William Godwin: Philosophy
One of the first and most outspoken libertarians in England, William Godwin is considered to be the father of modern anarchism. Although he denied that his work was anarchistic in nature, Godwin's brand of anarchist thinking was more or less a form of idealistic liberalism. Most of Godwin's ideas are based on the principle of absolute sovereignty, a doctrine which stated that man was the absolute master of himself and his own actions. Godwin had faith in the belief that man had the competence of reason to determine the right choices when determining what was best for him, and that man had the reason to make good decisions in his lifetime. He placed a great deal of faith in the individual's power to comprehend the best for themself. With that being, Godwin was very optimistic about man's future "perfectibility." In essence, he combined cultural determinism (the belief that fate will ultimately dictate the course of development for a culture) and extreme individualism (the belief that the self-fulfillment of the individual is the paramount end of society and faith in the individual power to rationally act and exist).
In feeling that way about the individual in society, Godwin rejected conventional government and its institutions, as detailed in his famous Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). In the book, he demonstrated the corrupting evil and tyranny inherent in government's power of manipulation and rule. In the place of centralized and bureaucratic government, Godwin offered the alternative of small, self-subsisting communities which handled the functions of a large government locally and with better management. The reason this approach to administration would work over traditionally large government institutions was since such entities would fail by their very nature. Social institutions could not rule because they would impose generalized thought categories and preconceived ideas about men, thereby making it impossible to observe situations as they really were.
Godwin also maintained a concept of property within his political doctrine, maintaining that ownership in society should be fairly and ethically handled. Advocating neither the abolition nor "communalization" (centralization of authority and jurisdiction by means of a large social institution such as government) of property, he maintained that property was to be held by those whose needs were greatest in a sacred trust not to unethically use it. Several of his major ideas about individual liberty and social organization, including those of property, were extensively used by later anarchist and syndicalist intellectuals, noteworthy examples being English writer Percy Bysshe Shelley and Russian anarchist theorists Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. Truly, Godwin's original and inspiring thinking had an enormous impact on liberal and moderate intellectual work with the progression of the nineteenth century.