User:MutantPlatypus/Libertarianism

Libertarianism is a political theory that advocates the maximization of individual liberty in thought and action and the minimization or even abolition of the state. Libertarians embrace viewpoints across a political spectrum, ranging from pro-property to anti-property (phrased as "right" versus "left") and from minimal state (or minarchist) to openly anarchist.

All schools of libertarianism declare a strong advocacy for the rights to life and liberty, though there is disagreement on ownership of the means of production. Some sources indicate that the term "libertarian" outside of the US, sometimes refers to anti-authoritarian anti-capitalist ideologies. However, some American and English sources claim that the most commonly known formulation of libertarianism supports free market capitalism advocating for private ownership of the means of production.

Origins
The modern meaning of the term "libertarian" is disputed. This section gives a brief historical review of the term's usage. The term "libertarian" in a metaphysical or philosophical sense was first used by late-Enlightenment free-thinkers to refer to those who believed in free will, as opposed to determinism. Libertarianism in this sense is still encountered in metaphysics in discussions of free will. The first recorded use was in 1789 by William Belsham in a discussion of free will and in opposition to "necessitarian" (or determinist) views. Anarchist communist Joseph Déjacque was the first person to describe himself as a libertarian. in May 1857, in an 11-page pamphlet De l'Etre Humain mâle et femelle ("Concerning the Human Male and Female"), an open letter criticizing Pierre-Joseph Proudhon published while its author was in exile in New Orleans. Déjacque accused Proudhon of being "libéral et non LIBERTAIRE" (liberal but not libertarian), that is, the neologism was coined specifically as a distinction from the classical liberalism that Proudhon advocated in relation to economic exchange, in contrast to the more communist approach advocated by Déjacque.

This is the both beginning of libertarianism in a political sense and the dichotomy of classical liberalism and THIS meaning of libertarianism. Enlightenment ideas of individual liberty, constitutionally limited government, and reliance on the institutions of civil society and a free market to promote social order and economic prosperity were part of what became known in the 19th century as liberalism. While it kept that meaning in most of the world, according to libertarians modern liberalism in the United States began to take a more statist approach to economic regulation. Some libertarians have argued it is closer to fascism than state socialism. Those who held to the earlier liberal views began to call themselves market liberals, classical liberals or libertarians to distinguish themselves from the new liberals. (Some limited government advocates still use the term "libertarianism" almost interchangeably with the term classical liberalism.) This is now the dominant use of the term, as is evidenced by the name and platform of the Libertarian partyies, in the English speaking world.

<!--Relevance disputed -- Numerous left libertarians or libertarian socialists around the world have labeled themselves as such over the last 100 years. Significant numbers of self-described libertarian socialists have been involved in the contemporary anti-globalisation movement, sometimes in aggressive formations such as the Black blocs or groups like the Tute Bianche.

Libertarian socialists such as Noam Chomsky or Colin Ward claim that the term libertarianism is considered throughout the world a synonym for anarchism, despite the fact that within the United States in recent decades it has become more usually associated with free market positions. Academics as well as proponents of the latter note that free market libertarianism has been successfully propagated beyond the US since the 1970s via think tanks and political parties to the extent that libertarianism is increasingly employed elsewhere to identify a free market pro-property stance. ->

Philosophical individualism and classical liberalism
Enlightenment ideas of individual liberty, constitutionally limited government, and reliance on the institutions of civil society and a free market to promote social order and economic prosperity were part of what became known in the 19th century as liberalism. While it kept that meaning in most of the world, according to libertarians modern liberalism in the United States began to take a more statist approach to economic regulation. Some libertarians have argued it is closer to fascism than state socialism. Those who held to the earlier liberal views began to call themselves market liberals, classical liberals or libertarians to distinguish themselves from the new liberals. (Some limited government advocates still use the term "libertarianism" almost interchangeably with the term classical liberalism.)

While conservatism in Europe continued to mean conserving hierarchical class structures through state control of society and the economy, some conservatives in the United States began to refer to conserving traditions of liberty. This was especially true of the Old Right, who opposed the New Deal and U.S. military interventions in World War I and World War II.

The Austrian School of economics, influenced by Frédéric Bastiat and later by Ludwig von Mises, also had a powerful impact on both economic teaching and libertarian principles. It influenced economists and political philosophers and theorists including Henry Hazlitt, Israel Kirzner, Murray Rothbard, Walter Block and Richard M. Ebeling.

Starting in the 1930s and continuing until today, a group of central European economists led by Austrians Mises and Friedrich Hayek identified the collectivist underpinnings to the various new socialist and fascist doctrines of government power as being different brands of totalitarianism.

