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.
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General categories[edit]
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, at one extreme as collectivist towards the other extreme 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[edit]
Completely anti-statist[edit]
- Anarchism and its inner schools of thought:
- Agorism
- Anarcha-feminism
- Anarchist communism
- Anarcho-capitalism
- 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
- Mutualism
- National anarchism
- Social anarchism
- Synthesis anarchism
- Veganarchism
- Voluntaryism
- Nihilist movement
Partially anti-statist[edit]
These philosophies have anti-statism as an ideal or deferred programmatic goal:
- Classical liberalism
- Geolibertarianism
- Libertarian conservatism
- Paleoconservatism
- Paleolibertarianism
- Political philosophies related to classical liberalism and minarchism.
Chronology of anti-statist writing[edit]
- 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
- 2001 – Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy:The God That Failed
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ 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
- ^ Civil Disobedience. Annotated works of Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau Society.
