Left-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism (or left-wing libertarianism) names several related but distinct approaches to political and social theory, which stresses both individual freedom and social equality. In its classical usage, left-libertarianism is a synonym for anti-authoritarian varieties of left-wing politics, either anarchism in general or social anarchism in particular.[1][2] It later became associated with free-market libertarians when Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess reached out to the New Left in the 1960s.[3] This left-wing market anarchism, which includes Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's mutualism and Samuel Edward Konkin III's agorism, appeals to left-wing concerns such as egalitarianism, gender and sexuality, class, immigration, and environmentalism.[1]
Most recently some have claimed left-libertarianism refers to mostly non-anarchist political positions associated with Hillel Steiner, Philippe Van Parijs, and Peter Vallentyne that combine self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to natural resources.[4]
Left-libertarians state that neither claiming nor mixing one's labor with natural resources is enough to generate full private property rights[5][6] and maintain that natural resources (land, oil, gold, vegetation) should be held in an egalitarian manner, either unowned or owned collectively. Those left-libertarians who support private property do so under the condition that recompense is offered to the local community.[6]
Contents
Definition[edit]
The term left-libertarian has been used to refer to a variety of different political-economic philosophies, emphasizing individual liberty. A related concept is libertarian socialism. According to Gaus,[1]
The term "left-libertanism" has at least three meanings. In its oldest sense, it is a synonym either for anarchism in general or social anarchism in particular. Later it became a term for the left or Konkinite wing of the free-market libertarian movement, and has since come to cover a range of pro-market but anti-capitalist positions, mostly individualist anarchist, including agorism and mutualism, often with an implication of sympathies (such as for radical feminism or the labor movement) not usually shared by anarcho-capitalists. In a third sense it has recently come to be applied to a position combining individual self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to natural resources; most proponents of this position are not anarchists.
Classical liberal radicalism[edit]
Contemporary left-libertarian scholars such as Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne, Philippe Van Parijs, Michael Otsuka, and David Ellerman root an economic egalitarianism in the classical liberal concepts of self-ownership and appropriation. They hold that it is illegitimate for anyone to claim private ownership of natural resources to the detriment of others, a condition John Locke explicated in Two Treatises of Government.[7] Locke argued that natural resources could be appropriated as long as doing so satisfies the proviso that there remains "enough, and as good, left in common for others."[8] In this view, unappropriated natural resources are either unowned or owned in common, and private appropriation is only legitimate if everyone can appropriate an equal amount or the property is taxed to compensate those who are excluded. This position is articulated in contrast to the position of other libertarians who argue for a characteristically labor-based right to appropriate unequal parts of the external world, such as land.[9] Most left-libertarians of this tradition support some form of economic rent redistribution on the grounds that each individual is entitled to an equal share of natural resources,[10] and argue for the desirability of state social welfare programs.[11][12]
Economists since Adam Smith have known that, unlike other forms of taxation, a land value tax would not cause economic inefficiency.[13] It would be a progressive tax[14] – that is, a tax paid primarily by the wealthy – that increases wages, reduces economic inequality, removes incentives to misuse real estate, and reduces the vulnerability that economies face from credit and property bubbles.[15][16] Early proponents of this view include Thomas Paine, Herbert Spencer, and Hugo Grotius,[4] but the concept was widely popularized by the political economist and social reformer Henry George.[17] George believed that people ought to own the fruits of their labor and the value of the improvements they make. Thus, he was opposed to tariffs, income taxes, sales taxes, poll taxes, property taxes (on improvements), and to any tax on production, consumption, or capital wealth. George was among the staunchest defenders of free markets, and his book Protection or Free Trade was read into the U.S. Congressional Record.[18] Yet he did support direct management of natural monopolies as a last resort, such as right-of-way monopolies necessary for railroad construction. George advocated the elimination of intellectual property arrangements, regarding them as an especially damaging form of protectionism, and instead favored government-sponsored prizes for inventors.[19][not in citation given]
Early followers of George's philosophy called themselves "Single Taxers" because they believed the only economically and morally legitimate, broad-based tax is on land rent. The term Georgism was coined later, though some modern proponents prefer the less eponymous term geoism instead,[20] leaving the meaning of geo- (from the Greek ge, meaning "earth") deliberately ambiguous. The terms Earth Sharing,[21] geonomics,[22] and geolibertarianism[23] are used by some Georgists to represent a difference of emphasis or divergent ideas about how the land value tax revenue should be spent or redistributed to residents, but all agree that economic rent must be recovered from private landholders.
