101
While groups of people within a nation are linked geographically, within a corporation, employees are linked by a common purpose and by information. Large companies, like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Shell, and Wal-Mart, export their corporate cultures as they establish operations abroad. Companies with cultures ranging from laid-back to highly formal will retain some aspects of their respective cultures abroad. Companies hire local executive talent and instill the companies’ cultural values in these new executives. The executives will then spread these values to other entities when they deal with suppliers and customers or if they transfer to different companies.
Not surprisingly, one of the most challenging aspects of merging two corporations is integrating disparate cultures after the closing date of the merger.102 Corporations can prosper when a merger enhances the surviving corporation’s culture by incorporating the best aspects of the target’s culture. Sometimes, however, the worst aspects of both corporations’ culture survive in the new entity and the corporation is weakened. Another important issue that arises during many mergers, according to organizational psychologists, is the acculturation of new employees.103 This is especially true for multinational corporations; the issue for these companies is how best to form a common culture across varying geographic, ethnic, and religious areas and time zones.104
Another characteristic of the permanent population of a nation-state is that citizens of the state have the right of suffrage and may vote on significant issues and for political candidates. As the global business population becomes more transient, this may mean that individuals vote on issues and candidates in states other than the one in which they reside. Some nation-states are inclusionary, giving residents or other groups of non-citizens the right to vote.105 Other nation-states are exclusionary, limiting suffrage to those who are citizens. In the European Union, for example, suffrage is based on residence rather than citizenship. Residents, regardless of citizenship, have the right to vote and to stand for political office.106
As corporations take on more of the attributes of government, the impact on the voting rights of citizens must be considered. The franchise rights of corporate shareholders become ever more important as the corporations in which they have purchased shares become more powerful actors on the global stage.107 Similarly, as corporate powers increase, the right to run for public office may become less important than the right to climb the corporate ladder or otherwise influence the activities of corporations.
Ideally, corporations engage in succession planning for all of the senior positions within the organization. But like the political climate within a particular country, a political climate can develop within a corporation. Executives align themselves with managers or directors, whom they believe may someday manage the entire organization, in an effort to rise to power on the manager or director’s coattails. Sometimes, just as in countries, coups occur within a corporation. When a CEO or senior executive is fired and another is appointed, jockeying for position and lobbying for board member votes becomes common.
Control over a defined territory, usually to the exclusion of all other states, is another typical attribute of sovereignty.108 According to the Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States, a state has “jurisdiction to prescribe law with respect to . . . conduct that, wholly or in substantial part, takes place within its territory; . . . the status of persons, or interests in things, present within its territory; . . . [and] conduct outside its territory that has or is intended to have substantial effect within its territory.”109
Although territory is viewed as a characteristic of the state, land, as one of the means of production, is less significant now than ever before. This decrease in significance is the result of information, which has taken its place with land, labor, and capital as a means of production. With respect to territory, size is largely irrelevant to the issue of statehood and can range from as little as 100 acres to an entire continent.110 Geographic borders may be disputed between neighboring states, making the territory of a state murkily defined. Similarly, even geographic borders lack the political significance that they once had as capital, people, and information cross borders with ease.111
B. Economic Power
Today’s Brobdingnagian corporations may never gain the measure of power held by the earliest companies during their peak, but the largest corporations still economically dwarf many developing nations. The tremendous power of multinational corporations can be partially explained by their sheer size. A few of the very largest companies have the power to make—or destroy—markets of particular products or in particular places.
The largest corporations have annual revenues that are multiples of the gross domestic products of many nations. For example, the gross domestic product (on a purchasing power parity basis) for three developing countries in different regions in 2006 was as follows: Sri Lanka, $95.46 billion;112 Ghana, $60 billion;113 and Honduras, $22.54 billion.114 In contrast, the world’s largest corporations had revenues in 2006 of several times these amounts. Wal-Mart’s revenues were $315.6 billion,115 British Petroleum’s revenues were $265.9 billion,116 Exxon Mobil’s revenues were $377.64 billion,117 and Royal Dutch/Shell Group’s revenues were $306.7 billion.118 In fact, of the three countries just mentioned, Sri Lanka’s $95.46 billion is closest to the 2006 revenues of Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, which ranked number 24 on the 2006 Fortune Global 500 list.119 Wal-Mart’s revenue in 2006 was approximately fourteen times the GDP of Honduras, with Honduras bested by 281 of the Fortune 500 companies in 2006.120
These staggering discrepancies in the GDPs of some developing countries and the revenues of the largest corporations mean that foreign corporations have the capacity to exert tremendous influence over the economic stability of developing nations. If one or more large companies divests or sources product elsewhere, the impact could be devastating to a developing nation. Similarly, a decision to source products in a developing nation could have a tremendously positive economic impact by creating jobs and providing a tax base.
It is important to note, however, that although corporations have grown tremendously in size over the past few decades, some authors have downplayed the importance of this growth. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge note that the growth of corporations has not kept pace with the economic growth of nations and that “wealth is not the same as power.” 121 The authors explain:
Micklethwait and Wooldridge also stress that globalization has, as a rule, tended to help small companies rather than large ones, and that governments may still exercise their powers to curtail the power of these large multinational corporations, as the Department of Justice did by filing an antitrust suit against Microsoft.123
C. Capacity to Engage in Foreign Relations
As noted previously, the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States lists as a characteristic of states the “capacity to enter into relations with other States.”124 Recognition by other countries is also viewed as a test, even though some nations may dispute the right to exist or the territory of a particular state.125
Modern corporations, particularly those with international operations, do enter into relations with nations other than their home country. In fact, corporations engage in foreign relations in a variety of ways, many of them very similar to the ways in which nations deal with each other. For example, corporations engage in diplomacy, establish outposts in other nations, engage in trade negotiations, and often serve as proxies for their home country’s government.
Under the agency theory of corporations, the executives of a company are the agents of the corporation’s shareholders.126 As such, these agents are charged with making money for the shareholders, not with formulating international policy. Yet in the course of pursuing profits, that is precisely what executives in multinational corporations do. The CEO and other senior executives often meet with trade ministers and heads of state. During and following World War II, the United States engaged in foreign relations with Saudi Arabia primarily through ARAMCO.127 There are several more recent examples, as well. In late 2004, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer met with India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.128 In April of 2006, in his first official visit to the United States, Chinese President Hu Jintao visited with Microsoft and Boeing executives before visiting the White House.129 By visiting with the CEOs of these companies first, China sent the message that relations between the Chinese government and industry have priority over relations between the two governments.130
In addition, companies will occasionally hold board meetings in the countries where they have operations. This gives the non-executive directors an opportunity to review the company’s foreign operations. When a foreign company holds a board meeting, the prime minister and other government officials may attend a portion of the meeting or a reception or dinner in connection with the meeting. Credit Suisse, BHP Billiton, and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB have all held board meetings in China.131 Wal-Mart has held board meetings in Canada, China, and Mexico. Perot Systems met in India.132 Meeting in countries where these mega-corporations have operations shows a commitment to future development in the country.133 Directors who may be asked to vote on significant capital expenditures are more comfortable doing so if they have seen first hand the company’s operations in a particular country. The presence of the head of state or cabinet ministers at the board meeting gives the directors further assurance that the company is welcome in the country and signals the value that the country’s leaders place on the corporation’s presence in their country.
Furthermore, large multinational corporations understand the importance of effective government relations and often establish offices in capital cities throughout the world. The need for an office in a particular capital has somewhat diminished in recent years as technology has advanced, giving executives easier ways to arrange for meeting with foreign diplomats.134 Even if the company has not yet entered a particular market, it may establish an office to monitor legislative developments, engage in government relations, identify local executive talent, and assess potential joint venture partners.135 Establishing an office and engaging in various forms of foreign relations also allows a company to transcend uncomfortable relations between its host country and its home country.136 In the past few years, for companies based in the United States or Great Britain, this has meant overcoming the unpopularity of their home countries’ foreign policies. Where the head of state is unpopular abroad, companies that seek to engage in business internationally must take additional steps to build constructive relationships and to distance themselves from politicians at home.137 Former diplomat Shaun Riordan wrote in his book The New Diplomacy that multinational corporations’ “economic strength, combined with international networks that frequently outstrip (and outperform) those of traditional diplomatic services, make them more influential than many states. Their interventions are no longer limited to narrowly defined commercial interests. The more forward-thinking corporations are already carving out a role in the design of any future global governance.”138
One important way that multinational corporations establish their “role in the design of any future global governance”139 is by engaging in trade negotiations, either directly or indirectly, through their chartering nations’ trade representatives. Adam Smith wrote in 1783 that trade regulations “may, I think, be demonstrated to be in every case a complete piece of dupery, by which the interest of the State and the nation is constantly sacrificed to that of some particular class of traders.”140 While trade policies may be motivated in part by the desires of a “particular class of traders,” they are also affected by the desires of the nations to court foreign investment. This competition has been characterized by some as a “race to the bottom,” in which countries offer cheap labor and substandard health and environmental standards in order to attract corporate investment.141
Trade policy remains in many ways a mechanism for enrichment and protection of companies.142 Corporations are stakeholders in trade policy decisions and also engage in commercial diplomacy, negotiating their own trade deals in countries where they wish to conduct or expand their business. Corporate executives often deal extensively with politicians, regulators, and policy makers on trade and investment issues that affect their organization. As explained above, these issues implicate not only traditional trade matters, but also environmental, labor, consumer protection, and other concerns.143
Beyond negotiating trade conditions between a corporation and a host country, a corporation often negotiates taxation as well. Unlike individuals, corporations have some ability to set their own rates of taxation, and often negotiate inducement agreements with various levels of government.144 Switzerland, for example, has been successful in attracting intellectual property holding companies largely because it offers generally low taxes and no up-front taxes on royalties.145 Companies often arbitrage tax treatment by taking advantage of the price differential between countries.146 All other things being equal, a corporation will locate its business in the country that gives it the best “deal” on taxes—and, as previously noted, this “deal” is often the subject of negotiation.
Furthermore, corporations can be viewed by the people of other nations as representatives of the entity’s home country. We saw this recently as Gulf retailers boycotted Danish companies after Jyllands-Posten printed offensive cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammed.147 In Europe, some restaurants boycotted American products, such as Coca-Cola and Budweiser, and refused to accept American Express cards in protest of the war in Iraq.148 These companies were targeted, not because of their own actions, but as proxies for the American government.
The home governments of multinational corporations also use these companies as diplomatic tools.149 Governments sometimes request that corporations conduct business in a certain way or in a certain place to facilitate foreign relations. In addition, a number of functions that have historically been within the purview of the state are now being privatized. One result of such privatization is that it allows states to distance themselves from treaty obligations. Legitimate concerns have been raised by some authors about the extent to which privatizing certain activities may lead to circumvention of treaties and international norms of human rights.150
D. Protection of Society
The International Committee of Jurists, appointed by the Council of the League of Nations, took the view that statehood cannot co-exist with anarchy. Rather, a state does not exist until a situation “is of a definite and normal character.”151 Sovereignty does not exist in some situations, “either because the state is not yet fully formed or because it is undergoing transformation or dissolution [and in such cases], the situation is obscure and uncertain from a legal point of view, and will not become clear until the period of development is completed and a definite new situation, which is normal in respect to territorial sovereignty, has been established.”152 Once created, one attribute of the state becomes the protection of minorities, which is often codified in the states’ constitutions.153 In order to maintain security and stability, governments establish armies to protect themselves from other nations and police forces to keep order internally. The pendulum seems to have swung back somewhat to the days of Henry Fielding’s Bow Street Runners.
Within this climate, corporations routinely exercise police powers, in some cases displacing traditional state functions. For instance, while it is unlikely that we will ever see corporate armies comparable in size to that of the East India Company,154 companies in many industries continue to establish private security forces.155 This practice is particularly prevalent where states are unable or unwilling to provide necessary police functions, such as guarding corporate facilities, investigating crimes, or protecting employees.156 Corporations have even funded other nations’ armies or police forces in certain circumstances. For example, western oil companies—Shell, in particular—have been charged with arming and employing security forces to quell opposition to oil exploration and production in the Niger Delta.157 Some governments have also contracted away the police function by bidding out the building and running of prisons to private enterprises. Privatizing prisons has become more common in recent years.158
The police function has also been partially replaced in recent years by the increase in the size and power of internal audit groups within most large corporations. While internal audit groups exist to help “an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control, and governance processes,”159 the internal audit group will also investigate suspected criminal activity as a part of these functions. Internal auditors seek evidence of violation of the laws or of internal controls by employees.160 To find these violations, they engage in investigatory work, such as interviewing witnesses and forensic accounting. If evidence of criminal activity is identified, internal audit groups may turn over the results of their investigation to local law enforcement authorities.161 The internal audit departments of large multinational corporations can complement understaffed or poorly trained law enforcement within the host country by uncovering and documenting evidence of criminal activity.
Corporations also engage outside law firms to assist in-house counsel with investigations into possible violations of the law. This process can in some ways be analogized to investigations conducted by law enforcement agencies, although there can be problems associated with the investigation that would not necessarily exist if a law enforcement agency were conducting the investigation. As recent press about Hewlett-Packard indicated, there can be questions about whether the investigation itself is conducted in a legal manner.162 Furthermore, the outside law firm may in effect be investigating its own actions, as was alleged when Enron engaged its outside firm to investigate complaints made by Sherron Watkins about transactions in which the firm participated as counsel to the company.163
E. Administration of Justice
A nation regulates its citizens by enacting laws and establishing a police force and a court system to assure compliance with those laws. While corporations have been long recognized as possessing authority to quasi-legislate regarding internal matters,164 in recent decades, corporations have also partially supplanted legislative bodies, the police function, and the courts.165
Corporations have gradually supplanted court systems in several respects. They use arbitration and mediation clauses in contracts that require parties to place their disputes before third parties rather than the court system. Studies found that between 1993 and 2003, international arbitration proceedings more than doubled.166 A 2006 study by Price Waterhouse Coopers, in conjunction with the Queen Mary University of London School of International Arbitration, found that 73% of surveyed corporations prefer to use international arbitration to resolve cross-border disputes.167 The use of arbitration “is a factor in transforming private contract practices into authoritative law for the business community.”168
Corporations also use grievance clauses in employee contracts to control internal disputes, requiring employees to file and pursue their complaints through internal corporate processes, rather than seek redress from the courts.169 Thus, while we typically think of resolution of disputes as a core function of the judiciary, it is certainly not the exclusive province of government.170 Corporations tend to favor arbitration of employee grievances because, as a rule, both costs of litigation and size of judgments are lower.171
Additionally, companies are increasingly utilizing “machine rule” as a means of partially replacing enforcement of contracts by the courts. For example, software code can automatically enforce termination provisions in license agreements, without the need for lawyers and judges to become involved.172 Machine rule is arguably a perfected replacement for the court systems because alternative dispute provisions are inchoate enforcement mechanisms in that they are not self-enforcing. Thus, if one party does not comply with the alternative dispute resolution provision, the other party must seek an injunction to force compliance with the provision. Where machine rule supplants court enforcement, it is unnecessary for the party seeking enforcement of the termination provision in an agreement to seek the assistance of the courts.
Despite these perceived efficiencies, the devolution of contract enforcement mechanisms to private enterprise raises important questions about the nature of contracts themselves. The Restatement (Second) of Contracts defines a contract as “a promise or a set of promises for the breach of which the law gives a remedy, or the performance of which the law in some way recognizes as a duty.”173 Professor Farnsworth describes a contract as “a promise, or a set of promises, that the law will enforce or at least recognize in some way.”174 The natural question, then, is whether private agreements are themselves law. If an agreement is not a contract unless the law will enforce it, are self-enforcing private agreements even contracts?
In a similar vein, the easy transfer of global capital across national boundaries has facilitated the international development of a body of business law known as the lex mercatoria. In a symposium at Tulane Law School in 1999, Keith Highet posed the question, “Has the lex mercatoria replaced national laws in the interpretation of transnational or international mixed contracts?”175 Highet posited that “[t]he only way in which a contract can exist independently of a legal system is to consider it as a voluntary compact operating by virtue of the collective will of the parties . . . . The force of the obligation in a contract comes from the force of the legal system that creates the obligation.”176 Others have viewed the lex mercatoria as the “lawyers’ law” that may not originate from legislative or judicial act, but that still operates to “transform[] private contract practices into authoritative law for the business community.”177
A recent article by Larry Catá Backer explores Wal-Mart’s role as a global legislator.178 Professor Backer argues that “old rule-making monopolies have been weakened and powerful non-state actors [have] become free to order their relations, subject ultimately only to their stakeholders.”179 Wal-Mart’s impact on other companies, through its power in the global supply chain, has enabled it to create private international law through its standardized vendor agreements and other activities. According to Professor Backer, “one company, even one very large and influential company, does not a system [of private laws] make. But Wal-Mart is pointing the way to the establishment of a new reality, a reality that is not waiting for theory for justification, or permission for implementation.”180
A corporation may “legislate” in other nations by importing its chartering nation’s laws, which often have extraterritorial effect. For example, both the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act181 and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act,182 passed by the United States Congress, have extraterritorial application.183 As companies establish operations in other countries, they export the laws of their chartering nations to the host country. While the laws from a company’s chartering country apply only to the subsidiary, application of these laws to foreign companies can have a normative influence within the host country as employees transition into and out of the subsidiary and as local companies emulate business practices of the multinational.
Corporations regulate their employees abroad by establishing policies to govern employees’ behavior. These corporate policies include ethics, operating, and social responsibility guidelines.184 When multinational corporations impose their home country’s moral and legal concepts on their foreign subsidiaries, these concepts do not always translate well across cultures. For example, as U.S. companies invested in Germany, it became clear that hotlines to facilitate anonymous reporting of policy violations were eschewed in Germany.185 In contrast, in many instances, the multinational corporation’s policies and guidelines could potentially complement the host country’s laws.186 This “importation” of policies and guidelines can be important to developing countries, whose regulatory agencies lack expertise or financial resources.
Admittedly, however, despite these activities by corporations, the discipline that a corporation can impose on an employee differs greatly from the discipline that a state can impose on its citizens. Corporations are constrained from regulating their employees in ways that nations are not. While a corporation typically communicates that a violation of company policy may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination, the ultimate sanction is limited to firing the employee. A state, however, can discipline a citizen through its penal system, using fines, incarceration and even, in some instances, capital punishment.
Allowing private companies to engage in regulatory actions is yet another way in which the police function of states has been transferred to private enterprise.187 Often, we see examples of self-regulation used to preempt governmental regulation in certain areas.188 In other instances, we see the government ceding regulatory rights to private entities.189 Of course, these private entities have no obligation to engage in the type of “notice-and-comment” rulemaking expected of true regulatory agencies.190
F. Monetary Policy
Corporations often participate in—and sometimes make— policies at the national level. This is true in many areas, including monetary policy. Private corporations influence monetary policy in significant ways, both in their home nations and in host countries abroad.191 In some instances, even today, private corporations may even be viewed as creating currency, a function normally reserved to states. Originally, the only involvement of the state with respect to money was the minting of coins.192 The state theory of money gained traction in the early part of the twentieth century with Georg Knapp’s book on the subject.193 Knapp, who greatly influenced John Maynard Keynes,194 viewed the state as “the sole creator and guarantor of money.”195
Glyn Davies wrote that Knapp’s view “carries the state theory of money to an absurd extreme.”196 In fact, the limitations of the state’s role can be seen from the fact that some of the earliest corporations minted coins.197 Davies noted, “right from the inception of money, from ancient down to modern times, the state has a powerful, though not omnipotent, role to play in the development of money. Yet neither ancient money nor . . . even the Bank of England, is a mere creature of the state.”198 The modern view of monetary policy views the market, rather than the state, as the supreme authority, although there are limits to this view.199 Professor Ludwig von Mises explained that “[t]he concept of money as a creature of law and the state is clearly untenable. It is not justified by a single market phenomenon of the market. To ascribe to the state the power of dictating the laws of exchange, is to ignore the fundamental principles of money-using society.”200
Because of the state’s role in the creation of money, currency is useful only where a state’s law applies.201 Yet the easy transferability of capital in today’s markets makes it difficult for nations to apply exchange controls.202 Further, as governments court foreign investment, they often do so by deregulating, creating a “race to the bottom.”203
Establishment of a currency and payment system is often recognized as a characteristic of a sovereign nation. While the earliest forms of currency mooed and brayed, today, most of us carry several denominations of government-issued paper money in our wallets. We also use debit cards, credit cards, and gift cards to engage in consumer transactions. Futurists have been predicting for the past decade or more that a cashless society is in the offing. This cashless society will be the result of the privatization of the issuance of currency. This privatization of currency has several effects.
Economists define “seignorage” as “[t]he amount of real purchasing power that [a] government can extract from the public by printing money.”204 Seignorage can include the interest-free use of the money by a government, because it may immediately exchange the currency for goods or services.205 When a country replaces its domestic currency with the U.S. dollar, a process known as “dollarization,”206 it in essence transfers its stream of seignorage revenue to the U.S. central bank.207 When the Euro was created, a seignorage sharing agreement was necessary among the countries comprising the European Union to replace the seignorage revenue associated with fiat money.208
Just as dollarization affects seignorage revenue, so too does electronic money.209 Electronic money can take several forms, including stored value cards, more commonly referred to as gift cards. Many businesses that deal directly with consumers issue stored value cards that can be used by the holder to redeem goods or services from the issuer or from other businesses that have contracted with the issuer. During 2006, gift cards in the United States represented a total stored value of almost $25 billion.210 These stored value cards affect currency in circulation because they reduce the necessary circulation of notes and coins.211 Debit transactions are another form of electronic currency and have a similar effect. Debit transactions increased from 8.3 billion transactions in 2000 to 15.6 billion in 2003.212 According to the Federal Reserve, debit cards are “used for small-value payments more commonly than other payment instruments except electronic benefits transfers and, perhaps, cash.”213 At some point, debit and credit cards may replace lower value denominations, and perhaps paper checks, all of which may eventually become obsolete.214 Finally, other forms of electronic transactions, such as PayPal or similar Internet payment mechanisms may also have the effect of reducing seignorage revenue that has typically been available to governments.215
As these types of electronic payments become more common, private enterprise is affecting monetary policy. It is issuing private money, which substitutes for government fiat currency. The government loses the seignorage revenue that would have been associated with these amounts. In addition, reserve balances at the central bank may be affected by this substitution of electronic, privately issued money for fiat currency.216
The discussion above centers on monetary policy issues associated with the issuance of electronic currency within the parent company’s home nation or within the countries in which the parent company’s subsidiaries operate. Nations that host the subsidiaries of multinational corporations face additional issues regarding repatriation of funds to the company’s home country. Multinational corporations may be required to negotiate with the central bank regarding processes for and constraints on repatriation of funds to their home country, or even to their subsidiary in another country that essentially serves as the “bank” for the operations of the corporation in various other countries.
In addition to issues of seignorage and repatriation, private corporations can dramatically affect the international currency markets.217 While there is an obvious impact associated with the export and import activity of private corporations, this impact can be seen most dramatically in connection with merger and acquisition transactions. For example, a corporation based in the United States that is engaged in an acquisition of several billion dollars in another country will most likely have to acquire that country’s currency to complete the transaction and pay the target company’s shareholders. If the acquiring company enters the market for Mexican pesos with an appetite for such a large volume of pesos, this buy-side pressure could artificially inflate the value of the peso for a brief period of time and artificially increase the costs of the acquisition by the acquirer. The government of the target’s home country will prefer a stable currency market. National banking regulators may, therefore, work with the acquiring company to assure that acquisitions of the currency occur in a measured manner that is unlikely to artificially inflate the price of the currency.
G. Public Welfare
Citizens have traditionally looked to the government to provide utilities, roads, bridges, airports, telecommunications, clean drinking water, and sewage treatment. Historically, however, corporations have played a role in the provision of such services as well. Indeed, almost from the inception of the corporate form, corporations have been viewed as serving a public function.218 One scholar has noted that:
While the reference to public institutions includes obvious things such as buildings, roads, and schools, some have argued that it also encompasses the establishment of a system for the creation of other types of entities, such as joint stock companies.220 As discussed previously, many today view the primary purpose of corporations as that of making money for their owners.221 However, corporate social responsibility has developed into an area of concern for corporations and an area of study by scholars in the last few decades.222 Corporate social responsibility focuses on the ways that corporations can help to address various social issues that are not necessarily issues of immediate impact to the corporations’ business.223 Cynics have observed that even socially responsible actions by corporations are geared toward the corporate imperative of profit-making.224
Private corporations can provide social services using various legal structures and arrangements with the local government. Increasingly, private companies engage in these enterprises, particularly in developing nations where the tax base needed to finance these projects is limited. Specifically, many developing countries now look to private corporations “to provide basic infrastructure or utility services, such as highways, railways, water, sanitation, electricity, gas, and telecommunications.”225 Some private infrastructure projects have succeeded, but others have failed spectacularly.226 The models for these projects are varied, with private companies sometimes assuming management of a government-owned project or leasing the underlying assets. In other instances, the private company may finance the project and assume all risk, just as with other commercial enterprises.227
The U.S. government has also used corporations to assist in disaster relief and international public relations. For example, after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, several American CEOs traveled there with Karen Hughes, Bush’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, to assist in raising funds for earthquake relief.228 Corporations have also engaged in disaster relief sua sponte. In connection with Hurricane Katrina, some commentators jokingly suggested that the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency could learn from Wal-Mart’s logistical system.229 Home Depot and Federal Express were also lauded as examples of organizations with excellent disaster preparedness response plans.230 Recently, the Business Roundtable launched a new web site dedicated to the coordination of corporate disaster response.231 These examples prove that corporations can provide assistance, such as logistical services and supplies, and coordination of economic resources, in ways that have historically been reserved to governments.
