I know I could have probably looked this up with a search engine but its more fun to hear what the good people of lemmy have to say
Most people here have insightful answers to your question, viewed from a US perspective. As awmwrites@lemmy.cafe pointed out, the notion of libertarianism is quite different between Europe and USA. It originated in Europe (i believe the first use was to criticize Proudhon’s misogyny, so a dispute between some of the first anarchists). It was then used as a synonym to anarchism, due to laws criminalizing anarchism.
Then some (relatively) anti-State american conservatives used the word for themselves, and successfully made it so that it now defines their philosophy rather than anarchism in US. In Europe (at least in France), both ideas coexist (here we have two words, libertaire for libertarian socialisms and libertarien for libertarian capitalism). As people pointed out, the main difference is seeing economical hierarchies as good or bad.
Nowadays in french, libertaire is not a strict synonym for anarchist, it’s rather a wide umbrella term to gather all anti-authoritarian leftist.
Broadly speaking it seems mostly to be the point of focus. In Libertarianism it is all about the individual, having freedoms from others, and being an island.
In Anarchism it is about specific external coercive forces. Those forces impact individuals, groups, communities, and so on.
So a Libertarian may think about food security from a perspective of deregulating supply so that you can choose to buy unsafe food because you think it is a good idea. An Anarchist may instead think about mutual aid, local cooperative production, and preventing external power structures like corporations or governments restricting sharing of resources.
Also, the comparison between the two is often confused by the fact that people tend to think of politics as a single left/right line. This is mostly because we as citizens vote for representatives, instead of voting for policies directly. And since we only get to vote for one representative, their different policies all get lumped together. In reality, the political spectrum is more like a 5D matrix, where things like personal freedom/authoritarianism, fiscal policy, religious freedom, etc exist on entirely separate axes.
One of the big differences between anarchists and libertarians tends to be fiscal policy and corporate regulation. Anarchists still tend to want things like public utilities, roads, trash collection, public art, universal healthcare, etc… They tend to see these as acceptable forms of government. Anarchists tend to be about collective action, and these things are an extension of that. They’re things that are too big to realistically build on an individual level, and they benefit everyone.
The “anarchy” part really comes into play when discussing personal freedoms, as anarchists tend to rebel against restrictions on what they are allowed to do. They tend to argue that individuals should have a lot more personal freedom, and local society should be correcting bad behaviors through social pressure (and use of force, if it comes to that). Break the social contract, and you’re punished by your neighbors until the behavior is corrected.
Anarchists also tend to argue for heavy corporate regulation, because monolithic “too big to fail” corporations will be able to unfairly exert external pressure on local communities. An example of this in action is Walmart running a new store at a net loss until all of the locally owned grocery stores are priced out and forced to close, at which point Walmart is the only grocer and can increase their prices. It’s not a perfect example, because anarchists tend to be against private property in general. Meaning the “locally owned grocers” would be more like a collective neighborhood garden. But it at least gets the point across.
To make a bad metaphor: An anarchist believes the government should pay for the neighborhood’s road using taxes, but the local neighborhood gets to decide what the speed limit (and other various rules of the road) should be.
All of those public works I listed in the second paragraph are things that libertarians would prefer to remove from the government’s purview entirely, by saying that a private company should be able to take over them instead of using taxes to pay for them. Libertarians are definitely more in the “every man is an island” basket. They tend to see public services, utilities, etc as frivolous government overreach. They tend to think that people should pay private companies to do these things, instead of paying taxes to have the government do them.
This stems from the idea that a private company will be more efficient than the government, which would conceivably lower costs while improving quality and agility. If you don’t like how a company does something, you can use the free market to find (or create) a new company instead. Essentially, under libertarianism, you’re not beholden to whatever the government decides to do, and libertarians think that extreme personal freedom should extend to corporations as well. They tend to argue for market deregulation and fewer government programs as a result.
To extend that bad metaphor: A libertarian thinks each neighbor should maintain their own section of the road out of their own personal effort/funds, and each homeowner gets to decide the rules for using their section of the road.
Libertarian used to be a polite word for anarchist, it was a contrast to authoritarian. Libertarian socialists still see themselves as part of a historical tradition as an alternative to authoritarian socialists, though that’s more European than American. Then there was a political project of European and American conservatives to redefine libertarians to mean conservatives who believed in strong property rights and a weak state.
Anarchism is a broad ideology against authority. Anarchists are against private property rights because if there is private property, there must be an authority to enforce those rights. Instead, anarchists point to pre-civilization methods of carving out individual spaces from the commons so that people can live without having to “make a living.”
