autarchy

1 economic independence as a national policy [syn: autarky]

2 a political system governed by a single individual [syn: autocracy] [ant: democracy]

English

Alternative spellings

• autarky

Etymology

Greek autarcheia (αὐταρχία) absolute governing

Noun

1. A condition of absolute power.
2. An autocratic government; an autocracy.
3. Self-government; a condition of economic self-sufficiency or national independence.

Derived terms

• autarch
• autarchic
• autarchical
• autarchically
• autarchist

Autarchism (from Greek, "belief in self rule") is a political philosophy that upholds the principle of individual liberty, rejects compulsory government, and supports the elimination of government in favor of ruling yourself and no other. Advocates of the philosophy are autarchist (from Greek, "one who believes in self rule"), while the state in which everyone rules themselves and no one else is autarchy (from Greek, "state of self rule").

Autarchists

Robert LeFevre, a "self-proclaimed autarchist" recognized as such by Murray Rothbard, distinguished autarchism from anarchism, whose economics he felt entailed interventions contrary to freedom, in contrast to his own laissez faire economics of the Austrian School. In professing "a sparkling and shining individualism" while "it advocates some kind of procedure to interfere with the processes of a free market", anarchism seemed to LeFevre to be self-contradictory. Fusing these influences together, he arrived at the autarchist philosophy: "The Stoics provide the moral framework; the Epicureans, the motivation; the praxeologists, the methodology. I propose to call this package of ideological systems autarchy, because autarchy means self-rule.". Robert D. Richardson stated that the anarchy Emerson "has in mind would be 'autarchy', rule by self".

George Burghope wrote the essay "Autarchy, or, the art of self government" in 1691.

See also

• Libertarianism

References

External links

• Politics by Ralph Waldo Emerson - In it, he advocates the practice of self-government as the most rightful way to organize individuals in society (1844).
• The Nature of Man and His Government by Robert LeFevre - an introduction by Rose Wilder Lane (1959).
• On the Other Hand by Robert LeFevre - Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought Vol. 2, No. 2 (Summer, 1966): 83–88
• Self-Government by Donald J. Boudreaux - The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty - September 2000 Vol. 50 No. 9

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