Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license.
Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat.
We can research this topic together.
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. 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. Thus, libertarianism and anarchism have been synonyms since the 1890s, and other equivalents include libertarian socialism, socialist anarchism, and left-libertarianism. 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.
In the 20th century, members of the Old Right in the United States such as Albert Jay Nock and H. L. Mencken 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." This modern American libertarianism is also referred to as right-libertarianism.
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.
^ Bookchin, 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. " 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."
^ Chartier, 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 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 . Most had not evolved consciously from this tradition; they had been a rather automatic product of the American environment."
^ Goodway, David (2006). Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool:Liverpool University Press. p. 4. "'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
Please stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. If consensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute.
This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
Libertarianism is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
This article appeared on Misplaced Pages's Main Page as Today's featured article on June 25, 2005.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Conservatism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of conservatism on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ConservatismWikipedia:WikiProject ConservatismTemplate:WikiProject ConservatismConservatism
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Misplaced Pages.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Sociology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of sociology on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SociologyWikipedia:WikiProject SociologyTemplate:WikiProject Sociologysociology
This article is within the scope of WikiProject History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the subject of History on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Historyhistory
This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Human rights, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Human rights on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Human rightsWikipedia:WikiProject Human rightsTemplate:WikiProject Human rightsHuman rights
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Anarchism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of anarchism on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AnarchismWikipedia:WikiProject AnarchismTemplate:WikiProject Anarchismanarchism
This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 3 sections are present.
Issues with the article
@North8000: You've talked about how this article has some issues, including more of a focus on philosophy and practice. Are there any other issues with the article and if so, how can they be fixed? How can the article be fixed to reflect the ideology's implementations in practice alongside the philosophy? X-Editor (talk) 05:00, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
That's complicated question. Just quick shooting from the hip:
Seek out material on current libertarian practice and current libertarian self-identification, current organizations, institutions & publication(s) and dramatically expand on that
Reduce the coverage of specialized philosophies
Make the lead be more a summary of the article.
Try for more coherent organized writing in the larger more complex areas such as libertarianism in the US
Increase simplified "overview" type coverage, especially of the dramatically different meanings of the terms on the two sides of the pond and the terms with equivalent meaning on the other side of the pond.
In the end it would be a summary of the revised body of the article and so to some extent the problems/fixes are the same as for the body. But also right now it's too loaded with / dependent on obscure and/or questionable philosophical-strand terms, too focused on history and historical subjective "ownership" of terms (although history is important), too focused on obscure philosophy terms vs. common meanings of common libertarian terms. North8000 (talk) 17:02, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
Maybe the history section should be split off into its own article called History of Libertarianism once the history section is simplified, because simplifying would lose a lot of valuable content that should still be on Misplaced Pages. X-Editor (talk) 19:33, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
I agree that we don't want to lose anything that is in the article (except possibly commentary type stuff). But also note that I was only talking about the lead. Overall, I don't think that history takes up too much space in this article other than it needs some organizing / tightening up I think that obscure libertarian philosophies and related obscure terminology takes up too much space. Overabundance of such actually be a minus. I originally tried to learn libertarianism by learning those terms and a taxonomy of those terms and it took me many years to figure out that it was a waste of time.....that I was just trying to learn the obscure creations and created terms of individual philosophers. North8000 (talk) 19:59, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
(per table below) I believe that that section IS relevant to the article but was too long / undue. I'm not sure what to do next. North8000 (talk) 23:28, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
Cool. Evolution of the article is invited. But before anyone goes off the deep end we need to understand that we need to understand that we are speaking two different languages here about two different topics which have enough overlap that they need to be in the same article. Here is your translation table for the common meanings:
Vague description
US term
European term
Prioritizes freedom and minimization of government, not defined by complex philosophies
Libertarian
Liberal
More radical anti-government, more defined by complex philosophies
Anarchist, somewhat leftish
Libertarian
And, for our European friends, a major part of the meaning of "liberal" in the US includes favoring expansion of social programs and taxes to pay for them.
So everybody, please recognize this and don't (based on terminologies) say that the other half of the article is all wrong.
@North8000: It's not somewhat leftish, it's usually full on left-wing anarchist. Regardless, you did define the different terms very well, which will hopefully clear up confusion. X-Editor (talk)
Don't forget that I was using American-ese in that column! :-) In American-ese, full left means being for expansion of governmental social programs and taxes to pay for them, and redistribution of wealth by the government.