IV. CONCLUSION
The implications of the nation-state metaphor as a way of viewing corporations are significant. To the extent that the transformation continues, the power of the vote in a democratic society may be eroded by the power of votes purchased through share ownership and the roles that our elected officials play may become less important than the roles played by corporate executives. Our security will become ever more dependent on the power and security of the world’s largest corporations. Personal identity will continue its shift from national identity and regional identity to corporate identity. Our legal matters may be brought before private judges and arbitrators, or handled through machine rule. And even our wallets are affected, as we need to carry very little cash issued by state treasuries.
Although some transference of sovereign powers to corporations is occurring, the implications are not all negative. After all, corporations, with their profit-maximizing motives, use economic resources efficiently. Standards of living are high in countries with vibrant capital markets and laws promoting entrepreneurship.
The metaphor of the nation-state provides one more way for scholars to analyze the activities and powers of corporations. Rather than looking at the balance of power within corporations, as do the director-primacy and shareholder-primacy models, this metaphor provides a way to view corporations as participants in broader governance processes such as foreign relations, adjudication, and law making.
III. SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE CORPORATION AND SOVEREIGN STATES
The remainder of this Article discusses the devolution of sovereign powers to private enterprise and the various forms of this devolution. Specifically, the following sections review the traditional characteristics and duties of sovereign nations articulated above and discuss the ways in which corporations have come to embody these characteristics and assume the duties of nations. These sections deal with the characteristics of a permanent population and defined territory, economic power, participation in foreign relations, the protection of society from violence and invasion, the administration of justice, and the creation of public works and public institutions.
A. Permanent Population & Defined Territory
Oppenheim describes one characteristic of the state as a permanent population, that is, as a people who live together as a community.89 Yet, the view that a state has a permanent population has waned in recent decades as populations have become more transient.90 Further, even within the borders of a state, there are often disparate groups of people who cannot be said to comprise a single community. This would be true, for example, of Kurdistan or Cyprus, where groups of people living under a single national flag operate largely autonomously from the national government. There is also the related question of what size population is necessary to qualify a group of people as a state. According to the Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States, “significant” size is necessary.91 Yet Vatican City has a permanent population of only 840,92 while the world’s largest corporations have “populations” of several hundred thousand. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest private employer with almost two million employees around the world, may be the best example of a large corporate population.93
Notions of citizenship are changing rapidly. Fordham Law School sponsored a two-day conference in September of 2006 entitled “New Dimensions of Citizenship.”94 Conference organizers noted that while citizenship theory has relied on the disciplines of law, history, political science, and anthropology, theories of citizenship are evolving to take into account the increasingly transnational nature of citizenship.95 These theories have necessarily moved beyond economic globalization and the convergence of financial markets; international capital may be mobile, but asymmetry exists when the movement of capital is compared to the movement of individuals.96
As these modern notions of citizenship emphasize the decreasing importance of national borders, theories of corporate citizenship have taken root. Individuals today often self-identify more closely with their employer than with their country of birth. In other words, a person’s work identity may transcend his or her national identity. The corporation, like a nation, has its own unique culture. Like immigrants to a new country, new corporate employees go through a process of acculturation. Similar to a capitalist nation in which the strongest entrepreneurs succeed, the corporation is often a meritocracy, allowing deserving employees to climb the corporate ladder and participate in the corporation’s internal governance.
Citizenship in a particular country is the serendipitous accident of birth,97 while association with a corporation is generally an affirmative choice based on market factors. These market factors have begun to affect residence to a large extent, and citizenship to a lesser extent. Individuals employed by multinational corporations often have opportunities to work as expatriates in countries where the corporation has operations. Just as groups of people may, by virtue of these shared experiences or self-determination, coalesce into a nation-state, so, too, may groups of people employed by a corporation coalesce into some larger type of society. Professor Bruno Frey, in writing about citizenship in our global society, explained that:
[T]o be forced to have the exclusive citizenship of one particular nation only, is inadequate for internationally highly mobile persons such as is the case with many managers, artists, academics, sportsmen and sportswomen. Moreover, multiple identities going above and beyond nationality have become the rule. But the present system of citizenship in the nation-state also does not conform to the preferences of the “average” persons, who often identify more with a lower level of government (for example, their particular region) or a higher level of government (for example, Europe as a whole) rather than with the national level. Even more fundamentally, people often identify more with other organizations such as NGOs or even with particular firms rather than with the nation of which they happen to be citizens.98
The concepts of organizational or corporate citizenship originated in the 1990s.99 Much has been written in the last several years about corporate cultures.100 One scholar noted that there now exists “a new breed of men and women for whom religion, culture, and ethnic nationality are marginal elements in a working identity.”101
While groups of people within a nation are linked geographically, within a corporation, employees are linked by a common purpose and by information. Large companies, like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Shell, and Wal-Mart, export their corporate cultures as they establish operations abroad. Companies with cultures ranging from laid-back to highly formal will retain some aspects of their respective cultures abroad. Companies hire local executive talent and instill the companies’ cultural values in these new executives. The executives will then spread these values to other entities when they deal with suppliers and customers or if they transfer to different companies.
Not surprisingly, one of the most challenging aspects of merging two corporations is integrating disparate cultures after the closing date of the merger.102 Corporations can prosper when a merger enhances the surviving corporation’s culture by incorporating the best aspects of the target’s culture. Sometimes, however, the worst aspects of both corporations’ culture survive in the new entity and the corporation is weakened. Another important issue that arises during many mergers, according to organizational psychologists, is the acculturation of new employees.103 This is especially true for multinational corporations; the issue for these companies is how best to form a common culture across varying geographic, ethnic, and religious areas and time zones.104
Another characteristic of the permanent population of a nation-state is that citizens of the state have the right of suffrage and may vote on significant issues and for political candidates. As the global business population becomes more transient, this may mean that individuals vote on issues and candidates in states other than the one in which they reside. Some nation-states are inclusionary, giving residents or other groups of non-citizens the right to vote.105 Other nation-states are exclusionary, limiting suffrage to those who are citizens. In the European Union, for example, suffrage is based on residence rather than citizenship. Residents, regardless of citizenship, have the right to vote and to stand for political office.106
As corporations take on more of the attributes of government, the impact on the voting rights of citizens must be considered. The franchise rights of corporate shareholders become ever more important as the corporations in which they have purchased shares become more powerful actors on the global stage.107 Similarly, as corporate powers increase, the right to run for public office may become less important than the right to climb the corporate ladder or otherwise influence the activities of corporations.
Ideally, corporations engage in succession planning for all of the senior positions within the organization. But like the political climate within a particular country, a political climate can develop within a corporation. Executives align themselves with managers or directors, whom they believe may someday manage the entire organization, in an effort to rise to power on the manager or director’s coattails. Sometimes, just as in countries, coups occur within a corporation. When a CEO or senior executive is fired and another is appointed, jockeying for position and lobbying for board member votes becomes common.
Control over a defined territory, usually to the exclusion of all other states, is another typical attribute of sovereignty.108 According to the Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States, a state has “jurisdiction to prescribe law with respect to . . . conduct that, wholly or in substantial part, takes place within its territory; . . . the status of persons, or interests in things, present within its territory; . . . [and] conduct outside its territory that has or is intended to have substantial effect within its territory.”109
Although territory is viewed as a characteristic of the state, land, as one of the means of production, is less significant now than ever before. This decrease in significance is the result of information, which has taken its place with land, labor, and capital as a means of production. With respect to territory, size is largely irrelevant to the issue of statehood and can range from as little as 100 acres to an entire continent.110 Geographic borders may be disputed between neighboring states, making the territory of a state murkily defined. Similarly, even geographic borders lack the political significance that they once had as capital, people, and information cross borders with ease.111
B. Economic Power
Today’s Brobdingnagian corporations may never gain the measure of power held by the earliest companies during their peak, but the largest corporations still economically dwarf many developing nations. The tremendous power of multinational corporations can be partially explained by their sheer size. A few of the very largest companies have the power to make—or destroy—markets of particular products or in particular places.
The largest corporations have annual revenues that are multiples of the gross domestic products of many nations. For example, the gross domestic product (on a purchasing power parity basis) for three developing countries in different regions in 2006 was as follows: Sri Lanka, $95.46 billion;112 Ghana, $60 billion;113 and Honduras, $22.54 billion.114 In contrast, the world’s largest corporations had revenues in 2006 of several times these amounts. Wal-Mart’s revenues were $315.6 billion,115 British Petroleum’s revenues were $265.9 billion,116 Exxon Mobil’s revenues were $377.64 billion,117 and Royal Dutch/Shell Group’s revenues were $306.7 billion.118 In fact, of the three countries just mentioned, Sri Lanka’s $95.46 billion is closest to the 2006 revenues of Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, which ranked number 24 on the 2006 Fortune Global 500 list.119 Wal-Mart’s revenue in 2006 was approximately fourteen times the GDP of Honduras, with Honduras bested by 281 of the Fortune 500 companies in 2006.120
These staggering discrepancies in the GDPs of some developing countries and the revenues of the largest corporations mean that foreign corporations have the capacity to exert tremendous influence over the economic stability of developing nations. If one or more large companies divests or sources product elsewhere, the impact could be devastating to a developing nation. Similarly, a decision to source products in a developing nation could have a tremendously positive economic impact by creating jobs and providing a tax base.
It is important to note, however, that although corporations have grown tremendously in size over the past few decades, some authors have downplayed the importance of this growth. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge note that the growth of corporations has not kept pace with the economic growth of nations and that “wealth is not the same as power.” 121 The authors explain:
The idea that companies are getting too big is a gross abuse of statistics. Far from gaining economic clout, the biggest multinationals have been losing it. Over the past twenty years, the world’s biggest fifty firms have grown more slowly than the world economy as a whole. In most countries the average size of companies is going down not up.
And what exactly do we mean by companies being the same size as states? By some measures, Wal-Mart, the biggest company in 2000, is as rich as Peru. But is it as powerful? Think what the government of Peru can do. It has powers beyond Wal-Mart’s belief. It can coerce you to join the army, force you to pay taxes, arrest and imprison security chiefs and terrorists. Wal-Mart has no equivalent powers. Yes, it makes profits round the world but in many ways it is far more hemmed in than the giants of yesteryear. The East India Company had an army of 200,000 people. Wal-Mart is simply rather good at retailing. 122
Micklethwait and Wooldridge also stress that globalization has, as a rule, tended to help small companies rather than large ones, and that governments may still exercise their powers to curtail the power of these large multinational corporations, as the Department of Justice did by filing an antitrust suit against Microsoft.123
C. Capacity to Engage in Foreign Relations
As noted previously, the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States lists as a characteristic of states the “capacity to enter into relations with other States.”124 Recognition by other countries is also viewed as a test, even though some nations may dispute the right to exist or the territory of a particular state.125
Modern corporations, particularly those with international operations, do enter into relations with nations other than their home country. In fact, corporations engage in foreign relations in a variety of ways, many of them very similar to the ways in which nations deal with each other. For example, corporations engage in diplomacy, establish outposts in other nations, engage in trade negotiations, and often serve as proxies for their home country’s government.
Under the agency theory of corporations, the executives of a company are the agents of the corporation’s shareholders.126 As such, these agents are charged with making money for the shareholders, not with formulating international policy. Yet in the course of pursuing profits, that is precisely what executives in multinational corporations do. The CEO and other senior executives often meet with trade ministers and heads of state. During and following World War II, the United States engaged in foreign relations with Saudi Arabia primarily through ARAMCO.127 There are several more recent examples, as well. In late 2004, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer met with India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.128 In April of 2006, in his first official visit to the United States, Chinese President Hu Jintao visited with Microsoft and Boeing executives before visiting the White House.129 By visiting with the CEOs of these companies first, China sent the message that relations between the Chinese government and industry have priority over relations between the two governments.130
In addition, companies will occasionally hold board meetings in the countries where they have operations. This gives the non-executive directors an opportunity to review the company’s foreign operations. When a foreign company holds a board meeting, the prime minister and other government officials may attend a portion of the meeting or a reception or dinner in connection with the meeting. Credit Suisse, BHP Billiton, and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB have all held board meetings in China.131 Wal-Mart has held board meetings in Canada, China, and Mexico. Perot Systems met in India.132 Meeting in countries where these mega-corporations have operations shows a commitment to future development in the country.133 Directors who may be asked to vote on significant capital expenditures are more comfortable doing so if they have seen first hand the company’s operations in a particular country. The presence of the head of state or cabinet ministers at the board meeting gives the directors further assurance that the company is welcome in the country and signals the value that the country’s leaders place on the corporation’s presence in their country.
Furthermore, large multinational corporations understand the importance of effective government relations and often establish offices in capital cities throughout the world. The need for an office in a particular capital has somewhat diminished in recent years as technology has advanced, giving executives easier ways to arrange for meeting with foreign diplomats.134 Even if the company has not yet entered a particular market, it may establish an office to monitor legislative developments, engage in government relations, identify local executive talent, and assess potential joint venture partners.135 Establishing an office and engaging in various forms of foreign relations also allows a company to transcend uncomfortable relations between its host country and its home country.136 In the past few years, for companies based in the United States or Great Britain, this has meant overcoming the unpopularity of their home countries’ foreign policies. Where the head of state is unpopular abroad, companies that seek to engage in business internationally must take additional steps to build constructive relationships and to distance themselves from politicians at home.137 Former diplomat Shaun Riordan wrote in his book The New Diplomacy that multinational corporations’ “economic strength, combined with international networks that frequently outstrip (and outperform) those of traditional diplomatic services, make them more influential than many states. Their interventions are no longer limited to narrowly defined commercial interests. The more forward-thinking corporations are already carving out a role in the design of any future global governance.”138
One important way that multinational corporations establish their “role in the design of any future global governance”139 is by engaging in trade negotiations, either directly or indirectly, through their chartering nations’ trade representatives. Adam Smith wrote in 1783 that trade regulations “may, I think, be demonstrated to be in every case a complete piece of dupery, by which the interest of the State and the nation is constantly sacrificed to that of some particular class of traders.”140 While trade policies may be motivated in part by the desires of a “particular class of traders,” they are also affected by the desires of the nations to court foreign investment. This competition has been characterized by some as a “race to the bottom,” in which countries offer cheap labor and substandard health and environmental standards in order to attract corporate investment.141
Trade policy remains in many ways a mechanism for enrichment and protection of companies.142 Corporations are stakeholders in trade policy decisions and also engage in commercial diplomacy, negotiating their own trade deals in countries where they wish to conduct or expand their business. Corporate executives often deal extensively with politicians, regulators, and policy makers on trade and investment issues that affect their organization. As explained above, these issues implicate not only traditional trade matters, but also environmental, labor, consumer protection, and other concerns.143
Beyond negotiating trade conditions between a corporation and a host country, a corporation often negotiates taxation as well. Unlike individuals, corporations have some ability to set their own rates of taxation, and often negotiate inducement agreements with various levels of government.144 Switzerland, for example, has been successful in attracting intellectual property holding companies largely because it offers generally low taxes and no up-front taxes on royalties.145 Companies often arbitrage tax treatment by taking advantage of the price differential between countries.146 All other things being equal, a corporation will locate its business in the country that gives it the best “deal” on taxes—and, as previously noted, this “deal” is often the subject of negotiation.
Furthermore, corporations can be viewed by the people of other nations as representatives of the entity’s home country. We saw this recently as Gulf retailers boycotted Danish companies after Jyllands-Posten printed offensive cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammed.147 In Europe, some restaurants boycotted American products, such as Coca-Cola and Budweiser, and refused to accept American Express cards in protest of the war in Iraq.148 These companies were targeted, not because of their own actions, but as proxies for the American government.
The home governments of multinational corporations also use these companies as diplomatic tools.149 Governments sometimes request that corporations conduct business in a certain way or in a certain place to facilitate foreign relations. In addition, a number of functions that have historically been within the purview of the state are now being privatized. One result of such privatization is that it allows states to distance themselves from treaty obligations. Legitimate concerns have been raised by some authors about the extent to which privatizing certain activities may lead to circumvention of treaties and international norms of human rights.150
D. Protection of Society
The International Committee of Jurists, appointed by the Council of the League of Nations, took the view that statehood cannot co-exist with anarchy. Rather, a state does not exist until a situation “is of a definite and normal character.”151 Sovereignty does not exist in some situations, “either because the state is not yet fully formed or because it is undergoing transformation or dissolution [and in such cases], the situation is obscure and uncertain from a legal point of view, and will not become clear until the period of development is completed and a definite new situation, which is normal in respect to territorial sovereignty, has been established.”152 Once created, one attribute of the state becomes the protection of minorities, which is often codified in the states’ constitutions.153 In order to maintain security and stability, governments establish armies to protect themselves from other nations and police forces to keep order internally. The pendulum seems to have swung back somewhat to the days of Henry Fielding’s Bow Street Runners.
Within this climate, corporations routinely exercise police powers, in some cases displacing traditional state functions. For instance, while it is unlikely that we will ever see corporate armies comparable in size to that of the East India Company,154 companies in many industries continue to establish private security forces.155 This practice is particularly prevalent where states are unable or unwilling to provide necessary police functions, such as guarding corporate facilities, investigating crimes, or protecting employees.156 Corporations have even funded other nations’ armies or police forces in certain circumstances. For example, western oil companies—Shell, in particular—have been charged with arming and employing security forces to quell opposition to oil exploration and production in the Niger Delta.157 Some governments have also contracted away the police function by bidding out the building and running of prisons to private enterprises. Privatizing prisons has become more common in recent years.158
The police function has also been partially replaced in recent years by the increase in the size and power of internal audit groups within most large corporations. While internal audit groups exist to help “an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control, and governance processes,”159 the internal audit group will also investigate suspected criminal activity as a part of these functions. Internal auditors seek evidence of violation of the laws or of internal controls by employees.160 To find these violations, they engage in investigatory work, such as interviewing witnesses and forensic accounting. If evidence of criminal activity is identified, internal audit groups may turn over the results of their investigation to local law enforcement authorities.161 The internal audit departments of large multinational corporations can complement understaffed or poorly trained law enforcement within the host country by uncovering and documenting evidence of criminal activity.
Corporations also engage outside law firms to assist in-house counsel with investigations into possible violations of the law. This process can in some ways be analogized to investigations conducted by law enforcement agencies, although there can be problems associated with the investigation that would not necessarily exist if a law enforcement agency were conducting the investigation. As recent press about Hewlett-Packard indicated, there can be questions about whether the investigation itself is conducted in a legal manner.162 Furthermore, the outside law firm may in effect be investigating its own actions, as was alleged when Enron engaged its outside firm to investigate complaints made by Sherron Watkins about transactions in which the firm participated as counsel to the company.163
E. Administration of Justice
A nation regulates its citizens by enacting laws and establishing a police force and a court system to assure compliance with those laws. While corporations have been long recognized as possessing authority to quasi-legislate regarding internal matters,164 in recent decades, corporations have also partially supplanted legislative bodies, the police function, and the courts.165
Corporations have gradually supplanted court systems in several respects. They use arbitration and mediation clauses in contracts that require parties to place their disputes before third parties rather than the court system. Studies found that between 1993 and 2003, international arbitration proceedings more than doubled.166 A 2006 study by Price Waterhouse Coopers, in conjunction with the Queen Mary University of London School of International Arbitration, found that 73% of surveyed corporations prefer to use international arbitration to resolve cross-border disputes.167 The use of arbitration “is a factor in transforming private contract practices into authoritative law for the business community.”168
Corporations also use grievance clauses in employee contracts to control internal disputes, requiring employees to file and pursue their complaints through internal corporate processes, rather than seek redress from the courts.169 Thus, while we typically think of resolution of disputes as a core function of the judiciary, it is certainly not the exclusive province of government.170 Corporations tend to favor arbitration of employee grievances because, as a rule, both costs of litigation and size of judgments are lower.171
Additionally, companies are increasingly utilizing “machine rule” as a means of partially replacing enforcement of contracts by the courts. For example, software code can automatically enforce termination provisions in license agreements, without the need for lawyers and judges to become involved.172 Machine rule is arguably a perfected replacement for the court systems because alternative dispute provisions are inchoate enforcement mechanisms in that they are not self-enforcing. Thus, if one party does not comply with the alternative dispute resolution provision, the other party must seek an injunction to force compliance with the provision. Where machine rule supplants court enforcement, it is unnecessary for the party seeking enforcement of the termination provision in an agreement to seek the assistance of the courts.
Despite these perceived efficiencies, the devolution of contract enforcement mechanisms to private enterprise raises important questions about the nature of contracts themselves. The Restatement (Second) of Contracts defines a contract as “a promise or a set of promises for the breach of which the law gives a remedy, or the performance of which the law in some way recognizes as a duty.”173 Professor Farnsworth describes a contract as “a promise, or a set of promises, that the law will enforce or at least recognize in some way.”174 The natural question, then, is whether private agreements are themselves law. If an agreement is not a contract unless the law will enforce it, are self-enforcing private agreements even contracts?
In a similar vein, the easy transfer of global capital across national boundaries has facilitated the international development of a body of business law known as the lex mercatoria. In a symposium at Tulane Law School in 1999, Keith Highet posed the question, “Has the lex mercatoria replaced national laws in the interpretation of transnational or international mixed contracts?”175 Highet posited that “[t]he only way in which a contract can exist independently of a legal system is to consider it as a voluntary compact operating by virtue of the collective will of the parties . . . . The force of the obligation in a contract comes from the force of the legal system that creates the obligation.”176 Others have viewed the lex mercatoria as the “lawyers’ law” that may not originate from legislative or judicial act, but that still operates to “transform[] private contract practices into authoritative law for the business community.”177
A recent article by Larry Catá Backer explores Wal-Mart’s role as a global legislator.178 Professor Backer argues that “old rule-making monopolies have been weakened and powerful non-state actors [have] become free to order their relations, subject ultimately only to their stakeholders.”179 Wal-Mart’s impact on other companies, through its power in the global supply chain, has enabled it to create private international law through its standardized vendor agreements and other activities. According to Professor Backer, “one company, even one very large and influential company, does not a system [of private laws] make. But Wal-Mart is pointing the way to the establishment of a new reality, a reality that is not waiting for theory for justification, or permission for implementation.”180
A corporation may “legislate” in other nations by importing its chartering nation’s laws, which often have extraterritorial effect. For example, both the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act181 and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act,182 passed by the United States Congress, have extraterritorial application.183 As companies establish operations in other countries, they export the laws of their chartering nations to the host country. While the laws from a company’s chartering country apply only to the subsidiary, application of these laws to foreign companies can have a normative influence within the host country as employees transition into and out of the subsidiary and as local companies emulate business practices of the multinational.
Corporations regulate their employees abroad by establishing policies to govern employees’ behavior. These corporate policies include ethics, operating, and social responsibility guidelines.184 When multinational corporations impose their home country’s moral and legal concepts on their foreign subsidiaries, these concepts do not always translate well across cultures. For example, as U.S. companies invested in Germany, it became clear that hotlines to facilitate anonymous reporting of policy violations were eschewed in Germany.185 In contrast, in many instances, the multinational corporation’s policies and guidelines could potentially complement the host country’s laws.186 This “importation” of policies and guidelines can be important to developing countries, whose regulatory agencies lack expertise or financial resources.
Admittedly, however, despite these activities by corporations, the discipline that a corporation can impose on an employee differs greatly from the discipline that a state can impose on its citizens. Corporations are constrained from regulating their employees in ways that nations are not. While a corporation typically communicates that a violation of company policy may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination, the ultimate sanction is limited to firing the employee. A state, however, can discipline a citizen through its penal system, using fines, incarceration and even, in some instances, capital punishment.
Allowing private companies to engage in regulatory actions is yet another way in which the police function of states has been transferred to private enterprise.187 Often, we see examples of self-regulation used to preempt governmental regulation in certain areas.188 In other instances, we see the government ceding regulatory rights to private entities.189 Of course, these private entities have no obligation to engage in the type of “notice-and-comment” rulemaking expected of true regulatory agencies.190
F. Monetary Policy
Corporations often participate in—and sometimes make— policies at the national level. This is true in many areas, including monetary policy. Private corporations influence monetary policy in significant ways, both in their home nations and in host countries abroad.191 In some instances, even today, private corporations may even be viewed as creating currency, a function normally reserved to states. Originally, the only involvement of the state with respect to money was the minting of coins.192 The state theory of money gained traction in the early part of the twentieth century with Georg Knapp’s book on the subject.193 Knapp, who greatly influenced John Maynard Keynes,194 viewed the state as “the sole creator and guarantor of money.”195
Glyn Davies wrote that Knapp’s view “carries the state theory of money to an absurd extreme.”196 In fact, the limitations of the state’s role can be seen from the fact that some of the earliest corporations minted coins.197 Davies noted, “right from the inception of money, from ancient down to modern times, the state has a powerful, though not omnipotent, role to play in the development of money. Yet neither ancient money nor . . . even the Bank of England, is a mere creature of the state.”198 The modern view of monetary policy views the market, rather than the state, as the supreme authority, although there are limits to this view.199 Professor Ludwig von Mises explained that “[t]he concept of money as a creature of law and the state is clearly untenable. It is not justified by a single market phenomenon of the market. To ascribe to the state the power of dictating the laws of exchange, is to ignore the fundamental principles of money-using society.”200
Because of the state’s role in the creation of money, currency is useful only where a state’s law applies.201 Yet the easy transferability of capital in today’s markets makes it difficult for nations to apply exchange controls.202 Further, as governments court foreign investment, they often do so by deregulating, creating a “race to the bottom.”203
Establishment of a currency and payment system is often recognized as a characteristic of a sovereign nation. While the earliest forms of currency mooed and brayed, today, most of us carry several denominations of government-issued paper money in our wallets. We also use debit cards, credit cards, and gift cards to engage in consumer transactions. Futurists have been predicting for the past decade or more that a cashless society is in the offing. This cashless society will be the result of the privatization of the issuance of currency. This privatization of currency has several effects.
