Libertarianism (from Latin: libertas, meaning
"freedom") is a collection of political philosophies
and movements that uphold liberty as a core
principle. Libertarians seek to maximize political
freedom and autonomy, emphasizing freedom
of choice, voluntary association and individual
judgment. Libertarians share a skepticism
of authority and state power, but they diverge
on the scope of their opposition to existing
political and economic 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.Traditionally,
libertarianism was a term for a form of left-wing
politics. Such left-libertarian ideologies
seek to abolish capitalism and private ownership
of the means of production, or else to restrict
their purview or effects, in favor of common
or cooperative ownership and management, viewing
private property as a barrier to freedom and
liberty. Classical libertarian ideologies
include—but are not limited to—anarcho-communism,
anarcho-syndicalism, mutualism and egoism,
alongside many other anti-paternalist, New
Left schools of thought centered around economic
egalitarianism. In the United States, modern
right-libertarian ideologies, such as minarchism
and anarcho-capitalism, co-opted the term
in the mid-20th century to instead advocate
laissez-faire capitalism and strong private
property rights such as in land, infrastructure
and natural resources.
== Etymology ==
The first recorded use of the term libertarian
was in 1789, when William Belsham wrote about
libertarianism in the context of metaphysics.Libertarian
came to mean an advocate or defender of liberty,
especially in the political and social spheres,
as early as 1796, when the London Packet printed
on 12 February: "Lately marched out of the
Prison at Bristol, 450 of the French Libertarians".
The word was again used in a political sense
in 1802 in a short piece critiquing a poem
by "the author of Gebir" and has since been
used with this meaning.The use of the word
libertarian to describe a new set of political
positions has been traced to the French cognate
libertaire, coined in a letter French libertarian
communist Joseph Déjacque wrote to mutualist
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1857. Déjacque
also used the term for his anarchist publication
Le Libertaire: Journal du Mouvement Social,
which was printed from 9 June 1858 to 4 February
1861 in New York City.In the mid-1890s, Sébastien
Faure began publishing a new Le Libertaire
while France's Third Republic enacted the
lois scélérates ("villainous laws"), which
banned anarchist publications in France. Libertarianism
has frequently been used as a synonym for
anarchism since this time.The term libertarianism
was first used in the United States as a synonym
for classical liberalism in May 1955 by writer
Dean Russell, a colleague of Leonard Read
and a classical liberal himself.
Russell justified the choice of the word as
follows: "Many of us call ourselves 'liberals.'
And it is true that the word 'liberal' once
described persons who respected the individual
and feared the use of mass compulsions. But
the leftists have now corrupted that once-proud
term to identify themselves and their program
of more government ownership of property and
more controls over persons. As a result, those
of us who believe in freedom must explain
that when we call ourselves liberals, we mean
liberals in the uncorrupted classical sense.
At best, this is awkward and subject to misunderstanding.
Here is a suggestion: Let those of us who
love liberty trade-mark and reserve for our
own use the good and honorable word 'libertarian'".Subsequently,
a growing number of Americans with classical
liberal beliefs began to describe themselves
as libertarian. One person responsible for
popularizing the term libertarian in this
sense was Murray Rothbard, who started publishing
libertarian works in the 1960s. Rothbard describes
this modern use of the words overtly as a
"capture" from his enemies, saying that "for
the first time in my memory, we, 'our side,'
had captured a crucial word from the enemy.
'Libertarians' had long been simply a polite
word for left-wing anarchists, that is for
anti-private property anarchists, either of
the communist or syndicalist variety. But
now we had taken it over". Robert Nozick was
responsible for popularizing this usage of
the term in philosophical circles and Europe.
Libertarianism in the United States has been
described as conservative on economic issues
and liberal on personal freedom (for common
meanings of conservative and liberal in the
United States) and it is also often associated
with a foreign policy of non-interventionism.
== Philosophy ==
All libertarians begin with a conception of
personal autonomy from which they argue in
favor of civil liberties and a reduction or
elimination of the state.
Left-libertarianism encompasses those libertarian
beliefs that claim the Earth's natural resources
belong to everyone in an egalitarian manner,
either unowned or owned collectively. Contemporary
left-libertarians such as Hillel Steiner,
Peter Vallentyne, Philippe Van Parijs, Michael
Otsuka and David Ellerman believe the appropriation
of land must leave "enough and as good" for
others or be taxed by society to compensate
for the exclusionary effects of private property.
Libertarian socialists (social and individualist
anarchists, libertarian Marxists, council
communists, Luxemburgists and DeLeonists)
promote usufruct and socialist economic theories,
including communism, collectivism, syndicalism
and mutualism. They criticize the state for
being the defender of private property and
believe capitalism entails wage slavery.
Right-libertarianism developed in the United
States in the mid-20th century from the works
of European writers like John Locke, Friedrich
Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises and is the most
popular conception of libertarianism in the
world today. It is commonly referred to as
a continuation or radicalization of classical
liberalism. The most important of these early
right-libertarian philosophers was Robert
Nozick. While often sharing left-libertarians'
advocacy for social freedom, right-libertarians
also value the social institutions that enforce
conditions of capitalism while rejecting institutions
that function in opposition to these on the
grounds that such interventions represent
unnecessary coercion of individuals and abrogation
of their economic freedom. Anarcho-capitalists
seek complete elimination of the state in
favor of privately funded security services
while minarchists defend night-watchman states
which maintain only those functions of government
necessary to safeguard natural rights, understood
in terms of self-ownership or autonomy.
=== Personal autonomy ===
Anarchism envisages freedom as a form of autonomy,
which Paul Goodman describes as "the ability
to initiate a task and do it one's own way,
without orders from authorities who do not
know the actual problem and the available
means". All anarchists oppose political and
legal authority, but collectivist strains
also oppose the economic authority of private
property. These social anarchists emphasize
mutual aid, whereas individualist anarchists
extol individual sovereignty.Some right-libertarians
consider the non-aggression principle (NAP)
to be a core part of their beliefs.
=== Civil liberties ===
Libertarians have been advocates and activists
of civil liberties, including free love and
free thought. Advocates of free love viewed
sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression
of individual sovereignty and they particularly
stressed women's rights as most sexual laws
discriminated against women: for example,
marriage laws and anti-birth control measures.Free
love appeared alongside anarcha-feminism and
advocacy of LGBT rights. Anarcha-feminism
developed as a synthesis of radical feminism
and anarchism and views patriarchy as a fundamental
manifestation of compulsory government. It
was inspired by the late-19th-century writings
of early feminist anarchists such as Lucy
Parsons, Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre
and Virginia Bolten.
Anarcha-feminists, like other radical feminists,
criticize and advocate the abolition of traditional
conceptions of family, education and gender
roles. Free Society (1895–1897 as The Firebrand,
1897–1904 as Free Society) was an anarchist
newspaper in the United States that staunchly
advocated free love and women's rights, while
criticizing "comstockery", the censorship
of sexual information. In recent times, anarchism
has also voiced opinions and taken action
around certain sex-related subjects such as
pornography, BDSM and the sex industry.Free
thought is a philosophical viewpoint that
holds opinions should be formed on the basis
of science, logic and reason in contrast with
authority, tradition or other dogmas. In the
United States, free thought was an anti-Christian,
anti-clerical movement whose purpose was to
make the individual politically and spiritually
free to decide on religious matters. A number
of contributors to Liberty were prominent
figures in both free thought and anarchism.
