Rothbard, Mises and the like are proponets of laisse-faire capitalism, not anarchism. Starting after WW2 a small group of right-wingers tried to appropriate the terms Libertarian and Anarchist to apply to their capitalist philosophy. They suceeded in appropriating the term libertarian but failed with anarchist. So-called "anarcho"-capitalists have about as much to do with anarchism as national socialism has to do with socialism. In order to make their rewriting of language less obvious some have tried to rewrite history so that Anarcho-Individualists from the 19th century like Banjamin Tucker appear within their capitalist tradition. Which is obviously absurd since Benjamin Tucker and other Anarcho-Individualists explicity attacked capitalism and called themselves socialists.
> I take it as given that these people no longer have any connections with the communist anarchist
tradition, but I was wondering whether they >have much influence - I take it that this is mainly an
American phenomenon.
Yes, it's mainly an American. They have virtually no influence on anything other then posting a lot on usenet.
-- Joe R. Golowka JoeG at ieee.org Anarchist FAQ - http://www.anarchyfaq.org
"If the Nuremberg laws were applied today, then every Post-War American president would have to be hanged." - Noam Chomsky