I've been active at this article for almost 12 years, many of them as an attempted moderator. A pattern is that someone unaware of the two languages comes in and says that half the article is not about libertarianism. So I wrote the above to try to avoid that confusion. North8000 (talk) 01:08, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
@North8000: Sorry for misinterpreting what you were trying to say, although there are anti-state leftists in the US that want to solve these problems without the state, but you are right that other leftists want to use the state for that task. You should add that column to the Q&A section of the talk page, since it clears up a lot of confusion. X-Editor (talk) 05:57, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
My main focus was to avoid debates fueled by tower-of-babel misunderstandings. And second to acknowledge some main elements which exist which we need to keep in mind when improving this article. A subtle one is that in Europe it's more defined by detailed philosophies and in the US (where there are maybe 50,000,000 vague self-declared libertarians) it really isn't. I do realize that everything I wrote is a (hopefully useful) massive over generalization and thus wrong in many cases. . If you felt like it I'd be interested in knowing which side of the Atlantic you live on, but if not, "rather not" is a fine answer. I'm on the West side of the pond. North8000 (talk) 13:28, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
@North8000: I'm more familiar with US Libertarianism because people in the US are extremely outspoken about their politics. I also added info about an attempt to try US Libertarianism in the real world, but I'm not sure how many other in practice movements there are. X-Editor (talk) 18:53, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
@X-Editor: If you are curious the "libertarian" meaning that 20%-30% of Americans self identify as has a very short and vague meaning. It's sort of "place a higher priority on freedom" (including privacy as a means to that end.) And on "smaller and less intrusive government." And note the mere "place a higher priority on" and so a mild version of those advocacies. And most of them vote Republican and Democrat, not Libertarian party. Probably equivalent to someone in Europe saying that they are a liberal. North8000 (talk) 17:08, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
North8000, although what you have provided is one definition of libertarianism, this would be a very different article if we used it. Every U.S. president from Washington to Hoover and ever Republican president from Reagan to Trump would be libertarians. For example in her book Roads to Dominion, p. 7, Sara Diamond writes, "Libertarianism, anticommunist militarism, and traditionalism have been the three pillars of the U.S. Right." Similar definitions were used by both social scientists and the founders of the modern conservative movement.
On the other hand, the term is used to refer more narrowly to the movement founded by Rothbard, Nolan and Hess, which drew on earlier libertarian movements, especially individualist anarchism. Rothbard distinguished his form of libertarianism by his emphasis on property ownership.
Libertarianism btw is not synonymous with liberalism. Hence French has three terms: libéralisme, libertairism and libertarianisme. The English term libertarianism is a translation of the French term libertairism, while the French term libertarianisme is a French translation of the English term libertarianism. Note the French article defines liberalism in the same way that the English article does, although it points out that the term is iused in different sense. Libertarianisme comes closest to the article North8000 suggests.
@The Four Deuces: I was not intending to create a new working definition for the term for the article, I was just trying to describe the most common meaning of the term in the US. But I disagree that that definition includes all of the people / presidents that you describe. The Nolan chart is probably the best decoder ring for the common meaning of the term in the US and IMO most or all of those presidents were in different corners of the chart than libertarianism. BTW I think that it is important recognize a 2nd tower of Babel between analysis by a European and US person. IMO a European would approach the topic as being mostly defined by history, taxonomy and well developed philosophies. A US person would tend to put extra weight on the common (vague) meaning of the term in the US. North8000 (talk) 17:14, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
North: interesting and thoughtful proposal, but I think your first, second, 4th and 5th bullet points would result in a worse article. This article should remain more strictly about the philosophy, its schools of thought, and the discourse and debates among philosophers. Our coverage of libertarian schools of thought should be made more rigorous, and expanded, to match the example of our far-better Socialism article.
We should be careful to avoid treating philosophical libertarianism and American self-ascribed "libertarianism" as the same thing. U.S. Republicans are as "libertarian" as Obamacare is "socialist". No scholar thinks these politicians have much to do with the actual philosophy, except for a handful of Libertarian Party candidates. For example, why does this article talk at such length about the Tea Party, when scholars don't see it as libertarian? (See Brennan 2012) Sure, it has vague libertarian roots, but scholars dictate our coverage, not self-identification; the Tea Party doesn't deserve more than a few sentences, the rest is cruft (including irrelevant crap like mentioning that Trump praised the Tea Party).
