Portal:Libertarianism

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

Introduction

Libertarianism (from French: libertaire, itself from the Latin: libertas, lit. 'freedom') is a political philosophy that holds freedom as a strong if not its primary value. Many libertarians conceive of freedom in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle, which holds that each individual has the right to live as they choose, so long as it does not involve violating the rights of others by initiating force or fraud against them.

Libertarians advocate for the expansion of individual autonomy and political self-determination, emphasizing the principles of equality before the law and the protection of civil rights, including the rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of choice. They generally support individual liberty and oppose authority, state power, warfare, militarism and nationalism, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

edit

Selected article

Libertarian communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, capitalism, wage labour and private property (while retaining respect for personal property) in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".

Some forms of libertarian communism, such as insurrectionary anarchism, are strongly influenced by egoism and radical individualism, believing libertarian communism is the best social system for the realization of individual freedom. Some libertarian communists view libertarian communism as a way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and society.

Libertarian communism developed out of radical socialist currents after the French Revolution, but it was first formulated as such in the Italian section of the First International. The work of Peter Kropotkin took importance later as it expanded and developed pro-organizationalist and insurrectionary anti-organizationalist sections. To date, the best-known examples of libertarian communist societies were the anarchist territories during the Spanish Revolution and the Free Territory during the Russian Revolution.

...Archive

edit

Selected quote

“

Even more remarkably, the Libertarian party achieved this growth while consistently adhering to a new ideological creed—"libertarianism"—thus bringing to the American political scene for the first time in a century a party interested in principle rather than in merely gaining jobs and money at the public trough. We have been told countless times by pundits and political scientists that the genius of America and of our party system is its lack of ideology and its "pragmatism" (a kind word for focusing solely on grabbing money and jobs from the hapless taxpayers). How, then, explain the amazing growth of a new party which is frankly and eagerly devoted to ideology?

One explanation is that Americans were not always pragmatic and nonideological. On the contrary, historians now realize that the American Revolution itself was not only ideological but also the result of devotion to the creed and the institutions of libertarianism. The American revolutionaries were steeped in the creed of libertarianism, an ideology which led them to resist with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor the invasions of their rights and liberties committed by the imperial British government. Historians have long debated the precise causes of the American Revolution: Were they constitutional, economic, political, or ideological? We now realize that, being libertarians, the revolutionaries saw no conflict between moral and political rights on the one hand and economic freedom on the other. On the contrary, they perceived civil and moral liberty, political independence, and the freedom to trade and produce as all part of one unblemished system, what Adam Smith was to call, in the same year that the Declaration of Independence was written, the "obvious and simple system of natural liberty."

”

— Murray Rothbard (1926–1995)
For a New Liberty (1973)

More selected quotes

edit

Selected picture

Credit: JayCoop

More selected pictures

Read more...

General images

The following are images from various libertarianism-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Tea Party movement protest in Washington, D.C., September 2009 (from Libertarianism)
Image 2A diagram of the typology of beliefs in libertarianism (both left and right, respectively) (from Libertarianism)
Image 3The Political Compass: the green quadrant represents left-libertarianism and the purple right-libertarianism (from Libertarianism)
Image 4Spanish anarchist militiawomen during the 1936 Revolution (from Libertarianism)
Image 5John Locke, regarded as the father of liberalism (from Libertarianism)
Image 6Murray Bookchin, American libertarian socialist theorist and proponent of libertarian municipalism and communalism (from Libertarianism)
Image 7Members of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo marching in Madrid in 2010 (from Libertarianism)
Image 8Sébastien Faure, prominent French theorist of libertarian communism as well as atheist and freethought militant (from Libertarianism)
Image 917 August 1860 edition of Le Libertaire, Journal du mouvement social, a libertarian communist publication in New York City (from Libertarianism)
Image 10The Nolan Chart, created by American libertarian David Nolan, expands the left–right line into a two-dimensional chart classifying the political spectrum by degrees of personal and economic freedom (from Libertarianism)
Image 11Thomas Paine, whose theory of property showed a libertarian concern with the unequal distribution of resources under statism (from Libertarianism)
Image 12Murray Bookchin, a left-libertarian of the social anarchist school (from Left-libertarianism)
Image 13Former congressman Ron Paul, a self-described libertarian, whose presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 garnered significant support from youth and libertarian Republicans (from Libertarianism)
Image 14Gary Chartier, a left-libertarian of the free-market anti-capitalist school (from Left-libertarianism)

Selected biography - show another

Claude-Frédéric Bastiat (/bɑːstiˈɑː/; French: [klod fʁedeʁik bastja]; 30 June 1801 – 24 December 1850) was a French economist, writer and a prominent member of the French liberal school.

A member of the French National Assembly, Bastiat developed the economic concept of opportunity cost and introduced the parable of the broken window. He was described as "the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived" by economic theorist Joseph Schumpeter. (Full article...)

List of selected biographies
Lysander Spooner Adam Smith Murray Bookchin Murray Rothbard Ayn Rand Ron Paul Mary Ruwart Milton Friedman Noam Chomsky Lew Rockwell Walter Block Steve Kubby Hans-Hermann Hoppe Randy Barnett John Stossel Nicholas Sarwark Gary Johnson Jo Jorgensen