# What is the difference between libertarianism and anarchism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 11, 2003, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018 "2003-06-11T01:56:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2003, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/1 "2003-06-11T01:56:14Z")
I’ve got a thread going in the GD forum right now – “Why is there no Libertarian Party outside the United States?” And it is interesting that some European posters seem vague on what libertarianism means – even though Europe has a long history of anarchist movements. It got me to thinking – what, exactly, is the difference between the kind of libertarianism expressed in the doctrines of the U.S. Libertarian Party, and anarchism in the European tradition? I used to think the matter was simple and straightforward – Libertarians are moderate or “soft” anarchists who don’t want to destroy the state, merely pare it down to what they perceive as essentials. Yet, based on things I’ve read in the past few years, it appears the two ideologies derive from drastically different intellectual and political traditions. Libertarians talk about Locke, Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. Anarchists talk about Proudhon, Bakunin, and sometimes even Marx. I know George Orwell served in the Spanish Civil War in the militia of a party known as the “P.O.U.M.” – which is usually described as an “anarchist” party even though the “M” stands for “Marxist.” The POUM anarchists seem to have had the idea that land should be worked by peasants’ collectives, factories run by workers’ committees – really more of a syndicalist than a socialist idea, if we define socialism in the Leninist sense. The Industrial Workers of the World, the “Wobblies,” also seem to be anarcho-syndicalists; I know “All workers unite against all bosses!” is one of their slogans. (Nowadays, of course, the Wobblies are a tiny fringe group, and most Americans know the term “anarcho-syndicalist,” if at all, from that scene in _Monty Python and the Holy Grail:_ “I already told you, we’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune! We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week!”) Libertarians, on the other hand, seem to envision a free-market economy which is pretty much like what we’ve got now, only more so. (A free-market economy with minimal government interference is a good description of what they’ve got in Russia right now, not because the government is libertarian, but because it is ineffectual.) Based on all this, I get the impression that libertarians and anarchists are aiming at two fundamentally different kinds of society – or perhaps they just have two fundamentally different theories about what kind of society would emerge in the absence of government control. Libertarians imagine something wild, lawless and individualistic, like (an idealization of) the old American Frontier. Anarchists imagine something safe and communal, like medieval feudalism without the lords. Anyone care to weigh in on this? ---
**Author:** ![Ben\_Hicks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbce88/32.png) [@Ben\_Hicks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ben_Hicks)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2003, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/2 "2003-06-11T01:56:49Z")
Spelling 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2003, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/3 "2003-06-11T02:22:28Z")
I don’t see that libertarians “imagine something wild, lawless and individualistic” at all. The primary elements in the minimalist libertarian government are security forces (internal and external, or police and army, if you prefer), and a judiciary. Lawless the libertarian state is not - certainly it is not regulated the way modern Western states are, what with hosts of items in which it is illegal to trade, laws intended to enforce religious morality, and the like - but laws would still exist. Overt harm to others would still be a crime, and contracts must needs be enforced. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2003, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/4 "2003-06-11T02:32:07Z")
I’m not convinced that there is a real difference…they both have, as their model society a society free of coersion made up up individuals in voluntarily accting cooperatively. The only big difference I can see is that European anarchism seems a lot more concerned about economic coersion…that a large disparity of wealth, and sometimes times, the idea of private property itself, is inherently coersive. So, you get people like Proudhon, saying “Property is theft”. It really comes down, I think, at base, to the difference between English and European liberalism and social contract theory. American libertarianism has its roots in the philosophy of John Locke, who argued that private property was beneficial, and all rights come ultimately from property ownership, because we all “own” at least one thing…ourselves, and nobody has the right to deny us of our ownership of ourselves. European anarchy has roots in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which says that private property is not the source of human liberty, but instead the source of inequality. For Rousseau, property ownership is also the source of government, but as he puts it, more negatively than Locke… > [@](#): > > The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘this is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society ---
