The first recorded use of the term libertarian was in 1789, when William Belsham wrote about libertarianism in the context of metaphysics.[44] As early as 1796, libertarian came to mean an advocate or defender of liberty, especially in the political and social spheres, when the London Packet printed on 12 February the following: "Lately marched out of the Prison at Bristol, 450 of the French Libertarians".[45] It 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.[46][47][48]
In the United States, libertarian was popularized by the individualist anarchistBenjamin Tucker around the late 1870s and early 1880s.[57]Libertarianism as a synonym for liberalism was popularized in May 1955 by writer Dean Russell, a colleague of Leonard Read and a classical liberal himself. Russell justified the choice of the term 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."[58][59][60]
Subsequently, a growing number of Americans with classical liberal beliefs began to describe themselves as libertarians. One person responsible for popularizing the term libertarian in this sense was Murray Rothbard, who started publishing libertarian works in the 1960s.[61] Rothbard described this modern use of the words overtly as a "capture" from his enemies, writing 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".[28][8]
Although libertarianism originated as a form of left-wing politics,[23][69] the development in the mid-20th century of modern libertarianism in the United States led several authors and political scientists to use two or more categorizations[3][4] to distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital, usually along left–right or socialist–capitalist lines,[5] Unlike right-libertarians, who reject the label due to its association with conservatism and right-wing politics, calling themselves simply libertarians, proponents of free-market anti-capitalism in the United States consciously label themselves as left-libertarians and see themselves as being part of a broad libertarian left.[23][69]
While the term libertarian has been largely synonymous with anarchism as part of the left,[9][70] continuing today as part of the libertarian left in opposition to the moderate left such as social democracy or authoritarian and statist socialism, its meaning has more recently diluted with wider adoption from ideologically disparate groups,[9] including the right.[16][25] As a term, libertarian can include both the New Left Marxists (who do not associate with a vanguard party) and extreme liberals (primarily concerned with civil liberties) or civil libertarians. Additionally, some libertarians use the term libertarian socialist to avoid anarchism's negative connotations and emphasize its connections with socialism.[9][71]
The revival of free-market ideologies during the mid- to late 20th century came with disagreement over what to call the movement. While many of its adherents prefer the term libertarian, many conservative libertarians reject the term's association with the 1960s New Left and its connotations of libertine hedonism.[72] The movement is divided over the use of conservatism as an alternative.[73] Those who seek both economic and social liberty would be known as liberals, but that term developed associations opposite of the limited government, low-taxation, minimal state advocated by the movement.[74] Name variants of the free-market revival movement include classical liberalism, economic liberalism, free-market liberalism and neoliberalism.[72] As a term, libertarian or economic libertarian has the most colloquial acceptance to describe a member of the movement, with the latter term being based on both the ideology's primacy of economics and its distinction from libertarians of the New Left.[73]
While both historical libertarianism and contemporary economic libertarianism share general antipathy towards power by government authority, the latter exempts power wielded through free-market capitalism. Historically, libertarians including Herbert Spencer and Max Stirner supported the protection of an individual's freedom from powers of government and private ownership.[75] In contrast, while condemning governmental encroachment on personal liberties, modern American libertarians support freedoms on the basis of their agreement with private property rights.[76] The abolishment of public amenities is a common theme in modern American libertarian writings.[77]
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.[1] People described as being left-libertarian or right-libertarian generally tend to call themselves simply libertarians and refer to their philosophy as libertarianism. As a result, some political scientists and writers classify the forms of libertarianism into two or more groups[3][4] to distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital.[5][13] In the United States, proponents of free-marketanti-capitalism consciously label themselves as left-libertarians and see themselves as being part of a broad libertarian left.[23][69]
Right-libertarianism[16][19][25][26] 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 United States today.[26][62] Commonly referred to as a continuation or radicalization of classical liberalism,[91][92] the most important of these early right-libertarian philosophers was Robert Nozick.[26][62][65] While sharing left-libertarians' advocacy for social freedom, right-libertarians 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.[93]Anarcho-capitalists[19][25] seek the 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.[94]
Libertarian paternalism[95] is a position advocated in the international bestseller Nudge by two American scholars, namely the economist Richard Thaler and the jurist Cass Sunstein.[96] 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".[97]Nudge is considered an important piece of literature in behavioral economics.[97]
Neo-libertarianism combines "the libertarian's moral commitment to negative liberty with a procedure that selects principles for restricting liberty on the basis of a unanimous agreement in which everyone's particular interests receive a fair hearing".[98] Neo-libertarianism has its roots at least as far back as 1980, when it was first described by the American philosopher James Sterba of the University of Notre Dame. Sterba observed that libertarianism advocates for a government that does no more than protection against force, fraud, theft, enforcement of contracts and other negative liberties as contrasted with positive liberties by Isaiah Berlin.[99] Sterba contrasted this with the older libertarian ideal of a night watchman state, or minarchism. Sterba held that it is "obviously impossible for everyone in society to be guaranteed complete liberty as defined by this ideal: after all, people's actual wants as well as their conceivable wants can come into serious conflict. [...] [I]t is also impossible for everyone in society to be completely free from the interference of other persons".[100] In 2013, Sterna wrote that "I shall show that moral commitment to an ideal of 'negative' liberty, which does not lead to a night-watchman state, but instead requires sufficient government to provide each person in society with the relatively high minimum of liberty that persons using Rawls' decision procedure would select. The political program actually justified by an ideal of negative liberty I shall call Neo-Libertarianism".[101]
