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Q: Are libertarianism and socialism mutually exclusive?
A: No. Libertarians believe liberty consists of personal autonomy, and they justify a strong distrust of the state upon this foundation. Socialism is a social and economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy, as well as a political theory and movement that aims at the establishment of such a system.[1] Although socialism is commonly associated with the planned economies proffered by Marxism-Leninism and other "authoritarian socialists," libertarian socialism rejects economic direction from a central authority such as the state.[2] Thus, libertarianism and anarchism have been synonyms since the 1890s,[3] and other equivalents include libertarian socialism,[4]socialist anarchism,[5] and left-libertarianism.[6] The libertarianism of the 19th century had two strong currents, social anarchism and individualist anarchism, both of which fall under the umbrella of libertarian socialism and were explicitly anti-capitalist.[7][8]
In the 20th century, members of the Old Right in the United States such as Albert Jay Nock and H. L. Mencken[9] began identifying as libertarians to declare their commitment to individualism and distance themselves from liberals who supported welfare capitalism. Some libertarians (e.g. Murray Rothbard, who popularized the libertarian philosophy anarcho-capitalism) were explicitly influenced by the American individualist anarchists, but most were "a rather automatic product of the American environment."[10] This modern American libertarianism is also referred to as right-libertarianism.[11]
Q: What is right-libertarianism? What is left-libertarianism?
Q: How are all these political philosophies related? Which ones are closely related or inclusive?
A: Some labels and qualifiers are typically used to group together multiple political movements or ideologies or distance them from others. Below is a rough and simplified visual representation of how many of the political camps described in the article (i.e. groups that have either identified or been described as libertarian) relate to one another, without any regard to their affinity for one another, their prominence or their significance.
Libertarian classification diagram
Libertarianism diagram
References
^Badie, Bertrand; Berg-Schlosser, Dirk; Morlino, Leonardo (2011). International Encyclopedia of Political Science. SAGE Publications, Inc. p. 2456. ISBN 978-1412959636. "Socialist systems are those regimes based on the economic and political theory of socialism, which advocates public ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources."
^Sacco, Nicola and Vanzetti, Bartolomeo (1928). The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti. New York: Octagon Books. p. 274. "After all we are socialists as the social-democrats, the socialists, the communists, and the I.W.W. are all Socialists. The difference—the fundamental one—between us and all the other is that they are authoritarian while we are libertarian; they believe in a State or Government of their own; we believe in no State or Government."
^Nettlau, Max (1996). A Short History of Anarchism (in English, translated). London:Freedom Press. p. 162. ISBN 978-0-900384-89-9. OCLC37529250.
^Guérin, Daniel (1970). Anarchism: From Theory to Practice. New York:Monthly Review Press. ISBN 978-0853451754. "Some contemporary anarchists have tried to clear up the misunderstanding by adopting a more explicit term: they align themselves with libertarian socialism or communism."
^Ostergaard, Geoffrey. "Anarchism". The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought. Blackwell Publishing. p. 14.
^ abBookchin, Murray and Biehl, Janet (1997). The Murray Bookchin Reader. New York:Cassell. p. 170.
^Marshall, Peter (2009). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. Oakland:PM Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-60486-064-1. "[Anarchism] emerged at the end of the eighteenth century in its modern form as a response partly to the rise of centalized States and nationalism, and partly to industrialization and capital. Anarchism thus took up the dual challenge of overthrowing both Capital and the State."
^ abChartier, Gary. Johnson, Charles W. (2011). Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty. Minor Compositions. pp. 4-5. ISBN 978-1570272424. "The anticapitalism of the 'first wave' individualists [represented mainly by 'individualist anarchists' and 'mutualists' such as Benjamin Tucker, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Dyer Lum] was obvious to them and to many of their contemporaries."
^DeLeon, David (1978). The American as Anarchist: Reflections on Indigenous Radicalism.Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 127. "only a few individuals like Murray Rothbard, in Power and Market, and some article writers were influenced by [past anarchists like Spooner and Tucker]. Most had not evolved consciously from this tradition; they had been a rather automatic product of the American environment."
^ abGoodway, 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. "'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 now become necessary to distinguish between their right libertarianism and the left libertarianism of the anarchist tradition."