Oxford University Marxist philosopher G. A. Cohen extensively criticized the claim, characteristic of the Georgist school of political economy, that self-ownership and a privilege-free society can be realized simultaneously. In Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, Cohen argued that any system purporting to take equality and its enforcement seriously is not consistent with the full emphasis on self-ownership and negative freedom that defines market libertarian thought.[24]
Anarchism[edit]
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170227230513im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/Proudhon-children.jpg/220px-Proudhon-children.jpg)
Anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates stateless societies characterized by self-governed, non-hierarchical, voluntary institutions. It developed in the 19th century from the secular or religious thought of the Enlightenment, particularly Jean-Jacques Rousseau's arguments for the moral centrality of freedom.[25]
As part of the political turmoil of the 1790s, in the wake of the French Revolution, William Godwin developed the first expression of modern anarchist thought.[26][27] According to anarchist Peter Kropotkin, Godwin was "the first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed in his work";[28] Godwin instead attached his ideas to an early Edmund Burke.[29] Godwin is generally regarded as the founder of philosophical anarchism. He argued in Political Justice that government has an inherently malevolent influence on society, and that it perpetuates dependency and ignorance.[27][30] He thought the proliferation of reason would eventually cause government to wither away as an unnecessary force. Although he did not accord the state with moral legitimacy, he was against the use of revolutionary tactics for removing the government from power. Rather, he advocated for its replacement through a process of peaceful evolution.[27][31] His aversion to the imposition of a rules-based society led him to denounce, as a manifestation of the people's "mental enslavement," the foundations of law, property rights and even the institution of marriage. He considered the basic foundations of society as constraining the natural development of individuals to use their powers of reasoning to arrive at a mutually beneficial method of social organization. In each case, government and its institutions are shown to constrain the development of our capacity to live wholly in accordance with the full and free exercise of private judgment.
In France, revolutionaries began using the term anarchiste in a positive light as early as September 1793.[32] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first self-proclaimed anarchist, a label he adopted in his treatise What is Property?, and is often described as the founder of modern anarchist theory.[33] He developed the theory of spontaneous order in society, in which organisation emerges without a central coordinator imposing its own idea of order against the wills of individuals acting in their own interests – "Liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of order." Proudhon answers his own question in What is Property? with the famous statement, "Property is theft." He opposed the institution of decreed property ("proprietorship") in which owners have complete rights to "use and abuse" their property as they wish,[34] and contrasted this with usufruct ("possession"), or limited ownership of resources only while in more or less continuous use. Later, Proudhon added that "Property is Liberty," and argued that it was a bulwark against state power.[35] His opposition to the state, organized religion, and certain capitalist practices inspired subsequent anarchists, and made him one of the leading social thinkers of his time.
In a scathing letter written in 1857, French anarchist Joseph Déjacque castigated Proudhon for his sexist economic and political views.[36][37] He argued that "it is not the product of his or her labour that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature."[38] Déjacque later named his anarchist publication The Libertarian: Journal of the Social Movement, which was printed from 9 June 1858 to 4 February 1861. In the mid-1890s, Sébastien Faure began publishing a new Le Libertaire while France's Third Republic enacted the "villainous laws" (lois scélérates), which banned anarchist publications in France; libertarianism has frequently been used as a synonym for anarchism since this time, especially in continental Europe.[39][40][41] In the 1950s, classical liberals in the United States began identifying as libertarians in order to distance themselves from the social liberals of the New Left.[42] Since this time, it has become useful to distinguish this modern American libertarianism, which promotes laissez-faire capitalism and, generally, a night-watchman state, from traditional, left-wing anarchism.[43][44] Accordingly, the former is often described as right-wing libertarianism or simply right-libertarianism, while synonyms for the latter include left-libertarianism,[1] libertarian socialism,[45] socialist anarchism,[1] and left-anarchism.[46]
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170227230513im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Le_libertaire_25.png/200px-Le_libertaire_25.png)
Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first US anarchist,[47][48] and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published,[49] an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and made his own printing plates.[49] Warren was a follower of Robert Owen and joined Owen's community at New Harmony, Indiana. Josiah Warren termed the phrase "Cost the limit of price," with "cost" referring not to monetary price paid but the labor one exerted to produce an item.[50] Therefore, "[h]e proposed a system to pay people with certificates indicating how many hours of work they did. They could exchange the notes at local time stores for goods that took the same amount of time to produce."[47] He put his theories to the test by establishing an experimental "labor for labor store" called the Cincinnati Time Store where trade was facilitated by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. The store proved successful and operated for three years after which it was closed so that Warren could pursue establishing colonies based on mutualism. These included Utopia and Modern Times. Warren said that Stephen Pearl Andrews' The Science of Society, published in 1852, was the most lucid and complete exposition of Warren's own theories.[51] American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker argued that the elimination of what he called "the four monopolies" – the land monopoly, the money and banking monopoly, the monopoly powers conferred by patents, and the quasi-monopolistic effects of tariffs – would undermine the power of the wealthy and big business, making possible widespread property ownership and higher incomes for ordinary people, while minimizing the power of would-be bosses and achieving socialist goals without state action. Tucker influenced and interacted with anarchist contemporaries – including Lysander Spooner, Voltairine de Cleyre, Dyer D. Lum, and William B. Greene – who have in various ways influenced later left-libertarian thinking.[52]
The catalan politician Francesc Pi i Margall became the principal translator of Proudhon's works into Spanish[53] and later briefly became president of Spain in 1873 while being the leader of the Democratic Republican Federal Party. For prominent anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker: "The first movement of the Spanish workers was strongly influenced by the ideas of Pi y Margall, leader of the Spanish Federalists and disciple of Proudhon. Pi y Margall was one of the outstanding theorists of his time and had a powerful influence on the development of libertarian ideas in Spain. His political ideas had much in common with those of Richard Price, Joseph Priestly (sic), Thomas Paine, Jefferson, and other representatives of the Anglo-American liberalism of the first period. He wanted to limit the power of the state to a minimum and gradually replace it by a Socialist economic order."[54] Pi i Margall was a dedicated theorist in his own right, especially through book-length works such as La reacción y la revolución (en:"Reaction and revolution" from 1855), Las nacionalidades (en:"Nationalities" from 1877), and La Federación from 1880.
