To Fight Authoritarianism, Libertarians Need to be More Pro-Liberty, Not Just Anti-State
Blogger Noah Smith’s praise for libertarianism comes at an odd time but offers an opportunity to clarify the side that has contributed to human freedom and flourishing
“The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress.” — Murray Rothbard, 1974
“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” — Ronald Reagan, 1981
Recently, the center-left economic blogger
apologized to the libertarian movement. This caught me by surprise. My own estimation of that movement, of which I’ve long considered myself a part, has taken a sharp downward turn over the last few years. Lured by a vague hope of deregulation and the more immediate pleasure of sticking it to the woke left, too many libertarians set aside their commitment to the rule of law and soft-peddled Trump’s threat. Some even threw their weight fully behind him. The Libertarian Party in particular experienced a takeover by a reactionary wing and is now an eager foot solider in MAGA’s culture wars against the left, as The Unpopulist has been chronicling.So this was a strange moment to be issuing an apology to the libertarian movement when even many libertarians are souring on it. But Noah’s piece was of course not issuing an apology to the MAGAfied libertarian movement or the Libertarian Party but the libertarianism that steadfastly stood for relatively free markets, free trade, and limited government even when these ideas weren’t popular anywhere else on the political spectrum. These commitments played a crucial role in keeping at bay some rather reactionary right-wing tendencies and left-wing excesses. In his words, “Free-market ideology, for all its flaws, was keeping a lid on the right’s natural impulse toward Peronism” in addition to serving as “the proper foil for progressivism.”
My initial surprise at Noah’s apology was due to the fact that he and I were using the word “libertarian” in two very different ways. In my book on the history of libertarian thought, The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism, that I co-authored with John Tomasi, the president of Heterodox Academy, we spent a lot of time talking about canonical libertarian thinkers like Herbert Spencer, Robert Nozick, and, most importantly, Murray Rothbard (more on him below)—who weren’t simply trying to make the state more efficient or less cumbersome, but to virtually (or literally) eliminate it. Noah, on the other hand, seemed to have in mind more moderate libertarian arguments about the evils of tariffs and cronyism, and the importance of relatively free markets in supplying a variety of important human needs.
One familiar way of understanding the difference between these two kinds of libertarians is by distinguishing between natural rights and consequentialist approaches. Some libertarians believe that all individuals have a natural right to be free from aggression, or something along those lines—others that libertarian institutions simply produce better results than the alternatives. As a rule, the natural rights approach lends itself to a kind of absolutism which, while exhilarating and inspiring in certain contexts, also encourages a kind of simplistic moralism that ignores the complexities of political life. Noah, as an economist, would naturally be more drawn to the consequentialist version, which thinks about public policy in terms of costs, benefits, and trade-offs.
Contrasting Libertarian Postures to the State
But there is another way of carving up the libertarian landscape that tracks with the broader American understanding of freedom: one variety sees freedom as nothing less—or more—than being anti-state, while the other sees freedom as affirmatively pro-liberty. This distinction, originally articulated by the late economist Steve Horwitz, can help elucidate those elements of libertarian thought that are genuinely valuable and worth saving (and ones that Noah was singling for praise) versus those that are not.
The anti-state understanding of freedom is exemplified most clearly in the quote from Rothbard above. Rothbard, a controversial figure, was the leading architect of anarcho-capitalist ideas that are radically anti-government. He regarded the state or the government as the enemy of freedom and rights, almost by definition. Later in his career, he became so committed to the destruction of the state that he advocated an alliance between libertarians and various extremist factions on the right to create a populist movement capable of rapid political change.
On this anti-state view, all states (even the most minimal) necessarily violate individual rights by exercising a monopoly on the use of force. And, of course, all actually existing states go well beyond this minimum through myriad policies of excessive taxation, conscription, regulation, and so on. Moreover, because states exercise a monopoly on violence, they have much greater power than any other organization to infringe upon our freedom. Rothbardians resist acknowledging that any private arrangements are oppressive because they see them as products of voluntary cooperation. This belief, combined with the view that the state is inherently evil, makes Rothbardians quite tolerant of what most would regard as blatant private rights violations (more on that below).
