@thesotiris 16 August 2025 more from that month

Stop using the words "anarchy" & "capitalism": Cut your losses from terms with loaded meaning

The words “anarchy” and “capitalism” don’t mean anything anymore. We can appeal to their etymology or definition all we want, but the fact remains that they mean vastly different things to so many different people. This makes it impossible to communicate what you truly want to communicate whenever you use them. These words carry such subjective, arbitrary, and fluid meaning that any attribute can be assigned to them at any given time, making their use an inevitable straw man every time. This makes these words completely useless. Using them is not only meaningless, but it is also dangerous, and does you a disservice in your attempts to communicate your message or cause. Propaganda The words “anarchy” and “capitalism” are the most twisted, loaded with conflicting meanings, terms in existence. And this is by design, as they have been infected with statist/socialist propaganda. Why? By inserting confusion into these vital words, it becomes extremely difficult to communicate the benefits of free markets, property rights, and incentive-based systems of voluntary self-governance, without the need for a threat-based “authoritative” monopoly of violence, also known as “the state”. Anarchy “Anarchy” used to mean the absence of violently imposed “authority”. That’s it. And now? When your average Joe hears the word “anarchy”, he hears “chaos” and black-wearing, rioting “antifa”, when it’s quite the opposite. In fact, it is statism that is chaos, with blatant corruption, war for profit, and “elite” pedophile rings, without any way for people to hold any “authority” figure accountable, as the latter are protected by the monopoly of violence of the state. “Anarchy” used to mean ‘no authority’. Authority-based social structures are the ones causing the chaos of corruption, arbitrary power abuses, psychological subversion, war, and pedophilic degeneracy. The state is chaotic, not the absence of it. The absence of the state is social order. Yet, state propaganda has managed, through its agent-provocateur and agitator tactics, to appropriate the term “anarchy” and erroneously associate it with scummy, masked, Molotov-wielding “ANTIFA” thugs, and the riots, burnt-down neighbourhoods, and the looting runs that come with them. If the state is effective and efficient at two things only, it’s **propaganda** and **violence**. Capitalism Capitalism, a scapegoat term used by Marx to undermine property rights, is designed to erode the concept of private property. Marxism boils down to pathological envy by which you do not own the fruits of your labour, and you instead owe them to a vague collective. Basically, Marxism/socialism/communism is a rebrand of slavery. The Marxist use of the term “capitalism” blames state corruption on the free market, which is as deceptive as deception gets. The audacity to blame the ills of government interventionism on the absence of it.

