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This article is about the type of libertarianism supporting capitalism and private ownership of natural resources. For the ideology combining conservatism with libertarianism, or representing the conservative wing of libertarianism, see Libertarian conservatism. For the type of libertarianism supporting conservative social policies, see Paleolibertarianism.
Right-libertarian political thought is characterized by the strict priority given to liberty, with the need to maximize the realm of individual freedom and minimize the scope of public authority.[14] Right-libertarians typically see the state as the principal threat to liberty. This anti-statism differs from anarchist doctrines in that it is based upon strong individualism that places less emphasis on human sociability or cooperation.[2][14][15] Right-libertarian philosophy is also rooted in the ideas of individual rights and laissez-faire economics. The right-libertarian theory of individual rights generally follows the homestead principle and the labor theory of property, stressing self-ownership and that people have an absolute right to the property that their labor produces.[14] Economically, right-libertarians make no distinction between capitalism and free markets and view any attempt to dictate the market process as counterproductive, emphasizing the mechanisms and self-regulating nature of the market whilst portraying government intervention and attempts to redistribute wealth as invariably unnecessary and counter-productive.[14] Although all right-libertarians oppose government intervention, there is a division between anarcho-capitalists, who view the state as an unnecessary evil and want property rights protected without statutory law through market-generated tort, contract and property law; and minarchists, who support the need for a minimal state, often referred to as a night-watchman state, to provide its citizens with courts, military, and police.[16]
Like libertarians of all varieties, right-libertarians refer to themselves simply as libertarians.[2][16][6] Being the most common type of libertarianism in the United States,[3] right-libertarianism has become the most common referent of libertarianism[17][18] there since the late 20th century while historically and elsewhere[19][20][21][22][23][24] it continues to be widely used to refer to anti-state forms of socialism such as anarchism[25][26][27][28] and more generally libertarian communism/libertarian Marxism and libertarian socialism.[19][29] Around the time of Murray Rothbard, who popularized the term libertarian in the United States during the 1960s, anarcho-capitalist movements started calling themselves libertarian, leading to the rise of the term right-libertarian to distinguish them. Rothbard himself acknowledged the co-opting of the term and boasted of its "capture [...] from the enemy".[19]
People described as being left-libertarian or right-libertarian generally tend to call themselves simply libertarians and refer to their philosophy as libertarianism. In light of this, some authors and political scientists classify the forms of libertarianism into two groups,[30][31] namely left-libertarianism and right-libertarianism,[1][2][16][3][6] to distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital.[8]
The term libertarian was first used by late Enlightenment freethinkers, referring to those who believed in free will, as opposed to necessity, a now-disused philosophy that posited a kind of determinism.[32] The word libertarian is first recorded in 1789 coined by the British historian William Belsham, in a discussion against free will from the author's deterministic point of view.[33][34] This debate between libertarianism in a philosophical-metaphysical sense and determinism would continue into the early nineteenth century, especially in the field of Protestant theology.[35] The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, in English, attests to this ancient use of the word libertarian by describing its meaning as "an advocate of the doctrine of free will "and, taking a broad definition, also says that he is" a person who holds the principles of individual freedom especially in thought and action ".[36]
Right-libertarianism has been described as combining individual freedom and opposition to the state, with strong support for free markets and private property. Property rights have been the issue that has divided libertarian philosophies. According to Jennifer Carlson, right-libertarianism is the dominant form of libertarianism in the United States. Right-libertarians "see strong private property rights as the basis for freedom and thus are—to quote the title of Brian Doherty's text on libertarianism in the United States—"Radicals for Capitalism".[3]
Herbert Kitschelt and Anthony J. McGann contrast right-libertarianism—"a strategy that combines pro-market positions with opposition to hierarchical authority, support of unconventional political participation, and endorsement of feminism and of environmentalism"—with right-authoritarianism.[45][46]
According to contemporary American libertarian Walter Block, left-libertarians and right-libertarians agree with certain libertarian premises, but "where [they] differ is in terms of the logical implications of these founding axioms".[48] Although some libertarians may reject the political spectrum, especially the left–right political spectrum,[1] right-libertarianism and several right-oriented strands of libertarianism in the United States have been described as being right-wing,[49]New Right,[50][51][52][53]radical right[45][46] and reactionary.[13][54]
American libertarian activist and politician David Nolan, the principal founder of the Libertarian Party, developed what is now known as the Nolan Chart to replace the traditional left-right political spectrum. The Nolan Chart has been used by several modern American libertarians and right-libertarians who reject the traditional political spectrum for its lack of inclusivity and see themselves as north-of-center. It is used in an effort to quantify typical libertarian views that support both free markets and social liberties and reject what they see as restrictions on economic and personal freedom imposed by the left and the right, respectively,[55] although this latter point has been criticized.[56] Other libertarians reject the separation of personal and economic liberty or argue that the Nolan Chart gives no weight to foreign policy.[57]
Since the resurgence of neoliberalism in the 1970s, right-libertarianism has spread beyond North America via think tanks and political parties.[58][59][60] In the United States, libertarianism is increasingly viewed as this capitalist free-market position.[2][16][6][3]
Peter Vallentyne writes that libertarianism, defined as being about self-ownership, is not a right-wing doctrine in the context of the typical left–right political spectrum because on social issues it tends to be left-wing, opposing laws restricting consensual sexual relationships between or drug use by adults as well as laws imposing religious views or practices and compulsory military service. He defines right-libertarianism as holding that unowned natural resources "may be appropriated by the first person who discovers them, mixes her labor with them, or merely claims them—without the consent of others, and with little or no payment to them". He contrasts this with left-libertarianism, where such "unappropriated natural resources belong to everyone in some egalitarian manner".[18] Similarly, Charlotte and Lawrence Becker maintain that right-libertarianism most often refers to the political position that because natural resources are originally unowned, they may be appropriated at will by private parties without the consent of, or owing to, others.[65]
Anthony Gregory maintains that libertarianism "can refer to any number of varying and at times mutually exclusive political orientations". While holding that the important distinction for libertarians is not left or right, but whether they are "government apologists who use libertarian rhetoric to defend state aggression", he describes right-libertarianism as having and maintaining interest in economic freedom, preferring a conservative lifestyle, viewing private business as a "great victim of the state" and favoring a non-interventionist foreign policy, sharing the Old Right's "opposition to empire".[70]
Murray Rothbard, whose writings and personal influence helped create some strands of right-libertarianism,[71] wrote about the Old Right in the United States, a loose coalition of individuals formed in the 1930s to oppose the New Deal at home and military interventionism abroad, that they "did not describe or think of themselves as conservatives: they wanted to repeal and overthrow, not conserve".[72]Bill Kauffman has also written about such "old right libertarians".[73]Peter Marshall dates right-libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism in particular back to the Old Right and as being popularized again by the New Right.[52]
While libertarian was popularized by the libertarian socialist Benjamin Tucker around the late 1870s and early 1880s,[95] H. L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock were the first prominent figures in the United States to describe themselves as libertarian as a 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.[96]
