Chapter 7 notes that there is a significant lacuna in the posited social anarchist position. One might expect that any view described as an “anarchist” position will include an endorsement of the political anarchist thesis that the mere existence of a state is unjust, with some persons thereby having an obligation to abolish any existing states. However, this contention does not appear among the five social anarchist theses defended by the book. Chapter 7 defends this choice by arguing that political anarchism is implausible. Specifically, it contends that political anarchists must provide an analysis of statehood that entails that (a) any group that qualifies as a state is unjust in a way that its non-state counterpart is not and (b) there are existing states. It then argues that there is no plausible analysis of statehood that satisfies both of these desiderata.

Chapter 5 notes that the anarchist argument against private property underdetermines which positive position libertarian property rights theorists ought to endorse. One option is to simply concede that people lack any sort of claim rights when it comes to natural resources ‒ that is, endorse what the chapter calls the Hobbesian conclusion. However, the chapter argues that this proposal must be rejected because it violates the moral tyranny constraint. Instead, the chapter argues that libertarians and property rights theorist should accept what it calls the anarchist conclusion. This thesis holds that persons do possess certain claims against others using unowned resources, where these claims correspond to the prescriptions of a luck egalitarian principle of distributive justice. The chapter then argues that libertarians have limited basis for rejecting the anarchist conclusion, as it is compatible with both their favored property-based theories of justice and the arguments that support such theories.

Chapter 4 provides an alternative argument for rejecting private property. While Chapter 3 derives this conclusion from the Lockean proviso, this chapter begins with the consent theory of legitimacy as its starting premise. It then argues that property ownership is a form of legitimate authority. Thus, if one accepts a consent theory of legitimacy, one must also maintain that ownership has consent as its necessary condition. However, given that no one has ever consented to such ownership, it follows that no one owns any natural resources. The chapter then considers three objections to this argument, namely, that (1) there is nothing problematic about imposing obligations on others, (2) legitimacy only requires consent when it conflicts with previously acquired property rights, and (3) there is a morally salient distinction between land and territory. It concludes with a discussion of what this argument from consent theory implies vis-à-vis self-ownership.

Chapter 3 argues that the Lockean proviso entails two further conclusions embraced by social anarchists. First the chapter argues that, contrary to what right-libertarians typically maintain, the Lockean proviso implies that no one owns any natural resources. This is because any appropriation of such resources would leave others worse off in a way that the proviso does not allow. By contrast, the chapter argues that the proviso is necessarily satisfied when it comes to each agent’s own body ‒ at least, if self-ownership is interpreted in the way proposed in Chapter 1. Thus, while people do not own any external resources, they can easily come to own themselves via acts of self-appropriation. The chapter then goes on to defend at greater length the interpretation of the Lockean proviso proposed in Chapter 1. Finally, it concludes by discussing what the proposed position implies vis-à-vis the rights of children.

The introductory chapter presents the aims and outline of the book’s argument. It then situates the book within the broader ideological landscape by explaining the relationship between its argument, the anarchist movement, and some of the defended position’s philosophical rivals. Specifically, it considers, first, the question of what it means for a moral position to be an anarchist position and, next, whether the position defended by the book can be reasonably characterized as “social anarchism.” The introduction then discusses the central aims of the book in a bit more detail, with the primary two being (1) showing that social anarchism is coherent (in a sense to be described below) and (2) showing that the position is independently plausible. Finally, the introduction concludes by arguing that social anarchism will be attractive (in at least some respect) to partisans of a number of rival philosophical positions.

Chapter 1 introduces the five moral principles that compose the social anarchist position. Specifically, it defines social anarchism as the conjunction of five theses: (1) the consent theory of legitimacy, which holds that persons are obligated to obey the laws of the state only if they have consented to do so; (2) the Lockean proviso, which holds that persons can acquire property rights over some natural resource iff they leave “enough and as good” for others; (3) the self-ownership thesis, which asserts that each person has the same rights over her body that she would have over a fully owned thing; (4) the contention that persons do not have private property rights over any external natural resources; and (5) an endorsement of luck egalitarianism as the moral principle regulating the permissible use of unowned external objects. It also adjusts these principles in various ways to render them more plausible.

Chapter 6 observes that the dominant interpretation of luck egalitarianism fails to fully satisfy the moral tyranny constraint. To resolve this problem, it offers an alternative interpretation that both eliminates the possibility of moral tyranny and rescues luck egalitarianism from two other prominent objections that have been raised against the position. Specifically, it argues that agents forfeit a claim to an equal share of advantage when they make sanctionable choices, where an agent makes such a choice when she fails to act in the way that her evidence suggests will maximize the expected (appropriately distributed) advantage that her action would produce under conditions of full compliance. The chapter, first, explicates what this means and, next, argues that the proposed account of sanctionable choice resolves both Richard Arneson’s costly rescues objection and Susan Hurley’s boring problem.

Chapter 2 argues that the anarchist theses can be derived from a single meta-principle that limits which moral theories qualify as theoretically acceptable. This posited moral tyranny constraint holds that a theory of duties is acceptable only if full compliance with that theory (and the demands of morality more generally) would not allow any person to unilaterally, discretionarily, and foreseeably act in a way that would leave others with less advantage than they would have possessed given some other choice by the agent. After explicating the constraint, the chapter defends its plausibility, arguing that it should be accepted on both foundationalist and coherentist grounds. The chapter then explains how the constraint entails three of the posited anarchist theses (the consent theory of legitimacy, the Lockean proviso, and luck egalitarianism’s responsibility component). Finally, it addresses three potential objections that might be raised against the moral tyranny constraint.