In 1901, Catalan anarchist and free-thinker
Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia established "modern"
or progressive schools in Barcelona in defiance
of an educational system controlled by the
Catholic Church. Fiercely anti-clerical, Ferrer
believed in "freedom in education", i.e. education
free from the authority of the church and
state. The schools' stated goal was to "educate
the working class in a rational, secular and
non-coercive setting".
Later in the 20th century, Austrian Freudo-Marxist
Wilhelm Reich became a consistent propagandist
for sexual freedom going as far as opening
free sex-counseling clinics in Vienna for
working-class patients as well as coining
the phrase "sexual revolution" in one of his
books from the 1940s. During the early 1970s,
the English anarchist and pacifist Alex Comfort
achieved international celebrity for writing
the sex manuals The Joy of Sex and More Joy
of Sex.
=== State ===
Many left-libertarians are anarchists and
believe the state inherently violates personal
autonomy: "As Robert Paul Wolff has argued,
since 'the state is authority, the right to
rule', anarchism which rejects the State is
the only political doctrine consistent with
autonomy in which the individual alone is
the judge of his moral constraints". Social
anarchists believe the state defends private
property, which they view as intrinsically
harmful, while market-oriented left-libertarians
argue that so-called free markets actually
consist of economic privileges granted by
the state. These latter libertarians advocate
instead for freed markets, which are freed
from these privileges.There is a debate amongst
right-libertarians as to whether or not the
state is legitimate: while anarcho-capitalists
advocate its abolition, minarchists support
minimal states, often referred to as night-watchman
states. Libertarians take a skeptical view
of government authority. Minarchists maintain
that the state is necessary for the protection
of individuals from aggresion, theft, breach
of contract and fraud. They believe the only
legitimate governmental institutions are the
military, police and courts, though some expand
this list to include fire departments, prisons
and the executive and legislative branches.They
justify the state on the grounds that it is
the logical consequence of adhering to the
non-aggression principle and argue that anarchism
is immoral because it implies that the non-aggression
principle is optional, that the enforcement
of laws under anarchism is open to competition.
Another common justification is that private
defense agencies and court firms would tend
to represent the interests of those who pay
them enough.Anarcho-capitalists argue that
the state violates the non-aggression principle
(NAP) by its nature because governments use
force against those who have not stolen or
vandalized private property, assaulted anyone
or committed fraud. Linda and Morris Tannehill
argue that no coercive monopoly of force can
arise on a truly free market and that a government's
citizenry can not desert them in favor of
a competent protection and defense agency.
=== Property rights ===
Left-libertarians believe that neither claiming
nor mixing one's labor with natural resources
is enough to generate full private property
rights and maintain that natural resources
ought to be held in an egalitarian manner,
either unowned or owned collectively.Right-libertarians
maintain that unowned natural resources "may
be appropriated by the first person who discovers
them, mixes his labor with them, or merely
claims them—without the consent of others,
and with little or no payment to them". They
believe that natural resources are originally
unowned and therefore private parties may
appropriate them at will without the consent
of, or owing to, others.
=== Economics ===
Left-libertarians (social and individualist
anarchists, libertarian Marxists and left-wing
market anarchists) argue in favor of socialist
theories such as communism, syndicalism and
mutualism (anarchist economics). Daniel Guérin
writes that "anarchism is really a synonym
for socialism. The anarchist is primarily
a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation
of man by man. Anarchism is only one of the
streams of socialist thought, that stream
whose main components are concern for liberty
and haste to abolish the State".Right-libertarians
are economic liberals of either the Austrian
School or Chicago school and support laissez-faire
capitalism.
== Prominent currents ==
=== 
Left-libertarianism ===
Left-libertarianism, also known as left-wing
libertarianism, names several related yet
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, i.e. libertarian
socialism, which includes anarchism and libertarian
Marxism, among others. Left-libertarianism
can also refer to political positions associated
with academic philosophers Hillel Steiner,
Philippe Van Parijs and Peter Vallentyne that
combine self-ownership with an egalitarian
approach to natural resources.While maintaining
full respect for personal property, left-libertarians
are skeptical of or fully against private
property, arguing that neither claiming nor
mixing one's labor with natural resources
is enough to generate full private property
rights and maintain that natural resources
(land, oil, gold and 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. Many left-libertarian schools
of thought are communist, advocating the eventual
replacement of money with labor vouchers or
decentralized planning.
On the other hand, 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 within the paradigm of a
socialist free market. Joseph Déjacque was
the first to formulate classical libertarian
ideas under the term libertarian. Later philosophers
on the left would go onto adding detail to
his political philosophy to study and document
attitudes and themes relating to stateless
socialism (for Déjacque it was called libertarian
communism).
=== Right-libertarianism ===
Right-libertarianism, or right-wing libertarianism,
refers to libertarian political philosophies
that advocate negative rights, natural law
and a major reversal of the modern welfare
state. Right-libertarians strongly support
private property rights and defend market
distribution of natural resources and private
property. This position is contrasted with
that of some versions of left-libertarianism,
which maintain that natural resources belong
to everyone in an egalitarian manner, either
unowned or owned collectively. Right-libertarianism
includes anarcho-capitalism and laissez-faire
minarchist liberalism.
=== Libertarian paternalism ===
Libertarian paternalism is a position advocated
in the international bestseller Nudge by the
economist Richard Thaler and the jurist Cass
Sunstein. In the book Thinking, Fast and Slow,
Daniel Kahneman provides the brief summary:
"Thaler and Sunstein advocate a position of
libertarian paternalism, in which the state
and other institutions are allowed to Nudge
people to make decisions that serve their
own long-term interests. The designation of
joining a pension plan as the default option
is an example of a nudge. It is difficult
to argue that anyone's freedom is diminished
by being automatically enrolled in the plan,
when they merely have to check a box to opt
out". Nudge is considered an important piece
of literature in behavioral economics.
== History ==
=== Age of Enlightenment ===
Elements of libertarianism can be traced as
far back as the ancient Chinese philosopher
Lao-Tzu and the higher-law concepts of the
Greeks and the Israelites. In 17th-century
England, libertarian ideas began to take modern
form in the writings of the Levellers and
John Locke. In the middle of that century,
opponents of royal power began to be called
Whigs, or sometimes simply "opposition" or
"country" (as opposed to Court) writers.During
the 18th century, liberal ideas flourished
in Europe and North America. Libertarians
of various schools were influenced by liberal
ideas. For libertarian philosopher Roderick
T. Long, both libertarian socialists and libertarian
capitalists "share a common—or at least
an overlapping intellectual ancestry—[...]
both claim the seventeenth century English
Levellers and the eighteenth century French
encyclopedists among their ideological forebears;
and [...] usually share an admiration for
Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine".