Although often sharing the left-libertarian advocacy for social freedom, right-libertarians also value capitalism while rejecting institutions that intervene the free market on the grounds that such interventions represent unnecessary coercion of individuals and therefore a violation of their economic freedom.[105]Anarcho-capitalists[106][107] seek complete elimination of the state in favor of private defense agencies 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.[108]
Libertarianism is often thought of as 'right-wing' doctrine. This, however, is mistaken for at least two reasons. First, on social—rather than economic—issues, libertarianism tends to be 'left-wing'. It opposes laws that restrict consensual and private sexual relationships between adults (e.g., gay-sex, non-marital sex, and deviant sex), laws that restrict drug use, laws that impose religious views or practices on individuals, and compulsory military service. Second, in addition to the better-known version of libertarianism—right-libertarianism—, there is also a version known as 'left-libertarianism. Both endorse full self-ownership, but they differ with respect to the powers agents have to appropriate unappropriated natural resources (land, air, water, etc.).[18]
Right-libertarians are distinguished from left-libertarians by their relation to property and capital. While both left-libertarianism and right-libertarianism share general antipathy towards power by a government authority, the latter exempts power wielded through free-market capitalism. Historically, libertarians such as Herbert Spencer and Max Stirner supported the protection of an individual's freedom from powers of government and private ownership. While condemning governmental encroachment on personal liberties, right-libertarians support freedoms on the basis of their agreement with private property rights and the abolishment of public amenities is a common theme in right-libertarian writings.[8][111]
While associated with free-market capitalism, right-libertarianism is not opposed in principle to voluntary egalitarianism and socialism.[112][113] However, right-libertarians believe that their advocated economic system would prove superior and that people would prefer it to socialism.[114][115] For Nozick, it does not imply support of capitalism, but merely that capitalism is compatible with libertarianism,[116] something which is rejected by anti-capitalist libertarians.[117][118][119][120]
According to Stephen Metcalf, Nozick expressed serious misgivings about capitalism, going so far as to reject much of the foundations of the theory on the grounds that personal freedom can sometimes only be fully actualized via a collectivist politics and that wealth is at times justly redistributed via taxation to protect the freedom of the many from the potential tyranny of an overly selfish and powerful few.[121] Nozick suggested that citizens who are opposed to wealth redistribution which fund programs they object to should be able to opt-out by supporting alternative government-approved charities with an added 5% surcharge.[122] Nonetheless, Nozick did not stop from self-identifying as a libertarian in a broad sense[123] and Julian Sanchez has argued that his views simply became more nuanced.[124]
The non-aggression principle (NAP) is often described as the foundation of several present-day libertarian philosophies, including right-libertarianism.[125][126][127][128][129] The NAP is a moral stance which forbids actions that are inconsistent with capitalist private property and property rights. It defines aggression and initiation of force as violation of these rights. The NAP and property rights are closely linked since what constitutes aggression depends on what it is considered to be one's property.[130] The principle has been used rhetorically to oppose policies such as military drafts, taxation and victimless crime laws.[5]
While there is debate on whether right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism or socialist libertarianism "represent distinct ideologies as opposed to variations on a theme", right-libertarianism is most in favor of capitalist private property and property rights.[131] Right-libertarians maintain that unowned natural resources "may be appropriated by the first person who discovers them, mixes his labor with them, or merely claims them—without the consent of others, and with little or no payment to them". This contrasts with left-libertarianism in which "unappropriated natural resources belong to everyone in some egalitarian manner".[132] Right-libertarians believe that natural resources are originally unowned and therefore private parties may appropriate them at will without the consent of, or owing to, others (e.g. a land value tax).[133]
Right-libertarians are also referred to as propertarians because they hold that societies in which private property rights are enforced are the only ones that are both ethical and lead to the best possible outcomes.[134] They generally support free-market capitalism and are not opposed to any concentrations of economic power, provided it occurs through non-coercive means.[135]
There is a debate amongst right-libertarians as to whether or not the state is legitimate. While anarcho-capitalists advocate its abolition, minarchists support minimal states, often referred to as night-watchman states. Minarchists maintain that the state is necessary for the protection of individuals from aggression, breach of contract, fraud and theft. They believe the only legitimate governmental institutions are courts, military and police, although some expand this list to include the executive and legislative branches, fire departments and prisons. These minarchists justify the state on the grounds that it is the logical consequence of adhering to the non-aggression principle.[136][137][138] Some minarchists argue that a state is inevitable, believing anarchy to be futile.[139] Others argue that anarchy is immoral because it implies that the non-aggression principle is optional and not sufficient to enforce the non-aggression principle because the enforcement of laws under anarchy is open to competition.[140][page needed] Another common justification is that private defense agencies and court firms would tend to represent the interests of those who pay them enough.[141]
Right-libertarians such as anarcho-capitalists argue that the state violates the non-aggression principle by its nature because governments use force against those who have not stolen or vandalized private property, assaulted anyone, or committed fraud.[142][143] Others argue that monopolies tend to be corrupt and inefficient and that private defense and court agencies would have to have a good reputation to stay in business. Linda and Morris Tannehill argue that no coercive monopoly of force can arise on a truly free market and that a government's citizenry can desert them in favor of a competent protection and defense agency.[144]
Philosopher Moshe Kroy argues that the disagreement between anarcho-capitalists who adhere to Murray Rothbard's view of human consciousness and the nature of values and minarchists who adhere to Ayn Rand's view of human consciousness and the nature of values over whether or not the state is moral is not due to a disagreement over the correct interpretation of a mutually held ethical stance. He argues that the disagreement between these two groups is instead the result of their disagreement over the nature of human consciousness and that each group is making the correct interpretation of their differing premises. According to Kroy, these two groups are not making any errors with respect to deducing the correct interpretation of any ethical stance because they do not hold the same ethical stance.[145]
The idea of taxation as theft is a viewpoint found in a number of political philosophies. Under this view, government transgresses property rights by enforcing compulsory tax collection.[146][147] Right-libertarians see taxation as a violation of the non-aggression principle.[148]
Anarcho-capitalism advocates the elimination of centralized states in favor of capitalism,[149][150][151] contracts, free markets, individual sovereignty, private property, the right-libertarian interpretation of self-ownership and voluntaryism. In the absence of statute, anarcho-capitalists hold that society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through participation in the free market which they describe as a voluntary society.[152][153] In an anarcho-capitalist society, courts, law enforcement and all other security services would be provided by privately funded competitors rather than through taxation and money would be privately and competitively provided in an open market.[154] Under anarcho-capitalism, personal and economic activities would be regulated by private law rather than through politics.[155] Anarcho-capitalists support wage labour[156] and believe that neither protection of person and property nor victim compensation requires a state.[52]Autarchism promotes the principles of individualism, the moral ideology of individual liberty and self-reliance whilst rejecting compulsory government and supporting the elimination of government in favor of ruling oneself to the exclusion of rule by others.
