Left-libertarianism

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Left-libertarianism names several related but distinct approaches to politics, society, culture, and political and social theory, which stress equally both freedom and social justice.^[1]

Schools of thought

Left-libertarianism can refer generally to three related and overlapping schools of thought: first, to anti-authoritarian, anti-propertarian varieties of socialism.

Second, the Steiner-Vallentyne school, whose proponents draw radical conclusions from classical liberal or market liberal premises — either emphasizing links between self-ownership and egalitarianism.

And third, to "Left-wing market anarchism" which stresses the socially transformative potential of non-aggression and free markets. The term refers in the case of the latter two to a group of market-based libertarian political philosophies which have an egalitarian view concerning natural resources, holding that it is not legitimate for someone to claim private ownership of such resources to the detriment of others.^[2][3][4][5]

Libertarian socialism

Main article: Libertarian Socialism

The first, and original, school of left-libertarianism is Libertarian socialism.

Noam Chomsky, a noted left-libertarian of the libertarian socialist school.

Libertarian socialism is the anti-state tradition of socialism. In a broad sense, people who may share with "traditional socialism a distrust of the market, of private investment, and of the achievement ethic, and a commitment to expansion of the welfare state" might sometimes be described as “left-libertarians.”^[6] More narrowly, some social anarchists and libertarian socialists, including Murray Bookchin,^[7] are sometimes characterized as “left-libertarian.”,^[8] and Noam Chomsky, who identifies as a “libertarian socialist,” applies the “left-libertarian” label to himself.^[9]

Most left-libertarians in this sense are anarchists, and frequently claim to reject the concept of self-ownership, at least when it is understood to underwrite capitalism,^[10] along with private ownership of the means of production and absentee ownership of private property, in favor of alternate rights of possession and stewardship which are understood as protecting personal autonomy while rejecting putative rights which they see as permitting the economic elite to control the lives of others. They support rights to personal property and the rights of occupancy over one’s dwelling, but reject commercial propertarianism and some do not consider the re-appropriation of such wealth to be an act of theft but rather an act of liberation (see individual reclamation). Many reject arrangements that allow for hierarchy, kyriarchy, or begrudgingly consensual subordination. Similarly, some reject the non-aggression principle to the extent that it is used by right-libertarians to treat assaults on private property as assaults on individual liberty.

Steiner-Vallentyne Left-Libertarianism

Another variant of contemporary left-libertarianism called the Steiner-Vallentyne school affirms the classical liberal idea of self-ownership, while rooting a robust version of economic egalitarianism in this idea. It combines the concept of self-ownership with unconventional views regarding the ownership of land and natural resources (e.g. those of Henry George), residual claimancy vis-à-vis the firm, or both.^[11] This approach is associated particularly with the work of such scholars as Hillel Steiner,^[12] Philippe Van Parijs,^[13] Peter Vallentyne,^[14] Michael Otsuka,^[15] and David Ellerman.^[16]

Key ideas

The version of left-libertarianism defended by contemporary theorists like Vallentyne, Steiner, Otsuka, van Parijs, and Ellerman features a strong commitment to personal liberty—embracing the libertarian premise that each person possesses a natural right of self-ownership—and an egalitarian view of natural resources, holding that it is illegitimate for anyone to claim private ownership of resources to the detriment of others.^[17] On this view, unappropriated natural resources are either unowned or owned in common, believing that private appropriation is only legitimate if everyone can appropriate an equal amount, or if private appropriation is taxed to compensate those who are excluded from natural resources. This position is articulated in self-conscious contrast to the position of other libertarians who argue for a (characteristically labor-based) right to appropriate unequal parts of the external world, such as land.^[18] Most left libertarians support some form of income redistribution on the grounds of a claim by each individual to be entitled to an equal share of natural resources.^[19] A number of left-libertarians of this school argue for the desirability of some state social welfare programs.^[20][21]

According to libertarian scholar Sheldon Richman:

Left-libertarians favor worker solidarity vis-à-vis bosses, support poor people’s squatting on government or abandoned property, and prefer that corporate privileges be repealed before the regulatory restrictions on how those privileges may be exercised. They see Walmart as a symbol of corporate favoritism—supported by highway subsidies and eminent domain—view the fictive personhood of the limited-liability corporation with suspicion, and doubt that Third World sweatshops would be the “best alternative” in the absence of government manipulation. Left-libertarians tend to eschew electoral politics, having little confidence in strategies that work through the government. They prefer to develop alternative institutions and methods of working around the state.^[22]

Property and natural resources

The Steiner-Vallentyne school of left-libertarianism takes a distinctive position regarding the issue that Robert Nozick calls the “original acquisition of holdings.”^[23] That is the question of how property rights came about in the first place, and how property was originally acquired.^[24]

Appropriating wilderness

Henry George (1839–1897) proposed the abolition of all taxes except those on land value.

