p Antipodal to the technocratic Utopia are projects which can be described either as Utopias of a “traditional” America (since their authors very often refer to the libertarian tradition) or as "anarchic capitalist" Utopias (since they are oriented on the corresponding social ideal).

p The works of practically all prominent theoreticians of American conservative thought, particularly such as Ludwig von Mises or Richard Weaver, feature aspects of the social ideal posited in the anarchic capitalist utopia. But the most consistent, clear and up-to-date exposition of this type of Utopia can be found in Anarchy, State and Utopia, a book by Robert Nozick, professor of philosophy at Harvard University.  [132•1 

p “With reluctance," writes Nozick, "I found myself becoming convinced of (as they are now often called) libertarian views, due to various consideration and arguments."  [132•2  Taking a libertarian position, Nozick assails modern bourgeois society for its interference not only in the economy but also in virtually all other spheres of activity. He advocates a “free” and “just” community of self-sufficient individuals. It is a community in which social relations would be regulated by free market mechanisms but which would be cleansed of structures that demolish an actual market society and in which there would be no independent sphere of political activity and, consequently, no organized political forces capable of destroying that society from within.

p And so, while the anarchic capitalist utopia appeals to the past and orients its ideal on a definite historical system of social relations, it proves to be as artificial as any other utopia. Moreover, a closer look shows that it shares certain features with the very technocratic utopia it rejects.

p Indeed, despite their distinctions in terms of many parameters, to say nothing of the differences in the social status and political potential of the forces behind each of the two types, both the technocratic and the libertarian Utopias are based on one and the same paradox: both 133 idealize a society which, while remaining capitalist, would become increasingly depoliticized—that is, where political mechanisms for regulating social processes would be replaced with nonpolitical ones and from where politics as an independent sphere of activity would be eliminated. The only difference is that in the technocratic Utopia, political institutions and relations are replaced by scientific and technological, while in the libertarian—by economic ones.

p The ideal society imagined by the advocate of anarchic capitalism is based on private property in the means of production. However, unlike other American Utopias where it is also present as an institution, in the anarchic capitalist utopia it plays a special role, functioning, the way it once did in the Utopias of a farmers’ America, as the metaphysical basis of freedom. An individual’s private property is his alter ego, the only real basis of existence. And what is meant here is not big corporate property but petty property whose links with the individual are not mediated by any bureaucratic institutions.

p By proclaiming a community of petty producers as its social ideal, the anarchic capitalist utopia appears to continue certain traditional aspects of the utopia of a farmers’ America. At the same time, there is a substantial difference between the two. The utopia of a farmers’ America, especially in its Jeffersonian version, does not consider private property as a natural right, while the anarchic Utopian places it alongside inalienable “natural” rights such as life and freedom.

p The anarchic capitalist Utopia is the petty proprietor’s spontaneous response to the growing role and functions of the capitalist state and its bureaucracy, to the encroachment of the monopolies and the rise of their power, and to the increasing political activity of working people which the petty bourgeoisie sees as a latent threat to the very institution of private property. This reaction determines the attitude of the advocate of anarchic capitalism to the state and the market as universal antagonistic mechanisms of social regulation.

p In the libertarian’s utopia, the state plays a “minimal” role; it is only a "minimal state". Robert Nozick holds that only "a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of 134 contracts and so on, is justified.”  [134•1  Any state which assumes additional functions, for example, of coercing some citizens (through the use of more or less complex mechanisms) to assist others, or of forcing them to desist from certain actions for the sake of their own welfare, the anarchic capitalist maintains, encroaches on the individual’s right to take autonomous decisions with regard to his own behavior and should therefore be considered a morally unjustified political dictatorship. Nozick emphasizes that man cannot be subjected to violence by the state; the state’s only duty is to ensure the greatest possible freedom for the individual. The state should respect the right of each to shape his life as he pleases and to enter into free cooperation with others who enjoy the same rights.  [134•2 

p The "minimal state" resembles Jefferson’s limited state only superficially but differs from it in essence. Jefferson determined the extent and functions of the state proceeding from the state’s objective—realizing the will and ensuring the welfare of the "productive majority". He believed that it is this will and this welfare that were to shape the state’s parameters in the final count. The anarchic capitalist approaches this question from a totally different angle, maintaining that a "minimal state" can and should realize this will and ensure this welfare in any conditions, especially today. But this is an arbitrary presumption, born of the anarchic Utopian’s critical attitude toward the "welfare state" which he correctly sees as a “mass” state. While taking care of the individual to a certain degree, it limits his freedom and his right to organize his life as he sees fit.

