Night-watchman state  A night-watchman state is a model of a state that is limited and minimal, whose only functions are to act as an enforcer of the non-aggression principle by providing its citizens with the military, the police and courts, thereby protecting them from aggression, theft, breach of contract, fraud and enforcing property laws. Its proponents are called minarchists. This form of government is mainly associated with libertarianism in the United States, Objectivist, and right-libertarian political philosophy. However, minarchism has also been advocated by non-anarchist libertarian socialists and other left-libertarians. Some anarchists and left-libertarians have also proposed or supported a minimal welfare state on the grounds that social safety nets are short-term goals for the working class and believe in stopping welfare programs only if it means abolishing both government and capitalism. Other left-libertarians prefer repealing corporate welfare before social welfare for the poor. A night-watchman state has been advocated and made popular by Robert Nozick in "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" (1974). 19th-century Britain has been described by historian Charles Townshend as a standard-bearer of this form of government. As a term, night-watchman state () was coined by German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle in an 1862 speech in Berlin. He criticized the bourgeois liberal limited government state, comparing it to a night-watchman whose sole duty was preventing theft. The phrase quickly caught on as a description of capitalist government, even as liberalism began to mean a more involved state, or a state with a larger sphere of responsibility. Ludwig von Mises later opined that Lassalle tried to make limited government look ridiculous, but that it was no more ridiculous than governments that concerned themselves with "the preparation of sauerkraut, with the manufacture of trouser buttons, or with the publication of newspapers". Proponents of the night-watchman state are minarchists, a portmanteau of "minimum" and "-archy". "Arche" (; ) is a Greek word which came to mean "first place, power", "method of government", "empire, realm", "authorities" (in plural: ), or "command". The term minarchist was coined by Samuel Edward Konkin III in 1980. Minarchists generally justify the state on the grounds that it is the logical consequence of adhering to the non-aggression principle. They argue that anarcho-capitalism is impractical because it is not sufficient to enforce the non-aggression principle because the enforcement of laws under anarchism is open to competition.