What is Minarchism?
Minarchists accept that some government is needed, but only a little. The state's one real job, they say, is to guard each person's life, freedom and property from force and fraud. That means police to stop crime, courts to settle disputes and uphold contracts, and a military for defense. Schools, hospitals, pensions and most rules on business should be handled by families, firms, charities and other voluntary groups. The label joins "minimal" with a Greek ending for rule. The idea is also called the night-watchman state, because the government only watches for trouble.
Core beliefs
- A state is justified only so far as it keeps each person safe in life, freedom and possessions.
- Police, courts and defense are the whole of its proper work.
- Taxes should be as low as those duties allow.
- Welfare, schooling and medicine are better left to private and voluntary providers.
- The law should not punish peaceful acts between consenting adults.
- A strict written constitution should hold the government in check.
History
The roots lie in classical liberalism. Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote The Limits of State Action in 1792, arguing that government should mainly protect security. Frederic Bastiat's The Law, from 1850, held that law should do nothing but defend persons and property. Herbert Spencer, a Victorian thinker, argued against state schooling and poor relief. The "night-watchman" label is usually traced to Ferdinand Lassalle, a German socialist who meant it as a sneer, and defenders later took it up. Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises both backed a limited state. The most famous modern defense is Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, published in 1974.
Variants
Strict minarchists keep to police, courts and defense. Moderate ones add a few public goods, such as roads or basic infrastructure. Some argue from natural rights, as Nozick did, while others argue from results, saying small governments make countries richer and freer. Minarchists differ from anarcho-capitalists, who say even police and courts could be private. They also differ from classical liberals, who usually accept a wider range of state tasks.
Criticisms
Left-wing critics say a minimal state leaves the poor, the sick and the old without a safety net and lets inequality grow without limit. Many economists say some goods, such as public health and clean air, will be under-supplied unless government steps in. Anarcho-capitalists object from the other side that a state funded by taxes it forces people to pay is not a minimal one in principle. Conservatives sometimes add that it ignores the shared institutions and customs that hold a society together.
In practice
No present-day country follows the model. Some historians say that parts of nineteenth-century Britain and the early United States came closer, with low taxes and little welfare spending, but both had many more rules than the ideal allows. Today the idea lives on in libertarian parties and think tanks, and in debates about privatization, deregulation and lower public spending. On the 12 axes it scores strongly toward Private on Ownership and Free on Markets, toward Liberty on Security and strongly toward Global on Trade.