Libertarian socialism[edit]
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170227230513im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Noam_chomsky_cropped.jpg)
Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism,[55][56] left-libertarianism[57][58] and socialist libertarianism[59]) is a group of anti-authoritarian[60] political philosophies inside the socialist movement that rejects socialism as centralized state ownership and control of the economy,[61] as well as the state itself.[62] It criticizes wage labour relationships within the workplace,[63] instead emphasizing workers' self-management of the workplace[62] and decentralized structures of political organization,[64][65][66] asserting that a society based on freedom and justice can be achieved through abolishing authoritarian institutions that control certain means of production and subordinate the majority to an owning class or political and economic elite.[67] Libertarian socialists advocate for decentralized structures based on direct democracy and federal or confederal associations[68] such as libertarian municipalism, citizens' assemblies, trade unions, and workers' councils.[69][70] All of this is generally done within a general call for libertarian[71] and voluntary human relationships[72] through the identification, criticism, and practical dismantling of illegitimate authority in all aspects of human life.[73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80]
Past and present political philosophies and movements commonly described as libertarian socialist include anarchism (especially anarchist communism, anarchist collectivism, anarcho-syndicalism,[81] and mutualism[82]) as well as autonomism, communalism, participism, guild socialism,[83] revolutionary syndicalism, and libertarian Marxist[84] philosophies such as council communism[85] and Luxemburgism;[86] as well as some versions of "utopian socialism"[87] and individualist anarchism.[88][89][90][91]
Left-wing market anarchism[edit]
While, with notable exceptions, US market-oriented libertarians after Benjamin Tucker tended to ally with the political right, relationships between such libertarians and the New Left thrived in the 1960s, laying the groundwork for modern left-wing market anarchism.[92] Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard was initially an enthusiastic partisan of the Old Right, particularly because of its general opposition to war and imperialism,[93] but long embraced a reading of American history that emphasized the role of elite privilege in shaping legal and political institutions – one that was thus naturally agreeable to many on the left. In the 1960s, he came increasingly to seek alliances on the left, especially with members of the New Left, in light of the Vietnam War,[94] the military draft, and the emergence of the black power movement.[95] Working with other radicals like Ronald Radosh and Karl Hess, Rothbard argued that the consensus view of American economic history, according to which a beneficent government has used its power to counter corporate predation, is fundamentally flawed. Rather, government intervention in the economy has largely benefited established players at the expense of marginalized groups, to the detriment of both liberty and equality. Moreover, the "Robber Baron" period, hailed by the right and despised by the left as a heyday of laissez-faire, was not characterized by laissez-faire at all, but was a time of massive state privilege accorded to capital.[96] In tandem with his emphasis on the intimate connection between state and corporate power, he defended the seizure of corporations dependent on state largesse by workers and others.[97] Rothbard himself ultimately broke with the left, allying himself instead with the burgeoning paleoconservative movement.[98] He criticized the tendency of left-libertarians to appeal to "'free spirits,' to people who don't want to push other people around, and who don't want to be pushed around themselves" in contrast to "the bulk of Americans," who "might well be tight-assed conformists, who want to stamp out drugs in their vicinity, kick out people with strange dress habits, etc."[99]
Some thinkers associated with market-oriented American libertarianism, drawing on the work of Rothbard during his alliance with the left and on the thought of Karl Hess, came increasingly to identify with the left on a range of issues, including opposition to war, to corporate oligopolies and state-corporate partnerships, and an affinity for cultural liberalism. This left-libertarianism is associated with scholars such as Kevin Carson,[100][101] Roderick T. Long,[102][103] Samuel Edward Konkin III,[104] Sheldon Richman,[105][106][107] Chris Matthew Sciabarra,[108] and Gary Chartier[109] who stress the value of radically free markets, termed freed markets to distinguish them from the common conception which these libertarians believe to be riddled with statist and capitalist privileges.[110] Referred to as left-wing market anarchists[111] or market-oriented left-libertarians,[107] proponents of this approach strongly affirm the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free markets, while maintaining that, taken to their logical conclusions, these ideas support strongly anti-corporatist, anti-hierarchical, pro-labor positions in economics; anti-imperialism in foreign policy; and thoroughly liberal or radical views regarding such cultural issues as gender, sexuality, and race. While adopting familiar libertarian views, including opposition to drug prohibition, gun control, civil liberties violations, and war, left-libertarians are more likely to take more distinctively leftist stances on issues as diverse as feminism, gender and sexuality, class, immigration, and environmentalism.[112] Members of this school typically urge the abolition of the state, arguing that vast disparities in wealth and social influence result from the use of force – especially state power – to steal and engross land and acquire and maintain special privileges. They judge that, in a stateless society, the kinds of privileges secured by the state will be absent, and injustices perpetrated or tolerated by the state can be rectified. Thus, they conclude that, with state interference eliminated, it will be possible to achieve "socialist ends by market means."[113] According to libertarian scholar Sheldon Richman:
Left-libertarians favor worker solidarity vis-à-vis bosses, support poor people's squatting on government or abandoned property, and prefer that corporate privileges be repealed before the regulatory restrictions on how those privileges may be exercised. They see Walmart as a symbol of corporate favoritism – supported by highway subsidies and eminent domain – view the fictive personhood of the limited-liability corporation with suspicion, and doubt that Third World sweatshops would be the "best alternative" in the absence of government manipulation. Left-libertarians tend to eschew electoral politics, having little confidence in strategies that work through the government. They prefer to develop alternative institutions and methods of working around the state.[107]
Agorism is an anarchist tendency founded by Samuel Edward Konkin III which advocates counter-economics, working in untaxable black or grey markets and boycotting as much as possible the unfree, taxed market with the intended result that private voluntary institutions emerge and outcompete statist ones.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ a b c d e "Anarchism". In Gaus, Gerald F.; D'Agostino, Fred, eds. (2012). The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy. p. 227.
