There is a great divide among the traditions of anarchism about the question of private property and economic organization.

Socialists vs Capitalists

  • Libertarian socialists consider that private property is a fiction enforced by illegitimate institutions which do not account for the needs and desires of the individuals they affect, and that beyond "personal possession" of immediate goods no property should exist.

  • Anarcho-capitalists consider that private property emerges from natural law, and is a paradigmatic way to respect individual rights, to solve and avoid conflict, and to promote creation.

  • Libertarian socialists propose that beyond personal possession, resources should be collectively managed, particularly capital goods used as means of economic production. The form of this collective management can vary greatly, but in all cases those affected by economic decisions have some representation in them. On one end of the spectrum lie the syndicalists, who propose a planned economy based on a series of collectives that rely fundamentally on consensus and free association. On the other end are the individualists, who advocate a free market without the constraints of usury, wage, and rent. They believe that property beyond personal possession should be handled by mutualist banks which print their own money and loan it free of interest.

  • Anarcho-capitalists think that any property that is not consumed immediately is a capital, so that capital goods and means of production are in no way particular.

  • Libertarian socialists consider that employer-employee relationship is based on coercion by the employer. They think that the oppressive restrictions of public and private property, upheld variously by states, corporations, and individuals, allow employers to blackmail employees into working for use of resources that they would otherwise have free access to either individually through mutualist banks or collectively through voluntarily associated communes and syndicates.

  • Anarcho-capitalists, think that an employer-employee relationship is basically an elaborate and mutually profitable form of voluntary association. They resent government as a parasite that corrupts, biases, impedes and distorts what would otherwise be peaceful fair and free associations.

  • Libertarian socialists claim that such oppression should be resisted. However, they generally follow Kant in maintaining that freedom can not be given as a privilege by some third party, but must instead be won through the struggles of the oppressed themselves. As such, libertarian socialists encourage employees to resist and obstruct economics based on hierarchical power and what they consider to be a form of wage slavery. Many also believe it is the obligation of anarchists to come to the aid of such groups when they call for help in their struggles.

  • Anarcho-capitalists consider that the consent to a contract that each party was free to refuse is evidence and guarantee that the contract is legitimate and beneficial. They claim that any external power capable of preventing such relationship is itself an oppression to be fought.

  • Libertarian socialists believe that all forms of hierarchy must be resisted, due to their coercive nature.

  • Anarcho-capitalists believe that all forms of coercion must be eliminated, but that apparent hierarchy is no coercion, as long as it reflects a freely-entered-into contract.

  • Libertarian socialists counter that as no ordinary person (as opposed to someone who is independently wealthy) can refuse to work, so there is no freedom involved in the negotiation of a contract with an employer who has the ability to dictate the terms of any contract to dispossessed employees who amount to little more than wage slaves living at the whim of the wealthy.

  • Anarcho-capitalists in return argue that, no matter what social organization may or may not exist, social organizations will never eliminate the basic human requirement to work in order to support themselves. Therefore an objection based on a constraint that cannot be overcome is useless to argue about, and not a rational objection at all. They also argue that while someone may not be able to refuse to work in general, one has the largest choice of employers with the diversity of a free market economy, and that what matters is that no given employer/employee contract in particular be coercive.

  • Libertarian socialists reject the claim that their objection to capitalist economics is based on the necessity of labor. They almost universally agree that some form of manual labor (which they often distinguish from work) is currently necessary. However, they do not agree that the necessity for manual labor requires that the form of this labor be dictated by privileged individuals who control the wealth and resources of the society. Instead, they argue that individual liberty requires that the laborers themselves control the means and mode of their labor, rather than having their actions dictated by others. Thus, those who are required to labor for survival should have representation in the use and distribution of the resources they interact with and distribute. Libertarian socialists do not believe that the mere ability to disassociate from a given employer is an adequate form of representation, given that the employers as a class can continue to dictate use of resources and compel others into wage-slavery once the association is disbanded.

In the end, both socialist anarchists and anarcho-capitalists consider the other group as deeply misled, and that the other group's notion of "anarchy" is not real anarchy, but government in disguise, rejecting the name, but keeping the concept. Thus, socialist anarchists and anarcho-capitalists don't generally engage in any form of co-operation, despite what might appear to be a mutual goal: both groups want to get rid of the state, but they have opposite opinions of what characterizes the state. On the other hand anarchists of each kind share a lot of literature and cooperate with the non-anarchists in their respective socialist and classical liberal traditions.

See also:

Other anarchist traditions with respect to private property

Anarchists of other traditions vary in their appreciation of the respective socialist and classical liberal arguments above.

Some of them will consistently side with some of the above arguments, thus adopting the socialist or classical liberal tradition, though without forcibly doing it formally.

Some will mildly side with some of the arguments above, though without considering them a defining stance for their flavor of anarchism, and will consider the question as secondary.

Some do not care about this debate, and consider it a waste of time; they think that by getting rid of government, such problems find a natural solution.