Many libertarians —right and left- maintain that "wilderness" is unowned, and that unowned resources are made into property by use. This is generally referred to as homesteading. According to John Locke’s influential view, for instance, when a person “mixes their labor” with a previously unowned object, it becomes theirs. A person who cultivates a field in the wilderness, by virtue of "mixing their personality" with the land, becomes the rightful owner of it (subject, on Locke’s view, to the Lockean proviso that equally-good land remains free for the taking for others).^[25]

Steiner-Vallentyne left-libertarians, by contrast, characteristically maintain that "wilderness" is commonly owned by all the people in a given area. Since there is no predetermined distribution of land and (they argue) since there is no reason to believe that, all things being equal, some people deserve more property than others, it makes sense to think of resources as commonly owned. Thus this brand of left-libertarianism denies that first use or "mixing labor" has any decisive bearing on ownership. Thus, land should be treated as presumptively owned in common. Different proponents of this school of thought have different ideas about what can be done with property. Some believe that one must gain some kind of permission from their community in order to use resources. Others argue that people should be allowed to appropriate land in exchange for some kind of rent and they must either pay taxes on the profits made from the appropriated resources or allow the products of those resources to become common property.

Similarities with Georgism

There are obvious affinities between the Steiner-Vallentyne approach to left-libertarianism and the approach endorsed by Henry George and his followers. Georgists tend to believe that all humanity rightfully owns all land in common and that individuals should pay rent to the rest of society for taking sole or exclusive use of that land. People in this movement are often referred to as "single taxers," since they believe that the only legitimate tax is land rent. However, they do typically believe that private property can be created by applying labor to natural resources.^[26]

Identifying a tradition

The Origins of Left-Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings, edited by Vallentyne and Steiner, places Hugo Grotius, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Spence, Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer and Henry George in the left libertarian tradition.^[27]

Related discussions

Though not left-libertarians themselves, G. A. Cohen, John Roemer, and Jon Elster have also written extensively about the notions of self-ownership and equality, which provide the basis for this branch of left-libertarian thought.

Left-wing Market Anarchism

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; main early proponent of left-wing market anarchism

Another contemporary school sometimes labeled “left-libertarian” stresses the value of radically free—or “freed”—markets.^[28] Proponents of this approach strongly affirm the classical liberal ideas of non-aggression and free markets, while maintaining that, taken to their logical conclusions, these ideas support strongly anti-corporatist, anti-hierarchical, pro-labor positions in economics, anti-imperialism in foreign policy, and thoroughly liberal or radical views regarding such cultural issues as gender, sexuality, and race.^[29] This strand of left-libertarianism tends to be rooted either in classical American individualist anarchism or in a left-wing interpretation or extension of the thought of Murray Rothbard. It is typically linked with the thought of scholars including Kevin Carson,^[30] Roderick T. Long,^[31] Charles Johnson,^[32] Brad Spangler,^[33] Samuel Edward Konkin III,^[34] Sheldon Richman,^[35] Chris Matthew Sciabarra,^[36] Arthur Silber, and Gary Chartier.^[37]

Arguing that vast disparities in wealth and social influence result from the use of force, and especially state power, to steal and engross land and acquire and maintain special privileges, members of this school typically urge the abolition of the state. They judge that, in a stateless society, the kinds of privileges secured by the state will be absent, and injustices perpetrated or tolerated by the state can be rectified. Thus, they conclude that, with state interference eliminated, it will be possible to achieve “socialist ends by market means.”^[38]

Antecedents

The genealogy of contemporary market-oriented left-libertarianism—sometimes labeled “left-wing market anarchism”^[39]—overlaps to a significant degree with that of Steiner-Vallentyne-style left-libertarianism as the roots of that tradition are sketched in The Origins of Left-Libertarianism. Carson-Long-style left-libertarianism is rooted in nineteenth-century mutualism and in the work of figures such as Thomas Hodgskin and the individualist anarchists Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner. While—with notable exceptions—market-oriented libertarians after Tucker tended to ally with the political right, relationships between such libertarians and the New Left thrived in the 1960s, laying the groundwork for modern left-wing market anarchism.^[40]