p The Utopian "minimal state" is not a projection of the Jeffersonian state into today’s world; it is a result of the contradictions current in American society as seen by the petty proprietor, oppressed by the state and the monopolies. Essentially it is a fictitious “antiwelfare” state, an artificial construct, a utopia, and quite unlike the Jeffersonian state which was a natural product of the historical conditions obtaining in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

p The anarchic Utopian appeals to the free market, picturing it as the ideal mechanism for social regulation. He holds that market relations are capable of discharging the 135 function the state is trying to usurp-ensuring equality of opportunity for each and giving everyone his due. Like the technocrat (here one utopia is again drawing close to another), he would like to stabilize the social structure because stability is a substantive feature of his social ideal. Unlike the technocrat, however, the anarchic Utopian connects social stability with the preservation of individual freedom (he proclaims it as a major value)-inasmuch as the self-regulating market can ensure it. His ideal is the individual who is not subject to tutelage and, consequently, to uniformity (for any mass tutelage calls for uniformity and standardization as its preconditions) and who is naturally exercising his self-determination within the "minimal state". Let each man live as he wants, the anarchic Utopian says; the state must not force anyone to accept any uniform pattern. "Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Taylor, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Merton, Yogi Berra, Allen Ginsburg, Harry Wolfson, Thoreau, Casey Stengel, The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Picasso, Moses, Einstein, Hugh Heffner, Socrates, Henry Ford, Lenny Bruce, Baba Ram Dass, Gandhi, Sir Edmund Hillary, Raymond Lubitz, Buddha, Frank Sinatra, Columbus, Freud, Norman Mailer, Ayn Rand, Baron Rothschild, Ted Williams, Thomas Edison, H. L. Mencken, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Ellison, Bobby Fischer, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, you, and your parents. Is there really one kind of life which is best for each of these people? Imagine all of them living in any utopia you’ve ever seen described in detail. Try to describe the society which would be best for all of these persons to live in. Would it be agricultural or urban? Of great material luxury or of austerity with basic needs satisfied? What would relations between the sexes be like? Would there be any institution similar to marriage?... Would there be private property?... Would there be one, many, any religion?”  [135•1 

p After asking a dozen more similar questions, Nozick concludes that there can be no single answer, just as there can be no single best society in which not only the people listed in the quotation but also any other combination of individuals could be happy. Therefore, the anarchic capitalist believes, it is not only pointless but even harmful to strive for the establishment of any uniform community, 136 the age-old dream of Utopians.

p One must admit that Nozick deals a heavy blow to the traditional Utopian opinion that there can be an absolute and “best” type of Utopian society equally acceptable to all, that a uniform and “best” way of life in a Utopia can be discovered. These are truly illusory notions repeatedly rejected by the founders of scientific socialism who resolutely opposed any attempts to “bless” humanity with all sorts of universal projects. Nozick himself claims that there is a way out, but that it lies outside the traditional mainstream of the Utopian quest. "Utopia will consist of Utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions.... Utopia is a framework for Utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own Utopian vision upon others.... Utopia is a meta- utopia: the environment in which Utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular Utopian visions are to be realized stably.”  [136•1 

p In Nozick’s view, let people live in communities, let these communities be many, let them be based on diverse material and spiritual principles, including socialist ones; let people choose a community after their own heart, let them switch from community to community if they want; let those who cannot find anything they like create communities of their own, geared to their own conceptions of the best possible world; but let no one be in anyone’s way. And let life itself—or rather, not life but “meta-utopia”, the “ environment”, the “framework” equivalent, Nozick emphasizes, to the "minimal state"—determine which community is to survive and develop and which is to perish. In the final analysis, the "minimal state" itself, a market of Utopias, an auction of Utopias, is the true Utopia.

p “Though the framework is libertarian and laissez-faire, individual communities within it need not be, and perhaps no community within it will choose to be so. Thus, the characteristics of the framework need not pervade the 137 individual communities. In this laissez-faire system it could turn out that though they are permitted, there are no actually functioning ‘capitalist’ institutions.”  [137•1  Nozick ignores the fact that the laws operating in subsystems cannot be contrary to those operating within the system (“framework”) of which they are a part. Otherwise the system itself would disintegrate, together with its constituent elements.

p As many of Nozick’s critics point out, and with good reason, his assertion that stable coexistence of different types of Utopia (including socialist Utopias) is possible within the bourgeois society is no more than a logical proposition incapable of standing the test of practice: contrary to all claims by Professor Nozick, communities which do not follow the imperatives of the market and the bourgeois state will cease to exist sooner or later. Here, even hypotheses are redundant: suffice it to simply recall the fate of 19th-century Utopian communities in America.

Still, while dismissing Nozick’s project as illusory, one must admit that there is reason behind his vision of an alternate world: it reflects the interests, illusions and social psychology of certain groups in American society. Pushed around by the state and the monopolies, these groups— which exist now and will, in all probability, continue to exist—feel more secure and free within an imagined laissezfaire society than in the United States as it exists in actual fact. It would be logical to assume that anarchic capitalist Utopias will retain their role of a conservative social alternative in the near future. However, even taking into account the growing trend toward a stronger state, the consequent criticism of the state and the nostalgia after free market relations, anarchic capitalist Utopias will hardly attract as many followers as technocratic Utopias; most probably, their long life will be confined to the Utopian periphery.