Anti-statism is opposition to state intervention
into personal, social, and economic affairs.
Anti-statism means opposition to the state
and any artificial form of government, and
it differs from traditional anarchism which
means the opposition not only to the state
but to any form of rulership.
== General categories ==
Anti-statists differ greatly according to
the beliefs they hold in addition to anti-statism.
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 legitimate
use of physical 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.
== Anti-statist philosophies ==
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
Libertarianism
Libertarian socialism
Mutualism
National anarchism
Social anarchism
Synthesis anarchism
Veganarchism
Voluntaryism
Nihilist movement
Marxism
== See also ==
Anti-nationalism
== References ==
