Talk:Libertarian anarchism

Questionable notability

What is "libertarian anarchism"? It does not appear to be notable and should probably be deleted. -- MisterDub (talk | contribs) 22:32, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Support deletion. Completely unsourced word salad that makes about as much sense as "buttery-butter". Also, "libertarian anarchist" is linked as well. Finx (talk) 17:20, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I have submitted this to RfD. Thanks! -- MisterDub (talk | contribs) 20:24, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Contested deletion

Although I agree that the redirect shouldn't point to Anarcho-capitalism, I don't think the page should be deleted in case people search for it, so we should either revert back to an Anarchism redirect or create a disambiguation page explaining the naming issues. See this discussion: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Philosophy/Anarchism#Redirection_of_Libertarian_anarchist.2Fism. benzband (talk) 17:29, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Benzband, I agree. I really don't understand why it was changed from Anarchism to Anarcho-capitalism after the RfD settled on the former. I think it should be changed back, but a DABPAGE would be fine as well. -- MisterDub (talk | contribs) 17:43, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Anarcho-capitalism as a right-wing philosophy

User ConcordeMandalorian is attempting to remove the categorization of anarcho-capitalism as a right-wing political philosophy, but this fact is both supported by secondary sources (see Peter Marshall's Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism and Colin Ward's Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction) and necessary for context. Anarchism is, historically, a radical left-wing political philosophy and many anarchists of this tradition reject the inclusion of anarcho-capitalism because it is right-wing. Similarly, many anarcho-capitalists refuse association with libertarian communists, syndicalists, and other left-wing socialists. This is not trivial, but speaks to the heart of the ambiguity of this DABPAGE. I am open to rephrasing, but without a clear delineation between traditional anarchism and anarcho-capitalism, this page fails to disambiguate the topics listed. -- MisterDub (talk | contribs) 19:00, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

A recent change

Four days ago, Helpsome edited the definition of anarcho-"capitalism" from "a libertarian political philosophy that strongly affirms the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free markets, while maintaining that, taken to their logical conclusions, these ideas support 'pro-capitalist' positions" to "a right-wing political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and open markets".

There are two problems with this.

(1)    All forms of free-market anarchism (including agorism, anarcho-"capitalism", and left-wing market anarchism) are "political philosoph[ies] that advocate[] the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and open markets".

If we are to change the definition of anarcho-"capitalism" from "a libertarian political philosophy that strongly affirms the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free markets, while maintaining that, taken to their logical conclusions, these ideas support 'pro-capitalist' positions" to "a right-wing political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and open markets", then we should also change the definition of left-wing market anarchism from "a libertarian political philosophy that strongly affirms the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free markets, while maintaining that, taken to their logical conclusions, these ideas support 'anti-capitalist' positions" to "a left-wing political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and open markets".

Conversely, if we leave the definition of left-wing market anarchism as "a libertarian political philosophy that strongly affirms the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free markets, while maintaining that, taken to their logical conclusions, these ideas support 'anti-capitalist' positions", then the definition of anarcho-"capitalism" should be reverted back to "a libertarian political philosophy that strongly affirms the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free markets, while maintaining that, taken to their logical conclusions, these ideas support 'pro-capitalist' positions".  After all, (a) the definition provided for free-market anarchism already denotes that the various types of free-market anarchism (i.e., agorism, anarcho-"capitalism", and left-wing market anarchism) "advocate[] the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and open markets" and (b) the only truly meaningful difference between left-wing market anarchism and anarcho-"capitalism" is that some (i.e., anarcho-"capitalists) say free-market anarchism is "pro-capitalist" while some (i.e., left-wing market anarchists) say that free-market anarchism is "anti-capitalist."  (Consider, for example, this quote from one prominent left-wing market anarchist:  "It is my contention that Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism is misnamed because it is actually a variety of socialism, in that it offers an alternative understanding of existing capitalism (or any other variety of statism) as systematic theft from the lower classes and envisions a more just society without that oppression.  Rather than depending upon the the labor theory of value to understand this systematic theft, Rothbardian market anarchism utilizes natural law theory and Lockean principles of property and self-ownership taken to their logical extreme as an alternative framework for understanding and combating oppression.  ...  Murray Rothbard was a visionary socialist" (Source).)

(2)    When Helpsome made her or his edit, she or he changed the definition of anarcho-"capitalism" from "a libertarian political philosophy" (emphasis added) to "a right-wing political philosophy" (emphasis added), thereby incorporating a subjective POV into the definition.  While it is true that some regard anarcho-"capitalism" to be "right-wing", there are also plenty (myself included) who view anarcho-"capitalism" to be left-wing.  In fact, there is plenty of historical precedent for considering anarcho-"capitalism" to be left-wing.