Economists define “seignorage” as “[t]he amount of real purchasing power that [a] government can extract from the public by printing money.”204 Seignorage can include the interest-free use of the money by a government, because it may immediately exchange the currency for goods or services.205 When a country replaces its domestic currency with the U.S. dollar, a process known as “dollarization,”206 it in essence transfers its stream of seignorage revenue to the U.S. central bank.207 When the Euro was created, a seignorage sharing agreement was necessary among the countries comprising the European Union to replace the seignorage revenue associated with fiat money.208
Just as dollarization affects seignorage revenue, so too does electronic money.209 Electronic money can take several forms, including stored value cards, more commonly referred to as gift cards. Many businesses that deal directly with consumers issue stored value cards that can be used by the holder to redeem goods or services from the issuer or from other businesses that have contracted with the issuer. During 2006, gift cards in the United States represented a total stored value of almost $25 billion.210 These stored value cards affect currency in circulation because they reduce the necessary circulation of notes and coins.211 Debit transactions are another form of electronic currency and have a similar effect. Debit transactions increased from 8.3 billion transactions in 2000 to 15.6 billion in 2003.212 According to the Federal Reserve, debit cards are “used for small-value payments more commonly than other payment instruments except electronic benefits transfers and, perhaps, cash.”213 At some point, debit and credit cards may replace lower value denominations, and perhaps paper checks, all of which may eventually become obsolete.214 Finally, other forms of electronic transactions, such as PayPal or similar Internet payment mechanisms may also have the effect of reducing seignorage revenue that has typically been available to governments.215
As these types of electronic payments become more common, private enterprise is affecting monetary policy. It is issuing private money, which substitutes for government fiat currency. The government loses the seignorage revenue that would have been associated with these amounts. In addition, reserve balances at the central bank may be affected by this substitution of electronic, privately issued money for fiat currency.216
The discussion above centers on monetary policy issues associated with the issuance of electronic currency within the parent company’s home nation or within the countries in which the parent company’s subsidiaries operate. Nations that host the subsidiaries of multinational corporations face additional issues regarding repatriation of funds to the company’s home country. Multinational corporations may be required to negotiate with the central bank regarding processes for and constraints on repatriation of funds to their home country, or even to their subsidiary in another country that essentially serves as the “bank” for the operations of the corporation in various other countries.
In addition to issues of seignorage and repatriation, private corporations can dramatically affect the international currency markets.217 While there is an obvious impact associated with the export and import activity of private corporations, this impact can be seen most dramatically in connection with merger and acquisition transactions. For example, a corporation based in the United States that is engaged in an acquisition of several billion dollars in another country will most likely have to acquire that country’s currency to complete the transaction and pay the target company’s shareholders. If the acquiring company enters the market for Mexican pesos with an appetite for such a large volume of pesos, this buy-side pressure could artificially inflate the value of the peso for a brief period of time and artificially increase the costs of the acquisition by the acquirer. The government of the target’s home country will prefer a stable currency market. National banking regulators may, therefore, work with the acquiring company to assure that acquisitions of the currency occur in a measured manner that is unlikely to artificially inflate the price of the currency.
G. Public Welfare
Citizens have traditionally looked to the government to provide utilities, roads, bridges, airports, telecommunications, clean drinking water, and sewage treatment. Historically, however, corporations have played a role in the provision of such services as well. Indeed, almost from the inception of the corporate form, corporations have been viewed as serving a public function.218 One scholar has noted that:
Although many corporate charters granted after 1800 for canals, turnpikes, and banks went to private business entrepreneurs, these corporations did not operate as private businesses in the same sense as unincorporated businesses. To encourage much needed improvements, the early special charters normally granted privileges in the form of monopolies or franchises, causing these early corporations to resemble more closely towns’ public bodies rather than private competitive businesses.219
While the reference to public institutions includes obvious things such as buildings, roads, and schools, some have argued that it also encompasses the establishment of a system for the creation of other types of entities, such as joint stock companies.220 As discussed previously, many today view the primary purpose of corporations as that of making money for their owners.221 However, corporate social responsibility has developed into an area of concern for corporations and an area of study by scholars in the last few decades.222 Corporate social responsibility focuses on the ways that corporations can help to address various social issues that are not necessarily issues of immediate impact to the corporations’ business.223 Cynics have observed that even socially responsible actions by corporations are geared toward the corporate imperative of profit-making.224
Private corporations can provide social services using various legal structures and arrangements with the local government. Increasingly, private companies engage in these enterprises, particularly in developing nations where the tax base needed to finance these projects is limited. Specifically, many developing countries now look to private corporations “to provide basic infrastructure or utility services, such as highways, railways, water, sanitation, electricity, gas, and telecommunications.”225 Some private infrastructure projects have succeeded, but others have failed spectacularly.226 The models for these projects are varied, with private companies sometimes assuming management of a government-owned project or leasing the underlying assets. In other instances, the private company may finance the project and assume all risk, just as with other commercial enterprises.227
The U.S. government has also used corporations to assist in disaster relief and international public relations. For example, after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, several American CEOs traveled there with Karen Hughes, Bush’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, to assist in raising funds for earthquake relief.228 Corporations have also engaged in disaster relief sua sponte. In connection with Hurricane Katrina, some commentators jokingly suggested that the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency could learn from Wal-Mart’s logistical system.229 Home Depot and Federal Express were also lauded as examples of organizations with excellent disaster preparedness response plans.230 Recently, the Business Roundtable launched a new web site dedicated to the coordination of corporate disaster response.231 These examples prove that corporations can provide assistance, such as logistical services and supplies, and coordination of economic resources, in ways that have historically been reserved to governments.
IV. CONCLUSION
The implications of the nation-state metaphor as a way of viewing corporations are significant. To the extent that the transformation continues, the power of the vote in a democratic society may be eroded by the power of votes purchased through share ownership and the roles that our elected officials play may become less important than the roles played by corporate executives. Our security will become ever more dependent on the power and security of the world’s largest corporations. Personal identity will continue its shift from national identity and regional identity to corporate identity. Our legal matters may be brought before private judges and arbitrators, or handled through machine rule. And even our wallets are affected, as we need to carry very little cash issued by state treasuries.
Although some transference of sovereign powers to corporations is occurring, the implications are not all negative. After all, corporations, with their profit-maximizing motives, use economic resources efficiently. Standards of living are high in countries with vibrant capital markets and laws promoting entrepreneurship.
The metaphor of the nation-state provides one more way for scholars to analyze the activities and powers of corporations. Rather than looking at the balance of power within corporations, as do the director-primacy and shareholder-primacy models, this metaphor provides a way to view corporations as participants in broader governance processes such as foreign relations, adjudication, and law making.
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Part 3 of 4
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Notes:
* Vice President for Academic Affairs, Oklahoma Christian University; former Vice President and General Counsel to the Corporate Division of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.; J.D. University of Tulsa; LL.M., Georgetown University. I am indebted to Professors Shirley Howell, Justin Garrett, John Garman, and Don Garner at Faulkner University’s School of Law for their comments, and to Robert Farmer for his research support.
1. Peace Treaty Between the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of France and Their Respective Allies (Treaty of Westphalia), Oct. 24, 1648, available at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/westphal.htm. The treaty ended the Thirty Years’ War in Europe and established self-determination as the basis for the forming of nations. This basis for the establishment of a sovereign nation is acknowledged in the Charter of the United Nations. U.N. Charter art. 1, para. 2. It was also acknowledged in Article 10 of the League of Nations Covenant, the precursor to the United Nations. League of Nations Covenant art. 10; see also R.R. PALMER & JOEL COLTON, A HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD 148 (7th ed. 1992) (explaining the influence of the Treaty of Westphalia on international law and the modern system of sovereign states).
2. Oscar Schachter, The Decline of the Nation-State and its Implications for International Law, 36 COLUM. J. TRANSNAT’L L. 7, 7 (1997) (“The state, long seen as steadily amassing power, is now being viewed as increasingly vulnerable, even on its way out.”); JEAN-MARIE GUÉHENNO, THE END OF THE NATION-STATE (Victoria Elliot trans., 1995); Vivien A. Schmidt, The New World Order, Incorporated: The Rise of Business and the Decline of the Nation-State, DAEDALUS, Spring 1995, at 75; The Shape of the World—The Nation-State is Dead. Long Live the Nation-State, ECONOMIST, Jan. 5, 1996, at 15-18; see also LOUIS HENKIN, INTERNATIONAL LAW: POLITICS AND VALUES 10 (1995) (“We might do well to relegate the term sovereignty to the shelf of history as a relic from an earlier era.”); Richard B. Lillich, Sovereignty and Humanity: Can They Converge?, in THE SPIRIT OF UPPSALA: PROCEEDINGS OF THE JOINT UNITARUPPSALA UNIVERSITY SEMINAR ON INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ORGANIZATION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER 406 (Atle Grahl-Madsen & Jiri Toman eds., 1984) (“[T]he concept of sovereignty in international law is an idea whose time has come and gone.”). Sub-nationalism has also been examined as a contributing factor to the death of the nation-state. See Stephen Tierney, Reframing Sovereignty? Sub-State National Societies and Contemporary Challenges to the Nation-State, 54 INT’L & COMP. L.Q. 161, 161 (2005). In addition, the influence of new actors, such as non-governmental human rights organizations, has played a role in the nation-state’s demise. See LOUIS HENKIN ET AL., HUMAN RIGHTS 737-45 (1999). Others have argued that rumors of the death of the nation-state are greatly exaggerated. See Martin Wolf, Will the Nation-State Survive Globalization?, 80 FOREIGN AFF. 178, 179 (2001).
3. See WALTER B. WRISTON, THE TWILIGHT OF SOVEREIGNTY: HOW THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION IS TRANSFORMING OUR WORLD 61-62 (1992). Likewise, distances have lost meaning. Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, noted recently:
Ben Bernanke, Remarks at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Thirtieth Annual Economic Symposium: Global Economic Integration: What’s New and What’s Not? (Aug. 25, 2006), available at http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs ... efault.htm. See also David R. Johnson & David G. Post, Law and Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace, 48 STAN. L. REV. 1367, 1367 (1996).
4. Schachter, supra note 2, at 8.
5. See JOEL BAKAN, THE CORPORATION: THE PATHOLOGICAL PURSUIT OF PROFIT AND POWER 25 (2004) (“Corporations now govern society, perhaps more than governments themselves do; yet ironically, it is their very power, much of which they have gained through economic globalization, that makes them vulnerable.”). While corporations have gained power, it does not follow that if one state loses some measure of sovereignty, another state, supranational organization, or corporation necessarily gains it. See Neil MacCormick, Beyond the Sovereign State, 56 MODERN L. REV. 1, 16 (1993) (arguing that sovereignty is not the object of a “zero sum game, such that the moment X loses it Y necessarily has it”).
6. See Jack M. Beermann, Privatization and Political Accountability, 28 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 1507 (2001) (drawing general connections between privatization and political accountability); Jack M. Beermann, Administrative-Law-Like Obligations on Private[ized] Entities, 49 UCLA L. REV. 1717 (2002) (arguing that the effect of privatization is likely to be muted by the recent phenomenon of a reduction in the differences between the government and private sector); Ronald A. Cass, Privatization: Politics, Law and Theory, 71 MARQ. L. REV. 449, 450-56 (1988) (discussing the theory of privatization and explaining how the law may affect privatization efforts); Laura A. Dickinson, Government for Hire: Privatizing Foreign Affairs and the Problem of Accountability Under International Law, 47 WM. & MARY L. REV. 135, 141-42 (2005) (arguing that accountability and public values may be increased by “an era of privatization”); Jody Freeman, Private Parties, Public Functions, and the New Administrative Law, 52 ADMIN. L. REV. 813 (2000) (arguing that contemporary administrative regulation is “best described as a regime of ‘mixed administration’ in which private actors and government share regulatory roles”); Jody Freeman, Extending Public Law Norms Through Privatization, 116 HARV. L. REV. 1285, 1285 (2003) (arguing that privatization may be a means of “publicization,” where private actors may be convinced to commit themselves to traditionally public goals in return for lucrative opportunities to provide goods and services historically provided by the state); Louis Jaffe, Law Making by Private Groups, 51 HARV. L. REV. 201 (1937) (noting that the most significant and powerful components of the political and social structure of the United States are economic interests groups); George Liebman, Delegation to Private Parties in American Constitutional Law, 50 IND. L.J. 650 (1975); Gary Peller, Public Imperialism and Private Resistance: Progressive Possibilities of the New Private Law, 73 DENV. U. L. REV. 1001 (1996) (reflecting upon the emergence of the “New Private Law Phenomenon”); Ira P. Robbins, The Legal Dimensions of Private Incarceration, 38 AM. U. L. REV. 531, 539 (1989) (presenting a comprehensive legal discussion of private action); David A. Sklansky, The Private Police, 46 UCLA L. REV. 1165 (1999) (advocating for future research and doctrinal development of legal research on the private security industry); Symposium, New Forms of Governance: Ceding Public Power to Private Actors, 49 UCLA L. REV. 1687 (2002); Note, Delegation of Governmental Power to Private Groups, 32 COLUM. L. REV. 80 (1932).
7. Pub. L. No. 94-583, 90 Stat. 2891 (1976) (codified as amended in scattered sections of 28 U.S.C.).
8. 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(2) (2000). It is the nature of the activity, rather than its purpose, that controls whether the foreign state or its agencies or instrumentalities have immunity for their actions. Id. § 1603(d) (defining “commercial activity”).
9. Examples of charters creating “bodies corporate and politic,” collected by Professor Greenwood, include the Plymouth Council, the Massachusetts Bay Company, Connecticut, The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers of the City of London for the First Colony in Virginia, and The Hudson Bay Company. Daniel J.H. Greenwood, The Semi-Sovereign Corporation 2-3 (University of Utah Legal Studies Research Paper Series, Paper No. 05-04, 2005), available at http://ssrn.com/abstracts=757315. Professor Greenwood notes that the same phrase “is used in the Charter of Dartmouth College, the Incorporation of Harvard College, and in the charter of the College of William and Mary.” Id. at 4. See also Samuel Williston, History of the Law of the Business Corporations Before 1800, 2 HARV. L. REV. 105, 105 (1888) (noting that “the most striking peculiarity found on first examination of the history of the law of business corporations is the fact that different kinds of corporations are treated without distinction”). Currently, it is generally the states that charter corporations, although federal law may determine whether a corporation exists for certain purposes, such as federal taxation. Kurzner v. United States, 413 F.2d 97, 100 (5th Cir. 1969); cf. I.R.C. § 7701(a)(4) (West 2007) (recognizing, for the purposes of the Internal Revenue Code, corporations organized “under the law of any state”).
10. 1844, 7 & 8 Vict., c.110 (U.K.).
11. 140 PARL. DEB., H.C. (3rd ser.) (1856) 134.
12. Id.
13. Greenwood, supra note 9, at 2.
14. See GlobalFinancialData.com, The Global History of Currencies, https://www.globalfindata.com/ index.php3?action=showghoc&country_name=UGANDA (last visited Nov. 26, 2007) [hereinafter Global Financial Data] (“Beginning in 1895, the Imperial British East Africa Company minted coins denominated in Rupees, Annas and Pice, following the British Indian monetary system.”).
15. The British East India Company, although established as a trading company, assumed governing authority for India. JOHN MICKLETHWAIT & ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE, THE COMPANY: A SHORT HISTORY OF A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA 21-26 (2003).
16. Id.
17. John Dewey, The Historical Background of Corporate Legal Personality, 35 YALE L.J. 655 (1926).
18. See Milton Friedman, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Profits, N.Y. TIMES MAGAZINE, Sept. 13, 1970, at 32.
19. See Michael C. Jensen & William H. Meckling, Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structures, 3 J. FIN. ECON. 305 (1976) (based on work by Armen A. Alchian & Harold Demsetz, Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization, 62 AM. ECON. REV. 777 (1972)); see also STEPHEN BAINBRIDGE, CORPORATION LAW AND ECONOMICS 27-33 (2002) (describing the corporation as nexus of contracts); FRANK H. EASTERBROOK & DANIEL R. FISCHEL, THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF CORPORATION LAW 17 (1991) (“All the terms in corporate governance are contractual in the sense that they are fully priced in transactions among the interested parties.”); William T. Allen, Contracts and Communities in Corporation Law, 50 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 1395, 1400 (1993) (“[T]he corporation is seen as the market writ small, a web of ongoing contracts (explicit or implicit) between various real persons . . . designed to reduce the costs necessary to plan, coordinate and accomplish the complex contracts that large-scale ongoing projects would require.”); Henry N. Butler & Larry E. Ribstein, The Contract Clause and the Corporation, 55 BROOK. L. REV. 767, 770 (1989); Henry N. Butler, The Contractual Theory of the Corporation, GEO. MASON U. L. REV., Summer 1989, at 99; William J. Carney, Controlling Management Opportunism in the Market for Corporate Control: An Agency Cost Model, 1988 WIS. L. REV. 385 (1988); Brian R. Cheffins, The Trajectory of (Corporate Law) Scholarship, 63 CAMBRIDGE L.J. 456, 484 (2004). But see John C. Coffee, Jr., No Exit?: Opting Out, the Contractual Theory of the Corporation, and the Special Case of Remedies, 53 BROOK. L. REV. 919, 923 (1988) (suggesting a more rigorous review of the “corporation as contract” theory).
20. ADOLF A. BERLE, JR. & GARDINER C. MEANS, THE MODERN CORPORATION AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 221 (1933); Jensen & Meckling, supra note 19, at 308-09.
21. Aronson v. Lewis, 473 A.2d 805, 811 (Del. 1984) (“If the stockholders are displeased with the actions of their elected representatives, the powers of corporate democracy are at their disposal to turn the board out.”). But see Lucian Ayre Bebchuk, The Case for Shareholder Access to the Ballot, 59 BUS. LAW. 43, 45-46 (2003) (arguing that corporations are undemocratic because managements’ board nominees are usually unopposed); Lucian Bebchuk, The Case for Increasing Shareholder Power, 118 HARV. L. REV. 833, 849-50 (2004) (arguing that the United States should eschew the view of the “modern corporation as a ‘purely representative democracy’”); Daniel J.H. Greenwood, Markets and Democracy: The Illegitimacy of Corporate Law, 74 UMKC L. REV. 41, 41 (2005) (“Corporate law is chosen by the very corporate managers who ought to be controlled by it, and created by lawyers, legislatures and judges unanswerable to the people whose lives are affected by it.”).
22. Douglas Litowitz, The Corporation as God, 30 J. CORP. L. 501 (2005).
23. See Trustees of Dartmouth Coll. v. Woodward, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 518, 569 (1819); FREDERIC W. MAITLAND, Moral Personality and Legal Personality, in 3 THE COLLECTED PAPERS OF FREDERIC WILLIAM MAITLAND 304, 305-06 (H.A.L. Fisher ed., Logos & Co. 1975) (1911).
24. See, e.g., Santa Clara County v. S. Pac. R.R., 118 U.S. 394, 396 (1886); San Mateo v. S. Pac. R.R. (Railroad Tax Cases), 13 F. 722, 740 (C.C.D. Cal. 1882); Natasha N. Aljalian, Note, Fourteenth Amendment Personhood: Fact or Fiction?, 73 ST. JOHN’S L. REV. 495, 497-98 (1999). Corporations do not, however, have the privilege against self-incrimination. Bellis v. United States, 417 U.S. 85, 89-90 (1974); United States v. Kordel, 397 U.S. 1, 7 (1970).
25. MODEL BUS. CORP. ACT § 3.02(4) (2002).
26. Id. § 3.02(7).
27. Id. § 3.02(1); EASTERBROOK & FISCHEL, supra note 19, at 11.
28. Michael E. DeBow & Dwight R. Lee, Shareholders, Nonshareholders and Corporate Law: Communitarianism and Resource Allocation, 18 DEL. J. CORP. L. 393, 396-97 (1993) (arguing that corporations are subject to public regulation because they are public entities).
29. Liam Séamus O’Melinn, Neither Contract nor Concession: The Public Personality of the Corporation, 74 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 201 (2006). Professor O’Melinn notes that:
Id. at 201.
30. William T. Allen, Our Schizophrenic Conception of the Business Corporation, 14 CARDOZO L. REV. 261, 264 (1992).
31. Friedman, supra note 18, at 32-33. A number of leading corporate law cases strongly support the property conception of the corporation. See, e.g., Revlon, Inc. v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc., 506 A.2d 173, 181-82 (Del. 1986) (recognizing the duty of the board of directors to maximize the financial interest of shareholders in the face of a hostile takeover); Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 170 N.W. 668, 684 (Mich. 1919) (“A business organization is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the shareholders.”). See also AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE, PRINCIPLES OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS § 2.01 (1994) (“[A] corporation should have as its objective the conduct of business activities with a view to enhancing corporate profit and shareholder gain.”); Lynn A. Stout, Bad and Not-So-Bad Arguments for Shareholder Primacy, 75 S. CAL. L. REV. 1189, 1190 (2002) (“Does the firm exist only to increase shareholder wealth (the ‘property’ theory)? Or, should managers also seek to serve the interests of employees, creditors, customers, and the broader society (the ‘entity’ view)?”).
32. Allen, supra note 30, at 265.
33. ADOLPH A. BERLE, JR. & GARDINER C. MEANS, THE MODERN CORPORATION AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 119-125 (1932) (discussing the separate identity and function of ownership and control groups within the corporate system and the potential conflicting interests of the two).
34. Ronald H. Coase, The Nature of the Firm, 4 ECONOMICA 386 (1937) (arguing that financial efficiencies are created by concentrating authority within a firm in a manager who directs production).
35. See Alchian & Demsetz, supra note 19 (describing the firm as a set of structured relationships between a group of individuals and a “central agent” or “employer”); Eugene F. Fama, Agency Problems and the Theory of the Firm, 88 J. POL. ECON. 288 (1980) (discussing the efficiency of separating security ownership and control within a corporation); Eugene F. Fama & Michael C. Jensen, Agency Problems and Residual Claims, 26 J.L. & ECON. 327 (1983); Eugene F. Fama & Michael C. Jensen, Separation of Ownership and Control, 26 J.L. & ECON. 301 (1983) (discussing the benefits of allocating the duty of initiating and implementing decisions to one group within an organization and the ratification and monitoring of decisions to another); Jensen & Meckling, supra note 19.
36. See Manuel A. Utset, Towards a Bargaining Theory of the Firm, 80 CORNELL L. REV. 540, 550-69 (1995).
37. Id. at 552-53.
38. See, e.g., Reza Dibadj, Reconceiving the Firm, 26 CARDOZO L. REV. 1459, 1462 (2005). Professor Dibadj notes that the flawed premise that corporations are “utility-maximizing actors” has led to poor public policy decisions. Id.
39. Jensen & Meckling, supra note 19, at 308-09.
40. Attempts to align interests of the executives with the interests of the shareholders can be most closely seen in stock option plans and restricted stock grants. Paying bonuses for good performance also helps align interests.
41. D. Gordon Smith, The Shareholder Primacy Norm, 23 J. CORP. L. 277, 278-79 (1998).
42. Id.
43. Stephen Bainbridge, The Board of Directors as Nexus of Contracts, 88 IOWA L. REV. 1 (2002).
44. Id. at 6-7.
45. Allen, supra note 30, at 265.
46. Id.
47. Stephen M. Bainbridge, Director Primacy: The Means and Ends of Corporate Governance, 97 NW. U. L. REV. 547, 560 (2003) (explaining that a corporation’s powers “flow not from shareholders alone, but from the complete set of contracts constituting the firm”); Allen, supra note 30, at 264-65; Allen, supra note 19, at 1400; Butler & Ribstein, supra note 19, at 770; Jensen & Meckling, supra note 19, at 306-07 (arguing that the corporation is the nexus of principal-agent contracts); Paul G. Mahoney, Contract or Concession? An Essay on the History of Corporate Law, 34 GA. L. REV. 873, 878-93 (2000). Contra Lewis A. Kornhauser, The Nexus of Contracts Approach to Corporations: A Comment on Easterbrook and Fischel, 89 COLUM. L. REV. 1449 (1989) (arguing that the contract metaphor, like other metaphors for the corporation, is an imperfect fit).
48. Ind. Harbor Belt R.R. Co. v. American Cyanamid Co., 916 F.2d 1174, 1182 (7th Cir. 1990) (“A corporation is not a living person but a set of contracts the terms of which determine who will bear the brunt of liability.”); see also REINIER KRAAKMAN ET AL., THE ANATOMY OF CORPORATE LAW: A COMPARATIVE AND FUNCTIONAL APPROACH § 1.2.1 (2004) (“As an economic entity, a firm fundamentally serves as a nexus of contracts: a single contracting party that coordinates the activities of suppliers of inputs and of consumers of products and services.”); Bainbridge, supra note 43, at 16 (giving as examples of the contracts to which the corporation is a party a bond indenture, an employment agreement and a collective bargaining agreement); O’Melinn, supra note 29, at 202.
49. G. Mitu Gulati et al., Connected Contracts, 47 UCLA L. REV. 887, 895 (2000).
50. Id. at 894.
51. Id.
52. Litowitz, supra note 22, at 501.
53. Id. at 502.
54. Id. at 503-04 (citing MODEL BUS. CORP. ACT § 1.40(4) (2002)).
55. Id. at 509-13.
56. Id. at 536.
57. Id.
58. Margaret M. Blair & Lynn A. Stout, A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law, 85 VA. L. REV. 247 (1999).
59. Id. at 249 (citing Alchian & Demsetz, supra note 19; Bengt Holmstrom, Moral Hazard in Teams, 13 BELL J. ECON. 324 (1982)).
60. Id.
61. See, e.g., Susanna M. Kim, Characteristics of Soulless Persons: The Applicability of the Character Evidence Rule to Corporations, 2000 U. ILL. L. REV. 763, 794 (“Because a corporation has the capacity to be an intentional actor and to modify its actions after learning of unintended harmful consequences, it may be regarded as a morally responsible being.”).
62. See Michael Keeley, Organizations as Non Persons, 15 J. OF VALUE INQUIRY 149, 149 (1981) (rejecting the idea that a corporation is a moral person because it has no “goals or intentions”); Michael B. Metzger & Dan R. Dalton, Seeing the Elephant: An Organizational Perspective on Corporate Moral Agency, 33 AM. BUS. L.J. 489, 493 (1996) (“Whatever organizations may be, they are not people.”); Manuel Velasquez, Why Corporations Are Not Morally Responsible for Anything They Do, in COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY: FIVE DECADES OF DEBATE IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ETHICS 111, 120 (Larry May & Stacey Hoffman eds., 1991) (arguing that corporations are not moral persons because they are not capable of acting intentionally).
63. Friedman, supra note 18, at 32.
64. BAKAN, supra note 5, at 34. Professor Bakan notes “the corporation can neither recognize nor act upon moral reasons to refrain from harming others. Nothing in its legal makeup limits what it can do to others in pursuit of its selfish ends, and it is compelled to cause harm when the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs.” Id. at 60.
65. Ernest Renan, What Is a Nation? in NATIONALISM IN EUROPE, 1815 TO THE PRESENT: A READER 49 (Stuart Woolf ed., 1996). Renan defined a nation as follows:
Id. at 57-58. Renan also called the nation “a soul . . .the outcome of a long and strenuous past of sacrifice and devotion . . . a heritage of glory and regrets to share in the past; one and the same programme to be realized in the future.” Id. at 58.
66. JOSEPH STALIN, MARXISM AND THE NATIONAL QUESTION: SELECTED WRITINGS AND SPEECHES 12 (1942).
67. J.M. KELLY, A SHORT HISTORY OF WESTERN LEGAL THEORY 346 (1992).
68. JOHN STUART MILL, CONSIDERATIONS ON REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 42 (Currin V. Shields ed., Bobbs-Merrill 1958) (1861) (“[T]he ideally best form of government is that in which the sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last resort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the community . . . .”).
69. MURRAY KNUTTILA & WENDEE KUBIK, STATE THEORIES: CLASSICAL, GLOBAL AND FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES 50 (Robert Clarke ed., 3d ed. 2000) (1987) (quoting FROM MAX WEBER: ESSAYS IN SOCIOLOGY 78 (H.H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills eds., 1958)). Weber’s thoughts were originally put forth in a speech given in 1918 in Munich.
70. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT & DISCOURSES 16-18 (6th prtg. 1930).
71. ERIC J. HOBSBAWM, NATIONS AND NATIONALISM SINCE 1780: PROGRAM, MYTH, REALITY 14-18 (2d ed. 1992) (noting that the old meaning of the word nation “envisaged mainly the ethnic unit,” while recent usage stresses “political unity and independence”); see also BENJAMIN AKZIN, STATE AND NATION 8-10 (W.A. Robson ed., 1964) (noting that the term “nation” usually refers to common ethnicity). But see JOHN A. ARMSTRONG, NATIONS BEFORE NATIONALISM 3-9 (1982) (noting that the concepts of a nation and an ethnic group have often been conflated).
72. The United Nations Charter states that one purpose of the United Nations is to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace. U.N. Charter art. 1, para. 2. For more information on the principle of self-determination, see ALLEN BUCHANAN, JUSTICE, LEGITIMACY, AND SELF-DETERMINATION (2004); HURST HANNUM, AUTONOMY, SOVEREIGNTY, AND SELF-DETERMINATION: THE ACCOMMODATION OF CONFLICTING RIGHTS (1990); NOMOS XLV, YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR POLITICAL AND LEGAL PHILOSOPHY, SECESSION AND SELF-DETERMINATION (Stephen Macedo & Allen Buchanan eds., 2003); Avishai Margalit & Joseph Raz, National Self-Determination, 87 J. PHIL. 439 (1990); Yael Tamir, The Right to National Self-Determination, 58 SOC. RES. 565 (1991).
73. Press Release, Secretary General, Secretary-General Presents His Annual Report to General Assembly, U.N. Doc. SG/SM/7136, GA/9596 (Sept. 20, 1999), available at http://www.un.org/News/Press/ docs/1999/19990920.sgsm7136.html. The United Nations has taken measures to regulate multinationals. See U.N. Econ. & Soc. Council (ESOCOC), Sub-Comm’n on Promotion & Prot. of Human Rights, Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/12/Rev.2 (Aug. 13, 2003), available at http://www1.umn. edu/humanrts/links/norms-Aug2003.html; see also Larry Catá Backer, Multinational Corporations, Transnational Law: The United Nations’ Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations As a Harbinger of Corporate Social Responsibility in International Law, 37 COLUM. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 287 (2006) (discussing the impact that the United Nations’ Norms will have on corporate responsibility).
74. Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States art. 1, Dec. 26, 1933, 49 Stat. 3097, 165 L.N.T.S. 19.
75. Id.; see also RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF THE FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 201 (1986) (“Under international law, a state is an entity that has a defined territory and a permanent population, under the control of its own government . . . .”).
76. ADAM SMITH, AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS 213-44 (Edwin Cannan ed., Univ. of Chi. Press 1976) (1776); see also Greenwood, supra note 9 (“If our major corporations share many of the characteristics of sovereigns, they should share the responsibilities as well.”).
77. SMITH, supra note 76, at 213.
78. Id. at 231. Similarly, John Locke noted that the sovereign possesses “a right of making laws, with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties for the regulating and preserving of property.” JOHN LOCKE, TWO TREATISES ON GOVERNMENT 268 (Peter Laslett ed., Cambridge Univ. Press 1988) (1690).
79. SMITH, supra note 76, at 244.
80. ELLEN GRIGSBY, ANALYZING POLITICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL SCIENCE 50 (Wadsworth/Thomson Learning 2002) (1999).
81. STEVEN L. SPIEGEL ET AL., WORLD POLITICS IN A NEW ERA 700 (3d ed., Wadsworth/Thomson Learning 2004).
82. Olli Lagerspetz, National Self-Determination and Ethnic Minorities, 25 MICH. J. INT’L L. 1299, 1299 (2004); ERNEST GELLNER, NATIONS AND NATIONALISM 1 (R.I. Moore et al. eds., 1983) (defining “nationalism” as “primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent”).
83. Lagerspetz, supra note 82, at 1299.
84. Id.
85. ALDOUS HUXLEY, BRAVE NEW WORLD (Harper & Row 1946) (1932).
86. KURT VONNEGUT, JR., PLAYER PIANO(Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1966) (1952).
87. EDWARD BELLAMY, LOOKING BACKWARD (Daniel H. Borus ed., St. Martin’s Press 1995) (1888).
88. Litowitz, supra note 22, at 536.
89. 1 OPPENHEIM’S INTERNATIONAL LAW § 34, at 121 (Robert Jennings & Arthur Watts eds., 9th ed. 1992).
90. Aristide R. Zolberg, The Dawn of Cosmopolitan Denizenship, 7 IND. J. GLOBAL LEGAL STUD. 511, 511 (2000) (citing Linda Bosniak, Citizenship Denationalized, 7 IND. J. GLOBAL LEGAL STUD. 447 (2000)) (discussing the devolution of the concept of citizenship away from the nation-state to a “hypernationalist version of citizenship”).
91. RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF THE FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 201 cmt. c (1986).
92. Catholic-pages.com, Vatican City: Population, http://www.catholic-pages.com/vatican/vatican_ city.asp (last visited Nov. 26, 2007).
93. See Wal-MartFacts.com, Employment and Diversity, http://www.walmartfacts.com/featuredtopics/ ?id=3 (last visited Nov. 26, 2007).
94. Fordham Law School, Event Details, http://law.fordham.edu/ihtml/ eventitemPP.ihtml?id=37&idc= 6763&template=cle (last visited Sept. 14, 2006).
95. Id.
96. Micheline Labelle & Franklin Midy, Re-Reading Citizenship and the Transnational Practice of Immigrants, 25 J. OF ETHNIC & MIGRATION STUD. 213, 217 (1999).
97. Political Scientist Ellen Grigsby notes that “the very origins of the word nation attest to such foundations, because nation is based on the older Latin word natus (birth), and nations generally consist of people whose sense of unity is based on something shared by virtue of the group into which they are born.” GRIGSBY, supra note 80, at 58. See also WALTER BERNS, MAKING PATRIOTS 11 (2001) (arguing that patriotism must “be cultivated because no one is born loving his country; such love is not natural, but has to be somehow taught or acquired”).
98. Bruno S. Frey, Flexible Citizenship for a Global Society, 2 POL. PHIL. & ECON. 93, 94-95 (2003). Frey proposes to transfer the citizenship relationship from the governmental realm “to a more general social setting” and to conceptualize citizenship as temporary, multiple, partial, or organizational. Id.
99. Id. (citing Linn Van Dyne et al., Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Construct, Redefinition, Measurement and Validation, 37 J. OF MGMT. 765 (1994); Dennis W. Organ, The Motivational Basis of Organizational Citizenship Behavior, in 12 RESEARCH IN ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR: AN ANNUAL SERIES OF ANALYTICAL ESSAYS AND CRITICAL REVIEWS 43 (Barry M. Staw & L.L. Cummings eds., 1990)).
100. See, e.g., KIM S. CAMERON & ROBERT E. QUINN, DIAGNOSING AND CHANGING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE (1999); Bill Munck, Changing a Culture of Face Time, in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ON CULTURE AND CHANGE (2002); E.H. SCHEIN, ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIP (2d ed. 1992); R. Charan, Conquering a Culture of Indecision, 79 HARV. BUS. REV. 75 (2001).
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Notes:
* Vice President for Academic Affairs, Oklahoma Christian University; former Vice President and General Counsel to the Corporate Division of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.; J.D. University of Tulsa; LL.M., Georgetown University. I am indebted to Professors Shirley Howell, Justin Garrett, John Garman, and Don Garner at Faulkner University’s School of Law for their comments, and to Robert Farmer for his research support.
1. Peace Treaty Between the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of France and Their Respective Allies (Treaty of Westphalia), Oct. 24, 1648, available at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/westphal.htm. The treaty ended the Thirty Years’ War in Europe and established self-determination as the basis for the forming of nations. This basis for the establishment of a sovereign nation is acknowledged in the Charter of the United Nations. U.N. Charter art. 1, para. 2. It was also acknowledged in Article 10 of the League of Nations Covenant, the precursor to the United Nations. League of Nations Covenant art. 10; see also R.R. PALMER & JOEL COLTON, A HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD 148 (7th ed. 1992) (explaining the influence of the Treaty of Westphalia on international law and the modern system of sovereign states).
2. Oscar Schachter, The Decline of the Nation-State and its Implications for International Law, 36 COLUM. J. TRANSNAT’L L. 7, 7 (1997) (“The state, long seen as steadily amassing power, is now being viewed as increasingly vulnerable, even on its way out.”); JEAN-MARIE GUÉHENNO, THE END OF THE NATION-STATE (Victoria Elliot trans., 1995); Vivien A. Schmidt, The New World Order, Incorporated: The Rise of Business and the Decline of the Nation-State, DAEDALUS, Spring 1995, at 75; The Shape of the World—The Nation-State is Dead. Long Live the Nation-State, ECONOMIST, Jan. 5, 1996, at 15-18; see also LOUIS HENKIN, INTERNATIONAL LAW: POLITICS AND VALUES 10 (1995) (“We might do well to relegate the term sovereignty to the shelf of history as a relic from an earlier era.”); Richard B. Lillich, Sovereignty and Humanity: Can They Converge?, in THE SPIRIT OF UPPSALA: PROCEEDINGS OF THE JOINT UNITARUPPSALA UNIVERSITY SEMINAR ON INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ORGANIZATION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER 406 (Atle Grahl-Madsen & Jiri Toman eds., 1984) (“[T]he concept of sovereignty in international law is an idea whose time has come and gone.”). Sub-nationalism has also been examined as a contributing factor to the death of the nation-state. See Stephen Tierney, Reframing Sovereignty? Sub-State National Societies and Contemporary Challenges to the Nation-State, 54 INT’L & COMP. L.Q. 161, 161 (2005). In addition, the influence of new actors, such as non-governmental human rights organizations, has played a role in the nation-state’s demise. See LOUIS HENKIN ET AL., HUMAN RIGHTS 737-45 (1999). Others have argued that rumors of the death of the nation-state are greatly exaggerated. See Martin Wolf, Will the Nation-State Survive Globalization?, 80 FOREIGN AFF. 178, 179 (2001).
3. See WALTER B. WRISTON, THE TWILIGHT OF SOVEREIGNTY: HOW THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION IS TRANSFORMING OUR WORLD 61-62 (1992). Likewise, distances have lost meaning. Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, noted recently:
Economically relevant distances . . . may also depend on what trade economists refer to as the width of the border, which reflects the extra costs of economic exchange imposed by factors such as tariff and nontariff barriers, as well as costs arising from differences in language, culture, legal traditions, and political systems.
. . . [B]y most economically relevant measures, distances are shrinking rapidly. The shrinking globe has been a major source of the powerful wave of worldwide economic integration and increased economic interdependence that we are currently experiencing. The causes and implications of declining economic distances and increased economic integration are, of course, the subject of this conference.
Ben Bernanke, Remarks at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Thirtieth Annual Economic Symposium: Global Economic Integration: What’s New and What’s Not? (Aug. 25, 2006), available at http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs ... efault.htm. See also David R. Johnson & David G. Post, Law and Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace, 48 STAN. L. REV. 1367, 1367 (1996).
4. Schachter, supra note 2, at 8.
5. See JOEL BAKAN, THE CORPORATION: THE PATHOLOGICAL PURSUIT OF PROFIT AND POWER 25 (2004) (“Corporations now govern society, perhaps more than governments themselves do; yet ironically, it is their very power, much of which they have gained through economic globalization, that makes them vulnerable.”). While corporations have gained power, it does not follow that if one state loses some measure of sovereignty, another state, supranational organization, or corporation necessarily gains it. See Neil MacCormick, Beyond the Sovereign State, 56 MODERN L. REV. 1, 16 (1993) (arguing that sovereignty is not the object of a “zero sum game, such that the moment X loses it Y necessarily has it”).
6. See Jack M. Beermann, Privatization and Political Accountability, 28 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 1507 (2001) (drawing general connections between privatization and political accountability); Jack M. Beermann, Administrative-Law-Like Obligations on Private[ized] Entities, 49 UCLA L. REV. 1717 (2002) (arguing that the effect of privatization is likely to be muted by the recent phenomenon of a reduction in the differences between the government and private sector); Ronald A. Cass, Privatization: Politics, Law and Theory, 71 MARQ. L. REV. 449, 450-56 (1988) (discussing the theory of privatization and explaining how the law may affect privatization efforts); Laura A. Dickinson, Government for Hire: Privatizing Foreign Affairs and the Problem of Accountability Under International Law, 47 WM. & MARY L. REV. 135, 141-42 (2005) (arguing that accountability and public values may be increased by “an era of privatization”); Jody Freeman, Private Parties, Public Functions, and the New Administrative Law, 52 ADMIN. L. REV. 813 (2000) (arguing that contemporary administrative regulation is “best described as a regime of ‘mixed administration’ in which private actors and government share regulatory roles”); Jody Freeman, Extending Public Law Norms Through Privatization, 116 HARV. L. REV. 1285, 1285 (2003) (arguing that privatization may be a means of “publicization,” where private actors may be convinced to commit themselves to traditionally public goals in return for lucrative opportunities to provide goods and services historically provided by the state); Louis Jaffe, Law Making by Private Groups, 51 HARV. L. REV. 201 (1937) (noting that the most significant and powerful components of the political and social structure of the United States are economic interests groups); George Liebman, Delegation to Private Parties in American Constitutional Law, 50 IND. L.J. 650 (1975); Gary Peller, Public Imperialism and Private Resistance: Progressive Possibilities of the New Private Law, 73 DENV. U. L. REV. 1001 (1996) (reflecting upon the emergence of the “New Private Law Phenomenon”); Ira P. Robbins, The Legal Dimensions of Private Incarceration, 38 AM. U. L. REV. 531, 539 (1989) (presenting a comprehensive legal discussion of private action); David A. Sklansky, The Private Police, 46 UCLA L. REV. 1165 (1999) (advocating for future research and doctrinal development of legal research on the private security industry); Symposium, New Forms of Governance: Ceding Public Power to Private Actors, 49 UCLA L. REV. 1687 (2002); Note, Delegation of Governmental Power to Private Groups, 32 COLUM. L. REV. 80 (1932).
7. Pub. L. No. 94-583, 90 Stat. 2891 (1976) (codified as amended in scattered sections of 28 U.S.C.).
8. 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(2) (2000). It is the nature of the activity, rather than its purpose, that controls whether the foreign state or its agencies or instrumentalities have immunity for their actions. Id. § 1603(d) (defining “commercial activity”).
9. Examples of charters creating “bodies corporate and politic,” collected by Professor Greenwood, include the Plymouth Council, the Massachusetts Bay Company, Connecticut, The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers of the City of London for the First Colony in Virginia, and The Hudson Bay Company. Daniel J.H. Greenwood, The Semi-Sovereign Corporation 2-3 (University of Utah Legal Studies Research Paper Series, Paper No. 05-04, 2005), available at http://ssrn.com/abstracts=757315. Professor Greenwood notes that the same phrase “is used in the Charter of Dartmouth College, the Incorporation of Harvard College, and in the charter of the College of William and Mary.” Id. at 4. See also Samuel Williston, History of the Law of the Business Corporations Before 1800, 2 HARV. L. REV. 105, 105 (1888) (noting that “the most striking peculiarity found on first examination of the history of the law of business corporations is the fact that different kinds of corporations are treated without distinction”). Currently, it is generally the states that charter corporations, although federal law may determine whether a corporation exists for certain purposes, such as federal taxation. Kurzner v. United States, 413 F.2d 97, 100 (5th Cir. 1969); cf. I.R.C. § 7701(a)(4) (West 2007) (recognizing, for the purposes of the Internal Revenue Code, corporations organized “under the law of any state”).
10. 1844, 7 & 8 Vict., c.110 (U.K.).
11. 140 PARL. DEB., H.C. (3rd ser.) (1856) 134.
12. Id.
13. Greenwood, supra note 9, at 2.
14. See GlobalFinancialData.com, The Global History of Currencies, https://www.globalfindata.com/ index.php3?action=showghoc&country_name=UGANDA (last visited Nov. 26, 2007) [hereinafter Global Financial Data] (“Beginning in 1895, the Imperial British East Africa Company minted coins denominated in Rupees, Annas and Pice, following the British Indian monetary system.”).
15. The British East India Company, although established as a trading company, assumed governing authority for India. JOHN MICKLETHWAIT & ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE, THE COMPANY: A SHORT HISTORY OF A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA 21-26 (2003).
16. Id.
17. John Dewey, The Historical Background of Corporate Legal Personality, 35 YALE L.J. 655 (1926).
18. See Milton Friedman, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Profits, N.Y. TIMES MAGAZINE, Sept. 13, 1970, at 32.
19. See Michael C. Jensen & William H. Meckling, Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structures, 3 J. FIN. ECON. 305 (1976) (based on work by Armen A. Alchian & Harold Demsetz, Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization, 62 AM. ECON. REV. 777 (1972)); see also STEPHEN BAINBRIDGE, CORPORATION LAW AND ECONOMICS 27-33 (2002) (describing the corporation as nexus of contracts); FRANK H. EASTERBROOK & DANIEL R. FISCHEL, THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF CORPORATION LAW 17 (1991) (“All the terms in corporate governance are contractual in the sense that they are fully priced in transactions among the interested parties.”); William T. Allen, Contracts and Communities in Corporation Law, 50 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 1395, 1400 (1993) (“[T]he corporation is seen as the market writ small, a web of ongoing contracts (explicit or implicit) between various real persons . . . designed to reduce the costs necessary to plan, coordinate and accomplish the complex contracts that large-scale ongoing projects would require.”); Henry N. Butler & Larry E. Ribstein, The Contract Clause and the Corporation, 55 BROOK. L. REV. 767, 770 (1989); Henry N. Butler, The Contractual Theory of the Corporation, GEO. MASON U. L. REV., Summer 1989, at 99; William J. Carney, Controlling Management Opportunism in the Market for Corporate Control: An Agency Cost Model, 1988 WIS. L. REV. 385 (1988); Brian R. Cheffins, The Trajectory of (Corporate Law) Scholarship, 63 CAMBRIDGE L.J. 456, 484 (2004). But see John C. Coffee, Jr., No Exit?: Opting Out, the Contractual Theory of the Corporation, and the Special Case of Remedies, 53 BROOK. L. REV. 919, 923 (1988) (suggesting a more rigorous review of the “corporation as contract” theory).
20. ADOLF A. BERLE, JR. & GARDINER C. MEANS, THE MODERN CORPORATION AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 221 (1933); Jensen & Meckling, supra note 19, at 308-09.
21. Aronson v. Lewis, 473 A.2d 805, 811 (Del. 1984) (“If the stockholders are displeased with the actions of their elected representatives, the powers of corporate democracy are at their disposal to turn the board out.”). But see Lucian Ayre Bebchuk, The Case for Shareholder Access to the Ballot, 59 BUS. LAW. 43, 45-46 (2003) (arguing that corporations are undemocratic because managements’ board nominees are usually unopposed); Lucian Bebchuk, The Case for Increasing Shareholder Power, 118 HARV. L. REV. 833, 849-50 (2004) (arguing that the United States should eschew the view of the “modern corporation as a ‘purely representative democracy’”); Daniel J.H. Greenwood, Markets and Democracy: The Illegitimacy of Corporate Law, 74 UMKC L. REV. 41, 41 (2005) (“Corporate law is chosen by the very corporate managers who ought to be controlled by it, and created by lawyers, legislatures and judges unanswerable to the people whose lives are affected by it.”).
22. Douglas Litowitz, The Corporation as God, 30 J. CORP. L. 501 (2005).
23. See Trustees of Dartmouth Coll. v. Woodward, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 518, 569 (1819); FREDERIC W. MAITLAND, Moral Personality and Legal Personality, in 3 THE COLLECTED PAPERS OF FREDERIC WILLIAM MAITLAND 304, 305-06 (H.A.L. Fisher ed., Logos & Co. 1975) (1911).
24. See, e.g., Santa Clara County v. S. Pac. R.R., 118 U.S. 394, 396 (1886); San Mateo v. S. Pac. R.R. (Railroad Tax Cases), 13 F. 722, 740 (C.C.D. Cal. 1882); Natasha N. Aljalian, Note, Fourteenth Amendment Personhood: Fact or Fiction?, 73 ST. JOHN’S L. REV. 495, 497-98 (1999). Corporations do not, however, have the privilege against self-incrimination. Bellis v. United States, 417 U.S. 85, 89-90 (1974); United States v. Kordel, 397 U.S. 1, 7 (1970).
25. MODEL BUS. CORP. ACT § 3.02(4) (2002).
26. Id. § 3.02(7).
27. Id. § 3.02(1); EASTERBROOK & FISCHEL, supra note 19, at 11.
28. Michael E. DeBow & Dwight R. Lee, Shareholders, Nonshareholders and Corporate Law: Communitarianism and Resource Allocation, 18 DEL. J. CORP. L. 393, 396-97 (1993) (arguing that corporations are subject to public regulation because they are public entities).
29. Liam Séamus O’Melinn, Neither Contract nor Concession: The Public Personality of the Corporation, 74 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 201 (2006). Professor O’Melinn notes that:
The corporation is a special kind of moral personality for which the law has made extensive accommodation. . . . First, although many of the most important developments in corporate law have resulted from the efforts of the nonprofit institution, the business corporation has undeservedly received the exclusive attention of corporate law theorists. Corporate law is the result of a common course of development shared by the profit and the nonprofit organizations, but the business corporation, by achieving pride of place as the corporation, has become divorced from its heritage and has been allowed to masquerade as a purely private institution. Second, given the important role that the nonprofit institution has played in the growth of corporate law, it is clear that shareholder primacy cannot be the ultimate goal of corporate law. Third, the public character of the corporation justifies greater regulation of corporate activity in the public interest.
