I'm not a huge fan of Murray Rothbard. Though I'm ostensibly a "libertarian" like him, I find myself pretty well disgusted by his pandering to the Buchanan Brigades and his willingness to accept capitalist collaboration and cartelization. But I do credit him, and this article in particular, for the beginning of my intellectual journey to left-libertarianism. And while I doubt he'd have much truck with my version of libertarianism - which owes a lot more to the Spanish syndicalists of the 20th century interbellum than to Thomas Jefferson - I think we're kindred spirits in our hatred of Ronald Reagan.

http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard60.html

There was no "Reagan Revolution." Any "revolution" in the direction of liberty (in Ronnie’s words "to get government off our backs") would reduce the total level of government spending. And that means reduce in absolute terms, not as proportion of the gross national product, or corrected for inflation, or anything else. There is no divine commandment that the federal government must always be at least as great a proportion of the national product as it was in 1980. If the government was a monstrous swollen Leviathan in 1980, as libertarians were surely convinced, as the inchoate American masses were apparently convinced and as Reagan and his cadre claimed to believe, then cutting government spending was in order. At the very least, federal government spending should have been frozen, in absolute terms, so that the rest of the economy would be allowed to grow in contrast. Instead, Ronald Reagan cut nothing, even in the heady first year, 1981.

At first, the only "cut" was in Carter’s last-minute loony-tunes estimates for the future. But in a few short years, Reagan’s spending surpassed even Carter’s irresponsible estimates. Instead, Reagan not only increased government spending by an enormous amount – so enormous that it would take a 40 percent cut to bring us back to Carter’s wild spending totals of 1980 – he even substantially increased the percentage of government spending to GNP. That’s a "revolution"? The much-heralded 1981 tax cut was more than offset by two tax increases that year. One was "bracket creep," by which just inflation wafted people into higher tax brackets, so that with the same real income (in terms of purchasing power) people found themselves paying a higher proportion of their income in taxes, even though the official tax rate went down. The other was the usual whopping increase in Social Security taxes which, however, don’t count, in the perverse semantics of our time, as "taxes"; they are only "insurance premiums." In the ensuing years the Reagan Administration has constantly raised taxes – to punish us for the fake tax cut of 1981 – beginning in 1982 with the largest single tax increase in American history, costing taxpayers $100 billion.

Creative semantics is the way in which Ronnie was able to keep his pledge never to raise taxes while raising them all the time. Reagan’s handlers, as we have seen, annoyed by the stubborn old coot’s sticking to "no new taxes," finessed the old boy by simply calling the phenomenon by a different name. If the Gipper was addled enough to fall for this trick, so did the American masses – and a large chuck of libertarians and self-proclaimed free-market economists as well! "Let’s close another loophole, Mr. President." "We-e-ell, OK, then, so long as we’re not raising taxes." (Definition of loophole: Any and all money the other guy has earned and that hasn’t been taxed away yet. Your money, of course, has been fairly earned, and shouldn’t be taxed further.) Income tax rates in the upper brackets have come down. But the odious bipartisan "loophole closing" of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 – an act engineered by our Jacobin egalitarian "free market" economists in the name of "fairness" – raised instead of lowered the income tax paid by most upper-income people. Again: what one hand of government giveth, the other taketh away, and then some. Thus, President-elect Bush has just abandoned his worthy plan to cut the capital gains tax in half, because it would violate the beloved tax fairness instituted by the bipartisan Reganite 1986 "reform."

The bottom line is that tax revenues have gone up an enormous amount under the eight years of Reagan; the only positive thing we can say for them is that revenues as percentage of the gross national product are up only slightly since 1980. The result: the monstrous deficit, now apparently permanently fixed somewhere around $200 billion, and the accompanying tripling of the total federal debt in the eight blessed years of the Reagan Era. Is that what the highly touted "Reagan Revolution" amounts to, then? A tripling of the national debt? We should also say a word about another of Ronnie’s great "libertarian" accomplishments. In the late 1970’s, it became obvious even to the man in the street that the Social Security System was bankrupt, kaput. For the first time in fifty years there was an excellent chance to get rid of the biggest single racket that acts as a gigantic Ponzi scheme to fleece the American taxpayer.