John Locke greatly influenced both libertarianism
and the modern world in his writings published
before and after the English Revolution of
1688, especially A Letter Concerning Toleration
(1667), Two Treatises of Government (1689)
and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690). In the text of 1689, he established
the basis of liberal political theory, i.e.
that people's rights existed before government;
that the purpose of government is to protect
personal and property rights; that people
may dissolve governments that do not do so;
and that representative government is the
best form to protect rights.The United States
Declaration of Independence was inspired by
Locke in its statement: "[T]o secure these
rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed. That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or
to abolish it". Nevertheless, scholar Ellen
Meiksins Wood says that "there are doctrines
of individualism that are opposed to Lockean
individualism [...] and non-Lockean individualism
may encompass socialism".According to Murray
Rothbard, the libertarian creed emerged from
the liberal challenges to an "absolute central
State and a king ruling by divine right on
top of an older, restrictive web of feudal
land monopolies and urban guild controls and
restrictions" as well as the mercantilism
of a bureaucratic warfaring state allied with
privileged merchants. The object of liberals
was individual liberty in the economy, in
personal freedoms and civil liberty, separation
of state and religion and peace as an alternative
to imperial aggrandizement. He cites Locke's
contemporaries, the Levellers, who held similar
views. Also influential were the English Cato's
Letters during the early 1700s, reprinted
eagerly by American colonists who already
were free of European aristocracy and feudal
land monopolies.In January 1776, only two
years after coming to America from England,
Thomas Paine published his pamphlet Common
Sense calling for independence for the colonies.
Paine promoted liberal ideas in clear and
concise language that allowed the general
public to understand the debates among the
political elites. Common Sense was immensely
popular in disseminating these ideas, selling
hundreds of thousands of copies. Paine would
later write the Rights of Man and The Age
of Reason and participate in the French Revolution.
Paine's theory of property showed a "libertarian
concern" with the redistribution of resources.In
1793, William Godwin wrote a libertarian philosophical
treatise, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice
and its Influence on Morals and Happiness,
which criticized ideas of human rights and
of society by contract based on vague promises.
He took liberalism to its logical anarchic
conclusion by rejecting all political institutions,
law, government and apparatus of coercion
as well as all political protest and insurrection.
Instead of institutionalized justice, Godwin
proposed that people influence one another
to moral goodness through informal reasoned
persuasion, including in the associations
they joined as this would facilitate happiness.
=== Rise of anarchism ===
Modern anarchism sprang from the secular or
religious thought of the Enlightenment, particularly
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's arguments for the
moral centrality of freedom.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.
According to 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" while Godwin attached his anarchist
ideas to an early Edmund Burke.Godwin is generally
regarded as the founder of the school of thought
known as philosophical anarchism. He argued
in Political Justice (1793) that government
has an inherently malevolent influence on
society and that it perpetuates dependency
and ignorance. He thought that the spread
of the use of reason to the masses 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, Godwin
advocated for its replacement through a process
of peaceful evolution.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. Godwin 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, various anarchist currents were
present during the Revolutionary period, with
some revolutionaries using the term anarchiste
in a positive light as early as September
1793. The enragés opposed revolutionary government
as a contradiction in terms. Denouncing the
Jacobin dictatorship, Jean Varlet wrote in
1794 that "government and revolution are incompatible,
unless the people wishes to set its constituted
authorities in permanent insurrection against
itself". In his "Manifesto of the Equals",
Sylvain Maréchal looked forward to the disappearance,
once and for all, of "the revolting distinction
between rich and poor, of great and small,
of masters and valets, of governors and governed".
=== Libertarian socialism ===
Libertarian socialism, libertarian communism
and libertarian Marxism are all phrases which
activists with a variety of perspectives have
applied to their views.Anarchist communist
philosopher Joseph Déjacque was the first
person to describe himself as a libertarian.
Unlike mutualist anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, he argued that "it is not the product
of his or her labor that the worker has a
right to, but to the satisfaction of his or
her needs, whatever may be their nature".According
to anarchist historian Max Nettlau, the first
use of the term "libertarian communism" was
in November 1880, when a French anarchist
congress employed it to more clearly identify
its doctrines. The French anarchist journalist
Sébastien Faure started the weekly paper
Le Libertaire (The Libertarian) in 1895.Individualist
anarchism refers to several traditions of
thought within the anarchist movement that
emphasize the individual and their will over
any kinds of external determinants such as
groups, society, traditions, and ideological
systems. An influential form of individualist
anarchism called egoism or egoist anarchism
was expounded by one of the earliest and best-known
proponents of individualist anarchism, the
German Max Stirner. Stirner's The Ego and
Its Own, published in 1844, is a founding
text of the philosophy. According to Stirner,
the only limitation on the rights of the individual
is their power to obtain what they desire,
without regard for God, state or morality.Stirner
advocated self-assertion and foresaw unions
of egoists, non-systematic associations continually
renewed by all parties' support through an
act of will, which Stirner proposed as a form
of organisation in place of the state. Egoist
anarchists argue that egoism will foster genuine
and spontaneous union between individuals.
Egoism has inspired many interpretations of
Stirner's philosophy.
It was re-discovered and promoted by German
philosophical anarchist and LGBT activist
John Henry Mackay. Josiah Warren is widely
regarded as the first American anarchist,
and the four-page weekly paper he edited during
1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the
first anarchist periodical published. For
American anarchist historian Eunice Minette
Schuster, "[i]t is apparent [...] that Proudhonian
Anarchism was to be found in the United States
at least as early as 1848 and that it was
not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist
Anarchism of Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl
Andrews... William B. Greene presented this
Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most
systematic form.".Later, Benjamin Tucker fused
Stirner's egoism with the economics of Warren
and Proudhon in his eclectic influential publication
Liberty. From these early influences, individualist
anarchism in different countries attracted
a small yet diverse following of bohemian
artists and intellectuals, free love and birth
control advocates (anarchism and issues related
to love and sex), individualist naturists
nudists (anarcho-naturism), free thought and
anti-clerical activists as well as young anarchist
outlaws in what became known as illegalism
and individual reclamation (European individualist
anarchism and individualist anarchism in France).
These authors and activists included Émile
Armand, Han Ryner, Henri Zisly, Renzo Novatore,
Miguel Gimenez Igualada, Adolf Brand and Lev
Chernyi.
In 1873, the follower and translator of Proudhon,
the Catalan Francesc Pi i Margall, became
President of Spain with a program which wanted
"to establish a decentralized, or "cantonalist,"
political system on Proudhonian lines", who
according to Rudolf Rocker had "political
ideas, [...] 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".On the other
hand, Fermín Salvochea was a mayor of the
city of Cádiz and a president of the province
of Cádiz. He was one of the main propagators
of anarchist thought in that area in the late
19th century and is considered to be "perhaps
the most beloved figure in the Spanish Anarchist
movement of the 19th century". Ideologically,
he was influenced by Bradlaugh, Owen and Paine,
whose works he had studied during his stay
in England and Kropotkin, whom he read later.
