# Libertarianism vs liberalism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 27, 2015, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691 "2015-09-27T13:58:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/41 "2015-09-29T03:14:57Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > The patron saint of liberalism in the United States is FDR. FDR also happens to be the closest thing to a totalitarian dictator the American System has seen. If you want to claim I’m out of date, Bernie Sanders is running on stale New Dealism in 2015. . . . How does the last sentence reinforce your point? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/42 "2015-09-29T03:26:16Z")
> [@Hellestal](#): > > Did the labor of the community originally create the atoms? Or did the atoms already exist? > > You can argue till you’re blue in the force that “labor” originally provided real capital, but don’t be too surprised if the laws of physics imply something else. How is that in any way relevant to any political or economic question? The atoms will exist under any system. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/43 "2015-09-29T03:30:25Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Libertarians are opposed to abortion rights (well, of removing Federal protections on abortion rights, which means abortion would be banned in a number of states if they actually got into power). They are generally opposed to federal protections of civil rights (including recently SSM). They oppose anti-disrimination laws, so their idea of ‘personal freedom’ includes the freedom to make ‘straight white protestants only’ rules. They also speak highly of the US in the 19th century as a model for society, when blacks were property at first, then later stuck under Jim Crow, and the US was continually waging aggressive, war against Indians (who weren’t considered citizens), and launched a major land-grab war against Mexico. > > Libertarians certainly like the word ‘liberty’, but what they mean by it doesn’t actually match what most people envision when they see ‘liberty’. Libertarianism has lost all meaning, half the people claiming the label have beliefs polar opposite to the other half. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/44 "2015-09-29T03:43:12Z")
Libertarians sometimes insist they are the “real liberals,” i.e., heirs to the classical-liberal tradition. If we’re gonna play that game, let us not forget that the name “libertarianism” originates in [Left-libertarianism](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Left-libertarianism), not in today’s LP version. > [@](#): > > **Left-libertarianism** > > The word “libertarianism” was used before the current usage came about to refer to anarchists, who are against hierarchies brought about by stratified classes and a state controlled by the wealthy elites, and thus _oppose_ capitalism. Many call themselves ‘libertarian socialists’ a philosophy championed by Noam Chomsky. The use of “libertarianism” to describe anarchy dates back to the late 1850s, with _Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social_ being the name of a journal published by anarchist Joseph Dejacque. The term ‘libertarian communism’ originated in the 1880s, when the French anarchist congress adopted it. As late as 1954, a largely anarcho-syndicalist movement named The Libertarian League was set up in the US. > > The current Libertarian Party in the US only came into being in early 1970s, well over 100 years after anarchists had begun using the term to describe themselves. In the US, to quote Murray Bookchin: > > > [@](#): > > > > [The] term ‘libertarian’ itself, to be sure, raises a problem, notably, the specious identification of an anti-authoritarian ideology with a straggling movement for ‘pure capitalism’ and ‘free trade.’ This movement never created the word: it appropriated it from the anarchist movement of the [19th] century. And it should be recovered by those anti-authoritarians… who try to speak for dominated people as a whole, not for personal egotists who identify freedom with entrepreneurship and profit." Many left-libertarians of this school favor equality as much as liberty and argue for fraternal health societies, civil disobedience through the black market, non-capitalist free trade and competitive worker co-ops. > > As late as the 1990s, the _Libertarian Labor Review_ newspaper promoted anarcho-syndicalism while still using the libertarian label. Samuel Edward Konkin III labeled his underground-economy based “agorism” as left-libertarianism, while claiming influence from right-libertarians like Rothbard. The term may also accurately describe Karl Hess, the former Goldwater Republican and Cold Warrior who aligned himself with Murray Rothbard for a few years, then swung to the hard left during the late 1960s and 1970s and joined the New Left.