Libertarian Ideology
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A Libertarian Ideology is a political ideology that enshrines liberty (human liberty) as a principal objective.
- Context:
- It can (often) be held by a Libertarian.
- ...
- It can range from being a Libertarian Economic Ideology to being a Libertarian Social Ideology, based on its focus area.
- It can range from being a Minarchist Philosophy to being an Anarchist Philosophy, depending on views of state power.
- It can range from being Pro-Capitalist Libertarianism to being Socialist Libertarianism, based on economic system preferences.
- ...
- It can emphasize Individual Rights through personal autonomy and freedom of choice.
- It can advocate for Voluntary Association over coercive institutions.
- It can critique State Authority and social institutions.
- It can promote Private Property Rights or Common Ownership Systems.
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- Example(s):
- Right-Libertarianism, which supports free market capitalism and strong property rights.
- Left-Libertarianism, which advocates for common ownership and workers' self-management.
- Anarcho-Capitalism, which seeks to eliminate state power entirely.
- Libertarian Socialism, which combines personal freedom with collective ownership.
- ...
- Counter-Example(s):
- See: Autonomy, Freedom of Choice, Political Freedom, Voluntary Association, School of Thought, State (Polity), Political Power, Social Institutions.
References
2014
- (Wikipedia, 2014) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/libertarianism Retrieved:2014-8-3.
- Libertarianism (free) is a classification of political philosophies that uphold liberty as their principal objective. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and freedom of choice, emphasizing political freedom, voluntary association and the primacy of individual judgment. While libertarians share a skepticism of authority, they diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing political and economic systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power, often calling to restrict or even to wholly dissolve pervasive social institutions. Rather than embodying a singular, rigid systematic theory or ideology, libertarianism has been applied as an umbrella term to a wide range of sometimes discordant political ideas through modern history. Although some present-day libertarians advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights, such as in land, infrastructure and natural resources, others, notably libertarian socialists, seek to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production in favor of their common or cooperative ownership and management.[1] While minarchists believe a limited centralized government is necessary to protect individuals and their property from certain transgressions, anarchists propose to completely eliminate the state as an illegitimate political system. [2] [3] The term libertarianism originally referred to a philosophical belief in free will but later became associated with anti-state socialism and Enlightenment-influenced political movements critical of institutional authority believed to serve forms of social domination and injustice. While it has generally retained its earlier political usage as a synonym for either social or individualist anarchism through much of the world, in the United States it has since come to describe pro-capitalist economic liberalism more so than radical, anti-capitalist egalitarianism. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, libertarianism is defined as the moral view that agents initially fully own themselves and have certain moral powers to acquire property rights in external things. As individualist opponents of social liberalism embraced the label and distanced themselves from the word liberal, American writers, political parties and think tanks adopted the word libertarian to describe advocacy of capitalist free market economics and a night-watchman state.
- ↑ Carlson, Jennifer D. (2012). “Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilburn R., ed. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. London: Sage Publications. p. 1007. ISBN 1412988764. “There exist three major camps in libertarian thought: right-libertarianism, socialist libertarianism, and left-libertarianism"
- ↑ Caplan, Bryan (2008). “Anarchism". In Hamowy, Ronald, ed. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. pp. 10–13. “Libertarianism puts severe limits on morally permissible government action. If one takes its strictures seriously, does libertarianism require the abolition of government, logically reducing the position to anarchism? Robert Nozick effectively captures this dilemma: 'Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its official may do.' Libertarian political philosophers have extensively debated this question, and many conclude that the answer is 'Nothing'."
- ↑ Friedman, David D. (2008). “libertarianism”. The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. 2nd Edition. “Libertarians differ among themselves in the degree to which they rely on rights-based or consequentialist arguments and on how far they take their conclusions, ranging from classical liberals, who wish only to drastically reduce government, to anarcho-capitalists who would replace all useful government functions with private alternatives."