The revolutionary wave of 1917–1923 saw
the active participation of anarchists in
Russia and Europe. Russian anarchists participated
alongside the Bolsheviks in both the February
and October 1917 revolutions.
However, Bolsheviks in central Russia quickly
began to imprison or drive underground the
libertarian anarchists. Many fled to the Ukraine.
There, in the Ukrainian Free Territory they
fought in the Russian Civil War against the
White movement, monarchists and other opponents
of revolution and then against Bolsheviks
as part of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary
Army of Ukraine led by Nestor Makhno, who
established an anarchist society in the region
for a number of months. Expelled American
anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman
protested Bolshevik policy before they left
Russia.The victory of the Bolsheviks damaged
anarchist movements internationally as workers
and activists joined Communist parties. In
France and the United States, for example,
members of the major syndicalist movements
of the CGT and IWW joined the Communist International.
In Paris, the Dielo Truda group of Russian
anarchist exiles, which included Nestor Makhno,
issued a 1926 manifesto, the Organizational
Platform of the General Union of Anarchists
(Draft), calling for new anarchist organizing
structures.The Bavarian Soviet Republic of
1918–1919 had libertarian socialist characteristics.
In Italy, from 1918 to 1921 the anarcho-syndicalist
trade union Unione Sindacale Italiana grew
to 800,000 members.In the 1920s and 1930s,
with the rise of fascism in Europe, anarchists
began to fight fascists in Italy, in France
during the February 1934 riots and in Spain
where the CNT (Confederación Nacional del
Trabajo) boycott of elections led to a right-wing
victory and its later participation in voting
in 1936 helped bring the popular front back
to power. This led to a ruling class attempted
coup and the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).
Gruppo Comunista Anarchico di Firenze held
that the during early twentieth century, the
terms libertarian communism and anarchist
communism became synonymous within the international
anarchist movement as a result of the close
connection they had in Spain (anarchism in
Spain) (with libertarian communism becoming
the prevalent term).Murray Bookchin wrote
that the Spanish libertarian movement of the
mid-1930s was unique because its workers'
control and collectives—which came out of
a three-generation "massive libertarian movement"—divided
the republican camp and challenged the Marxists.
"Urban anarchists" created libertarian communist
forms of organization which evolved into the
CNT, a syndicalist union providing the infrastructure
for a libertarian society. Also formed were
local bodies to administer social and economic
life on a decentralized libertarian basis.
Much of the infrastructure was destroyed during
the 1930s Spanish Civil War against authoritarian
and fascist forces.The Iberian Federation
of Libertarian Youth (FIJL, Spanish: Federación
Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias), sometimes
abbreviated as Libertarian Youth (Juventudes
Libertarias), was a libertarian socialist
organization created in 1932 in Madrid.In
February 1937, the FIJL organized a plenum
of regional organizations (second congress
of FIJL). In October 1938, from the 16th through
the 30th in Barcelona the FIJL participated
in a national plenum of the libertarian movement,
also attended by members of the CNT and the
Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI). The FIJL
exists until today. When the republican forces
lost the Spanish Civil War, the city of Madrid
was turned over to the Francoist forces in
1939 by the last non-Francoist mayor of the
city, the anarchist Melchor Rodríguez García.
During autumn of 1931, the "Manifesto of the
30" was published by militants of the anarchist
trade union CNT and among those who signed
it there was the CNT General Secretary (1922–1923)
Joan Peiro, Angel Pestaña CNT (General Secretary
in 1929) and Juan Lopez Sanchez.
They were called treintismo and they were
calling for libertarian possibilism which
advocated achieving libertarian socialist
ends with participation inside structures
of contemporary parliamentary democracy. In
1932, they establish the Syndicalist Party
which participates in the 1936 Spanish general
elections and proceed to be a part of the
leftist coalition of parties known as the
Popular Front obtaining 2 congressmen (Pestaña
and Benito Pabon). In 1938, Horacio Prieto,
general secretary of the CNT, proposes that
the Iberian Anarchist Federation transforms
itself into a "Libertarian Socialist Party"
and that it participates in the national elections.
The Manifesto of Libertarian Communism was
written in 1953 by Georges Fontenis for the
Federation Communiste Libertaire of France.
It is one of the key texts of the anarchist-communist
current known as platformism. In 1968, in
Carrara, Italy the International of Anarchist
Federations was founded during an international
anarchist conference to advance libertarian
solidarity.
It wanted to form "a strong and organized
workers movement, agreeing with the libertarian
ideas". In the United States, the Libertarian
League was founded in New York City in 1954
as a left-libertarian political organization
building on the Libertarian Book Club. Members
included Sam Dolgoff, Russell Blackwell, Dave
Van Ronk, Enrico Arrigoni and Murray Bookchin.
In Australia, the Sydney Push was a predominantly
left-wing intellectual subculture in Sydney
from the late 1940s to the early 1970s which
became associated with the label "Sydney libertarianism".
Well known associates of the Push include
Jim Baker, John Flaus, Harry Hooton, Margaret
Fink, Sasha Soldatow, Lex Banning, Eva Cox,
Richard Appleton, Paddy McGuinness, David
Makinson, Germaine Greer, Clive James, Robert
Hughes, Frank Moorhouse and Lillian Roxon.
Amongst the key intellectual figures in Push
debates were philosophers David J. Ivison,
George Molnar, Roelof Smilde, Darcy Waters
and Jim Baker, as recorded in Baker's memoir
Sydney Libertarians and the Push, published
in the libertarian Broadsheet in 1975. An
understanding of libertarian values and social
theory can be obtained from their publications,
a few of which are available online.In 1969,
French platformist anarcho-communist Daniel
Guérin published an essay in 1969 called
"Libertarian Marxism?" in which he dealt with
the debate between Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin
at the First International and afterwards
suggested that "libertarian Marxism rejects
determinism and fatalism, giving the greater
place to individual will, intuition, imagination,
reflex speeds, and to the deep instincts of
the masses, which are more far-seeing in hours
of crisis than the reasonings of the 'elites';
libertarian Marxism thinks of the effects
of surprise, provocation and boldness, refuses
to be cluttered and paralyzed by a heavy 'scientific'
apparatus, doesn't equivocate or bluff, and
guards itself from adventurism as much as
from fear of the unknown".Libertarian Marxist
currents often draw from Marx and Engels'
later works, specifically the Grundrisse and
The Civil War in France. They emphasize the
Marxist belief in the ability of the working
class to forge its own destiny without the
need for a revolutionary party or state. Libertarian
Marxism includes such currents as council
communism, left communism, Socialisme ou Barbarie,
Lettrism/Situationism and operaismo/autonomism
and New Left.From 1970 to 1981, in the United
States there existed the publication Root
& Branch which had as a subtitle A Libertarian
Marxist Journal. In 1974, the Libertarian
Communism journal was started in the United
Kingdom by a group inside the Socialist Party
of Great Britain. In 1986, the anarcho-syndicalist
Sam Dolgoff started and led the publication
Libertarian Labor Review in the United States
which decided to rename itself as Anarcho-Syndicalist
Review in order to avoid confusion with right-libertarian
views.
