Liberalism , regarded as the father of liberalism Elements of libertarianism can be traced back to the higher-law concepts of the
Greeks and the
Israelites, and
Christian theologians who argued for the moral worth of the individual and the division of the world into two realms, one of which is the province of God and thus beyond the power of states to control it. The
Cato Institute's
David Boaz includes passages from the
Tao Te Ching in his 1997 book
The Libertarian Reader and noted in an article for the
Encyclopædia Britannica that Laozi advocated for rulers to "do nothing" because "without law or compulsion, men would dwell in harmony". Libertarianism was influenced by debates within
Scholasticism regarding private property and
slavery. In 17th-century England, libertarian ideas began to take modern form in the writings of the
Levellers and
John Locke. In the middle of that century, opponents of royal power began to be called
Whigs, or sometimes simply Opposition or Country, as opposed to Court writers. During the 18th century and
Age of Enlightenment,
liberal ideas flourished in Europe and North America. Libertarians of various schools were influenced by liberal ideas. For philosopher Roderick T. Long, libertarians "share a common—or at least an overlapping—intellectual ancestry. [Libertarians] [...] claim the seventeenth century English Levellers and the eighteenth century French
Encyclopedists among their ideological forebears; and [...] usually share an admiration for
Thomas Jefferson and
Thomas Paine." , whose theory of property showed a libertarian concern with the unequal distribution of resources under statism John Locke greatly influenced both libertarianism and the modern world in his writings published before and after the
English Revolution of 1688, especially
A Letter Concerning Toleration (1667),
Two Treatises of Government (1689) and
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). In the text of 1689, he established the basis of liberal political theory, i.e. that people's rights existed before government; that the purpose of government is to protect personal and property rights; that people may dissolve governments that do not do so; and that representative government is the best form to protect rights. The
United States Declaration of Independence was inspired by Locke in its statement: "[T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." According to American historian
Bernard Bailyn, during and after the
American Revolution, "the major themes of eighteenth-century libertarianism were brought to realization" in
constitutions,
bills of rights, and limits on legislative and executive powers, including limits on starting wars.
Common Sense was immensely popular in disseminating these ideas, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. Paine's theory of property showed a "libertarian concern" with the unequal distribution of resources under statism. In 1793,
William Godwin wrote a libertarian philosophical treatise titled
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness which criticized ideas of human rights and of society by contract based on vague promises. He took liberalism to its logical anarchic conclusion by rejecting all political institutions, law, government and apparatus of coercion as well as all political protest and insurrection. Instead of institutionalized justice, Godwin proposed that people influence one another to moral goodness through informal reasoned persuasion, including in the associations they joined as this would facilitate happiness.
Libertarian socialism (1857–1980s) In the mid-19th century, libertarianism originated as a form of
anti-authoritarian and
anti-state politics usually seen as being on the left (like
socialists and
anarchists especially
social anarchists, but more generally
libertarian communists/
Marxists and
libertarian socialists). According to anarchist historian
Max Nettlau, the first use of the term
libertarian communism was in November 1880, when a French anarchist congress employed it to identify its doctrines more clearly. The French anarchist journalist
Sébastien Faure started the weekly paper
Le Libertaire (
The Libertarian) in 1895. , prominent French theorist of libertarian communism as well as atheist and freethought militant The
revolutionary wave of 1917–1923 saw the active participation of anarchists in Russia and Europe. Russian anarchists participated alongside the
Bolsheviks in both the
February and
October 1917 revolutions. However, Bolsheviks in central Russia quickly began to imprison or drive underground the libertarian anarchists. Many fled to Ukraine. After the anarchist
Makhnovshchina helped stave off the
White movement during the
Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks turned on the Makkhnovists and contributed to the schism between the anarcho-syndicalists and the Communists. With the rise of
fascism in Europe between the 1920s and the 1930s, anarchists began to fight fascists in Italy, in France during the
February 1934 riots and in Spain where the
CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo) boycott of elections led to a right-wing victory and its later participation in voting in 1936 helped bring the popular front back to power. This led to a ruling class attempted coup and the
Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Gruppo Comunista Anarchico di Firenze held that during the early twentieth century, the terms libertarian communism and anarchist communism became synonymous within the international anarchist movement as a result of the close connection they had in Spain (
anarchism in Spain), with
libertarian communism becoming the prevalent term.
