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This article is from the Anarchy FAQ, by Bryan Caplan with numerous contributions by others.

14. What are the major debates between anarchists? What are the recurring arguments?

Without a doubt, the most repeated debate among modern anarchists is fought between the left-anarchists on one side and the anarcho-capitalists on the other. Of course, there are occasional debates between different left-anarchist factions, but probably most of them would be content with an anarchist society populated by some mixture of communes, worker-controlled firms, and cooperatives. And similarly there are a few internal debates between anarcho- capitalists, notably the tension between Rothbard's natural law anarcho-capitalism and David Friedman's more economistic anarcho-capitalism. But it is the debate between the left-anarchists and the anarcho-capitalists which is the most fundamental and the most acrimonious. There are many sub-debates within this wider genre, which we will now consider.

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