You don't have to be an anarchist, a libertarian or even just politically on the right, to want to see a reduction in the size and span of state control. However, convincing those on the non-anarchist, non-libertarian left of this is likely to be difficult, despite the fact that much left-wing political activity and tactics has revolved around exactly the same sort of community and work based institutions as would be needed to continue civil society in a minimalist state - however you define 'minimal'.
Doing this full justice would require a book, indeed several books. I have touched on it before here. What I intend to do now, in what I hope will be a series of linked posts, is to take a range of institutions in present (UK) society where the conventional wisdom is that these institutions are needed to 'protect the community' in some way and to examine whether a) they are genuinely needed in the first place and b) if indeed they represent some real need, how that might be met without the state, or at very least with a much reduced role for it.
In this context, by 'the State' I mean not just all the national apparatus of the Civil Service and Parliament, but also that huge and growing collection of agencies and quangos at national level together with the parallel bureaucracies of local government and their dependencies, such as housing associations, care agencies and the like.
If everyone capable of benefiting from the alternative economy participates in it, and it makes full and efficient use of the resources already available to them, eventually we'll have a society where most of what the average person consumes is produced in a network of self-employed or worker-owned production...
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/03/building-structure-of-new-society.html