militiawomen during the
1936 Revolution Libertarian socialism reached its apex of popularity with the
Spanish Revolution of 1936, during which libertarian socialists led "the largest and most successful revolution against capitalism to ever take place in any industrial economy". During the revolution, the
means of production were brought under
workers' control and
worker cooperatives formed the basis for the new economy. According to
Gaston Leval, the CNT established an agrarian federation in the Levante that encompassed 78% of Spain's most
arable land. The regional federation was populated by 1,650,000 people, 40% of whom lived on the region's 900 agrarian collectives, which were self-organised by peasant unions. Although industrial and agricultural production was at its highest in the anarchist-controlled areas of the Spanish Republic, and the
anarchist militias displayed the strongest military discipline, liberals and communists alike blamed the "
sectarian" libertarian socialists for the defeat of the Republic in the
Spanish Civil War. These charges have been disputed by contemporary libertarian socialists, such as
Robin Hahnel and
Noam Chomsky, who have accused such claims of lacking substantial evidence. During the autumn of 1931, the "Manifesto of the 30" was published by militants of the anarchist trade union CNT and among those who signed it there was the CNT General Secretary (1922–1923) Joan Peiro,
Ángel Pestaña CNT (General Secretary in 1929) and Juan Lopez Sanchez. They were called
treintismo and they were calling for
libertarian possibilism which advocated achieving libertarian socialist ends with participation inside structures of contemporary
parliamentary democracy. In 1932, they established the
Syndicalist Party, which participated in the 1936 Spanish general elections and proceeded to be a part of the leftist coalition of parties known as the
Popular Front obtaining two congressmen (Pestaña and Benito Pabon). In 1938, Horacio Prieto, general secretary of the CNT, proposed that the
Iberian Anarchist Federation transform itself into the Libertarian Socialist Party and that it participate in the national elections. , American libertarian socialist theorist and proponent of
libertarian municipalism and
communalism The
Manifesto of Libertarian Communism was written in 1953 by Georges Fontenis for the
Federation Communiste Libertaire of France. It is one of the key texts of the anarchist-communist current known as
platformism. In 1968, the
International of Anarchist Federations was founded during an international anarchist conference in
Carrara, Italy to advance libertarian solidarity. It wanted to form "a strong and organized workers movement, agreeing with the libertarian ideas". In the United States, the
Libertarian League was founded in New York City in 1954 as a left-libertarian political organization building on the
Libertarian Book Club. Members included
Sam Dolgoff,
Russell Blackwell,
Dave Van Ronk,
Enrico Arrigoni and
Murray Bookchin. In Australia, the
Sydney Push was a predominantly left-wing intellectual subculture in
Sydney from the late 1940s to the early 1970s which became associated with the label Sydney libertarianism. Well known associates of the Push include
Jim Baker,
John Flaus,
Harry Hooton,
Margaret Fink, Sasha Soldatow,
Lex Banning,
Eva Cox,
Richard Appleton,
Paddy McGuinness,
David Makinson,
Germaine Greer,
Clive James,
Robert Hughes,
Frank Moorhouse and
Lillian Roxon. Amongst the key intellectual figures in Push debates were philosophers David J. Ivison,
George Molnar, Roelof Smilde, Darcy Waters and Jim Baker, as recorded in Baker's memoir
Sydney Libertarians and the Push, published in the libertarian
Broadsheet in 1975. An understanding of libertarian values and social theory can be obtained from their publications, a few of which are available online. In 1969, French
platformist anarcho-communist
Daniel Guérin published an essay in 1969 called "Libertarian Marxism?" in which he dealt with the debate between
Karl Marx and
Mikhail Bakunin at the
First International. Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Marx and Engels' later works, specifically the
Grundrisse and
The Civil War in France.
Libertarianism in the United States (1943–1980s) In the mid-20th century, American proponents of
anarcho-capitalism and
minarchism began using the term
libertarian. Minarchists advocate for
night-watchman states which maintain only those functions of government necessary to safeguard natural rights, understood in terms of self-ownership or autonomy, During this time period, the term "libertarian" became used by growing numbers of people to advocate
laissez-faire capitalism and strong
private property rights such as in land, infrastructure and natural resources. This libertarianism, a revival of
classical liberalism in the United States, occurred due to other
American liberals abandoning classical liberalism and embracing
progressivism and
economic interventionism in the early 20th century after the
Great Depression and with the
New Deal.