Instead, Reagan brought in the famed "Randian libertarian" Alan Greenspan, who served as head of a bipartisan commission, performing the miracle of "saving Social Security" and the masses have rested content with the system ever since. How did he "save" it? By raising taxes (oops "premiums"), of course; by that route, the government can "save" any program. (Bipartisan: both parties acting in concert to put both of their hands in your pocket.)

The way Reagan-Greenspan saved Social Security is a superb paradigm of Reagan’s historical function in all areas of his realm; he acted to bail out statism and to co-opt and defuse any libertarian or quasi-libertarian opposition. The method worked brilliantly, for Social Security and other programs. How about deregulation? Didn’t Ronnie at least deregulate the regulation-ridden economy inherited from the evil Carter? Just the opposite. The outstanding measures of deregulation were all passed by the Carter Administration, and, as is typical of that luckless President, the deregulation was phased in to take effect during the early Reagan years, so that the Gipper could claim the credit. Such was the story with oil and gas deregulation (which the Gipper did advance from September to January of 1981); airline deregulation and the actual abolition of the Civil Aeronautics Board, and deregulation of trucking. That was it. The Gipper deregulated nothing, abolished nothing. Instead of keeping his pledge to abolish the Departments of Energy and Education, he strengthened them, and even wound up his years in office adding a new Cabinet post, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Overall, the quantity and degree of government regulation of the economy was greatly increased and intensified during the Reagan years. The hated OSHA, the scourge of small business and at the time the second most-hated agency of federal government (surely you need not ask which is the first most-hated), was not only not abolished; it too was strengthened and reinforced. Environmentalist restrictions were greatly accelerated, especially after the heady early years when selling off some public lands was briefly mentioned, and the proponents of actually using and developing locked-up government resources (James Watt, Anne Burford, Rita Lavelle) were disgraced and sent packing as a warning to any future "anti-environmentalists."

The Reagan Administration, supposedly the champion of free trade, has been the most protectionist in American history, raising tariffs, imposing import quotas, and – as another neat bit of creative semantics – twisting the arms of the Japanese to impose "voluntary" export quotas on automobiles and microchips. It has made the farm program the most abysmal of this century: boosting price supports and production quotas, and paying many more billions of taxpayer money to farmers so that they can produce less and raise prices to consumers. And we should never forget a disastrous and despotic program that has received unanimous support from the media and from the envious American public: the massive witch hunt and reign of terror against the victimless non-crime of "insider trading." In a country where real criminals – muggers, rapists, and "inside" thieves – are allowed to run rampant, massive resources and publicity are directed toward outlawing the use of one’s superior knowledge and insight in order to make profits on the market.

Welcome to the Democratic Party- 31 years late.

In what way is the Democratic Party left-libertarian?

It isn't, though it must be admitted that it approached left-libertarian positions under George McGovern, who was certainly preferable from a libertarian perspdctive than Dick Nixon (Ayn Rand's uneducated caterwauling aside). Or to 1964-vintage AuH20, for that matter.

Originally Posted by Einzige

I'm not a huge fan of Murray Rothbard. Though I'm ostensibly a "libertarian" like him, I find myself pretty well disgusted by his pandering to the Buchanan Brigades and his willingness to accept capitalist collaboration and cartelization. But I do credit him, and this article in particular, for the beginning of my intellectual journey to left-libertarianism. And while I doubt he'd have much truck with my version of libertarianism - which owes a lot more to the Spanish syndicalists of the 20th century interbellum than to Thomas Jefferson - I think we're kindred spirits in our hatred of Ronald Reagan.

Unlike the characterizations of Eric the Obtuse, there were very few libertarians during the eighties. A much greater percentage of the population is libertarian in outlook now, which is why Ron Paul did as well as he did in the last two presidential elections. Rothbard had very little to choose from in the way of political allies at the time, so Buchanan could have seemed to be the lesser of evils. I have read much of his writing and his acceptance of cartelization, as you put it, was simply recognizing reality as it currently existed and his goal was always to eliminate the special privileges that allow it to exist in favor of the free market.

Originally Posted by Galen

Unlike the characterizations of Eric the Obtuse, there were very few libertarians during the eighties. A much greater percentage of the population is libertarian in outlook now, which is why Ron Paul did as well as he did in the last two presidential elections. Rothbard had very little to choose from in the way of political allies at the time, so Buchanan could have seemed to be the lesser of evils. I have read much of his writing and his acceptance of cartelization, as you put it, was simply recognizing reality as it currently existed and his goal was always to eliminate the special privileges that allow it to exist in favor of the free market.

