Anti-statism

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Anti-statism is a term describing opposition to state intervention into personal, social, and economic affairs.^[1] Anti-statist views may reject the state completely as well as rulership in general (e.g. anarchism), they may wish to reduce the size and scope of the state to a minimum (e.g. minarchism), or they may advocate a stateless society as a distant goal (e.g. Marxism).

General categories

Anti-statists differ greatly according to the beliefs they hold in addition to anti-statism. Thus the categories of anti-statist thought are sometimes classified as collectivist or individualist.

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 word, "state" in a different sense than we use it today. Thus, the anarchist Mikhail 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 legal monopoly on the use of force in a particular geographic area.

Henry David Thoreau expressed this evolutionary anti-statist view in his essay Civil Disobedience:

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 and women are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. ^[2]

Anti-statist philosophies

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

Completely anti-statist

• Anarchism and its inner schools
  • Agorism
  • Anarcha-feminism
  • Anarchist communism
  • Anarcho-capitalism and free-market anarchism
  • Anarcho-naturism
  • Anarcho-pacifism
  • Anarcho-primitivism
  • Anarcho-syndicalism
  • Buddhist anarchism
  • Christian anarchism
  • Collectivist anarchism
  • Egoist anarchism and the philosophy of Max Stirner
  • Existentialist anarchism
  • Green anarchism
  • Individualist anarchism
  • Insurrectionary anarchism
  • Jewish anarchism
  • Left anarchism
  • Libertarian socialism
  • National anarchism
  • Social anarchism
  • Synthesis anarchism
  • Veganarchism
  • Voluntaryism
• Nihilist movement

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

• Classical liberalism
• Geolibertarianism
• Libertarian conservatism
• Paleoconservatism
• Paleolibertarianism
• Political philosophies related to classical liberalism and minarchism.
• Political philosophies related to Marxism and communism.

Chronology of anti-statist writing

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

1548  – Étienne de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude

1793 – William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice

1825 – Thomas Hodgskin, Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital

1840 – Pierre Joseph Proudhon, [1]

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, [2]

1902 – Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid

1935 – Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State

1962 – Murray Rothbard, Man, Economy & State

1982 – Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty

1983 - Samuel Edward Konkin III, The New Libertarian Manifesto

1985 – Anthony de Jasay, The State

2001 – Kevin A. Carson, The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand

See also

• Anti-nationalism
• Statism

References

1. ^ Gallaher, Carolyn. "Anti-statism. Definition: Opposition from Above and Below" in Gallaher, et al. Key Concepts in Political Geography, London: Sage Press, 2009. p.260
2. ^ Civil Disobedience. Annotated works of Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau Society.