The state’s corruption (Wall Street bailouts, corporate welfare, and favourable regulation that empowers the ultra-rich lobbying corporations while crippling smaller competitors) is blamed on this derogatory word “capitalism”, implying that property rights and free markets are the cause of exploitation, inequality, and corruption. Quite the opposite. Capitalism, in the classic sense, and in the way it is used by freedom-oriented people, simply means **property rights and free markets: the only moral, efficient, and fair way for a society to function**. Socialist deception Socialists, fascists, and statists alike make the non-sequitur assumption that a free market would somehow create monopolies; a deluded, schizophrenic state of mind. We live under ever-tightening government regulations while monopolies and oligopolies keep growing, along with wealth inequalities… yet statists still delude themselves that it’s the free market instead that has caused this. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-dumbest-objections-against-statelessness-4 They got it backward: it’s the free market that is the great equaliser, the spontaneous regulator that forces people to be as courteous with each other as possible. It only takes the **violence of state interventionism** to distort the inevitable equilibrium of the free market. It only takes the threat-based systems of centralised government, with its arbitrary and corrupt licensing, its extortive and selective taxation, its also selective regulations and prohibitions, and its enforced monopoly of money supply, to establish artificial **oligopolies and monopolies that would otherwise be impossible in a free market**. Cut your losses. We lost those words, “anarchy” and “capitalism”. Cut your losses, or face total loss. You do yourself a disservice when you use them. Don’t fall for the political ideology and the tribal in-group preferences of socialists, fascists, and statists alike. Other infected words Even the word “libertarian” has been infected with statist propaganda. Notice how Murray Rothbard uses the word “libertarian” to describe freedom-oriented people who understand that the state is not only totally unnecessary but also dangerous, inefficient, and immoral. Today, any Trump bro who worships big military spending and cooms at the Nazi aesthetic calls himself a “libertarian”. Even **socialists call themselves “libertarians” now, just like biological males call themselves women**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-military-is-gay-part-3 Alternatives Instead of “capitalism”, use the term “free competitive markets”. Adding the term “competitive” is crucial to avoid the straw man of monopolies supposedly taking over without the state, when in fact monopolies cannot emerge without the help of the state, as we blindingly witness today. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-dumbest-objections-against-statelessness-4 Instead of “anarchy”? I use the term “voluntaryism”; voluntaryism is a moral premise, a first principle on which all other aspects of life can be based. It’s not a group identity, and it’s not a political system. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/on-voluntaryism Still, though, voluntaryism is confusing as it is mistaken for the vague term volunteering or voluntarism. Most people don’t understand it unless you go off on a lecture-like rant about it. Consentism Recently, my fellow Substacker, Christopher Cook, introduced me to the term “**consentism**”, which puts consent at the centre of all freedom and incentive-based organising of society. What do we freedom-oriented people want to communicate? It’s statelessness: the total absence of a violently imposed social order by the threat of perceived “authority”. We instead value voluntary, decentralised, and incentive-based systems of self-governance. They already work perfectly in the little free market we have left, such as industry self-regulation driven by the biggest incentive of all: to survive in a free competitive market by **obeying the laws of scarcity and supply and demand**. There is no greater, fairer, more efficient, and more relentless regulator than free competition. **Free competition is also the greatest equaliser**. Without the artificial and corrupt barriers of entry imposed by a lobbied and bribed state, there can be no monopolies or oligopolies, because as soon as a big business starts being unfair with its customers, it immediately creates a demand for better, more competitive suppliers, thus shooting itself in the foot. Only the violence of the state can interfere with the free market’s self-correcting mechanisms. Takeaway Let’s ditch infected words like anarchy, capitalism, and even libertarian. Let them have them. Let’s instead use “free competitive markets” and “consentism”, words that communicate the core moral behind them, thus avoiding straw-man loaded meanings. And if they infect these words too, we’ll find new ones. It is a war of communication after all. **Recommended reading** ‘Chaos Theory: Two Essays on Market Anarchy’ by Robert P. Murphy https://mises.org/library/book/chaos-theory-two-essays-market-anarchy ‘The Market for Liberty’ by Morris and Linda Tannehill https://mises.org/library/book/market-liberty ‘Democracy: The God That Failed’ by Hans Hermann Hoppe https://mises.org/library/book/democracy-god-failed ‘The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production’ by Hans-Hermann Hoppe https://mises.org/library/book/myth-national-defense-essays-theory-and-history-security-production ‘The Private Production of Defense’ by Hans-Hermann Hoppe https://mises.org/library/book/private-production-defense ‘The Privatization of Roads and Highways’ by Walter Block https://mises.org/library/book/privatization-roads-and-highways ‘Defending the Undefendable I & II’ by Walter Block https://mises.org/library/book/defending-undefendable ‘No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority’ by Lysander Spooner https://libertyunderattack.com/no-treason-the-constitution-of-no-authority-by-lysander-spooner/ ‘Let’s Abolish Government’ by Lysander Spooner https://mises.org/library/book/lets-abolish-government ‘Anatomy of the State’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/podcasts/anatomy-state ‘For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/book/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto ‘Power and Market: Government and the Economy’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/book/power-and-market-government-and-economy ‘Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/book/man-economy-and-state-power-and-market ‘The Ethics of Liberty’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/book/ethics-liberty ‘Human Action’ by Ludwig von Mises https://mises.org/library/book/human-action ‘The Enterprise Of Law: Justice Without The State’ by Bruce L. Benson https://archive.org/details/the-enterprise-of-law-justice-without-the-state ‘The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism’ by David Friedman http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Machinery%203rd%20Edn.pdf ‘The Most Dangerous Superstition’ by Larken Rose https://www.amazon.com/Larken-Rose-Most-Dangerous-Superstition/dp/B00N4EGD8C ‘The dumbest objections against statelessness’ by Sotiris Rex https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-dumbest-objections-against-statelessness-series