Left wing Libertarianism? Like, Libertarianism without the few redeeming features it had?

Good grief. There's no such thing as "left libertarian", in the same way as there's no such thing as a good version of "Progressive".

The two ideas simply aren't compatible. "Left" is pure evil; because it represents domination and murder.

There is no version of "Left" that doesn't mean "I own you".

Originally Posted by Seattleblue

Good grief. There's no such thing as "left libertarian", in the same way as there's no such thing as a good version of "Progressive".

The two ideas simply aren't compatible. "Left" is pure evil; because it represents domination and murder.

There is no version of "Left" that doesn't mean "I own you".

Educate, my man. You're embarrasing yourself.

Can someone please explain where any republican had stood for smaller government overall in the past 30 years (hint, if your explanation involves anything regarding the states, not only are you wrong, but you're supporting more expensive governance).

Originally Posted by Kepi

Can someone please explain where any republican had stood for smaller government overall in the past 30 years (hint, if your explanation involves anything regarding the states, not only are you wrong, but you're supporting more expensive governance).

It is easy to get small government rhetoric out of most Republicans, strangely they never seem to follow through. This is the main problem libertarians have with the Republican Party and why the Libertarian Party was formed.

Originally Posted by Galen

It is easy to get small government rhetoric out of most Republicans, strangely they never seem to follow through. This is the main problem libertarians have with the Republican Party and why the Libertarian Party was formed.

Right, but to my knowledge, and correct me if I'm wrong, Libertarians are fine with state and local spending, its federal spending they have a problem with. But the alternatives wind up being consistently more expensive, which is why you frequently see republican style administration failing at decreasing costs and providing fewer services to boot.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Right, but to my knowledge, and correct me if I'm wrong, Libertarians are fine with state and local spending, its federal spending they have a problem with. But the alternatives wind up being consistently more expensive, which is why you frequently see republican style administration failing at decreasing costs and providing fewer services to boot.

It varies from libertarian to libertarian. It's a real fractious group, with no real central authority to determine what is and isn't libertarian. Hence, Einzige and Seattleblue.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Right, but to my knowledge, and correct me if I'm wrong, Libertarians are fine with state and local spending, its federal spending they have a problem with. But the alternatives wind up being consistently more expensive, which is why you frequently see republican style administration failing at decreasing costs and providing fewer services to boot.

Oh boy, getting libertarians to agree on something is like herding cats. Well, they do agree that freedom is good, just not necessarily what freedom means, whose freedoms come first, or whether or not particular freedom might have an unintended negative consequence.

The modern Libertarian Party is loosely composed of minarchists & anarcho-capitalists who don't need a state getting in the way of their Randian dreams of building an empire of private security guards around their castle. They bring the money and fund the conventions, but they have a hard time getting their guys nominated to the top spots.

Then you get your paleo-conservatives who believe in a very simplified type of government. Police would prevent disorder, courts would uphold contracts, but see most other public functions as being market activities. They tend to be in favor of international trade, but are dead against binding treaties, most warfare, and entangling alliances.

Somewhere down the line you get your federal-libertarians but local-liberals. They're like the politically homeless leftovers of the anti-federalists. There's also a bit of overlap between this group and the paleoconservatives, especially in foreign affairs.

I know a guy up in the LP in VA, and I've heard some crazy stories about the kind of chaos that erupts at the meetings. There's a bigger spectrum of discussion in that tiny sliver of the electorate, than there is on the stage at a CNN/NBC presidential debate.

But yeah... when you group up people who primarily identify through individualism... that's the only thing they really have in common.

Originally Posted by Galen

It is easy to get small government rhetoric out of most Republicans, strangely they never seem to follow through. This is the main problem libertarians have with the Republican Party and why the Libertarian Party was formed.

Correct... if you're talking about Republican POLITICIANS. The rank and file of the party generally prefer smaller government.

It's difficult for any politician to actually cut the size of government. They are immediately attacked as being mean or uncaring to those in need. It doesn't matter that we're robbing our kids to provide the benefits that they wish to cut or that they do so largely out of a moral obligation to avoid creating a burden on future generations. They're demonized anyway. Look at the horrible, wheel granny off the cliff ads the Dems ran about Paul Ryan.

