Sustaining the state

What would make either market anarchy or a minimal state possible is widespread popular support. Just as widespread popular support for market socialism (or whatever it is) makes the big state possible today.

What lead to the increase in the size of the state both here and in the USA was the rise of a religious belief in social action. Uncle Murray talks about the process in the USA:

…Also animating both groups of progressives was a postmillennial pietist Protestantism that had conquered "Yankee" areas of northern Protestantism by the 1830s and had impelled the pietists to use local, state, and finally federal governments to stamp out "sin," to make America and eventually the world holy, and thereby to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.

Rothbard World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals”

Likewise here in England. It wasn’t so much Engles scribbling in Manchester but John Wesley’s efforts 50 years earlier that gave rise to the justifying narrative of the big state. Religiously motivated attempts to save the poor continued for most of the 19C and eventually the Methodist movement morphs into the English form of Socialism that the Labour movement is rooted in.

The activities of those members of the labour movement who were also Methodists is an important topic for research. Methodism was important in a variety of locations as well as for certain professions and occupations in Australia as it was in Britain. Methodism had many core value systems that were co-extensive with what may be called craft unionism. These values were also widely held throughout professions such as finance, teaching, nursing, police and administration.

‘Not a dictatorship of the proletariat but a comradeship of all’: Methodism and the Newcastle Labour Movement

Sure most of the left see themselves as post-christian: they don’t believe in God or Jesus (nor do I). I think the rise of natural science in the 19C put paid to big old God up in the sky. But they still have the value system of a Methodist towards trade, money and fun. Oh and eliminating poverty (perhaps by eliminating poor people via eugenics and abortion). The big socialist state exists because most people believe it is Good and they believe that it is Good because they have a moral code and value system which is deeply rooted in a specific set of religious beliefs. The only way a minimal state or market anarchy could exist and endure is because people believed that it was morally desirable or Good.

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