Pro-private property libertarians espouse the Non-aggression principle, which is the concept that a person or organization cannot use force or coercion on an individual or someone else's property to achieve their objectives. Under this principle you can defend yourself using force but you can not initiate force upon someone else. If force is initiated by someone the state will get involved to protect life, liberty, and property. The government therefore has a monopoly of force and violence and if it should exist at any capacity, it would be only to protect society from criminals who violate the non-aggression principle.[102]
The Social contract is the consent of the governed to the State. The foundation of this contract is the Non-aggression principle, where the state also abides by the social contract of non-aggression except to defend its citizens from criminals that violate the non-aggression principle.[citation needed]
$10,000,000 a year initial investment for the first 10 years for a total of $100 million initial investment
*Annual dividend of 1.5% *Dividends were not reinvested in this scenario *A government with $100 million in tax revenue annually could wane themselves off taxes for government revenue in about ~34 years in this scenario
The Nolan Chart, created by American libertarian David Nolan, expands the left–right line into a two-dimensional chart classifying the political spectrum by degrees of personal and economic freedom
In the United States, libertarian is a typology used to describe a political position that advocates small government and is culturally liberal and fiscally conservative in a two-dimensional political spectrum such as the libertarian-inspired Nolan Chart, where the other major typologies are conservative, liberal and populist.[66][106][107][108]Libertarians support legalization of victimless crimes such as the use of marijuana while opposing high levels of taxation and government spending on health, welfare and education.[66]Libertarian was adopted in the United States, where liberal had become associated with a version that supports extensive government spending on social policies.[60]Libertarian may also refer to an anarchist ideology that developed in the 19th century and to a liberal version which developed in the United States that is avowedly pro-capitalist.[15][16][19]
According to polls, approximately one in four Americans self-identify as libertarian.[109][110][111][112] While this group is not typically ideologically driven, the term libertarian is commonly used to describe the form of libertarianism widely practiced in the United States and is the common meaning of the word libertarianism in the United States.[26] This form is often named liberalism elsewhere such as in Europe, where liberalism has a different common meaning than in the United States.[60] In some academic circles, this form is called right-libertarianism as a complement to left-libertarianism, with acceptance of capitalism or the private ownership of land as being the distinguishing feature.[15][16][19]
Although 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,[113][114] it was in 17th-century England that 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.[115]
During the 18th century and Age of Enlightenment, liberal ideas flourished in Europe and North America.[116][117] Libertarians of various schools were influenced by liberal ideas.[118] For philosopher Roderick T. Long, libertarians "share a common—or at least an overlapping—intellectual ancestry. [Libertarians] [...] claim the seventeenth century English Levellers and the eighteenth century French Encyclopedists among their ideological forebears; and [...] usually share an admiration for Thomas Jefferson[119][120][121] and Thomas Paine".[122]
Thomas Paine, whose theory of property showed a libertarian concern with the redistribution of resources
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.[123]
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".[124] 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".[125]
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.[124]
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.[126] Paine promoted liberal ideas in clear and concise language that allowed the general public to understand the debates among the political elites.[127]Common Sense was immensely popular in disseminating these ideas,[128] selling hundreds of thousands of copies.[129] Paine would later write the Rights of Man and The Age of Reason and participate in the French Revolution.[126] Paine's theory of property showed a "libertarian concern" with the redistribution of resources.[130]
In 1793, William Godwin wrote a libertarian philosophical treatise titled 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.[131]
Libertarian communism, libertarian Marxism and libertarian socialism are all terms which activists with a variety of perspectives have applied to their views.[132] Anarchist communist philosopher Joseph Déjacque was the first person to describe himself as a libertarian[133] in an 1857 letter.[134] 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".[135][136] 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.[137] The French anarchist journalist Sébastien Faure started the weekly paper Le Libertaire (The Libertarian) in 1895.[138]
Individualist anarchism represents 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.[139][140] An influential form of individualist anarchism called egoism[141] or egoist anarchism was expounded by one of the earliest and best-known proponents of individualist anarchism, the German Max Stirner.[142] Stirner's The Ego and Its Own, published in 1844, is a founding text of the philosophy.[142] According to Stirner, the only limitation on the rights of the individual is their power to obtain what they desire,[143] without regard for God, state or morality.[144] Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw unions of egoists, non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will,[145] which Stirner proposed as a form of organisation in place of the state.[146]
Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first American anarchist,[147] and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published.[148] 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".[149]
Sébastien Faure, prominent French theorist of libertarian communism as well as atheist and freethought militant
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",[155] 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".[156] 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".[157][158] 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.[157]
With the rise of fascism in Europe between the 1920s and the 1930s, anarchists began to fight fascists in Italy,[163] in France during the February 1934 riots[164] 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).[165] 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.[166]
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, Ángel 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.[167] 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 two congressmen (Pestaña and Benito Pabon). In 1938, Horacio Prieto, general secretary of the CNT, proposes that the Iberian Anarchist Federation transforms itself into the Libertarian Socialist Party and that it participates in the national elections.[168]
Murray Bookchin, American libertarian socialist theorist and proponent of libertarian municipalism
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.[169] In 1968, the International of Anarchist Federations was founded during an international anarchist conference in Carrara, Italy to advance libertarian solidarity. It wanted to form "a strong and organized workers movement, agreeing with the libertarian ideas".[170][171] 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.[172][173] Members included Sam Dolgoff,[174]Russell Blackwell, Dave Van Ronk, Enrico Arrigoni[175] and Murray Bookchin.