There is also a large segment of the Republican party that are actually former liberals that defected when the Dems went too far to the left for their tastes or when they finally realized that liberal policies tend to hurt the very people they're intended to help. Ronald Reagan himself was such a person. So, is conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. Frequently (but not always), these types of people are more comfortable with a higher level of statism than those who have been conservative all their lives.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Right, but to my knowledge, and correct me if I'm wrong, Libertarians are fine with state and local spending, its federal spending they have a problem with.

I'm sure there are such individuals. But, my impression is that most folks of the libertarian persuasion are more concerned with national spending because that's where the majority of spending occurs. In most states, per capita spending at the state and local level is quite modest by comparison. Focus on the big problem first.

Additionally, the following factors tend to mitigate sentiment:
+ State and local spending are applied locally rather than in distant parts of the country. It's easier to see the results.
+ Because state and local governments are smaller, they tend to waste less. Libertarians are likely to appreciate that.

Originally Posted by Tussilago

Left wing Libertarianism? Like, Libertarianism without the few redeeming features it had?

Yes... well.... they exist. They're more commonly called "Anarchists," though.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Right, but to my knowledge, and correct me if I'm wrong, Libertarians are fine with state and local spending, its federal spending they have a problem with. But the alternatives wind up being consistently more expensive, which is why you frequently see republican style administration failing at decreasing costs and providing fewer services to boot.

It depends, at any libertarian gathering there is going to be three major groups. A minarchist libertarian would prefer to keep such spending to a minimum, centralization of political power is to be avoided as much as possible. The Objectivists are much the same except that Ayn Rand is the most important person who ever lived, think of them as the neocons of the libertarians since they have generally been in favor of the wars. The third group are the anarcho-capitalists who are of the opinion that the state is completely unnecessary, destructive in nature and can't be fixed and so hold that all social arrangements must be voluntary.

One thing all three of these groups agree on is that government because of its reliance on coercion to acquire resources is not subject to the profit and loss test. With the result that anything that it does being inefficient since without the profit and loss test economic calculation is not possible. See Mises for a complete explanation of why this is so. You should note that any business that had botched a web site as badly as the government did for Obamacare they would have suffered massive losses and probably went out of business as a consequence, the government will simply confiscate more of our resources at the point of a gun and continue on. I have no doubt that Obamacare will make everything worse for the same reason even if the consequences will not be quite as obvious.

Originally Posted by stilltim

I'm sure there are such individuals. But, my impression is that most folks of the libertarian persuasion are more concerned with national spending because that's where the majority of spending occurs. In most states, per capita spending at the state and local level is quite modest by comparison. Focus on the big problem first.

Additionally, the following factors tend to mitigate sentiment:
+ State and local spending are applied locally rather than in distant parts of the country. It's easier to see the results.
+ Because state and local governments are smaller, they tend to waste less. Libertarians are likely to appreciate that.

Spending at the federal level is high, because the taxing authority is strong and ability to sell bonds is strong enoough to keep interest rates low. Now, how much of the sate and local spending is actually Federal money, or directly offset by Federal money? If the states have to run things directly, there are going to be a lot of unhappy campers - mostly in the Red states that get huge Federal subsidies.

It would be nice to see how this would play, but I doubt we'll ever get there.

Originally Posted by Seattleblue

Good grief. There's no such thing as "left libertarian", in the same way as there's no such thing as a good version of "Progressive".

Except, you know, for the first ones.

Joseph Déjacque (December 27, 1821, Paris – 1864, Paris) was a French early anarcho-communist poet and writer. Déjacque was the first recorded person to employ the term libertarian (French: libertaire) for himself^[

The two ideas simply aren't compatible. "Left" is pure evil; because it represents domination and murder.

Tell it to the worker-owners of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation]Mondragon Corporation collective of worker's co-operatives in Spain.

There is no version of "Left" that doesn't mean "I own you".

The Confederacy was of the Left, then?

(Ah, right. Because the planter class consisted of Democrats; and we all know that Democrats = slavery = Left.)

