Talk:Libertarian

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The Right-wing Libertarians keep messing with this thing to keep people from finding out that Libertarians don't neccessarily have to subscribe to capitalism.

A left-wing libertarian would argue that a true libertarian cannot subscribe to capitalism and a market economy, because within the capitalist system there are still hierarchies and authority, they are just not in the form of a traditional nation-state. A true libertarian would oppose all authority, weather it comes from a boss, corporation, king/dictator, government, or landlord. Right-wing libertarians only oppose governments and kings/dictators, but are strangely content with all forms of authority that exist elsewhere.

Anyways, thats how the left-wing libertarian arguement would go.

I put this page back to how it was before the re-direct. Please, lets keep it that way. Wikipedia is not supposed to be where an ideological group manipulates the contents for their own ends. Lets try to keep this objective and include all views.

Anonymous: shouldn't your beef really be with the libertarianism page? I can't imagine why libertarianism and libertarian should be about different things. - Nat Krause 00:11, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Nat Krause - They actually are not the same thing. Libertarianism is another term for extreme neoliberalism. It is an economic view that is very pro-business and is centered on free trade and markets. Libertarian on the other hand is a view opposed to authority. They should rightly be seperated.

In addition, there is much information in this article that is not contained in the one on Libertarianism. Please leave this one intact.

I dispute the distinction. "Libertarian" is a noun for person believing in libertarianism, or an adjective relating to libertarianism. They are different forms of the same word. If there is material worth salvaging in this article, it should go to some other article, either to libertarianism or to libertarian socialism or to someplace else. - Nat Krause 03:32, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

They are, however different. Libertarian is a noun for a person believing first and foremost in LIBERTY. Libertarianism is a specific brand of libertarian belief, namely right-wing market libertarian.

The article on Libertarianism is clearly just a soap box for the right-wing libertarians. I do not even think it qualifies under the Neutral-point-of-view, but I'm not going to take my time neutralizing it so long as this article clarifies the history, etymology, and meaning of the word "Libertarian". Its meaning and history is so often distorted by the right-wing libertarians (along with other terms like "classical liberal")

Would you please stop deleting this article. I am going to take it up with the webmasters if you do it again. Thank you.

What I want to know is, what leads you to thnk that they have separate meanings? Merriam-Webster only has one entry for both words. Dictionary.com defines libertarianism as "Libertarian principles or doctrines." I know that there are leftists around here who would resent your implication that libertarianism is necessarily "right-wing ". It is because of this ambiguity that we have notes at the beginning of the libertarianism article directing interested parties to libertarian socialism and libertarianism (philosophy). If you have a problem with the libertarianism article, I invite you to fix it, but I still see no reason to separate this one. If we continue to disagree about this, we can take the discussion to Wikipedia:Requests for comment. - Nat Krause 08:07, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What happened to this page? It used to contain a description of the ORIGINAL libertarian movement, as an alternative name for left-wing anarchists. Why must the right-wing Anarcho-Capitalists go around hijacking everything and using it for their own twisted ends?

Does anyone know where that description of the original meaning of libertarian went? It had something to do with being French and "libertairre" or something like that... -CertainKindOfFool

I cannot understand why Libertarianism is being connected with the collectivist ideologies. Libertarianism whould be defined from the standpoints of the US Libertarian Party (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nolan_%28Libertarian_Party%29 ), which was founded in 1971. The work "libertarian" is almosy unused outside the USA, sue to the fact that it is only in the US that the original term "Liberal" has been redefined to cover the Democratic party line.

Libertarian means "Classical liberal" or "Paleoliberal".

Furthermore "libertarian socialism" or "libertarian communism" are oxymorons. Communism and socialism are from the definition of the terms socialism and communism ipso facto *collectivist* ideologies, which is the direct antithesis of libertarianism, which is *individualist*. Lastly, socialism and communism are both anti-capitalist ideologies, while libertarians are strongly pro-capitalism.

If nobody clears this up, I'll do it before too long. - Peter Perlsø 23:22, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

WOULD YOU STOP ENGAGING IN REVISIONIST HISTORY PLEASE!!!!! Left-wing "collectivist" libertarianism (Anarcho-Syndicalism) is a legitimate libertarian ideology. Are you the one who destroyed this page and made it a propoganda tool for your Anarcho-Capitalist cult? Please put it back how it originally was!!! Thank you! -CertainKindOfFool

There, I fixed it.

A note to all Anarcho-capitalists & MARKET libertarians- PLEASE STOP USING WIKIPEDIA AS A TOOL TO DISTORT HISTORY! You are NOT classical liberals!!! You are economic conservatives with liberal social tendancies. The classical liberal thinkers only shared some qualities with your movement, others they would wholeheartedly reject, as I have demonstrated in the discussion thread about Classical Liberalism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Classical_liberalism

The classical liberals believed as do modern liberals that there are LIMITS to the free market. They were often openly hostile to the very wealthy and to corporations. They believed that corporations needed to be kept on a tight leash in order to serve the public interest, and that the government served a role in public education, basic public services, and in keeping bussinessmen honest. If they were alive today, they would not subscribe to your movement or ideology!!

I am a student of political science, so I know what I am talking about. Please do not make this mistake again. Thank you.

-CertainKindOfFool

You are a student of political science, correct? Please demonstrate more intellectual maturity. Thanks in advance. --DylanL 01:13, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You have expressed more than just a few misconception about the ideologies which you are talking about.

Libertarian means "Classical liberal" or "Paleoliberal".