While some authors consider anarcho-capitalism a form of individualist anarchism, many others disagree with this as individualist anarchism is largely socialistic.[163][164][165] Rothbard argued that individualist anarchism is different from anarcho-capitalism and other capitalist theories due to the individualist anarchists retaining the labor theory of value and socialist economics.[166] Many anarchist activists and scholars deny that anarcho-capitalism is a form of anarchism, or that capitalism is compatible with anarchism,[165] regarding it instead as right-libertarian.[2][16][6] Anarcho-capitalists are distinguished from anarchists and minarchists. The latter advocate a night-watchman state limited to protecting individuals from aggression and enforcing private property.[140] On the other hand, anarchists support personal property (defined in terms of possession and use, i.e. mutualist usufruct)[167][168] and oppose capital concentration, interest, monopoly, private ownership of productive property such as the means of production (capital, land and the means of labor), profit, rent, usury and wage slavery which are viewed as inherent to capitalism.[169][170] Anarchism's emphasis on anti-capitalism, egalitarianism and for the extension of community and individuality sets it apart from anarcho-capitalism and other types of right-libertarianism.[171][172][173][174]
Ruth Kinna writes that anarcho-capitalism is a term coined by Rothbard to describe "a commitment to unregulated private property and laissez-faire economics, prioritizing the liberty-rights of individuals, unfettered by government regulation, to accumulate, consume and determine the patterns of their lives as they see fit". According to Kinna, anarcho-capitalists "will sometimes label themselves market anarchists because they recognize the negative connotations of 'capitalism'. But the literatures of anarcho-capitalism draw on classical liberal theory, particularly the Austrian School—Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises—rather than recognizable anarchist traditions. Ayn Rand's laissez-faire, anti-government, corporate philosophy—Objectivism—is sometimes associated with anarcho-capitalism".[175] Other scholars similarly associate anarcho-capitalism with anti-state liberal schools such as neo-classical liberalism, radical neoliberalism and right-libertarianism.[2][16][3][6][176] Anarcho-capitalism is usually seen as part of the New Right.[53][177]
Conservative libertarianism prioritizes liberty as its main emphasis, promoting free expression, freedom of choice and laissez-faire capitalism to achieve cultural and social conservative ends whilst rejecting liberalsocial engineering.[179] This can also be understood as promoting civil society through conservative institutions and authority such as education, family, fatherland and religion in the quest of libertarian ends for less state power.[180]
In the United States, conservative libertarianism combines conservatism and libertarianism, representing the conservative wing of libertarianism and vice versa. Fusionism combines traditionalist and social conservatism with laissez-faire economics.[181] This is most closely associated with Frank Meyer.[182]Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a cultural conservative right-libertarian, whose belief in the rights of property owners to establish private covenant communities, from which homosexuals and political dissidents may be "physically removed",[183] has proven particularly divisive.[184][185][186][187] Hoppe also garnered controversy due to his support for restrictive limits on immigration which critics argue is at odds with libertarianism.[188]
Within right-libertarian philosophy, minarchism[189] is supportive of a night-watchman state, a model of a state whose only functions are to provide its citizens with courts, military and police, protecting them from aggression, breach of contract, fraud and theft whilst enforcing property laws.[136][137][138] 19th-century Britain has been described by historian Charles Townshend as standard-bearer of this form of government among European countries.[190]
As a term, night-watchman state (German: Nachtwächterstaat) was coined by German socialistFerdinand Lassalle, an advocate of social-democraticstate socialism, to criticize the bourgeois state.[191] Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises, a classical liberal who greatly influenced right-libertarianism, later opined that Lassalle tried to make limited government look ridiculous, but that it was no more ridiculous than governments that concerned themselves with "the preparation of sauerkraut, with the manufacture of trouser buttons, or with the publication of newspapers".[192]
Traditionally, liberalism's primary emphasis was placed on securing the freedom of the individual by limiting the power of the government and maximizing the power of free market forces. As a political philosophy, it advocated civil liberties under the rule of law, with an emphasis on economic freedom. Closely related to economic liberalism, it developed in the early 19th century, emerging as a response to urbanization and to the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the United States.[196][197][198][199] It advocated a limited government and held a belief in laissez-faire economic policy.[197][198][200]
Neoliberalism emerged in the era following World War II during which social liberalism was the mainstream form of liberalism while Keynesianism and social democracy were the dominant ideologies in the Western world. It was led by neoclassical economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, who advocated the reduction of the state and a return to classical liberalism, hence the term neo-classical liberalism,[207] not to be confused with the more left-leaning neoclassical liberalism,[208][209] an American bleeding-heart libertarian school originating in Arizona.[208] However, it did accept some aspects of social liberalism such as some degree of welfare provision by the state, but on a greatly reduced scale. Hayek and Friedman used the term classical liberalism to refer to their ideas, but others use the term to refer to all liberalism before the 20th century, not to designate any particular set of political views and therefore see all modern developments as being by definition not classical.[210]
In the late 19th century, classical liberalism developed into neo-classical liberalism which argued for government to be as small as possible to allow the exercise of individual freedom. In its most extreme form, neo-classical liberalism advocated social Darwinism.[211] Right-libertarianism has been influenced by these schools of liberalism. It has been commonly referred to as a continuation or radicalization of classical liberalism[210][32][104][212] and referred to as neo-classical liberalism.[211]
Paleolibertarianism was developed by American libertarian theorists Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell. Combining conservative cultural values and social philosophy with a libertarian opposition to government intervention,[215] it overlaps with paleoconservatism.[216][217]
Propertarianism advocates the replacement of states with contractual relationships. Propertarian ideals are most commonly cited to advocate for a state or other governance body whose main or only job is to enforce contracts and private property.[225][226]
Propertarianism is generally considered right-libertarian[175] because it "reduce[s] all human rights to rights of property, beginning with the natural right of self-ownership".[227]
As a term, propertarian appears to have been coined in 1963 by Edward Cain, who wrote:
Since their use of the word "liberty" refers almost exclusively to property, it would be helpful if we had some other word, such as "propertarian", to describe them. [...] Novelist Ayn Rand is not a conservative at all but claims to be very relevant. She is a radical capitalist, and is the closest to what I mean by a propertarian.[228]
Comparison to Classical Liberalism
Some forms of right-libertarianism are an outgrowth or as a variant of classical liberal thought.[210] With other forms of right-libertarianism there are significant differences. Edwin Van de Haar argues that "confusingly, in the United States the term libertarianism is sometimes also used for or by classical liberals. But this erroneously masks the differences between them".[229] Classical liberalism refuses to give priority to liberty over order and therefore does not exhibit the hostility to the state which is the defining feature of libertarianism.[14] As such, right-libertarians believe classical liberals favor too much state involvement,[230] arguing that they do not have enough respect for individual property rights and lack sufficient trust in the workings of the free market and its spontaneous order leading to support of a much larger state.[230] Right-libertarians also disagree with classical liberals as being too supportive of central banks and monetarist policies.[231]
Prominent British right-libertarians include former director of the Libertarian AllianceSean Gabb and philosopher Stephen R. L. Clark, who are seen as rightists. Gabb has called himself "a man of the right"[249] and Clark self-identifies as an "anarcho-conservative".[250][251] Gabb has also articulated a libertarian defense of the British Empire.[252] At the same time, Gabb has given a generally appreciative commentary of left-libertarian Kevin Carson's work on organization theory[253] and Clark has supported animal rights, gender inclusiveness and non-judgmental attitude toward some unconventional sexual arrangements.[254][255][256][257]