- ^ Bookchin, Murray and Biehl, Janet (1997). The Murray Bookchin Reader. Cassell: p. 170. ISBN 0-304-33873-7
- ^ Carson, Kevin (15 June 2014). "What is Left-Libertarianism?". Center for a Stateless Society.
- ^ a b Kymlicka, Will (2005). "libertarianism, left-". In Honderich, Ted. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. New York City: Oxford University Press. p. 516. ISBN 978-0199264797. "'Left-libertarianism' is a new term for an old conception of justice, dating back to Grotius. It combines the libertarian assumption that each person possesses a natural right of self-ownership over his person with the egalitarian premiss that natural resources should be shared equally. Right-wing libertarians argue that the right of self-ownership entails the right to appropriate unequal parts of the external world, such as unequal amounts of land. According to left-libertarians, however, the world's natural resources were initially unowned, or belonged equally to all, and it is illegitimate for anyone to claim exclusive private ownership of these resources to the detriment of others. Such private appropriation is legitimate only if everyone can appropriate an equal amount, or if those who appropriate more are taxed to compensate those who are thereby excluded from what was once common property. Historic proponents of this view include Thomas Paine, Herbert Spencer, and Henry George. Recent exponents include Philippe Van Parijs and Hillel Steiner."
- ^ a b Narveson, Jan; Trenchard, David (2008). "Left libertarianism". In Hamowy, Ronald. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE; Cato Institute. pp. 288–89. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n174. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024.
Left libertarians regard each of us as full self-owners. However, they differ from what we generally understand by the term libertarian in denying the right to private property. We own ourselves, but we do not own nature, at least not as individuals. Left libertarians embrace the view that all natural resources, land, oil, gold, trees, and so on should be held collectively. To the extent that individuals make use of these commonly owned goods, they must do so only with the permission of society, a permission granted only under the proviso that a certain payment for their use be made to society at large.
- ^ Kymlicka, Will (2005). "libertarianism, left-." The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. In Honderich, Ted. New York: Oxford University Press. "[Left-libertarians maintain that] the world's natural resources were initially unowned, or belonged equally to all, and it is illegitimate for anyone to claim exclusive private ownership of these resources to the detriment of others. Such private appropriation is legitimate only if everyone can appropriate an equal amount, or if those who appropriate more are taxed to compensate those who are thereby excluded from what was once common property."
- ^ Locke, John (1689). Two Treatises of Government.
- ^ Rothbard, Murray N. (1982). The Ethics of Liberty. Atlantic Heights, NJ: Humanities.
- ^ Gaus, Gerald F. and Kukathas, Chandran (2004). Handbook of Political Theory. Sage Publications Inc. p. 128.
- ^ Van Parijs, Phillippe (1998). Real Freedom for All: What (If Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford University Press.
- ^ Daskal, Steve (1 January 2010). "Libertarianism Left and Right, the Lockean Proviso, and the Reformed Welfare State". Social Theory and Practice. p. 1.
- ^ Smith, Adam (1776). "Chapter 2, Article 1: Taxes upon the Rent of Houses". The Wealth of Nations, Book V.
- ^ Suits, Daniel B. (Sep 1977). "Measurement of Tax Progressivity". The American Economic Review, published by American Economic Association. 67 (4): 747–52. Retrieved 28 October 2014.
- ^ Suits, Daniel B. (September 1977). "Measurement of Tax Progressivity". American Economic Review. 67 (4): 747–52. JSTOR 1813408.
- ^ Land Value Taxation: An Applied Analysis, William J. McCluskey, Riël C. D. Franzsen
- ^ Foldvary, Fred. "Geoism Explained". The Progress Report. Retrieved 12 January 2014.
- ^ http://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/research/ei/ei0502.pdf
- ^ George, Henry. Progress and Poverty. (1879; Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1912).
- ^ Casal, Paula (2011). "Global Taxes on Natural Resources" (PDF). Journal of Moral Philosophy. 8 (3): 307–27. doi:10.1163/174552411x591339. Retrieved 14 March 2014.
It can also invoke geoism, a philosophical tradition encompassing the views of John Locke and Henry George ...
- ^ Introduction to Earth Sharing,
- ^ Geonomics in a Nutshell
- ^ Foldvary, Fred. "Geoism and Libertarianism".