[32] ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/45 "2015-09-29T03:56:16Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Libertarianism has lost all meaning, half the people claiming the label have beliefs polar opposite to the other half. Well, it is nevertheless possible to make some sense of it all. See [A brief attempt at (right-)libertarian taxonomy in the US.](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Libertarianism#A_brief_attempt_at_.28right-.29libertarian_taxonomy_in_the_US) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/46 "2015-09-29T04:01:47Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > You’re making a lot of statements about what libertarians tend to say. Do you have any evidence that libertarians actually tend to say the things that you say they tend to say? [Does Robert Tracinski count?](http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/libertarians_still_a_cult/) > [@](#): > > n unscientific survey of the blogosphere turns up a number of libertarians claiming in response to my essay that, because libertarianism is anti-statist, to ask for an example of a real-world libertarian state shows a failure to understand libertarianism. But if the libertarian ideal is a stateless society, then libertarianism is merely a different name for utopian anarchism and deserves to be similarly ignored. > > Another response to my essay has been to claim that a libertarian country really did exist once in the real world, in the form of the United States between Reconstruction and the New Deal. Robert Tracinski writes that I am “astonishingly ignorant of history” for failing to note that the “libertarian utopia, or the closest we’ve come to it, is America itself, up to about 100 years ago. It was a country with no income tax and no central bank. (It was on the gold standard, for crying out loud. You can’t get more libertarian than that.) It had few economic regulations and was still in the Lochner era, when such regulations were routinely struck down by the Supreme Court. There was no federal welfare state, no Social Security, no Medicare.” > > It is Tracinski who is astonishingly ignorant of history. To begin with, the majority of the countries that adopted the “libertarian” gold standard were authoritarian monarchies or military dictatorships. With the exception of Imperial Britain, an authoritarian government outside of the home islands, where most Britons were denied the vote for most of this period, most of the independent countries of the pre-World War I gold standard epoch, including the U.S., Germany, France, Russia and many Latin American republics, rejected free trade in favor of varying degrees of economic protectionism. > > For its part, the U.S. between Lincoln and FDR was hardly laissez-faire. Ever since colonial times, states had engaged in public poor relief and sometimes created public hospitals and asylums. Tracinski to the contrary, there were also two massive federal welfare programs before the New Deal: the Homestead Act, a colossal redistribution of government land to farmers, and generous pension benefits for Union veterans of the Civil War and their families. Much earlier, the 1798 act that taxed sailors to fund a small system of government-run sailors’ hospitals was supported by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton alike. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/47 "2015-09-29T07:55:52Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, it is nevertheless possible to make some sense of it all. See [A brief attempt at (right-)libertarian taxonomy in the US.](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Libertarianism#A_brief_attempt_at_.28right-.29libertarian_taxonomy_in_the_US) The problem is that when I say libertarian I mean that I don’t care if you have a hobby of collecting your aborted feti and displaying them on the mantle abortion should be legal, and you can marry your three wives and two husbands. Someone else claiming the label opposes abortion being legal, and is against SSM. At that point the label is useless. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/48 "2015-09-29T16:26:13Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > The patron saint of liberalism in the United States is FDR. FDR also happens to be the closest thing to a totalitarian dictator the American System has seen. If you want to claim I’m out of date, Bernie Sanders is running on stale New Dealism in 2015. What does social democracy have to do with totalitarian dictatorship? Sweden is no totalitarian dictatorship. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/49 "2015-09-29T17:00:32Z")
@ITR champion, XT, here’s a couple Harry Browne, Libertarian presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000 made the following claim in an article on his website [http://harrybrowne.org/articles/century.htm](http://harrybrowne.org/articles/century.htm) : > [@](#): > > In the 19th century most Americans had to cope only with local government — which was generally small with carefully defined limits. The federal government seemed a million miles away and of little importance. XT, in a thread on the SDMB, said [Is 19th Century U.S.A. the closest we've been to a Libertarian Ideal? - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=720912) : > [@](#): > > The positive aspects (from a libertarian perspective) was that the government was pretty small and the services it provided were pretty basic. But it’s the personal liberty aspect where you had a really mixed bag. There was plenty of crony capitalism going on with links to the highest levels of the government (which allowed things like monopolies to thrive and things like strikes to be put down violently), and the moralizing laws became increasingly prevalent in the latter part of the century…and, hell, there were aspects of them that were fairly odorous from a libertarians perspective in the first part of that century too. Libertarians speaking highly of personal liberty in the US in the 19th century while glossing over or ignoring the treatment of blacks is so common that I found a presidential candidate and someone who posts in this thread doing so with a couple of minutes of searching. The ‘small local government with carefully defined limits’ wasn’t enforcing non-initiation of force for things like rape, torture, and murder if you were black (and would often engage in