This may belong in the general questions, but I figure if it goes anywhere it’ll end up here, so here it starts…
My question is massively uninformed. I don’t know anything about anarchists (was this even a real movement or just an epithet?) And I know little more about libertarians. But my sense is that libertarian is just a nice name for an anarchist - someone who has no use for government whatsoever.
Right? wrong? in between?
No. Anarchists promote “NO GOVERNMENT!” Libertarians promote “Only essential Government.”
Plus, Libertarianism is less popular amongst angst-ridden, disaffected youth, for two reasons: 1. It’s harder to say, and 2. There’s no “Libertarian’s Cookbook” (to my knowledge).
Libertarians would have a working sewer system, Anarchists would not. Which would you rather have?
Yeah yeah, overly simplistic.
Check these out:
-Tcat
Anarchists are left-wingers and libertarians right-wingers, on the overall…
Right wingers? Yes, I suppose. Since we advocate the abolition of all drug laws and prohibition laws, all sodomy and anti-gay marriage laws, and all laws against free and open immigration, I can see where you’d say we’re right wing.
There is some overlap between anarchists and libertarians, but they are not the same.
An anarchist, by definition, wants no government at all. Some libertarians agree with this, but most want to have some extremely limited government for military, police, and judicial purposes.
Libertarians’ beef with government is generally that it initiates force and violence against people, and libertarians are by their own definition opposed to such initiation of force. While some anarchists would agree with this, there is nothing inherent about anarchists that makes them opposed to the initiation of force, and many of the old 19th century and early 20th century anarchists (Sacco and Vanzetti, anyone) considered it quite legitimate to use terrorism against ordinary private citizens regardless of whether their victims had attacked the anarchists first.
So some people are both libertarians and anarchists, but the two groups are not necessarily the same