There’s been a massive propaganda push by governments and state powers to define anarchist as “bomb-thrower,” or to try and make anarchist ideas seem ridiculous, but anarchists are extremely invested in people recognizing themselves as moral agents invested in communal good while maintaining individuality. if you’re interested in anarchist ideas, try reading non-fiction like David Graeber, or fiction like Ursula K LeGuin, or speeches by Emma Goldman. Don’t let people on social media’s knee-jerk reaction against anarchism turn you off. Even if you end up not being an anarchist, you can at least engage with the ideas and maybe find some stuff that resonates with you.
Instead, anarchists point to pre-civilization methods of carving out individual spaces from the commons so that people can live without having to “make a living.”
This basically started with farming didn’t it? (If you seed a field and can’t harvest you’re at a loss and possibly starving.) What are these methods? Some are obviously basic diplomacy / agreements but some are clearly brutal murder to make a point. I guess I’m a bit more interested in how the brutal murder type techniques are argued to be kept in check but I’m also curious about the spectrum of techniques
I mean game theory kind of dictates that to achieve a system of anarchy you would need to assassinate a lot of powerful actors. Although that seems to be polling high right now.
Libertarians are basically just conservatives who want to smoke weed.
That’s an unfair oversimplification.
They also want to get rid of that pesky ‘age of consent’.
And progressive taxes
conservatives who smoke too much weed
Seriously libertarians are the civic equivalent of not knowing how potato chips are made.
Right libertarians, yep.
Left libertarians are socialists who want to own guns.
It sucks that “libertarians” get lumped in with the US Libertarian Party, because the former isn’t restricted to right or left, just like authoritarianism isn’t restricted to the right or left. It’s a whole different axis of the political map.
Is gun ownership inherently an anti-left stance? That seems like a very American thing. Didn’t Marx say that the proletariat should never be disarmed?
I’m just saying “libertarian” isn’t a right wing thing. You’ve got left libertarians and right libertarians.
No and yes.
(American) libertarians believe all the ills of modern capitalism ultimately stem from state intervention, while anarchists believe they stem from hierarchical relationships between people.
Libertarians want a Leviathan to enforce contracts.
True—but it’s not “intervention” when it’s doing what they want.
Also true. I wasn’t disagreeing
Keep in mind that a lot of political words are contentious and can have multiple definitions.
But in the broadest senses, a libertarian would be someone who orients their politics towards the pursuit or protection of liberty. This can take many forms. In the US at least, many libertarians tend to focus on reducing government interventions in their lives, opposing things like taxes, gun control, abortion and speech restrictions, etc.
Anarchists could be considered a subset of libertarians. However, they go much further in that they believe in the total abolition of the state. Most anarchists also believe in the total abolition of all relationships involving the domination of people by other people. This typically includes things like capitalism, racial hierarchies, gender hierarchies, or even hierarchies over children.
So a quick distinction might be that libertarians want a minimal state while anarchists want no state.
Should also add that a lot of libertarians in reality tend to be more of the “I want the freedom to repress others” people, eg wanting homeschooling (which can increase abuse), opposing measures that would improve every person’s quality of life (such as universal healthcare) etc.
Anarchists on the other hand, tend to be more often on the socialist or communist kind, in where they favour the abolition of hierarchy and thus favour an egalitarian society, by abolition of private (but not personal) property.
There is a weird contingent of “libertarians” who are very close to just fascists who hate taxes. It makes no sense but I attribute it to the political magnetism of Trump and similar fascist leaders. These people clearly don’t fit any sane definition of libertarian but I think they just continue to identify that way because they used to and they aren’t aware they’ve gone off the deep end.
They aren’t all like that though.
However, I disagree that there aren’t valid justifications for some of the specific examples you gave that go beyond a desire to repress people. Some people have been deeply harmed by the state and do not wish to be subject to its logic or control and I respect that choice.
political words are contentious and
can have multiple definitionshave been assigned new made-up definitions for us to ignore .FTFY
Good summary :)
Just my 2c regarding
opposing things like taxes, gun control, abortion and speech restrictions, etc.
Opposing abortion is not a libertarian policy, it is a conservative policy. So conservative libertarians hold this opinion because they are conservative, not because they are libertarian. Your example is probably still correct though, because you say it is about US, and I guess in US lots of libertarians are indeed conservatives.
Sorry that was grammatically unclear. I meant opposing restrictions on abortion. I agree with you.
So a quick distinction might be that libertarians want a minimal state while anarchists want no state.
Aka house cats and yappy dogs.
And I know that’s apt because it pisses lemmy off
Or maybe it just doesn’t answer the question lol.
“I’m downvoted, it must be because I’m right!” is a very silly conclusion here.