Id. at 201.
30. William T. Allen, Our Schizophrenic Conception of the Business Corporation, 14 CARDOZO L. REV. 261, 264 (1992).
31. Friedman, supra note 18, at 32-33. A number of leading corporate law cases strongly support the property conception of the corporation. See, e.g., Revlon, Inc. v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc., 506 A.2d 173, 181-82 (Del. 1986) (recognizing the duty of the board of directors to maximize the financial interest of shareholders in the face of a hostile takeover); Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 170 N.W. 668, 684 (Mich. 1919) (“A business organization is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the shareholders.”). See also AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE, PRINCIPLES OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS § 2.01 (1994) (“[A] corporation should have as its objective the conduct of business activities with a view to enhancing corporate profit and shareholder gain.”); Lynn A. Stout, Bad and Not-So-Bad Arguments for Shareholder Primacy, 75 S. CAL. L. REV. 1189, 1190 (2002) (“Does the firm exist only to increase shareholder wealth (the ‘property’ theory)? Or, should managers also seek to serve the interests of employees, creditors, customers, and the broader society (the ‘entity’ view)?”).
32. Allen, supra note 30, at 265.
33. ADOLPH A. BERLE, JR. & GARDINER C. MEANS, THE MODERN CORPORATION AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 119-125 (1932) (discussing the separate identity and function of ownership and control groups within the corporate system and the potential conflicting interests of the two).
34. Ronald H. Coase, The Nature of the Firm, 4 ECONOMICA 386 (1937) (arguing that financial efficiencies are created by concentrating authority within a firm in a manager who directs production).
35. See Alchian & Demsetz, supra note 19 (describing the firm as a set of structured relationships between a group of individuals and a “central agent” or “employer”); Eugene F. Fama, Agency Problems and the Theory of the Firm, 88 J. POL. ECON. 288 (1980) (discussing the efficiency of separating security ownership and control within a corporation); Eugene F. Fama & Michael C. Jensen, Agency Problems and Residual Claims, 26 J.L. & ECON. 327 (1983); Eugene F. Fama & Michael C. Jensen, Separation of Ownership and Control, 26 J.L. & ECON. 301 (1983) (discussing the benefits of allocating the duty of initiating and implementing decisions to one group within an organization and the ratification and monitoring of decisions to another); Jensen & Meckling, supra note 19.
36. See Manuel A. Utset, Towards a Bargaining Theory of the Firm, 80 CORNELL L. REV. 540, 550-69 (1995).
37. Id. at 552-53.
38. See, e.g., Reza Dibadj, Reconceiving the Firm, 26 CARDOZO L. REV. 1459, 1462 (2005). Professor Dibadj notes that the flawed premise that corporations are “utility-maximizing actors” has led to poor public policy decisions. Id.
39. Jensen & Meckling, supra note 19, at 308-09.
40. Attempts to align interests of the executives with the interests of the shareholders can be most closely seen in stock option plans and restricted stock grants. Paying bonuses for good performance also helps align interests.
41. D. Gordon Smith, The Shareholder Primacy Norm, 23 J. CORP. L. 277, 278-79 (1998).
42. Id.
43. Stephen Bainbridge, The Board of Directors as Nexus of Contracts, 88 IOWA L. REV. 1 (2002).
44. Id. at 6-7.
45. Allen, supra note 30, at 265.
46. Id.
47. Stephen M. Bainbridge, Director Primacy: The Means and Ends of Corporate Governance, 97 NW. U. L. REV. 547, 560 (2003) (explaining that a corporation’s powers “flow not from shareholders alone, but from the complete set of contracts constituting the firm”); Allen, supra note 30, at 264-65; Allen, supra note 19, at 1400; Butler & Ribstein, supra note 19, at 770; Jensen & Meckling, supra note 19, at 306-07 (arguing that the corporation is the nexus of principal-agent contracts); Paul G. Mahoney, Contract or Concession? An Essay on the History of Corporate Law, 34 GA. L. REV. 873, 878-93 (2000). Contra Lewis A. Kornhauser, The Nexus of Contracts Approach to Corporations: A Comment on Easterbrook and Fischel, 89 COLUM. L. REV. 1449 (1989) (arguing that the contract metaphor, like other metaphors for the corporation, is an imperfect fit).
48. Ind. Harbor Belt R.R. Co. v. American Cyanamid Co., 916 F.2d 1174, 1182 (7th Cir. 1990) (“A corporation is not a living person but a set of contracts the terms of which determine who will bear the brunt of liability.”); see also REINIER KRAAKMAN ET AL., THE ANATOMY OF CORPORATE LAW: A COMPARATIVE AND FUNCTIONAL APPROACH § 1.2.1 (2004) (“As an economic entity, a firm fundamentally serves as a nexus of contracts: a single contracting party that coordinates the activities of suppliers of inputs and of consumers of products and services.”); Bainbridge, supra note 43, at 16 (giving as examples of the contracts to which the corporation is a party a bond indenture, an employment agreement and a collective bargaining agreement); O’Melinn, supra note 29, at 202.
49. G. Mitu Gulati et al., Connected Contracts, 47 UCLA L. REV. 887, 895 (2000).
50. Id. at 894.
51. Id.
52. Litowitz, supra note 22, at 501.
53. Id. at 502.
54. Id. at 503-04 (citing MODEL BUS. CORP. ACT § 1.40(4) (2002)).
55. Id. at 509-13.
56. Id. at 536.
57. Id.
58. Margaret M. Blair & Lynn A. Stout, A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law, 85 VA. L. REV. 247 (1999).
59. Id. at 249 (citing Alchian & Demsetz, supra note 19; Bengt Holmstrom, Moral Hazard in Teams, 13 BELL J. ECON. 324 (1982)).
60. Id.
61. See, e.g., Susanna M. Kim, Characteristics of Soulless Persons: The Applicability of the Character Evidence Rule to Corporations, 2000 U. ILL. L. REV. 763, 794 (“Because a corporation has the capacity to be an intentional actor and to modify its actions after learning of unintended harmful consequences, it may be regarded as a morally responsible being.”).
62. See Michael Keeley, Organizations as Non Persons, 15 J. OF VALUE INQUIRY 149, 149 (1981) (rejecting the idea that a corporation is a moral person because it has no “goals or intentions”); Michael B. Metzger & Dan R. Dalton, Seeing the Elephant: An Organizational Perspective on Corporate Moral Agency, 33 AM. BUS. L.J. 489, 493 (1996) (“Whatever organizations may be, they are not people.”); Manuel Velasquez, Why Corporations Are Not Morally Responsible for Anything They Do, in COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY: FIVE DECADES OF DEBATE IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ETHICS 111, 120 (Larry May & Stacey Hoffman eds., 1991) (arguing that corporations are not moral persons because they are not capable of acting intentionally).
63. Friedman, supra note 18, at 32.
64. BAKAN, supra note 5, at 34. Professor Bakan notes “the corporation can neither recognize nor act upon moral reasons to refrain from harming others. Nothing in its legal makeup limits what it can do to others in pursuit of its selfish ends, and it is compelled to cause harm when the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs.” Id. at 60.
65. Ernest Renan, What Is a Nation? in NATIONALISM IN EUROPE, 1815 TO THE PRESENT: A READER 49 (Stuart Woolf ed., 1996). Renan defined a nation as follows:
A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which, strictly speaking, are just one, constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the common possession of a rich legacy of memories; the other is the actual consent, the desire to live together, the will to continue to value the heritage that has been received in common . . . . To have the common glories in the past, and will in the present; to have done great things together, and to do more of them again: these are the essential conditions to being a people.
Id. at 57-58. Renan also called the nation “a soul . . .the outcome of a long and strenuous past of sacrifice and devotion . . . a heritage of glory and regrets to share in the past; one and the same programme to be realized in the future.” Id. at 58.
66. JOSEPH STALIN, MARXISM AND THE NATIONAL QUESTION: SELECTED WRITINGS AND SPEECHES 12 (1942).
67. J.M. KELLY, A SHORT HISTORY OF WESTERN LEGAL THEORY 346 (1992).
68. JOHN STUART MILL, CONSIDERATIONS ON REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 42 (Currin V. Shields ed., Bobbs-Merrill 1958) (1861) (“[T]he ideally best form of government is that in which the sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last resort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the community . . . .”).
69. MURRAY KNUTTILA & WENDEE KUBIK, STATE THEORIES: CLASSICAL, GLOBAL AND FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES 50 (Robert Clarke ed., 3d ed. 2000) (1987) (quoting FROM MAX WEBER: ESSAYS IN SOCIOLOGY 78 (H.H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills eds., 1958)). Weber’s thoughts were originally put forth in a speech given in 1918 in Munich.
70. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT & DISCOURSES 16-18 (6th prtg. 1930).
71. ERIC J. HOBSBAWM, NATIONS AND NATIONALISM SINCE 1780: PROGRAM, MYTH, REALITY 14-18 (2d ed. 1992) (noting that the old meaning of the word nation “envisaged mainly the ethnic unit,” while recent usage stresses “political unity and independence”); see also BENJAMIN AKZIN, STATE AND NATION 8-10 (W.A. Robson ed., 1964) (noting that the term “nation” usually refers to common ethnicity). But see JOHN A. ARMSTRONG, NATIONS BEFORE NATIONALISM 3-9 (1982) (noting that the concepts of a nation and an ethnic group have often been conflated).
72. The United Nations Charter states that one purpose of the United Nations is to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace. U.N. Charter art. 1, para. 2. For more information on the principle of self-determination, see ALLEN BUCHANAN, JUSTICE, LEGITIMACY, AND SELF-DETERMINATION (2004); HURST HANNUM, AUTONOMY, SOVEREIGNTY, AND SELF-DETERMINATION: THE ACCOMMODATION OF CONFLICTING RIGHTS (1990); NOMOS XLV, YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR POLITICAL AND LEGAL PHILOSOPHY, SECESSION AND SELF-DETERMINATION (Stephen Macedo & Allen Buchanan eds., 2003); Avishai Margalit & Joseph Raz, National Self-Determination, 87 J. PHIL. 439 (1990); Yael Tamir, The Right to National Self-Determination, 58 SOC. RES. 565 (1991).
73. Press Release, Secretary General, Secretary-General Presents His Annual Report to General Assembly, U.N. Doc. SG/SM/7136, GA/9596 (Sept. 20, 1999), available at http://www.un.org/News/Press/ docs/1999/19990920.sgsm7136.html. The United Nations has taken measures to regulate multinationals. See U.N. Econ. & Soc. Council (ESOCOC), Sub-Comm’n on Promotion & Prot. of Human Rights, Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/12/Rev.2 (Aug. 13, 2003), available at http://www1.umn. edu/humanrts/links/norms-Aug2003.html; see also Larry Catá Backer, Multinational Corporations, Transnational Law: The United Nations’ Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations As a Harbinger of Corporate Social Responsibility in International Law, 37 COLUM. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 287 (2006) (discussing the impact that the United Nations’ Norms will have on corporate responsibility).
74. Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States art. 1, Dec. 26, 1933, 49 Stat. 3097, 165 L.N.T.S. 19.
75. Id.; see also RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF THE FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 201 (1986) (“Under international law, a state is an entity that has a defined territory and a permanent population, under the control of its own government . . . .”).
76. ADAM SMITH, AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS 213-44 (Edwin Cannan ed., Univ. of Chi. Press 1976) (1776); see also Greenwood, supra note 9 (“If our major corporations share many of the characteristics of sovereigns, they should share the responsibilities as well.”).
77. SMITH, supra note 76, at 213.
78. Id. at 231. Similarly, John Locke noted that the sovereign possesses “a right of making laws, with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties for the regulating and preserving of property.” JOHN LOCKE, TWO TREATISES ON GOVERNMENT 268 (Peter Laslett ed., Cambridge Univ. Press 1988) (1690).
79. SMITH, supra note 76, at 244.
80. ELLEN GRIGSBY, ANALYZING POLITICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL SCIENCE 50 (Wadsworth/Thomson Learning 2002) (1999).
81. STEVEN L. SPIEGEL ET AL., WORLD POLITICS IN A NEW ERA 700 (3d ed., Wadsworth/Thomson Learning 2004).
82. Olli Lagerspetz, National Self-Determination and Ethnic Minorities, 25 MICH. J. INT’L L. 1299, 1299 (2004); ERNEST GELLNER, NATIONS AND NATIONALISM 1 (R.I. Moore et al. eds., 1983) (defining “nationalism” as “primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent”).
83. Lagerspetz, supra note 82, at 1299.
84. Id.
85. ALDOUS HUXLEY, BRAVE NEW WORLD (Harper & Row 1946) (1932).
86. KURT VONNEGUT, JR., PLAYER PIANO(Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1966) (1952).
87. EDWARD BELLAMY, LOOKING BACKWARD (Daniel H. Borus ed., St. Martin’s Press 1995) (1888).
88. Litowitz, supra note 22, at 536.
89. 1 OPPENHEIM’S INTERNATIONAL LAW § 34, at 121 (Robert Jennings & Arthur Watts eds., 9th ed. 1992).
90. Aristide R. Zolberg, The Dawn of Cosmopolitan Denizenship, 7 IND. J. GLOBAL LEGAL STUD. 511, 511 (2000) (citing Linda Bosniak, Citizenship Denationalized, 7 IND. J. GLOBAL LEGAL STUD. 447 (2000)) (discussing the devolution of the concept of citizenship away from the nation-state to a “hypernationalist version of citizenship”).
91. RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF THE FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 201 cmt. c (1986).
92. Catholic-pages.com, Vatican City: Population, http://www.catholic-pages.com/vatican/vatican_ city.asp (last visited Nov. 26, 2007).
93. See Wal-MartFacts.com, Employment and Diversity, http://www.walmartfacts.com/featuredtopics/ ?id=3 (last visited Nov. 26, 2007).
94. Fordham Law School, Event Details, http://law.fordham.edu/ihtml/ eventitemPP.ihtml?id=37&idc= 6763&template=cle (last visited Sept. 14, 2006).
95. Id.
96. Micheline Labelle & Franklin Midy, Re-Reading Citizenship and the Transnational Practice of Immigrants, 25 J. OF ETHNIC & MIGRATION STUD. 213, 217 (1999).
97. Political Scientist Ellen Grigsby notes that “the very origins of the word nation attest to such foundations, because nation is based on the older Latin word natus (birth), and nations generally consist of people whose sense of unity is based on something shared by virtue of the group into which they are born.” GRIGSBY, supra note 80, at 58. See also WALTER BERNS, MAKING PATRIOTS 11 (2001) (arguing that patriotism must “be cultivated because no one is born loving his country; such love is not natural, but has to be somehow taught or acquired”).
98. Bruno S. Frey, Flexible Citizenship for a Global Society, 2 POL. PHIL. & ECON. 93, 94-95 (2003). Frey proposes to transfer the citizenship relationship from the governmental realm “to a more general social setting” and to conceptualize citizenship as temporary, multiple, partial, or organizational. Id.
99. Id. (citing Linn Van Dyne et al., Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Construct, Redefinition, Measurement and Validation, 37 J. OF MGMT. 765 (1994); Dennis W. Organ, The Motivational Basis of Organizational Citizenship Behavior, in 12 RESEARCH IN ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR: AN ANNUAL SERIES OF ANALYTICAL ESSAYS AND CRITICAL REVIEWS 43 (Barry M. Staw & L.L. Cummings eds., 1990)).
100. See, e.g., KIM S. CAMERON & ROBERT E. QUINN, DIAGNOSING AND CHANGING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE (1999); Bill Munck, Changing a Culture of Face Time, in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ON CULTURE AND CHANGE (2002); E.H. SCHEIN, ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIP (2d ed. 1992); R. Charan, Conquering a Culture of Indecision, 79 HARV. BUS. REV. 75 (2001).
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101. BENJAMIN R. BARBER, JIHAD VS. MCWORLD: HOW GLOBALISM AND TRIBALISM ARE RESHAPING THE WORLD 17 (1996); see also Azizah Y. al-Hibri, The American Corporation in the Twenty-First Century: Future Forms of Structure and Governance, 31 U. RICH. L. REV. 1399 (1997). Professor al-Hibri states that
Id. at 1451-52.
102. See Miriam Erez, Make Management Practice Fit the National Culture, in THE BLACKWELL HANDBOOK OF PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR 419, 431 (E.A. Locke ed., Blackwell Pub. 2000). Erez stresses that
Id.
103. See generally Uzoamaka P. Anakwe & Jeffrey H. Greenhaus, Effective Socialization of Employees: Socialization Content Perspective, 11 J. OF MANAGERIAL ISSUES 315 (1999) (examining the effectiveness of corporate socialization measures); C.A. O’Reilly III, J. Chatman & D.F. Caldwell, People and Organizational Culture: A Profile Comparison Approach to Assessing Person-Organization Fit, 34 ACAD. OF MGMT. J. 487 (1991) (developing and validating a test for assessing person-organization fit, which predicts job satisfaction and organizational commitment to an employee).
104. Erez, supra note 102, at 431.
105. The approach to suffrage as one of inclusion or exclusion of resident non-citizens often depends on the nation’s view of voting either as a fundamental human right or merely as a citizen’s right. See generally Harald Waldrauch, Electoral Rights for Foreign Nationals: A Comparative Overview of Regulations in 36 Countries (European Ctr. for Soc. Welfare Policy, Paper No. 73, 2003), available at http://www.anu.edu.au/NEC/Archive/waldrauch_paper.pdf (explaining the criteria used by several nations in decisions to either grant or deny voting rights).
106. Treaty on European Union tit. II, art. 86 (Maastricht Treaty), Feb. 7, 1992, 31 I.L.M. 247, 1992 O.J. (C 191) (amended at 2002 O.J. (C 325)). Article 8b of Title II of the Maastricht Treaty states: “Every citizen of the Union residing in a Member State of which he is not a national shall have the right to vote and to stand as a candidate at municipal elections in the Member State in which he resides, under the same conditions as nationals of that State.” Id. at art. 8b.
107. See al-Hibri, supra note 101, at 1451. Professor al-Hibri notes that
Id.
108. See Corfu Channel (U.K. v. Alb.) 1949 I.C.J. 4, 43 (Apr. 9) (separate opinion of Judge Alvarez) (“By sovereignty, we understand the whole body of rights and attributes which a State possesses in its territory, to the exclusion of all other States, and also in its relations with other States.”). But see 2 KARL R. POPPER, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES51 (5th ed. 1966) (“[T]he political demand that the territory of every state should coincide with the territory inhabited by one nation, is by no means so self-evident as it seems to appear to many people to-day.”).
109. RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 402 (1986).
110. OPPENHEIM’S INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 89, § 102, at 327 (noting that Vatican City is generally viewed as a nation-state, despite its small size).
111. Schachter, supra note 2, at 8 (“The mobility of capital and technology—plus the global communications networks—is viewed as obliterating spatial lines, making nonsense of geographic demarcations.”). For additional articles on the topics of sub-state nationalism and indigenous peoples, see S. James Anaya, International Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples: The Move Toward the Multicultural State, 21 ARIZ. J. INT’L & COMP. L. 13 (2004); Erica-Irene Daes, The Concepts of Self-Determination and Autonomy of Indigenous Peoples in the Draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 14 ST. THOMAS L. REV. 259 (2002); Hurst Hannun, New Developments in Indigenous Rights, 28 VA. J. INT’L L. 649 (1988); Siegfried Wiessner, Rights and Status of Indigenous Peoples: A Global Comparative and International Legal Analysis, 12 HARV. HUM. RTS. J. 57 (1999).
112. CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... os/ce.html (last visited Nov. 26, 2007).
113. CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... os/gh.html (last visited Nov. 26, 2007).
114. CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... os/ho.html (last visited Nov. 26, 2007).
115. CNN.com, Fortune Global 500, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2006/ snapshots/1551.html (last visited Nov. 4, 2007).
116. Opesc.org, BP, http://www.opesc.org/fiche-societe/fich ... reprise=BP (last visited Nov. 4, 2007).
117. John Porretto, Exxon Mobil Posts Record Annual Profit, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Feb. 1, 2007, available at http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id ... _article=1.
118. CNNMoney.com, Fortune Global 500, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/ fortune/global500/2006/ (last visited Nov. 4, 2007). Comparing the economic power of a nation with that of a company is difficult; GDP and revenues are different measures and the conclusions that can be drawn from comparing them are, admittedly, limited.
119. CNNMoney.com, Fortune Global 500, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/ global500/2006/full_list/index.html (last visited Nov. 4, 2007).
120. Id.
121. MICKLETHWAIT & WOOLDRIDGE, supra note 15, at 176.
122. Id.
123. Id.
124. Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, supra note 74, 49 Stat. at 3097, 165 L.N.T.S. at 19; see also RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF THE FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 201 (1986).
125. OPPENHEIM’S INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 89, § 33, at 120.
126. See supra notes 33-40 and accompanying text.
127. MADAWI AL-RASHEED, A HISTORY OF SAUDI ARABIA 117 (2002) (“During the war, as far as Saudi Arabia was concerned, ARAMCO was the ‘United States’. . . . ARAMCO was responsible for facilitating contact between the USA and Saudi Arabia.”).
128. Windows to be Localized in 14 Indian Languages, THE TRIBUNE ONLINE EDITION (Chandigarh, India), Nov. 16, 2004, available at http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20041117/biz.htm.
129. Thomas Friedman, Go West, Old Men, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 26, 2006, at A19.
130. Id.
131. Francesco Guerrera, Stepping into the Breach at CSFB: Brady Dougan, Credit Suisse First Boston’s Newly Installed Chief Executive, Takes Over From John Mack, THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE, Nov. 2004, available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... _n7586517; BusinessWeek.com, Leaders of Europe’s BW 50:1 BHP Billiton, available at http://images.businessweek.com/ss/05/06/ 0526eubw50/index_01.htm; Press Release, Sony Ericsson, Beijing Board Meeting Confirms Sony Ericsson’s Commitment to China (Dec. 8, 2004) (on file with Sony Ericsson).
132. Press Release, Perot Systems, Importance of India Underscored by Historic Perot Systems Board Meeting (Mar. 14, 2005) (on file with Perot Systems).
133. See, e.g., Guerrera, supra note 131.
134. SHAUN RIORDAN, THE NEW DIPLOMACY 4 (2003) (“[M]inisters will often know their opposite numbers far better than any diplomat can. The same is true of business executives, whose dependence on embassies for advice or to arrange meetings has accordingly diminished.”).
135. Where the market entry will be through acquisition, companies are less likely to establish offices prior to market entry, as this sends a strong signal of interest in a particular market, and can artificially inflate the share prices of likely targets.
136. RIORDAN, supra note 134, at 4 (arguing that traditional diplomatic approaches are lacking and that the private sector must play a role in diplomacy).
137. Id. at 9 (asserting that, at the multinational level, many firms shun overt national identification).
138. Id. at 7.
139. Id.
140. Letter from Adam Smith to William Eden (Dec. 15, 1783), in THE CORRESPONDENCE OF ADAM SMITH 271-72 (Ernest Campbell Mossner & Ian Simpson Ross eds., 1987).
141. Schachter, supra note 2, at 9 (citing David C. Korten, Sustainable Development, 9 WORLD POL’Y J. 157, 173 (1992)).
142. See generally Richard Sherman & Johan Eliasson, Trade Disputes and Non-State Actors: New Institutional Arrangements and the Privatization of Commercial Diplomacy, 29 WORLD ECON. 473 (2006) (examining the gradual process and international phenomenon of the privatization of commercial diplomacy).
143. See Schachter, supra note 2, at 9.
144. See Korten, supra note 141, at 173; David Hryck & Brian Andreoli, Foreign Tax Strategies Can Be Boon to Multinationals, FIN. EXECUTIVE, Sept. 1, 2005, at 56.
145. Hryck & Andreoli, supra note 144, at 57.
146. See id.
147. Arthur Bright, Firestorm over Danish Muhammad Cartoons Continues, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, Feb. 1, 2006.
148. Erik Kirschbaum, Boycott of American Goods Over Iraq War Gains Pace, REUTERS, Mar. 25, 2003, available at http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/pri ... 325-10.htm.
149. The trend of corporations taking on the attributes of the sovereign is not unidirectional. Governments occasionally find it advantageous to form corporations to act as quasi-governmental agencies. Two good examples of this are the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the United States and China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Cooperation.
150. Michael K. Addo, Human Rights Perspectives of Corporate Groups, 37 CONN. L. REV. 667, 670-73 (2005).
151. Report of the International Committee of Jurists on the Legal Aspects of the Aaland Islands Question, 1 LEAGUE OF NATIONS OFFICIAL JOURNAL, Special Supp. No. 3, 7 (1920).
152. Id. at 6.
153. Id.
154. The Dutch East India Company had broad powers, including the “the right to wage war and the right to make treaties with foreign powers.” Tonio Andrade, The Company’s Chinese Pirates: How the Dutch East India Company Tried to Lead a Coalition of Pirates to War Against China, 1621-1662, 15 J. OF WORLD HIST. 415, 423 (2004).
155. See David Alan Sklansky, Private Police and Democracy, 43 AM. CRIM. L. REV. 89 (2006); Elizabeth E. Joh, Conceptualizing the Private Police, 2005 UTAH L. REV. 573 (2005); Sklansky, supra note 6, at 1166-67. Sklansky notes that little has been written about private policing and that what little has been written often deals with legal issues relating to security personnel. Id.