- ^ Tom G. Palmer has responded to Cohen's critique:
- Palmer, Tom G. (2009). "G. A. Cohen on Self-ownership, Property and Equality". Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice. Washington, DC: Cato. pp. 129–54.
- Palmer, Tom G. (1998). "The Literature of Liberty". The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao Tzu to Milton Friedman. In Boaz, David. New York: Free. pp. 415–55.
- ^ (2006). "Anarchism". Encarta Online Encyclopedia.
- ^ Everhart, Robert B. (1982). The Public School Monopoly: A Critical Analysis of Education and the State in American Society. Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research. p. 115.
- ^ a b c Philip, Mark (2006-05-20). "William Godwin". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- ^ Peter Kropotkin, "Anarchism", Encyclopædia Britannica 1910.
- ^ Godwin, William (1793). Political Justice. "Most of the above arguments may be found much more at large in [Edmund] Burke's Vindication of Natural Society; a treatise in which the evils of the existing political institutions are displayed with incomparable force of reasoning and lustre of eloquence".
- ^ Adams, Ian (2001). Political Ideology Today. Manchester University Press. p. 116.
- ^ Godwin, William (1796) [1793]. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners. G.G. and J. Robinson. OCLC 2340417.
- ^ Sheehan, Sean (2004). Anarchism. London: Reaktion Books Ltd. p. 85.
- ^ Guérin, Daniel (1970). Anarchism: From Theory to Practice. New York: Monthly Review Press.
- ^ Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1840). "Chapter 3. Labour as the efficient cause of the domain of property". In What is Property?.
- ^ Edwards, Stewart (1969). "Introduction". In Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc. p. 33.
- ^ Marshall (2009). p. 641. "The word 'libertarian' has long been associated with anarchism, and has been used repeatedly throughout this work. The term originally denoted a person who upheld the doctrine of the freedom of the will; in this sense, Godwin was not a 'libertarian', but a 'necessitarian'. It came however to be applied to anyone who approved of liberty in general. In anarchist circles, it was first used by Joseph Déjacque as the title of his anarchist journal Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social published in New York in 1858. At the end of the last century, the anarchist Sébastien Faure took up the word, to stress the difference between anarchists and authoritarian socialists."
- ^ Robert Graham, ed. (2005). Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas. Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE–1939). Montreal: Black Rose Books. §17.
- ^ (21 September 1858). "l'Echange". In Le Libertaire. 6. New York. [1]
- ^ Nettlau, Max (1996). A Short History of Anarchism. London: Freedom Press. p. 162. ISBN 978-0-900384-89-9. OCLC 37529250.
- ^ Colin Ward (2004), Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 62. "For a century, anarchists have used the word 'libertarian' as a synonym for 'anarchist', both as a noun and an adjective. The celebrated anarchist journal Le Libertaire was founded in 1896. However, much more recently the word has been appropriated by various American free-market philosophers..."
- ^ Chomsky, Noam (February 23, 2002). "The Week Online Interviews Chomsky". Z Magazine. Z Communications. Retrieved 2011-11-21.
The term libertarian as used in the US means something quite different from what it meant historically and still means in the rest of the world. Historically, the libertarian movement has been the anti-statist wing of the socialist movement. Socialist anarchism was libertarian socialism.
- ^ Burns, Jennifer (2009). Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 309. ISBN 978-0-19-532487-7. "Although it did not become widely used until the 1950s, 'libertarian' was in circulation prior to the New Deal. It emerged after Roosevelt popularized a new understanding of 'liberal,' the term formerly used by advocates of limited government."
- ^ Goodway, David (2006). Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 4. ISBN 1846310253, 9781846310256. "'Libertarian' and 'libertarianism' are frequently employed by anarchists as synonyms for 'anarchist' and 'anarchism', largely as an attempt to distance themselves from the negative connotations of 'anarchy' and its derivatives. The situation has been vastly complicated in recent decades with the rise of anarcho-capitalism, 'minimal statism' and an extreme right-wing laissez-faire philosophy advocated by such theorists as Murray Rothbard and Robert Nozick and their adoption of the words 'libertarian' and 'libertarianism'. It has therefore no become necessary to distinguish between their right libertarianism and the left libertarianism of the anarchist tradition."
- ^ Newman, Saul (2010). The Politics of Postanarchism, Edinburgh University Press. p. 43. ISBN 0748634959, 9780748634958. "It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism). There is a complex debate within this tradition between those like Robert Nozick, who advocate a 'minimal state', and those like Rothbard who want to do away with the state altogether and allow all transactions to be governed by the market alone. From an anarchist perspective, however, both positions--the minimal state (minarchist) and the no-state ('anarchist') positions--neglect the problem of economic domination; in other words, they neglect the hierarchies, oppressions, and forms of exploitation that would inevitably arise in a laissez-faire 'free' market. ... Anarchism, therefore, has no truck with this right-wing libertarianism, not only because it neglects economic inequality and domination, but also because in practice (and theory) it is highly inconsistent and contradictory. The individual freedom invoked by right-wing libertarians is only a narrow economic freedom within the constraints of a capitalist market, which, as anarchists show, is no freedom at all."
- ^ Ostergaard, Geoffrey. "Anarchism". The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought. Blackwell Publishing. p. 14.