Updoots = truth is much sillier but keep yappin puppy.
Either way you clearly took offense and no amount of reddit dunks will hide that
I never claimed to endorse that view. You certainly can be downvoted for speaking truth. That’s just not the case here.
Usually this is the case when you are polite and articulate but get no serious replies and only downvotes. In other words, people downvote because they can’t dispute what you’re saying.
When you post a snarky one-liner that ignores the question at hand in favor of some belligerent tribal attitude, that’s just a low quality comment that belongs at the bottom of the thread. There’s nothing to contest because there’s no substance, so downvotes are the most appropriate response.
My brother in christ. I disrespect conservatives, libertarians, and anarchists equally.
No one cares about your opinions lol. How are you not getting this?
Starting to remind me a bit of a yappy dog…
you sure do
“I’m right because it pisses people off” is pathetic. Find a hobby.
You offended little yappy pup?
Offended by weak trolling? No. You haven’t done anything offensive, just idiotic. It’s sad to see someone try so hard to annoy others and fail. Trolling is easy as fuck and you can’t even do that right.
In terms of actual theoretical frameworks? Libertarianism is highly individualistic, anarchism is highly collectivist. Extreme libertariansim can be described as “Every man for himself” and anarchism as open ended, reciprocal (as opposed to transactional) community.
belief in property rights.
And heirarchy
To expand further Leftists believe in ownership of personal property (your house, your toothbrush ) and not private property (a factory, investment housing)
This is a useful distinction
A more neutral way to put it is that libertarianism and anarchism both value individual freedom, but differ on the role of the state.
Libertarians generally want a minimal state (for things like courts, police, national defense), while anarchists want to eliminate the state entirely.
There are also different kinds of anarchists—some are anti-capitalist, while others (like anarcho-capitalists) overlap more with libertarian ideas.
Both of these terms have more than one meaning, some of which overlap with each other, so the question is impossible to answer objectively. Both terms can refer to a belief system that people would usually describe as “left-wing” (~ “anarchism”, “libertarian socialism”, “left-libertarianism”, “anarcho-communism”), or one that people would usually describe as “right-wing” (~ “anarcho-capitalism”, “(right-)libertarianism”, “minarchism”).
Myself, I use “libertarian” as the antonym of “authoritarian”, so “libertarian” is a positive term for me; after all (like most people) I think authoritarianism is a bad thing. But libertarianism doesn’t need to be, nor is it usually, completely 100% against all hierarchy and all authority. It can still hold that some hierarchy and authority is necessary for getting things to function, but that it should be limited or accountable.
I don’t consider myself any sort of “anarchist”, I think it’s impossible to completely do away with authority, hierarchy, or government, no matter how much I think those things should have limits to their powers.
Of course I also very strongly believe that what leftists call “capitalism” (i.e. the economic system the world currently mostly runs on) is not, like they say, just another class society where the function of the state is to keep the ruling class in power. There are no formally defined classes in a liberal democracy like there were under feudalism. The mere existence of private property rights and wage labor doesn’t create a class society; those things have existed for millennia of human history and are here to stay. So for that reason I disagree with anarcho-communists when they say that in an “anarchy”, there would no longer be private property.
Yo, check this out
This was an interesting thread, thanks
Capitalism
Libertarians want businesses to have complete freedom to operate, believing this will make them ethical.
Hierarchy
Libertarians believe in keeping a hierarchy, the billionaires will still be above you in life.
Individualism
Libertarians generally don’t want to work together, but to be left alone. Anarchism even individualist anarchism still promotes working together as an ideal.
Fun historical fact: Libertarian is the original name for anarchism. The US right co-opted it, same as they try to do with Anarcho-Capitalism. You will still find people on the left calling themselves social libertarians.
Why do you keep asking anarchist questions in ask Lemmy and not an anarchist community who would be better able to answer?
I’ll check it out thanks
There are two definitions of Anarchy in the society. Leftists think it’s some magical utopian self governing system with no upper authority, while everyone else understands it as just state of no laws being enforced.
I leave impossible utopia to others, and answer with common definitions:
Libertarian framework postulate reduction of state to absolute minimum, leaving everything to free market forces. (for better or for worse)
Anarchy is temporary state at which for some reason (war, cataclysm, ect) there’s no framework at all. It’s temporary because some people organize, and some sort of structure emerges
I’ve always observed them to be the largely the same thing but on different ends of the ideological spectrum (libertarians holding a more right-wing stance to anarchism’s left-wing stances). Otherwise, they’re both essentially petulant toddlers stamping their feet and saying “I don’t want to, and you can’t make me”.