=== Individualism in the United States ===
The indigenous anarchist tradition in the
United States was largely individualist. In
1825, Josiah Warren became aware of the social
system of utopian socialist Robert Owen and
began to talk with others in Cincinnati about
founding a communist colony. When this group
failed to come to an agreement about the form
and goals of their proposed community, Warren
"sold his factory after only two years of
operation, packed up his young family, and
took his place as one of 900 or so Owenites
who had decided to become part of the founding
population of New Harmony, Indiana". Warren
termed the phrase "cost the limit of price"
and "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". 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
labor notes.
The store proved successful and operated for
three years, after which it was closed so
that Warren could pursue establishing colonies
based on mutualism, including Utopia and Modern
Times. "After New Harmony failed, Warren shifted
his ideological loyalties from socialism to
anarchism (which was no great leap, given
that Owen's socialism had been predicated
on Godwin's anarchism)". Warren is widely
regarded as the first American anarchist and
the four-page weekly paper The Peaceful Revolutionist
he edited during 1833 was the first anarchist
periodical published, an enterprise for which
he built his own printing press, cast his
own type and made his own printing plates.
Catalan historian Xavier Diez reports that
the intentional communal experiments pioneered
by Warren were influential in European individualist
anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries such as Émile Armand and the intentional
communities started by them. Warren said that
Stephen Pearl Andrews, individualist anarchist
and close associate, wrote the most lucid
and complete exposition of Warren's own theories
in The Science of Society, published in 1852.
Andrews was formerly associated with the Fourierist
movement, but converted to radical individualism
after becoming acquainted with the work of
Warren. Like Warren, he held the principle
of "individual sovereignty" as being of paramount
importance. Contemporary American anarchist
Hakim Bey reports: Steven Pearl Andrews...
was not a Fourierist, but he lived through
the brief craze for phalansteries in America
and adopted a lot of Fourierist principles
and practices... a maker of worlds out of
words. He syncretized abolitionism in the
United States, free love, spiritual universalism,
Warren, and Fourier into a grand utopian scheme
he called the Universal Pantarchy... He was
instrumental in founding several 'intentional
communities,' including the 'Brownstone Utopia'
on 14th St. in New York, and 'Modern Times'
in Brentwood, Long Island. The latter became
as famous as the best-known Fourierist communes
(Brook Farm in Massachusetts & the North American
Phalanx in New Jersey)—in fact, Modern Times
became downright notorious (for 'Free Love')
and finally foundered under a wave of scandalous
publicity. Andrews (and Victoria Woodhull)
were members of the infamous Section 12 of
the 1st International, expelled by Marx for
its anarchist, feminist, and spiritualist
tendencies.
For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette
Schuster, "[i]t is apparent that Proudhonian
Anarchism was to be found in the United States
at least as early as 1848 and that it was
not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist
Anarchism of Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl
Andrews. William B. Greene presented this
Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most
systematic form". William Batchelder Greene
was a 19th-century mutualist individualist
anarchist, Unitarian minister, soldier and
promoter of free banking in the United States.
Greene is best known for the works Mutual
Banking, which proposed an interest-free banking
system; and Transcendentalism, a critique
of the New England philosophical school.
After 1850, he became active in labor reform.
"He was elected vice-president of the New
England Labor Reform League, the majority
of the members holding to Proudhon's scheme
of mutual banking, and in 1869 president of
the Massachusetts Labor Union". Greene then
published Socialistic, Mutualistic, and Financial
Fragments (1875). He saw mutualism as the
synthesis of "liberty and order". His "associationism
[...] is checked by individualism. [...] 'Mind
your own business,' 'Judge not that ye be
not judged.' Over matters which are purely
personal, as for example, moral conduct, the
individual is sovereign, as well as over that
which he himself produces. For this reason
he demands 'mutuality' in marriage—the equal
right of a woman to her own personal freedom
and property".Poet, naturalist and transcendentalist
Henry David Thoreau was an important early
influence in individualist anarchist thought
in the United States and Europe. He is best
known for his book Walden, a reflection upon
simple living in natural surroundings; and
his essay Civil Disobedience (Resistance to
Civil Government), an argument for individual
resistance to civil government in moral opposition
to an unjust state. In Walden, Thoreau advocates
simple living and self-sufficiency among natural
surroundings in resistance to the advancement
of industrial civilization.Civil Disobedience,
first published in 1849, argues that people
should not permit governments to overrule
or atrophy their consciences and that people
have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence
to enable the government to make them the
agents of injustice. These works influenced
green anarchism, anarcho-primitivism and anarcho-pacifism
as well as figures including Mohandas Gandhi,
Martin Luther King Jr., Martin Buber and Leo
Tolstoy. Many have seen in Thoreau one of
the precursors of ecologism and anarcho-primitivism
represented today in John Zerzan.
For George Woodcock this attitude can be also
motivated by certain idea of resistance to
progress and of rejection of the growing materialism
which is the nature of American society in
the mid-19th century". Zerzan included Thoreau's
"Excursions" in his edited compilation of
anti-civilization writings, Against Civilization:
Readings and Reflections. Individualist anarchists
such as Thoreau do not speak of economics,
but simply the right of disunion from the
state and foresee the gradual elimination
of the state through social evolution. Agorist
author J. Neil Schulman cites Thoreau as a
primary inspiration.Many economists since
Adam Smith have argued that—unlike other
taxes—a land value tax would not cause economic
inefficiency. It would be a progressive tax,
i.e. 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.Early proponents
of this view include Thomas Paine, Herbert
Spencer and Hugo Grotius, but the concept
was widely popularized by the economist and
social reformer Henry George. 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 income taxes,
sales taxes, taxes on improvements and all
other taxes on production, labor, trade or
commerce.
George was among the staunchest defenders
of free markets and his book Protection or
Free Trade was read into the Congressional
Record. Yet he did support direct management
of natural monopolies as a last resort, such
as right-of-way monopolies necessary for railroads.
George advocated for elimination of intellectual
property arrangements in favor of government
sponsored prizes for inventors.Early followers
of George's philosophy called themselves single
taxers because they believed that the only
legitimate, broad-based tax was land rent.
The term Georgism was coined later, though
some modern proponents prefer the term geoism
instead, leaving the meaning of geo (Earth
in Greek) deliberately ambiguous. The terms
Earth Sharing, geonomics and geolibertarianism
are used by some Georgists to represent a
difference of emphasis, or real differences
about how land rent should be spent, but all
agree that land rent should be recovered from
its private owners.
Individualist anarchism found in the United
States an important space for discussion and
development within the group known as the
Boston anarchists. Even among the 19th-century
American individualists there was no monolithic
doctrine and they disagreed amongst each other
on various issues including intellectual property
rights and possession versus property in land.
Some Boston anarchists, including Benjamin
Tucker, identified as socialists, which in
the 19th century was often used in the sense
of a commitment to improving conditions of
the working class (i.e. "the labor problem").Lysander
Spooner, besides his individualist anarchist
activism, was also an anti-slavery activist
and member of the First International. 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's anarchist
periodical, Liberty, was published from August
1881 to April 1908.