- ^ Brooks, Thom. (2002) Book Reviews. Journal of Applied Philosophy 19 (1) , 75–90 doi:10.1111/1468-5930.00206
- ^ a b Palmer, Brian (29 December 2010) "What do anarchists want from us?" Slate.com.
- ^ Orton, Bill (2011) Against Authority
- ^ a b Bailie, William (1906). Josiah Warren: The First American Anarchist – A Sociological Study. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. p. 20.
- ^ Warren, Josiah. Equitable Commerce. "A watch has a cost and a value. The COST consists of the amount of labor bestowed on the mineral or natural wealth, in converting it into metals..."
- ^ Madison, Charles A. (1945). "Anarchism in the United States". Journal of the History of Ideas. 6 (1): 53. doi:10.2307/2707055.
- ^ Martin, James J. (1970). Men against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America. Colorado Springs, CO: Myles.
- ^ George Woodcock. Anarchism: a history of libertarian movements. p. 357
- ^ [http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/rudolf-rocker-anarchosyndicalism "Anarchosyndicalism" by Rudolf Rocker
- ^ Ostergaard, Geoffrey. "Anarchism". A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Blackwell Publishing, 1991. p. 21.
- ^ Chomsky, Noam (2004). Language and Politics. In Otero, Carlos Peregrín. AK Press. p. 739
- ^ Bookchin, Murray and Janet Biehl. The Murray Bookchin Reader. Cassell, 1997. p. 170 ISBN 0-304-33873-7
- ^ Hicks, Steven V. and Daniel E. Shannon. The American journal of economics and sociolology. Blackwell Pub, 2003. p. 612
- ^ Miller, Wilbur R. (2012). The social history of crime and punishment in America. An encyclopedia. 5 vols. London: Sage Publications. p. 1007. ISBN 1412988764. "There exist three major camps in libertarian thought: right-libertarianism, socialist libertarianism, and ..."
- ^ "It implies a classless and anti-authoritarian (i.e. libertarian) society in which people manage their own affairs" I.1 Isn't libertarian socialism an oxymoron? at An Anarchist FAQ
- ^ "unlike other socialists, they tend to see (to various different degrees, depending on the thinker) to be skeptical of centralized state intervention as the solution to capitalist exploitation..." Roderick T. Long. "Toward a libertarian theory of class." Social Philosophy and Policy. Volume 15. Issue 02. Summer 1998. p. 305
- ^ a b "So, libertarian socialism rejects the idea of state ownership and control of the economy, along with the state as such. Through workers' self-management it proposes to bring an end to authority, exploitation, and hierarchy in production." "I1. Isn´t libertarian socialism an oxymoron" in An Anarchist FAQ
- ^ "Therefore, rather than being an oxymoron, "libertarian socialism" indicates that true socialism must be libertarian and that a libertarian who is not a socialist is a phoney. As true socialists oppose wage labour, they must also oppose the state for the same reasons. Similarly, libertarians must oppose wage labour for the same reasons they must oppose the state." "I1. Isn´t libertarian socialism an oxymoron" in An Anarchist FAQ
- ^ "Their analysis treats libertarian socialism as a form of anti-parliamentary, democratic, antibureaucratic grass roots socialist organisation, strongly linked to working class activism." Alex Prichard, Ruth Kinna, Saku Pinta and Dave Berry (eds) Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red. Palgrave Macmillan, December 2012. p. 13
- ^ " ...preferringa system of popular self governance via networks of decentralized, local voluntary, participatory, cooperative associations. Roderick T. Long. "Toward a libertarian theory of class." Social Philosophy and Policy. Volume 15. Issue 02. Summer 1998. p. 305
- ^ "What is of particular interest here, however, is the appeal to a form of emancipation grounded in decentralized, cooperative and democratic forms of political and economic governance which most libertarian socialist visions, including Cole's, tend to share." Charles Masquelier. Critical theory and libertarian socialism: Realizing the political potential of critical social theory. Bloombury. New York-London. 2014. p. 189
- ^ Mendes, Silva. Socialismo Libertário ou Anarchismo Vol. 1 (1896): "Society should be free through mankind's spontaneous federative affiliation to life, based on the community of land and tools of the trade; meaning: Anarchy will be equality by abolition of private property (while retaining respect for personal property) and liberty by abolition of authority".
- ^ "We therefore foresee a Society in which all activities will be coordinated, a structure that has, at the same time, sufficient flexibility to permit the greatest possible autonomy for social life, or for the life of each enterprise, and enough cohesiveness to prevent all disorder...In a well-organized society, all of these things must be systematically accomplished by means of parallel federations, vertically united at the highest levels, constituting one vast organism in which all economic functions will be performed in solidarity with all others and that will permanently preserve the necessary cohesion." Gaston Leval. Libertarian socialism: a practical outline".
- ^ "...preferring a system of popular self governance via networks of decentralized, local, voluntary, participatory, cooperative associations-sometimes as a complement to and check on state power..."
- ^ Rocker, Rudolf (2004). Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice. AK Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-902593-92-0.