Editors should be mindful to avoid rejiggering this article around what they're familiar with (U.S. domestic politics for most English Wikipedians). U.S. Republican talking points do not "define" libertarianism. Scholars and libertarian philosophers do, exclusively. Our already-excessive coverage of America only increase this article's WP:SYSTEMICBIAS and make it pointlessly more redundant with Libertarianism in the United States; that article should be WP:SUMMARYzed in a few paragraphs in a single section under "History".
For the structure, Socialism is a good model. The History section should be dedicated to attempts to implement the philosophy: politicians and governments deemed libertarian by scholars. The entire rest of the article should be about the philosophy itself, and based entirely on scholarship, not news orgs. "History" should also be reorganized to be more chronological, as others proposed. We should add "Social and political theory", "Economics", and "Politics" sections (the latter is about individual schools of thought, but again must be restricted to philosophers, not be redundant with "History"). What's in "Overview" (and most of History) should be spread out among those three sections. Thoughts appreciated. DFlhb (talk) 13:57, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
I do agree that the article should not focus on any one type of libertarianism. Also that the Tea party is only about 1/2 libertarian. Other that that I pretty much disagree with most of your post. "In practice" is immensely important. A scholar on a topic covers the topic. Most that you might be considering to be that might not be. Instead of covering the topic, they are more like philosophers creating or interpreting their own strands/meanings of the term. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:26, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
North8000, I'm still trying to understand what your definition of U.S. libertarianism is. It seems to describe the shared U.S. ideology, although they interpret it differently. Social conservatives claimed that morality laws do not infringe on freedom of choice, since immorality is not a real choice. U.S. liberals justified the welfare state and civil rights legislation on the basis that it empowered individual freedom. How far along a conservative or liberal pathway does one have to go before one is no longer a libertarian? It seems that only Rothbard & co. can claim no conservative and/or liberal traits, while democratic socialists are the only significant group that rejects its premises, at least in part. TFD (talk) 22:01, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
It varies a lot even in the US. Not only the definition, but even the degree to which it is defined. What runs through the most mathematically prevalent ones is short and vague....prioritizing freedom. The limit of the definition is pretty much the Nolan chart, and nothing beyond that. Fiscally conservative, and socially liberal (using the US definition of "liberal"). Sincerely,North8000 (talk) 02:03, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
The Nolan chart usually shows mainline parties in the upper right, left parties in the bottom left and libertarian parties in the bottom right. See for example "The US Presidential Election 2020" on the Political Compass website. Are you saying that libertarians are people who fall in the bottom right? That bascially limits it to Libertarian Party supporters. TFD (talk) 04:02, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
I know that you are one of the least biased and most objective editors I've worked with. But (especially if you live outside of the US) you might have the accidental bias of trying to understand the numerically large US libertarian phenomena in a framework of developed philosophies. The numerically large (20%+ of the population) has a very short vague definition given in my previous post, and for most of them it is nothing more specific than that, They know little or nothing about the US Libertarian Party and even those who do seldom vote for the USLP; they mostly vote for Democratic and Republican candidates. And of course there is the difference in meaning in terms across the pond. If you live in Europe, I think that the closest European word for the numerically large US libertarian phenomena folks would not be "libertarian" it would be "liberal", (which I assume is a big tent) which I think might illustrate the challenge of trying to define it as a specific developed philosophy.
Probably the distant-second most common "libertarian" in the US (my guess 1%-2% of the population) is one with a more developed philosophy along the lines of the USLP platform. Within that group there are varying degrees all the way from anarchists to very mild advocates.
Political scientists in the US describe common US libertarianism as classical liberalism or something evolved from it. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:19, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Whole page and related wiki stuff reads like an ideological campaign for someone's idiosyncratic politics
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)
@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)
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)
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)
"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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
I would agree with this point. I’ve noticed as of recently that there is an obsession on Misplaced Pages 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)
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)
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)
32 Fernandez, Frank (2001). Cuban Anarchism. The History of a Movement. Sharp Press. not a reliable source, and should be deleted
Taking a look at the book and pages in question, Fernandez gives no citations or sources for what he writes, Seeming to be an opinion piece. Contradicted by facts that are properly sourced here.
Looking at Letters of H. L. Mencken, H.L. Mencken was using the word to describe himself at least as early as the 1940s, I wish there was a source or citation explaining why he began to use it.
(Current sentence seems to imply active intent in Co-Opting it, Rothbard source could be interpreted as it being a happy{for them} coincidence) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.158.83.164 (talk) 18:15, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
Lack of criticism of left-libertarianism
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)
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)
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)
view · edit Frequently asked questions