Mutualism

Mutualism emerged from early nineteenth-century socialism, and is generally considered a market-oriented strand within the libertarian socialist tradition. Mutualists typically accept property rights, but with brief abandonment time periods. In a community in which mutuality property rules were upheld, a land-owner would need to make (more or less) continuous use of her land; if she failed to do so, her ownership rights would be extinguished and the land could be homesteaded by someone else. A mutualist property regime is often described as one rooted in “possession,” “occupancy-and-use,” or “usufruct.”^[41]

Thomas Hodgskin

Sometimes referred to as a “Ricardian socialist,” Thomas Hodgskin was a thoroughgoing anti-statist. His position was socialist insofar as he believed that workers were exploited and that massive structural changes for the purpose of remedying their exploitation were just and necessary. But Hodgskin grounded his account of exploitation in a belief in pre-political property rights and was a committed proponent of free trade: the protection of property rights and free exchange would, he believed, uproot social injustice.^[42]

Benjamin Tucker and his contemporaries

American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker self-identified as a socialist,^[43] but opposed the state and favored individual ownership of property. He argued that the elimination of what he called the “four monopolies”—the land monopoly, the money and banking monopoly, the monopoly powers conferred by patents, and the quasi-monopolistic effects of tariffs—would undermine the power of the wealthy and big business and make possible widespread property ownership and higher incomes for ordinary people, minimizing the power of would-be bosses and achieving socialist goals without state action. Tucker influenced and interacted with anarchist contemporaries—including Spooner, Voltairine de Cleyre, Dyer Lum, and William B. Greene—who have in various ways influenced later left-libertarian thinking.^[44]

Market-oriented Leftism in the first part of the twentieth century

The most visible leftist movements in the United States after Tucker’s time were statist, anarcho-syndicalist, or anarcho-communist. By contrast, perhaps because of the use of leftist rhetoric to support statism during the Progressive and New Deal eras, market-oriented thinkers tended increasingly to identify with the Right. The developing political landscape was more complicated, however, than this broad-brush sketch might suggest. Sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, for instance, attacked the state as an entity that uses force to acquire wealth and secure market-distorting privileges for elites,^[45] with the implication that a market free of such privileges would undermine elite power. The American essayist and social critic Albert Jay Nock applied Oppenheimer’s analysis to the history of the United States in Our Enemy, the State.^[46] Though Nock is often characterized as a figure of the so-called “Old Right,”^[47] he roundly criticized existing economic arrangements as resulting from state-sanctioned violence and maintained by state-guaranteed privilege, and drew on the work of historian Charles Beard to underscore the role of economic elites in shaping American political institutions to their own advantage.^[48]

Alliance between market-oriented libertarians and the New Left

Karl Hess

The doyen of modern American market-oriented libertarianism, Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard, was initially an enthusiastic partisan of the Old Right, particularly because of its general opposition to war and imperialism.^[49] But Rothbard had long embraced a reading of American history that emphasized the role of elite privilege in shaping legal and political institutions—one that was thus naturally agreeable to many on the Left—and he came increasingly in the 1960s to seek alliances on the Left—especially with members of the “New Left”—in light of the Vietnam War,^[50] the military draft, and the emergence of the black power movement.^[51]

Working with other radicals like Ronald Radosh^[52] and Karl Hess,^[53] Rothbard argued that the consensus view of American economic history, according to which a beneficent government has used its power to counter corporate predation, is fundamentally flawed. Rather, he argued, government intervention in the economy has largely benefited established players at the expense of marginalized groups, to the detriment of both liberty and equality. Moreover, the “Robber Baron” period, hailed by the right and despised by the left as a heyday of laissez-faire, was not characterized by laissez-faire at all, but was in fact a time of massive state privilege accorded to capital.^[54] In tandem with his emphasis on the intimate connection between state and corporate power, he defended the seizure of corporations dependent on state largesse by workers and others.^[55]

