https://c4ss.org/content/45865

"Proponents of market anarchism should strengthen the case for their
doctrine by incorporating some aspects of postmodern philosophy into
their arguments."

"For the purposes of this essay, the term ‘postmodern philosophy’ will
be defined as philosophy informed by an “incredulity toward
metanarratives”. Metanarratives are understood as “totalising stories
about history and the goals of the human race that ground and legitimise
knowledges and cultural practises” (Woodward, n.d.), with specific
examples including the accumulation of wealth in a capitalist society,
the emancipation of the rational Cartesian subject, and the process of
scientific inquiry yielding an increasing amount of
objective knowledge."

"Chapter One will evaluate the extent to which postmodern philosophy can
provide an effective means of accounting for (and combating) forms of
domination other than the state. I will begin by arguing that a
significant portion of market anarchist thought fails to adequately
address non-state forms of domination, owing to its often singular focus
on the inherent illegitimacy of the state."

"However, the fact that the non-aggression principle only entails the
abolition of the state (and its replacement with alternative
arrangements that protect private property) has resulted in the
majority of market anarchist scholarship narrowly focusing on
identifying and eliminating violations of the non-aggression principle.
...
This has translated into a praxis that willfully refuses to devote
attention to most cultural and social concerns: an attitude summarized
by anarcho-capitalist Walter Block, who stated that such issues have
“nothing to do with libertarianism...[since they are not related to] the
non-aggression axiom coupled with private property rights”"

"As a consequence of the NAP’s silence on matters of positive freedom,
which concerns one’s capacity for self-mastery and self-realization, it
has been argued that market anarchism “calls for the absence of coercion
but cannot guarantee the positive freedom of individual autonomy and
independence”"

“Power becomes coextensive with all social relationships and is not
reducible to the state, even though the state is the site where power is
at its most concentrated, excessive and brutal. In other words, we can
no longer imagine a clear conceptual distinction between society and the
state...”

"The idea that power operates on such a microscopic level is useful. It
curbs the arguably naïve optimism of market anarchism, reminding its
adherents that whilst dismantling the state may disperse the power
concentrated in its hands, doing so is only part of a wider struggle
against unjust hierarchies."

"In combination with the insights of other thinkers such as Friedrich
Nietzsche, postanarchist writers have called for an ‘anarchism of
becoming’ in line with viewing liberated subjectivity as that which is
constantly in flux."

"The primary counterargument to the praxis entailed by postmodern
subjectivity is that it draws energy away from collective struggle
against the state in favor of an ineffective egocentricity."

"This criticism has been advanced most forcefully by Murray Bookchin,
who coined the disparaging term ‘lifestyle anarchism’ in order to
describe what he saw as the emerging harms within the anarchist movement
caused by accepting postmodern accounts of subjectivity:

“Ad hoc adventurism, personal bravura,...celebrations of theoretical
incoherence (pluralism), a basically apolitical and
anti-organizational commitment to imagination,
desire, and ecstasy, and an intensely self-oriented enchantment of
everyday life, reflect the toll that social reaction has taken on
Euro-American anarchism over the past two decades.”

Bookchin’s damning polemic against the inconsequential hedonism he
believes stems from adopting an ‘anarchism of becoming’ has been subject
to criticism."

"market anarchists must still give an account of why certain power
relations are beneficially ‘productive’, whilst others are unjust.
...
There are two main approaches...
The first is simply to state that hierarchy that exists as a result of
state coercion is illegitimate, and that any other hierarchy is legitimate.
Despite the seemingly restrictive nature of this approach, market
anarchist scholarship in this tradition sometimes arrives at some fairly
radical conclusions regarding the resulting distribution of power. For
example, Murray Rothbard argued that one conclusion of the libertarian
property theory underlying his defense of the non-aggression principle
was that students should take over their universities:

“Take, for example, the State universities. This is property built on
funds stolen from the taxpayers. Since the State has not found or put
into effect a way of returning ownership of this property to the
taxpaying public, the proper owners of this university are the
“homesteaders”, those who have already been using and therefore
“mixing their labor” with the facilities. The prime consideration is
to deprive the thief, in this case the State,
as quickly as possible of the ownership and control of its ill-gotten
gains, to return the property to the innocent, private sector. This
means student and/or faculty ownership of the universities.”

However, despite the occasionally radically anti-hierarchical
conclusions of libertarian praxis arrived at through the non-aggression
principle alone, it fails to provide any basis for directly opposing
non-coercive hierarchies. This can result in the emergence of culturally
authoritarian varieties of market anarchism, such as the
anarcho-capitalism advocated by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Professor Hoppe
argues that anarcho-capitalism should be based on hierarchical,
conservative moral values."

"However, the unsuitability of deconstruction as a criteria for
determining the acceptability of hierarchies does not mean that those
who work in such a tradition are useless for the market anarchist."

"Various strands of anarchism, including market anarchism, are often
overly dismissive of possibilities for the co-existence of different
forms of voluntary economic and social organization within a stateless
society. Many anarcho-capitalists envision society after the state
as being dominated by ‘capitalist’ norms, such as “...a social order of
bosses, landlords, centralized corporations, class exploitation,
cut-throat business dealings, immiserated workers, structural poverty,
or large-scale economic inequality”

...

“The future free society they envisioned was a market society – but
one in which market relationships were little changed from business
as usual and the end of state control was imagined as freeing
business to do much what it had been doing before, rather than
unleashing competing forms of economic organization, which might
radically transform market forms from the bottom up.”

Some market anarchist writers, such as Kevin Carson, have ascribed the
cause of this totalizing tendency to ‘vulgar libertarianism’: the idea
that those within the libertarian and market anarchist tradition “seem
to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether
they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles”"

"This tendency can be seen in a significant proportion of current
libertarian and market anarchist literature, and stems from a misplaced
admiration for those who profit not from the unknown ideal of the free
market, but from the warped and privilege-ridden state capitalism
(or ‘crony capitalism’) that characterizes much of the developed world."

"Rorty calls for a dynamic, tolerant pragmatism that stems from his
anti-representationalism."

"Like Lyotard, he regards scientific discourse as unjustly asserting a
claim to universal legitimation: “an overzealous philosophy of science
has created an impossible ideal of ahistorical legitimation”"

“...a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents
and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents
eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”