Introduction

state - an organization with an effective monopoly on the legal use of force in a given geographic area.

This definition is from Max Weber, who put it thusly: "A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." Having this relatively sharp definition of "state" at our disposal, we can better understand and evaluate historic anarchist thought. We are at an advantage over even luminaries like Proudhon and Spooner, in that we have more experience with the modern state, an institutional analysis of the state, and new reasons to distrust and hate the state. We can stand on the shoulders of anti-statist theorists like Tucker, Nock and Rothbard, leverage our greater understanding of economics, and discover new wisdom and new understanding.

Anti-statists tend to see society and state as inherently opposing institutions. Society is the sum total of all voluntary human interaction. Aggression (the violation of rights, the initiation of force or threat of it) is morally wrong. The state is aggression legalized and legitimized.

Anti-statist assertions: Legitimacy - No state has legitimate moral authority to rule an individual. Desirability - All states are unnecessary and undesirable. Purity - All states should be abolished immediately.

The political philosophy that supports all three anti-statist assertions is called "anarchism." Prior to the late 1700's, known anarchist writings were negative, purely a critique of the institution of state. They did not offer a positive alternative. An eloquent example is Vindication of Natural Society by Edmund Burke. Burke stresses that natural society - without artificial government - couldn't possibly be worse than the known bloody and tyrannical history of states. He shows how states fail, and the undesirability of states, but offers no positive vision of a stateless society. Modern anarchists have ideas about how such a society would be organized and brought about. Thus, for full-fledged anarchists there is an additional consideration: How a stateless society may work.