Notes on Chomsky, Government in the Future (speech), 1970, online at http://www.zmag.org/altradio/0212nc1970.mp3
and von Humboldt, The Sphere and Duties of Government (The Limits of State Action), 1792, online at http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Humboldt0128/SpheresAndDuties/HTMLs/0053_Pt01_Part1.html

Chomsky sees four idealised positions of the role of the state in an advanced industrial economy:

1. Classical liberal - von Humboldt "limits of state action" and enlightenment;
2. Libertarian socialist – a range of thinking that extends from left wing Marxism through anarchism. Chomsky believes these are the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society;
3. State socialist – what Bolsheviks have become;
4. State capitalist - the modern welfare state: wage slavery, alienated labour.

Chomsky says for Humboldt and Cartesians, mans' essential attribute is his freedom. State is a fundamentally anti-human institution.
Chomsky says for Fourier, we are awaiting a 3^rd and last emancipation:

1. 1^st Made serfs out of slaves;
2. 2^nd Made wage earners out of serfs;
3. 3^rd Would emancipate the proletariat to free men by eliminating the commodity character of labour, ending wage slavery and bringing the commercial, industrial, and financial institutions under democratic control.

Chomsky says a consistent anarchist will:

1. Oppose private ownership of the means of production, which is, as Proudhon asserted, a form of theft.
2. Oppose the organisation of production by government - must be run in industrial society by directly elected workers committees.

von Humboldt says:
The state can aim at promoting happiness (positive welfare) or simply preventing evil (security only).
After various arguments, his conclusion is: "the State is to abstain from all solicitude for the positive welfare of the citizens, and not to proceed a step further than is necessary for their mutual security and protection against foreign enemies; for with no other object should it impose restrictions on freedom."
He believes the state should be a war leader in times of war, and a judge in times of peace, and nothing more.
He believes standing armies should be avoided, and wars not deliberately sought out, and such military training to citizens as is necessary be conducive to spirit of a free warrior.
He believe the utility of national education is inconceivable, that it would produce and maintain tranquillity, that it would be much less hurtful to extend assistance to pay for private education where parents are in indigent circumstances.
For state revenue, he see three possible sources: state owned property; direct taxation; and indirect taxation. State owned property, he says, should not be allowed because the state has preponderating power compared to private individuals with whom it would then be competing and would get drawn into using that power in furtherance of its property. Indirect taxation he also believes is hurtful because of the interference necessary for its levying [AF – referring here to complex 18th century tax systems rather than modern indirect taxation systems]. So are left with direct taxation – but he sees revenue needs of his ideal state as slight anyway.
He concludes again "the State must wholly refrain from every attempt to operate directly or indirectly on the morals and character of the nation, otherwise than as such a policy may become inevitable as a natural consequence of its other absolutely necessary measures"
However: “I call the citizens of a State secure, when, living together in the full enjoyment of their due rights of person and property, they are out of the reach of any external disturbance from the encroachments of others; and hence I would call security (if the expression does not seem too brief for distinctness) the assurance of legal freedom.” and “The State, then, is not to concern itself in any way with the positive welfare of its citizens, and hence, no more with their life or health, except where these are imperilled by the actions of others” and “confine prohibitive laws to those cases only in which actions are done without the will of another, or still more, in direct opposition to it.” and “the State should content itself with securing to men their natural right to sacrifice the freedom and property of another in order to avert their own ruin.”
More: “Right of any kind can only relate immediately to the person: its relation to things is only conceivable in so far as these are connected with the person by actions.”
Security is very wide ranging: “Every effort of the State, then, to prevent crimes by suppressing their causes in the criminal, must, according to the difference noticed in these cases, be directed either towards changing and improving such positions of the citizens as may easily oblige them to commit crimes .... The first of these, or that which is designed only to improve such circumstances as oblige the person to commit the crime, appears to be attended with by far the fewest disadvantages. It is of itself so beneficial, and calculated to enrich the means of power as well as of enjoyment; it does not immediately operate to restrict free activity; and although it is evident that all those consequences must be acknowledged to follow such a policy which I have before represented as the effects of the State solicitude for the physical welfare of the citizen, still they only follow here in a much smaller degree, since such a solicitude is extended only to a few persons. Nevertheless they do always really follow in the train of such a policy; the very struggle between internal morality and the external circumstances is done away with, and along with it its beneficial influence on the agent’s strength of character, and on the mutual benevolence among the citizens in general; and the very circumstance that such a solicitude can only reach single persons, necessitates political interference in the individual circumstances of the citizens—all of which are injuries which we could only overlook in the conviction that the security of the State would suffer without some such arrangement. But there seems to me considerable room for doubt as to the existence of such a necessity. For in a State which does not give rise to such critical circumstances by the very nature of its own constitution, but which, on the contrary, secures such a degree of freedom to its citizens as that which it is the design of these pages to recommend, it is hardly possible in general that such situations as those we describe should arise, without finding a sufficient remedy in the voluntary assistance of the citizens themselves, and thereby rendering any State interference unnecessary; the cause in such a case must be looked for in the conduct of the man himself. But in this case it is wrong for the State to interpose itself, and disturb that order of events which the natural course of things induces in the man’s actions. These situations, moreover, will only occur so rarely as to require no especial State interference, so that the advantages of such solicitude would be surpassed by those disadvantages which need no more detailed exposition here, after all we have already observed.”

[AF – von Humboldt falls into classical liberal mistake of ignoring wealth inequalities. Chomsky argues von Humboldt would have revised his argument in response to rise of private tyrannies of corporations in industrial age, maybe true, but von Humboldt did say nothing about land ownership – even though his father was a junker! Von Humboldt’s citizens’ “mutual security” logically expands to allow for minimum requirements for exercise of freedom – life, health, education, minimal property – which means raising his judge-state to become a more intrusive judge.]