Pirates, like gangsters and other pop culture outlaws, have always carried a certain romantic appeal and, thanks to "Pirates of the Caribbean", they are the most appealing outlaws at this moment.
In Journal of Political Economy, Peter Leeson explores the “golden age” of piracy during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and finds that these criminal organizations were able to establish a remarkably stable form of self-government.
Piracy was a capital crime so the risks were commensurate with the rewards, but what is surprising about such a free market criminal enterprise is how socialist it was.
Pirates never lacked for “Brethren in Iniquity”
The court records of pirate trials give us context as to why the pirate’s life was for them. Piracy exploded along with trade to the far-flung colonies. A captain of a trading ship was the representative of land-based merchants, and thus wielded complete authority—which was often abused—over the crew. Pirates were a little more like Congress. While the captain wielded absolute authority in battle the pirates, “constituted other Officers besides the Captain; so very industrious were they to avoid putting too much power into the hands of one Man.”
The quartermaster oversaw the distribution of provisions, general order aboard the ship and, importantly, fair division of booty.
Pirates entered into an agreement called the chasse-partie that dictated the division of loot. Their were also standard articles for a voyage, institutionalized as the “Custom of the Coast” or the “Jamaica Discipline,” that covered all aspects of government, and life aboard a ship “for the better Conservation of their Society, and doing Justice to one another.” Records of those articles still exist Even a court that stood in judgment gave the pirates the backhanded compliment that they were “wickedly united, articled together.”
Modern piracy, Leeson notes, is a different affair. It is a land-based and a short-term commitment, so it no longer requires the same sort of organization - and it is a lot more capitalist as well. The days of “an-arrgh-chy” have long passed but anarchy never really was part of it.
Leeson, Peter T. “An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization” Journal of Political Economy 116:6
