Anarcho-capitalism is an anti-statist, libertarian political philosophy and economic theory that seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property enforced by private agencies, based on concepts such as the non-aggression principle, free markets and self-ownership. 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 involving the voluntary exchange of goods and services. In a theoretical anarcho-capitalist society a system of private property would still exist, and would be enforced by private defense agencies and/or insurance companies that were selected by property owners, whose ownership rights or claims would be enforced by private defence agencies and/or insurance companies. These agencies or companies would operate competitively in a market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police. Some anarcho-capitalist authors have argued that voluntary slavery is compatible with anarcho-capitalist ideals.
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American economist of the Austrian School, economic historian, political theorist, and activist. Rothbard was a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian movement, particularly its right-wing strands, and was a founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism. He wrote over twenty books on political theory, history, economics, and other subjects.
Libertarians promote individual liberty and seek to minimize the role of the state. The abortion debate is mainly within right-libertarianism between cultural liberals and social conservatives as left-libertarians generally see it as a settled issue regarding individual rights, as they support legal access to abortion as part of what they consider to be a woman's right to control her body and its functions. Religious right and intellectual conservatives have attacked such libertarians for supporting abortion rights, especially after the demise of the Soviet Union led to a greater divide in the conservative movement between libertarians and social conservatives. Libertarian conservatives claim libertarian principles such as the non-aggression principle (NAP) apply to human beings from conception and that the universal right to life applies to fetuses in the womb. Thus, some of those individuals express opposition to legal abortion. According to a 2013 survey, 5.7/10 of American Libertarians oppose making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion.
Libertarian perspectives on foreign intervention started as a reaction to the Cold War mentality of military interventionism promoted by American conservatives, including William F. Buckley Jr., who supplanted Old Right non-interventionism.
Paleolibertarianism is a right-libertarian political activism strategy aimed at uniting libertarians and paleoconservatives. It was developed by American anarcho-capitalist theorists Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell in the American political context after the end of the Cold War. From 1989 to 1995, they sought to communicate libertarian notions of opposition to government intervention by using messages accessible to the working class and middle class people of the time. They combined libertarian free market views with the cultural conservatism of paleoconservatism, while also opposing protectionism. The strategy also embraced the paleoconservative reverence for tradition and religion. This approach, usually identified as right-wing populism, was intended to radicalize citizens against the state. The name they chose for this style of activism evoked the roots of modern libertarianism, hence the prefix paleo. That founding movement was American classical liberalism, which shared the anti-war and anti-New Deal sentiments of the Old Right in the first half of the 20th century. Paleolibertarianism is generally seen as a right-wing ideology.
Justin Raimondo was an American author and the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He described himself as a "conservative-paleo-libertarian."
Albert Jay Nock was an American libertarian author, editor first of The Freeman and then The Nation, educational theorist, Georgist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century. He was an outspoken opponent of the New Deal, and served as a fundamental inspiration for the modern libertarian and conservative movements, cited as an influence by William F. Buckley Jr. He was one of the first Americans to self-identify as "libertarian". His best-known books are Memoirs of a Superfluous Man and Our Enemy, the State.
The nature of capitalism is criticized by left-wing anarchists, who reject hierarchy and advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations. Anarchism is generally defined as the libertarian philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful as well as opposing authoritarianism, illegitimate authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Capitalism is generally considered by scholars to be an economic system that includes private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit or income, the accumulation of capital, competitive markets, voluntary exchange and wage labor, which have generally been opposed by most anarchists historically. Since capitalism is variously defined by sources and there is no general consensus among scholars on the definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category, the designation is applied to a variety of historical cases, varying in time, geography, politics and culture.
Frank Straus Meyer was an American philosopher and political activist best known for his theory of "fusionism" – a political philosophy that unites elements of libertarianism and traditionalism into a philosophical synthesis which is posited as the definition of modern American conservatism. Meyer's philosophy was presented in two books, primarily In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo (1962) and also in a collection of his essays, The Conservative Mainstream (1969). Fusionism has been summed up by E. J. Dionne, Jr. as "utilizing libertarian means in a conservative society for traditionalist ends".
Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism has been, and continues to be, a major influence on the right-libertarian movement, particularly libertarianism in the United States. Many right-libertarians justify their political views using aspects of Objectivism.
Frank Chodorov was an American member of the Old Right, a group of conservative and libertarian thinkers who were non-interventionist in foreign policy and opposed to both the American entry into World War II and the New Deal. He was called by Ralph Raico "the last of the Old Right greats."
The Old Right is an informal designation used for a branch of American conservatism that was most prominent from 1910 to the mid-1950s, but never became an organized movement. Most members were Republicans, although there was a conservative Democratic element based largely in the Southern United States. They are termed the "Old Right" to distinguish them from their New Right successors who came to prominence in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy that places a strong emphasis on the value of liberty. Libertarians advocate for the expansion of individual autonomy and political freedom, 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. Libertarians often oppose authority, state power, warfare, militarism and nationalism, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power. Different categorizations have been used to distinguish various forms of Libertarianism. Scholars have identified distinct libertarian perspectives on the nature of property and capital, typically delineating them along left–right or socialist–capitalist axes. The various schools of libertarian thought have also been shaped by liberal ideas.
In the United States, libertarianism is a political philosophy promoting individual liberty. According to common meanings of conservatism and liberalism in the United States, libertarianism has been described as conservative on economic issues and liberal on personal freedom, often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism. Broadly, there are four principal traditions within libertarianism, namely the libertarianism that developed in the mid-20th century out of the revival tradition of classical liberalism in the United States after liberalism associated with the New Deal; the libertarianism developed in the 1950s by anarcho-capitalist author Murray Rothbard, who based it on the anti-New Deal Old Right and 19th-century libertarianism and American individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner while rejecting the labor theory of value in favor of Austrian School economics and the subjective theory of value; the libertarianism developed in the 1970s by Robert Nozick and founded in American and European classical liberal traditions; and the libertarianism associated with the Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971, including politicians such as David Nolan and Ron Paul.
Right-libertarianism, also known as libertarian capitalism, or right-wing libertarianism, is a libertarian political philosophy that supports capitalist property rights and defends market distribution of natural resources and private property. The term right-libertarianism is used to distinguish this class of views on the nature of property and capital from left-libertarianism, a variant of libertarianism that combines self-ownership with an anti-authoritarian approach to property and income. In contrast to socialist libertarianism, right-libertarianism supports free-market capitalism. Like most forms of libertarianism, it supports civil liberties, especially natural law, negative rights, the non-aggression principle, and a significant transformation of the modern welfare state. Practitioners of right-libertarianism usually do not self-describe by that term and often object to it.
For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto is a book by American economist and historian Murray Rothbard, in which the author promotes anarcho-capitalism. The work has been credited as an influence on modern libertarian thought and on part of the New Right.
In American politics, fusionism is the philosophical and political combination or "fusion" of traditionalist and social conservatism with political and economic right-libertarianism. Fusionism combines "free markets, social conservatism, and a hawkish foreign policy". The philosophy is most closely associated with Frank Meyer.
Libertarianism is variously defined by sources as there is no general consensus among scholars on the definition nor on how one should use the term as a historical category. Scholars generally agree that libertarianism refers to the group of political philosophies which emphasize freedom, individual liberty and voluntary association. Libertarians generally advocate a society with little or no government power.
Libertarian conservatism, also referred to as conservative libertarianism and, more rarely, conservatarianism, is a political and social philosophy that combines conservatism and libertarianism, representing the libertarian wing of conservatism and vice versa.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to libertarianism:
