From what I can gather, when capitalist democracies cut government departments, they just end up outsourced to private companies who reap whatever infrastructure was there and replace it with their own, cheap and barely functioning version for profit.
So basically the government service is still there, it’s just privatised and crappier.
Small government means it’s so small there’s no room for YOU.
Size is just sort of a generally incoherent thing to measure a government by
Yeah, you’re definitely onto something. On the surface, it often looks like the government is stepping back or shrinking. But from what I’ve seen, it’s not always that simple.
A lot of the time, when a service gets “privatized” or moved out of direct government control, it doesn’t actually become independent. It still runs on state funding, follows government-mandated rules, and relies on public contracts or guarantees. The state might not be running it day to day, but it’s still paying for it, backing it, and ultimately responsible if things go wrong. So it’s less like pulling back and more like shifting roles. It’s as if the government goes from being the operator to the sponsor.
From a socialist angle, this is tricky because it makes accountability weaker. You no longer have clear government oversight, but the financial risk still falls on ordinary people. It’s kind of a gray zone. Services aren’t exactly private in practice, even if they’re labeled that way. So calling it “small government” feels misleading. It’s more like hidden government. The state is still there, still involved, but harder to track or hold accountable.
That said, I do think small government is possible in theory, even under capitalism. If you can imagine it, it’s not impossible. But it would require consistency. You’d have to actually reduce involvement, cut spending, and walk away from guarantees, subsidies, and bailouts. Most so called small government pushes don’t go that far. They just rebrand state functions and keep the safety net underneath. So maybe the issue isn’t that small government can’t exist, but that it rarely does in practice, because the system ends up protecting certain interests anyway.
So I wouldn’t say everything just gets outsourced and downgraded. Sometimes it’s more subtle than that. The machinery keeps running, but now it’s behind a curtain.
A lot of the time, when a service gets “privatized” or moved out of direct government control, it doesn’t actually become independent. It still runs on state funding, follows government-mandated rules, and relies on public contracts or guarantees. The state might not be running it day to day, but it’s still paying for it, backing it, and ultimately responsible if things go wrong.
It’s a truism that in public-private partnerships, the private end will eventually be bailed out by the public end. Profits are guaranteed for the public end, but surprise surprise the necessary functions of the state aren’t profitable. So the public end either takes over and buys out the private end, or provides a minimum profit to the private end.
There is a saying, that ancaps don’t want to tear down the state, they want to privatize it.
Ancaps don’t want to tear down the state, they want to privatize it.
That saying has some weight to it.
And honestly, when you look at what actually happens when public services get restructured, it often feels less like liberation and more like reshuffling.
Like, sure. In theory, you could imagine worker co-ops, community health councils, or animal care collectives running things without top down control. And if those models were truly empowered, democratically managed, publicly accountable, and not dependent on profit, then maybe decentralization could mean something real. We already see glimpses of that in more socialist communities, mutual aid networks, and solidarity economies where people organize care, housing, and support outside both corporate markets and bureaucratic state systems.
But so much of what passes for privatization doesn’t move toward that kind of grassroots self management. Instead, it hands over public assets and responsibilities to entities that aren’t answerable to communities, don’t operate transparently, and prioritize stability or returns over participation. The state doesn’t disappear. It just steps behind the curtain, guaranteeing contracts, absorbing risk, and bailing things out when they fail.
So yeah, maybe the goal isn’t to abolish the state so much as to hide its role while keeping the machinery running for select interests. And if that’s the case, then calling it private feels more like branding than reality.
Real small government wouldn’t need backstops, guarantees, or constant intervention. But we rarely see that. What we usually see is the state staying deeply involved, just less accountable. Meanwhile, the kinds of truly democratic, community run alternatives, the ones that actually reduce reliance on centralized power, get ignored or underfunded, even though they show it’s possible to do things differently.
The government gets bigger directly under capitalism as well. Graeber points out in Debt that the number of people working in the government in Russia more than doubled after the fall of the Soviet Union than right before it fell. It’s all grift