The publication, emblazoned with Proudhon's
quote that liberty is "Not the Daughter But
the Mother of Order" was instrumental in developing
and formalizing the individualist anarchist
philosophy through publishing essays and serving
as a forum for debate. Contributors included
Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Auberon
Herbert, Dyer Lum, Joshua K. Ingalls, John
Henry Mackay, Victor Yarros, Wordsworth Donisthorpe,
James L. Walker, J. William Lloyd, Florence
Finch Kelly, Voltairine de Cleyre, Steven
T. Byington, John Beverley Robinson, Jo Labadie,
Lillian Harman and Henry Appleton. Later,
Tucker and others abandoned their traditional
support of natural rights and converted to
an egoism modeled upon the philosophy of Max
Stirner.A number of natural rights proponents
stopped contributing in protest. Several periodicals
were undoubtedly influenced by Liberty's presentation
of egoism, including I published by Clarence
Lee Swartz and edited by William Walstein
Gordak and J. William Lloyd (all associates
of Liberty); and The Ego and The Egoist, both
of which were edited by Edward H. Fulton.
Among the egoist papers that Tucker followed
were the German Der Eigene, edited by Adolf
Brand; and The Eagle and The Serpent, issued
from London. The latter, the most prominent
English language egoist journal, was published
from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle A Journal
of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology.
=== Georgism and geolibertarianism ===
Henry George was an American political economist
and journalist who advocated that all economic
value derived from land, including natural
resources, should belong equally to all members
of society. Strongly opposed to feudalism
and the privatisation of land, George created
the philosophy of Georgism, or geoism, influential
among many left-libertarians, including geolibertarians
and geoanarchists. Much like the English Digger
movement, who held all material possessions
in common, George claimed that land and its
financial properties belong to everyone, and
that to hold land as private property would
lead to immense inequalities, including authority
from the private owners of such ground.
Prior to states assigning property owners
slices of either once populated or uninhabited
land, the world's earth was held in common.
When all resources that derive from land are
put to achieving a higher quality of life,
not just for employers or landlords, but to
serve the general interests and comforts of
a wider community, Geolibertarians claim vastly
higher qualities of life can be reached, especially
with ever advancing technology and industrialised
agriculture.
The Levellers, also known as the Diggers,
were a 17th century anti-authoritarian movement
that stood in resistance to the English government
and the feudalism it was pushing through the
forced privatisation of land around the time
of the First English Civil War. Devout Protestants,
Gerrard Winstanley was a prominent member
of the community and with a very progressive
interpretation of his religion seeked to end
buying and selling, instead for all inhabitants
of a society to share their material possessions
and to hold all things in common, without
money or payment. With the complete abolition
of private property, including that of private
land, the English Levellers created a pool
of property where all properties belonged
in equal measure to everyone. Often seen as
some of the first practising anarchists, the
Digger movement is considered extremely early
anarchist communism.
=== Modern American libertarianism ===
By around the start of the 20th century, the
heyday of individualist anarchism had passed.
H. L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock were the
first prominent figures in the United States
to describe themselves as libertarians; they
believed Franklin D. Roosevelt had co-opted
the word liberal for his New Deal policies
which they opposed and used libertarian to
signify their allegiance to individualism.
In 1914, Nock joined the staff of The Nation
magazine, which at the time was supportive
of liberal capitalism. A lifelong admirer
of Henry George, Nock went on to become co-editor
of The Freeman from 1920 to 1924, a publication
initially conceived as a vehicle for the single
tax movement, financed by the wealthy wife
of the magazine's other editor, Francis Neilson.
Critic H. L. Mencken wrote that "[h]is editorials
during the three brief years of the Freeman
set a mark that no other man of his trade
has ever quite managed to reach. They were
well-informed and sometimes even learned,
but there was never the slightest trace of
pedantry in them".
Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute
David Boaz writes: "In 1943, at one of the
lowest points for liberty and humanity in
history, three remarkable women published
books that could be said to have given birth
to the modern libertarian movement". Isabel
Paterson's The God of the Machine, Rose Wilder
Lane's The Discovery of Freedom and Ayn Rand's
The Fountainhead each promoted individualism
and capitalism. None of the three used the
term libertarianism to describe their beliefs
and Rand specifically rejected the label,
criticizing the burgeoning American libertarian
movement as the "hippies of the right". Rand's
own philosophy, Objectivism, is notedly similar
to libertarianism and she accused libertarians
of plagiarizing her ideas. Rand stated: All
kinds of people today call themselves "libertarians,"
especially something calling itself the New
Right, which consists of hippies who are anarchists
instead of leftist collectivists; but anarchists
are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system
that requires absolute objective law, yet
libertarians combine capitalism and anarchism.
That's worse than anything the New Left has
proposed. It's a mockery of philosophy and
ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride
on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies,
but don't want to preach collectivism because
those jobs are already taken. But anarchism
is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual
side of collectivism. I could deal with a
Marxist with a greater chance of reaching
some kind of understanding, and with much
greater respect. Anarchists are the scum of
the intellectual world of the Left, which
has given them up. So the Right picks up another
leftist discard. That's the libertarian movement.
In 1946, Leonard E. Read founded the Foundation
for Economic Education (FEE), an American
nonprofit educational organization which promotes
the principles of laissez-faire economics,
private property and limited government. According
to Gary North, former FEE director of seminars
and a current Ludwig von Mises Institute scholar,
FEE is the "granddaddy of all libertarian
organizations". The initial officers of FEE
were Leonard E. Read as president, Austrian
School economist Henry Hazlitt as vice president
and David Goodrich of B. F. Goodrich as chairman.
Other trustees on the FEE board have included
wealthy industrialist Jasper Crane of DuPont,
H. W. Luhnow of William Volker & Co. and Robert
Welch, founder of the John Birch Society.Austrian
School economist Murray Rothbard was initially
an enthusiastic partisan of the Old Right,
particularly because of its general opposition
to war and imperialism, but long embraced
a reading of American history that emphasized
the role of elite privilege in shaping legal
and political institutions. He was part of
Ayn Rand's circle for a brief period, but
later harshly criticized Objectivism. He praised
Rand's Atlas Shrugged and wrote that she "introduced
me to the whole field of natural rights and
natural law philosophy", prompting him to
learn "the glorious natural rights tradition".
He soon broke with Rand over various differences,
including his defense of anarchism. Rothbard
was influenced by the work of the 19th-century
American individualist anarchists and sought
to meld their advocacy of free markets and
private defense with the principles of Austrian
economics. This new philosophy he called anarcho-capitalism.
