The Misesian, vol. 2, no. 2, 2025

One of the most popular essays we’ve ever published at the Mises Institute is Murray Rothbard’s “Anatomy of the State.” It’s a great and succinct introduction to the institution that we now call “the state” and explains how the state is a unique type of governance built on coercion and war. Perhaps most importantly, Rothbard explains why the state is not synonymous with society, with the nation, or with any private or voluntary group of individuals. Rothbard drew on the ideas of German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, who had illustrated the important distinction between voluntary organization— such as markets—and organization built on coercion and theft—such as states.

Originally published in 1974, Rothbard’s essay reflected scholars’ growing interest in the origins and nature of the state. A year after Rothbard’s essay was published, Charles Tilly published his influential book The Formation of National States in Western Europe (1975). Over the next 20 years, many other scholars would explore the topic in their own volumes, including Gianfranco Poggi in The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects (1990), Hendrik Spruyt in The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (1994), and Martin van Creveld in The Rise and Decline of the State (1999).

Central to all this scholarship has been the fact that the state’s peculiar type of political rule arose in a specific time and place. This leads us to an important conclusion; namely, that there is nothing natural about the state, and that it is not necessary for human development or governance.

It remains important that advocates of freedom and free markets continue to publish scholarship that builds on this truly libertarian, or laissez-faire, view of the state. This, of course, was what Rothbard was doing with “Anatomy of the State,” and we are fortunate to include in this issue of The Misesian a new essay from historian and political scientist Roberta Adelaide Modugno that does precisely this. In “The Making of the State,” Professor Modugno shows that even as the state was coming into being, historians and scholars understood that it was something new and different, and she examines a broad array of commentary from observers spanning the sixteenth century to the present day. A lesson we learn from all of this is that the state is central to what we now call “modernity,” which is in many ways defined by the overwhelming power of states.