The first positive treatment of what came to be known as anarchism was a book by William Godwin called An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, published in 1793. This first effort at positive anarchism, we see with perfect hindsight, contained two major flaws. The first flaw, one might call the utopian flaw, consisted of the belief that the nature of mankind is sufficiently malleable to allow the abandonment of all legal systems. This attitude basically throws the baby out with the bath water. Since decreed law (state monopoly law) was illegitimate, early utopian anarchists jumped to the erroneous conclusion that all law was bad. This is understandable, since the polycentric law systems that predominated in the Middle Ages were forgotten, cultures with polycentric law were largely unknown, and like today, most people simply assumed that law and state were inseparable. Another flaw seen in early anarchism had to do with economics: a belief in the doctrine of just price. In particular, the early "classical" anarchists held the normative doctrine that "cost is the limit of price," also known as the labor theory of value.

Major Errors in Classical Anarchism Utopianism - the belief that people are quickly perfectable legal utopianism - laws and law enforcement are unnecessary; crime would disappear in a stateless society economic utopianism - scarcity and property wouldn't exist in a stateless society ethical utopianism - people can achieve consensus on moral standards and property systems Just price doctrine - all goods and services have an intrinsic just price

Much of modern anarchist thought has been updating the core anti-statist principles to reflect modern thought and scientific advancement in these two areas. As we will see, historians now know more about polycentric and spontaneous law in various cultures and civilizations throughout history. For example, hunter-gatherer tribes were generally not communistic as once thought, but had private property in scarce goods like tools and weapons. We know now that, for these indigenous peoples, land was simply not sufficiently scarce to warrant property status. Early utopians had assumed that these were "noble savages" with a communist bent, and that natural society had to reject private property. Now we know, with our greater understanding of the advantages of division of labor, and the concept of comparative advantage, that freedom of association, trade, and property rights are not only advantageous in terms of individuals' standard of living, but are also absolutely necessary to maintain the number of people on earth today. The modern anarchist tends to be ardently pro-property and pro-market, championing "anarcho-capitalism" - the radicalism of the 21st century. How times have changed!