Karl Hess, a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater
and primary author of the Republican Party's
1960 and 1964 platforms, became disillusioned
with traditional politics following the 1964
presidential campaign in which Goldwater lost
to Lyndon B. Johnson. He parted with the Republicans
altogether after being rejected for employment
with the party, and began work as a heavy-duty
welder. Hess began reading American anarchists
largely due to the recommendations of his
friend Murray Rothbard and said that upon
reading the works of communist anarchist Emma
Goldman, he discovered that anarchists believed
everything he had hoped the Republican Party
would represent. For Hess, Goldman was the
source for the best and most essential theories
of Ayn Rand without any of the "crazy solipsism
that Rand was so fond of". Hess and Rothbard
founded the journal Left and Right: A Journal
of Libertarian Thought, which was published
from 1965 to 1968, with George Resch and Leonard
P. Liggio. In 1969, they edited The Libertarian
Forum 1969, which Hess left in 1971. Hess
eventually put his focus on the small scale,
stating that "Society is: people together
making culture". He deemed two of his cardinal
social principles to be "opposition to central
political authority" and "concern for people
as individuals". His rejection of standard
American party politics was reflected in a
lecture he gave during which he said: "The
Democrats or liberals think that everybody
is stupid and therefore they need somebody...
to tell them how to behave themselves. The
Republicans think everybody is lazy".
The Vietnam War split the uneasy alliance
between growing numbers of American libertarians
and conservatives who believed in limiting
liberty to uphold moral virtues. Libertarians
opposed to the war joined the draft resistance
and peace movements, as well as organizations
such as Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS). In 1969 and 1970, Hess joined with
others, including Murray Rothbard, Robert
LeFevre, Dana Rohrabacher, Samuel Edward Konkin
III and former SDS leader Carl Oglesby to
speak at two Left-Right conferences which
brought together activists from both the Old
Right and the New Left in what was emerging
as a nascent libertarian movement. As part
of his effort to unite right and left-libertarianism,
Hess would join the SDS as well as the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW), of which he explained:
"We used to have a labor movement in this
country, until I.W.W. leaders were killed
or imprisoned. You could tell labor unions
had become captive when business and government
began to praise them. They're destroying the
militant black leaders the same way now. If
the slaughter continues, before long liberals
will be asking, 'What happened to the blacks?
Why aren't they militant anymore?'". Rothbard
ultimately broke with the left, allying himself
instead with the burgeoning paleoconservative
movement. He criticized the tendency of these
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". This left-libertarian tradition has
been carried to the present day by Samuel
Edward Konkin III's agorists, contemporary
mutualists such as Kevin Carson and Roderick
T. Long and other left-wing market anarchists.In
1971, a small group of Americans led by David
Nolan formed the Libertarian Party, which
has run a presidential candidate every election
year since 1972. Other libertarian organizations,
such as the Center for Libertarian Studies
and the Cato Institute, were also formed in
the 1970s. Philosopher John Hospers, a one-time
member of Rand's inner circle, proposed a
non-initiation of force principle to unite
both groups, but this statement later became
a required "pledge" for candidates of the
Libertarian Party and Hospers became its first
presidential candidate in 1972. In the 1980s,
Hess joined the Libertarian Party and served
as editor of its newspaper from 1986 to 1990.
Modern libertarianism gained significant recognition
in academia with the publication of Harvard
University professor Robert Nozick's Anarchy,
State, and Utopia in 1974, for which he received
a National Book Award in 1975. In response
to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, Nozick's
book supported a minimal state (also called
a nightwatchman state by Nozick) on the grounds
that the ultraminimal state arises without
violating individual rights and the transition
from an ultraminimal state to a minimal state
is morally obligated to occur. Specifically,
Nozick writes, "We argue that the first transition
from a system of private protective agencies
to an ultraminimal state, will occur by an
invisible-hand process in a morally permissible
way that violates no one's rights. Secondly,
we argue that the transition from an ultraminimal
state to a minimal state morally must occur.
It would be morally impermissible for persons
to maintain the monopoly in the ultraminimal
state without providing protective services
for all, even if this requires specific 'redistribution.'
The operators of the ultraminimal state are
morally obligated to produce the minimal state".In
the early 1970s, Rothbard wrote. "One gratifying
aspect of our rise to some prominence is that,
for the first time in my memory, we, 'our
side,' had captured a crucial word from the
enemy. 'Libertarians' had long been simply
a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that
is for anti-private property anarchists, either
of the communist or syndicalist variety. But
now we had taken it over". Indeed, the project
of spreading libertarian ideals in the United
States has been so successful that some Americans
who don't identify as "libertarian" seem to
hold libertarian views. Since the resurgence
of neoliberalism in the 1970s, this modern
American libertarianism has spread beyond
North America via think tanks and political
parties.
== Contemporary libertarianism ==
=== 
Contemporary libertarian socialism ===
A surge of popular interest in libertarian
socialism occurred in Western nations during
the 1960s and 1970s. Anarchism was influential
in the counterculture of the 1960s and anarchists
actively participated in the late sixties
students and workers revolts. In 1968, the
International of Anarchist Federations was
founded in Carrara, Italy during an international
anarchist conference held there in 1968 by
the three existing European federations of
France, the Italian and the Iberian Anarchist
Federation as well as the Bulgarian federation
in French exile. The uprisings of May 1968
also led to a small resurgence of interest
in left communist ideas. Various small left
communist groups emerged around the world,
predominantly in the leading capitalist countries.
A series of conferences of the communist left
began in 1976, with the aim of promoting international
and cross-tendency discussion, but these petered
out in the 1980s without having increased
the profile of the movement or its unity of
ideas. Left communist groups existing today
include the International Communist Party,
International Communist Current and the Internationalist
Communist Tendency. The housing and employment
crisis in most of Western Europe led to the
formation of communes and squatter movements
like that of Barcelona, Spain. In Denmark,
squatters occupied a disused military base
and declared the Freetown Christiania, an
autonomous haven in central Copenhagen.
Around the turn of the 21st century, libertarian
socialism grew in popularity and influence
as part of the anti-war, anti-capitalist and
anti-globalisation movements. Anarchists became
known for their involvement in protests against
the meetings of the World Trade Organization
(WTO), Group of Eight and the World Economic
Forum. Some anarchist factions at these protests
engaged in rioting, property destruction and
violent confrontations with police. These
actions were precipitated by ad hoc, leaderless,
anonymous cadres known as black blocs and
other organizational tactics pioneered in
this time include security culture, affinity
groups and the use of decentralized technologies
such as the Internet. A significant event
of this period was the confrontations at WTO
conference in Seattle in 1999. For English
anarchist scholar Simon Critchley, "contemporary
anarchism can be seen as a powerful critique
of the pseudo-libertarianism of contemporary
neo-liberalism. One might say that contemporary
anarchism is about responsibility, whether
sexual, ecological or socio-economic; it flows
from an experience of conscience about the
manifold ways in which the West ravages the
rest; it is an ethical outrage at the yawning
inequality, impoverishment and disenfranchisment
that is so palpable locally and globally".
This might also have been motivated by "the
collapse of 'really existing socialism' and
the capitulation to neo-liberalism of Western
social democracy".Libertarian socialists in
the early 21st century have been involved
in the alter-globalization movement, squatter
movement; social centers; infoshops; anti-poverty
groups such as Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
and Food Not Bombs; tenants' unions; housing
cooperatives; intentional communities generally
and egalitarian communities; anti-sexist organizing;
grassroots media initiatives; digital media
and computer activism; experiments in participatory
economics; anti-racist and anti-fascist groups
like Anti-Racist Action and Anti-Fascist Action;
activist groups protecting the rights of immigrants
and promoting the free movement of people,
such as the No Border network; worker co-operatives,
countercultural and artist groups; and the
peace movement.
