Policing in a Stateless Society
Communal Police, Private Police, and a Voluntaryist Framework
The historical divergence between the social anarchist (democratic confederalist) and the market-anarchist traditions has left a seemingly unbridgable chasm between two approaches to organizing a stateless society. The one side — represented by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Murray Bookchin, and Abdullah Öcalan — emphasizes local autonomy and direct democracy. It proposes “to replace the police and the professional army with a popular militia — more specifically, a civic guard, composed of rotating patrols for police purposes and well-trained citizen military contingents for dealing with external dangers to freedom.”(Murray Bookchin, Libertarian Municipalism: The New Municipal Agenda) On the other side stand market-anarchists such as Gustave de Molinari, Benjamin Tucker, Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, and Morris and Linda Tannehill. These market-anarchists propose that a system of competitive private police could replace the government. While these schools of thought have often viewed one another with suspicion, I would like to propose a synthesis that I believe to be stronger than the position of either side on its own.
Democratic Confederalism
Democratic confederalism (or libertarian municipalism), as developed by Murray Bookchin and later adapted by Abdullah Öcalan, is a decentralized political model based on directly democratic assemblies in local communities (communes or municipalities) that federate into broader networks through voluntary coordination. These assemblies make decisions on local matters through consensus or majority vote, while higher-level councils coordinate intercommunal affairs without coercive authority. In this model, policing would be community-controlled, with local residents organizing their own security and emergency response systems — often through volunteer or elected roles — accountable to the democratic assembly.
Market Anarchism
Murray Rothbard’s market-anarchism envisions a stateless society where all goods and services — including policing and legal adjudication — are provided through voluntary exchange in a free market. In this system, private security firms would replace government police, offering protection and dispute resolution services to clients based on contractual agreements. These firms would compete for customers, creating incentives to provide effective and accountable service. Victims of crime would be compensated by insurance-backed protection agencies, which would in turn pursue restitution from offenders. There would be no centralized authority; instead, multiple legal systems could coexist, with private arbitrators resolving disputes between individuals or agencies according to agreed-upon rules.
Voluntaryism
Our synthesis begins with local communities (municipalities) governed via direct democracy. In keeping with Bookchin’s vision, each municipality will act through a face-to-face democratic assembly that deliberates on local policy. However, rather than being tax-funded or compulsory, these municipal institutions are funded voluntarily. Here is where the ideas of Herbert Spencer and Auberon Herbert come in. Their philosophy can be called voluntaryism.
“Spencer’s alternative to the coercive monopoly of the state was to convert it into a ‘mutual-safety confederation’ which would provide protection to all who paid its ‘taxes.’ Those who decided to secede would be free to make their own arrangements for defense, but Spencer did not go so far as Molinari in arguing that ‘competing governments’ would spring up to provide the security of those who withdrew. He did, however, hint that this would be the case with the statement that if,
‘as was shown, every man his right to secede from the state, and if, as a consequence, the state must be regarded as a body of men voluntarily associated, there remains nothing to distinguish it in the abstract from any other incorporated body.’…
“Like Molinari, Herbert believed that, if the market were given a chance to operate free from the restrictions of the state ‘every want that we have will be satisfied by means of a voluntary combination.’ He extends Spencer’s idea of a joint-stock protection society and argued that a ‘system of insurance’ would develop on the free market whereby ‘voluntary protection associations of every kind and form’ would replace the monopoly of the state. These protective associations would be financed by ‘voluntary taxes’ — insurance premiums in Molinari’s system — paid by those individuals who voluntarily placed themselves under the jurisdiction of each association. In this ‘deofficialized’ fully voluntary society
‘the state should compel no services and exact no payment by force, it should depend entirely upon voluntary services and voluntary payments…it should be free to conduct many useful undertakings…but that it should do so in competition with all voluntary agencies, without employment of force, in dependence on voluntary payments, and acting with the consent of those concerned simply as their friend and their advisor.’”(David Hart, Gustave de Molinari and the Anti-Statist Liberal Tradition in Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice, edited by Edward P. Stringham)
The voluntaryism of Herbert Spencer and Auberon Herbert provides the ethical backbone, ensuring that participation and funding of “government” is strictly consensual and that individuals are free to withdraw from the system and seek alternatives.
The Synthesis
Now let’s integrate Bookchin’s ideas into this framework. In this framework, the municipal governments, constituted on a directly-democratic basis, can offer their services as a “public option.” Why a public option? Because you would be free to opt-out and purchase the same service from any number of competing private companies. The democratic assemblies may choose to create and fund a local policing system — let’s call this the Voluntary Public-Option Police (VPOP). VPOP security is staffed by community volunteers or elected individuals, depending upon their position within the organization. The officers receive wages in remuneration for their work. VPOP security functions as a civic emergency response system, not unlike a volunteer fire department or how police and ambulances respond to car crashes and fires. Its main role is to deter crime by being visibly present in the community, to provide rapid response to emergencies, and to maintain public order. While the VPOP officers receive wages, the organization's funding comes entirely from voluntary contributions in the form of donations or payments for goods and services provided by the municipality. Because of limited resources (as a result of being funded entirely by the local community rather than being national corporations like the competing private police) and due to a lack of insurance-based liability, these public police forces would not be expected to compensate the victims of crime or offer any guarantee of property protection. In this respect, the VPOP security would be inferior to the private police services. While their emergency response function would be vital, there would be a clear incentive for people to purchase insurance/protection from private companies as a supplement to the VPOP services.