Ayn Rand's international best sellers The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) and her books about her philosophy of Objectivism influenced modern libertarianism. For a number of years after the publication of her books, people promoting a libertarian philosophy continued to call it individualism. Two other women also published influential pro-freedom books in 1943, Rose Wilder Lane's The Discovery of Freedom and Isabel Paterson's The God of the Machine.

According to libertarian publisher Robert W. Poole, Arizona United States Senator Barry Goldwater's message of individual liberty, economic freedom, and anti-communism also had a major impact on the libertarian movement, both with the publication of his book The Conscience of a Conservative and with his run for president in 1964. Goldwater's speech writer, Karl Hess, became a leading libertarian writer and activist.

The Cold War mentality of military interventionism, which had supplanted Old Right non-interventionism, was promoted by conservatives like William F. Buckley and accepted by many libertarians, with Murray Rothbard being a notable dissenter. However, the Vietnam War split the uneasy alliance between growing numbers of self-identified libertarians, anarcho-libertarians, and more traditional conservatives who believed in limiting liberty to uphold moral virtues. Libertarians opposed to the war joined the draft resistance and peace movements and organisations such as Students for a Democratic Society. They began founding their own publications, like Murray Rothbard's The Libertarian Forum and organizations like the Radical Libertarian Alliance.

The split was aggravated at the 1969 Young Americans for Freedom convention, when more than 300 libertarians organized to take control of the organization from conservatives. The burning of a draft card in protest to a conservative proposal against draft resistance sparked physical confrontations among convention attendees, a walkout by a large number of libertarians, the creation of libertarian organizations like the Society for Individual Liberty, and efforts to recruit potential libertarians from conservative organizations. The split was finalized in 1971 when conservative leader William F. Buckley, in a 1971 New York Times article, attempted to divorce libertarianism from the freedom movement. He wrote: "The ideological licentiousness that rages through America today makes anarchy attractive to the simple-minded. Even to the ingeniously simple-minded."

In 1971, David Nolan and a few friends formed the Libertarian Party. Attracting former Democrats, Republicans and independents, it has run a presidential candidate every election year since 1972, including John Hospers (1972), Ed Clark (1980), Ron Paul (1988), Harry Browne (1996 and 2000), Michael Badnarik (2004), and Bob Barr (2008). By 2006, polls showed that 15 percent of American voters identified themselves as libertarian. Over the years, dozens of libertarian political parties have been formed worldwide. Educational organizations like the Center for Libertarian Studies and the Cato Institute were formed in the 1970s, and others have been created since then.

Philosophical libertarianism gained a significant measure of recognition in academia with the publication of Harvard University professor Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974. The book won a National Book Award in 1975. According to libertarian essayist Roy Childs, "Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia single-handedly established the legitimacy of libertarianism as a political theory in the world of academia."

Libertarian principles
According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Libertarians are committed to the belief that individuals, and not states or groups of any other kind, are both ontologically and normatively primary; that individuals have rights against certain kinds of forcible interference on the part of others; that liberty, understood as non-interference, is the only thing that can be legitimately demanded of others as a matter of legal or political right; that robust property rights and the economic liberty that follows from their consistent recognition are of central importance in respecting individual liberty; that social order is not at odds with but develops out of individual liberty; that the only proper use of coercion is defensive or to rectify an error; that governments are bound by essentially the same moral principles as individuals; and that most existing and historical governments have acted improperly insofar as they have utilized coercion for plunder, aggression, redistribution, and other purposes beyond the protection of individual liberty."

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states "libertarianism holds that agents initially fully own themselves and have moral powers to acquire property rights in external things under certain conditions." It notes that libertarianism is not a "right-wing" doctrine because of its opposition to laws restricting adult consensual sexual relationships and drug use, and its opposition to imposing religious views or practices and compulsory military service. However, it notes that there is a version known as "left-libertarianism" which also endorses full self-ownership, but "differs on unappropriated natural resources (land, air, water, etc.)." In this respect, left-libertarianism borrows heavily from earlier Georgist economic views. "Right-libertarianism" holds that such resources may be appropriated by individuals. "Left-libertarianism" holds that they belong to everyone and must be distributed in some egalitarian manner.

Libertarianism has generally come to be associated with propertarian minarchism or a general tendency to reduce (but not necessarily eliminate) the role of government in the economic and personal realm. This definition of libertarianism is the most influential among the general public, mostly due to the name of the Libertarian Party. Presidential Candidate Harry Browne (L) writes: "We should never define Libertarian positions in terms coined by liberals or conservatives – nor as some variant of their positions. We are not fiscally conservative and socially liberal. We are Libertarians, who believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility on all issues at all times. You can depend on us to treat government as the problem, not the solution."

Like many libertarians, Leonard Read rejected the concepts of "left" and "right" libertarianism, calling them "authoritarian."