Libertarianism is not complicated at all. It's a philosophy based on a very simple principle - that liberty should be the goal in any question of politics. That people should be free from coercion, that all associations and transactions should be voluntary, and more or less that the right of one person to swing their fist ends at the tip of another's nose (also known as the "harm principle" in classical liberalism). Libertarians do not believe in the complete removal of government, so the disagreements often arise about areas where there may be an exception to the principle of individual liberty.

"Left libertarian" generally means one of three things:

1. "Libertarian socialism" as championed by Noam Chomsky, which is an oxymoron built on a mountain of fallacies, not really worth wasting breath on.

2. Shallow hipsters who think libertarianism means "socially liberal and economically conservative", but end up taking totally wrong-headed and contradictory positions because they don't understand how to think about things from a principled libertarian perspective. For example, these types often vehemently support government-sanctioned, subsidized and regulated same-sex marriage, despite the fact that it is not, in any way, shape or form, a libertarian position (it is a radical egalitarian position of the far left).

3. Anarchists. Anarchists are communists. As noted above, they were the first to appropriate the term "libertarian", despite the fact that it is almost wholly inappropriate for what they believe. It counted then more as a particular flavor of communist thought. These communists could be said to be "more" libertarian than other types, but they were/are not libertarians. The modern American usage is almost completely divorced from that ideology, is much more consistent and accurate to the meaning of the word, and stands in for the loss of the term "liberal" which has been completely corrupted.

There is some variation among anarchists, but their belief system generally boils down to this: they advocate a violent revolution, overthrowing the government and appropriating whatever private property they deem to have been ill-gotten. At that point, they expect a pure, Utopian communism to arise naturally out of the people, despite the fact that human beings have never exhibited any tendency to behave in that way. That's a simplification, but it's fairly accurate. They believe that without government, there would be a communist Utopia. In that way they differ from the pure Marxists, who believe the revolution must be followed by a "dictatorship of the proletariat", which will re-shape society into the communist ideal, and state-run socialism. Once the state has done the job of completely re-shaping and re-educating the people out of their capitalist habits, the state will wither away, leaving a pure communist Utopia. Anarchists want to go directly from point A to point B. In that way they're arguably even more wrong-headed, naive and dangerous than the doctrinaire Marxists are. They also tend to be Luddites, worshiping an agrarian ideal that never existed, and totally fine with the complete disintegration of modern society, including infrastructure, technology and standards of living, that would occur if modern corporations and government were summarily and simultaneously destroyed.

Because libertarianism (as understood in America) has risen in popularity (and because the 2nd type of "libertarian" exists), anarchists have sought to glom on and resurrect their usage of the term, in the hope of fooling stupid people into supporting them. There is almost no relationship between the two things, but the argument over semantics and who "owns" the term rages on (mostly on the part of anarchists, because anarchists have a bad history and want to improve their image). Libertarians mostly ignore them, because anarchists are almost totally irrelevant to modern society.

As for Reagan, he never claimed to be a libertarian, so judging him on that basis is rather pointless. He was a conservative. That's always how he defined himself. What is true is that of all the presidents since Calvin Coolidge, he was by far the most libertarian, on balance. Nevertheless, he was not a purist libertarian by any stretch of the imagination. To explain Reagan you have to get into all the variations of conservative thought, of which libertarianism (I believe rightly) is considered a subset.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Libertarianism is not complicated at all. It's a philosophy based on a very simple principle - that liberty should be the goal in any question of politics. That people should be free from coercion, that all associations and transactions should be voluntary, and more or less that the right of one person to swing their fist ends at the tip of another's nose (also known as the "harm principle" in classical liberalism). Libertarians do not believe in the complete removal of government, so the disagreements often arise about areas where there may be an exception to the principle of individual liberty.

"Left libertarian" generally means one of three things:

1. "Libertarian socialism" as championed by Noam Chomsky, which is an oxymoron built on a mountain of fallacies, not really worth wasting breath on.

2. Shallow hipsters who think libertarianism means "socially liberal and economically conservative", but end up taking totally wrong-headed and contradictory positions because they don't understand how to think about things from a principled libertarian perspective. For example, these types often vehemently support government-sanctioned, subsidized and regulated same-sex marriage, despite the fact that it is not, in any way, shape or form, a libertarian position (it is a radical egalitarian position of the far left).