In the United States, there existed from 1970 to 1981 the publication Root & Branch[184] which had as a subtitle A Libertarian Marxist Journal.[185] In 1974, the Libertarian Communism journal was started in the United Kingdom by a group inside the Socialist Party of Great Britain.[186] In 1986, the anarcho-syndicalist Sam Dolgoff started and led the publication Libertarian Labor Review in the United States[187] which decided to rename itself as Anarcho-Syndicalist Review in order to avoid confusion with right-libertarian views.[188]
20th-century libertarianism in the United States[edit]
By around the start of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed.[189]H. L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock were the first prominent figures in the United States to describe themselves as libertarian as synonym for liberal. They believed that 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 classical liberalism, individualism and limited government.[190]
According to David Boaz, in 1943 three women "published books that could be said to have given birth to the modern libertarian movement".[191]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".[192] Rand's own philosophy of Objectivism is notedly similar to libertarianism and she accused libertarians of plagiarizing her ideas.[192]
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.[193] According to Gary North, the FEE is the "granddaddy of all libertarian organizations".[194]
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 conferences which brought together activists from both the New Left and the Old Right in what was emerging as a nascent libertarian movement. Rothbard ultimately broke with the left, allying himself with the burgeoning paleoconservative movement.[196][197] He criticized the tendency of these 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." Rothbard emphasized that this was relevant as a matter of strategy as the failure to pitch the libertarian message to Middle America might result in the loss of "the tight-assed majority".[198][199] This left-libertarian tradition has been carried to the present day by Konkin III's agorists,[200] contemporary mutualists such as Kevin Carson,[201] Roderick T. Long[202] and others such as Gary Chartier[203] Charles W. Johnson[204][205] Sheldon Richman,[206]Chris Matthew Sciabarra[207] and Brad Spangler.[208]
Former Congressman Ron Paul, a self-described libertarian, whose presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 garnered significant support from youth and libertarian Republicans
In 1971, a small group led by David Nolan formed the Libertarian Party,[209] 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.[210] 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.[211]
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.[212] 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[213] and the transition from an ultraminimal state to a minimal state is morally obligated to occur.
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".[214] The project of spreading libertarian ideals in the United States has been so successful that some Americans who do not identify as libertarian seem to hold libertarian views.[215] Since the resurgence of neoliberalism in the 1970s, this modern American libertarianism has spread beyond North America via think tanks and political parties.[216][217]
A surge of popular interest in libertarian socialism occurred in Western nations during the 1960s and 1970s.[219] Anarchism was influential in the counterculture of the 1960s[220][221][222] and anarchists actively participated in the protests of 1968 which included students and workers' revolts.[223] 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 Anarchist Federation in French exile.[171][224] 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.[225] 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 in 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.[226] 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.[226] A significant event of this period was the confrontations at WTO conference in Seattle in 1999.[226] 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".[227] This might also have been motivated by "the collapse of 'really existing socialism' and the capitulation to neo-liberalism of Western social democracy".[228]
In the United States, polls (circa 2006) find that the views and voting habits of between 10% and 20%, or more, of voting age Americans may be classified as "fiscally conservative and socially liberal, or libertarian".[66][106] 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.[66] In a 2015 Gallup poll, this figure had risen to 27%.[112] A 2015 Reuters poll found that 23% of American voters self-identify as libertarians, including 32% in the 18–29 age group.[111] Through twenty polls on this topic spanning thirteen years, Gallup found that voters who are libertarian on the political spectrum ranged from 17–23% of the United States electorate.[109] However, a 2014 Pew Poll found that 23% of Americans who identify as libertarians have no idea what the word means. In this poll, 11% of respondents both identified as libertarians and understand what the term meant.[110]
In 2001, an American political migration movement, called the Free State Project, was founded to recruit at least 20,000 libertarians to move to a single low-population state (New Hampshire, was selected in 2003) in order to make the state a stronghold for libertarian ideas.[229][230] As of May 2022, approximately 6,232 participants have moved to New Hampshire for the Free State Project.[231]
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[232] despite having contrasts with libertarian values and views in some areas such as free trade, immigration, nationalism and social issues.[233] 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.[234] Named after the Boston Tea Party, it also contains conservative[235][236][237] and populist elements[238][239][240] 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.[241][242] Mostly, Tea Party organizations are said to have shifted away from national demonstrations to local issues.[241] 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".[243]