H. L. Mencken and
Albert Jay Nock were the first prominent figures in the United States to describe themselves as
libertarian as 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. According to
David Boaz, in 1943 three women "published books that could be said to have given birth to the modern libertarian movement".
Isabel Paterson's
The God of the Machine,
Rose Wilder Lane's
The Discovery of Freedom and
Ayn Rand's
The Fountainhead each promoted individualism and capitalism. None of the three used the term libertarianism to describe their beliefs and Rand specifically rejected the label, criticizing the burgeoning American libertarian movement as the "hippies of the right". Rand accused libertarians of plagiarizing ideas related to her own philosophy of Objectivism and yet viciously attacking other aspects of it. According to
Gary North, the FEE is the "granddaddy of all libertarian organizations".
Karl Hess, a speechwriter for
Barry Goldwater and primary author of the Republican Party's 1960 and 1964
platforms, became disillusioned with traditional politics following the
1964 presidential campaign in which Goldwater lost to
Lyndon B. Johnson. He and his friend
Murray Rothbard, an
Austrian School economist, founded the journal
Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought, which was published from 1965 to 1968, with George Resch and
Leonard P. Liggio. In 1969, they edited
The Libertarian Forum which Hess left in 1971. The
Vietnam War split the uneasy alliance between the growing numbers of American libertarians, on the one hand, and conservatives who believed in limiting liberty to uphold moral virtues on the other. Libertarians opposed to the war joined the
draft resistance and
peace movements as well as organizations such as
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In 1969 and 1970, Hess joined with others, including Murray Rothbard,
Robert LeFevre,
Dana Rohrabacher,
Samuel Edward Konkin III and former SDS leader
Carl Oglesby to speak at two conferences which brought together activists from both the New Left and the Old Right in what was emerging as a nascent libertarian movement. Rothbard ultimately broke with the left, allying himself with the burgeoning
paleoconservative movement. He criticized the tendency of these libertarians 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, etc.". Rothbard emphasized that this was relevant as a matter of strategy as the failure to pitch the libertarian message to Middle America might result in the loss of "the tight-assed majority". This
left-libertarian tradition has been carried to the present day by Konkin's
agorists, contemporary mutualists such as
Kevin Carson, Roderick T. Long and others such as
Gary Chartier Charles W. Johnson Sheldon Richman,
Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Brad Spangler. , a self-described libertarian, whose presidential campaigns in
2008 and
2012 garnered significant support from youth and
libertarian Republicans In 1971, a small group led by
David Nolan formed the
Libertarian Party. Modern libertarianism gained significant recognition in academia with the publication of Harvard University professor
Robert Nozick's
Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974, for which he received a National Book Award in 1975. In response to
John Rawls'
A Theory of Justice, Nozick's book supported a
minimal state (also called a nightwatchman state by Nozick) on the grounds that the ultraminimal state arises without violating individual rights and the transition from an ultraminimal state to a minimal state is morally obligated to occur. The project of spreading libertarian ideals in the United States has been so successful that some Americans who do not identify as libertarian seem to hold libertarian views. Since the resurgence of neoliberalism in the 1970s, this modern American libertarianism has spread beyond North America via think tanks and political parties. In a 1975 interview with
Reason, California Governor
Ronald Reagan appealed to libertarians when he stated to "believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism".
Libertarian Republican Ron Paul supported
Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign, being one of the first elected officials in the nation to support his campaign and actively campaigned for Reagan in 1976 and 1980. However, 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 Reagan budget proposals in 1981. In the 1980s, libertarians criticized President Reagan,
Reaganomics and policies of the
Reagan administration for, among other reasons, having 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 the Reagan administration. Rothbard argued that the
presidency of Reagan has been "a disaster for libertarianism in the United States" and Paul described Reagan himself as "a dramatic failure". with
libertarian or right-libertarian parties being established in the
United Kingdom,
Israel,
South Africa,
Argentina, and many other countries. == Contemporary libertarianism ==