Statism: an Outdated Solution

Statism, as previously established, is a structure of government that empowers the central state with the total and complete control over the individual; thereby reducing him/her to a mere number – a singular unit of a meaningless mass. Too often, my fellow libertarians and conservatives admit to the following line of reasoning: Socialism – they would maintain – is a great idea; but the only problem is that it doesn’t work. Furthermore, my comrades on the left often add: perhaps human beings are not advanced enough to fully implement this system.

It is particularly the latter line thought that has led me to a single inescapable and contrary conclusion: statism is an outdated, archaic, and primitive form of human governing. It takes root in an age where men trusted kings to be partly divine, where the state could be the master of the individual and his hard labor, where the idea of individuality was an insult to nationality, and where elementary freedoms were a luxury. In short, it comes from an uncivilized age of tribal behavior, where a thought of individual choice was completely nonexistent.

Of course, being an anti-statist does not simply mean anti-Marxist or anti-socialist. A wide list of other governing systems which equally downgrade individuality must certainly not escape the criticism. However, for the most part the human beings have outlived the various forms of statism. With the advancement of society, the power of the kings, czars, and other tyrants has been drastically limited to mere non-existence. This is, undoubtedly, a progress of a kind.

However, just as the parent forms of statism began to die out, new forms of statism quietly but quickly took their place. Fascism and Marxism were now on the doorstep of human history, awaiting their turn of inflicting misery and dehumanization. Ironically, we are partially fortunate that these two forms of statism appeared at the same time and were forced to eliminate one another. This development quickly buried the fascist statism, leaving humanity to combat just one destructive ideology.

Today, we are facing a last remnant of the latter ideology. With the collapse of the soviet union and softening of many other communist regimes around the world, it seems as if Marxist statim is on its last leg. It’s time we finish the job that we already started, and progress one step further away from primitive statist tendencies.