But even less dogmatic anti-state libertarians who don’t necessarily believe that all private relations are good or benign don’t prioritize tackling private oppression. As far as they are concerned, landlords, bosses, even private criminal organizations are much more constrained by competitive pressures and scarce resources than monopolistic governments. Even if their intentions are just as rapacious, their ability to carry those intentions out is generally nowhere nearly as effective.
Rothbard vs Hayek
The pro-liberty approach, by contrast, can perhaps best be seen in the writing of Friedrich Hayek, especially in his Constitution of Liberty. He begins that book by saying that his concern is the promotion of freedom, where freedom is understood as “that condition of men in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as possible.” The rest of the book is essentially an attempt to explain what that means, and to explore the various ways by which it might be achieved. While Hayek’s discussion has a strong libertarian bent, nowhere does Hayek give the impression that he is fundamentally opposed to the state. Indeed, Hayek explicitly argues that states are necessary in order to limit the coercion that individuals and groups would otherwise wield against each other.
Of course, it is possible to be both pro-liberty and anti-state. The two approaches to liberty are not mutually exclusive. And many of the causes that libertarians have championed most persuasively, such as ending military conscription, zoning laws, the war on drugs, and occupational licensing, are ones in which rolling back the powers of the state is precisely the best means of promoting the end of human freedom.
The question, then, is not which of the two approaches you reject, but which you regard as fundamental. It’s a matter of emphasis and priority. It is possible to be anti-state because—and to the extent that—opposing the state promotes human liberty. But it is also possible to take this as the philosophical end point, a goal to be pursued regardless of its impact on freedom. When being anti-state and the pursuit of liberty line up, we don’t have to choose between them. It’s in cases where they come into conflict when things get more complicated.
State and Private Power
On the Rothbardian approach, liberty is essentially defined in such a way that anything the state does counts as an automatic infringement. Liberty is freedom from aggression and all state action is necessarily aggressive. On the Hayekian approach, in contrast, we start with an independent understanding of liberty, and then seek to discover, empirically, whether this or that activity of the state expands or contracts it.
For Rothbard, liberty is a constraint that places absolute limits on what the state can do. For Hayek, liberty is a goal—a value that we seek to realize as best we can in the face of inevitable trade-offs.
Though sometimes these two approaches overlap, in a wide range of cases, they pull in very different directions. Noah, in a previous post, had rightly criticized libertarianism for ignoring threats to liberty posed by non-state institutions (“local bullies”) like corporations, churches, and schools (which was another reason I was surprised by his complimentary follow up). Each of these organizations wields an enormous amount of power over people’s lives, including the power to restrict their freedom according to any ordinary understanding of that term. Opposition to the state, however, will not suffice either to illuminate that threat or to combat it.
Consider, for instance, the Rothbardian-informed libertarian opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited certain private entities from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. For the anti-state libertarians, the Act represents an objectionable increase in government power and a violation of individual property rights. But for those whose primary goal is the expansion of human liberty, the Act seems to be a clear victory—expanding the realm of choice for millions of Americans by limiting the power of private bullies to deny them service or employment on arbitrary, objectionable grounds. Just because the government can sometimes overreach or overcorrect does not mean that its efforts to stop private aggression are inherently illicit. We need general principles to guide it and then judge their application on a case-by-case basis as with everything else in human affairs.
