ABSTRACT
For a small but growing group of anarchists, rehabilitating anarchy is only the first step toward reconstructing liberal political theory. The major difference between the Thomas Hobbesian and the de Jasian view of anarchy is that de Jasay, like other anarcho-liberals, takes into account a central fact of social life: not everyone is a stranger. Anarchy's foes err by asserting that it is inconsistent with social order; both theory and evidence show that the richness of social relations may lead even the most brutal egoists to cooperate rationally. Hobbes's claim that anarchy was so bad that anything would be better has limited the imagination of institutional designers. Since Hobbes, the comparisons have usually begun by considering a society of people living in the state of nature, that is, without a state. Like Hobbes, anarcho-liberals start with people in a state of nature and show how they can build effective institutions.