In 2012, anti-war and pro-drug liberalization presidential candidates such as Libertarian RepublicanRon Paul and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson raised millions of dollars and garnered millions of votes despite opposition to their obtaining ballot access by both Democrats and Republicans.[244] The 2012 Libertarian National Convention saw Johnson and Jim Gray being nominated as the 2012 presidential ticket for the Libertarian Party, resulting 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.[245][246] 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.[247][248][249] The 2016 Libertarian National Convention saw Johnson and Bill Weld nominated as the 2016 presidential ticket and resulted in the most successful result for a third-party presidential candidacy since 1996 and the best in the Libertarian Party's history by vote number. Johnson received 3% of the popular vote, amounting to more than 4.3 million votes.[250] Following the 2022 Libertarian National Convention, the Mises Caucus, a paleolibertarian faction, became the dominant faction on the Libertarian National Committee.[251][252]
Criticism of libertarianism includes ethical, economic, environmental, pragmatic and philosophical concerns, especially in relation to right-libertarianism,[258][259][260][261][262][263] including the view that it has no explicit theory of liberty.[62] It has been argued that laissez-fairecapitalism does not necessarily produce the best or most efficient outcome,[264][265] nor does its philosophy of individualism and policies of deregulation prevent the abuse of natural resources.[266] Critics have also accused libertarianism of promoting "atomistic" individualism that ignores the role of groups and communities in shaping an individual's identity.[1] Critics such as Corey Robin describe this type of libertarianism as fundamentally a reactionaryconservative ideology united with more traditionalist conservative thought and goals by a desire to enforce hierarchical power and social relations.[83]
Similarly, Nancy MacLean has argued that libertarianism is a radical right ideology that has stood against democracy. According to MacLean, libertarian-leaning Charles and David Koch have used anonymous, dark money campaign contributions, a network of libertarian institutes and lobbying for the appointment of libertarian, pro-business judges to United States federal and state courts to oppose taxes, public education, employee protection laws, environmental protection laws and the New DealSocial Security program.[267]
Conservative philosopher Russell Kirk argued that libertarians "bear no authority, temporal or spiritual" and do not "venerate ancient beliefs and customs, or the natural world, or [their] country, or the immortal spark in [their] fellow men."[1]
Criticism of left-libertarianism is instead mainly related to anarchism and includes allegations of utopianism,[268] tacit authoritarianism[269][270] and vandalism towards feats of civilisation.[271]
^ abcdBoaz, David (30 January 2009). "Libertarianism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 4 May 2015. Retrieved 21 February 2017. [L]ibertarianism, political philosophy that takes individual liberty to be the primary political value.
^Woodcock, George (2004) [1962]. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. Peterborough: Broadview Press. p. 16. ISBN978-1551116297. [F]or the very nature of the libertarian attitude—its rejection of dogma, its deliberate avoidance of rigidly systematic theory, and, above all, its stress on extreme freedom of choice and on the primacy of the individual judgement [sic].
^ abcLong, Joseph. W (1996). "Toward a Libertarian Theory of Class". Social Philosophy and Policy. 15 (2): 310. "When I speak of 'libertarianism' [...] I mean all three of these very different movements. It might be protested that LibCap [libertarian capitalism], LibSoc [libertarian socialism] and LibPop [libertarian populism] are too different from one another to be treated as aspects of a single point of view. But they do share a common—or at least an overlapping—intellectual ancestry."
^ abcCarlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilburn R., ed. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. London: Sage Publications. p. 1006Archived 30 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine. ISBN1412988764. "There exist three major camps in libertarian thought: right-libertarianism, socialist libertarianism, and left-libertarianism; the extent to which these represent distinct ideologies as opposed to variations on a theme is contested by scholars."
^Long, Roderick T. (2012). "The Rise of Social Anarchism". In Gaus, Gerald F.; D'Agostino, Fred, eds. The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy. p. 223Archived 30 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine. "In the meantime, anarchist theories of a more communist or collectivist character had been developing as well. One important pioneer is French anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque (1821–1864), who [...] appears to have been the first thinker to adopt the term 'libertarian' for this position; hence 'libertarianism' initially denoted a communist rather than a free-market ideology."
^Long, Roderick T. (2012). "Anarchism". In Gaus, Gerald F.; D'Agostino, Fred, eds. The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy. p. 227Archived 30 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine. "In its oldest sense, it is a synonym either for anarchism in general or social anarchism in particular."
^ abcRothbard, Murray (2009) [2007]. The Betrayal of the American Right(PDF). Mises Institute. p. 83. ISBN978-1610165013. Archived(PDF) from the original on 21 December 2019. Retrieved 10 November 2019. 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.