^Hamowy, Ronald. "Left Libertarianism." The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. p. 288
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The whole discussion that tries to shoehorn libertarian thought into a one dimensional axis is terrible. Human thought isn't as simple as left and right. Rjedgar (talk) 23:24, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Rjedgar The article does mention other forms of libertarian thought that aren't explicitly right or left wing, including libertarian paternalism, neo-libertarianism and libertarian populism. However, I can understand your point that the article might focus too much on the left-right divide. I think the reason this left-right divide was created was to distinguish between more socialist and anti-capitalist libertarians and more pro-capitalist libertarians. If you have any suggestions on how to fix this problem, please share them with me. X-Editor (talk) 01:04, 3 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I do reject the right and left libertarian terminology attempts to divide along those lines, and think that those two articles should be reduced to short articles on those terms. But I don't see where this article has that problem. North8000 (talk) 18:53, 13 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You all DO realize that libertarianism in and of itself is an asinine, poorly reasoned, vague and nebulous conception, dont you? Libertarianism is nonsensical from the get go, which is why its difficult to write any coherent descriptions about it. The libertarians cannot even decide what libertarianism is, by enumerating specific tenets and values, and by designing a functional system. Everything is so abstract all the time to the point of vagueness. And idealistic, as well, akin to the socialists utopian ideal; just as delusional and idealistic, merely occupying a different political space. Whenever one libertarian decides a policy is too libertarian, others in his ilk will naturally think him an authoritarian. And the push for ever more libertarianism at the expense of the ejection of prior proponents who are now too authoritarian by comparison is inevitable, precisely because no limits are defined. Simply put, libertarianism is, or will inevitably lead to, anarchism. The typical libertarian, though, is too strung out on pot to ever realize it, and has his mind set on a fantasy world. If you truly simply want less government involvement, but still appreciate the need for the rule of law and for society to set standards of conduct, well then, welcome to the conservative movement and let me introduce you to the tenth amendment. 50.34.32.46 (talk) 03:21, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"let me introduce you to the tenth amendment." The tenth amendment of what? And conservatism is not about less government involvement, it tends to support hierarchical society and traditionalism, and to oppose social reforms. Dimadick (talk) 08:39, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not exactly. Fiscal conservatism is in favour of smaller government in the economic sense, while traditionalist conservatism and social conservatism primarily favour hierarchy and traditionalism and oppose social reform. X-Editor (talk) 02:35, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not going to respond to that other than to say that the topic is far more complex and diverse than you imagine. You should start by reading the article. North8000 (talk) 16:02, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We’re not here to debate the merits of libertarianism, we’re here to discuss improvements to the article on libertarianism. X-Editor (talk) 02:36, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Are you saying libertarianism is nonsense because (unlike any other political philosophy) it has factions that disagree? If so, then what – the article ought not to exist? —Tamfang (talk) 06:11, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would agree with this point. I’ve noticed as of recently that there is an obsession on Wikipedia with categorizing every single political ideology and movement into a simple left vs. right spectrum. This greatly oversimplifies the many complexities of politics. X-Editor (talk) 02:39, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agree and agree that this is a problem. Plus even "left" and "right" are in the eye of the beholder. The left/right concept makes a particular mess out of covering libertarianism, because in that area the meanings of the terms are very different in the US vs. Europe. Also see my comment below. North8000 (talk) 13:25, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We should just edit this article and the other relevant ones. There is no group with any entrenched viewpoint defending the status quo. There is just 10+ years of random discussion, random viewpoints and random debates. North8000 (talk) 23:29, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@North8000: "Random" is a good way of describing this article. I keep coming back to it and keep being surprised by how incoherent it is, it reads more as an ideological tug-of-war than an actually informative encyclopedic article. Even just the lead section is a rambling grab-bag of nonsense, from that sea of blue links for different random concepts that libertarians "emphasise" (which honestly reads as synth), to the paragraphs about random sub-schools, to the recent claims about elected heads of state. I wouldn't know where to start with improving this, because I'm not even sure it can be improved. I worry this article is doomed to forever be an ideological battleground where different editors claim different people, movements and