Modern market-oriented left-libertarianism

Rothbard himself ultimately broke with the left, allying himself instead with the burgeoning paleoconservative movement.^[56] However, drawing on the work of Rothbard during his alliance with the left and on the thought of Karl Hess, some thinkers associated with market-oriented American libertarianism came increasingly to identify with the Left on a range of issues, including opposition to war, to social and cultural hierarchies, and to corporate hierarchies and corporate-state partnerships. One variety of this kind of libertarianism has been a resurgent mutualism, incorporating modern economic ideas such as marginal utility theory into mutualist theory. Kevin A. Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy helped to stimulate the growth of new-style mutualism, articulating a version of the labor theory of value incorporating ideas drawn from Austrian economics.^[57] Other market-oriented left-libertarians have declined to embrace mutualist views of real property, while sharing the mutualist opposition to corporate hierarchies and wealth-concentration.^[58] Left-libertarians have placed particular emphasis on the articulation and defense of a libertarian theory of class and class conflict, though considerable work in this area has been performed by libertarians of other persuasions.^[59]

Cultural politics

Contemporary left-libertarians also show markedly more sympathy than mainstream or paleolibertarians towards various cultural movements which challenge non-governmental relations of power. For instance, left-libertarians Roderick Long and Charles Johnson have called for a recovery of the nineteenth-century alliance between radical liberalism and feminism.^[60]

While adopting familiar libertarian views, including opposition to drug prohibition, gun control, civil liberties violations, and war, left-libertarians are more likely than most self-identified libertarians to take more distinctively leftist stances on issues as diverse as feminism, gender and sexuality, sexual freedom, race, class, immigration, and environmentalism. Especially influential regarding these topics have been scholars including Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Roderick T. Long, Charles W. Johnson, and Arthur Silber.

Agorism

Agorism,^[61] an anarchist tendency founded by Samuel Edward Konkin III, advocates counter-economics, working in untaxed black or grey markets, and boycotting as much as possible the unfree taxed market with the intended result that private voluntary institutions emerge and outcompete statist ones.

Geoanarchism

Geoanarchism, an anarchist form of Henry George's philosophy, is considered left-libertarian because it assumes land to be initially owned in common, so that when land is privately appropriated the proprietor pays rent to the community.^[62]

Criticism

Criticisms of the different schools of left-libertarianism have come from the right and left alike. Right-libertarians like Robert Nozick, holding that self-ownership and property acquisition need not meet egalitarian standards and that they must merely avoid worsening the situation of others, have rejected left-libertarianism of the Steiner-Vallentye school. G. A. Cohen extensively criticized the claim, typical of this school, that self-ownership and equality can be realized simultaneously. In Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, Cohen claims that any system that takes equality and its enforcement seriously is not consistent with the full emphasis on self-ownership and "negative freedom" of market libertarian thought.^[63]

Murray Rothbard criticized what amounted to the cultural aspect of left-libertarianism of the Carson-Long school (Left-wing market anarchism), challenging the tendency of proponents of libertarianism 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.”^[64]

See also

• Libertarian socialism
• Geolibertarianism
• Green libertarianism
• Libertarian municipalism
• Right-libertarianism

