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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]

[edit] 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 legal monopoly on the use of force in a particular geographic area.

[edit] 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

• Libertarian socialism
• Anarchism and its inner schools.
• Voluntaryism
• Anarcho-Capitalism
• Philosophy of Max Stirner

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.

[edit] Chronology of anti-statist writing

[The editor of Proudhon and Tucker's link has fixed it but advises that someone match those links up with the rest so they don't mess up the symmetry]

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 – tienne de la Botie, 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, [2]

1844– Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

1849– Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

1849– Frdric 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, [3]

1902– Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid

1935– Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State

1962– Murray Rothbard, Man, Economy & State with Power and Market

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

[edit] References

1. ^ [1]

[edit] See also

• Anarchy
• Anti-nationalism
• Stateless society
• Outline of anarchism
• Anarchist communities
• Statism
• Wirtland (micronation)
• Anti-Japanese sentiment