Isaiah Berlin's 1958 essay "Two Concepts of Liberty" described a difference between negative liberty which limits the power of the state to interfere and positive liberty in which a paternalistic state helps individuals achieve self-realization and self-determination. He believed these were rival and incompatible interpretations of liberty and held that demands for positive liberty lead to authoritarianism. This view has been adopted by many libertarians including Robert Nozick and Murray Rothbard.

Generally, pro-market libertarians focus on the rights of the individual to act in accordance with the individual's own subjective values, and argue that the coercive actions of the state are often (or even always) an impediment to the efficient realization of individual desires and values. Libertarians also maintain that what is immoral for the individual must necessarily be immoral for all state agents and that the state should not be above the law.

Normative ethics
Libertarians contrast two ethical views: consequentialist libertarianism, which is the support for liberty because it leads to favorable consequences, such as prosperity or efficiency and deontological libertarianism (also known as "rights-theorist libertarianism," "natural rights libertarianism," or "libertarian moralism") which consider moral tenets to be the basis of libertarian philosophy. Others combine a hybrid of consequentialist and deontologist thinking.

Ownership of the means of production
Some libertarians reject private ownership of land, and hold the position that all land is a common asset to which all individuals have an equal right to access. Geolibertarianism advocates that individuals pay economic rent to claim land as their private property. Left-libertarianism takes this claim further, asserting that anyone profiting from any natural resource must pay a tax so that their income (equivalently, the benefits of the natural resource) may be redistributed among the entire society. Most left libertarians support some form of income redistribution on the grounds of a claim by each individual to be entitled to an equal share of natural resources.

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Libertarianism and anarchism
Anarchism is a political philosophy encompassing many theories and traditions, all opposed to coercion of individuals, especially by government. Anarchism is usually considered a radical left-wing ideology, and much of anarchist economics and anarchist legal philosophy reflects anti-statist views such as anarcho-communism, collectivist anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism and participatory economics.

However, anarchism has always included an economic and legal individualist strain, with that strain supporting an anarchist free-market economy and private property (like classical mutualism or anarcho-capitalism and agorism). Anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard has stated that "Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism." ->

Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism is an individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state and the elevation of the sovereign individual in a free market. In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services are provided by voluntarily-funded competitors such as private defense agencies rather than through compulsory taxation. Because personal and economic activities are regulated by the natural laws of the market through private law rather than through politics, victimless crimes and crimes against the state would be rendered moot.

Anarcho-capitalists argue for a society based in voluntary trade of private property (including money, consumer goods, land, and capital goods) and services in order to maximize individual liberty and prosperity, but also recognize charity and communal arrangements as part of the same voluntary ethic. Though anarcho-capitalists are known for asserting a right to private (individualized or joint non-public) property, some propose that non-state public/community property can also exist in an anarcho-capitalist society. For them, what is important is that it is acquired and transferred without help or hindrance from the compulsory state. Market anarchists believe that the only just, and/or most economically-beneficial, way to acquire property is through voluntary trade, gift, or labor-based original appropriation, rather than through aggression or fraud.

Beyond their agreeing that security should be privately provided by market-based entities, proponents of free-market anarchism differ in other details and aspects of their philosophies, particularly justification, tactics and property rights.

Murray Rothbard and other natural rights theorists hold strongly to the central non-aggression axiom, while other free-market anarchists such as David D. Friedman utilize consequentialist theories such as utilitarianism. Agorists, anarcho-capitalists of the Rothbardian tradition, and voluntaryists are propertarian market anarchists who consider property rights to be natural rights deriving from the primary right of self-ownership.

Anarcho-capitalists have varying views on how to go about eliminating the state. Rothbard advocates the use of any non-immoral tactic available to bring about liberty. Agorists – followers of the philosophy of Samuel Edward Konkin III – propose to eliminate the state by practising tax resistance and by the use of illegal black market strategies called counter-economics until the security functions of the state can be replaced by free market competitors.

Minarchism
Minarchism refers to the belief in a state limited to police forces, courts, and a military. In minarchism, the state neither regulates nor intervenes in personal choices and business practices, except to protect against aggression, breach of contract, and fraud. Both market anarchists and minarchists oppose victimless crimes, the Drug War, compulsory education, and conscription at all levels of government.

However, minarchists often disagree on the level of government centralization. This ranges from the centralist minarchists who support the enforcement of laws at the global or national governments, to the middle-ground minarchists who advocate states' rights or increased autonomy at the state level, and to the decentralist minarchists who think that every city or town should have its own government. Such proponents of extreme decentralization include Albert Jay Nock and Jeffersonian republicans.

