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:"
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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.
[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]
   | The Ego and Its Own - The Ego and His Own, by Max Stirner |
| | An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice - Godwin, Political Justice |
| | Man, Economy & State with Power and Market - Man, Economy, and State (with Power and Market) by Murray N. Rothbard |
| | The Production of Security - Gustave de Molinari - The Production of Security |
| | Our Enemy, the State - albert jay nock, our enemy, the state |
| | The Right to Ignore the State - Herbert Spencer : The Right to Ignore the State (1851) |
| | The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand - The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand |
| | Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital - The Avalon Project : Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy |
| | The State and Revolution - The State and Revolution |
| | The Communist Manifesto - Manifesto of the Communist Party |
| | The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude - Discourse on Voluntary Servitude - Wikisource |
| | A Vindication of Natural Society - Online Library of Liberty - A Vindication of Natural Society |
| | The Declaration of Independence - The Declaration of Independence |
| | Declaration of Independence - Charters of Freedom - The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights |
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