Right-libertarianism is the dominant form and better known version of libertarianism in the United States,[3][17] especially when compared with left-libertarianism.[18]Robert Nozick and Murray Rothbard have been described as the most noted advocate of this type of libertarianism.[2][16][6] Unlike Rothbard, who argued for the abolition of the state,[259] Nozick argued for a night-watchman state.[193] To this day, there remains a division between anarcho-capitalists that advocate its abolition and minarchists who support a night-watchman state.[16] According to Nozick, only such a minimal state could be justified without violating people's rights. Nozick argued that a night-watchman state provides a framework that allows for any political system that respects fundamental individual rights and therefore morally justifies the existence of a state.[194][195]
Already a radical classical liberal and anti-interventionist strongly influenced by the Old Right, especially its opposition to the managerial state whilst being more unequivocally anti-war and anti-imperialist,[260] Rothbard had become the doyen of right-libertarianism.[261][262] Before his departure from the New Left, with which he helped build for a few years a relationship with other libertarians, Rothbard considered liberalism and libertarianism to be left-wing, radical and revolutionary whereas conservatism to be right-wing, reactionary and counter-revolutionary. As for socialism, especially state socialism, Rothbard argued that it was not the opposite of libertarianism, but rather that it pursued liberal ends through conservative means, putting it in the political center.[263][264] By the time of his death in 1995,[265] Rothbard had involved the segment of the libertarian movement loyal to him in an alliance with the growing paleoconservative movement,[266][267] seen by many observers, libertarian and otherwise, as flirting with racism and social reaction.[185][186][187] Suggesting that libertarians needed a new cultural profile that would make them more acceptable to social and cultural conservatives, Rothbard criticized the tendency of proponents of libertarianism 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." While emphasizing that it was relevant as a matter of strategy, Rothbard argued that the failure to pitch the libertarian message to Middle America might result in the loss of "the tight-assed majority".[268]
At least partly reflective of some of the social and cultural concerns that lay beneath Rothbard's outreach to paleoconservatives is paleolibertarianism.[269] In an early statement of this position, Lew Rockwell and Jeffrey Tucker arguing for a specifically Christian libertarianism.[94] Later, Rockwell would no longer consider himself a "paleolibertarian" and was "happy with the term libertarian."[270] While distancing himself from the paleolibertarian alliance strategy, Rockwell affirmed paleoconservatives for their "work on the immigration issue" and maintained that "porous borders in Texas and California" could be seen as "reducing liberty, not increasing it, through a form of publicly subsidized right to trespass."[271]
Hans-Hermann Hoppe argued that "libertarians must be conservatives."[272] Hoppe acknowledged what he described as "the importance, under clearly stated circumstances, of discriminating against communists, democrats, and habitual advocates of alternative, non-family centered lifestyles, including homosexuals."[273][274] He disagreed with Walter Block[275] and argued that libertarianism need not be seen as requiring open borders.[276] Hoppe attributed "open border enthusiasm" to "egalitarianism".[277] While defending market anarchy in preference to both, Hoppe argued for the superiority of monarchy to democracy by maintaining that monarchs are likely to be better stewards of the territory they claim to own than are democratic politicians, whose time horizons may be shorter.[278]
Defending the fusion of traditionalist conservatism with libertarianism and rejecting the view that libertarianism means support for a liberal culture, Edward Feser implies that a central issue for those who share his viewpoint is "the preservation of traditional morality—particularly traditional sexual morality, with its idealization of marriage and its insistence that sexual activity be confined within the bounds of that institution, but also a general emphasis on dignity and temperance over self-indulgence and dissolute living."[279]
California Governor Ronald Reagan appealed to right-libertarians in a 1975 interview with Reason by stating to "believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism."[280] However, President Reagan, Reaganomics and policies of the Reagan administration have been criticized by libertarians, including right-libertarians such as Rothbard,[281][282] who argued that the Reagan presidency has been "a disaster for libertarianism in the United States"[283] and Reagan himself was "a dramatic failure".[284] Among other reasons, this was because Reagan turned the United States' big trade deficit into debt and the United States became a debtor nation for the first time since World War I under Reagan.[285][286]Ron Paul was one of the first elected officials in the nation to support Reagan's presidential campaign[287] and actively campaigned for Reagan in 1976 and 1980.[284] Paul quickly became disillusioned with the Reagan administration's policies after Reagan's election in 1980 and later recalled being the only Republican to vote against the Reagan budget proposals in 1981,[288][289] aghast that "in 1977, Jimmy Carter proposed a budget with a $38 billion deficit, and every Republican in the House voted against it. In 1981, Reagan proposed a budget with a $45 billion deficit—which turned out to be $113 billion—and Republicans were cheering his great victory. They were living in a storybook land."[287] Paul expressed his disgust with the political culture of both major parties in a speech delivered in 1984 upon resigning from the House of Representatives to prepare for a failed run for the Senate and eventually apologized to his libertarian friends for having supported Reagan.[289] By 1987, Paul was ready to sever all ties to the Republican Party as explained in a blistering resignation letter.[284] While affiliated with both Libertarian and Republican parties at different times, Paul stated to have always been a libertarian at heart.[288][289]
Walter Block identifies Feser, Hoppe, and Paul as "right-libertarians".[48] Rothbard's outreach to conservatives was partly triggered by his perception of negative reactions within the Libertarian Party to Ron Paul 1988 presidential campaign because of Paul's conservative appearance and his discomfort with abortion. Nonetheless, Paul himself did not make cultural issues central to his public persona during his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination and focused on a simple message of support for personal freedom and civil liberties, commitment to fiscal discipline and opposition to war,[290] although he did continue to take what some regarded as a conservative position regarding immigration, arguing for some restrictions on cross-border freedom of movement.[291]
Paul's fellow libertarian anti-militarist Justin Raimondo, a co-founder of Antiwar.com, described himself as a "conservative paleolibertarian". Unlike Feser and Rockwell, Raimondo's Reclaiming the American Right argued for a resurgence of Old Right political attitudes and did not focus on the social and cultural issues that are of central importance to Feser and Rockwell.[292]
Free State Project
One of the most prominent groups dedicated to promulgating and instituting right-libertarian values is the Free State Project. The Free State Project is an activist libertarian movement formed in 2001. It is working to bring libertarians to the state of New Hampshire to protect and advance liberty. As of July 2022, the project website showed that 19,988 people have pledged to move and 6,232 people identified as Free Staters in New Hampshire.[293]
Free State Project participants interact with the political landscape in New Hampshire in various ways. In 2017, there were 17 Free Staters in the New Hampshire House of Representatives,[294] and in 2021, the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, which ranks bills and elected representatives based on their adherence to what they see as libertarian principles, scored 150 (out of 380 rated) representatives as "A−" or above rated representatives.[295] Participants also engage with other like-minded activist groups such as Rebuild New Hampshire,[296]Young Americans for Liberty,[297] and Americans for Prosperity.[298]
Criticism of right-libertarianism includes ethical, economic, environmental, pragmatic and philosophical concerns,[299][300][301][302][303][304][305] including the view that it has no explicit theory of liberty.[103] It has been argued that laissez-faire capitalism[5] does not necessarily produce the best or most efficient outcome,[303][306] nor does its philosophy of individualism and policies of deregulation prevent the abuse of natural resources.[307]
Use of the NAP as a justification for right-libertarianism has been criticized as circular reasoning and as a rhetorical obfuscation of the coercive nature of right-libertarian property law enforcement,[5] with critics arguing that the principle redefines aggression in their own terms.[299][300][301][302][303][304][305]
Jeffrey H. Reiman criticized right-libertarians' support of private property, arguing that "the holders of large amounts of property have great power to dictate the terms upon which others work for them and thus in effect the power to 'force' others to be resources for them".[5]
^ abcdefghijklGoodway, 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 7 February 2024 at the Wayback Machine. "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".
^ abcdefghiCarlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilburn R., ed. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. London: Sage Publications. p. 1006Archived 7 February 2024 at the Wayback Machine. ISBN 1412988764.
^ abcdefghNewman 2010, p. 53 "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 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 narrow economic freedom within the constraints of a capitalist market, which, as anarchists show, is no freedom at all.
^Kymlicka 2005, p. 516: "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."
^Vallentyne 2007, p. 6. "The best-known versions of libertarianism are right-libertarian theories, which hold that agents have a very strong moral power to acquire full private property rights in external things. Left-libertarians, by contrast, holds that natural resources (e.g., space, land, minerals, air, and water) belong to everyone in some egalitarian manner and thus cannot be appropriated without the consent of, or significant payment to, the members of society."
^Miller, Fred (15 August 2008). "Natural Law". The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Archived from the original on 26 May 2020. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
^Sterba, James P. (October 1994). "From Liberty to Welfare". Ethics. Cambridge: Blackwell. 105 (1): 237–241.
^Newman 2010, p. 43: "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 narrow economic freedom within the constraints of a capitalist market, which, as anarchists show, is no freedom at all."
^ abcdefghijMarshall, 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".
^ abcdRothbard, Murray (2009) [2007]. The Betrayal of the American Right(PDF). Mises Institute. p. 83. ISBN 978-1610165013. Archived(PDF) from the original on 21 December 2019. Retrieved 15 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.
^ abBookchin, Murray (January 1986). "The Greening of Politics: Toward a New Kind of Political Practice"Archived 1 October 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Green Perspectives: Newsletter of the Green Program Project (1). "We have permitted cynical political reactionaries and the spokesmen of large corporations to pre-empt these basic libertarian American ideals. We have permitted them not only to become the specious voice of these ideals such that individualism has been used to justify egotism; the pursuit of happiness to justify greed, and even our emphasis on local and regional autonomy has been used to justify parochialism, insularism, and exclusivity—often against ethnic minorities and so-called deviant individuals. We have even permitted these reactionaries to stake out a claim to the word libertarian, a word, in fact, that was literally devised in the 1890s in France by Elisée Reclus as a substitute for the word anarchist, which the government had rendered an illegal expression for identifying one's views. The propertarians, in effect—acolytes of Ayn Rand, the earth mother of greed, egotism, and the virtues of property—have appropriated expressions and traditions that should have been expressed by radicals but were willfully neglected because of the lure of European and Asian traditions of socialism, socialisms that are now entering into decline in the very countries in which they originated".
^ abNettlau, Max (1996). A Short History of Anarchism. London: Freedom Press. p. 162. ISBN 978-0900384899. OCLC37529250.
^ abFernandez, Frank (2001). Cuban Anarchism. The History of a Movement[permanent dead link]. Sharp Press. p. 9. "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."
^ ab"The Week Online Interviews Chomsky". Z Magazine. 23 February 2002. "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. In the US, which is a society much more dominated by business, the term has a different meaning. It means eliminating or reducing state controls, mainly controls over private tyrannies. Libertarians in the US don't say let's get rid of corporations. It is a sort of ultra-rightism."
^Ward, Colin (2004). Anarchism: A Very Short IntroductionArchived 7 February 2024 at the Wayback Machine. 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."
^ abcGraham, Robert, ed. (2005). Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas. Vol. 1. Montreal: Black Rose Books. §17.
^ abcMarshall, 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".
^ abThe Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective (11 December 2008). "150 years of Libertarian"Archived 17 October 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Anarchist Writers. The Anarchist Library. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
^Marshall, 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."
^Long, 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."
^Carlson, 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. ISBN 1412988764. "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."
^ abcBoaz, David (1998). Libertarianism: A Primer. Free Press. pp. 22–26.
^William Belsham, "Essays", printed for C. Dilly, 1789; original from the University of Michigan, digitized 21 May 2007.
^William Belsham (1752–1827)Archived 8 January 2015 at the Wayback Machine. The Information Philosopher. El primer uso de la palabra se encuentra en el primer ensayo llamado On Liberty and NecessityArchived 28 July 2021 at the Wayback Machine (1789): "Or where is the difference between the Libertarian, who says that the mind chooses the motive; and the Necessarian, who asserts that the motive determines the mind; if the volition be the necessary result of all the previous circumstances?"
^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."
^Hussain, Syed B. (2004). Encyclopedia of Capitalism. Vol. II : H-R. New York: Facts on File Inc. p. 492. ISBN 0816052247. Archived from the original on 7 February 2024. Retrieved 15 November 2019. 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 a excellent economic system, unfairly maligned, with little or no need for corrective government policy, are generally known as libertarians.
^Carlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilburn R., ed. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. London: Sage Publications. p. 1006. ISBN 1412988764. "There exist three major camps in libertarian thought: right-libertarianism, socialist libertarianism, and left-libertarianism. [...] [S]ocialist libertarians [...] advocate for the simultaneous abolition of both government and capitalism."
^Bookchin, Murray; Biehl, Janet (1997). The Murray Bookchin Reader. Cassell. p. 170 ISBN 0304338737.
^Hicks, Steven V.; Shannon, Daniel E. (2003). The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Blackwell Pub. p. 612.
^"Anarchism". In Gaus, Gerald F.; D'Agostino, Fred, eds. (2012). The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy. p. 227.
^Bevir, Mark, ed. (2010). Encyclopedia of Political Theory. Sage Publications. p. 811Archived 11 October 2023 at the Wayback Machine. ISBN 978-1412958653.
^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.
^ abcVincent, Andrew (2009). Modern Political Ideologies (3rd ed.). Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. p. 66. ISBN 978-1444311051. Whom to include under the rubric of the New Right remains puzzling. It is usually seen as an amalgam of traditional liberal conservatism, Austrian liberal economic theory Ludwing von Mises and Hayek), extreme libertarianism (anarcho-capitalism) and crude populism.
^McManus, Matt (26 May 2019). "Classical Liberals" and the Alt-Right"Archived 21 October 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Merion West. Retrieved 17 June 2020. "Nevertheless, it is worth examining why many who do adopt these labels do paradoxically seem to gravitate towards post-modern conservative reactionary positions. [...] The second way individuals tend to interpret classical liberalism and libertarianism is as an ideology that is strictly inegalitarian. They tend to support it because they see society as a competitive association, where superior individuals will rise to the top due to their merits and efforts. While they identify as classical liberals and libertarians, these individuals tend to limit themselves to desiring a capitalist marketplace to discriminate between the superior and inferior by allocating rewards and honors according to economic contributions. But if these individuals come to believe the system increasingly rewards the unworthy, they can be inspired to radicalize and move further to the extremes offered by alt-right doctrines."
^Boas, Taylor C.; Gans-Morse, Jordan (2009). "Neoliberalism: From New Liberal Philosophy to Anti-Liberal Slogan". Studies in Comparative International Development. 44 (2): 151–152. doi:10.1007/s12116-009-9040-5.
^Knapp, Andrew; Wright, Vincent (2006). The Government and Politics of France. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415357326.
