From its very beginnings as the party fighting European mercantilism and absolutism in the seventeenth century, the classical liberals (also known as “libertarians,” or, historically, “liberals”) have been primarily focused on limiting the powers of the state. It has been state powers—not the powers of church or family or employer—that has been the great occupation of the classical liberals. In this view, it has always been state power that is fundamentally coercive and violent, and is the greatest threat to freedom and property rights. Moreover, because the state is monopolistic by nature, the state can exercise its powers untroubled by any legal opposition within the state’s territory. As such, the state is the organization that is positioned to most frequently and potently violate the property rights of its subjects with impunity. Thus, it is not surprising that historian Ralph Raico states that classical liberalism has been historically focused of preventing states from regulating the private sector, also known as “society.” In classical liberal thinking, Raico tells us, 

the most desirable regime was one in which civil society—that is, the whole of the social order based on private property and voluntary exchange—by and large runs itself.

This is to be contrasted with the old monarchical absolutists who “insisted that the state was the engine of society and the necessary overseer of the religious, cultural, and, not least, economic life of its subjects[.] ... [L]iberalism posited a starkly contrasting view.”

In practice, the classical liberals—especially those of the more radical variety such as Molinari, Bastiat, Leggett, Cobden, and Pareto—feared the powers of the state far more than the powers of any other organization. After all, the liberals understood that powerful interest groups only wielded coercive power if they could enlist the aid of the state itself. In other words, business interests or religious groups—i.e., non-state elements of the private sector—are largely powerless unless backed by state power. This is all the more true today than it was in the time of the early liberals. By the nineteenth century, the state had so solidified its monopoly on violence that whatever “coercion” might be proffered by non-state groups tended to be limited, weak, and inconsistent. It is state power that is the locus of coercive power in our modern world.

Those who favor more state power and more state intervention, on the other hand, tend to downplay the abusive and violent nature of state coercion. These apologists for the state often claim that the private sector is just as much of a threat to freedom as is the state. 

This claim has long been popular among Marxists who say that private employers and other property owners exercise “economic power” which is supposedly coercive in nature. For example, we are to believe that it is a violation of “rights” if an employer refuses to hire a worker at the worker’s preferred wage. It is supposedly a rights violation if a Christian baker refuses to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding. This way of thinking is well established among social democrats, Marxists, and a variety of center-left groups. 

Strangely, though, there are some who claim to be libertarians and who are apparently more worried about supposed private violations of rights than they are concerned about the state’s coercive monopoly power. 

For example, in a June article self-described libertarian Matt Zwolinski insists that “Libertarians and other advocates of liberty” must commit to ”liberating individuals from all forms of coercion, public and private alike.” He states that libertarians have been wrong for “ignoring threats to liberty posed by non-state institutions (“local bullies”) like corporations, churches, and schools...Each of these organizations wields an enormous amount of power over people’s lives, including the power to restrict their freedom...”

It’s unclear what “threats to liberty” are being carried out by schools and churches in 2025, but Zwolinski’s isn’t talking about actual theft of fraud here. These aren’t real violations of property rights through any coercive means. Rather, Zwolinski appears to making the old “economic-power” argument used by the Left. In this way of thinking, if a private organization won’t rent you a hotel room or give you a raise, then that organization has somehow illegitimately “restricted” your freedom. 

Of course, these alleged attacks on freedom by private organization are nothing like state attacks on freedom because these private acts are nothing more than one party declining to enter into an agreement with another party. State coercion, on the other hand, involves the state actually stealing, controlling, or destroying the property of an innocent party. (For a full explanation, see Rothbard’s analysis in Man, Economy, and State.)

Indeed, Zwolinski specifically opposes Rothbard’s classical liberal view which focuses on limiting state power. He writes: 

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...

Rothbard, as a theorist firmly within the radical anti-state wing of the French liberals (i.e., Molinari and Bastiat) naturally opposed the US government’s so-called “Civil Rights Act.” That legislation has always been little more than a scheme to increase federal regulatory power. 