them), and was enforcing laws making it illegal to learn to read. And I’m sure Indians being rousted from their homes and marched to death didn’t feel that the federal government was distant. (I can find some stuff on robber barons specifically if you want to quibble on that, but it’s not rare either). Do I think that the Libertarian Party endorses slavery? No, that’s a stupid strawman position that John Mace made up and argued against for no good reason. What I do think is that libertarians use the word ‘liberty’ in a way that is very different than what other people mean. For some, ‘liberty’ just means freedom from Federal government interference, oppressive local or state laws are fine as long as it’s not the feds. For others, they see themselves as someone who’s always going to be in the privileged position, so it’s easy to gloss over how the bottom class lived, since it wouldn’t affect them. Some others are outright racists who don’t want to say that out loud. Do I know what percentages of libertarians think what? Nope, though I suspect the outright racists are a small minority. What I do think is that the ease with which libertarians ignore a really variety of horrible and pervasive violation of basic liberties enforced and condoned by the government shows a really big disconnect from what their ‘liberty’ means in the real world and the way non-libertarians usually use the word. And I think that the ease with which libertarians discount true atrocities committed against non-whites has a lot to do with the reason why 94% of libertarians in the US were white in 2013. And this isn’t just some weird exaggeration for effect, there’s a schism among people who identify as libertarian about being pro-confederate or not that’s widely enough known to be reported on [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/07/10/the-libertarian-war-over-the-civil-war/](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/07/10/the-libertarian-war-over-the-civil-war/) . ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/50 "2015-09-29T17:17:23Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Do I think that the Libertarian Party endorses slavery? No, that’s a stupid straw man position that John Mace made up and argued against for no good reason. Pffft. **YOU** brought slavery into the discussion, not me. I had a very good reason for pointing it out to you. It’s not necessary for everyone at all times to denounce the things they are against. I can say that the US was a democracy in the 19th century, without pointing out that blacks were slaves and women couldn’t vote. Your attempt to associate Libertarianism with slavery was thinly veiled, at best. But at least now you are recognizing that Libertarians don’t endorse slavery. > [@](#): > > What I do think is that libertarians use the word ‘liberty’ in a way that is very different than what other people mean. . So what? Americans use freedom differently than Europeans do. Republicans use “freedom” differently than Democrats do. This is not some unique feature of Libertarianism. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/51 "2015-09-29T17:30:30Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > There is no supreme arbiter, just as there is no supreme arbiter now. > > Intellectual property is a construct of the state. And what property isn’t? ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/52 "2015-09-29T19:14:11Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Pffft. **YOU** brought slavery into the discussion, not me. I had a very good reason for pointing it out to you. You didn’t ‘point out’, you made a false allegation, then argued with the false allegation. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/53 "2015-09-29T20:49:23Z")
For clarity, and to minimize largely-irrelevant side-argumentation, I would modify the **LinusK** quote from the OP as follows: Libertarians tend to see [del]an economic system in which wealth flows from the poor to the rich[/del] [insert]the market economic system[/insert] as natural; liberals see it as constructed. A thing that is constructed can be reconstructed. Furthermore, I’d question whether liberals see the economic system as constructed, although they’re probably closer to seeing that than libertarians, generally speaking. In my experience, liberals tend to think of the market economy as a starting point that needs adjusting in order to redistribute its results more fairly, but a starting point nonetheless. _Anarchists_ see the market economic system as constructed and are generally uninclined to see it as a starting point in any discussion of how things should be structured under ideal circumstances. Currency systems are maintained by governments, are based on no-longer-applicable notions of scarcity and competition, and are very much tied in with coercive enforcement systems. Why liberals think they can maintain the market economy and yet magically stick a few redistributivist Band-Aids on it and that everyone will be happy then is beyond me. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2015, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/54 "2015-09-30T15:29:55Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > _Anarchists_ see the market economic system as constructed and are generally uninclined to see it as a starting point in any discussion of how things should be structured under ideal circumstances. Currency systems are maintained by governments, are based on no-longer-applicable notions of scarcity and competition . . . Wait, how are they no longer applicable? > [@AHunter3](#): > > Why liberals think they can maintain the market economy and yet magically stick a few redistributivist Band-Aids on it and that everyone will be happy then is beyond me. Easy, because that seems to work well enough where it has been tried. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2015, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/55 "2015-09-30T16:29:50Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Libertarians believe in the use of force in self defense. > > Libertarians believe private courts will be better than govt monopoly courts. Honest question: What do you mean by private courts and how would they work? I admit that I am no fan of Libertarianism, but all versions I have heard of it admit that there will need to be a small remnant government that would handle things like courts and national security. Yours is the first plan I’ve heard where even this was outsourced. When you argue against a government monopoly on courts then presumably you want litigants to be able to choose among a number of different courts (otherwise it’s still a monopoly system) . But then how do you prevent them from choosing a court that they know will support their side of the case. Also what rules will there be in place to prevent bribery. Certainly people should be allowed to use of their assets as they see fit, and if that includes buying by the judge on your case a car without coercion, why should that be forbidden? The current system works because your case is assigned more or less at random to a judge that is independent of the litigants, and further there are restrictions on the use of assets to bribe judges, also enforced by and indpendent court. I don’t see how this can work outside a “monopoly”. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2015, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/56 "2015-09-30T16:49:40Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Honest question: What do you mean by private courts and how would they work? > > I admit that I am no fan of Libertarianism, but all versions I have heard of it admit that there will need to be a small remnant government that would handle things like courts and national security. Yours is the first plan I’ve heard where even this was outsourced. > > When you argue against a government monopoly on courts then presumably you want litigants to be able to choose among a number of different courts (otherwise it’s still a monopoly system) . But then how do you prevent them from choosing a court that they know will support their side of the case. Also what rules will there be in place to prevent bribery. Certainly people should be allowed to use of their assets as they see fit, and if that includes buying by the judge on your case a car without coercion, why should that be forbidden? > > The current system works because your case is assigned more or less at random to a judge that is independent of the litigants, and further there are restrictions on the use of assets to bribe judges, also enforced by and indpendent court. I don’t see how this can work outside a “monopoly”. If you’ve ever been through binding arbitration as the little guy you would never assent to private justice. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2015, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/57 "2015-09-30T19:56:15Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Libertarians believe private courts will be better than govt monopoly courts. What do you base that on? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2015, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/58 "2015-09-30T21:44:24Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Wait, how are they no longer applicable? [referring to scarcity and competition] There’s enough to go around and no reason to fight over it. Competition (the serious kind not the “playing chess or football” kind) is fighting over scarce resources. People behave as they do largely because those behaviors are the behaviors that are rewarded by the rules of the game, not because that’s just how selfish and greedy people are. And the game is basically just Parker Brothers’ _Monopoly_ writ large. You already know the rules. [QUOTE=BrainGlutton] > [@AHunter3](#): > > Why liberals think they can maintain the market economy and yet magically stick a few redistributivist Band-Aids on it and that everyone will be happy then is beyond me. Easy, because that seems to work well enough where it has been tried. [/QUOTE] When I look around at the world I do not see much that I would characterize as “working well enough”. Your mileage may differ. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2015, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/59 "2015-10-01T00:04:41Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > When I look around at the world I do not see much that I would characterize as “working well enough”. Your mileage may differ. The social democracy of the Scandinavian countries works well enough, doesn’t it? Never heard of anything anywhere that works any better. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2015, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691/60 "2015-10-01T00:08:55Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > [referring to scarcity and competition] > > There’s enough to go around and no reason to fight over it. Competition (the serious kind not the “playing chess or football” kind) is fighting over scarce resources. There’s enough materials, enough technology, but neither is any use without labor, and who’s gonna work for nothing? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarianism-vs-liberalism/732691.md?page=4)