Within this theoretical society, all people would receive some level of basic protection from their local VPOP security force. Most people would contract with private protection firms to insure their property against theft and damage, and the profit motive would incentivize the firms to prevent and solve crimes. Unlike the VPOP security, which responds after the fact and does not assume financial liability for criminal losses, the private police forces would have a vested interest in both crime prevention and restitution. If property is stolen, these firms are contractually obligated to compensate the owner and pursue restitution from perpetrators.
This framework leads to a form of polycentric law enforcement, where communal VPOP services and competitive private police firms coexist within the same territory, each catering to different values and needs. The public option provides something like a minimal safety net, protection even for those who can’t afford private police, while private police firms allow individuals to opt into more robust and customer-driven protection and security services.
Incentives and Outcomes
One likely outcome of this arrangement is that the VPOP security, being resource-constrained and funded only by the local community, would provide a lower level of service than the private firms, especially in terms of investigative capacity and restitution. However, this is not a flaw — it is a feature of our voluntaryist democratic confederalism. No community is compelled to fund more than it wishes, and individuals retain the freedom to opt for alternative security and protection services.
This decentralized and non-monopolistic structure addresses several concerns. For market-anarchists, it removes the coercive monopoly that is inherent in state policing. For democratic confederalists (or libertarian municipalists), it retains local government and democratic input in matters of concern to the community. For voluntaryists, it ensures that all contributions are made freely, with no threat of violence or coercion.
Importantly, direct democracy in the municipality governs only public property and public services. The direct democracy governs only the municipal VPOP — not the behavior of private firms. Firms are bound by contract law rather than arbitrary decree (even if that decree is democratic in nature). This preserves individual autonomy and prevents democratic overreach into private affairs.
A Polycentric and Pluralistic Stateless Order
By combining the participatory ethics of libertarian municipalism with the dynamic efficiency of market anarchism, and grounding both in the moral framework of voluntaryism, a new model of post-state policing emerges. The coexistence of communal police and private police, chosen freely and funded voluntarily, represents a practical synthesis of communal and individualist visions of liberty. It is not a utopia, but a framework rooted in freedom, accountability, and pluralism. In this ecosystem, individuals and communities alike can navigate their own balance between solidarity and autonomy — between the democratic commons and the sovereign self.
P.S.
It should be noted that the Voluntary Public-Option Police service does not have to rely only on voluntary donations for its funding. It would be funded by the democratic municipality. The municipality could offer public options for a variety of goods and services. The municipality could, for instance, run a local grocery store or offer banking and postal services. The municipality would be paid for such services. The municipality may also own property in which case it might charge ground-rent for use of municipal land. Furthermore, it may even own and maintain roads and could charge tolls for the use of those roads. Excess revenue from various municipal or confederal enterprises could be used to fund local municipal police forces. How much funding and how to voluntarily acquire the appropriate amount of funding would be left up to the directly-democratic process of the municipality and the democratic confederation to which it belongs.
Another advantage of this mixed market-anarchist/communalist system is that it has a system of courts and law enforcement independent of any particular municipality. Suppose there is a dispute between municipalities. How is that to be resolved? Bookchin’s answer is “by force.”
“If a libertarian municipal society is brought about as a result of a movement and people who are ecologically oriented, it would be utterly incongruous if suddenly a portion of that society decided it wanted to go around and freely pollute — additionally, pollute because it wanted to expand industry! We would have to enter into consultation with either such a municipality or such a region and say, “You have to stop this. By trying to pollute and by trying to develop entirely on your own, you’re acting in the same manner as the very society we tried to eliminate.” And if they say, “Well, we demand our sovereign right (either as individuals or as communities) to do what we want, or to secede,” we would answer, “You can secede. You can do whatever you like provided it doesn’t affect other people. And if you’re polluting an area, damaging the planet or even part of it, a planet that should be the common heritage of all living forms including human beings, then we’re going to stop you.” Suppose they defiantly answer, “We refuse!” Well, if things come to such as point, we’ll come in with armed militias and we’ll put an end to it…”(Murray Bookchin, Basic Principles, Future Prospects)
In the market-anarchist system, however, there is a network of private dispute resolution organizations, arbitrators, or courts. If one municipality decides to pollute a river, other municipalities downstream can sue the particular municipally-owned company that is engaging in such behavior. The dispute would most likely be resolved peacefully in the courts, with force only being used as a last resort. This market-anarchist system allows us to avoid clashes between the security forces of municipalities that fail to see eye-to-eye.
