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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wkmac" data-source="post: 2701695" data-attributes="member: 2189">To some extent what Ricky is saying has some manner of truth to it.  For starters, when I speak of libertarianism, I speak of the lower case form as opposed to the upper case Libertarianism that is a political movement to take power within a political state.  For my own purposes I would say that a libertarian first is an advocate of the Non Aggression Axiom or Principle sometimes called NAP.  The non aggression principle just means you can't use force or forms of coercion against another person, in effect, you first grant libertarianism or belief in liberty to the other person with the idea that reciprocity will occur and the other principle at play in libertarianism, all associations and interactions between people are voluntary.  There it is, that's all it is. For me, libertarianism is No force and all human actions voluntary.  But at the same time and this speaks to the efforts of creating a "so-called" Libertarian Central State, to force someone using the State and its compulsory means to Libertarian ends is itself a very un-libertarian act and thus violates the very concepts of libertarianism.  Thus, libertarianism by its nature is anti-State because it opposes the compulsory nature of the State.  To even have a "Libertarian" party seems to violate libertarian principle.The word libertarianism just means "one who believes in liberty" as "liber" in the ancient Roman was a god of freedom and his festival Liberalia (March 17th) was a festival dedicated to a time of free speech and expression of other rights.  In the latin, liber means both freedom, hence our word liberty but also knowledge as in our word library.  The bark of trees was called liber and such was used to write books upon thus liber could also refer to books as in knowledge and thus knowledge gives freedom.  Our word liberal also comes from the word liber.  The suffix arian and ism refer to belief or belief in.  In our modern sense, the word libertarian, the word liberal and even the word conservative are terms that have been turned on their heads and are quite different from what they were just 100 years ago.Now to Ricky's point about American libertarianism verses what he called traditional libertarianism which I would call European libertarianism.  The word libertarian goes back about 150 years ago when European anarchists first used the term in reference to themselves. In other words, libertarian and anarchist were the same thing.  Thus there is truth to the old saying that an anarchist is a libertarian who took libertarianism to its conclusion.  The late anarcho communist Murray Bookchin in his book, The Ecology of Freedom, noted that "libertarian was a term created by nineteenth century European anarchists, not by contemporary right wing propriertarians."  The first use of the term libertarian in written form came actually from NY City in the anarchist journal La Libertaire, Journal de Mouvment Social, publish by French communist anarchist Joseph Dejacque between 1858 and 1861.  The French regional anarchist Congress at La Havre November 1880' used the term libertarian and later published a manifest entitled "Libertarian or Anarchist Communism."  As a result of the 20th century failures of State communism, we fail often to realize that prior to the 20th century, there was a healthy movement of anti-state socialists and communists that would shame many of the so-called right libertarians who hold what they think are anti-state viewpoints.  One can read the communist Mikhail Bakunin's work to get a healthy dose of real radical left wing anti-statism.  I consider Bakunin a hero and yes he was a communist, a communist that told Marx to his face he was wrong to advocate for the use of the State to achieve communist ends.  He said it would end in disaster and he was right.  Marx had Bakunin kicked out of the First International because of this too.But even in this undercurrent were emerging ideas of individualism that married into the strands of libertarianism which is nothing but anarchism by another name.  In America we had our own 19th century radicals such as the individualist, anarchist Lysander Spooner whose "Constitution of No Authority" and his work of Jury Nullification IMO are must reads.  In the late 1800's and early 1900's we had the anarchist and self described socialist Benjamin Tucker who not only argued for the rights of the individual but also for a true free market.  And no, I do not conflate capitalism with free market because in the sense of crony or interventionist capitalism, I'm anti capitalist.  Tucker also embraced what many call mutualism (a form of voluntary association I find very appealing) that is based off the works of Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin.  Josiah Warren would be another American anarchist.Leo Tolstoy had a form of anarchism based in the teaching of Jesus that many refer to Tolstoy as a christian anarchist. Some refer to Henry David Thoreau as an anarchist but I think of Thoreau with some anarchistic thinking and not as much an anarchist in whole cloth.Our modern version of libertarianism associated with right wing politics emerged in the 1970's as a syncretism of sorts of classical liberalism, right wing anti-communism and opposition to FDR type public policy influenced by FDR's New Deal.  It also was the efforts of Murray Rothbard to merge the Old Right with the New Left where Rothbard, former Goldwater speech writer turned anarchist Karl Hess and former SDS founder Carl Olgesby attempted this feat. I have a personal interest in this as Carl Olgesby and I are distant cousins.  No we never knew one another personally and I consider that my lost, my great grandfather and Carl's father were cousins.  But the results of Rothbard's efforts would help result in the Libertarian political party and the original Cato Institute was created to promote Rothbard's writings and theories before he had a falling out with Charles Koch of the Kochtopus fame.  This form of Libertarianism (note the use of upper case as opposed to lower case "L") is what is often referred to today as rightwing libertarianism that later made a devil's deal with the republican party. A deal quite frankly the GOP had no intentions of ever honoring. (see Ron Paul) There were libertarians such as Sam E. Konkin III, often referred to as SEK3 who tried to steer libertarians away from this devil's deal and he even wrote a manifesto called the New Libertarian Manifesto and coined the term and ideal <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agorism" target="_blank">Agorism</a> as a method to fight it. SEK3 is also the man who coined the term Kochtopus as a pejorative in reference to the Koch brothers and their empire.    A heart attack took him down before he was able to complete his vision but a vibrant left libertarianism still exists none the less.As to the 2nd part of Ricky's comments in regards to Corp. power, some of that may be true but the larger and growing trend among the hardcore radical libertarians is that Corp. status is a state privilege and not just an illegit privilege but a market intervention by the state which the market radicals oppose.  Corporations with their privilege of limited liability for example is not a natural operation of a true free market but is a state creation and thus perverts the market place with unequal actors.  It also hijacks local customs and ways in the name of centralized power and creates an imbalance in true competition.  Ricky and others seems to refuse to actually read libertarian writings on the matter or even acknowledge this when pointed out because it mostly contradicts their talking points and thus kills the popular political narrative they postulate.Seems to me before any discussion of what libertarianism actually is, knowing the history of your subject might be the first order of the day.  But then that results in not so much discrediting libertarianism but rather calling out that which calls itself libertarian as not being libertarian in the first place.  But for political purposes, maintaining the straw man is more effective when your goal is to just force others to what you think is right.  Thus in the end they are no better than the Libertarians they so adamantly criticize.Another POV on libertarianism, or left libertarianism can be found <a href="https://jeffriggenbach.liberty.me/why-i-am-a-left-libertarian/" target="_blank">here</a>.  One can also hear the author who has a good radio voice read his essay <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APR1CP65xM8&t=3s" target="_blank">here</a>.  This may also explain why I see no real difference in someone who voted for Trump and/or voted for Hillary.  Or even Gary Johnson or even Ron Paul for that matter.  Now pretend I was never here and just carry on as you were as in the end that is what you'll end up doing anyway!<img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/wink.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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