**Author:** ![Gairloch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d2c977/32.png) [@Gairloch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gairloch)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2003, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/5 "2003-06-11T02:41:49Z")
The libertarians, I think, pine for a return to conditions which may have once existed, if only briefly. A defined nostalgia, if you will. Anarchists, I think, pine for a return to a time before there was even such a thing as nostalgia. An undefined longing for chaos, which they might correctly observe to be the natural condition. Civilization irks the most tolerant nearly every day, if these forums are any reflection, and I’d be hard pressed to guess which form of living might be the best. There is much to be said for the opinion that the various governments have gone too far, and need to be reeled in and tamed a bit. Reverting to simpler thoughts is hardly a way to go about that, but I can certainly sympathize with the basis of the ideas of both the libertarians and the anarchists. God knows, my own demands for perfection haven’t been answered. Gairloch ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2003, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/6 "2003-06-11T04:27:23Z")
Some thoughts gleaned from past threads on this when I asked a similar question. flowbark > [@](#): > > Anarchists are the libertarians of the left, roughly speaking. > > Anarchism is a stance towards hierarchy in general, such that they are against governmental bureaucracy, but also top-down corporate bureaucracy. Anarchists like cooperatives. > > Libertarians believe that the proper scope of government is to protect property rights. Proudhon, the first 19th century anarchist pamphlateer, proclaimed that, “Property is theft”. (He defined property as ownership of the means of production.) Eris > [@](#): > > Anarchy admits no government. Libertarianism admits a government whose sole role is protecting people from external coercion. > > \ > > There is a strong philosophical and historical reason to suggest that anarchy will always result in at least Libertarianism, at best a minimal state (which is a bit more restrictive than libertarian state), and anything greater than that. > > I would at least imagine that applied anarchy would look vastly similar to libertarianism, except that it wouldn’t have a contractual army and would have several competing forms of currency. I’m sure there are other points, but I think that is what DSeid is troubled about. The idea that practical anarchism results in a minimal state, or a libertarian one. > > Anarchy, State, and Utopia \<[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465097200/](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465097200/)\>: a very interesting read for those so inclined. Helped me understand it a little better at the time anyway. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/7 "2003-06-12T23:14:06Z")
What about those black-clad, hooded figures who have been blamed for some of the vandalism at anti-globalization protests? The U.S. media called them “anarchists.” Are they? Are they anarchists in the European-leftist tradition? What ever happened to all those anarchist organizations in Europe, anyway? Do they still exist? The IWW is the only still-active anarchist organization I know about. (And is an “anarchist organization” a contradiction in terms?) ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/8 "2003-06-12T23:41:58Z")
BrainGlut-- I think of the black-clad, hooded masses more as nihilists than anarchists. But I think to them, the word ‘anarchist’ is so much cooler. And that’s what they’re really all about anyway—image. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/9 "2003-06-12T23:44:52Z")
I asked for clarification once from **Libertarian** , and his answer was that libertarians do not oppose government; they simply feel that it must be what it was created to be, the servant of the people, doing those few things which they cannot do for themselves but which they can do corporately. (These are my words, not his, but they summarize, I believe accurately, his stance.) ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/10 "2003-06-12T23:52:00Z")
Anarchists still put much more emphasis on the rights of the community than the rights of the individual (which is the main focus of libertarians). It’s a common misconception that anarchists feel that anyone can do whatever the hell they want, their main disagreement is with the organs of power. Anarchists believe that everyone should fully take part in the descion making processes and are against abstract entities such as states and prefer government by the community. btw I’m not an anarchist and the above in no way reflects my throughly sit-on-the-fence and statist political views. ---
