The history of any state is a history of changes in its structure. But since a state can change, why shouldn’t libertarians try to change it to suit their needs? To gain political power and launch libertarian political reforms—that is, the restructuring of society from the top down.
The form of government in a state does not matter. History knows examples of liberal reforms carried out by monarchs and dictators, influential officials under monarchs and dictators, as well as talented demagogues elected in democratic elections. Moreover, these demagogues could be elected under liberal slogans or under slogans of strengthening the state; by initiating liberal reforms, they literally deceived their voters.
At the same time, history knows no cases where such reforms touched all aspects of society’s structure. Usually, it may only be a matter of liberalization in certain areas of public life, but certainly not the abolition of the state as such through political reforms. Also, quite often, liberal reforms were followed by a rollback to harsher etatist practices.
The reasons for this are quite obvious. Even if at the start the reformer has the full support of society due to total exhaustion from the preceding regime, every implemented change reduces the number of the reformer’s supporters. First, supporters may have been seeking exactly this change, while otherwise the status quo more or less satisfies them. Second, they may consider this specific change absolutely unacceptable to them, and this particular reform immediately pushes them into the opposition. As a result, at some point, the reformer will lose support to such an extent that further reforms must be scaled back. Any attempt to continue them despite the lack of support only leads to the reforming government eventually losing power, and the next one beginning a rollback to the good old etatist practices.
Nevertheless, although the path of abolishing the state through political reforms seems practically unfeasible, minarchism as an approach to minimizing state power should not be neglected. At the very least, minarchism provides a clear criterion for evaluating any changes occurring in the state: whether they increase human freedom from coercion or, on the contrary, expand the state’s capacity for coercion. And, of course, in a more liberal state, it is more convenient to practice other approaches to implementing libertarian principles, which we will consider further.