Discussions about liberty, anarchy, statelessness, and voluntary interaction depend upon clearly defined concepts.  Too often, libertarians dive deep into discussions without clarifying their terms.

 Society

Society is the collective effort of individuals who produce value and choose to cooperate with one another through trade in order to fulfill each person’s own lack of satisfactions.

Frank Chodorov, The Rise and Fall of Society.

Society is the aggregate of human interactions in a given time and place.  Society is not an real “thing”.  There is no creature or entity bearing a society’s identity.

 State

The state is defined as an agency that possesses two unique characteristics. First, the state is an agency that exercises a territorial monopoly of ultimate decision-making. That is, it is the ultimate arbiter in every case of conflict, including conflicts involving itself, and it allows no appeal above and beyond itself. Furthermore, the state is an agency that exercises a territorial monopoly of taxation. That is, it is an agency that unilaterally fixes the price private citizens must pay for its provision of law and order.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Idea of a Private Law Society

 The state is the form of government defined by a geographical monopoly on the final authority of adjudication and the legitimation of violence.

 Government

Government is, rather broadly put, a legal service institution the actions or policies of which are backed by allegedly justified physical force and its threat.

Tibord Machan, Reconciling Anarchism and Minarchism

 Government is an institution which prevents injustice other than such as it commits itself.

Ibn Khaldun

 Anarchy

In anarchy no institution exists with legitimate authority over all members of society.

Daniel Sutter, Asymmetric Power Relations and Cooperation in Anarchy

 I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.

Murray Rothbard, Society without a State

 Anarchism … means the development of the individual as well as the assertion of the individual. It means self-responsibility, and not leader worship.

Voltarine de Cleyre