Anti-statism is opposition to state intervention into personal, social or economic affairs. 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. autonomism). 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. [1]
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General categories
Radical 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 monopoly on the use of force in a particular geographic area.
Anti-statist philosophies
- Completely anti-statist
- Partially anti-statist, or anti-statism as an ideal or deferred programmatic goal
- Political philosophies related to classical liberalism and libertarian minarchism.
- Political philosophies related to marxism and communism.
Chronology of anti-statist writing
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- 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 Proudhon, What is Property?
- 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
References
See also
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