=== American libertarianism ===
In the United States, polls (circa 2006) find
that the views and voting habits of between
10 and 20 percent (and increasing) of voting
age Americans may be classified as "fiscally
conservative and socially liberal, or libertarian".
This is based on pollsters and researchers
defining libertarian views as fiscally conservative
and socially liberal (based on the common
United States meanings of the terms) and against
government intervention in economic affairs
and for expansion of personal freedoms. Through
20 polls on this topic spanning 13 years,
Gallup found that voters who are libertarian
on the political spectrum ranged from 17–23%
of the United States electorate. However,
a 2014 Pew Poll found that 23% of Americans
who identify as libertarians have no idea
what the word means.2009 saw the rise of the
Tea Party movement, an American political
movement known for advocating a reduction
in the United States national debt and federal
budget deficit by reducing government spending
and taxes, which had a significant libertarian
component despite having contrasts with libertarian
values and views in some areas, such as nationalism,
free trade, social issues and immigration.
A 2011 Reason-Rupe poll found that among those
who self-identified as Tea Party supporters,
41 percent leaned libertarian and 59 percent
socially conservative. The movement, named
after the Boston Tea Party, also contains
conservative and populist elements and has
sponsored multiple protests and supported
various political candidates since 2009. Tea
Party activities have declined since 2010
with the number of chapters across the country
slipping from about 1,000 to 600. Mostly,
Tea Party organizations are said to have shifted
away from national demonstrations to local
issues. Following the selection of Paul Ryan
as Mitt Romney's 2012 vice presidential running
mate, The New York Times declared that Tea
Party lawmakers are no longer a fringe of
the conservative coalition, but now "indisputably
at the core of the modern Republican Party".
In 2012, anti-war presidential candidates
(Libertarian Republican Ron Paul and Libertarian
Party candidate Gary Johnson) raised millions
of dollars and garnered millions of votes
despite opposition to their obtaining ballot
access by Democrats and Republicans. The 2012
Libertarian National Convention, which saw
Gary Johnson and James P. Gray nominated as
the 2012 presidential ticket for the Libertarian
Party, resulted in the most successful result
for a third-party presidential candidacy since
2000 and the best in the Libertarian Party's
history by vote number. Johnson received 1%
of the popular vote, amounting to more than
1.2 million votes. Johnson has expressed a
desire to win at least 5 percent of the vote
so that the Libertarian Party candidates could
get equal ballot access and federal funding,
thus subsequently ending the two-party system.
== Contemporary libertarian organizations
==
Since the 1950s, many American libertarian
organizations have adopted a free market stance,
as well as supporting civil liberties and
non-interventionist foreign policies. These
include the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Francisco
Marroquín University, the Foundation for
Economic Education, Center for Libertarian
Studies, the Cato Institute and Liberty International.
The activist Free State Project, formed in
2001, works to bring 20,000 libertarians to
New Hampshire to influence state policy. Active
student organizations include Students for
Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty.
A number of countries have libertarian parties
that run candidates for political office.
In the United States, the Libertarian Party
was formed in 1972 and is the third largest
American political party, with over 370,000
registered voters in the 35 states that allow
registration as a Libertarian and hundreds
of party candidates elected or appointed to
public office.Current international anarchist
federations which sometimes identify themselves
as libertarian include the International of
Anarchist Federations, the International Workers'
Association and International Libertarian
Solidarity. The largest organized anarchist
movement today is in Spain, in the form of
the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT)
and the CNT. CGT membership was estimated
to be around 100,000 for 2003. Other active
syndicalist movements include the Central
Organisation of the Workers of Sweden and
the Swedish Anarcho-syndicalist Youth Federation
in Sweden; the Unione Sindacale Italiana in
Italy; Workers Solidarity Alliance in the
United States; and Solidarity Federation in
the United Kingdom. The revolutionary industrial
unionist Industrial Workers of the World claiming
2,000 paying members as well as the International
Workers Association, an anarcho-syndicalist
successor to the First International, also
remain active. In the United States, there
exists the Common Struggle – Libertarian
Communist Federation.
== Criticism ==
Criticism of libertarianism includes ethical,
economic, environmental, pragmatic and philosophical
concerns, though most of them are mainly related
to right-libertarianism. For instance, it
has been argued that laissez-faire capitalism
does not necessarily produce the best or most
efficient outcome, nor does its philosophy
of individualism and policies of deregulation
prevent the abuse of natural resources.
=== Authenticity of libertarian goals ===
Critics such as Corey Robin describe right-libertarianism
as fundamentally a reactionary conservative
ideology united with more traditional conservative
thought and goals by a desire to enforce hierarchical
power and social relations:Conservatism, then,
is not a commitment to limited government
and liberty—or a wariness of change, a belief
in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue.
These may be the byproducts of conservatism,
one or more of its historically specific and
ever-changing modes of expression. But they
are not its animating purpose. Neither is
conservatism a makeshift fusion of capitalists,
Christians, and warriors, for that fusion
is impelled by a more elemental force—the
opposition to the liberation of men and women
from the fetters of their superiors, particularly
in the private sphere. Such a view might seem
miles away from the libertarian defense of
the free market, with its celebration of the
atomistic and autonomous individual. But it
is not. When the libertarian looks out upon
society, he does not see isolated individuals;
he sees private, often hierarchical, groups,
where a father governs his family and an owner
his employees.
=== Government decentralization ===
John Donahue argues that if political power
were radically shifted to local authorities,
parochial local interests would predominate
at the expense of the whole and that this
would exacerbate current problems with collective
action.
Before Donahue, Friedrich Engels claimed in
his essay On Authority that radical decentralization
promoted would destroy modern industrial civilization,
citing an example of railways: Here too the
co-operation of an infinite number of individuals
is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation
must be practised during precisely fixed hours
so that no accidents may happen. Here, too,
the first condition of the job is a dominant
will that settles all subordinate questions,
whether this will is represented by a single
delegate or a committee charged with the execution
of the resolutions of the majority of persona
interested. In either case there is a very
pronounced authority. Moreover, what would
happen to the first train dispatched if the
authority of the railway employees over the
Hon. passengers were abolished?
In the end, it is argued that authority in
any form is a natural occurrence which should
not be abolished.
=== Lack of real-world examples ===
Michael Lind has observed that of the 195
countries in the world today, none have fully
actualized a society as advocated by right-libertarians:
If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn't
at least one country have tried it? Wouldn't
there be at least one country, out of nearly
two hundred, with minimal government, free
trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs,
no welfare state and no public education system?
Furthermore, Lind has criticized right-libertarianism
as being incompatible with democracy and apologetic
towards autocracy. In response, right-libertarian
Warren Redlich argues that the United States
"was extremely libertarian from the founding
until 1860, and still very libertarian until
roughly 1930".
== See also ==
== 
Notes