^Becker, Charlotte B.; Becker, Lawrence C. (2001). Encyclopedia of Ethics. 3. Taylor & Francis US. p. 1562Archived 11 October 2023 at the Wayback Machine. ISBN 978-0415936750.
^Radosh, Ronald (1975). Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism. New York City, New York: Simon.
^Raimondo, Justin (2008). Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (2d ed.). Wilmington, Delaware: ISI.
^Chodorov, Frank (1962). Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist. New York City, New York: Devin-Adair.
^Hamilton, Charles H. (1980). Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov. Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty.
^Flynn, John T. (1973) [1944]. As We Go Marching: A Biting Indictment of the Coming of Domestic Fascism in America. New York City, New York: Free Life.
^Moser, John (2005). Right Turn: John T. Flynn and the Transformation of American Liberalism. New York City, New York: New York University Press.
^Ryant, Carl (1989). Profit's Prophet: Garet Garrett (1878–1954). Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania: Susquehanna University Press.
^Ramsey, Bruce (2008). Unsanctioned Voice: Garet Garrett, Journalist of the Old Right. Caldwell, Indiana: Caxton.
^Wilder Lane, Rose (2006) [1936]. Give Me Liberty. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger.
^Wilder Lane, Rose (2007) [1943]. The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle against Authority. Auburn, Alabama: Mises Institute.
^Mencken, H. L. (1961). Letters of H. L. Mencken. Knofp. pp. xiii, 189.
^Cox, Stephen D. (2004). The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction.
^Kauffman, Bill (2008). Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism. New York City, New York: Metropolitan.
^Chodorov, Frank (6 October 1956). "Letter to the editor". National Review. 2 (20): 23.
^Hamilton, Charles H. (1981). "Introduction". Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov Compiled. p. 29.
^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.
^Burns, Jennifer (2009). Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 309. ISBN 978-0195324877.
^Raimondo, Justin (2000). An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard. "Beyond left and right". Prometheus Books. p. 159. ISBN 978-1573928090.
^Rothbard, Murray (17 August 2007). "Floyd Arthur 'Baldy' Harper, RIP". Mises Daily. Mises Institute. Archived from the original on 13 December 2011. Retrieved 15 March 2020.
^D'Agostino, Fred; Gaus, Gerald (2012). The Routledge Companion To Social And Political Philosophy. Routledge. p. 225. ISBN 978-0415874564.
^Sanchez, Julian; Weigel, David (16 January 2008). "Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters?". Reason. Reason Foundation. Archived from the original on 2 October 2013. Retrieved 15 March 2020.
^ abConway, David (2008). "Freedom of Speech". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). Liberalism, Classical. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications; Cato Institute. pp. 295–298 [296]. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n112. ISBN 978-1412965804. LCCN2008009151. OCLC750831024. Archived from the original on 9 January 2023. Retrieved 5 February 2018. 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 14 November 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Libertarian Party. Retrieved 27 June 2019. "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".
^Newman, Saul (2010). The Politics of Postanarchism. Edinburgh University Press. p. 43. ISBN 0748634959. "It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism)".
^Marshall, Peter (2008). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: Harper Perennial. p. 565. "In fact, few anarchists would accept the 'anarcho-capitalists' into the anarchist camp since they do not share a concern for economic equality and social justice, Their self-interested, calculating market men would be incapable of practicing voluntary co-operation and mutual aid. Anarcho-capitalists, even if they do reject the State, might therefore best be called right-wing libertarians rather than anarchists".
^"National Questions" (30 June 1997). National Review. 49 (12): 16–17.
^Carson, Kevin (8 November 2015). "Are We All Mutualists?"Archived 28 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine Center for a Stateless Society. Retrieved 23 March 2020. "This willingness to recognize the joint homesteading of land and natural resources (in such historical forms as village open-field systems, common pasture and waste, public rights of way and town commons, common fisheries, etc.) is a refreshing contrast to the all too many right-libertarians who insist that property can only be owned by individuals (most notably Ayn Rand’s claim that the theft of Native American tribal land by European settlers was justified because they didn’t believe in any “legitimate" form of property rights)."
^McManus, Matt (26 May 2019). "Classical Liberals" and the Alt-Right"Archived 21 October 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Merion West. Retrieved 17 June 2020. "In his great work Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick hypothesizes about a future where a "minimal state" exists and individuals are free to experiment with as many different forms of life as they choose. This may even include communist or socialist communities, where individuals would willingly choose to share property in common and live according to more egalitarian principles of distributive justice. But no one form of life would be enforced by political authorities, which had no business telling free and equal individuals what the best way to live was."
^Mises, Ludwig; Kahane, J., trans. (1947) [1922]. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. p. 76. ISBN 0226181502. "The only certain fact about Russian affairs under the Soviet regime with regard to which all people agree is: that the standard of living of the Russian masses is much lower than that of the masses in the country which is universally considered as the paragon of capitalism, the United States of America. If we were to regard the Soviet regime as an experiment, we would have to say that the experiment has clearly demonstrated the superiority of capitalism and the inferiority of socialism".
^Kropotkin, Peter (1927). Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings. Courier Dover Publications. p. 150. ISBN 978-0486119861. It attacks not only capital, but also the main sources of the power of capitalism: law, authority, and the State.
^Otero, 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. ISBN 1902593693.
^Chomsky, Noam (2003). Carlos Peregrin Otero (ed.). Radical Priorities (3rd ed.). Oakland, California: AK Press. pp. 227–228. ISBN 1902593693.
^Carlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilbur R. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: An Encyclopedia. Sage Publications. p. 1006Archived 7 February 2024 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".
^Nozick, Robert (1989). "The Zigzag of Politics". The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671725013.
^Riggenbach, Jeff (26 November 2010). "Anarchy, State, and Robert Nozick". Mises Daily. Mises Institute. Archived from the original on 27 October 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2020. [Nozick] identified voluntary cooperation as the 'core principle' of ethics, maintaining that the duty not to interfere with another person's 'domain of choice' is '[a]ll that any society should (coercively) demand'; higher levels of ethics, involving positive benevolence, represent instead a 'personal ideal' that should be left to 'a person's own individual choice and development.' And that certainly sounds like an attempt to embrace libertarianism all over again. My own view is that Nozick's thinking about these matters evolved over time and that what he wrote at any given time was an accurate reflection of what he was thinking at that time.
^Sanchez, Julian (21 June 2011). "Nozick, Libertarianism, and Thought Experiments"Archived 17 June 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Julian Shanchez.com. Retrieved 19 March 2020. "Nozick always thought of himself as a libertarian in a broad sense, right up to his final days, even as his views became somewhat less 'hardcore.'"
^"Join the Libertarian Party". Libertarian Party. 1971. Archived from the original on 16 November 2020. Retrieved 18 January 2020. I certify that I oppose the initiation of force to achieve political or social goals.
^Barnet, Phred (14 April 2011). "The Non-Aggression Principle". Americanly Yours. Archived from the original on 17 November 2011. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
^Vance, Laurence M. Vance (1 October 2015). "The Morality of Libertarianism". The Future of Freedom Foundation. Archived from the original on 23 January 2017. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
^Kinsella, Stephan (21 August 2009). "What Libertarianism Is". Mises Daily. Mises Institute. Archived from the original on 3 February 2022. Retrieved 20 January 2020.
