Portal:Libertarianism
Introduction
Libertarianism (from French: libertaire, "libertarian"; from Latin: libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's violation of individual liberties; emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association. Libertarians often share a skepticism of authority and state power, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. Various schools of Libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power, often calling for the restriction or dissolution of coercive social institutions. Different categorizations have been used to distinguish various forms of Libertarianism. Scholars distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital, usually along left–right or socialist–capitalist lines.
Libertarianism originated as a form of left-wing politics such as anti-authoritarian and anti-state socialists like anarchists, especially social anarchists, but more generally libertarian communists/Marxists and libertarian socialists. These libertarians seek to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production, or else to restrict their purview or effects to usufruct property norms, in favor of common or cooperative ownership and management, viewing private property as a barrier to freedom and liberty. Left-libertarian ideologies include anarchist schools of thought, alongside many other anti-paternalist and New Left schools of thought centered around economic egalitarianism as well as geolibertarianism, green politics, market-oriented left-libertarianism and the Steiner–Vallentyne school. (Full article...)
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Libertarian Marxism refers to a broad scope of economic and political philosophies that emphasize the anti-authoritarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as left communism, emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism and its derivatives, such as Stalinism and Maoism.
Libertarian Marxism is also often critical of reformist positions, such as those held by social democrats. Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse and The Civil War in France, emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its own destiny without the need for a revolutionary party or state to mediate or aid its liberation. Along with anarchism, libertarian Marxism is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism.
Libertarian Marxism includes such currents as council communism, De Leonism, Socialisme ou Barbarie, Lettrism/Situationism and workerism/autonomism and parts of the New Left. Libertarian Marxism has often had a strong influence on both post-left and social anarchists. Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Anton Pannekoek, Raya Dunayevskaya, CLR James, E. P. Thompson, Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Negri, Cornelius Castoriadis, Maurice Brinton, Guy Debord, Daniel Guérin, Fredy Perlman, Ernesto Screpanti and Raoul Vaneigem.
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| “ | Even more remarkably, the Libertarian party achieved this growth while consistently adhering to a new ideological creed—"libertarianism"—thus bringing to the American political scene for the first time in a century a party interested in principle rather than in merely gaining jobs and money at the public trough. We have been told countless times by pundits and political scientists that the genius of America and of our party system is its lack of ideology and its "pragmatism" (a kind word for focusing solely on grabbing money and jobs from the hapless taxpayers). How, then, explain the amazing growth of a new party which is frankly and eagerly devoted to ideology?
One explanation is that Americans were not always pragmatic and nonideological. On the contrary, historians now realize that the American Revolution itself was not only ideological but also the result of devotion to the creed and the institutions of libertarianism. The American revolutionaries were steeped in the creed of libertarianism, an ideology which led them to resist with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor the invasions of their rights and liberties committed by the imperial British government. Historians have long debated the precise causes of the American Revolution: Were they constitutional, economic, political, or ideological? We now realize that, being libertarians, the revolutionaries saw no conflict between moral and political rights on the one hand and economic freedom on the other. On the contrary, they perceived civil and moral liberty, political independence, and the freedom to trade and produce as all part of one unblemished system, what Adam Smith was to call, in the same year that the Declaration of Independence was written, the "obvious and simple system of natural liberty." |
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| — Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) For a New Liberty (1973) |
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Murray Bookchin, American libertarian socialist theorist and proponent of libertarian municipalism (from Libertarianism)
Sébastien Faure, prominent French theorist of libertarian communism as well as atheist and freethought militant (from Libertarianism)
17 August 1860 edition of Le Libertaire, Journal du mouvement social, a libertarian communist publication in New York City (from Left-libertarianism)
Noam Chomsky, a noted left-libertarian of the libertarian socialist school (from Left-libertarianism)
American anarchist Emma Goldman, prominent anarcha-feminist, free love and freethought activist (from Left-libertarianism)
The Nolan Chart, created by American libertarian David Nolan, expands the left–right line into a two-dimensional chart classifying the political spectrum by degrees of personal and economic freedom (from Libertarianism)
Members of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo marching in Madrid in 2010 (from Libertarianism)
William Godwin, who has been described as an early philosophical anarchist (from Left-libertarianism)
Henry George, influential among left-libertarians, advocated that the value derived from land should belong to all members of a society (from Libertarianism)
Thomas Paine, whose theory of property showed a libertarian concern with the redistribution of resources (from Libertarianism)
Tea Party movement protest in Washington, D.C., September 2009 (from Libertarianism)
Former Congressman Ron Paul, a self-described libertarian, whose presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 garnered significant support from youth and libertarian Republicans (from Libertarianism)
17 August 1860 edition of Le Libertaire, Journal du mouvement social, a libertarian communist publication in New York City (from Libertarianism)
Henry George proposed the abolition of all taxes except those on land value (from Left-libertarianism)
A libertarian group diagram (from Left-libertarianism)
John Locke, regarded as the father of liberalism (from Libertarianism)
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first self-described anarchist (from Left-libertarianism)
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