**Author:** ![Riboflavin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Riboflavin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riboflavin)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/11 "2003-06-13T00:42:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BrainGlutton \* > (A free-market economy with minimal government interference is a good description of what they’ve got in Russia right now, not because the government is libertarian, but because it is ineffectual.) Libertarians **do not** advocate ineffectual government; while Libertarians want to massively reduce the scope of government, they want the government to do certain things and do them effectively. One of those things is to maintain an actual free-market economy, and not something which is manifestly not free-market economy like Russia or Sudan at the present time. In a free-market, the government does not intervene to set minimum or maximum wages, tarriffs, anti-trust laws, various ‘standards’ laws, but it does enforce contracts and prevent extortion. The government in Russia (or Sudan) does have a whole host of wage laws, ‘standards’ laws, tarriffs, and special taxes. The governments don’t uniformly enforce those laws, but they do enforce them some, and they don’t enforce contracts (more so in Sudan than Russia) and don’t prevent extortion and other crimes of violence. A system where the government collects taxes when it can, and officials take bribes not to collect said taxes when they can, where businesses cannot count on a fair enforcement mechanism for contracts, and where criminal gangs can casually extort money under threat of attacks on the business or its customers is not a free-market, at least not in the sense that an economist, libertarian, or anyone who knows much about the topic would use it. The venerable _Wealth of Nations_ by Adam Smith is considered the philosophical base for free markets, and it clearly does not refer to the mess in Russia, the Sudan, or a host of third-world countries on a variety of specific criteria. ---
**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:** [June 13, 2003, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/12 "2003-06-13T04:12:43Z")
Money and property. We anarchists would not keep the money system around at all, and property would consist of what you can carry on your back plus whatever you can continually convince other people is “yours” but it would not be a notion backed by force, of course. Libertarians, at least as far as I’ve encountered them, assume the continued existence of the money system, the continued existence of property and owernship, and (as far as I can tell) the continued existence of police officers and laws and courts and whatnot to protect one’s claim to it. ---
**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:** [June 13, 2003, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/13 "2003-06-13T04:44:01Z")
I don’t understand anarchism except in the context of small, hunter gatherer tribes. No gov’t and no property. If the goal is to return, literally, to the stone age, then I guess this would work. Libertarians clearly advocate a limited gov’t, but one that effectively manages those aspects delegated to it. Is there an organization of Anarchists, in the sense that there is a [Libertarian Party](http://www.lp.org/)? I think of anarchists like atheists. Atheists don’t get together to “not worship” and an organization of anarchists would seem to be similarly self-contradictory. But I’m not familiar with the details of the European Anarchists mentioned in other posts on this threads. I see aboslutlely no similarity between Anarchists and Libertarians any more than a similiarity would exist between Anarchists and Republicans or Democrats. ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/14 "2003-06-13T10:26:00Z")
There are many organisations of anarchists, but they are strictly non-hierachical. Another thing that anarchists are against is any from of immigration control and they believe that all borders should be completely open,which I don’t think Libertarians believe. As **AHunter** mentioned above in terms of property rights anarchists and Libertarians are completely different as anarchists tend to believe in community property and the property of the individual only being what he needs. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/15 "2003-06-13T10:44:24Z")
[hijack] **John Mace** : Atheists could form groups to prevent religion from taking too great of a hold on society, but I can’t think of any specifically atheist groups off the top of my head. The best I can come up with is the rather generic backing the ACLU gives to atheist causes. [/hijack] This is best illustrated with the a slightly modified verson of the classic two-dimensional political chart. (I’m a visual person. Sue me.) Imagine the horizontal axis being collectivist to individualist from left to right, and the vertical axis being libertarian to authoritarian from top to bottom. (Does everyone have it drawn in their heads, or perhaps on a convenient piece of paper? Good.) In such a scale, Anarcho-Syndicalists would be top-left. That is, extreme collectivism (“Property is theft” and everyone works for the Common Good) and extreme libertarian (anarchist). Anarcho-Capitalists would be top-right, or extreme individualist (“Property is the root of freedom” and everyone works as an independent agent) and extreme libertarian. Libertarians would be lower down than Anarcho-Capitalists, reflecting our minarchist (small government) views, but equally to the right, reflecting a strong belief in individual responsibility. I think the fact that Anarchists are always lumped together and always portrayed as ultra-liberal is due to the rather conservative views of the states that persecuted them in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s always easier to fight an enemy if you deny them any common ground. Plus, they could show Anarchists as being in cahoots with the Evil Red Devils (aka International Communism), another publicity win. (And yes, I did steal my own idea for a modified two-axis (or three-axis) graph.) ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/16 "2003-06-13T10:47:26Z")
