A liberal political theory is one that views the protection of individual rights and property as the fundamental task of the state. It is often thought that a liberal theory so conceived also has a strong propensity toward political-economic libertarianism. That is, it must view the state as having few responsibilities for overseeing and regulating the economic life of society, and especially for providing for the welfare of the poor or redistributing wealth in an egalitarian direction. A liberal state, so the argument goes, because its preoccupation is solely with protecting individual freedom and property, ought to leave economic distribution entirely to the free market. If there are any countervailing tendencies to this within the liberal tradition, they are usually thought to lie in another side of liberalism – its consequentialist or utilitarian side, which adds to the state's charge of protecting individual rights a concern to promote the general happiness (or even reinterprets that first charge as a way of serving its utilitarian function).

Kant is a theorist within the liberal tradition who provides a good test case for this argument. He views the state exclusively as a mechanism for protecting individual rights and property through coercive force. It is not the responsibility of the state to make people happy, but only to protect the external freedom they require to pursue their happiness (as they alone, and never the state, are responsible for conceiving it). For Kant, therefore, the “utilitarian” side of liberalism does not exist at all.