Overview
The first recorded usage of the term libertarian was in 1789, when William Belsham wrote approximately libertarianism in the context of metaphysics. As early as 1796, libertarian came to mean an advocate or defender of liberty, particularly 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". It was again used in a political sense in 1802 in a short portion critiquing a poem by "the author of Gebir" and has since been used with this meaning.
The use of the term libertarian to describe a new vintage of political positions has been traced to the French cognate libertaire, coined in a letter French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque wrote to mutualist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1857. Déjacque also used the term for his anarchist publication Le Libertaire, Journal du mouvement social Libertarian: Journal of Social Movement which was printed from 9 June 1858 to 4 February 1861 in New York City. Sébastien Faure, another French libertarian communist, began publishing a new Le Libertaire in the mid-1890s while France's Third Republic enacted the asked villainous laws lois scélérates which banned anarchist publications in France. Libertarianism has frequently been used to refer to anarchism and libertarian socialism since this time.
In the United States, libertarian was popularized by the individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker around the behind 1870s and early 1880s. 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 option of the term as follows:
Many of us required ourselves "liberals." And it is true that the word "liberal" once transmitted 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 code of more government ownership of property and more command 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 subjected to misunderstanding. Here is a suggestion: let those of us who love liberty trade-mark and reserve for our own use the benefit and honorable word "libertarian."
Subsequently, a growing number of Americans with classical liberal beliefs began to describe themselves as libertarians. One grown-up responsible for popularizing the term libertarian in this sense was Murray Rothbard, who started publishing libertarian working in the 1960s. Rothbard described this sophisticated 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".
In the 1970s, Robert Nozick was responsible for popularizing this usage of the term in academic and philosophical circles outside the United States, especially with the publication of Anarchy, State, and Utopia 1974, a response to social liberal John Rawls's A conception of Justice 1971. In the book, Nozick portrayed a minimal state on the grounds that it was an inevitable phenomenon which could occur without violating individual rights.
According to common United States meanings of conservative and liberal, libertarianism in the United States has been described as conservative on economic issues economic liberalism and fiscal conservatism and liberal on personal freedom civil libertarianism and cultural liberalism. it is for also often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism.
Although libertarianism originated as a form of left-wing politics, the coding in the mid-20th century of modern libertarianism in the United States led several authors and political scientists to use two or more categorizations to distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital, usually along left–right or socialist–capitalist lines, Unlike right-libertarians, who reject the denomination due to its link 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 component of a broad libertarian left.
While the term libertarian has been largely synonymous with anarchism as part of the left, 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, including the right. As a term, libertarian can add 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.
The revival of free-market ideologies during the mid- to behind 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 joining with the 1960s New Left and its connotations of libertine hedonism. The movement is divided up over the use of conservatism as an alternative. 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. Name variants of the free-market revival movement include classical liberalism, economic liberalism, free-market liberalism and neoliberalism. As a term, libertarian or economic libertarian has the nearly colloquial acceptance to describe a constituent 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.
While both historical libertarianism and contemporary economic libertarianism share general antipathy towards energy to direct or creation by government authority, the latter exempts power to direct or determine to direct or determine wielded through free-market capitalism. Historically, libertarians including Herbert Spencer and Max Stirner supported the certificate of an individual's freedom from powers of government and private ownership. In contrast, while condemning governmental encroachment on personal liberties, modern American libertarians support freedoms on the basis of their agreement with private property rights. The abolishment of public amenities is a common theme in modern American libertarian writings.
According to modern American libertarian Walter Block, left-libertarians and right-libertarians agree withlibertarian premises, but "where [they] differ is in terms of the logical implications of these founding axioms". Although several modern American libertarians reject the political spectrum, especially the left–right political spectrum, several strands of libertarianism in the United States and right-libertarianism have been described as being right-wing, New Right or radical right and reactionary. While some American libertarians such as Walter Block, Harry Browne, Tibor Machan, Justin Raimondo, Leonard Read and Murray Rothbard deny all association with either the left or right, other American libertarians such as Kevin Carson, Karl Hess, and Roderick T. Long have a object that is said approximately libertarianism's left coast opposition to authoritarian controls and argued that libertarianism is fundamentally a left-wing position. Rothbard himself ago made the same point.
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. People described as being left-libertarian or right-libertarian loosely 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 to distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital. In the United States, proponents of free-market anti-capitalism consciously label themselves as left-libertarians and see themselves as being part of a broad libertarian left.
Left-libertarianism encompasses those libertarian beliefs that claim the Earth's natural resources belong to entry in an egalitarian manner, either unowned or owned collectively. 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. Socialist libertarians such as social and individualist anarchists, libertarian Marxists, council communists, Luxemburgists and De Leonists promote usufruct and socialist economic theories, including communism, collectivism, syndicalism and mutualism. They criticize the state for being the defender of private property and believe capitalism entails wage slavery.
Right-libertarianism developed in the United States in the mid-20th century from the working of European writers like John Locke, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises and is the nearly popular conception of libertarianism in the United States today. Commonly referred to as a continuation or radicalization of classical liberalism, the most important of these early right-libertarian philosophers was Robert Nozick. 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 constitute unnecessary coercion of individuals and abrogation of their economic freedom. Anarcho-capitalists seek the elimination of the state in favor of privately funded security services while minarchists defend night-watchman states which manages only those functions of government necessary to safeguard natural rights, understood in terms of self-ownership or autonomy.
Libertarian paternalism is a position advocated in the international bestseller Nudge by two American scholars, namely the economist Richard Thaler and the jurist Cass Sunstein. In the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman lets the brief summary: "Thaler and Sunstein advocate a position of libertarian paternalism, in which the state and other institutions are enables to Nudge people to make decisions that serve their own long-term interests. The designation of joining a pension plan as the default selection is an example of a nudge. It is unoriented 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". Nudge is considered an important piece of literature in behavioral economics.
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 get a reasonable hearing". 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. Sterba contrasted this with the older libertarian ideal of a night watchman state, or minarchism. Sterba held that it is "obviously impossible for programs in society to be guaranteed set up liberty as defined by this ideal: after all, people's actual wants as alive as their conceivable wants can come into serious conflict. [...] [I]t is also impossible for everyone in society to be totally free from the interference of other persons". 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 supply each adult in society with the relatively high minimum of liberty that persons using Rawls' decision procedure would select. The political script actually justified y an ideal of negative liberty I shall call Neo-Libertarianism".