Anarcho-capitalists love to claim that their system exalts the individual above all else. Yet in practice, their model quietly legitimizes one of the most collectivist forms of property: joint ownership.
They call it corporation, partnership, or co-property. I call it miniature collectivism.
1. The Paradox of Collective Ownership
In anarcho-capitalist theory, property exists wherever two or more parties agree to own and manage something together.
But this collective ownership is nothing more than a voluntary collective — the very essence of anarcho-communism.
The difference is merely semantic: instead of calling it a “collective,” they call it a “company.”
The moment ownership becomes shared, individual sovereignty over that object disappears.
Each participant’s freedom becomes conditional upon the will of others — and a structure of governance must arise to coordinate, regulate, and settle disputes.
That structure is, in miniature, a State.
2. Spooner’s and Tucker’s Warning
Lysander Spooner argued that law has moral force only when it protects individual sovereignty.
Benjamin Tucker added that freedom means “the sovereignty of the individual over himself, and nothing more.”
If ownership ceases to be personal — if it requires meetings, boards, contracts, or hierarchies — then the property no longer belongs to any individual.
It belongs to a collective abstraction, an entity with interests above and beyond its members.
This is precisely how the State itself emerged: as a supposed “collective agent” managing what no single man could claim alone.
3. When the Market Becomes the Commune
Anarcho-capitalists scoff at communism, yet defend corporations that function on the same principle: pooled ownership, shared liability, collective decision-making.
The modern corporation is nothing but a market commune — property without a single owner, power exercised through consensus or bureaucracy, and individuals subordinated to the entity they’ve created.
In this sense, anarcho-capitalism contains the germ of the very collectivism it denounces.
Wherever property is shared, authority must be invented.
Wherever authority exists, anarchy fades.
4. The Case for Absolute Ownership
True anarchism — the kind envisioned by Spooner, Tucker, and later Konkin — rests on a simple axiom:
Every object should have one owner, and that owner should be a person.
No boards, no shareholders, no committees.
Property must be individually grounded, or else it will require coordination mechanisms — rules, contracts, enforcement — that slowly evolve into law, arbitration systems, and finally, a new kind of State.
Anarchism is preserved only where every decision has a single moral origin: one conscience, one will, one individual.
To multiply ownership is to multiply authority; to multiply authority is to invite domination.
5. The Irony of the “Free Market”
In defending collective property as “voluntary,” anarcho-capitalists confuse freedom with choice.
Yes, people can choose to bind themselves to a corporation — but so can citizens choose to bind themselves to a State.
Voluntary servitude is still servitude.
A society of independent proprietors — each sovereign over his person and possessions — would require no overarching authority, no “corporate law,” no collective arbitration.
That is the only anarchism consistent with pure individualism.
6. Conclusion: The One-to-One Society
If anarchism means anything, it means no collective will above the individual.
By allowing collective ownership, anarcho-capitalism reintroduces the logic of communism through the back door — a “capitalist commune” masquerading as liberty.
To preserve anarchy, property must always have a one-to-one relation:
one owner, one responsibility, one freedom.
That alone prevents the rebirth of the State — in any form, whether red or gold.
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