^Becker, Lawrence C.; Becker, Charlotte B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Ethics. 3. New York: Routledge. p. 1562Archived 11 October 2023 at the Wayback Machine.
^Rothbard, Murray (1998). The Ethics of Liberty. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 978-0814775066.
^Mises, Ludwig (2007). Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. ISBN 978-0865976313.
^Feserm, Edward (Fall 2000). "Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft"(PDF). The Independent Review: 219–235). Archived(PDF) from the original on 31 December 2013. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
^Tame, Chris R. (1989). "Taxation Is Theft"(PDF). Libertarian Alliance Political Note (44). Archived from the original(PDF) on 2 August 2019. Retrieved 2 September 2012.
^Chodorov, Frank (26 February 2007). "Taxation Is Robbery". Mises Institute. Archived from the original on 28 October 2014. Retrieved 10 July 2012. Reprint from Chodorov, Frank (1962). Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist. New York: The Devin-Adair Company. pp. 216–239.
^Tannehill, Linda; Tannehill, Morris (1993). The Market for Liberty(PDF). San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes. pp. 105–106. ISBN 978-0930073084. Archived(PDF) from the original on 3 October 2014. Retrieved 30 June 2011.
^Robert Leeson (2017). Hayek: A Collaborative Biography, Part IX: The Divine Right of the 'Free' Market. Springer. p. 180. ISBN 978-3319607085. To the original 'anarchocapitalist' (Rothbard coined the term) [...].
^Miller 1987, p. 290. "A student and disciple of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, Rothbard combined the laissez-faire economics of his teacher with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the nineteenth century such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker".
^Tame, Chris R. (October 1983). The Chicago School: Lessons from the Thirties for the Eighties. Economic Affairs. p. 56.
^Franks, Benjamin (August 2013). Freeden, Michael; Stears, Marc (eds.). "Anarchism". The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Oxford University Press: 385–404. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585977.013.0001.
^McKay, Iain, ed. (2012). An Anarchist FAQ. Vol. II. Stirling: AK Press. ISBN 978-1849351225.
^ abDavis, Laurence (2019). "Individual and Community". In Levy, Carl; Adams, Matthew S. (eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism. Cham: Springer. pp. 47–70. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-75620-2_3. ISBN 978-3319756196.
^Crowder, George (1991). Classical Anarchism: The Political Thought of Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 85–86. ISBN 978-0198277446. "The ownership [anarchists oppose] is basically that which is unearned [...] including such things as interest on loans and income from rent. This is contrasted with ownership rights in those goods either produced by the work of the owner or necessary for that work, for example, his dwelling-house, land, and tools. Proudhon initially refers to legitimate rights of ownership of these goods as 'possession,' and although in his later work he calls this 'property,' the conceptual distinction remains the same."
^Hargreaves, David H. London (2019). Beyond Schooling: An Anarchist Challenge. London: Routledge. pp. 90–91. ISBN 978-0429582363. "Ironically, Proudhon did not mean literally what he said. His boldness of expression was intended for emphasis, and by 'property' he wished to be understood what he later called 'the sum of its abuses'. He was denouncing the property of the man who uses it to exploit the labour of others without any effort on his own part, property distinguished by interest and rent, by the impositions of the non-producer on the producer. Towards property regarded as 'possession' the right of a man to control his dwelling and the land and tools he needs to live, Proudhon had no hostility; indeed, he regarded it as the cornerstone of liberty, and his main criticism of the communists was that they wished to destroy it."
^McKay, Iain (2008). An Anarchist FAQ. I. "Why do anarchists oppose the current system?" "Why are anarchists against private property?" Oakland/Edinburgh: AK Press. ISBN 978-1902593906.
^McKay, Iain (2008). An Anarchist FAQ. I. "Anarchism and 'anarcho'-capitalism" Oakland/Edinburgh: AK Press. ISBN 978-1902593906.
^Jennings, Jeremy (1993). "Anarchism". In Eatwell, Roger; Wright, Anthony (eds.). Contemporary Political Ideologies. London: Pinter. pp. 127–146. ISBN 978-0861870967. "[...] anarchism does not stand for the untrammelled freedom of the individual (as the 'anarcho-capitalists' appear to believe) but, as we have already seen, for the extension of individuality and community" (p. 143).
^Gay, Kathlyn; Gay, Martin (1999). Encyclopedia of Political Anarchy. ABC-CLIO. p. 15. ISBN 978-0874369823. "For many anarchists (of whatever persuasion), anarcho-capitalism is a contradictory term, since 'traditional' anarchists oppose capitalism".
^Morriss, Andrew (2008). "Anarcho-capitalism". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 13–14. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n8. ISBN 978-1412965804. OCLC191924853. "Social anarchists, those anarchists with communitarian leanings, are critical of anarcho-capitalism because it permits individuals to accumulate substantial power through markets and private property."
^Franks, Benjamin (August 2013). Freeden, Michael; Stears, Marc (eds.). "Anarchism". The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Oxford University Press: 385–404. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585977.013.0001. "Individualisms that defend or reinforce hierarchical forms such as the economic-power relations of anarcho-capitalism [...] are incompatible with practices of social anarchism. [...] Increasingly, academic analysis has followed activist currents in rejecting the view that anarcho-capitalism has anything to do with social anarchism" (pp. 393–394).
^ abKinna, Ruth, ed. (2012). The Bloomsbury Companion to Anarchism. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 330–331. ISBN 978-1441142702.
^Goodwin, Barbara (2007). Using Political Ideas. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. p. 143. ISBN 978-0470025529. "[Anarcho-capitalists'] true place is in the group of right-wing libertarians described in Chapter 3."
^Meltzer, Albert (2000). Anarchism: Arguments for and Against. London: AK Press. p. 50. ISBN 978-1873176573. The philosophy of 'anarcho-capitalism' dreamed up by the 'libertarian' New Right, has nothing to do with Anarchism as known by the Anarchist movement proper.
^Piper, J. Richard (1997). Ideologies and Institutions: American Conservative and Liberal Governance Prescriptions Since 1933. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 110–111. ISBN 978-0847684595.
^Dionne Jr., E. J. (1991). Why Americans Hate Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 161.
^Meyer, Frank S. (1996). In Defense of Freedom and Other Essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
^Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (2011). DemocracyThe God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order. Transaction Publishers. pp. 216–218. ISBN 978-1412815291.
^Guenzl, Simon (23 June 2016). "Public Property and the Libertarian Immigration DebateArchived 2 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine". Libertarian Papers. 8 (1): 153–177. "I conclude that supporting a legitimate role for the state as an immigration gatekeeper is inconsistent with Rothbardian and Hoppean libertarian anarchism, as well as with the associated strategy of advocating always and in every instance reductions in the state's role in society."
^Sawer, Marian (2003). The Ethical State?: Social Liberalism in Australia. Melbourne University Publishing. p. 87Archived 11 October 2023 at the Wayback Machine. ISBN 978-0522850826.
^ abFeser, Edward. "Robert Nozick (1938–2002)". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archived from the original on 26 February 2017. Retrieved 13 March 2017.
^Appleby, Joyce (1992). Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination. p. 58.
^Gaus, Gerald F.; Kukathas, Chandran (2004). Handbook of Political Theory. p. 422.