- ^ "LibSoc share with LibCap an aversion to any interference to freedom of thought, expression or choicce of lifestyle." Roderick T. Long. "Toward a libertarian theory of class." Social Philosophy and Policy. Volume 15. Issue 02. Summer 1998. pp 305
- ^ "What is implied by the term 'libertarian socialism'?: The idea that socialism is first and foremost about freedom and therefore about overcoming the domination, repression, and alienation that block the free flow of human creativity, thought, and action...An approach to socialism that incorporates cultural revolution, women's and children's liberation, and the critique and transformation of daily life, as well as the more traditional concerns of socialist politics. A politics that is completely revolutionary because it seeks to transform all of reality. We do not think that capturing the economy and the state lead automatically to the transformation of the rest of social being, nor do we equate liberation with changing our life-styles and our heads. Capitalism is a total system that invades all areas of life: socialism must be the overcoming of capitalist reality in its entirety, or it is nothing." "What is Libertarian Socialism?" by Ulli Diemer. Volume 2, Number 1 (Summer 1997 issue) of The Red Menace.
- ^ "The Soviet Union Versus Socialism". chomsky.info. Retrieved 2015-11-22.
Libertarian socialism, furthermore, does not limit its aims to democratic control by producers over production, but seeks to abolish all forms of domination and hierarchy in every aspect of social and personal life, an unending struggle, since progress in achieving a more just society will lead to new insight and understanding of forms of oppression that may be concealed in traditional practice and consciousness.
- ^ "Authority is defined in terms of the right to exercise social control (as explored in the "sociology of power") and the correlative duty to obey (as explred in the "philosophy of practical reason"). Anarchism is distinguished, philosophically, by its scepticism towards such moral relations – by its questioning of the claims made for such normative power – and, practically, by its challenge to those "authoritative" powers which cannot justify their claims and which are therefore deemed illegitimate or without moral foundation."Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism by Paul McLaughlin. AshGate. 2007. p. 1
- ^ "The IAF – IFA fights for : the abolition of all forms of authority whether economical, political, social, religious, cultural or sexual."[http://www.iaf-ifa.org/principles/english.html "Principles of The International of Anarchist Federations"
- ^ "Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations." Emma Goldman. "What it Really Stands for Anarchy" in Anarchism and Other Essays.
- ^ Individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker defined anarchism as opposition to authority as follows "They found that they must turn either to the right or to the left, – follow either the path of Authority or the path of Liberty. Marx went one way; Warren and Proudhon the other. Thus were born State Socialism and Anarchism...Authority, takes many shapes, but, broadly speaking, her enemies divide themselves into three classes: first, those who abhor her both as a means and as an end of progress, opposing her openly, avowedly, sincerely, consistently, universally; second, those who profess to believe in her as a means of progress, but who accept her only so far as they think she will subserve their own selfish interests, denying her and her blessings to the rest of the world; third, those who distrust her as a means of progress, believing in her only as an end to be obtained by first trampling upon, violating, and outraging her. These three phases of opposition to Liberty are met in almost every sphere of thought and human activity. Good representatives of the first are seen in the Catholic Church and the Russian autocracy; of the second, in the Protestant Church and the Manchester school of politics and political economy; of the third, in the atheism of Gambetta and the socialism of Karl Marx." Benjamin Tucker. Individual Liberty.
- ^ Ward, Colin (1966). "Anarchism as a Theory of Organization". Archived from the original on 25 March 2010. Retrieved 1 March 2010.
- ^ Anarchist historian George Woodcock report of Mikhail Bakunin's anti-authoritarianism and shows opposition to both state and non-state forms of authority as follows: "All anarchists deny authority; many of them fight against it." (p. 9)...Bakunin did not convert the League's central committee to his full program, but he did persuade them to accept a remarkably radical recommendation to the Berne Congress of September 1868, demanding economic equality and implicitly attacking authority in both Church and State."
- ^ Brown, L. Susan (2002). "Anarchism as a Political Philosophy of Existential Individualism: Implications for Feminism". The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism and Anarchism. Black Rose Books Ltd. Publishing. p. 106.
- ^ Sims, Franwa (2006). The Anacostia Diaries As It Is. Lulu Press. p. 160.
- ^ A Mutualist FAQ: A.4. Are Mutualists Socialists?
- ^ "It is by meeting such a twofold requirement that the libertarian socialism of G.D.H. Cole could be said to offer timely and sustainable avenues for the institutionalization of the liberal value of autonomy..." Charles Masquelier. Critical theory and libertarian socialism: Realizing the political potential of critical social theory. Bloombury. New York-London. 2014. p. 190
- ^ "Locating libertarian socialism in a grey area between anarchist and Marxist extremes, they argue that the multiple experiences of historical convergence remain inspirational and that, through these examples, the hope of socialist transformation survives." Alex Prichard, Ruth Kinna, Saku Pinta and Dave Berry (eds) Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red. Palgrave Macmillan, December 2012. p. 13
- ^ "Councilism and anarchism loosely merged into ‘libertarian socialism’, offering a non-dogmatic path by which both council communism and anarchism could be updated for the changed conditions of the time, and for the new forms of proletarian resistance to these new conditions." Toby Boraman. "Carnival and Class: Anarchism and Councilism in Australasia during the 1970s" in Alex Prichard, Ruth Kinna, Saku Pinta and Dave Berry (eds). Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red. Palgrave Macmillan, December 2012. p. 268.