philosophies, without ever caring to explain what "libertarianism" actually is... Grnrchst (talk) 09:40, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Grnrchst: I've been through all of the battles here and there are reasons that give me more hope than that. The battles are usually "Tower of Babel" based rather than an ideological war. The term (plus other related terms) has a completely different meaning in Europe vs. the (common meaning in the) US and so even well meaning people think that the article is screwed up. To complicated it more, the most prominent libertarian organization in the US (the USLP) is more philosophical and Europeanish than the common meaning of the term in the US. So everybody thinks that half of the article has been hijacked and is totally wrong. Second, it easy to make the mistake of thinking that it fundamentally a philosophical topic (rather than "in practice") and so we tend think that by covering the philosophies and we are covering the topic. So, to be a bit facetious, if one philosopher guy invents a libertarian term and philosophy, he is considered to be a "source" on his invention and then it gets a whole section in the top level libertarian article. IMO the article just needs a lot of work, while acknowledging and dealing with the above issues. Also not using other terms to describe the topic which have opposite meanings or at least acknowledge the problems with the terms. An example: "Right Libertarian" is a term which is an oxymoron in the USA but used by Europeans to describe the forms libertarianism which are common in the US. So we'll tell people about the term but otherwise use it to describe libertarianism. North8000 (talk) 20:03, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree that it is used in the US....of course there are probably rare exceptions. And the fact that some (non-US sources) use it does not refute that. North8000 (talk) 23:06, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Consider that on the Spanish Wikipedia some editors say that "right-wing libertarian" is an American term... In common parlance the term is probably not used in the United States, but in U.S. books and academic papers "right-libertarian" is used.
In the criticism section there is one line referring to criticism of left-libertarianism, but four paragraphs to the right. Considering left-libertarianism is talked about frequently in this article, why so little criticism mentioned? Zilch-nada (talk) 05:05, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the question. I think that "left-libertarianism" and "right-libertarianism" are terms that need to be covered but not valid for use in covering libertarianism. But I don't know how to answer your question. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:20, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@North8000: I had a look at Google Ngrams and found that there's a pretty massive gap between the coverage of the term "libertarianism" and those of its branches. Together, the terms "right-libertarianism", "left-libertarianism", "libertarian socialism" and "libertarian communism" make up only 4% of the coverage of "libertarianism" as a whole.[1] But in our article, for 502 uses of the term "libertarian", there are 25 uses of "left-libertarian", 25 cases of "libertarian socialis[m/t]", 20 uses of "right-libertarian" and 16 uses of "libertarian communis[m/t]". That's 17% of the cases in the article.
So I think there's a very good argument to be made that such excessive rack-focusing on different branches of libertarianism, rather than giving a broad overview of the subject, is probably undue. -- Grnrchst (talk) 12:10, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Grnrchst: I agree on your end result but for a different reason. The terms are very confusing particularly because we're talking about meanings/terms which exist on only one side of the pond. So we need to start treating those as mere terms (including explaining their meanings) rather than as entities. North8000 (talk) 14:23, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Zilch-nada: If you're referring to the one I'm thinking of, I ended up removing it because none of the cited sources mentioned "left-libertarianism" or even "libertarianism".[2] I'm sure there's criticisms of "left-libertarianism" to be made, but those are better constructed with sources that actually criticise "left-libertarianism" and those are probably better utilised in the article on left-libertarianism, not here. --Grnrchst (talk) 12:25, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Spanish language article
I was reading the Spanish version of this article and realized that it is very low-quality and an apparently US-centric, right-libertarian only, and outright sometimes incorrect description of libertarianism that fails to even mention its history before right-libertarianism and the expansiveness of non-right libertarian movements. I will try to contribute to its improvement when I am free, but if there are other people who speak/write Spanish I strongly encourage you to help with its improvement. 4kbw9Df3Tw (talk) 17:23, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@4kbw9Df3Tw The Spanish article has been "monopolized" by right-wing libertarianism advocates, so it is extremely biased. The problem is evident in so many Spanish articles. The only thing I can recommend is to report to the administration who is preventing you from editing the article. 