Libertarianism
Libertarianism is a political philosophy that emphasizes individual liberty and minimal government intervention in both personal and economic matters. It advocates for a free market economy, limited government regulation, and personal freedom, including the right to make choices without interference from the state. Libertarianism is characterized by a strong belief in individual rights and a skepticism of government authority.
6 Key excerpts on "Libertarianism"
eBook - ePubLiberty, Property and Markets
A Critique of Libertarianism
- Daniel Attas(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Libertarianism (henceforth this particular brand of Libertarianism) is a right-based political morality. Its argument proceeds from a set of moral rights grounded on liberty to the justification of the non-interventive state and the market, and the rejection of redistributive taxation. In the words of one proponent: 'Libertarianism' [...] is the doctrine that the only relevant consideration in political matters is individual liberty: that there is a delimitable sphere of action for each person, the person's 'rightful liberty', such that one may be forced to do or refrain from what one wants to do only if what one would do or not do would violate, or at least infringe, the rightful liberty of some other person. (Narveson, 1988, p. 7) The foundational moral rights of Libertarianism are property rights. These property rights are natural in the sense that they are logically and morally prior to the state and its institutions. Libertarianism holds that: [...] natural relations obtain between [particular] persons and [particular] objects in the world. These relations precede civil society and thereby establish claims to property that are prior to social determination. (Lomasky, 1987, pp. 119f) Other forms of Libertarianism, i.e., other theories which call for a non-interventive market distribution for reasons other than the protection of property rights in oneself and external objects – such as those based on efficiency or utility-maximising, or on desert-based justifications, or those that regard the market as a necessary safeguard of political liberty – will not be a primary subject of my inquiry. 3 There are three kinds of logically possible objects 4 of ownership: persons, natural resources and products (of persons and/or natural resources). And indeed Libertarianism posits a natural property right to each kind of object...
eBook - ePub- Gregory Claeys(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- CQ Press(Publisher)
...Tom G. Palmer Tom G. Palmer Libertarianism Libertarianism 510 512 Libertarianism Libertarianism is a philosophy that places individual liberty at the center of political thought. Although libertarians acknowledge the value of other goals, such as justice, peace, order, equality, and prosperity, they see them as given meaning by liberty. Libertarians take seriously the admonition of the English classical liberal historian Lord Acton that “[l]iberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.” Libertarians support free markets, free trade, repeal of victimless crime laws, and strict limits on governmental powers. The term “libertarian” was popularized in the United States in the mid-twentieth century after “liberal” had come to be associated with what in Europe is known as “social democracy,” and a new term for liberal ideas was needed. The Austrian economist and later Harvard professor Joseph Schumpeter noted, “As a supreme, if unintended, compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label” (Schumpeter 1954, 394). Thus, Libertarianism is sometimes used in the United States to refer to the tradition of “classical liberalism” when “liberalism” would be used in other countries. “Libertarianism” is also sometimes used to distinguish the more radical or consistent proponents of liberal thought from other liberals who might accord more power to the state to intervene in otherwise voluntary relations. A central tenet of Libertarianism is the presumption of liberty, that is, the principle that interference with the freedom of others requires political justification, whereas their free choices do not. In the absence of a legitimate reason to interfere with speech (e.g., a speech is found to be an incitement to violence), speech should not be censored or restricted...
eBook - ePubTheories of Distributive Justice
Who Gets What and Why
- Jeppe Platz(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...This principle is powerful both in its appeal and in its ability to answer questions of justice. Most people would agree that we have authority to decide things for ourselves, as long as we don’t wrong others – and that it is deeply problematic when other people force us to do things against our will, even when they can show that it is for our own good. Paternalism, whether individual or political, rubs people the wrong way; “What gives you the authority to tell me how to live?” is a powerful question. Moreover, the principle of liberty can support a comprehensive theory of justice. When combined with a theory of property and contract rights, the principle of liberty provides clear answers to the main questions of political philosophy: What justifies the state? What are the limits of political authority? How should advantages be distributed between the members of society? The principle of liberty answers the need to protect our liberty and rights (and our consent to do so through the state); political authority is limited to the protection of liberty and rights; advantages should be distributed by voluntary exchanges that respect liberty and rights. Returning again to the pyramid introduced in Chapter 1, Libertarianism can be depicted as follows (Figure 4.1): FIGURE 4.1 The main elements of Libertarianism Libertarians view society as a series of contracts. The state is special because it has been entrusted to exercise the enforcement of rights on behalf of all, and because one cannot opt out of its authority if one resides in its territory. But the state is not a distinct subject of justice in the sense that it has rights and obligations, other than those that can be created by interpersonal contracts...
eBook - ePub- Maurice Mullard, Paul Spicker(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...It seeks to expand privatised lives where individuals seek to resolve problems through families, networks, employment and neighbourhood. Individuals are therefore asked to retreat from the public sphere because ‘politics’ is unpredictable, unstable and unjust. Other modern liberals have tended to see more of a role for the state. The liberalism of Hayek, Friedman and Brittan does not take for granted that the individual exists in nature but rather that individualism has to be created and protected. 16 According to this argument the individual is not perceived as having some natural existence: the individual needs to be created. It becomes the duty of governments to promote the climate of liberalism. Liberalism and the market Liberalism is strongly associated with laissez-faire in the economic sphere. Laissez-faire means to leave people to get on with it, and that is pretty much what liberal economists believe is best. In establishing the new political economy, the advocates of classical market economics wanted to promote the theme of the natural rights of the individual. Seeking to explain the changes in agriculture during the 1760s, Adam Smith argued that it was not government direction that had been promoting the new technology but rather the process of autonomous individual self-interest. This self-interest was basic to social improvement: ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.’ 17 The state, the monarchy, and feudal society had all acted as constraints on the freedom of the individual, and were prime targets of classical liberal reformers. In the traditions of market liberalism, markets are both desirable and inescapable...
eBook - ePubLiberal Internationalism
Theory, History, Practice
- B. Jahn(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...It successfully reconstitutes individuals, communities, and the international system itself through processes of appropriation and governance. Despite its powerful transformative role, however, this development does not lead to the realization of liberal principles but to the reproduction of its internal tensions in the relations between these actors. Liberalism thus continually reinvents itself by applying its core practices to changing circumstances. Underneath its flexibility and diversity, however, its core dynamic is constant. And it is this continuity through change that makes a preliminary conceptualization of the relations between liberalism’s core dimensions possible. Liberalism is a political project that aims to establish individual freedom through private property and to protect and extend this freedom through government by consent. It pursues this goal through the privatization/expropriation of common property which requires the maintenance of unequal power relations (by economic, political, ideological or military means). And it justifies this inequality through a philosophy of history that attributes to different actors different levels of development corresponding to different rights and obligations. 1 This chapter focuses on Locke’s (international) political thought. For a more general overview over Locke’s work, see Chappell (1994). 2 For biographies of Locke, see Woolhouse (2007) and Cranston (1985). 3 See, for example, Meek (1976) on its role in the social sciences, Bitterli (1982) and Pagden (1993) on its influence on European world views, