Libertarianism
[4][6] They generally support individual liberty and oppose authority, state power, warfare, militarism and nationalism, but some libertarians diverge on the scope and nature of their opposition to existing economic and political systems.
[27] During this time period, the term "libertarian" became used by growing numbers of people to advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights such as in land, infrastructure and natural resources.
[39][40] In 2022, former student activist and self-described libertarian socialist Gabriel Boric became head of state of Chile after winning the 2021 Chilean presidential election with the Apruebo Dignidad coalition.
[4] Proposed examples of systems that evolved through spontaneous order or self-organization include the evolution of life on Earth, language, crystal structure, the Internet, Wikipedia, workers' councils, Horizontalidad, and a free market economy.
Based on the works of European writers like John Locke, Frederic Bastiat, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises, it developed in the United States in the mid-20th century, and is now the most popular conception of libertarianism.
[74][76][78][79][24] Contemporary left-libertarians such as Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne, Philippe Van Parijs, Michael Otsuka and David Ellerman believe the appropriation of land must leave "enough and as good" for others or be taxed by society to compensate for the exclusionary effects of private property.
[118] Libertarian paternalism[119] is a position advocated in the international bestseller Nudge by two American scholars, namely the economist Richard Thaler and the jurist Cass Sunstein.
[120] 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.
According to Jesse Walker, writing in the libertarian magazine Reason, libertarian populists oppose "big government" while also opposing "other large, centralized institutions" and advocate "tak[ing] an axe to the thicket of corporate subsidies, favors, and bailouts, clearing our way to an economy where businesses that can't make money serving customers don't have the option of wringing profits from the taxpayers instead".
[74][21][22] Elements of libertarianism can be traced back to the higher-law concepts of the Greeks and the Israelites, and Christian theologians who argued for the moral worth of the individual and the division of the world into two realms, one of which is the province of God and thus beyond the power of states to control it.
[138] Similarly, the Cato Institute's David Boaz includes passages from the Tao Te Ching in his 1997 book The Libertarian Reader and noted in an article for the Encyclopædia Britannica that Laozi advocated for rulers to "do nothing" because "without law or compulsion, men would dwell in harmony".
[152] 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.
[159] After the anarchist Makhnovshchina helped stave off the White movement during the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks turned on the Makkhnovists and contributed to the schism between the anarcho-syndicalists and the Communists.
[160] With the rise of fascism in Europe between the 1920s and the 1930s, anarchists began to fight fascists in Italy,[161] in France during the February 1934 riots[162] 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.
In 1938, Horacio Prieto, general secretary of the CNT, proposed that the Iberian Anarchist Federation transform itself into the Libertarian Socialist Party and that it participate in the national elections.
Well known associates of the Push include Jim Baker, John Flaus, Harry Hooton, Margaret Fink, Sasha Soldatow,[178] Lex Banning, Eva Cox, Richard Appleton, Paddy McGuinness, David Makinson, Germaine Greer, Clive James, Robert Hughes, Frank Moorhouse and Lillian Roxon.
[189] The Vietnam War split the uneasy alliance between the growing numbers of American libertarians, on the one hand, and conservatives who believed in limiting liberty to uphold moral virtues on the other.
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.
[192][193] This left-libertarian tradition has been carried to the present day by Konkin's agorists,[194] contemporary mutualists such as Kevin Carson,[195] Roderick T. Long[196] and others such as Gary Chartier[197] Charles W. Johnson[198][199] Sheldon Richman,[200] Chris Matthew Sciabarra[201] and Brad Spangler.
[205] 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.
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.
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".
[229] Since the end of the Cold War, there have been at least two major experiments in libertarian socialism: the Zapatista uprising in Mexico, during which the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) enabled the formation of a self-governing autonomous territory in the Mexican state of Chiapas;[230] and the Rojava Revolution in Syria, which established the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) as a "libertarian socialist alternative to the colonially established state boundaries in the Middle East.
"[230] In 2022, student activist and self-described libertarian socialist Gabriel Boric became head of state of Chile after winning the 2021 Chilean presidential election with the Apruebo Dignidad coalition.
[233] 2009 saw the rise of the Tea Party, an American political movement known for advocating reductions in the United States national debt and federal budget deficits by reducing government spending, as well as cutting taxes.
[241][242] 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.
Milei, a self-described "liberal libertarian," became the face of this movement, transforming it from an academic discourse into a powerful political phenomenon that culminated in his victory in the 2023 Argentine general election.
His economic proposals included substantial government spending reduction, elimination of numerous federal agencies, and promoting currency competition through free market mechanisms.
The intellectual foundations of Milei's libertarianism draw from classical liberal thinkers like Milton Friedman and Murray Rothbard, emphasizing individual economic freedom and minimal state intervention.
[260] 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".
