This view takes individuals, who are understood to be prior to society - as basic building block of social life. These individuals are inherently equal. Since individuals have rights apart from their involvement in or existence in society, the state should only exist to promote those values and uphold those rights. Government does not exist to create people's interests, to tell them what interests they should have, but rather, to serve the interests they already have.
Society is nothing but the individuals who compose it.
In other words, the interests of the community are reducible to the interests of the interests of the people who compose it. What is good for the state is nothing more than what is good for the people who comprise it. Protection of property and rights. Political institutions exist for the protection of individual rights and for the protection of private property. Freedom is conceived of as negative - individuals and markets should be free of coercive interference from the state, and from other people.