References

1. ^ Related, arguably synonymous, terms include “libertarianism,” “left-wing libertarianism,” “egalitarian-libertarianism,” and ”libertarian socialism”; see William A. Sundstrom “An Egalitarian-Libertarian Manifesto”; Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl, The Murray Bookchin Reader (New York: Cassell 1997) 170; Mark A. Sullivan, “Why the Georgist Movement Has Not Succeeded: A Personal Response to the Question Raised by Warren J. Samuels,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 62.3 (July 2003): 612.
2. ^ Vallentyne, Peter (September 5, 2002). "Libertarianism". In Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 ed.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University. ISSN [1]. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/libertarianism/. Retrieved March 5, 2010. 
3. ^ Will Kymlicka (2005). "libertarianism, left-". In Ted Honderich. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. New York City: Oxford University Press. 
4. ^ Vallentyne and Steiner (2000b). [Unknown]. [Unknown]. p. 1. http://books.google.com/books?id=p3BgCFNnHDAC&pg=PA1. ^{[unknowns verification needed]}
5. ^ Eric Mack and Gerald F Gauss (2004). Gerald F. Gaus, Chandran Kukathas. ed. Handbook of Political Theory. Sage Publications Inc.. pp. 115–131, found at 128. http://books.google.com/books?id=dXjXKlb79cgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=handbook+of+political+theory&ei=2ab4S_SOBpmOzgSkjM3dCg&cd=1#v=snippet&q=libertarian%20left%20&f=false. 
6. ^ Herbert P. Kitschelt, “La gauche libertaire et les écologistes français,” Revue Française de Science Politique 40.3 (June 1990): 339-365, ctd. Hans-Georg Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (London: Palgrave-Macmillan 1994) 180-1.
7. ^ John Barry, “Murray Bookchin,” Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment, ed. Joy Palmer, David Edward Cooper, and Peter Blaze Corcoran (London: Routledge 2001) 241.
8. ^ Barbara Goodwin, Using Political Ideas, 4th ed. (New York: Wiley 1987) 137-8
9. ^ Encyclopedia of Political Economy, ed. Phillip Anthony O'Hara (London: Routledge 1999) 15.
10. ^ Cp. Carole Pateman, “Self-Ownership and Property in the Person: Democratization and a Tale of Two Concepts,” Journal of Political Philosophy 10.1 (2002): 20-53 (arguing that it is the notion of “property in the person” that is entangled with alienating and subordinative commodification).
11. ^ Scholars representing this school of left-libertarianism often understand their position in contrast to other libertarians who maintain that there are no fair share constraints on use or appropriation (see Peter Vallentyne, “Libertarianism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Stanford University, July 20, 2010]), that individuals have the power to appropriate unowned things by claiming them (usually by mixing their labor with them), and deny any other conditions or considerations are relevant, and that there is no justification for the state to redistribute resources to the needy or to overcome market failures. See Peter Vallentyne, “Libertarianism and the State,” Liberalism: Old and New, ed. Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul (Cambridge: CUP 2007) 199. Left-libertarians of the Carson-Long school (called left-wing market anarchists), referenced below, typically endorse the labor-based property rights Steiner-Vallentyne left-libertarians reject, but hold that implementing such rights would have radical rather than conservative consequences.
12. ^ See, e.g., Hillel Steiner, An Essay on Rights (Oxford: Blackwell 1994).
13. ^ See, e.g., Philippe Van Parijs, Marxism Recycled (Cambridge: CUP 2009).
14. ^ See, e.g., Left Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate, ed. Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner (London: Palgrave 2000)
15. ^ See, e.g., Michael Otsuka, Libertarianism without Inequality (New York: OUP 2005). Otsuka argues for incorporating egalitarian ideas into libertarian rights schemes.
16. ^ See, e.g., David Ellerman, Property and Contract in Economics: The Case for Economic Democracy (Cambridge MA:Blackwell 1992); The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm (London: Unwin 1990).
17. ^ Vallentyne, “Libertarianism”. Will Kymlicka, “Libertarianism, Left-,” Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich (New York: OUP 2005) describes this view as “combin[ing] the libertarian assumption that each person possesses a natural right of self-ownership over his person with the egalitarian premise that natural resources should be shared equally.” According to Kymlicka, proponents of this view maintain that “the world's natural resources were initially unowned, or belonged equally to all, and it is illegitimate for anyone to claim exclusive private ownership of these resources to the detriment of others. Such private appropriation is legitimate only if everyone can appropriate an equal amount, or if those who appropriate more are taxed to compensate those who are thereby excluded from what was once common property.” Some left-libertarians of the Steiner-Vallentyne type support some form of income redistribution on the grounds of a claim by each individual to be entitled to an equal share of natural resources. Cp. Hillel Steiner and Peter Vallentyne, eds., Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate (London: Macmillan 2000) 1; Handbook of Political Theory, ed. Gerald F. Gaus and Chandran Kukathas (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 2004) 128.
18. ^ Cp. Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (Atlantic Heights, NJ: Humanities 1982).
19. ^ Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran. 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. Sage Publications Inc. p. 128.
20. ^ See, e.g., Phillippe van Parijs, Real Freedom for All: What (If Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? (Oxford: Clarendon-OUP 1998). Van Parijs’s “real libertarianism” is very similar in approach to that of Steiner and Vallentyne.
21. ^ Steve Daskal, Libertarianism Left and Right, the Lockean Proviso, and the Reformed Welfare State, Social Theory and Practice, January 1, 2010 page 1, line 45.
22. ^ Richman, Sheldon, Libertarian Left, The American Conservative (March 2011)
23. ^ Cp. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic 1974).
24. ^ They differ in this respect from other libertarians, right and left, who tend to believe that property rights in physical objects are the most basic rights of all, or that all genuine rights can be understood as property rights rooted in self-ownership.
25. ^ See John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1690; London: Millar 1764).
26. ^ See Henry George, Progress and Poverty (1879; Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1912).
27. ^ The Origins of Left-Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings, ed. Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner (London: MacMillan 2001). Steiner’s own An Essay on Rights is a provocative look at rights and justice from a left-libertarian perspective.