Take, for example, "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty" by the anarcho-"capitalist" Murray N. Rothbard, in which the author argues that his libertarian philosophy grew out of classical liberalism, which he places squarely on the left.  (He places conservatism on the right, and socialism in the middle.  Why the middle?  Because socialism, according to Rothbard, is a confused, middle-of-the-road philosophy that aims to achieve his leftist ends through rightist means.  In his own words, "Socialism, like Liberalism and against Conservatism, accepted the industrial system and the liberal goals of freedom, reason, mobility, progress, higher living standards the masses, and an end to theocracy and war; but it tried to achieve these ends by the use of incompatible, Conservative means: statism, central planning, communitarianism, etc.")  He is quite clear that his ideology was the "party of the left" and that it is a "great error" to view his ideology as right-wing.

Rothbard's friend Sheldon Richman also views himself as a member of the left.  In his "Libertarianism: Left or Right?", he, too, plants libertarianism "squarely on the Left".  But, he goes a tad further, placing his philosophy on the left of the left.  In his own words, "From early on libertarians were seen, and saw themselves, as on the Left.  Obviously, 'the Left' could comprise people who agreed on very little—as long as they opposed the established regime (or restoration of the old regime).  The French Left in the first half of the 19th century included individualists and collectivists, laissez-faire free-marketeers and those who wanted state control of the means of production, state socialism.  One could say that the Left itself had left and right wings, with the laissez-fairists on the left-left and the state socialists on the right-left."  Although Richman has increasingly distanced himself from the word capitalism in recent years, he's never distanced himself from his overall Rothbardian framework.

And, as has already been noted above, Brad Spangler has done so far as to say that "anarcho-capitalism is misnamed because it is actually a variety of socialism".  It's hard for an author to more-clearly describe anarcho-"capitalism" as inherently leftist than that.

Given the history of thought that places libertarianism in general and Rothbardian anarcho-"capitalism" in particular on the left, should we be surprised when Professor Roderick T. Long, in his "Rothbard's 'Left and Right': Forty Years Later", writes the following?:  "And Rothbard is surely right in thinking that what we now call free-market libertarianism was originally a left-wing position. The great liberal economist Frédéric Bastiat sat on the left side of the French national assembly, with the anarcho-socialist Proudhon. Many of the causes we now think of as paradigmatically left-wing—feminism, antiracism, antimilitarism, the defense of laborers and consumers against big business—were traditionally embraced and promoted specifically by free-market radicals."

Long thinks the problem is not with Rothbardian political philosophy (a political philosophy that has historically been called "anarcho-'capitalism'"), but rather with the misleading nature of the word "capitalism" itself.  This is why I think it is best to contrast anarcho-"capitalism" with left-wing market anarchism by noting that the former maintains that its "ideas support 'pro-capitalist' positions" while the latter maintains that its "ideas support 'anti-capitalist' positions".  But, ultimately, Long does personally place all forms of free-market anarchism on the left.  "Now I think it's important to distinguish terminological issues from more substantive ones here.  While it's an interesting question whether Rothbard and [Karl] Hess are correct in maintaining that the terms 'left' and 'right' are best understood as still retaining their original 19th-century meaning, how any particular thinker prefers using those slippery labels is not the most important issue.  If you want to call the free market a left-wing idea, or a right-wing idea, or a neither-left-wing-nor-right-wing idea, or a left-wing-in-sense-37-but-right-wing-in-sense-49 idea, whatever, go for it—so long as you make clear how you're using it.  I like calling the free market a left-wing idea—in fact, I like calling libertarianism the proletarian revolution—but terminology is not the fundamental issue.  The crucial point is to track when one of these labels is being used in an authoritarian sense, or an anti-authoritarian sense, or a mixed sense, and not allow any particular preconceived stereotype of 'left' or 'right' to occlude one's thinking as to where one's natural allies are to be found" (emphasis added).

Some say anarcho-"capitalism" is on the right, sure, but that's clearly a subjective POV, and has no place on Wikipedia.  Some (including moi) call it a left-wing philosophy (and for good historical reason).  Then there are others who say it's neither left-wing nor right-wing, that neither term is appropriate to libertarianism generally or any of the particular forms of libertarian anarchism specifically.  Before Helpsome's edit, both left-wing market anarchism and anarcho-"capitalism" were described as "libertarian political philosoph[ies]"—something we can all agree is a correct description free of any POV problems.  Altering the article to describe anarcho-"capitalism" as a "right-wing political philosophy", by contrast, is clearly problematic as there is so much disagreement regarding the accuracy of the description.  Any way we slice it, this is obviously a POV issue, and the only viable solutions are (a) reverting the text back to "a libertarian political philosophy" or (b) altering the description to merely read "a political philosophy".

Since both (1) and (2) are issues that need to be addressed, allow me to conclude with a summation of the problem.  We have to remove "right-wing" from the description of anarcho-"capitalism" because it violates the POV rules, and we need to make sure that the definition provided for anarcho-"capitalism" (which is a type of free-market anarchism) is not identical to the definition provided for free-market anarchism generally.

Best regards,
allixpeeke (talk) 22:27, 15 February 2015 (UTC)