3. Anarchists. Anarchists are communists. As noted above, they were the first to appropriate the term "libertarian", despite the fact that it is almost wholly inappropriate for what they believe. It counted then more as a particular flavor of communist thought. These communists could be said to be "more" libertarian than other types, but they were/are not libertarians. The modern American usage is almost completely divorced from that ideology, is much more consistent and accurate to the meaning of the word, and stands in for the loss of the term "liberal" which has been completely corrupted.

There is some variation among anarchists, but their belief system generally boils down to this: they advocate a violent revolution, overthrowing the government and appropriating whatever private property they deem to have been ill-gotten. At that point, they expect a pure, Utopian communism to arise naturally out of the people, despite the fact that human beings have never exhibited any tendency to behave in that way. That's a simplification, but it's fairly accurate. They believe that without government, there would be a communist Utopia. In that way they differ from the pure Marxists, who believe the revolution must be followed by a "dictatorship of the proletariat", which will re-shape society into the communist ideal, and state-run socialism. Once the state has done the job of completely re-shaping and re-educating the people out of their capitalist habits, the state will wither away, leaving a pure communist Utopia. Anarchists want to go directly from point A to point B. In that way they're arguably even more wrong-headed, naive and dangerous than the doctrinaire Marxists are. They also tend to be Luddites, worshiping an agrarian ideal that never existed, and totally fine with the complete disintegration of modern society, including infrastructure, technology and standards of living, that would occur if modern corporations and government were summarily and simultaneously destroyed.

Because libertarianism (as understood in America) has risen in popularity (and because the 2nd type of "libertarian" exists), anarchists have sought to glom on and resurrect their usage of the term, in the hope of fooling stupid people into supporting them. There is almost no relationship between the two things, but the argument over semantics and who "owns" the term rages on (mostly on the part of anarchists, because anarchists have a bad history and want to improve their image). Libertarians mostly ignore them, because anarchists are almost totally irrelevant to modern society.

As for Reagan, he never claimed to be a libertarian, so judging him on that basis is rather pointless. He was a conservative. That's always how he defined himself. What is true is that of all the presidents since Calvin Coolidge, he was by far the most libertarian, on balance. Nevertheless, he was not a purist libertarian by any stretch of the imagination. To explain Reagan you have to get into all the variations of conservative thought, of which libertarianism (I believe rightly) is considered a subset.

Do you know "straw man?"

Generally speaking, there isn't much to be gained from saying what you think someone else thinks - especially if you don't really care to understand it in the first place.

Would it be useful if I told you what conservatives think?

Originally Posted by stilltim

I'm sure there are such individuals. But, my impression is that most folks of the libertarian persuasion are more concerned with national spending because that's where the majority of spending occurs. In most states, per capita spending at the state and local level is quite modest by comparison. Focus on the big problem first.

Additionally, the following factors tend to mitigate sentiment:
+ State and local spending are applied locally rather than in distant parts of the country. It's easier to see the results.
+ Because state and local governments are smaller, they tend to waste less. Libertarians are likely to appreciate that.

Well, most federal spending is military in nature, and there's not a generally a big push amongst either party to eliminate that. Second largest is transportation, and transportation is 1) a military program given to public dual purpose when not being used for military purposes and 2) prone to natural monopolies and therefore in the purvue of the government anyway, and because they deal in terms of commerce are within the realm of federal jurisdiction anyway.

Meanwhile, most of the rest of federal spending is distributed to state and local governments anyway, and they are intrinsically less efficient as a result because in order to transfer funds you're forcing the state or local governance to create a reciprocal organization to receive the funds and track and justify said spending. The amounts per capita of state and local spending are only lower because they're largely already funded federally. Attacking the state governments spending would attack the actual in efficiency. Either the feds would find a more efficient means of spending with state and local pipelines closed, our they'd budget less and less each year becausethat's how that works. If a department can't spend its budget, it gets less next year.

Either way, attacking the federal government for its spending habits while not sticking it to the less efficient, in so many ways, state and local governance seems more like an emotional response than any rational plan of attack.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Libertarianism is not complicated at all. It's a philosophy based on a very simple principle - that liberty should be the goal in any question of politics. That people should be free from coercion, that all associations and transactions should be voluntary, and more or less that the right of one person to swing their fist ends at the tip of another's nose (also known as the "harm principle" in classical liberalism). Libertarians do not believe in the complete removal of government, so the disagreements often arise about areas where there may be an exception to the principle of individual liberty.

No. One has no right even to threaten harm even if harm is not forthcoming. Add to that, self-defense is a right inherent in every living thing. Self-defense can be brutal. Molest puppies in the presence of their mother and you will discover how close a dog is to being a tiger.

"Left libertarian" generally means one of three things:

1. "Libertarian socialism" as championed by Noam Chomsky, which is an oxymoron built on a mountain of fallacies, not really worth wasting breath on.

Noam Chomsky is not an authority on politics. I wouldn't argue against him on linguistics.

2. Shallow hipsters who think libertarianism means "socially liberal and economically conservative", but end up taking totally wrong-headed and contradictory positions because they don't understand how to think about things from a principled libertarian perspective. For example, these types often vehemently support government-sanctioned, subsidized and regulated same-sex marriage, despite the fact that it is not, in any way, shape or form, a libertarian position (it is a radical egalitarian position of the far left).

I can imagine no libertarian approach to same-sex marriage except to allow it and treat it as equal as heterosexual marriage with adjustments to existing law parallel to those for heterosexual marriage. Basically no incest, and consenting adults only.

3. Anarchists. Anarchists are communists. As noted above, they were the first to appropriate the term "libertarian", despite the fact that it is almost wholly inappropriate for what they believe. It counted then more as a particular flavor of communist thought. These communists could be said to be "more" libertarian than other types, but they were/are not libertarians. The modern American usage is almost completely divorced from that ideology, is much more consistent and accurate to the meaning of the word, and stands in for the loss of the term "liberal" which has been completely corrupted.

The Soviet Civil War demonstrated the hostility between anarchists and Communists. Nestor Makhno, head of the Black (anarchist) army, rejected the rapid bureaucratization of the Soviet state and the repressive order of the tsarist Whites. Makhno executed a White general for killing Jews.

Anarchy is more likely to be distributist than socialist. Distributism contends that people must get equality in the means of making income without any certainty of getting the income. If there is to be government, then the only approach both socialist and democratic is to have as much direct democracy as possible. Socialism without democracy is of course tyranny just as is capitalism without democracy.

Contemporary capitalism has huge faults.

There is some variation among anarchists, but their belief system generally boils down to this: they advocate a violent revolution, overthrowing the government and appropriating whatever private property they deem to have been ill-gotten. At that point, they expect a pure, Utopian communism to arise naturally out of the people, despite the fact that human beings have never exhibited any tendency to behave in that way. That's a simplification, but it's fairly accurate.

Imagine a community without need -- one in which people work solely out of altruistic values and not out of fear of being beaten or starved. Imagine that status symbols lose all meaning. Imagine that bureaucracies serve humanity instead of the other way around. Such is what Karl Marx saw as a consequence of socialism that would dispense with the plutocrats and big landowners, and outpace capitalism in enhancement of productivity. Such is a revolution in itself, one that Marx missed. Capitalists could give working people a stake in the system by allowing the toil of workers to buy consumer goods; able to do so much of the alienation of early capitalism (the Capitalism that Marx knew) would disappear. Such proved better than Socialism as Lenin imposed.

So now we see what modern capitalism has brought, and as the bureaucratic elites find workers harder to control they turn to fascistic methods to impose control and maximize profits. America's elites would keep the current productivity for wars to get and achieve captive markets and secure cheap labor and raw materials. Most of the rest of the world is not going to like that.

They believe that without government, there would be a communist Utopia. In that way they differ from the pure Marxists, who believe the revolution must be followed by a "dictatorship of the proletariat", which will re-shape society into the communist ideal, and state-run socialism. Once the state has done the job of completely re-shaping and re-educating the people out of their capitalist habits, the state will wither away, leaving a pure communist Utopia.

Maybe it is possible that Humanity goes from modern capitalism to Communism without going through Socialism. Of course without the repression, anarchy is more likely to result in distributism than any Marxist order. Equality of means seems like one of the more practical solutions to questions of economic equity. Just think of the fantasy of Ayn Rand in which the capitalist elite leaves, the masses fail with what is left, and of course the masses beg for the return of the economic elites at any terms -- even serfdom. I figure that there is far more competence, talent, imagination, and decency in the common man than there is in our contemporary elites. If anything I would expect that after the common man has sorted things out those elites will beg to return -- I hope, politically emasculated.

Anarchists want to go directly from point A to point B. In that way they're arguably even more wrong-headed, naive and dangerous than the doctrinaire Marxists are. They also tend to be Luddites, worshiping an agrarian ideal that never existed, and totally fine with the complete disintegration of modern society, including infrastructure, technology and standards of living, that would occur if modern corporations and government were summarily and simultaneously destroyed.

Not being an anarchist, I am going to assume that anarchists are going to like watching old movies, attending the theater and concert hall, and reading books, all of which require economic activity other than peasant farming.

1. Revolution? No -- more likely the breakdown of a capitalist order that has proved repressive, anti-egalitarian, and hierarchical, most likely in the wake of some War for Profit that has gone awry. Should people recognize that the level of economic development is high enough to allow good lives for all yet elites impose gross need as another tool of repression, then perhaps Marx' concept of Communism (an economic order in which poverty has no power as a motivator) is nigh. Convince the soldiers and police that they are better off as civil servants of a just order than as brutal enforcers of the commands of a few property owners and bureaucrats, and the rotten order of inequity, repression, and hierarchy dies.

2. Maybe the utopian community has some religious basis. The Sermon on the Mount, the most attractive part of the New Testament, calls for the antithesis of a plutocratic nightmare.

3. There has never been either a Libertarian nor an Anarchist state that has lasted. But Anarchists would run into some realities. Anarchy assumes that people are generally good and operate from at the least benign intentions. So what happens to thieves, cheats, and perverts? Economic grinds to a halt when contract law either does not exist or is unenforced. So I can easily imagine any anarchist recognize the need for the rule of law after some flagrant examples of its necessity.

Because libertarianism (as understood in America) has risen in popularity (and because the 2nd type of "libertarian" exists), anarchists have sought to glom on and resurrect their usage of the term, in the hope of fooling stupid people into supporting them. There is almost no relationship between the two things, but the argument over semantics and who "owns" the term rages on (mostly on the part of anarchists, because anarchists have a bad history and want to improve their image). Libertarians mostly ignore them, because anarchists are almost totally irrelevant to modern society.

It is unlikely that any ideology with ideological consistency as its basis will ever be imposed or evolve into existence.

As for Reagan, he never claimed to be a libertarian, so judging him on that basis is rather pointless. He was a conservative. That's always how he defined himself. What is true is that of all the presidents since Calvin Coolidge, he was by far the most libertarian, on balance. Nevertheless, he was not a purist libertarian by any stretch of the imagination. To explain Reagan you have to get into all the variations of conservative thought, of which libertarianism (I believe rightly) is considered a subset.

Ronald Reagan was above all else an elitist and a snob.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

these types often vehemently support government-sanctioned, subsidized and regulated same-sex marriage, despite the fact that it is not, in any way, shape or form, a libertarian position

Subsidized? How exactly are same-sex marriages subsidized (or what subsidies are being proposed)? Other than some tax advantages (in certain situations) to marriage or extention of veterans' benefits to spouses, which also equally apply to heterosexual marriage, I can't think of any--particularly any that are exclusive to same-sex marriages.

Most capital-L Libertarians (i.e. party members) I've known over the years don't see why same-sex marriages should be prohibited--however, granted, they are of the general belief that the state should have no role in any marriages, hetero or otherwise: that marriages should simply be seen as voluntary private partnership contracts (and even, some would say, could involve more than two people if all parties desire) that need no state sanction (other than its judicial role in enforcing contracts, as needed, if private mediation efforts fail). This would be the "purest" position from the standpoint of individual liberty (in the way Libertarians see it) actually. Straight out of Heinlein, too. I was once a big-L Libertarian myself so I've heard these discussions.

I don't really have a problem with libertarianism as long as individuals are allowed the same liberties as corporations. Too many "libertarians" these days talk about small government, want no regulations for corporations, but still want to police our personal lives--doesn't that require "big government"? It's hypocritical. Ron Paul isn't too bad, although I disagree with his views on abortion, so he isn't a true libertarian in my book.

Of course, pure libertarianism is really anarchy when you think about it. I think there should be some laws to keep big corporations in check, and they should pay more taxes, and government leave individuals' private lives alone--except for serious crimes like rape, robbery and murder.