156. P. W. SINGER, CORPORATE WARRIORS: THE RISE OF THE PRIVATIZED MILITARY INDUSTRY 210 (2003) (noting that private forces are sometimes used where the government opts not to use force); see also Todd S. Milliard, Overcoming Post-Colonial Myopia: A Call to Recognize and Regulate Private Military Companies, 176 MIL. L. REV. 1 (2003); Clifford J. Rosky, Force, Inc.: The Privatization of Punishment, Policing, and Military Force in Liberal States, 36 CONN. L. REV. 879 (2004); P. W. Singer, War, Profits, and the Vacuum of Law: Privatized Military Firms and International Law, 42 COLUM. J. TRANSNAT’L L. 521 (2004); Juan Carlos Zarate, The Emergence of a New Dog of War: Private International Security Companies, International Law, and the New World Disorder, 34 STAN. J. INT’L L. 75 (1998). General Paul Kern, then Commanding General of the U.S. Army Material Command, noted before Congress that the United States military has seen an unprecedented level of contractors on the battlefield, with more than a division’s worth of contractors working side-by-side with U.S. soldiers. Contracting in Iraq, Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Gov’t Reform, 108th Cong. (2004) (statement of Paul J. Kern, Commanding General, U.S. Army Material Command), available at http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true &db=mth&AN =32Y1364275198&site=ehost-live. Kern stated, “They too are our troops and we need to ensure that the policies and systems are in place to support and take care of our total force, including our contractors.” Id.
157. Ken Wiwa, Nigeria Can Help Create A More Global Economy, FINANCIAL TIMES, Nov. 9, 2005, at 19; see also Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 226 F.3d 88, 92 (2d Cir. 2000) (plaintiffs alleged that a Shell subsidiary “recruited the Nigerian police and military to attack local villages and suppress the organized opposition to its development activity”).
158. See Mark Babineck, Private Prisons Filling Up Fast, Too: Demand Forces Governments to Take a Gamble On Some Facilities, HOUSTON CHRON., Aug. 25, 2007, at A1 (“Private facilities, either owned by for-profit companies or governments that contract out their management, for years have become an increasingly important relief valve for public systems at or near capacity.”); Ira P. Robbins, The Legal Dimensions of Private Incarceration, 38 AM. U. L. REV. 531 (1989) (noting that, during the 1980s, the government began looking seriously into privatizing the running of America’s prisons and jails in order to reduce some of the stress on state and federal government, and explaining the legal issues associated therewith).
159. Theiia.org, International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing, Introduction, http://www.theiia.org/guidance/standard ... framework/ standards/standards-for-the-professional-practice-of-internal-auditing/ (last visited Nov. 26, 2007).
160. See THE INSTITUTE OF INTERNAL AUDITORS, PRACTICE ADVISORY 1210.A2-2, AUDITOR’S RESPONSIBILITIES RELATING TO FRAUD INVESTIGATION, REPORTING, RESOLUTION AND COMMUNICATION (“Investigations should be designed to discover the full nature and extent of the fraudulent activity, not just the event that may have initiated the investigation.”).
161. Id. (“Management should consider whether the investigator or management reaches a conclusion of fraud, or whether the company refers the facts to outside authorities for their conclusion. A judgment that fraud has occurred may, in some jurisdictions, only be made by law enforcement or judicial authorities.”); see also THE INSTITUTE OF INTERNAL AUDITORS, PRACTICE ADVISORY 2440-3, COMMUNICATING SENSITIVE INFORMATION WITHIN AND OUTSIDE THE CHAIN OF COMMAND (providing guidance to internal auditors regarding when to share information with law enforcement authorities).
162. Damon Darlin, Report Shows H.P. Sought Expert to Help Find Leak, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 3, 2006, at C2.
163. Kristen Hays, Vinson & Elkins Lawyer Says Firm Investigated Enron Complaints, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Apr. 6, 2006, available at http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1144228261326.
164. See, e.g., Republican Mountain Silver Mines v. Brown, 58 F. 644 (8th Cir. 1893). The Brown court noted that:
Id. at 647.
165. See generally David H. Bayley & Clifford D. Shearing, The Future of Policing, 30 L. & SOC’Y REV. 585 (1996) (examining the restructuring of policing in developed democracies); PRIVATIZING THE UNITED STATES JUSTICE SYSTEM: POLICE, ADJUDICATION, AND CORRECTIONS SERVICES FROM THE PRIVATE SECTOR (Gary W. Bowman et al. eds., 1992) (collecting and publishing essays on the partnership between the justice system and the private sector).
166. TOWARDS A SCIENCE OF INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION: COLLECTED EMPIRICAL RESEARCH app. 1, at 341 (Christopher R. Drahozal & Richard W. Naimark eds., 2005).
167. Executive Summary, INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION: CORPORATE ATTITUDES AND PRACTICE 2006 (Price Waterhouse Coopers/Univ. of London Sch. of Int’l Arbitration, London), May 2006, at 2, available at http://www.pwc.com/extweb/pwcpublicatio ... 003177F0/$ file/pwc_IA_Study.pdf.
168. Schachter, supra note 2, at 12.
169. See generally Cecilia H. Morgan, Employment Dispute Resolution Processes 2004, 11 TEX. WESLEYAN L. REV. 31 (2004); CPR INSTITUTE FOR DISPUTE RESOLUTION, INC., HOW COMPANIES MANAGE EMPLOYMENT DISPUTES: A COMPENDIUM OF LEADING CORPORATE EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMS 43 (2002). Following the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20 (1991), employers have been requiring that employees agree to arbitrate employment disputes as a condition of employment. The Supreme Court stated in Gilmer that “[m]ere inequality in bargaining power . . . is not a sufficient reason to hold that arbitration agreements are never enforceable in the employment context.” Id. at 33; see also Kenneth F. Dunham, Sailing Around Erie: The Emergence of a Federal General Common Law of Arbitration, 6 PEPP. DISP. RESOL. L.J. 197, 222 (2006) (noting that although employees may be bound to arbitrate, the federal government is likely exempt from those arbitration provisions); Kenneth F. Dunham, Great Gilmer’s Ghost: The Haunting Tale of the Role of Employment Arbitration in the Disappearance of Statutory Rights in Discrimination Cases, 29 AM. J. TRIAL ADVOC. 303, 324-25 (2005) (discussing how businesses profit from the fact that statutory rights are poorly protected in employment discrimination cases).
170. See, e.g., Flagg Bros. v. Brooks, 436 U.S. 149, 161-62 (1978) (noting that the settlement of disputes between private parties is not an exclusive governmental function).
171. Lisa B. Bingham, Employment Arbitration: The Repeat Player Effect, 1 EMPL. RTS. & EMPL. POL’Y J. 189 (1997).
172. See generally Margaret Jane Radin, Online Standardization and the Integration of Text and Machine, 70 FORDHAM L. REV. 1125 (2002); Margaret Jane Radin, Regime Change in Intellectual Property: Superseding the Law of the State with the “Law” of the Firm, 1 U. OTTAWA L. & TECH. J. 173 (2003).
173. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 1 (1979) (emphasis added).
174. E. ALLAN FARNSWORTH, CONTRACTS 3 (1982).
175. Keith Highet, The Enigma of the Lex Mercatoria, 63 TUL. L. REV. 613, 613 (1989) (citing Georges R. Delaume, Comparative Analysis as a Basis of Law in State Contracts: The Myth of the Lex Mercatoria, 63 TUL. L. REV. 577 (1988)).
176. Id. at 614.
177. Schachter, supra note 2, at 12.
178. Larry Catá Backer, Economic Globalization and the Rise of Efficient Systems of Global Private Lawmaking: Wal-Mart as Global Legislator, 39 CONN. L. REV. 1739 (2007).
179. Id. at 1748.
180. Id. at 1750.
181. Pub. L. No. 95-213, 91 Stat. 1494 (1977) (codified as amended in scattered sections of 15 U.S.C.).
182. Pub. L. No. 107-204, 116 Stat. 745 (2002).
183. See Clyde Stoltenberg et al., A Comparative Analysis of Post-Sarbanes-Oxley Corporate Governance Developments in the U.S. and European Union: The Impact of Tensions Created by Extraterritorial Application of Section 404, 53 AM. J. COMP. L. 457, 458-74 (2005). The extraterritorial application of Sarbanes-Oxley is limited, however. Certain provisions apply abroad, while others do not. See Carnero v. Boston Scientific Corp., 433 F.3d 1, 16 (1st Cir. 2006) (holding that the civil whistleblower protection provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act does not have extraterritorial application). Some extraterritorial application of U.S. securities laws is appropriate and necessary to protect U.S. investors. See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW § 416, cmt. a (1987) (the reach and application of federal securities laws depends upon their reasonableness and linkage to the protection of American investors and capital markets).
184. See generally Backer, supra note 73 (considering the ramifications of current efforts to internationalize regulation of corporate social responsibility).
185. Jose A. Tabuena & Chris Mondini, Internal Reporting and Whistleblowing, in BUSINESS AGAINST CORRUPTION, IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 10TH UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL COMPACT PRINCIPLE AGAINST CORRUPTION 92 (2006) (noting both that recent legal decisions and cultural differences have made the establishment of anonymous employee whistle-blowing in Germany difficult).
186. See Erik Berglof & Stijn Claessens, Enforcement and Corporate Governance 19-24 (World Bank Policy Research, Working Paper No. 3409, 2004), available at http://econ.worldbank.org/external/ default/main?pagePK=64165259&theSitePK=469372&piPK=64165421&menuPK=64166093&entityI D=000012009_20041006152130.
187. See generally Harold I. Abramson, A Fifth Branch of Government: The Private Regulators and Their Constitutionality, 16 HASTINGS CONST. L. Q. 165 (1989) (discussing the constitutionality of regulation by “private agencies”); Robert W. Hamilton, Prospects for the Nongovernmental Development of Regulatory Standards, 32 AM. U. L. REV. 455 (1983) (examining “the extent to which the social value judgments reflected in regulatory standards may be made by non-governmental agencies and accepted by the governmental agency rather than be created by the governmental agency through its own internal processes”); Harold J. Krent, Fragmenting the Unitary Executive: Congressional Delegations of Administrative Authority Outside the Federal Government, 85 NW. U. L. REV. 62 (1990) (examining the constitutional questions posed by congressional delegation of administrative power to state officials, private officials, and private groups). So long as the regulatory work is not exclusively reserved to the state, private entities have been allowed to act. See, e.g., Blum v. Yaretzky, 457 U.S. 991, 992 (1982) (private nursing home could decide whether to discharge or transfer Medicaid patients to a lower level of care without violating due process).
188. Common examples of self-regulation include the American Bar Association’s accreditation of law schools in the United States, The American Bar Association’s Role in the Law School Accreditation Process: A Report of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, 32 J. LEGAL EDUC. 195 (1982), the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s setting of “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles” and “Generally Accepted Auditing Standards,” James F. Strother, The Establishment of Generally Accepted Auditing Standards, 28 VAND. L. REV. 201 (1975), and the Better Business Bureau, Abramson, supra note 187, at n.6. See also Douglas H. Ginsburg, Administration Efforts to Enhance the Opportunities for Self-Regulation, 35 LAB. L.J. 731 (1984).
189. See Berglof & Claessens, supra note 186, at 22-23.
190. E.g., 5 U.S.C. § 553 (2000) (providing that general notice of a proposed rule must be published in the Federal Register and the agency must give the interested parties opportunity to participate in the rulemaking).
191. Schachter, supra note 2, at 8-9 (citing Vincent Cable, The Diminished Nation-State: A Study in the Loss of Economic Power, 124(2) DAEDALUS 23, 27 (1995) (“The sheer scale of profit-seeking finance capital that can be mobilized in currency markets far exceeds what any government, or even governments acting in concert can put against it.”)).
192. LUDWIG VON MISES, THE THEORY OF MONEY AND CREDIT 43 (H.E. Batson trans., Liberty Fund 1981) (1912).
193. GEORG FRIEDRICH KNAPP, THE STATE THEORY OF MONEY (Simon Publications 2003) (1905).
194. GLYN DAVIES, A HISTORY OF MONEY FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY 26 (3d ed. Univ. of Wales Press 2002) (1994) (noting that Knapp’s work was translated into English through the efforts of Keynes); see also JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, MONETARY REFORM (1923).
195. DAVIES, supra note 194, at 26. Knapp’s explanation of the state’s role in the creation of money is as follows:
[quite]The State as guardian of the law declares that the property of being the means of payment should be inherent in certain stamped pieces as such, and not in the material of the pieces . . . . The State, not the jurist, creates [money].
In all these cases the impulse comes from the political action of the State, jurisprudence only drawing its conclusions from the State’s action as it needs them.[/quote]
KNAPP, supra note 193, at 40.
196. DAVIES, supra note 194, at 26.
197. See Global Financial Data, supra note 14; Greenwood, supra note 9, at 3 (citing M.F. LINDLEY, THE ACQUISITION AND GOVERNMENT OF BACKWARD TERRITORY IN INTERNATIONAL LAW 95-96 (1926)); see generally DAVIES, supra note 194. Privately minted coins whose primary purpose is the collectibles market are distinguishable from privately minted coins that were actually used as currency. For the purposes of this Article, only privately minted coins used as currency are referenced.
198. DAVIES, supra note 194, at 26.
199. Id.
200. VON MISES, supra note 192, at 41.
201. KNAPP, supra note 193, at 40-41.
202. Schachter, supra note 2, at 8-9.
203. Id. at 9 (citing Korten, supra note 141, at 173).
204. ALEX CUKIERMAN, CENTRAL BANK STRATEGY, CREDIBILITY, AND INDEPENDENCE: THEORY AND EVIDENCE 18 (4th ed. 1998).
205. Joydeep Bhattacharya & Joseph H. Haslag, Central Bank Responsibility, Seigniorage, and Welfare 1-2 (Fed. Reserve Bank of Dallas, Working Paper No. 9909, 1999), available at http://www.dallasfed.org/ research/papers/1999/wp9909.pdf (discussing the average reliance on seignorage income by sixty-nine countries from 1965 through 1994, as measured by the ratio of seignorage income to federal expenditures over the same period).
206. See Neil Reynolds, Dollar Woes? A Monetary Union Solution, GLOBE AND MAIL, Nov. 16, 2007, at B2 (noting that countries such as Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, East Timor, and Turks and Caicos have all undertaken “dollarization” and adopted U.S. currency as their national currency).
207. Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé & Martin Uribe, Dollarization and Seignorage: How Much is at Stake? 1 (Univ. Of Pa. Dep’t of Econ. Working Paper, 1999), available at http://www.econ.upenn.edu/~uribe/ seignorage.pdf#search =%22%22replace%20its%20domestic%20currency%22%22 (discussing the loss of seignorage revenue from dollarization and the lack of seignorage sharing arrangements between central banks).
208. For a discussion of the Euro’s impact on capital markets and the various European Union documents affecting the Euro, see Rosa Giovanna Barresi, The Impact of Monetary Union and the Euro on European Capital Markets: What May Be Achieved in Capital Market Integration, 28 FORDHAM INT’L L. J. 1257 (2005). Other types of monetary agreements among nations are created for other purposes. See David Stasavage & Dominique Guillaume, When are Monetary Commitments Credible? Parallel Agreements and the Sustainability of Currency Unions, 32 B.J. POL. S. 119, 125 (2002) (“Governments which enter into monetary agreements often have agreements with other member states in the domains of trade, finance, aid or security.”); see generally Lisa L. Martin, Heterogeneity, Linkage and Commons Problems, 6 J. THEORETICAL POL. 473 (1994) (providing theoretical framework for, and examples of, multi-state collaborative agreements).
209. See W.C. Boeschoten & G.E. Hebbink, Electronic Money, Currency Demand and Seignorage Loss in the G10 Countries (De Nederlandsche Bank, DNB Staff Reports No. 1, 1996), available at http://www.dnb.nl/dnb/home/file/sr001_tcm46-146796.pdf.
210. During the 2006 holiday season, the National Retail Federation reported that “[t]he fourth annual National Retail Federation (NRF) Gift Card Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, found that gift card sales will total $24.81 billion this holiday season, an impressive $6 billion increase over 2005 when gift card sales hit $18.48 billion” and estimated that the average consumer would spend more than $116 on gift cards during the 2006 holiday season. Press Release, National Retail Federation, Holiday Gift Card Sales Reach All-Time High, According to NRF (Nov. 17, 2006), available at http://www.nrf.com/content/default.asp? folder=press/release2006&file=2006giftcards.htm. In the 2005 holiday season, the National Retail Federation estimated that “gift card sales [would total] $18.48 billion” and that the average consumer would spend more than $88 on gift cards during the 2005 holiday season. Press Release, National Retail Federation, Gift Card Sales to Surge Again This Holiday as Popularity Increases, According to NRF (Nov. 17, 2005), available at http://www.nrf.com/content/ default.asp?folder=press/release2005&file=giftcards 1105.htm.
211. Boeschoten & Hebbink, supra note 209, at 2.
212. Geoffrey R. Gerdes et al., Trends in the Use of Payment Instruments in the United States, FED. RES. BULL. (Federal Reserve, Washington, D.C.), Spring 2005, at 180, 183.
213. Id.; see also Press Release, American Banking Association, Cards Gain Share in Payments Mix (Feb. 8, 2006), available at http://www.aba.com/Press+Room/020806cardsgainshare.htm (“Eighty-three percent of consumers report having a debit card . . . .”).
214. Boeschoten & Hebbink, supra note 209, at 3; see generally Gerdes et al., supra note 212, at 180 (noting that use of paper money is decreasing). We may just now be seeing the first wave of the cashless society. Snap, a crepe and bubble tea restaurant in Washington, D.C., announced recently that it had become a plastic-only establishment: cash is no longer accepted. Morning Edition: Plastic Only: Cafe Refuses to Accept Cash (National Public Radio broadcast Oct. 11, 2006), available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=6246139 (audio transcript). When the leaders of a large church noticed that giving was down, they concluded that members no longer carried much cash. The church installed giving kiosks in its foyer to allow church members to give by swiping their credit cards. Richard Fausset, At Church, an ‘ATM for Jesus,’ L.A. TIMES, Sept. 28, 2006, available at http://www.securegive.com/news_latimes_092806.html. Visa recently aired a delightfully choreographed commercial set in a deli that shows everything coming to a halt when one customer pays with cash.
215. See Press Release, eBAY Inc., eBAY Inc. Announces Second Quarter 2006 Financial Results (July 19, 2006), available at http://investor.ebay.com/news/EBAY0719-204302.pdf (noting that in the second quarter of 2006, the Total Payment Volume (TPV), or the dollar volume of payments initiated through the PayPal system, excluding the payment gateway business, was $9 billion in the second quarter of 2006, a 37% increase from the $6 billion reported in the same quarter a year earlier).
216. Boeschoten & Hebbink, supra note 209, at 11 (“[R]eserve holdings [of central banks] may be reduced if electronic money is issued outside the banking system or if banks reduce their required or free reserves due to a lower demand for deposit money.”).
217. Keith Feiler & Tim Schilling, Strong Dollar, Weak Dollar: Foreign Exchange Rates and the U.S. Economy, http://www.chicagofed.org/consumer_info ... dollar.cfm (noting that corporations purchase foreign currencies incidental to doing business in those countries); see also VON MISES, supra note 192, at 284 (“Foreign-exchange control is today primarily a device for the virtual expropriation of foreign investments. It has destroyed the international capital and money market.”).
218. ROBERT L. HEILBRONER & AARON SINGER, THE ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA: 1600 TO THE PRESENT 183 (2d ed. 1984) (noting that corporations were created to engage in “certain activities, such as charity work and other activities that were associated with the public welfare”).
219. Susan P. Hamill, From Special Privilege to General Utility: A Continuation of Willard Hurst’s Study of Corporations, 49 AM. U. L. REV. 81, 93 n.51 (1999).
220. Valentin Petkantchin, Is The Wealth of Nations’ Third Duty of the Sovereign Compatible with Laissez Fair?, 20 J. OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES 3, 9 (2006).
221. Friedman, supra note 18, at 32.
222. See, e.g., WILLIAM B. WERTHER JR. & DAVID CHANDLER, STRATEGIC CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: STAKEHOLDERS IN A GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT 3-13 (2006).
223. Daniel T. Ostas, Deconstructing Corporate Social Responsibility: Insights from Legal and Economic Theory, 38 AM. BUS. L.J. 261, 261 n.1 (2001) (citing CHRISTOPHER D. STONE, WHERE THE LAW ENDS: THE SOCIAL CONTROL OF CORPORATE BEHAVIOR 111-18 (1975)); see also Henry N. Butler & Fred S. McChesney, Why They Give at the Office: Shareholder Welfare and Corporate Philanthropy in the Contractual Theory of the Corporation, 84 CORNELL L. REV. 1195 (1999) (noting that the law allows, and shareholders often desire, some level of unprofitable corporate philanthropy).
224. Michael Lewis, The Socially Irresponsible Investor, N.Y. TIMES MAGAZINE, June 6, 2004, at 68 (“Corporate social responsibility, as taught in business schools, is apparently all about using your goodness to make more money.”). Henry Ford is credited with stating, in an attempt to explain why he paid such high wages to employees, “I do not believe that we should make such awful profits on our cars. A reasonable profit is right, but not too much.” Richard Eriksson, Notes on Chapter Two of the Corporation by Joel Bakan: Business as Usual, URBAN VANCOUVER, May 12, 2004, available at http://www. urbanvancouver. com/node/269; see also Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 170 N.W. 668 (Mich. 1919) (determining director liability for corporate action to reduce profits). As laudable as Ford’s statement sounds, Ford’s motive in paying high wages may have been as much to avoid paying profits out in the form of dividends to investors like the Dodge brothers, who were also his competitors.
225. José A. Gómez-Ibáñez, Dominique Lorrain & Meg Osius, The Future of Private Infrastructure 2 (Taubman Ctr. for State and Local Gov’t, Kennedy Sch. of Gov’t, Harvard Univ., Working Paper, 2004), available at http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubmancente ... ibanez_04_ infrastructure. pdf#search=%22%22the%20future%20of%20private%20infrastructure%22%22.
226. Id. at 2-3.
227. To finance these public works, the state taxes its citizens. We often think of a primary characteristic of government as the right to tax citizens. Corporations certainly do not have rights to tax individuals, but they do act as agents for government in collecting taxes. When I receive my paycheck from my employer, it shows the amount of taxes withheld in several areas. My employer is acting as the agent for the government in withholding those taxes and paying them over to the government on my behalf. Similarly, corporations collect taxes at the cash register and remit those taxes to state and local authorities. In addition, the legal obligations of corporations to escheat to the state abandoned property can be viewed as a way in which corporations collect taxes on behalf of the government.
228. Neil King Jr., Goodwill Hunting: Trying to Turn Its Image Around, U.S. Puts Top CEOs Out Front; State Department’s Ms. Hughes Rallies Companies to Play Bigger Role in Diplomacy; Mr. Lane Surveys a Mud Slide, WALL ST. J., Feb. 17, 2006, at A1 (noting that CEOs of Pfizer, UPS, and Xerox made the trip to Pakistan to burnish the U.S. image, and that “[p]artly at the behest of Ms. Hughes and the White House, but also prodded by their own worries, U.S. companies are jumping into the type of overseas public diplomacy long shouldered by the federal government”).
229. After Hurricane Katrina, the cover of Fortune blared “Government Broke Down. Business Stepped Up.” Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and FedEx were lauded as examples of good corporate citizens.
230. Bill Steigerwald, Government Can Take Lesson from Wal-Mart, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE REVIEW, Oct. 14, 2005, available at http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsbu ... 83909.html.
231. Press Release, Business Roundtable, Business Roundtable Launches New Web Site Dedicated to Disaster Response (Oct. 12, 2006), available at http://www.businessroundtable.org/newsroom/Document. aspx?qs=5916BF807822B0F1ADD418622FB51711FCF50C8. The goal of the Business Roundtable is to leverage “corporate resources to create a more effective response to natural disasters in the United States and abroad.” Id.
101. BENJAMIN R. BARBER, JIHAD VS. MCWORLD: HOW GLOBALISM AND TRIBALISM ARE RESHAPING THE WORLD 17 (1996); see also Azizah Y. al-Hibri, The American Corporation in the Twenty-First Century: Future Forms of Structure and Governance, 31 U. RICH. L. REV. 1399 (1997). Professor al-Hibri states that
the corporation is not just a production unit, a “cash cow,” or a profit center; it has become a community for all those in it. People spend most of their waking hours at work in the corporation; they make friends there, have meals there, and derive much of their self-esteem from work. A corporation is therefore an important community for those who work in it, and it significantly impacts on the society in which it is imbedded.
Id. at 1451-52.
102. See Miriam Erez, Make Management Practice Fit the National Culture, in THE BLACKWELL HANDBOOK OF PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR 419, 431 (E.A. Locke ed., Blackwell Pub. 2000). Erez stresses that
[m]anagers should . . . take into consideration the cultural characteristics of both the acquiring company and the acquired company. For example, when an American company acquires a Mexican company, it is not enough to know that the characteristics of the American company facilitate the acculturation process. One should also take into consideration that the cultural gap between the two companies is quite high, and that it is not easy to change the Mexican company’s culture.
Id.