No. In the context you are using it, as a reference to the Libertarian Party of the United States, it means "market-liberal", "neoliberal", or "economic-liberal".

Furthermore "libertarian socialism" or "libertarian communism" are oxymorons.

Again, you are obviously not familiar with these ideologies, so how can you say this? According to Marx and his contempories such as Bakunin, the state is a manifestation of the interests of the ruling class. Once capitalism is overthrown, it will wither away. You are confusing Marxism with Bolshevism, Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism. The former is not a statist ideology. In fact, it is very strongly anti-statist. The later are statist ideologies.

Communism and socialism are from the definition of the terms socialism and communism ipso facto *collectivist* ideologies,

Only YOUR ideology labels them as such. They do not consider themselves to be "collectivist". This is why I refer to anarcho-capitalists and right-wing libertarians as a cult. You are incredibly dogmatic and use perjorative terms like that as if they are the objective truth.

which is the direct antithesis of libertarianism, which is *individualist*. Lastly, socialism and communism are both anti-capitalist ideologies, while libertarians are strongly pro-capitalism.

This is not true. Right-wing Libertarians are strongly pro-capitalist, while Left-wing Libertarians are strongly anti-capitalist.

-CertainKindOfFool

Peter: historically speaking, CertainKindofFool is right about the various uses of the term "libertarian". CertainKindofFool: you come across as someone just as motivated by ideology as are those you decry. - Nat Krause 10:14, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] The early period

How can "libertarian" be applied to a determinist? It seems to me a philosophical libertarian and a philosophical determinist would hold polar opposite beliefs. -- Prell 21:34, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Big L and small l

this is a really obvious example of why small-l "libertarian" and big-L "Libertarian" MUST be distinct entries. The same problem applies to "green Party" versus "Green Party". Thankfully there we have the big-P small-p to distinguish them...

But this has to be fixed.

Think. How do people distinguish between capital and lower case words in speech? They use extra words to disambiguate. Think about it. Perhaps you need to handle this by using your writing skills. The Anome

Many confusions are resolved by context in speech, that cannot be so resolved in writing visible to all billion Internet users at once, when disconnected from context in an encyclopedia.

No matter how skilled I am at writing, I can't cause a lawyer to read "green" and "Green" the same way. In the former case he has no one to serve papers to, in the latter he has lots of Parties.

Linguistic style and convention serves writers, not the other way around. Personally, I think using case distinctions for meaning is stupid and wrong, because English wasn't designed that way, but I recognize that some people do use that convention, so an encyclopedia article should explain the use of the convention. But it should not use the convention unless it's universally accepted, and it's not. It's only used in narrow contexts--it's not something that will ever be taught in a standard English expository writing course. Take your blinders off a little and think about articles in terms of readers who are not congnocenti within the narrow fields of study where such conventions might be commonly used, but where they are ordinary moderately-educated speakers of the English language who expect words to mean something vaguely resembling their dictionary definitions and sentences and paragraphs to be written using generally accepted conventions of English writing. In generally accepted conventions of English writing, letter case does not carry meaning. --LDC

In English, capital letters are used to designate proper names. That is exactly what the distinction is between "L" and "l" libertarians. The Libertarians are a political party, which has a proper name, and is therefore capitalized.

[edit] Disambiguate?

Should we have a disambiguation page for libertarianism? A person could come to "libertarian" looking for three different things 1) political party
2) political ideology
3) non-political philosophy--this is at the end of libertarianism

[edit] Libertarianism

Still can't figure out why we have separate pages for libertarian and libertarianism. Should we merge them? Make one or both disambiguation pages? - Nat Krause 15:12, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm planning on merging this page with Libertarianism unless there are objections. - Nat Krause 06:38, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Chile and Libertarianism

It was mentioned in the article that "libertarian economic theory" was implemented in Chile. It is true that the "Chicago Boys" went to Chile and spoke to Pinochet, and that Pinochet then did implement some small parts of libertarian economic policiy (i.e. more choice in pension plans, some choice in education), but Chile never implemented "libertarian economic theory". If they did want to point to some good examples they could have used the United States from 1787 to (maybe) the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank in the early 20th century. Of course, this was mostly for White Male Land-Owners. Another good example would have been Hong Kong from the 1970's to its handover to China in the late 1990's. Neither of these are perfect examples, but they are the closest any nation has come to a free-market.

[edit] Milton Freidman?

Since when was the man who invented withholding tax and the Negative Income Tax a libertarian?

Oh well this kinda crap fits in well in this god forsaken wiki.

Oh and by the way, There is only one type of libertarian and he follows the Austraian school of economics.

[edit] Libertarians and Nature?

The article is a great introduction. The lineage of libertarianism is awesome - from Aritstotle through Aquinas to Locke, Hobbes, Jefferson and Smith. The libertarian method is great - it starts with few axioms - just the premise of "Nature of Man" and builds a huge system of laws. But, it is distinctly narrow in that it does not seem to shed any light on the most important current issue - Man's relation with other Creatures on Earth. It seems like such a good fit. The minimalist approach of libertarian thought would seem ideal to understand how to derive laws that would enable sustainable living on earth. Is it truly that these great thinkers did not consider the issue of man's relationship to nature? Is it that the Libertarian thinkers do not think that the Natural Law approach can be applied to this problem? I cannot believe that is so. It would be neat if we could find sources that would extend the libertarian method to Global Warming, Habitat Protection, etc.

Rdesai19 (talk) 06:57, 20 January 2008 (UTC)