Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Kevin Carson
“Although he does so in the course of arguing against right-libertarians, [Joseph] Heath takes at face value the right-libertarian framing of the 19th century United States as characterized by a ‘minimal state.’ He responds that the economy of the late 19th century, in which the state mostly just enforced property rights and contracts, spent as much time in recession as in expansion. But by pretending that this was a ‘laissez-faire’ or ‘minimal state’ era, he neglects not only the massive role of the state in setting up capitalism and the wage system in the first place — like right-libertarians, Heath ignores the role of the state in creating what he calls ‘private property rights’ — but in creating the structure of the Gilded Age economy after the Civil War.” (07/02/25)