Libertarian conservatism
Libertarian conservatism, also known as conservative libertarianism (and sometimes called right-libertarianism), describes certain political ideologies which attempt to meld libertarian and conservative ideas, often called "fusionism". Anthony Gregory writes that right, or conservative, "libertarianism can refer to any number of varying and at times mutually exclusive political orientations" such as being "interested mainly in 'economic freedoms'"; following the "conservative lifestyle of right-libertarians"; seeking "others to embrace their own conservative lifestyle"; considering big business "as a great victim of the state"; favoring a "strong national defense"; and having "an Old Right opposition to empire."

Conservatives hold that shared values, morals, standards, and traditions are necessary for social order while libertarians consider individual liberty as the highest value. Laurence M. Vance writes: "Some libertarians consider libertarianism to be a lifestyle rather than a political philosophy... They apparently don't know the difference between libertarianism and libertinism." However, Edward Feser emphasizes that libertarianism does not require individuals to reject traditional conservative values.

"Paleolibertarianism" is a school of thought devised by Lew Rockwell and late Murray Rothbard, though Rockwell no longer identifies as one. Closely associated with the Austrian School of economics, most paleolibertarians identify as anarcho-capitalist. Though they advocate the elimination of the state, paleolibertarians disagree with other libertarians on reforming the state, such as illegal immigration and the legitimacy of state property.

According to Jonathan Henke "neolibertarianism" is the philosophy of being a "pragmatic libertarian; Hawk or strong on defense; Hobbesian (or Lockean according to some) libertarian; Big-Tent libertarian". Domestically, neolibertarians embrace incrementalism to achieve libertarian small government goals. On foreign policy, neolibertarians usually have combined a generally neoconservative outlook with a more pragmatic method. Anthony Gregory criticizes neolibertarianism as "libertine conservatism" and "pro-war" libertarianism, noting neolibertarians "believe that the government, which supposedly can't do anything right, can still wage war correctly."

Some "libertarian constitutionalists" like U.S. Representative Ron Paul believe liberty can be obtained through proper interpretation of the United States Constitution, something which would not allow federal incursions on the economy and civil liberties. Other libertarians critique constitutionalism for failure of its proponents to check the growth of government power.

Libertarian transhumanism
Libertarian transhumanism asserts that the principle of self-ownership is fundamental to both libertarianism and transhumanism. The philosophy advocates free market individualism as the best vehicle for technological progress and the "right to human enhancement." Some criticize it as utopian, overly reliant as technology or biological fetishism.

Left-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism is usually regarded as doctrine that has an egalitarian view concerning natural resources, believing that it is not legitimate for someone to claim private ownership of such resources to the detriment of others. Most left libertarians support some form of income redistribution on the grounds of a claim by each individual to be entitled to an equal share of natural resources. Left libertarianism is defended by contemporary theorists such as Peter Vallentyne, Hillel Steiner and Michael Otsuka. Also, the term is sometimes used as a synonym for libertarian socialism, an collectivist ideology not directly related to libertarianism.

Some members of the U.S. libertarian movement, including the late Samuel Edward Konkin III, and such members of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left as Roderick T. Long, and Gary Chartier support property rights and identify themselves with the political Left for a variety of reasons. They tend to oppose intellectual property, war and state policies that make and keep people poor, and to support labor unions and non-violent challenges to exclusion, subordination, impoverishment, and workplace oppression. They support voluntary cooperation.

Geolibertarianism
Geolibertarianism is a political movement that strives to reconcile libertarianism and Georgism (or "geoism"). The term was coined by Fred Foldvary. Geolibertarians are advocates of geoism, which is the position that all land is a common asset to which all individuals have an equal right to access, and therefore if individuals claim the land as their property they must pay rent to the community for doing so. Rent need not be paid for the mere use of land, but only for the right to exclude others from that land, and for the protection of one's title by government. They simultaneously agree with the libertarian position that each individual has an exclusive right to the fruits of his or her labor as their private property, as opposed to this product being owned collectively by society or the community, and that "one's labor, wages, and the products of labor" should not be taxed. In agreement with traditional libertarians they advocate "full civil liberties, with no crimes unless there are victims who have been invaded." In the voluntary geolibertarianism described by Foldvary, rent would be collected by private associations with the opportunity to secede from a geocommunity if desired.

Libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism aims to create a society in which all violent or coercive institutions would be dissolved, and in their place every person would have free, equal access to tools of information and production, or a society in which such coercive institutions and hierarchies were drastically reduced in scope.

This equality and freedom would be achieved through the abolition of authoritarian institutions such as an individual's right to own private property, in order that direct control of the means of production and resources will be gained by the working class and society as a whole.

Political philosophies commonly described as libertarian socialist include: most varieties of anarchism (especially anarchist communism, anarchist collectivism, anarcho-syndicalism ), social ecology, libertarian municipalism, and council communism.