George Washington, first president of the United States*, said, "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force."
Political philosophy asks, in essence, When is it legitimate to use force, and who decides?
The pacifist position is that there is no legitimate use of force.
The libertarian position is that there is no legitimate initiation of force.
(Whether or not there is justification for reactive force is outside the definition of libertarianism, but do note that the pacifist position presumes the libertarian position: you cannot oppose all use of force without also opposing the initiation of force. To be true therefore to pacifist principles requires an acceptance of the libertarian position, as was recognized by Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist and Christian anarchist.)
Adherents of the libertarian position are divided into two camps:
The minarchist position was summarized by Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, who said, "That government is best which governs least."
Modern minarchists are represented by the Libertarian Party of the United States, the infamous Ayn Rand, and academic philosophers like Robert Nozick, author of Anarchy, State and Utopia.
The anarchist position was summarized by Henry David Thoreau, who amended "... 'That government is best which governs not at all' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."
Benjamin R. Tucker, later in the 19th century, wrote, "The Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats."
Tucker defined anarchism as non-invasion against the non-invasive individual.
At BlackCrayon, we define Anarchism as the promotion of "that organization of society in which the Free Market operates freely, without taxes, usury, landlordism, tariffs, or other forms of coercion or privilege."
Our emphasis is on
individualist
anarchism, which as Thoreau and Tucker suggest, is the logical conclusion of the values espoused by
19th-century
liberalism
and 20th-century
libertarianism.
Despite this emphasis, we do include information about and discussion of the more
collectivist forms of anarchism (also known as "libertarian socialism"), especially from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
For more in-depth information on anarchist philosophies, see the BlackCrayon Dictionary, the BlackCrayon Library or read other BlackCrayon Essays.
At BlackCrayon, we do not equate individualist anarchism with so-called anarcho-capitalism, although we recognize their potential compatibility.
What does free-market anarchism look like when it doesn't emphasize capitalism?
See the definition of mutualism in the BlackCrayon dictionary.
[See historical note on the question, Who Was the First President of the United States?]