28. ^ For “freed market,” see William Gillis, “(The Freed Market),” Human Iterations (n.p., July 31, 2007).
29. ^ Writing before the rise of the Carson-Long school of left-libertarianism, historian of American anarchism David DeLeon was disinclined to treat any market-oriented variant of libertarianism as leftist; see David DeLeon, The American as Anarchist: Reflections on Indigenous Radicalism (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP 1978) 123.
30. ^ See, e.g., Kevin A. Carson, Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective (Charleston, SC: BookSurge 2008); The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto (Charleston, SC: BookSurge 2010).
31. ^ See, e.g., Roderick T. Long, Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand (Washington, DC: Objectivist Center 2000); Roderick T. Long, “An Interview With Roderick Long”
32. ^ See, e.g., Charles W. Johnson, “Liberty, Equality, Solidarity: Toward a Dialectical Anarchism,” Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country?, ed. Roderick T. Long and Tibor Machan (Aldershot: Ashgate 2008) 155-88.
33. ^ See, e.g., Brad Spangler, “Market Anarchism as Stigmergic Socialism” (BradSpangler.Com, Sep. 15, 2006).
34. ^ See, e.g., Samuel Edward Konkin III, The New Libertarian Manifesto.
35. ^ See, e.g., Sheldon Richman, “Why Left-Libertarian?,” The Freeman (Foundation for Economic Education, June 23, 2010); “Workers of the World Unite for a Free Market” (Foundation for Economic Education, Dec. 18, 2009).
36. ^ See, e.g., Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP 2000).
37. ^ See, e.g., Gary Chartier, Economic Justice and Natural Law (Cambridge: CUP 2009).
38. ^ See Gary Chartier, Socialist Ends, Market Means: Five Essays (Tulsa, OK: Tulsa Alliance of the Libertarian Left 2009).
39. ^ Chris Sciabarra is the only scholar associated with this school of left-libertarianism who is skeptical about anarchism; see Sciabarra’s Total Freedom.
40. ^ Roderick T. Long, “Rothbard’s ‘Left and Right’: Forty Years Later” (Rothbard Memorial Lecture, Austrian Scholars Conference 2006).
41. ^ On mutualism, see, e.g., Pierre-Joseph. Proudhon, What Is Property?, trans. Benjamin R. Tucker (New York: Humboldt 1890).
42. ^ See, e.g., Thomas Hodgskin, Popular Political Economy: Four Lectures Delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (London: Tait 1827); The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted: A Series of Letters, Addressed without Permission to H. Brougham, Esq. M.P. F.R.S. (London: Steil 1832); Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital, or, The Unproductiveness of Capital Proved (London: Knight 1825). Hodgskin repeatedly uses “capitalist” as a pejorative throughout these works.
43. ^ See, e.g., “State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree and Wherein They Differ,” Instead of a Book: By a Man Too Busy to Write One (New York: Tucker 1897).
44. ^ On the nineteenth century American individualist anarchists, see James J. Martin, Men against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America (Colorado Springs, CO: Myles 1970).
45. ^ Franz Oppenheimer, The State (1929; New York: Free Life 1975).
46. ^ Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State (1935; Auburn, AL: Mises 2009).
47. ^ On Nock and other figures from this movement, see Murray N. Rothbard, The Betrayal of the American Right (Auburn, AL: Mises 2007); Justin Raimondo, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, 2d ed. (Wilmington, DE: ISI 2008); Bill Kauffman, Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan 2008).
48. ^ See, e.g., Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913; New York: Free 1986). Nock’s own views regarding land ownership were roughly Georgist.
49. ^ See Justin Raimondo, An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Amherst, NY: Prometheus 2001).
50. ^ Cp. Raimondo 151-209.
51. ^ See Brian M. Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (New York: Public Affairs 2007) 338.
52. ^ See Murray N. Rothbard and Ronald Radosh, eds., A New History of Leviathan: Essays on the Rise of the American Corporate State (New York: Dutton 1972).
53. ^ Cp. Karl Hess, Dear America (New York: Morrow 1975).
54. ^ On partnerships between the state and big business and the role of big business in promoting regulation, see Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (New York: Free 1977); Butler Shaffer, In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign against Competition, 1918-1938 (Auburn, AL: Mises 2008).
55. ^ See Murray N. Rothbard, “Confiscation and the Homestead Principle,” Libertarian Forum 1.6 (June 15, 1969): 3-4.
56. ^ See Raimondo 277-8; Doherty 562-5.
57. ^ See Kevin A. Carson, Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (Charleston, SC: BookSurge 2007). This book was the focus of a symposium in the Journal of Libertarian Studies.
58. ^ See, e.g., Roderick T. Long, “Land Locked: A Critique of Carson on Property Rights,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 20.1 (Winter 2006): 87-95.
59. ^ Sheldon Richman, “Class Struggle Rightly Conceived,” The Goal Is Freedom (Foundation for Economic Education, July 13, 2007); Nock, Our Enemy, the State; Franz Oppenheimer, The State (San Francisco: Fox 1997); Tom G. Palmer, “Classical Liberalism, Marxism, and the Conflict of Classes: The Classical Liberal Theory of Class Conflict,” Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice (Washington: Cato 2009) 255-76; Wally Conger, Agorist Class Theory: A Left Libertarian Approach to Class Conflict Analysis (Agorism.info, n.d.); Kevin A. Carson, “Another Free-for-All: Libertarian Class Analysis, Organized Labor, Etc.,” Mutualist Blog: Free-Market Anti-Capitalism (n.p., Jan. 26, 2006); Walter E. Grinder and John Hagel, “Toward a Theory of State Capitalism: Ultimate Decision Making and Class Structure,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 1.1 (1977): 59-79; David M. Hart, “The Radical Liberalism of Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer” (PhD diss., U of Cambridge, 1994); Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 9.2 (1990): 79-93; Roderick T. Long, “Toward a Libertarian Theory of Class,” Social Philosophy and Policy 15.2 (Sum. 1998): 303-49.
60. ^ Roderick T. Long and Charles W. Johnson, “Libertarian Feminism: Can this Marriage Be Saved?” (Molinari Society, May 1, 2005).
61. ^ Agorism.Info
62. ^ "Geoanarchism" by Fred Foldvary
63. ^ Tom G. Palmer has responded to Cohen's critique: see Tom G. Palmer, “G. A. Cohen on Self-ownership, Property and Equality,” Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice (Washington, DC: Cato 2009) 129-54; cp. Tom G. Palmer, “The Literature of Liberty,” The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao Tzu to Milton Friedman, ed. David Boaz (New York: Free 1998) 415-55 (discussing critiques of libertarianism).
64. ^ Murray N. Rothbard, letter to David Bergland, June 5, 1986, qtd. Raimondo 263-4. Rothbard emphasized that this was relevant as a matter of strategy: the failure to pitch the libertarian message to Middle America, he wrote, might result in the loss of “the tight-assed majority.”