^ abcdMarshall, Peter (2009). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. p. 641Archived 30 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine. "For a long time, libertarian was interchangeable in France with anarchism but in recent years, its meaning has become more ambivalent. Some anarchists like Daniel Guérin will call themselves 'libertarian socialists', partly to avoid the negative overtones still associated with anarchism, and partly to stress the place of anarchism within the socialist tradition. Even Marxists of the New Left like E. P. Thompson call themselves 'libertarian' to distinguish themselves from those authoritarian socialists and communists who believe in revolutionary dictatorship and vanguard parties."
^ abcKropotkin, Peter (1927). Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings. Courier Dover Publications. p. 150. ISBN978-0486119861. It attacks not only capital, but also the main sources of the power of capitalism: law, authority, and the State.
^ abcOtero, Carlos Peregrin (2003). "Introduction to Chomsky's Social Theory". In Otero, Carlos Peregrin (ed.). Radical Priorities. Chomsky, Noam Chomsky (3rd ed.). Oakland, California: AK Press. p. 26. ISBN1902593693.
^ abcChomsky, Noam (2003). Carlos Peregrin Otero (ed.). Radical Priorities (3rd ed.). Oakland, California: AK Press. pp. 227–228. ISBN1902593693.
^ abcCarlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilbur R. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: An Encyclopedia. SAGE Publications. p. 1006Archived 21 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine. "[S]ocialist libertarians view any concentration of power into the hands of a few (whether politically or economically) as antithetical to freedom and thus advocate for the simultaneous abolition of both government and capitalism".
^ abcdefKymlicka, 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 premiss 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."
^ abcdefgGoodway, David (2006). Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 4Archived 8 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine. ISBN978-1846310256. "'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".
^ abMarshall, Peter (2008). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: Harper Perennial. p. 641Archived 7 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine. "Left libertarianism can therefore range from the decentralist who wishes to limit and devolve State power, to the syndicalist who wants to abolish it altogether. It can even encompass the Fabians and the social democrats who wish to socialize the economy but who still see a limited role for the State".
^ abcdefgNewman, Saul (2010). The Politics of Postanarchism, Edinburgh University Press. p. 43Archived 30 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine. ISBN978-0748634958. "It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism). There is a complex debate within this tradition between those like Robert Nozick, who advocate a 'minimal state', and those like Rothbard who want to do away with the state altogether and allow all transactions to be governed by the market alone. From an anarchist perspective, however, both positions—the minimal state (minarchist) and the no-state ('anarchist') positions—neglect the problem of economic domination; in other words, they neglect the hierarchies, oppressions, and forms of exploitation that would inevitably arise in a laissez-faire 'free' market. [...] Anarchism, therefore, has no truck with this right-wing libertarianism, not only because it neglects economic inequality and domination, but also because in practice (and theory) it is highly inconsistent and contradictory. The individual freedom invoked by right-wing libertarians is only a narrow economic freedom within the constraints of a capitalist market, which, as anarchists show, is no freedom at all".
^ abc"Anarchism". In Gaus, Gerald F.; D'Agostino, Fred, eds. (2012). The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy. p. 227. "The term 'left-libertarianism' has at least three meanings. In its oldest sense, it is a synonym either for anarchism in general or social anarchism in particular. Later it became a term for the left or Konkinite wing of the free-market libertarian movement, and has since come to cover a range of pro-market but anti-capitalist positions, mostly individualist anarchist, including agorism and mutualism, often with an implication of sympathies (such as for radical feminism or the labor movement) not usually shared by anarcho-capitalists. In a third sense it has recently come to be applied to a position combining individual self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to natural resources; most proponents of this position are not anarchists."
^ abcVallentyne, Peter (March 2009). "Libertarianism". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 ed.). Stanford, California: Stanford University. Archived from the original on 6 July 2019. Retrieved 5 March 2010. Libertarianism is committed to full self-ownership. A distinction can be made, however, between right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism, depending on the stance taken on how natural resources can be owned.
^ abcdMarshall, 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".
^ abcdefghCarlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilburn R., ed. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. London: Sage Publications. p. 1006Archived 21 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine. ISBN1412988764.
^ abFernandez, Frank (2001). Cuban Anarchism. The History of a Movement. Sharp Press. p. 9Archived 13 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine. "Thus, in the United States, the once exceedingly useful term 'libertarian' has been hijacked by egotists who are in fact enemies of liberty in the full sense of the word."
^Hussain, Syed B. (2004). Encyclopedia of Capitalism, Volume 2. New York: Facts on File Inc. p. 492. ISBN0816052247. Archived from the original on 30 September 2020. Retrieved 31 October 2015. In the modern world, political ideologies are largely defined by their attitude towards capitalism. Marxists want to overthrow it, liberals to curtail it extensively, conservatives to curtail it moderately. Those who maintain that capitalism is an excellent economic system, unfairly maligned, with little or no need for corrective government policy, are generally known as libertarians.