‘Ultra-Liberal’, isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron as ‘Liberal’ generally means the ‘soft left’ (just left of centre) where as most anarchist are ‘hard left’ (or extremly left of centre)? ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/17 "2003-06-13T11:20:23Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MC Master of Ceremonies \* > \*\*‘Ultra-Liberal’, isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron as ‘Liberal’ generally means the ‘soft left’ (just left of centre) where as most anarchist are ‘hard left’ (or extremly left of centre)? \*\* `Ultra-Liberal' means more of an opposition to convention than the current society is willing to tolerate. `Liberal’ means a respected opposition to current views. The liberal-conservative scale is extremely relative to current social climate. [hijack] I don’t much like it, actually, but not just for that reason. I’ve found, in my own experience, that both Ultra-Liberals and Ultra-Conservatives, when measured on a two-dimensional extension of the liberal-conservative scale, tend towards the bottom (authoritarian) segment. In other words, I was having trouble constructing a scale where left-right was independent from up-down until I discarded liberal-conservative completely. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/18 "2003-06-13T11:23:43Z")
I suppose it’s just the difference in the European and American usuage of the term ‘Liberal’, as in my experince ‘Liberal’ is almost as much of a dirty word to the European anarchists as it is to the US Conservatives. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Svinlesha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@Mr.Svinlesha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Svinlesha)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/19 "2003-06-13T12:05:20Z")
**Brain Glutton** : Very short answer, because I’m pressed for time: > [@](#): > > - What about those black-clad, hooded figures who have been blamed for some of the vandalism at anti-globalization protests? The U.S. media called them “anarchists.” Are they?\* They identify themselves as anarchists. Here in Sweden they are members of AFA (anti-Fascist Action League), a radical left-wing organization that draws its membership primarily from disgruntled teenagers. They fight fascism (which is, really, a problem over here), government/multi-national corporations, and homophobia. What really draws them together, though, is the anti-fascism stance. Typically anarchistic, they believe in “direct action,” so they are always on the lookout for a good street-fight with the local gang of skinheads.\* > [@](#): > > Are they anarchists in the European-leftist tradition?\* They like to think so, but it’s hard to say. The membership is pretty young and a bit emotionally immature, IMHO. I get the feeling that the older anarchist tradition was by comparison more serious, mature, led by older political theoreticians, and so forth. Oh, by the way, the whole scene is also connected to punk, as well – general rebellion against society’s standards and so on. > [@](#): > > - What ever happened to all those anarchist organizations in Europe, anyway? Do they still exist?\* Well, I was a member of SAC, the local anarcho-syndicalist labor union here, for a number of years after my arrival in Sweden. There’s a network of such unions throughout Europe (particularly in Spain), but they are on the fringe and I get the feeling they’re dying out. In my own personal opinion, anarchism lacks the tools to address our state-run, economically globalized world anymore. As a philosophy/social critique, it made more sense, and seemed a more feasible alternative, in the earlier stages of industrialization than it does now. It’s become a kind of refuge for crackpots and dogmatic left-wing idealists these days. But don’t get me wrong – I love Christiania still. 🙂 Gotta go. Will try to get back and answer any other questions you might have later this evening. ---
**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:** [June 13, 2003, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018/20 "2003-06-13T20:50:25Z")
Anarchists are neither “left” nor “right”, per se. A source no “leftier” than the John Birch Society treatise _None Dare Call it Conspiracy_ puts it really really well, in fact. The conventional “left” and “right”, if taken to their “extremes”, end up in both cases looking like pretty rigid centralized police states (e.g., “communism” in the fashion of China or Soviet Union representing hard left, “national socialism” & “fascism” as per Spain, Italy, and Germany in their Nazi/Fascists incarnations representing hard right). If the extremes appear to bend around and meet as if the “line” is an arc instead, it’s because the line has been drawn wrong. The opposite of the mirror-image no-freedom extremes is not the vapid McDonalds-and-Coke commercialized middle, but rather anarchy – regardless of whether or not you believe it is possible for the governmental form used by several billion people to be anarchy. Anarchy, hypothetical or otherwise, is where no one is in a position of authority over others, either to control you or to protect you by controlling others. That’s a concept that seems indigestable to both liberals and conservatives. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-difference-between-libertarianism-and-anarchism/181018.md?page=2)