Origin, history and development of libertarianism in the United States
This article is about the origin, history and development of libertarianism in the United States. For the broader political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core principle, see Libertarianism. For the most common type of libertarianism in the United States, see Right-libertarianism.
Libertarianism includes anarchist and libertarian socialist tendencies, although they are not as widespread as in other countries. Murray Bookchin,[25] a libertarian within this socialist tradition, argued that anarchists, libertarian socialists and the left should reclaim libertarian as a term, suggesting these other self-declared libertarians to rename themselves propertarians instead.[26][27] Although all libertarians oppose government intervention, there is a division between those anarchist or socialist libertarians as well as anarcho-capitalists such as Rothbard and David D. Friedman who adhere to the anti-state position, viewing the state as an unnecessary evil; minarchists such as Nozick who recognize the necessary need for a minimal state, often referred to as a night-watchman state;[28] and classical liberals who support a minimized small government[29][30][31] and a major reversal of the welfare state.[32]
Although libertarian continues to be widely used to refer to anti-statesocialists internationally,[25][40][41][42][43][44] its meaning in the United States has deviated from its political origins to the extent that the common meaning of libertarian in the United States is different from elsewhere.[17][26][27][28][45] The Libertarian Party asserts the following core beliefs of libertarianism: "Libertarians support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties".[46][47] Libertarians have worked to implement their ideas through the Libertarian Party, the Free State Project, agorism, and other forms of activism.[48][49][50]
^Long, Roderick T. (1998). "Towards a Libertarian Theory of Class". Social Philosophy and Policy. 15 (2): 303–349 (online: "Part 1", "Part 2").
^Becker, Lawrence C.; Becker, Charlotte B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Ethics: P–W. 3. Taylor & Francis. p. 1562.
^Paul, Ellen F. (2007). Liberalism: Old and New. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 187.
^Christiano, Thomas; John P. Christman (2009). Contemporary Debates in Political Philosophy. "Individualism and Libertarian Rights". Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 121Archived June 12, 2020, at the Wayback Machine.
^Vallentyne, Peter (March 3, 2009). "Libertarianism". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 ed.). Stanford, California: Stanford University. Retrieved March 5, 2010.
^Bevir, Mark (2010). Encyclopedia of Political Theory. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications; Cato Institute. p. 811.
^Boaz, David; Kirby, David (October 18, 2006). The Libertarian Vote. Cato Institute.
^Cite error: The named reference Russell was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference DeLeon was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference Rothbard was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Van der Vossen, Bas (January 28, 2019). "Libertarianism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved August 23, 2020.
^Cite error: The named reference Martin was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference Caldwell was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ abGoodway, David (2006). Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 4. "'Libertarian' and 'libertarianism' are frequently employed by anarchists as synonyms for 'anarchist' and 'anarchism', largely as an attempt to distance themselves from the negative connotations of 'anarchy' and its derivatives. The situation has been vastly complicated in recent decades with the rise of anarcho-capitalism, 'minimal statism' and an extreme right-wing laissez-faire philosophy advocated by such theorists as Rothbard and 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".
^Marshall, Peter (2008). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: Harper Perennial. p. 565. "The problem with the term 'libertarian' is that it is now also used by the Right. [...] In its moderate form, right libertarianism embraces laissez-faire liberals like Robert Nozick who call for a minimal State, and in its extreme form, anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard and David Friedman who entirely repudiate the role of the State and look to the market as a means of ensuring social order".
^Cite error: The named reference Schaefer was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Carlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilburn R., ed. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. London: Sage Publications. p. 1006. ISBN1412988764.
^Long, Riderick T. "Anarchism". In Gaus, Gerald F.; D'Agostino, Fred, eds. (2012). The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy. p. 227.
^Kymlicka, Will (2005). "libertarianism, left-". In Honderich, Ted. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. New York City: Oxford University Press. p. 516. ISBN978-0199264797. "'Left-libertarianism' is a new term for an old conception of justice, dating back to Grotius. It combines the libertarian assumption that each person possesses a natural right of self-ownership over his person with the egalitarian premise that natural resources should be shared equally. Right-wing libertarians argue that the right of self-ownership entails the right to appropriate unequal parts of the external world, such as unequal amounts of land. According to left-libertarians, however, the world's natural resources were initially unowned, or belonged equally to all, and it is illegitimate for anyone to claim exclusive private ownership of these resources to the detriment of others. Such private appropriation is legitimate only if everyone can appropriate an equal amount, or if those who appropriate more are taxed to compensate those who are thereby excluded from what was once common property. Historic proponents of this view include Thomas Paine, Herbert Spencer, and Henry George. Recent exponents include Philippe Van Parijs and Hillel Steiner."
^Chartier, Gary; Johnson, Charles W. (2011). Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty. Brooklyn: Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. pp. 1–16.
^ abBookchin, Murray (January 1986). "The Greening of Politics: Toward a New Kind of Political Practice". Green Perspectives: Newsletter of the Green Program Project (1). "We have permitted cynical political reactionaries and the spokesmen of large corporations to pre-empt these basic libertarian American ideals. We have permitted them not only to become the specious voice of these ideals such that individualism has been used to justify egotism; the pursuit of happiness to justify greed, and even our emphasis on local and regional autonomy has been used to justify parochialism, insularism, and exclusivity – often against ethnic minorities and so-called deviant individuals. We have even permitted these reactionaries to stake out a claim to the word libertarian, a word, in fact, that was literally devised in the 1890s in France by Elisée Reclus as a substitute for the word anarchist, which the government had rendered an illegal expression for identifying one's views. The propertarians, in effect – acolytes of Ayn Rand, the earth mother of greed, egotism, and the virtues of property – have appropriated expressions and traditions that should have been expressed by radicals but were willfully neglected because of the lure of European and Asian traditions of socialism, socialisms that are now entering into decline in the very countries in which they originated".
^ abThe Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective (December 11, 2008). "150 years of Libertarian". Anarchist Writers. The Anarchist Library. Retrieved January 31, 2020.
^Boaz, David (1998). Libertarianism: A Primer. Free Press. pp. 22–26.
^Conway, David (2008). "Freedom of Speech". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). Liberalism, Classical. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 295–298, quote at p. 296. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n112. ISBN978-1-4129-6580-4. LCCN2008009151. OCLC750831024. Depending on the context, libertarianism can be seen as either the contemporary name for classical liberalism, adopted to avoid confusion in those countries where liberalism is widely understood to denote advocacy of expansive government powers, or as a more radical version of classical liberalism.
^Cite error: The named reference Baradat was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Rothbard, Murray (2009) [1970s]. The Betrayal of the American Right(PDF). Mises Institute. ISBN978-1610165013. Archived from the original(PDF) on July 3, 2015. Retrieved April 17, 2016. 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.
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