^Harkov, Lahav (17 March 2019). "The Feiglin phenomenon". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 17 March 2019. The leader of the rising Zehut Party is attracting more than just young potheads to his libertarian platform.
^"Zehut". Israel Democracy Institute. Retrieved 21 February 2019. [...] and personal liberty. Its platform includes libertarian economic positions [...].
^William Belsham (1789). Essays. C. Dilly. p. 11. Archived from the original on 11 April 2021. Retrieved 26 October 2020Original from the University of Michigan, digitized 21 May 2007{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
^The British Critic. p. 432. "The author's Latin verses, which are rather more intelligible than his English, mark him for a furious Libertarian (if we may coin such a term) and a zealous admirer of France, and her liberty, under Bonaparte; such liberty!"
^Seeley, John Robert (1878). Life and Times of Stein: Or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 3: 355.
^Marshall, Peter (2009). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. p. 641. "The word 'libertarian' has long been associated with anarchism, and has been used repeatedly throughout this work. The term originally denoted a person who upheld the doctrine of the freedom of the will; in this sense, Godwin was not a 'libertarian', but a 'necessitarian'. It came however to be applied to anyone who approved of liberty in general. In anarchist circles, it was first used by Joseph Déjacque as the title of his anarchist journal Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social published in New York in 1858. At the end of the last century, the anarchist Sebastien Faure took up the word, to stress the difference between anarchists and authoritarian socialists".
^Robert Graham, ed. (2005). Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas. Vol. One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE–1939). Montreal: Black Rose Books. §17.
^Woodcock, George (1962). Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. Meridian Books. p. 280. "He called himself a "social poet," and published two volumes of heavily didactic verse—Lazaréennes and Les Pyrénées Nivelées. In New York, from 1858 to 1861, he edited an anarchist paper entitled Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social, in whose pages he printed as a serial his vision of the anarchist Utopia, entitled L'Humanisphére."
^Ward, Colin (2004). Anarchism: A Very Short IntroductionArchived 13 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 62. "For a century, anarchists have used the word 'libertarian' as a synonym for 'anarchist', both as a noun and an adjective. The celebrated anarchist journal Le Libertaire was founded in 1896. However, much more recently the word has been appropriated by various American free-market philosophers [...]."
^Chomsky, Noam (23 February 2002). "The Week Online Interviews Chomsky". Z Magazine. Z Communications. Archived from the original on 13 January 2013. Retrieved 21 November 2011. The term libertarian as used in the US means something quite different from what it meant historically and still means in the rest of the world. Historically, the libertarian movement has been the anti-statist wing of the socialist movement. Socialist anarchism was libertarian socialism.
^Comegna, Anthony; Gomez, Camillo (3 October 2018). "Libertarianism, Then and Now"Archived 3 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Libertarianism. Cato Institute. "[...] Benjamin Tucker was the first American to really start using the term 'libertarian' as a self-identifier somewhere in the late 1870s or early 1880s." Retrieved 3 August 2020.
^Russell, Dean (May 1955). "Who Is A Libertarian?". The Freeman. Foundation for Economic Education. 5 (5). Archived from the original on 26 June 2010. Retrieved 6 March 2010.
^Guérin, Daniel (1970). Anarchism: From Theory to Practice. New York City: Monthly Review Press. p. 12. "[A]narchism 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." ISBN978-0853451754.
^Harmel, Robert; Gibson, Rachel K. (June 1995). "Right‐Libertarian Parties and the "New Values": A Re‐examination". Scandinavian Political Studies. 18 (July 1993): 97–118. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9477.1995.tb00157.x.
^Hess, Karl (18 February 2015). "Anarchism Without Hyphens & The Left/Right Spectrum"Archived 17 March 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Center for a Stateless Society. Tulsa Alliance of the Libertarian Left. Retrieved 17 March 2020. "The far left, as far as you can get away from the right, would logically represent the opposite tendency and, in fact, has done just that throughout history. The left has been the side of politics and economics that opposes the concentration of power and wealth and, instead, advocates and works toward the distribution of power into the maximum number of hands."
^Rothbard, Murray (Spring 1965). "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty". Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought. 1 (1): 4–22.
^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. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n112. ISBN978-1412965804. LCCN2008009151. OCLC750831024. Archived from the original on 30 September 2020. Retrieved 31 October 2015. 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.
^"About the Libertarian Party"Archived 8 May 2018 at the Wayback Machine. Libertarian Party. "Libertarians strongly oppose any government interference into their personal, family, and business decisions. Essentially, we believe all Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests as they see fit as long as they do no harm to another". Retrieved 2 May 2020.
^Nozick, Robert (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Basic Books.
^Thaler, Richard; Sunstein, Cass (2003). "Libertarian Paternalism". The American Economic Review. 93: 175–179.
^Sterba, James (2013). The Pursuit of Justice. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 66. ISBN978-1442221796.