93.45.229.98 (talk) 11:07, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"In the second place, alleged “human rights” can be boiled down to property rights, although in many cases this fact is obscured. Take, for example, the “human right” of free speech. Freedom of speech is supposed to mean the right of everyone to say whatever he likes. But the neglected question is: Where? Where does a man have this right? He certainly does not have it on property on which he is trespassing. In short, he has this right only either on his own property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, to allow him on the premises. In fact, then, there is no such thing as a separate “right to free speech”; there is only a man’s property right: the right to do as he wills with his own or to make voluntary agreements with other property owners. The concentration on vague and wholly “human” rights has not only obscured this fact but has led to the belief that there are, of necessity, all sorts of conflicts between individual rights and alleged “public policy” or the “public good.” These conflicts have, in turn, led people to contend that no rights can be absolute, that they must all be relative and tentative. Take, for example, the human right of “freedom of assembly.” Suppose that a citizens’ group wishes to demonstrate for a certain measure. It uses a street for this purpose. The police, on the other hand, break up the meeting on the ground that it obstructs traffic. Now, the point is that there is no way of resolving this conflict, except arbitrarily, because the government owns the streets." [...] Government ownership, as we have seen, inevitably breeds insoluble conflicts. For, on the one hand, the citizens’ group can argue that they are taxpayers and are therefore entitled to use the streets for assembly, while, on the other hand, the police are right that traffic is obstructed. There is no rational way to resolve the conflict because there is as yet no true ownership of the valuable street-resource. In a purely free society, where the streets are privately owned, the question would be simple: it would be for the streetowner to decide, and it would be the concern of the citizens’ group to try to rent the street space voluntarily from the owner.
"Left-libertarians are being grossly unrealistic by saying that anti-discrimination laws should only apply to strictly government operations, while private operations must be totally free. The problem is that, particularly in our State-ridden society, the line between “public” and “private” has grown increasingly fuzzy, and it is precisely because of that fuzziness that left-liberalism has been able to expand very easily, and with virtually no opposition, the original application of civil rights from public to all sorts of private facilities. Everywhere, for example, and in front of or next to every private property, there are public streets and roads" [...] So what is the remedy for all this? Certainly not to take the standard libertarian path: to endorse civil rights for public operations and then, if-they are interested at all in the real world, to try to sort out precisely what is private and what is public nowdays [...] "What has to be done is to repudiate “civil rights” and antidiscrimination laws totally, and in the meanwhile, on a separate but parallel track, try to privatize as much and as, fully as we can."
"Right Libertarianism" and "Left Libertarianism" are European terms, each representing dozens of strands of libertarian ism and philosophies. So it is not valid or useful to lump all of those under either banner and say that a particular characteristic or belief applies to the (entire) group. North8000 (talk) 15:12, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I get it, but in the article, it sounds like the anarcho-capitalists and the paleolibertarians are not big supporters of freedom of expression and freedom of movement. In all of this talk by Rothbard, it seems to be an obvious corollary that there is no right of expression and movement without the permission of the owners of the respective streets and roads. Heh, but it also seems that abolishing public property has a suppressive end. 93.45.229.98 (talk) 15:19, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is much of this kind of content in the anarcho-capitalist wing:
"In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one's own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. [...] they the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order."
"How about this compromise: we remove all barriers to immigration except one: we charge a fee. I propose we charge somewhere between $1 million and $10 million per family. That way you guarantee you get fairly decent (non-criminal, educated, successful, civil, etc.) quality immigrants.
If, say, 100,000 families (about 400,000 people, say) immigrate per year and pay $1 million each, that’s $100 billion per year."
1- The first libertarian president ever in the world is completely against abortion.
2- The idea of "body autonomy" is completely contradictory and it hides lies, because you arent exercting "body autonomy" if you are killing another human, otherwise
a murder in the street would be exerting "body autonomy" when he kills another human, and libertarianism is against this.
3- Libertarianism supports the principle of "non agression" which is completely contradictory with abortion.
4- There are many remarkable and very influential libertarian thinkers in the world who are completely against abortion.
It's funny to me that the above complaints about the terms "freedom of movement" and "bodily autonomy" leant so hard on ideologically-charged complaints, when they could have just checked the sources and seen they weren't in there. That alone is far better justification for removal than any political rant one could write or quote. --Grnrchst (talk) 13:53, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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