The Molinari Institute web site defines market anarchism this way:
Market anarchism is the doctrine that the legislative, adjudicative, and protective functions unjustly and inefficiently monopolised by the coercive State should be entirely turned over to the voluntary, consensual forces of market society.
Perhaps more succinctly, market anarchism is advocacy of replacing the state with civil society while pointing to free market economics to explain the workability and/or desirability of such.
However, the ideological preference for market society is not as important as the methodological imperative for decentralization and political pluralism. In an anarchistic society not everyone will be market-oriented; there will even be those who oppose the profit motive altogether. So long as we can agree to respect each other we welcome the peaceful evolution and experimentation between different models of social organization.
Translations for this article:
- Deutsch, Was ist Marktanarchismus?
- Dutch, Wat is markt anarchisme?