Further reading

• Konkin III, S.E. (1983). New Libertarian Manifesto. Koman Publishing.
• Rothbard, Murray N. (2007). Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought (Complete, 1965-1968). Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, USA. 
• Otsuka, Michael (2005). Libertarianism Without Inequality. City: Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 9780199280186. 
• Vallentyne, P., Steiner, H., & Otsuka, M. (2005). Why Left-Libertarianism is not Incoherent, Indeterminate, or Irrelevant. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 33: 201-15. Full text
• Vallentyne, Peter (2000). Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics. Basingstoke: Palgrave. ISBN 9780312236991. 
• Vallentyne, Peter (2000). The Origins of Left-Libertarianism. Basingstoke: Palgrave. ISBN 9780312235918. 
• Vallentyne, P. (2000). Left-Libertarianism: A Primer. In Left Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate, Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner (Eds.). Palgrave Publishers Ltd. 1-20. Full text (Final draft)

External links

• Richman, Sheldon, Libertarian Left, The American Conservative
• Alliance of the Libertarian Left
• Hillel Steiner's faculty page at the University of Manchester
• LeftLibertarian.org (anti-corporate left-libertarianism) blog aggregator
• leftlib.org (philosophical left-libertarianism)
• Mutualist.org, free market anti-capitalism
• Peter Vallentyne's online papers
• A reading list on left libertarianism of the 1960s
• Prominent Anarchists and Left-Libertarians
• Spunk Library: Left libertarian critiques of anarcho-capitalism and right-libertarianism