103. See generally Uzoamaka P. Anakwe & Jeffrey H. Greenhaus, Effective Socialization of Employees: Socialization Content Perspective, 11 J. OF MANAGERIAL ISSUES 315 (1999) (examining the effectiveness of corporate socialization measures); C.A. O’Reilly III, J. Chatman & D.F. Caldwell, People and Organizational Culture: A Profile Comparison Approach to Assessing Person-Organization Fit, 34 ACAD. OF MGMT. J. 487 (1991) (developing and validating a test for assessing person-organization fit, which predicts job satisfaction and organizational commitment to an employee).
104. Erez, supra note 102, at 431.
105. The approach to suffrage as one of inclusion or exclusion of resident non-citizens often depends on the nation’s view of voting either as a fundamental human right or merely as a citizen’s right. See generally Harald Waldrauch, Electoral Rights for Foreign Nationals: A Comparative Overview of Regulations in 36 Countries (European Ctr. for Soc. Welfare Policy, Paper No. 73, 2003), available at http://www.anu.edu.au/NEC/Archive/waldrauch_paper.pdf (explaining the criteria used by several nations in decisions to either grant or deny voting rights).
106. Treaty on European Union tit. II, art. 86 (Maastricht Treaty), Feb. 7, 1992, 31 I.L.M. 247, 1992 O.J. (C 191) (amended at 2002 O.J. (C 325)). Article 8b of Title II of the Maastricht Treaty states: “Every citizen of the Union residing in a Member State of which he is not a national shall have the right to vote and to stand as a candidate at municipal elections in the Member State in which he resides, under the same conditions as nationals of that State.” Id. at art. 8b.
107. See al-Hibri, supra note 101, at 1451. Professor al-Hibri notes that
the term “corporate democracy” usually refers to shareholder rights, which reflects a view of the corporation as a polis where only the “owners of shares” count as citizens. In political terms, shareholders of a corporation are the only citizens of the corporate polis, and only citizens vote. Put in this way, we now recognize that our legal system does not view non-shareholders as “citizens.” This is analogous to a familiar political situation in our past where only landowners had the right to vote in an election and the non-landed, non-owners had no voting rights. We have since recognized in the political arena that those who do not own land are nevertheless an integral part of the citizenship of our country. The same recognition seems to be overdue in corporate law and practice. Getting to it, however, will require a major ideological/conceptual shift not only in the concept of “corporate citizenship,” but also in the concept of the “corporation” itself.
Id.
108. See Corfu Channel (U.K. v. Alb.) 1949 I.C.J. 4, 43 (Apr. 9) (separate opinion of Judge Alvarez) (“By sovereignty, we understand the whole body of rights and attributes which a State possesses in its territory, to the exclusion of all other States, and also in its relations with other States.”). But see 2 KARL R. POPPER, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES51 (5th ed. 1966) (“[T]he political demand that the territory of every state should coincide with the territory inhabited by one nation, is by no means so self-evident as it seems to appear to many people to-day.”).
109. RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 402 (1986).
110. OPPENHEIM’S INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 89, § 102, at 327 (noting that Vatican City is generally viewed as a nation-state, despite its small size).
111. Schachter, supra note 2, at 8 (“The mobility of capital and technology—plus the global communications networks—is viewed as obliterating spatial lines, making nonsense of geographic demarcations.”). For additional articles on the topics of sub-state nationalism and indigenous peoples, see S. James Anaya, International Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples: The Move Toward the Multicultural State, 21 ARIZ. J. INT’L & COMP. L. 13 (2004); Erica-Irene Daes, The Concepts of Self-Determination and Autonomy of Indigenous Peoples in the Draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 14 ST. THOMAS L. REV. 259 (2002); Hurst Hannun, New Developments in Indigenous Rights, 28 VA. J. INT’L L. 649 (1988); Siegfried Wiessner, Rights and Status of Indigenous Peoples: A Global Comparative and International Legal Analysis, 12 HARV. HUM. RTS. J. 57 (1999).
112. CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... os/ce.html (last visited Nov. 26, 2007).
113. CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... os/gh.html (last visited Nov. 26, 2007).
114. CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... os/ho.html (last visited Nov. 26, 2007).
115. CNN.com, Fortune Global 500, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2006/ snapshots/1551.html (last visited Nov. 4, 2007).
116. Opesc.org, BP, http://www.opesc.org/fiche-societe/fich ... reprise=BP (last visited Nov. 4, 2007).
117. John Porretto, Exxon Mobil Posts Record Annual Profit, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Feb. 1, 2007, available at http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id ... _article=1.
118. CNNMoney.com, Fortune Global 500, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/ fortune/global500/2006/ (last visited Nov. 4, 2007). Comparing the economic power of a nation with that of a company is difficult; GDP and revenues are different measures and the conclusions that can be drawn from comparing them are, admittedly, limited.
119. CNNMoney.com, Fortune Global 500, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/ global500/2006/full_list/index.html (last visited Nov. 4, 2007).
120. Id.
121. MICKLETHWAIT & WOOLDRIDGE, supra note 15, at 176.
122. Id.
123. Id.
124. Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, supra note 74, 49 Stat. at 3097, 165 L.N.T.S. at 19; see also RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF THE FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 201 (1986).
125. OPPENHEIM’S INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 89, § 33, at 120.
126. See supra notes 33-40 and accompanying text.
127. MADAWI AL-RASHEED, A HISTORY OF SAUDI ARABIA 117 (2002) (“During the war, as far as Saudi Arabia was concerned, ARAMCO was the ‘United States’. . . . ARAMCO was responsible for facilitating contact between the USA and Saudi Arabia.”).
128. Windows to be Localized in 14 Indian Languages, THE TRIBUNE ONLINE EDITION (Chandigarh, India), Nov. 16, 2004, available at http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20041117/biz.htm.
129. Thomas Friedman, Go West, Old Men, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 26, 2006, at A19.
130. Id.
131. Francesco Guerrera, Stepping into the Breach at CSFB: Brady Dougan, Credit Suisse First Boston’s Newly Installed Chief Executive, Takes Over From John Mack, THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE, Nov. 2004, available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... _n7586517; BusinessWeek.com, Leaders of Europe’s BW 50:1 BHP Billiton, available at http://images.businessweek.com/ss/05/06/ 0526eubw50/index_01.htm; Press Release, Sony Ericsson, Beijing Board Meeting Confirms Sony Ericsson’s Commitment to China (Dec. 8, 2004) (on file with Sony Ericsson).
132. Press Release, Perot Systems, Importance of India Underscored by Historic Perot Systems Board Meeting (Mar. 14, 2005) (on file with Perot Systems).
133. See, e.g., Guerrera, supra note 131.
134. SHAUN RIORDAN, THE NEW DIPLOMACY 4 (2003) (“[M]inisters will often know their opposite numbers far better than any diplomat can. The same is true of business executives, whose dependence on embassies for advice or to arrange meetings has accordingly diminished.”).
135. Where the market entry will be through acquisition, companies are less likely to establish offices prior to market entry, as this sends a strong signal of interest in a particular market, and can artificially inflate the share prices of likely targets.
136. RIORDAN, supra note 134, at 4 (arguing that traditional diplomatic approaches are lacking and that the private sector must play a role in diplomacy).
137. Id. at 9 (asserting that, at the multinational level, many firms shun overt national identification).
138. Id. at 7.
139. Id.
140. Letter from Adam Smith to William Eden (Dec. 15, 1783), in THE CORRESPONDENCE OF ADAM SMITH 271-72 (Ernest Campbell Mossner & Ian Simpson Ross eds., 1987).
141. Schachter, supra note 2, at 9 (citing David C. Korten, Sustainable Development, 9 WORLD POL’Y J. 157, 173 (1992)).
142. See generally Richard Sherman & Johan Eliasson, Trade Disputes and Non-State Actors: New Institutional Arrangements and the Privatization of Commercial Diplomacy, 29 WORLD ECON. 473 (2006) (examining the gradual process and international phenomenon of the privatization of commercial diplomacy).
143. See Schachter, supra note 2, at 9.
144. See Korten, supra note 141, at 173; David Hryck & Brian Andreoli, Foreign Tax Strategies Can Be Boon to Multinationals, FIN. EXECUTIVE, Sept. 1, 2005, at 56.
145. Hryck & Andreoli, supra note 144, at 57.
146. See id.
147. Arthur Bright, Firestorm over Danish Muhammad Cartoons Continues, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, Feb. 1, 2006.
148. Erik Kirschbaum, Boycott of American Goods Over Iraq War Gains Pace, REUTERS, Mar. 25, 2003, available at http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/pri ... 325-10.htm.
149. The trend of corporations taking on the attributes of the sovereign is not unidirectional. Governments occasionally find it advantageous to form corporations to act as quasi-governmental agencies. Two good examples of this are the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the United States and China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Cooperation.
150. Michael K. Addo, Human Rights Perspectives of Corporate Groups, 37 CONN. L. REV. 667, 670-73 (2005).
151. Report of the International Committee of Jurists on the Legal Aspects of the Aaland Islands Question, 1 LEAGUE OF NATIONS OFFICIAL JOURNAL, Special Supp. No. 3, 7 (1920).
152. Id. at 6.
153. Id.
154. The Dutch East India Company had broad powers, including the “the right to wage war and the right to make treaties with foreign powers.” Tonio Andrade, The Company’s Chinese Pirates: How the Dutch East India Company Tried to Lead a Coalition of Pirates to War Against China, 1621-1662, 15 J. OF WORLD HIST. 415, 423 (2004).
155. See David Alan Sklansky, Private Police and Democracy, 43 AM. CRIM. L. REV. 89 (2006); Elizabeth E. Joh, Conceptualizing the Private Police, 2005 UTAH L. REV. 573 (2005); Sklansky, supra note 6, at 1166-67. Sklansky notes that little has been written about private policing and that what little has been written often deals with legal issues relating to security personnel. Id.
156. P. W. SINGER, CORPORATE WARRIORS: THE RISE OF THE PRIVATIZED MILITARY INDUSTRY 210 (2003) (noting that private forces are sometimes used where the government opts not to use force); see also Todd S. Milliard, Overcoming Post-Colonial Myopia: A Call to Recognize and Regulate Private Military Companies, 176 MIL. L. REV. 1 (2003); Clifford J. Rosky, Force, Inc.: The Privatization of Punishment, Policing, and Military Force in Liberal States, 36 CONN. L. REV. 879 (2004); P. W. Singer, War, Profits, and the Vacuum of Law: Privatized Military Firms and International Law, 42 COLUM. J. TRANSNAT’L L. 521 (2004); Juan Carlos Zarate, The Emergence of a New Dog of War: Private International Security Companies, International Law, and the New World Disorder, 34 STAN. J. INT’L L. 75 (1998). General Paul Kern, then Commanding General of the U.S. Army Material Command, noted before Congress that the United States military has seen an unprecedented level of contractors on the battlefield, with more than a division’s worth of contractors working side-by-side with U.S. soldiers. Contracting in Iraq, Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Gov’t Reform, 108th Cong. (2004) (statement of Paul J. Kern, Commanding General, U.S. Army Material Command), available at http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true &db=mth&AN =32Y1364275198&site=ehost-live. Kern stated, “They too are our troops and we need to ensure that the policies and systems are in place to support and take care of our total force, including our contractors.” Id.
157. Ken Wiwa, Nigeria Can Help Create A More Global Economy, FINANCIAL TIMES, Nov. 9, 2005, at 19; see also Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 226 F.3d 88, 92 (2d Cir. 2000) (plaintiffs alleged that a Shell subsidiary “recruited the Nigerian police and military to attack local villages and suppress the organized opposition to its development activity”).
158. See Mark Babineck, Private Prisons Filling Up Fast, Too: Demand Forces Governments to Take a Gamble On Some Facilities, HOUSTON CHRON., Aug. 25, 2007, at A1 (“Private facilities, either owned by for-profit companies or governments that contract out their management, for years have become an increasingly important relief valve for public systems at or near capacity.”); Ira P. Robbins, The Legal Dimensions of Private Incarceration, 38 AM. U. L. REV. 531 (1989) (noting that, during the 1980s, the government began looking seriously into privatizing the running of America’s prisons and jails in order to reduce some of the stress on state and federal government, and explaining the legal issues associated therewith).
159. Theiia.org, International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing, Introduction, http://www.theiia.org/guidance/standard ... framework/ standards/standards-for-the-professional-practice-of-internal-auditing/ (last visited Nov. 26, 2007).
160. See THE INSTITUTE OF INTERNAL AUDITORS, PRACTICE ADVISORY 1210.A2-2, AUDITOR’S RESPONSIBILITIES RELATING TO FRAUD INVESTIGATION, REPORTING, RESOLUTION AND COMMUNICATION (“Investigations should be designed to discover the full nature and extent of the fraudulent activity, not just the event that may have initiated the investigation.”).
161. Id. (“Management should consider whether the investigator or management reaches a conclusion of fraud, or whether the company refers the facts to outside authorities for their conclusion. A judgment that fraud has occurred may, in some jurisdictions, only be made by law enforcement or judicial authorities.”); see also THE INSTITUTE OF INTERNAL AUDITORS, PRACTICE ADVISORY 2440-3, COMMUNICATING SENSITIVE INFORMATION WITHIN AND OUTSIDE THE CHAIN OF COMMAND (providing guidance to internal auditors regarding when to share information with law enforcement authorities).
162. Damon Darlin, Report Shows H.P. Sought Expert to Help Find Leak, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 3, 2006, at C2.
163. Kristen Hays, Vinson & Elkins Lawyer Says Firm Investigated Enron Complaints, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Apr. 6, 2006, available at http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1144228261326.
164. See, e.g., Republican Mountain Silver Mines v. Brown, 58 F. 644 (8th Cir. 1893). The Brown court noted that:
[A] court of equity has no power to interpose its authority for the purpose of adjusting controversies that have arisen among the shareholders or directors of a corporation relative to the proper mode of conducting the corporate business, as it may do in case of a similar controversy arising between the members of an ordinary partnership. Corporations are in a certain sense legislative bodies. They have a legislative power when the directors or shareholders are duly convened that is fully adequate to settle all questions affecting their business interests or policy . . . .
Id. at 647.
165. See generally David H. Bayley & Clifford D. Shearing, The Future of Policing, 30 L. & SOC’Y REV. 585 (1996) (examining the restructuring of policing in developed democracies); PRIVATIZING THE UNITED STATES JUSTICE SYSTEM: POLICE, ADJUDICATION, AND CORRECTIONS SERVICES FROM THE PRIVATE SECTOR (Gary W. Bowman et al. eds., 1992) (collecting and publishing essays on the partnership between the justice system and the private sector).
166. TOWARDS A SCIENCE OF INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION: COLLECTED EMPIRICAL RESEARCH app. 1, at 341 (Christopher R. Drahozal & Richard W. Naimark eds., 2005).
167. Executive Summary, INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION: CORPORATE ATTITUDES AND PRACTICE 2006 (Price Waterhouse Coopers/Univ. of London Sch. of Int’l Arbitration, London), May 2006, at 2, available at http://www.pwc.com/extweb/pwcpublicatio ... 003177F0/$ file/pwc_IA_Study.pdf.
168. Schachter, supra note 2, at 12.
169. See generally Cecilia H. Morgan, Employment Dispute Resolution Processes 2004, 11 TEX. WESLEYAN L. REV. 31 (2004); CPR INSTITUTE FOR DISPUTE RESOLUTION, INC., HOW COMPANIES MANAGE EMPLOYMENT DISPUTES: A COMPENDIUM OF LEADING CORPORATE EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMS 43 (2002). Following the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20 (1991), employers have been requiring that employees agree to arbitrate employment disputes as a condition of employment. The Supreme Court stated in Gilmer that “[m]ere inequality in bargaining power . . . is not a sufficient reason to hold that arbitration agreements are never enforceable in the employment context.” Id. at 33; see also Kenneth F. Dunham, Sailing Around Erie: The Emergence of a Federal General Common Law of Arbitration, 6 PEPP. DISP. RESOL. L.J. 197, 222 (2006) (noting that although employees may be bound to arbitrate, the federal government is likely exempt from those arbitration provisions); Kenneth F. Dunham, Great Gilmer’s Ghost: The Haunting Tale of the Role of Employment Arbitration in the Disappearance of Statutory Rights in Discrimination Cases, 29 AM. J. TRIAL ADVOC. 303, 324-25 (2005) (discussing how businesses profit from the fact that statutory rights are poorly protected in employment discrimination cases).
170. See, e.g., Flagg Bros. v. Brooks, 436 U.S. 149, 161-62 (1978) (noting that the settlement of disputes between private parties is not an exclusive governmental function).
171. Lisa B. Bingham, Employment Arbitration: The Repeat Player Effect, 1 EMPL. RTS. & EMPL. POL’Y J. 189 (1997).
172. See generally Margaret Jane Radin, Online Standardization and the Integration of Text and Machine, 70 FORDHAM L. REV. 1125 (2002); Margaret Jane Radin, Regime Change in Intellectual Property: Superseding the Law of the State with the “Law” of the Firm, 1 U. OTTAWA L. & TECH. J. 173 (2003).
173. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 1 (1979) (emphasis added).
174. E. ALLAN FARNSWORTH, CONTRACTS 3 (1982).
175. Keith Highet, The Enigma of the Lex Mercatoria, 63 TUL. L. REV. 613, 613 (1989) (citing Georges R. Delaume, Comparative Analysis as a Basis of Law in State Contracts: The Myth of the Lex Mercatoria, 63 TUL. L. REV. 577 (1988)).
176. Id. at 614.
177. Schachter, supra note 2, at 12.
178. Larry Catá Backer, Economic Globalization and the Rise of Efficient Systems of Global Private Lawmaking: Wal-Mart as Global Legislator, 39 CONN. L. REV. 1739 (2007).
179. Id. at 1748.
180. Id. at 1750.
181. Pub. L. No. 95-213, 91 Stat. 1494 (1977) (codified as amended in scattered sections of 15 U.S.C.).
182. Pub. L. No. 107-204, 116 Stat. 745 (2002).
183. See Clyde Stoltenberg et al., A Comparative Analysis of Post-Sarbanes-Oxley Corporate Governance Developments in the U.S. and European Union: The Impact of Tensions Created by Extraterritorial Application of Section 404, 53 AM. J. COMP. L. 457, 458-74 (2005). The extraterritorial application of Sarbanes-Oxley is limited, however. Certain provisions apply abroad, while others do not. See Carnero v. Boston Scientific Corp., 433 F.3d 1, 16 (1st Cir. 2006) (holding that the civil whistleblower protection provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act does not have extraterritorial application). Some extraterritorial application of U.S. securities laws is appropriate and necessary to protect U.S. investors. See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW § 416, cmt. a (1987) (the reach and application of federal securities laws depends upon their reasonableness and linkage to the protection of American investors and capital markets).
184. See generally Backer, supra note 73 (considering the ramifications of current efforts to internationalize regulation of corporate social responsibility).
185. Jose A. Tabuena & Chris Mondini, Internal Reporting and Whistleblowing, in BUSINESS AGAINST CORRUPTION, IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 10TH UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL COMPACT PRINCIPLE AGAINST CORRUPTION 92 (2006) (noting both that recent legal decisions and cultural differences have made the establishment of anonymous employee whistle-blowing in Germany difficult).
186. See Erik Berglof & Stijn Claessens, Enforcement and Corporate Governance 19-24 (World Bank Policy Research, Working Paper No. 3409, 2004), available at http://econ.worldbank.org/external/ default/main?pagePK=64165259&theSitePK=469372&piPK=64165421&menuPK=64166093&entityI D=000012009_20041006152130.
187. See generally Harold I. Abramson, A Fifth Branch of Government: The Private Regulators and Their Constitutionality, 16 HASTINGS CONST. L. Q. 165 (1989) (discussing the constitutionality of regulation by “private agencies”); Robert W. Hamilton, Prospects for the Nongovernmental Development of Regulatory Standards, 32 AM. U. L. REV. 455 (1983) (examining “the extent to which the social value judgments reflected in regulatory standards may be made by non-governmental agencies and accepted by the governmental agency rather than be created by the governmental agency through its own internal processes”); Harold J. Krent, Fragmenting the Unitary Executive: Congressional Delegations of Administrative Authority Outside the Federal Government, 85 NW. U. L. REV. 62 (1990) (examining the constitutional questions posed by congressional delegation of administrative power to state officials, private officials, and private groups). So long as the regulatory work is not exclusively reserved to the state, private entities have been allowed to act. See, e.g., Blum v. Yaretzky, 457 U.S. 991, 992 (1982) (private nursing home could decide whether to discharge or transfer Medicaid patients to a lower level of care without violating due process).
188. Common examples of self-regulation include the American Bar Association’s accreditation of law schools in the United States, The American Bar Association’s Role in the Law School Accreditation Process: A Report of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, 32 J. LEGAL EDUC. 195 (1982), the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s setting of “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles” and “Generally Accepted Auditing Standards,” James F. Strother, The Establishment of Generally Accepted Auditing Standards, 28 VAND. L. REV. 201 (1975), and the Better Business Bureau, Abramson, supra note 187, at n.6. See also Douglas H. Ginsburg, Administration Efforts to Enhance the Opportunities for Self-Regulation, 35 LAB. L.J. 731 (1984).
189. See Berglof & Claessens, supra note 186, at 22-23.
190. E.g., 5 U.S.C. § 553 (2000) (providing that general notice of a proposed rule must be published in the Federal Register and the agency must give the interested parties opportunity to participate in the rulemaking).
191. Schachter, supra note 2, at 8-9 (citing Vincent Cable, The Diminished Nation-State: A Study in the Loss of Economic Power, 124(2) DAEDALUS 23, 27 (1995) (“The sheer scale of profit-seeking finance capital that can be mobilized in currency markets far exceeds what any government, or even governments acting in concert can put against it.”)).
192. LUDWIG VON MISES, THE THEORY OF MONEY AND CREDIT 43 (H.E. Batson trans., Liberty Fund 1981) (1912).
193. GEORG FRIEDRICH KNAPP, THE STATE THEORY OF MONEY (Simon Publications 2003) (1905).
194. GLYN DAVIES, A HISTORY OF MONEY FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY 26 (3d ed. Univ. of Wales Press 2002) (1994) (noting that Knapp’s work was translated into English through the efforts of Keynes); see also JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, MONETARY REFORM (1923).
195. DAVIES, supra note 194, at 26. Knapp’s explanation of the state’s role in the creation of money is as follows:
[quite]The State as guardian of the law declares that the property of being the means of payment should be inherent in certain stamped pieces as such, and not in the material of the pieces . . . . The State, not the jurist, creates [money].
In all these cases the impulse comes from the political action of the State, jurisprudence only drawing its conclusions from the State’s action as it needs them.[/quote]
KNAPP, supra note 193, at 40.
196. DAVIES, supra note 194, at 26.
197. See Global Financial Data, supra note 14; Greenwood, supra note 9, at 3 (citing M.F. LINDLEY, THE ACQUISITION AND GOVERNMENT OF BACKWARD TERRITORY IN INTERNATIONAL LAW 95-96 (1926)); see generally DAVIES, supra note 194. Privately minted coins whose primary purpose is the collectibles market are distinguishable from privately minted coins that were actually used as currency. For the purposes of this Article, only privately minted coins used as currency are referenced.
198. DAVIES, supra note 194, at 26.
199. Id.
200. VON MISES, supra note 192, at 41.
201. KNAPP, supra note 193, at 40-41.
202. Schachter, supra note 2, at 8-9.
203. Id. at 9 (citing Korten, supra note 141, at 173).
204. ALEX CUKIERMAN, CENTRAL BANK STRATEGY, CREDIBILITY, AND INDEPENDENCE: THEORY AND EVIDENCE 18 (4th ed. 1998).
205. Joydeep Bhattacharya & Joseph H. Haslag, Central Bank Responsibility, Seigniorage, and Welfare 1-2 (Fed. Reserve Bank of Dallas, Working Paper No. 9909, 1999), available at http://www.dallasfed.org/ research/papers/1999/wp9909.pdf (discussing the average reliance on seignorage income by sixty-nine countries from 1965 through 1994, as measured by the ratio of seignorage income to federal expenditures over the same period).
206. See Neil Reynolds, Dollar Woes? A Monetary Union Solution, GLOBE AND MAIL, Nov. 16, 2007, at B2 (noting that countries such as Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, East Timor, and Turks and Caicos have all undertaken “dollarization” and adopted U.S. currency as their national currency).
207. Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé & Martin Uribe, Dollarization and Seignorage: How Much is at Stake? 1 (Univ. Of Pa. Dep’t of Econ. Working Paper, 1999), available at http://www.econ.upenn.edu/~uribe/ seignorage.pdf#search =%22%22replace%20its%20domestic%20currency%22%22 (discussing the loss of seignorage revenue from dollarization and the lack of seignorage sharing arrangements between central banks).
208. For a discussion of the Euro’s impact on capital markets and the various European Union documents affecting the Euro, see Rosa Giovanna Barresi, The Impact of Monetary Union and the Euro on European Capital Markets: What May Be Achieved in Capital Market Integration, 28 FORDHAM INT’L L. J. 1257 (2005). Other types of monetary agreements among nations are created for other purposes. See David Stasavage & Dominique Guillaume, When are Monetary Commitments Credible? Parallel Agreements and the Sustainability of Currency Unions, 32 B.J. POL. S. 119, 125 (2002) (“Governments which enter into monetary agreements often have agreements with other member states in the domains of trade, finance, aid or security.”); see generally Lisa L. Martin, Heterogeneity, Linkage and Commons Problems, 6 J. THEORETICAL POL. 473 (1994) (providing theoretical framework for, and examples of, multi-state collaborative agreements).