Zwolinski however, praises the Act for fighting supposed private-sector “coercion.” This is just the “bake the cake” philosophy pushed by the interventionist Left in which the advocate believes that if a baker refuses to bake a cake for a gay couple then the baker should be subject to government regulation and legal action that will likely bankrupt the baker and destroy his business. By this way of thinking, the way to “increase freedom” is to empower the government with vast regulatory powers to ensure that business owners sell pastries in a government-approved manner.

Now, I suspect that millions of Americans think this is fine, thanks to decades of public school propaganda which teaches children that the federal government should dictate to whom you may sell a sandwich. But it is very odd to bother calling one’s self a “libertarian,” as Zwolinski does, when one takes the position that what this country needs is more government employees micromanaging more American businesses. In this very odd type of “libertarianism,” it seems, the real problem is  the local wedding photographer or property manager—who is apparently more a threat to freedom than a national government which taxes its population to the tune of 5 trillions dollars per year and which wages near constant elective wars. 

In his “libertarian” crusade to increase state power, Zwolinski also employs a second line of attack. Zwolinski attacks the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for de-funding too many federal projects. He writes: 

consider DOGE’s relentless attack on state capacity... [Elon] 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. 

How strange it is to read an alleged libertarian complaining about a few small cuts to a federal budget that totals seven trillion dollars. Voce of America and USAID are basically propaganda agencies and are utterly superfluous. No ordinary person who isn’t on the federal dole will be negatively impacted by the total abolition of these agencies. On the other hand, Zwolinski shrewdly lists the cuts to the headcount at the Nuclear Safety Agency because those cuts have been the only cuts that could arguably endanger ordinary people in any way. But even in that case, there has been no fundamental change to the agency after 27 employees were fired. The cuts might slow down the rate at which the US Navy—which is already massively over-funded and bloated—builds nuclear-powered vessels

Although these cuts have done virtually nothing to impact the overall size, scope, and power of the American state, Zwolinski appears to be deeply concerned that the “state capacity” of the federal government has been negatively impacted. 

Given the sheer size and breadth of the US federal government, it’s difficult to see how anyone could take seriously the claim that the Federal government’s state capacity is too limited. At no time is the US state ever limited in the projects and endeavors that Washington chooses to prioritize. For example, during the covid lockdowns, the federal budget skyrocketed from 4.5 to 6.7 trillion dollars, nearly overnight. That is not a government that lacks state capacity by any measure at all. Moreover, there is no doubt that the US government will continue to send hundreds of billions of dollars to the military conflicts in which Washington wishes to meddle. The money materializes as needed because Washington’s enjoys nearly unlimited access to credit thanks to Washington’s historically unparalleled and untrammeled access to the wealth and income of hundreds of millions of Americans. 

The idea that we must wring our hands about what Zwolinski calls Trump’s supposed “relentless attack on state capacity” is, frankly, laughable.  

It is perhaps bizarre to see someone claiming to be a libertarian while also trying to convince us that private property and the private sector are the real dangers to freedom. This is hardly a novel argument, of course, it’s just one that belongs far more to the democratic socialists of the Eduard Bernstein variety than with anything we might call libertarianism or classical liberalism. 

In contrast, the historical liberals and modern day libertarians have always overwhelmingly focused on the dangers of the state, and for good reason. Following the abuses of the French revolution, the Continental classical liberals soon figured out the true nature of state power, and influential freedom fighters like Benjamin Constant declared government—by which he meant the state—to be “the natural enemy of liberty.” Few of these liberals wasted their time warning against the dangers of the local baker. 

Not surprisingly, this same “state hatred” so thoroughly developed by nineteenth-century liberals would be reflected in the work of the great Ludwig von Mises. Writing in 1944, Mises sums up the true nature of the state, and why it must be our primary target:  

He who says “state” means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: The police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.