^Quinton, A. (1995). "Conservativism". In Goodin, R. E.; Pettit, P. eds. A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. p. 246.
^ abMayne, Alan James (1999). From Politics Past to Politics Future: An Integrated Analysis of Current and Emergent Paradigmss. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 124. ISBN 0275961516.
^Vallentyne 2007, p. 1. "The best-known form of libertarianism—right-libertarianism—is a version of classical liberalism [...]."
^ abRothbard, Murray (1992). "A Strategy for the Right". Rothbard-Rockwell Report. Archived from the original on 30 October 2020. Retrieved 27 February 2020.
^ abSanchez, Julian; Weigel, David. "Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters?". Reason. Reason Foundation. Archived from the original on 26 October 2009. Retrieved 9 June 2013. Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks," which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes.
^Kirby, David; Ekins, Emily (6 August 2012). "Libertarian Roots of the Tea Party". Policy Analysis. No. 705. Cato Institute. Archived from the original on 27 February 2020. Retrieved 27 February 2020.
^Berger, Edmund Berger (2017). "Looking Forward". Uncertain Futures: An Assessment of the Conditions of the Present. Zero Book. ISBN 978-1785355004.
^Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (17 September 2017). Libertarianism and the Alt-Right (Speech). 12th annual meeting of the Property and Freedom Society. Bodrum, Turkey.
^Harkov, Lahav (17 March 2019). "The Feiglin phenomenon". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on 30 April 2021. 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. Archived from the original on 15 November 2020. Retrieved 21 February 2019. [...] and personal liberty. Its platform includes libertarian economic positions [...].
^Cronin, Bruce C.; Lee, Frederic S. (2010). "Research Quality Rankings of Heterodox Economic Journals in a Contested Discipline." American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 69 (5): 1428. doi:10.1111/j.1536-7150.2010.00751.x/pdf.
^Heppell, Timothy (June 2002). "The ideological composition of the Parliamentary Conservative Party 1992–97". British Journal of Politics and International Relations. 4 (2): 299–324. doi:10.1111/1467-856X.t01-1-00006. S2CID144304577.
^See Raimondo, Enemy; Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (New York: Public Affairs 2007).
^Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction 2001) 189.
^Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "My Battle With The Thought PoliceArchived 28 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine," Mises Daily (Mises Institute, 12 April 2005). The quoted material in the text was intended as an elaboration of an earlier discussion in Democracy; Hoppe noted that "a few sentences" of Democracy: The God that Failed address that point and noted: "In its proper context these statements are hardly more offensive than saying that the Catholic Church should excommunicate those violating its fundamental precepts or that a nudist colony should expel those insisting on wearing bathing suits." In Democracy, he suggests that in a stateless society, it would make sense for people forming communities "for the purpose of protecting family and kin" to eschew "tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal." He stated that "the advocates of alternative, non-family-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism—will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order." Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction 2001) 218.
^Walter Block, "A Libertarian Case for Free Immigration," Journal of Libertarian Studies 13.2 (Sum. 1998): 167–186.
^Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "Natural Order, the State, and the Immigration Problem," Journal of Libertarian Studies 16.1 (Winter 2002): 75–97.
^Hoppe, "Immigration" 93n23. Proponents of open borders, he maintained, "were initially drawn to libertarianism as juveniles because of its 'antiauthoritarianism' (trust no authority) and seeming 'tolerance,' in particular toward 'alternative'—nonbourgeois—lifestyles. As adults, they have been arrested in this phase of mental development They express special 'sensitivity' in every manner of discrimination and are not inhibited in using the power of the central state to impose non-discrimination or 'civil rights' statutes on society. Consequently, by prohibiting other property owners from discrimination as they see fit, they are allowed to live at others' expense. They can indulge in their 'alternative' lifestyle without having to pay the 'normal' price for such conduct, i.e., discrimination and exclusion. To legitimize this course of action, they insist that one lifestyle is as good and acceptable as another. This leads first to multiculturalism, then to cultural relativism, and finally to 'open borders.'"
^Rothbard, Murray (1984). "The Reagan Phenomenon"Archived 18 January 2023 at the Wayback Machine. Free Life: The Journal of the Libertarian Alliance. Libertarian Alliance. '4 (1): 1–7. Retrieved 20 September 2020 – via the Mises Institute.
^ abcNichols, Bruce (15 March 1987). "Ron Paul Wants to Get Americans Thinking: Republican-Turned-Libertarian Seeks Presidency". The Dallas Morning News.
^ abcKutzmann, David M. (24 May 1988). "Small Party Battles Big Government Libertarian Candidate Opposes Intrusion into Private Lives". San Jose Mercury News. p. 12A.
^In 2008, Paul was reported to conclude his campaign stump "speeches with a three-part paean to individualism: 'I don't want to run your life,' 'I don't want to run the economy,' and 'I don't want to run the world.'" See Julian Sanchez and David Weigel, "Who Wrote Ron Paul's NewslettersArchived 26 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine," Reason (Reason Foundation, 16 January 2008). The primary focus of the article is the ongoing controversy over the authorship of racially charged statements contained in newsletters published by Paul between around 1989 and 1994; the article cites various sources identifying Lew Rockwell as the author, as well as Rockwell's denial of authorship and his characterization of attempts to raise the issue as "hysterical smears."
^Justin Raimondo, "Confessions of an Obama CultistArchived 17 March 2020 at the Wayback Machine," AntiWar.Com (Randolph Bourne Institute, 8 March 2008); Raimondo, Reclaiming. The openly gay Raimondo—see Justin Raimondo, In Praise of Outlaws: Rebuilding Gay Liberation (San Francisco: Students for a Libertarian Society 1979)—may be as dismissive of so-called "beltway libertarianism" as Rockwell, but he shows no signs of uncritically embracing the right-libertarianism of Hoppe and others.
^ abFriedman, Jeffrey (1993). "What's Wrong with Libertarianism". Critical Review. 11 (3). p. 427.
^ abSterba, James P. (October 1994). "From Liberty to Welfare". Ethics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell. 105 (1): 237–241.
^ abPartridge, Ernest (2004). "With Liberty and Justice for Some"Archived 21 August 2019 at the Wayback Machine. In Zimmerman, Michael; Callicott, Baird; Warren, Karen; Klaver, Irene; Clark, John. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (4th ed.). Pearson. ISBN 978-0131126954.
^ abcFried, Barbara (2009). The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire: Robert Hale and the First Law and Economics Movement. Harvard University Press. p. 50. ISBN 978-0674037304.
Carlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilburn R. (ed.). The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. London: Sage Publications; Cato Institute. ISBN 978-1412988766.
Hunt, E. K. (2003). Property and Prophets: The Evolution of Economic Institutions and Ideologies. New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc. ISBN 0765606089.
Kymlicka, Will (2005). "libertarianism, left-". In Honderich, Ted (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (New ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199264797.
Vallentyne, Peter (2007). "Libertarianism and the State". Liberalism: Old and New: Volume 24. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521703055.
Van de Haar, Edwin (2015). Degrees of Freedom: Liberal Political Philosophy and Ideology. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1412855754.
Wündisch, Joachim (2014). Towards a Right-Libertarian Welfare State. Mentis. ISBN 978-3897858442.
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