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Anti-state




I heartily accept the motto,—"That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.



GENERAL CATEGORIES

Pure anti-statists (" Anarchists ") differ greatly according to the beliefs they hold ''in addition'' to anti-statism. Most commonly, the ''preferred economic system'' is the focus. Thus the main categories of pure anti-statist thought can be classifed as Collectivist or Individualist . The term "anarchism" is often contested between adherents of collectivist forms of anarchism which are opposed to Private Property (such as Anarcho-syndicalism and Anarchist Communism ) and Individualist forms that descend from Liberalism which embrace private property (such as Mutualism and Anarcho-capitalism ). Througout history, some proponents of both sides have accused the other of not being genuinely anti-statist or anarchist.

Anti-statist philosophies that seek to minimize the role or influence of the state are difficult to delimit. They range from Panarchy (states competing in the same territory for patronage, an arrangement hard to distinguish from statelessness) to Marxism and Christian Postmillennialism , which envision statelessness in the remote future, to Liberalism (or more precisely Classical Liberalism ), which seeks only to reduce, not abolish, the role of the state.

A significant difficulty in determining whether a thinker or philosophy is anti-statist is the problem of defining the state itself. Terminology has changed over time, and past writers often used the term "state" in a different sense than we use it today. Thus, the anarchist Michael Bakunin used the term simply to mean a governing organization. Other writers used the term "state" to mean any law-making or law-enforcement agency. Karl Marx defined the state as the institution used by the Ruling Class of a country to maintain the conditions of its rule. According to Max Weber , the state is an organization with an effective Monopoly On The Use Of Force in a particular geographic area.


ANTI-STATIST PHILOSPHIES



Completely Anti-statist








Partially anti-statist, or anti-statism as an ideal or deferred programmatic goal





CHRONOLOGY OF ANTI-STATIST WRITING


:: 1548 Étienne De La Boétie , '' The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude ''
:: 1756 Edmund Burke , '' A Vindication of Natural Society ''
:: 1776 Thomas Jefferson , '' The Declaration of Independence ''
:: 1793 William Godwin , '' An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice ''
:: 1825 Thomas Hodgskin , '' Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital ''
:: 1840 Pierre Proudhon , '' What is Property? ''
:: 1841 Josiah Warren , '' Manifesto ''
:: 1844 Max Stirner , '' The Ego and Its Own ''
:: 1849 Henry David Thoreau , '' Civil Disobedience ''
:: 1849 Frédéric Bastiat , '' The Law ''
:: 1849 Gustave De Molinari , '' The Production of Security ''
:: 1851 Herbert Spencer , '' The Right to Ignore the State ''
:: 1866 Michael Bakunin , '' Revolutionary Catechism ''
:: 1867 Lysander Spooner , '' No Treason ''
:: 1886 Benjamin Tucker , '' State Socialism and Anarchism: How far they agree, & wherein they differ ''
:: 1902 Peter Kropotkin , '' Mutual Aid ''
:: 1935 Albert Jay Nock , '' Our Enemy, the State ''
:: 1962 Murray Rothbard , '' Man, Economy & State with Power and Market ''
:: 2001 Kevin A. Carson , '' The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand


SEE ALSO