^Carter, Ian (2 August 2016). "Positive and Negative Liberty". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archived from the original on 16 November 2019. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
^Sterba, James (1980). Justice: Alternative Political Perspectives. Boston: Wadsworth Publishing Company. p. 175. ISBN978-0534007621.
^Sterba, James (2013). The Pursuit of Justice. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 52. ISBN978-1442221796.
^Mahdjour, Nima (6 June 2016). "Modern Monetary Theory". Beinglibertarian.co. Archived from the original on 20 February 2022. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
^ abKiley, Jocelyn (25 August 2014). "In Search of Libertarians"Archived 7 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Pew Research Center. "14% say the term libertarian describes them well; 77% of those know the definition (11% of total), while 23% do not (3% of total)."
^Kropotkin, Peter (13 January 2017). "Anarchism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 19 April 2022. Retrieved 16 April 2020. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions.
^Garbooshian, Adrina Michelle (2006). The Concept of Human Dignity in the French and American Enlightenments: Religion, Virtue, Liberty. ProQuest. p. 472[dead link]. ISBN978-0542851605. "Influenced by Locke and Smith, certain segments of society affirmed classical liberalism, with a libertarian bent."
^Rocker, Rudolf (1949). Pioneers of American Freedom: Origin of Liberal and Radical Thought in America. New York: J. J. Little & Ives Company. p. 13. "It was the great service of liberal thinkers like Jefferson and Paine that they recognized the natural limitations of every form of government. That is why they did not want to see the state become a terrestrial Providence which in its infallibility would make on its own every decision, thereby not only blocking the road to higher forms of social development, but also crippling the natural sense of responsibility of the people which is the essential condition for every prosperous society".
^Tucker, Benjamin (1926) [1976]. Individual Liberty. New York: Vanguard Press. p. 13. "The Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats. They believe that 'the best government is that which governs least,' and that that which governs least is no government at all".
^Scott, James C. (2012). Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play. Princeton University Press. pp. 79–80. "At one end of an institutional continuum one can place the total institutions that routinely destroy the autonomy and initiative of their subjects. At the other end of this continuum lies, perhaps, some ideal version of Jeffersonian democracy composed of independent, self-reliant, self-respecting, landowning farmers, managers of their own small enterprises, answerable to themselves, free of debt, and more generally with no institutional reason for servility or deference. Such free-standing farmers, Jefferson thought, were the basis of a vigorous and independent public sphere where citizens could speak their mind without fear or favor. Somewhere in between these two poles lies the contemporary situation of most citizens of Western democracies: a relatively open public sphere but a quotidian institutional experience that is largely at cross purposes with the implicit assumptions behind this public sphere and encouraging and often rewarding caution, deference, servility, and conformity".
^Long, Roderick T. (1998). "Toward a Libertarian Theory of Class". Social Philosophy and Policy. 15 (2): 310. doi:10.1017/s0265052500002028.
^Hoffman, David C. (Fall 2006). "Paine and Prejudice: Rhetorical Leadership through Perceptual Framing in Common Sense". Rhetoric and Public Affairs. 9 (3): 373–410.
^Maier, Pauline (1997). American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York City: Knopf. pp. 90–91.
^Hitchens, Christopher (2006). Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. Grove Press. p. 37. ISBN0802143830.
^"What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual conscience."Mini-Manual of Individualism by Han Ryner
^"I do not admit anything except the existence of the individual, as a condition of his sovereignty. To say that the sovereignty of the individual is conditioned by Liberty is simply another way of saying that it is conditioned by itself.""Anarchism and the State" in Individual Liberty
^The Encyclopedia Americana: A Library of Universal Knowledge. Encyclopedia Corporation. p. 176.
^Miller, David. "Anarchism". 1987. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought. Blackwell Publishing. p. 11.
^Nyberg, Svein Olav. "The union of egoists"(PDF). Non Serviam. Oslo, Norway: Svein Olav Nyberg. 1: 13–14. OCLC47758413. Archived from the original(PDF) on 7 December 2010. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
^Nomad, Max (1966). "The Anarchist Tradition". In Drachkovitch, Milorad M. (ed.). The Revolutionary Internationals, 1864–1943. Stanford University Press. p. 88. ISBN0804702934.[verification needed]
^Avrich, Paul (1995) [2006]. Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America. Edinburgh, Scotland; Oakland, West Virginia: AK Press. p. 6. ISBN978-1904859277.
^Boaz, David (1997). The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman. New York: Free Press. p. 31.
^ ab"What was Ayn Rand's view of the libertarian movement?". Ayn Rand Institute. Archived from the original on 15 January 2014. Retrieved 5 March 2014. More specifically, I disapprove of, disagree with and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called "hippies of the right," who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. [...] libertarians are a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people: they plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose, and denounce me in a more vicious manner than any communist publication when that fits their purpose.
^Galles, Gary (2013). Apostle of Peace: The Radical Mind of Leonard Read. Laissez Faire Books. ISBN978-1621290513.
^Halle, Roland; Ladue, Peter (1980). Karl Hess: Toward Liberty. Direct Cinema, Ltd. [M16 2824 K].
