Who says the propertyless need the government to protect them? If the State did not interfere with or regulate their human right to freely associate and organize themselves, workers could fend for their own interests just fine--and, I believe, they could do much better for themselves than the government's imposed "fair" solutions to labor disputes.

A liberal argues--weakly--that state intervention has been good for the working class; i.e., that the state's imposed balance of class power is more egalitarian than the what would have resulted from a free struggle between a class that includes the vast majority (workers) and a class that includes less than 10% (employers)! Ludicrous, on its face. However, this book is good for the history.

Left-libertarianism is arguably just right-libertarianism plus the labor theory of value.

Complements the Tigar book. Absolutely crucial history of the necessity of state intervention in creating early capitalism.

If you favor heavy so-called "defense" spending, you are a statist. If you favor anything more than a National Guard or even just a system of militias for home protection, in fact, you are a statist.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/history/interventions.htm http://www.alternet.org/story/47998/ http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-08.htm

Pinochet's Chile: Small Government imposed through Big Government Terror.

Self-explanatory I think.

Shows that the only durable, meaningful difference between Left and Right is egalitarianism versus inegalitarianism.

This is probably the best primer on modern libertarian socialism. The Great Anarchists book below is the best primer on classical libertarian socialist thought.

(cont'd from above) It could be that the state grants the temporary right of control over--and a share of the profits in--a factory (or tract of land, or office, or university, or whatever) to the people who actually USE it rather than to those who hold the deed to it but do not use it.

Marx was never a fan of government at any point in his life. He always, consistently called the state something "above and separate from" civil society, an instrument for the suppression of one class by another. However, it may be in in his early writings that his emphasis on individual freedom comes through most clearly. They are worth checking out alongside his better known stuff.