Liberty Betrayed: DOGE and the Manipulation of Libertarian Opposition to the State
For a more recent example, consider DOGE’s relentless attack on state capacity, so nicely discussed here by
. Musk himself is no libertarian. But a great many libertarians have cheered his “chainsaw” approach to cutting the size of government. The problem with this perspective is that not all cuts to government are good, even from the perspective of human liberty. Cutting back on the size and scope of the regulatory state would almost certainly be a very positive thing. But eliminating Voice of America, indiscriminately cutting USAID, and randomly firing employees at the Nuclear Security Administration doesn’t meaningfully enhance the liberty of American citizens. From a purely fiscal perspective, DOGE simply isn’t touching the items that place the biggest burden on taxpayers. From a regulatory perspective, DOGE has no power to change government’s rules, only to inhibit its ability to implement the rules already in place. And from a legal perspective, all of this is being done in a way that seriously undermines the rule of law, arguably the most important guarantor of individual liberty, and that renders executive power more highly concentrated and unaccountable.At its best, an anti-state attitude is an insufficient guide for continuing the struggle for liberty and liberalism in the 21st century. At worst, it is a strategy that can (and has been) consciously manipulated to expand the scope of unaccountable private power, leaving individuals even less free than before. This is especially relevant given that state and corporate power have become enmeshed and increasingly complement—rather than check—each other, complicating the clean distinction between state and market on which the anti-state view rests.
Libertarians and other advocates of liberty can play an important role in resisting the excesses of government, especially when authoritarianism is on the rise. Over the course of the 20th century, their voices contributed to a range of victories that dramatically expanded the scope of human freedom: the end of conscription; greater social, economic, and political equality for women; significantly lower marginal tax rates; freer international trade and immigration; expanded rights of free speech; deregulation of major industries such as airlines and trucking. It’s a good thing that Noah Smith is now acknowledging these contributions. These battles were worth fighting—not because they eliminated some portion of the state, but because they advanced the larger cause of human emancipation.
But if libertarianism is to endure as a force for genuine human freedom, it must reclaim and reaffirm its commitment to liberty as its highest value—not as a reflexive rejection of the state, but as a principled commitment to liberating individuals from all forms of coercion, public and private alike.
Ironically, being anti-state is not the most reliable road to being anti-authoritarian.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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I agree that libertarianism is owed an apology, but less so libertarians themselves. I saw too many commentators in that space throw up their hands with a "gee, both sides are just so bad, so I don't know" when one side was clearly worse. They're so obsessed with a fringe online left that is mostly limited to Ivy League college campuses that they're blind to much bigger threats on the right. We now have a guy locking people up without due process, hiking taxes via executive order, and trying to control the economy through central planning, much of it motivated by the ability of people to bribe him. Even today, you see John Stossel (a journalist I used to admire) post far more content about left-wing media activists (who hold no real political power and likely never will) than he does about Trump's tariffs (i.e., the one with actual power)
"Noah, in a previous post, had rightly criticized libertarianism for ignoring threats to liberty posed by non-state institutions ('local bullies') like corporations, churches, and schools (which was another reason I was surprised by his complimentary follow up). Each of these organizations wields an enormous amount of power over people’s lives, including the power to restrict their freedom according to any ordinary understanding of that term."
This is obviously and absurdly wrong. If you don't like what a corporation does to you, you are free to work for a different one and/or decline to purchase its products. If you don't like a church, you are free to formally renounce it or just never attend it. And thanks to the efforts of charter school and homeschooling advocates, you can freely withdraw your children from a school and send them to a different one. (There is an issue here regarding the liberty of the children themselves, which is one reason the age of majority should be lower, but that's not really the point being made.) Corporations and churches can restrict people's freedom through illegal acts of physical harm to their persons or property, or plausible-deniability encouragement of same, but preventing that is a question of enforcing laws that are entirely consistent with libertarian principles. Any other ability they have to restrict freedom is granted to them and ultimately enforced by the state, in contravention of libertarian principles.
In stark contrast, law and government is not voluntary. It is not an agreement out of which you are free to opt. The law and the coercive power of the state to enforce it is applied to you, based on where you happened to be born and where you go, and there is no escape from it. In theory, one can emigrate, but almost every country has immigration rules that give you even less liberty once there, and not one hectare of land one can scrape a living on remains unclaimed on Earth, and the technology and infrastructure to live off it does not yet exist. All humanity lives under a state.