Explaining A Nightwatchman state in Depth

Many people imagine anarchism as a chaotic ideology where people just burn the government to the ground and replace it with nothing, allowing everything to simply fall apart and no one but a bunch of gangs & vigilantes to run the streets. They imagine everything being like Somalia or a failed state that is failing apart at the seams as the naive anarchist tells people that everything will be fine without any society or order whatsoever.

Fortunately, many people are wrong when they say most anarchists want that. While certain anarchist extremists are like this and literally want no government and society whatsoever (which I will write about those more extreme anarchists later), the majority of anarchists, especially market anarchists like myself, actually are ok with a particular kind of government that works without a monopoly of violence. This particular form of government is known as a night-watchman state and it has had an extensive history of working in many communities & showing how anarchists are actually able to properly create a functioning society that does not end with everything turning into a destructive free-for-all.

I bet many people are asking what a night-watchman state is and here is the definition as defined by US Legal which is defined here:

A night watchman state refers to a state with the least possible amount of powers, to uphold law. Powers exercised by a night watchman state cannot be reduced any further without abolishing the state altogether and instituting a form of anarchy. Powers of the state is limited to the police, the judicial system, prisons and the army to protect individuals from coercion and theft, punish criminals, and defend the country from foreign aggression.

Basically, a night watchman state is a state without a monopoly on violence that acts as an enforcer of the rules with many volunteers, citizens in uniform, and individuals who don't get special powers above the average person to govern society. Anarchists like anarcho-syndicalist Noam Chomsky and Peter Marshall have endorsed the night-watchman state as a version of government that they are satisfied with. Peter Marshall even describes this in his book Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism:

Left libertarianism can therefore range from the decentralist who wishes to limit and devolve State power, to the syndicalist who wants to abolish it altogether. It can even encompass the Fabians and the social democrats who wish to socialize the economy but who still see a limited role for the State.

The concept of a night-watchman state was popularized by the book Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick & the concept of a night-watchman state is not just some pie-in-the-sky idea that has never worked in human history. For example, historian Charles Townshend describes most of the United Kingdom in the 19th century as a night-watchman state:

Britain, however, with its strong tradition of minimal government – the 'night-watchman state' – vividly illustrated the speed of the shift [during World War I] from normalcy to drastic and all-embracing wartime powers like those contained in the Defence of the Realm Act. -Charles Townshend, The Oxford History of Modern War. Oxford University Press. pp. 14–15

Pretty much almost every currently existing anarchist community & society currently in the world (yes, they do exist or at least some societies partially designed based on anarchist ideals are around) is a night watchman state and shows how anarchism & libertarianism can actually work in real life by creating a government without excessive powers that put representatives & members of the government far above the average person in terms of purview and power.