^Raimondo, Justin (2001). An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard. Amherst: Prometheus. pp. 277–278.
^Doherty, Brian (2007). Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. New York: Public Affairs. pp. 562–565.
^Rothbard, Murray (5 June 1986). "Letter to David Bergland". Rothbard emphasized that this was relevant as a matter of strategy, writing that the failure to pitch the libertarian message to Middle America might result in the loss of "the tight-assed majority".
^Raimondo, Justin (2001). An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard. Amherst: Prometheus. pp. 263–264.
^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.
^Rothbard, Murray. (2009). The Betrayal of the American Right. Ludwig von Mises Institute. ISBN1610165012.
^Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew (14 October 2015). Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture. Chicago. ISBN978-0226285573. OCLC922640625.
^"Friedman and Freedom". Queen's Journal. Archived from the original on 11 August 2006. Retrieved 20 February 2008., Interview with Peter Jaworski. The Journal, Queen's University, March 15, 2002 – Issue 37, Volume 129
^"Farrell provides a detailed history of the Catholic Workers and their founders Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. He explains that their pacifism, anarchism, and commitment to the downtrodden were one of the important models and inspirations for the 60s. As Farrell puts it, "Catholic Workers identified the issues of the sixties before the Sixties began, and they offered models of protest long before the protest decade.""The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism" by James J. FarrellArchived 6 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine.
^"While not always formally recognized, much of the protest of the sixties was anarchist. Within the nascent women's movement, anarchist principles became so widespread that a political science professor denounced what she saw as "The Tyranny of Structurelessness." Several groups have called themselves "Amazon Anarchists." After the Stonewall Rebellion, the New York Gay Liberation Front based their organization in part on a reading of Murray Bookchin's anarchist writings." "Anarchism" by Charley Shively in Encyclopedia of HomosexualityArchived 19 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine. p. 52.
^"Within the movements of the sixties there was much more receptivity to anarchism-in-fact than had existed in the movements of the thirties ... But the movements of the sixties were driven by concerns that were more compatible with an expressive style of politics, with hostility to authority in general and state power in particular ... By the late sixties, political protest was intertwined with cultural radicalism based on a critique of all authority and all hierarchies of power. Anarchism circulated within the movement along with other radical ideologies. The influence of anarchism was strongest among radical feminists, in the commune movement, and probably in the Weather Underground and elsewhere in the violent fringe of the anti-war movement." "Anarchism and the Anti-Globalization Movement" by Barbara EpsteinArchived 17 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine.
^Brennan, Jason (2012). Libertarianism What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford University Press. p. 142. Is the Tea Party libertarian? Overall, the Tea Party movement is not libertarian, though it has many libertarian elements, and many libertarians are Tea Partiers. [...] They share the libertarian view that DC tends to be corrupt, and that Washington often promotes special interests at the expense of the common good. However, Tea Party members are predominantly populist, nationalist, social conservatives rather than libertarians. Polls indicate that most Tea Partiers believe government should have an active role in promoting traditional "family values" or conservative Judeo-Christian values. Many of them oppose free trade and open immigration. They tend to favor less government intervention in the domestic economy but more government intervention in international trade.
^Peter Wallsten, Danny Yadron (29 September 2010). "Tea-Party Movement Gathers Strength". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 13 September 2018. Retrieved 8 August 2017.
^Gairdner, William D. (2007) [1990]. The Trouble with Canada: A Citizen Speaks Out. Toronto: BPS Books. pp. 101–102. ISBN978-0978440220. The first, we would call "libertarianism" today. Libertarians wanted to get all government out of people's lives. This movement is still very much alive today. In fact, in the United States, it is the third largest political party, and ran 125 candidates during the U.S. election of 1988.
^Fried, Barbara (2009). The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire: Robert Hale and the First Law and Economics Movement. Harvard University Press. p. 50. ISBN978-0674037304.
Attas, Daniel (2010). "Libertarianism". In Bevir, Mark. Encyclopedia of Political Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. pp. 810–818. ISBN978-1412958653.
Carlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilburn R., ed. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. London: Sage Publications. ISBN978-1412988766.
Doherty, Brian (2007). Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. PublicAffairs.
Hospers, John (1971). Libertarianism. Santa Barbara, CA: Reason Press.
Hunt, E. K. (2003). Property and Prophets: the Evolution of Economic Institutions and Ideologies. New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc. ISBN0765606089.
Kinna, Ruth (2010). "Anarchism". In Bevir, Mark. Encyclopedia of Political Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. pp. 34–37. ISBN978-1412958653.
McLaughlin, Paul (2007). Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism. AshGate.
Miller, David; Coleman, Janet; Connolly, William; Ryan, Alan (1991). The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN978-0631179443.
Richardson, James L. (2001). Contending Liberalisms in World Politics: Ideology and Power. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. ISBN155587939X.
Ward, Colin (2004). Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0192804778.
Woodcock, George (2004). Anarchism. University of Toronto Press. ISBN978-1551116297.