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Atlas / Comparisons / Anarcho-Capitalism vs Institutional Revolutionary Party

Anarcho-Capitalism and Institutional Revolutionary Party

Measured distance across six axes

27.9 / 49.0 possible

Opposed programmes with little shared ground. They agree within three points on CU. They diverge by eight points or more on EC, AU, SC.

Axis by axis

AxisRothbardPRIGapReading
EC · Economic organisation+10+019DivergesCarries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this.
CU · Social and cultural order+01+043AgreesEffectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about.
AU · Organisation of power−10+0818DivergesCarries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this.
SC · Scale of decision−10+0717DivergesCarries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this.
ID · Rule of membership−02+035DiffersReal difference, but not the dividing line.
CH · Method and tempo+03−047DiffersReal difference, but not the dividing line.

Each axis runs from −10 to +10; the distance is the straight-line separation across all six at once, out of a maximum of 49.0. How the scoring works →

The evidence behind the widest gaps

A distance figure is worth nothing unless the scores behind it can be checked. These are the artefacts supporting the axes that separate these two most.

Rothbard · EC +10

At the ceiling. Every function including law and defence is to be supplied by contract.

  • Programme textRothbard's For a New Liberty treats taxation as theft without qualification and proposes private courts and defence agencies.

PRI · EC +01

Coded +1: the same party redistributed land, nationalised oil and then signed NAFTA and privatised.

  • Documented act or statuteOil was nationalised in 1938; the banks were nationalised in 1982 and reprivatised from 1991.
  • Documented act or statuteNAFTA entered force in 1994 under a PRI president.

Rothbard · AU −10

At the floor with anarcho-communism, from the opposite economic pole. The pairing is the strongest single refutation of the one-dimensional model.

  • Comparative datasetBoth traditions reject the state as such; they differ by nineteen points on the economic axis.

PRI · AU +08

Coded +8: elections held without interruption and never lost for seventy-one years.

  • Documented act or statuteThe 1988 result was declared after a computer failure that destroyed the ballots, later admitted by the incumbent president.
  • Documented act or statuteThe party lost the presidency in 2000 and conceded, which is why this is not higher.

What this comparison does not establish

Proximity means similarity of stated position. It carries no claim about competence, circumstance, scale of operation, or what either organisation actually did to the people under it. Two organisations can sit close together and produce entirely different histories, because those things are not on any axis and could not be.

Anarcho-Capitalism

1970– · United States

All state functions including courts, police and defence should be supplied competitively on the market; taxation is theft.

Institutional Revolutionary Party

1929– · Mexico

A party built to institutionalise a revolution and end military coups, which then held the presidency for seventy-one consecutive years.

Distance is not the whole answer. Two organisations can sit the same distance apart for entirely different reasons, and the reason is the content of any claim about them. Open the comparison in the atlas to weight the axes yourself.

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