209. See W.C. Boeschoten & G.E. Hebbink, Electronic Money, Currency Demand and Seignorage Loss in the G10 Countries (De Nederlandsche Bank, DNB Staff Reports No. 1, 1996), available at http://www.dnb.nl/dnb/home/file/sr001_tcm46-146796.pdf.
210. During the 2006 holiday season, the National Retail Federation reported that “[t]he fourth annual National Retail Federation (NRF) Gift Card Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, found that gift card sales will total $24.81 billion this holiday season, an impressive $6 billion increase over 2005 when gift card sales hit $18.48 billion” and estimated that the average consumer would spend more than $116 on gift cards during the 2006 holiday season. Press Release, National Retail Federation, Holiday Gift Card Sales Reach All-Time High, According to NRF (Nov. 17, 2006), available at http://www.nrf.com/content/default.asp? folder=press/release2006&file=2006giftcards.htm. In the 2005 holiday season, the National Retail Federation estimated that “gift card sales [would total] $18.48 billion” and that the average consumer would spend more than $88 on gift cards during the 2005 holiday season. Press Release, National Retail Federation, Gift Card Sales to Surge Again This Holiday as Popularity Increases, According to NRF (Nov. 17, 2005), available at http://www.nrf.com/content/ default.asp?folder=press/release2005&file=giftcards 1105.htm.
211. Boeschoten & Hebbink, supra note 209, at 2.
212. Geoffrey R. Gerdes et al., Trends in the Use of Payment Instruments in the United States, FED. RES. BULL. (Federal Reserve, Washington, D.C.), Spring 2005, at 180, 183.
213. Id.; see also Press Release, American Banking Association, Cards Gain Share in Payments Mix (Feb. 8, 2006), available at http://www.aba.com/Press+Room/020806cardsgainshare.htm (“Eighty-three percent of consumers report having a debit card . . . .”).
214. Boeschoten & Hebbink, supra note 209, at 3; see generally Gerdes et al., supra note 212, at 180 (noting that use of paper money is decreasing). We may just now be seeing the first wave of the cashless society. Snap, a crepe and bubble tea restaurant in Washington, D.C., announced recently that it had become a plastic-only establishment: cash is no longer accepted. Morning Edition: Plastic Only: Cafe Refuses to Accept Cash (National Public Radio broadcast Oct. 11, 2006), available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=6246139 (audio transcript). When the leaders of a large church noticed that giving was down, they concluded that members no longer carried much cash. The church installed giving kiosks in its foyer to allow church members to give by swiping their credit cards. Richard Fausset, At Church, an ‘ATM for Jesus,’ L.A. TIMES, Sept. 28, 2006, available at http://www.securegive.com/news_latimes_092806.html. Visa recently aired a delightfully choreographed commercial set in a deli that shows everything coming to a halt when one customer pays with cash.
215. See Press Release, eBAY Inc., eBAY Inc. Announces Second Quarter 2006 Financial Results (July 19, 2006), available at http://investor.ebay.com/news/EBAY0719-204302.pdf (noting that in the second quarter of 2006, the Total Payment Volume (TPV), or the dollar volume of payments initiated through the PayPal system, excluding the payment gateway business, was $9 billion in the second quarter of 2006, a 37% increase from the $6 billion reported in the same quarter a year earlier).
216. Boeschoten & Hebbink, supra note 209, at 11 (“[R]eserve holdings [of central banks] may be reduced if electronic money is issued outside the banking system or if banks reduce their required or free reserves due to a lower demand for deposit money.”).
217. Keith Feiler & Tim Schilling, Strong Dollar, Weak Dollar: Foreign Exchange Rates and the U.S. Economy, http://www.chicagofed.org/consumer_info ... dollar.cfm (noting that corporations purchase foreign currencies incidental to doing business in those countries); see also VON MISES, supra note 192, at 284 (“Foreign-exchange control is today primarily a device for the virtual expropriation of foreign investments. It has destroyed the international capital and money market.”).
218. ROBERT L. HEILBRONER & AARON SINGER, THE ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA: 1600 TO THE PRESENT 183 (2d ed. 1984) (noting that corporations were created to engage in “certain activities, such as charity work and other activities that were associated with the public welfare”).
219. Susan P. Hamill, From Special Privilege to General Utility: A Continuation of Willard Hurst’s Study of Corporations, 49 AM. U. L. REV. 81, 93 n.51 (1999).
220. Valentin Petkantchin, Is The Wealth of Nations’ Third Duty of the Sovereign Compatible with Laissez Fair?, 20 J. OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES 3, 9 (2006).
221. Friedman, supra note 18, at 32.
222. See, e.g., WILLIAM B. WERTHER JR. & DAVID CHANDLER, STRATEGIC CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: STAKEHOLDERS IN A GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT 3-13 (2006).
223. Daniel T. Ostas, Deconstructing Corporate Social Responsibility: Insights from Legal and Economic Theory, 38 AM. BUS. L.J. 261, 261 n.1 (2001) (citing CHRISTOPHER D. STONE, WHERE THE LAW ENDS: THE SOCIAL CONTROL OF CORPORATE BEHAVIOR 111-18 (1975)); see also Henry N. Butler & Fred S. McChesney, Why They Give at the Office: Shareholder Welfare and Corporate Philanthropy in the Contractual Theory of the Corporation, 84 CORNELL L. REV. 1195 (1999) (noting that the law allows, and shareholders often desire, some level of unprofitable corporate philanthropy).
224. Michael Lewis, The Socially Irresponsible Investor, N.Y. TIMES MAGAZINE, June 6, 2004, at 68 (“Corporate social responsibility, as taught in business schools, is apparently all about using your goodness to make more money.”). Henry Ford is credited with stating, in an attempt to explain why he paid such high wages to employees, “I do not believe that we should make such awful profits on our cars. A reasonable profit is right, but not too much.” Richard Eriksson, Notes on Chapter Two of the Corporation by Joel Bakan: Business as Usual, URBAN VANCOUVER, May 12, 2004, available at http://www. urbanvancouver. com/node/269; see also Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 170 N.W. 668 (Mich. 1919) (determining director liability for corporate action to reduce profits). As laudable as Ford’s statement sounds, Ford’s motive in paying high wages may have been as much to avoid paying profits out in the form of dividends to investors like the Dodge brothers, who were also his competitors.
225. José A. Gómez-Ibáñez, Dominique Lorrain & Meg Osius, The Future of Private Infrastructure 2 (Taubman Ctr. for State and Local Gov’t, Kennedy Sch. of Gov’t, Harvard Univ., Working Paper, 2004), available at http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubmancente ... ibanez_04_ infrastructure. pdf#search=%22%22the%20future%20of%20private%20infrastructure%22%22.
226. Id. at 2-3.
227. To finance these public works, the state taxes its citizens. We often think of a primary characteristic of government as the right to tax citizens. Corporations certainly do not have rights to tax individuals, but they do act as agents for government in collecting taxes. When I receive my paycheck from my employer, it shows the amount of taxes withheld in several areas. My employer is acting as the agent for the government in withholding those taxes and paying them over to the government on my behalf. Similarly, corporations collect taxes at the cash register and remit those taxes to state and local authorities. In addition, the legal obligations of corporations to escheat to the state abandoned property can be viewed as a way in which corporations collect taxes on behalf of the government.
228. Neil King Jr., Goodwill Hunting: Trying to Turn Its Image Around, U.S. Puts Top CEOs Out Front; State Department’s Ms. Hughes Rallies Companies to Play Bigger Role in Diplomacy; Mr. Lane Surveys a Mud Slide, WALL ST. J., Feb. 17, 2006, at A1 (noting that CEOs of Pfizer, UPS, and Xerox made the trip to Pakistan to burnish the U.S. image, and that “[p]artly at the behest of Ms. Hughes and the White House, but also prodded by their own worries, U.S. companies are jumping into the type of overseas public diplomacy long shouldered by the federal government”).
229. After Hurricane Katrina, the cover of Fortune blared “Government Broke Down. Business Stepped Up.” Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and FedEx were lauded as examples of good corporate citizens.
230. Bill Steigerwald, Government Can Take Lesson from Wal-Mart, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE REVIEW, Oct. 14, 2005, available at http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsbu ... 83909.html.
231. Press Release, Business Roundtable, Business Roundtable Launches New Web Site Dedicated to Disaster Response (Oct. 12, 2006), available at http://www.businessroundtable.org/newsroom/Document. aspx?qs=5916BF807822B0F1ADD418622FB51711FCF50C8. The goal of the Business Roundtable is to leverage “corporate resources to create a more effective response to natural disasters in the United States and abroad.” Id.
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Re: Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down the Ga
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City Hall turmoil: Four deputy mayors quitting Adams administration over mayor’s cooperation with Trump
by Barbara Russo-Lennon & Robert Pozarycki
amny.com
Posted on February 17, 2025
https://www.amny.com/news/deputy-mayors ... min-trump/
Mayor Eric Adams and First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer. Photo by Ethan Stark-Miller
Four of Eric Adams’ deputy mayors and top advisors resigned their posts Monday over his cooperation with President Trump a week after the Justice Department moved to dismiss the criminal charges against the embattled mayor, amNewYork Metro has confirmed.
The deputy mayors who announced their departures are Maria Torres-Springer, Anne Williams-Isom, Meera Joshi and Chauncey Parker. A spokesperson for City Hall said the resignations are not effective immediately.
“They’re going to stay on for the next few weeks to make sure the transition is smooth, and there are already talks about who will replace them,” the spokesperson said.
Adams said in a statement he is disappointed to see them go, but “given the current challenges,” he understands their decisions.
“Maria Torres-Springer, Anne Williams-Isom, Meera Joshi, and Chauncey Parker are extraordinary public servants who have been vital to our work reshaping New York City,” Adams said. “Together, we’ve broken housing records, created the most jobs in the city’s history, provided for hundreds of thousands of longtime New Yorkers and migrants, built unprecedented public spaces, and made our city safer at every level. New Yorkers owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for their service to our city.”
From l. to r.: Deputy Mayors Maria Torres-Springer, Meera Joshi, Anne Williams-Isom and Chauncey Parker. Photos by Lloyd Mitchell, Ethan Stark-Miller and NYC Mayoral Photography Unit
The four resigning deputy mayors handle operations, housing, economic development, labor health and human services, infrastructure, and public safety—some of the city government’s most critical responsibilities.
Losing all four deputy mayors — three of whom have been with Adams from the beginning of his term — strikes a catastrophic blow to Adams’ increasingly tenuous hold on his office at a time when he faces mounting calls for his resignation or removal following the Trump Justice Department moving to drop the federal criminal case against him, and his stated cooperation with feds on deportation efforts.
Even so, Mayor Adams sought to reassure the city that things will keep “moving forward.”
“The people of New York City remain, without question, our top priority,” he said. “I am solely beholden to the 8.3 million New Yorkers I represent, and I will always put this city first — as I always have.”
Torres-Springer took over as first deputy mayor following Sheena Wright’s departure in September. Wright was part of the wave of Adams administration officials who left their posts amid ongoing federal investigations that started last year.
Williams-Isom oversees and coordinates operations of city hospitals, and Meera Joshi heads operations.
The New York Post first reported Monday’s resignations, hours after multiple outlets reported rumblings of the City Hall chaos.
Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi. Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
Hochul and the Adams administration
The resignations come as pressure mounts on Gov. Kathy Hochul to use her executive power to boot Adams from office after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) instructed Manhattan federal prosecutors to drop his five-count corruption indictment on Feb. 10.
According to a NBC New York report, the deputy mayors said they had concerns about their ability to continue on with the mayor’s team in light of the DOJ move, which temporarily suspends possible criminal charges against Adams.
Several federal prosecutors resigned last week in protest, including U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon, who alleged that Adams’ defense team offered a “quid pro quo” to the Justice Department of cooperation with Trump’s immigration crackdown in exchange for having the case dismissed.
Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom. Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
Other city elected officials, meanwhile, have also expressed concern about where Mayor Adams’ loyalties lie, with some going as far as to suggest Trump had politically compromised him.
“According to the Department of Justice’s recent directive, Mayor Adams adopted a strategy of selling out marginalized New Yorkers and our city’s values to avoid personal and legal accountability,” NYC public advocate Jumaane Williams said in a recent statement. “Well, it worked. I hope it was worth it.”
On Sunday, hundreds of demonstrators marched in Lower Manhattan, demanding that Hochul remove the mayor from office. Last week, in wake of the fallout from the Justice Department’s effort to dismiss the Adams case, Hochul told MSNBC that she was evaluating her options on taking action.
But Adams has continued to insist on his innocence and has repeatedly said since Feb. 10 that he is not leaving the job, telling congregants at a Queens church Sunday, “I am going nowhere.” That statement came after he explicitly denied a quid pro quo with Trump’s Justice Department in a statement Friday.
“I want to be crystal clear with New Yorkers: I never offered — nor did anyone offer on my behalf — any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never,” Adams said in a Feb. 14 statement released from City Hall. “I am solely beholden to the 8.3 million New Yorkers that I represent, and I will always put this city first.”
The four resigning deputy mayors
Maria Torres-Springer, Deputy Mayor of Housing, Economic Development and Workforce: Mayor Adams appointed her to the post in May 2023 to succeed Jessica Katz in the now-defunct Chief Housing Officer role. She oversees agencies including the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the Housing Development Corporation and Housing Recovery Office. She began with the Adams administration on its first day, Jan. 1, 2022, as Deputy Mayor for Economic and Workforce Development.
Meera Joshi, Deputy Mayor for Operations: Another original member of the Adams administration, the former Taxi and Limousine Commissioner was appointed the post in December 2021, and took office on Jan. 1, 2022. The deputy mayor of operations helps the administration develop polices related to government operations and infrastructure.
Anne Williams-Isom, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services: The third original member of the Adams administration mentioned as considering resignation, Williams-Isom took office on Jan. 1, 2022 in a role designed to help guide policies related to the city’s health and welfare. Mayor Adams credited her for helping to lead the city through the migrant crisis of 2022-23, finding homes for tens of thousands of newcomers.
Chauncey Parker, Deputy Mayor of Public Safety: Parker succeeded the embattled Phillip Banks in the role just last October after Banks resigned from the post helping to guide policing policies. Prior to his appointment, Parker was the assistant deputy mayor of public safety and a deputy commissioner for collaborative policing at the NYPD.
by Barbara Russo-Lennon & Robert Pozarycki
amny.com
Posted on February 17, 2025
https://www.amny.com/news/deputy-mayors ... min-trump/
Mayor Eric Adams and First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer. Photo by Ethan Stark-Miller
Four of Eric Adams’ deputy mayors and top advisors resigned their posts Monday over his cooperation with President Trump a week after the Justice Department moved to dismiss the criminal charges against the embattled mayor, amNewYork Metro has confirmed.
The deputy mayors who announced their departures are Maria Torres-Springer, Anne Williams-Isom, Meera Joshi and Chauncey Parker. A spokesperson for City Hall said the resignations are not effective immediately.
“They’re going to stay on for the next few weeks to make sure the transition is smooth, and there are already talks about who will replace them,” the spokesperson said.
Adams said in a statement he is disappointed to see them go, but “given the current challenges,” he understands their decisions.
“Maria Torres-Springer, Anne Williams-Isom, Meera Joshi, and Chauncey Parker are extraordinary public servants who have been vital to our work reshaping New York City,” Adams said. “Together, we’ve broken housing records, created the most jobs in the city’s history, provided for hundreds of thousands of longtime New Yorkers and migrants, built unprecedented public spaces, and made our city safer at every level. New Yorkers owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for their service to our city.”
From l. to r.: Deputy Mayors Maria Torres-Springer, Meera Joshi, Anne Williams-Isom and Chauncey Parker. Photos by Lloyd Mitchell, Ethan Stark-Miller and NYC Mayoral Photography Unit
The four resigning deputy mayors handle operations, housing, economic development, labor health and human services, infrastructure, and public safety—some of the city government’s most critical responsibilities.
Losing all four deputy mayors — three of whom have been with Adams from the beginning of his term — strikes a catastrophic blow to Adams’ increasingly tenuous hold on his office at a time when he faces mounting calls for his resignation or removal following the Trump Justice Department moving to drop the federal criminal case against him, and his stated cooperation with feds on deportation efforts.
Even so, Mayor Adams sought to reassure the city that things will keep “moving forward.”
“The people of New York City remain, without question, our top priority,” he said. “I am solely beholden to the 8.3 million New Yorkers I represent, and I will always put this city first — as I always have.”
Torres-Springer took over as first deputy mayor following Sheena Wright’s departure in September. Wright was part of the wave of Adams administration officials who left their posts amid ongoing federal investigations that started last year.
Williams-Isom oversees and coordinates operations of city hospitals, and Meera Joshi heads operations.
The New York Post first reported Monday’s resignations, hours after multiple outlets reported rumblings of the City Hall chaos.
Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi. Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
Hochul and the Adams administration
The resignations come as pressure mounts on Gov. Kathy Hochul to use her executive power to boot Adams from office after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) instructed Manhattan federal prosecutors to drop his five-count corruption indictment on Feb. 10.
According to a NBC New York report, the deputy mayors said they had concerns about their ability to continue on with the mayor’s team in light of the DOJ move, which temporarily suspends possible criminal charges against Adams.
Several federal prosecutors resigned last week in protest, including U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon, who alleged that Adams’ defense team offered a “quid pro quo” to the Justice Department of cooperation with Trump’s immigration crackdown in exchange for having the case dismissed.
Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom. Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
Other city elected officials, meanwhile, have also expressed concern about where Mayor Adams’ loyalties lie, with some going as far as to suggest Trump had politically compromised him.
“According to the Department of Justice’s recent directive, Mayor Adams adopted a strategy of selling out marginalized New Yorkers and our city’s values to avoid personal and legal accountability,” NYC public advocate Jumaane Williams said in a recent statement. “Well, it worked. I hope it was worth it.”
On Sunday, hundreds of demonstrators marched in Lower Manhattan, demanding that Hochul remove the mayor from office. Last week, in wake of the fallout from the Justice Department’s effort to dismiss the Adams case, Hochul told MSNBC that she was evaluating her options on taking action.
But Adams has continued to insist on his innocence and has repeatedly said since Feb. 10 that he is not leaving the job, telling congregants at a Queens church Sunday, “I am going nowhere.” That statement came after he explicitly denied a quid pro quo with Trump’s Justice Department in a statement Friday.
“I want to be crystal clear with New Yorkers: I never offered — nor did anyone offer on my behalf — any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never,” Adams said in a Feb. 14 statement released from City Hall. “I am solely beholden to the 8.3 million New Yorkers that I represent, and I will always put this city first.”
The four resigning deputy mayors
Maria Torres-Springer, Deputy Mayor of Housing, Economic Development and Workforce: Mayor Adams appointed her to the post in May 2023 to succeed Jessica Katz in the now-defunct Chief Housing Officer role. She oversees agencies including the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the Housing Development Corporation and Housing Recovery Office. She began with the Adams administration on its first day, Jan. 1, 2022, as Deputy Mayor for Economic and Workforce Development.
Meera Joshi, Deputy Mayor for Operations: Another original member of the Adams administration, the former Taxi and Limousine Commissioner was appointed the post in December 2021, and took office on Jan. 1, 2022. The deputy mayor of operations helps the administration develop polices related to government operations and infrastructure.
Anne Williams-Isom, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services: The third original member of the Adams administration mentioned as considering resignation, Williams-Isom took office on Jan. 1, 2022 in a role designed to help guide policies related to the city’s health and welfare. Mayor Adams credited her for helping to lead the city through the migrant crisis of 2022-23, finding homes for tens of thousands of newcomers.
Chauncey Parker, Deputy Mayor of Public Safety: Parker succeeded the embattled Phillip Banks in the role just last October after Banks resigned from the post helping to guide policing policies. Prior to his appointment, Parker was the assistant deputy mayor of public safety and a deputy commissioner for collaborative policing at the NYPD.
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Re: Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down the Ga
by admin » Tue Feb 18, 2025 12:12 am
PROSPECTUS SUPPLEMENT NO. 7 (to Prospectus dated June 18, 2024)
by Trump Media & Technology Group Corp
February 14, 2025
Date: 2/14/2025 Form: 10-K Annual Report
https://s3.amazonaws.com/sec.irpass.cc/ ... 004837.pdf
TRUMP MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY GROUP CORP.
Inflation and the Global Supply Chain
Currently the U.S. economy is experiencing a bout of increased inflation, resulting in rising prices. The U.S. Federal Reserve, as well as its counterparts in other countries, have engaged in a series of interest rate hikes in an effort to combat rising inflation. Although inflation did not have a significant impact on our results of operations for the years ended December 31, 2024, 2023, and 2022, we anticipate that inflation will have an impact on our business going forward, including through a material increase in our cost of revenue and operating expenses in the coming years, if not permanently. Continued or permanent rises in core costs could impact our growth negatively.
Current Economic Conditions
We are subject to risks and uncertainties caused by events with significant macroeconomic impacts, including, but not limited to, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, and actions taken to counter inflation. Supply chain constraints, labor shortages, inflation, and rising interest rates and reduced consumer confidence have caused advertisers in a variety of industries to be cautious in their spending and to either pause or slow their campaigns.
In order to manage our cost structure in light of the current macroeconomic environment and pending TMTG’s access to additional capital via the Business Combination, we sought opportunities to reduce our expense growth. Following the elimination of several positions in March 2023, we paused hiring in the second quarter of 2023. We were subsequently more selective about the roles that we filled, resulting in some attrition. We also reduced non-labor spend in areas such as travel, rent, consulting fees, and professional services.
The extent of the ongoing impact of these macroeconomic events on our business and on global economic activity is uncertain and may continue to adversely affect our business, operations and financial results. Our past results may not be indicative of our future performance, and historical trends in revenue, income(loss) from operations, net income(loss), and net income(loss) per share may differ materially.
President Donald J. Trump
TMTG’s success depends in part on the popularity of our brand and the reputation and popularity of President Donald J. Trump. The value of TMTG’s brand may diminish if the popularity of President Donald J. Trump were to suffer. Adverse reactions to publicity relating to President Donald J. Trump, or the loss of his services, could adversely affect TMTG’s revenues, results of operations and its ability to maintain or generate a consumer base. President Donald J. Trump is involved in numerous lawsuits and other matters that could damage his reputation. Additionally, TMTG’s business plan relies on President Donald J. Trump bringing his former social media followers to TMTG’s platform. In the event any of these, or other events, cause his followers to lose interest in his messages, the number of users of our platform could decline or not grow as we have assumed. To the extent users prefer a platform that is not associated with President Donald J. Trump, TMTG’s ability to attract users may decrease.
by Trump Media & Technology Group Corp
February 14, 2025
Date: 2/14/2025 Form: 10-K Annual Report
https://s3.amazonaws.com/sec.irpass.cc/ ... 004837.pdf
TRUMP MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY GROUP CORP.
Inflation and the Global Supply Chain
Currently the U.S. economy is experiencing a bout of increased inflation, resulting in rising prices. The U.S. Federal Reserve, as well as its counterparts in other countries, have engaged in a series of interest rate hikes in an effort to combat rising inflation. Although inflation did not have a significant impact on our results of operations for the years ended December 31, 2024, 2023, and 2022, we anticipate that inflation will have an impact on our business going forward, including through a material increase in our cost of revenue and operating expenses in the coming years, if not permanently. Continued or permanent rises in core costs could impact our growth negatively.
Current Economic Conditions
We are subject to risks and uncertainties caused by events with significant macroeconomic impacts, including, but not limited to, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, and actions taken to counter inflation. Supply chain constraints, labor shortages, inflation, and rising interest rates and reduced consumer confidence have caused advertisers in a variety of industries to be cautious in their spending and to either pause or slow their campaigns.
In order to manage our cost structure in light of the current macroeconomic environment and pending TMTG’s access to additional capital via the Business Combination, we sought opportunities to reduce our expense growth. Following the elimination of several positions in March 2023, we paused hiring in the second quarter of 2023. We were subsequently more selective about the roles that we filled, resulting in some attrition. We also reduced non-labor spend in areas such as travel, rent, consulting fees, and professional services.
The extent of the ongoing impact of these macroeconomic events on our business and on global economic activity is uncertain and may continue to adversely affect our business, operations and financial results. Our past results may not be indicative of our future performance, and historical trends in revenue, income(loss) from operations, net income(loss), and net income(loss) per share may differ materially.
President Donald J. Trump
TMTG’s success depends in part on the popularity of our brand and the reputation and popularity of President Donald J. Trump. The value of TMTG’s brand may diminish if the popularity of President Donald J. Trump were to suffer. Adverse reactions to publicity relating to President Donald J. Trump, or the loss of his services, could adversely affect TMTG’s revenues, results of operations and its ability to maintain or generate a consumer base. President Donald J. Trump is involved in numerous lawsuits and other matters that could damage his reputation. Additionally, TMTG’s business plan relies on President Donald J. Trump bringing his former social media followers to TMTG’s platform. In the event any of these, or other events, cause his followers to lose interest in his messages, the number of users of our platform could decline or not grow as we have assumed. To the extent users prefer a platform that is not associated with President Donald J. Trump, TMTG’s ability to attract users may decrease.
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