- ^ Murray Bookchin, Ghost of Anarcho-Syndicalism; Robert Graham, The General Idea of Proudhon's Revolution
- ^ Kent Bromley, in his preface to Peter Kropotkin's book The Conquest of Bread, considered early French utopian socialist Charles Fourier to be the founder of the libertarian branch of socialist thought, as opposed to the authoritarian socialist ideas of Babeuf and Buonarroti." Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread, preface by Kent Bromley, New York and London, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1906.
- ^ "(Benjamin) Tucker referred to himself many times as a socialist and considered his philosophy to be "Anarchistic socialism." An Anarchist FAQ by Various Authors
- ^ French individualist anarchist Émile Armand shows clearly opposition to capitalism and centralized economies when he said that the individualist anarchist "inwardly he remains refractory – fatally refractory – morally, intellectually, economically (The capitalist economy and the directed economy, the speculators and the fabricators of single are equally repugnant to him.)""Anarchist Individualism as a Life and Activity" by Emile Armand
- ^ Anarchist Peter Sabatini reports that In the United States "of early to mid-19th century, there appeared an array of communal and "utopian" counterculture groups (including the so-called free love movement). William Godwin's anarchism exerted an ideological influence on some of this, but more so the socialism of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. After success of his British venture, Owen himself established a cooperative community within the United States at New Harmony, Indiana during 1825. One member of this commune was Josiah Warren (1798–1874), considered to be the first individualist anarchist"Peter Sabatini. "Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy"
- ^ "It introduces an eye-opening approach to radical social thought, rooted equally in libertarian socialism and market anarchism." Chartier, Gary; Johnson, Charles W. (2011). Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty. Brooklyn, NY:Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. p. Back cover
- ^ Long, Roderick T. (2006). "Rothbard's 'Left and Right': Forty Years Later". Rothbard Memorial Lecture, Austrian Scholars Conference.
- ^ Raimondo, Justin (2001). An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
- ^ Raimondo. pp. 151–209.
- ^ Doherty, Brian M. (2007). Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. New York: Public Affairs. p. 338.
- ^ On partnerships between the state and big business and the role of big business in promoting regulation, see Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York: Free 1977); Butler Shaffer, In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign against Competition, 1918–1938 (Auburn, AL: Mises 2008).
- ^ Rothbard, Murray N. (15 June 1969). "Confiscation and the Homestead Principle." Libertarian Forum. 1:6. pp. 3–4.
- ^ See Raimondo 277–78; Doherty 562–65.
- ^ Murray N. Rothbard, letter to David Bergland, June 5, 1986, qtd. Raimondo 263–64. Rothbard emphasized that this was relevant as a matter of strategy: the failure to pitch the libertarian message to Middle America, he wrote, might result in the loss of "the tight-assed majority."
- ^ Carson, Kevin A. (2008). Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective. Charleston, SC:BookSurge.
- ^ Carson, Kevin A. (2010). The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto. Charleston, SC:BookSurge.
- ^ Long, Roderick T. (2000). Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand. Washington, DC:Objectivist Center
- ^ Long, Roderick T. (2008). "An Interview With Roderick Long"
- ^ Konkin III, Samuel Edward. The New Libertarian Manifesto.
- ^ Richman, Sheldon (23 June 2010). "Why Left-Libertarian?" The Freeman. Foundation for Economic Education.
- ^ Richman, Sheldon (18 December 2009). "Workers of the World Unite for a Free Market." Foundation for Economic Education.
- ^ a b c Sheldon Richman (3 February 2011). "Libertarian Left: Free-market anti-capitalism, the unknown ideal." The American Conservative. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
- ^ Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (2000). Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism. University Park, PA:Pennsylvania State University Press.
- ^ Chartier, Gary (2009). Economic Justice and Natural Law. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Gillis, William (2011). "The Freed Market." In Chartier, Gary and Johnson, Charles. Markets Not Capitalism. Brooklyn, NY: Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. pp. 19–20.
- ^ Chartier, Gary; Johnson, Charles W. (2011). Markets Not Capitalism. Brooklyn, NY:Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. pp. 1–16.
- ^ Long, Roderick T.; Johnson, Charles W. (1 May 2005). "Libertarian Feminism: Can this Marriage Be Saved?" Molinari Society.
- ^ Chartier, Gary (2009). Socialist Ends, Market Means: Five Essays. Tulsa, OK: Tulsa Alliance of the Libertarian Left.
Further reading[edit]
![]() |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Left-libertarianism. |
- Otsuka, Michael (2005). Libertarianism Without Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-928018-6.
- Rothbard, Murray N. (2007). Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought (Complete, 1965–1968). Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- Vallentyne, Peter; Steiner, Hillel; Otsuka, Michael (2005). "Why Left-Libertarianism is not Incoherent, Indeterminate, or Irrelevant" (PDF). Philosophy & Public Affairs. 33: 201–15. doi:10.1111/j.1088-4963.2005.00030.x.
- Vallentyne, Peter; Steiner, Hillel (2000). Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics. Basingstoke: Palgrave. ISBN 978-0-312-23699-1.
- Vallentyne, Peter; Steiner, Hillel (2000). The Origins of Left-Libertarianism. Basingstoke: Palgrave. ISBN 978-0-312-23591-8.
- Vallentyne, Peter (2000). Left-Libertarianism: A Primer. In Left Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate, Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner (Eds.). Palgrave Publishers Ltd. 1–20. Full text (Final draft)