Left-libertarianism
[4] In the United States, left-libertarianism is the term used for the left wing of the American libertarian movement,[3] including the political positions associated with academic philosophers Hillel Steiner, Philippe Van Parijs, and Peter Vallentyne that combine self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to natural resources.
The anarchist ideology and movement are firmly rooted within this broad ideational category, together with other branches of left-libertarianism such as council communism, anarcho-syndicalism or autonomism.
[13] This contemporary model of left-libertarianism, associated mainly with Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner,[39] distinguishes itself from right-libertarianism in its advocacy of the social ownership and equitable distribution of natural resources, while also upholding the libertarian principle of self-ownership.
[2][3][8][10][11] Left-libertarians generally uphold self-ownership and oppose strong private property rights, instead supporting the egalitarian distribution of natural resources.
[48] In contrast to individualist tendencies, social anarchism rejects private property and market relations,[49] which they believe will be eliminated with the abolition of the state.
[51] The contemporary left-libertarian Murray Bookchin advocated for the replacement of the state with a libertarian communist society, which he saw as a decentralized confederation of municipalities, in which decisions would be made by direct democracy.
[34] From this point until the late 2010s, "the main tendency in radical left activism shifted from party-based Marxism-Leninism to network-based, direct-action activism based on libertarian socialist ideals… shifting [in this period] from direct-action networks that engaged in a variety of political issue—anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, feminism, animal rights, etc.—to more 'conventional' networks of organizations and initiatives through which activists intervened in local politics and neighborhood and workplace conflicts.
left-wing market anarchism) advocated by Kevin Carson, Gary Chartier, and Charles W. Johnson,[56] who together formed the Alliance of the Libertarian Left and the subsequent Center for a Stateless Society.
[58] Free-market anti-capitalists hold market intervention responsible for capitalist control of the means of production, a situation they believe will be solved by the introduction of free competition.
Building on Tucker's ideas, Kevin Carson has also defended the labor theory of value and occupancy-and-use land ownership, although not all free-market anti-capitalists agree with these positions.
"[65] According to Herbert Kitschelt, left libertarian parties are "post-materialist" in that they reject the primary status of economic issues, and argue that "the predominance of markets and bureaucracies must be rolled back in favor of social solidarity relations and participatory institutions".
[66] He posits that the strong commitment to direct participation leads to the weakness (or even absence) of formal structurel, centralized organization, leadership and hierarchy, and "a sometimes chaotic ‘assembly’ organizational style (as best illustrated by the water-balloon attack on Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer at the 1999 congress of the German Greens).
[65] Such parties attempt to apply left-libertarian ideas to a more pragmatic system of democratic governance as opposed to contemporary individualist or socialist libertarianism.
[78] Contemporary left-libertarian scholars such as David Ellerman,[79][80] Michael Otsuka,[81] Hillel Steiner,[82] Peter Vallentyne[83] and Philippe Van Parijs[84] root an economic egalitarianism in the classical liberal concepts of self-ownership and land appropriation, combined with geoist or physiocratic views regarding the ownership of land and natural resources (e.g. those of Henry George and John Locke).
[87][88] Classical economists such as Henry George, John Stuart Mill, the early writings of Herbert Spencer,[89] among others, "provided the basis for the further development of the left libertarian perspective.
"[90] Most left-libertarians of this tradition support some form of economic rent redistribution on the grounds that each individual is entitled to an equal share of natural resources[91] and argue for the desirability of state social welfare programs.
[92][93] Scholars representing this school of left-libertarianism often understand their position in contrast to right-libertarians, who maintain that there are no fair share constraints on use or appropriation that individuals have the power to appropriate unowned things by claiming them (usually by mixing their labor with them) and deny any other conditions or considerations are relevant and that there is no justification for the state to redistribute resources to the needy or to overcome market failures.
[87] These left-libertarians support some form of income redistribution on the grounds of a claim by each individual to be entitled to an equal share of natural resources.
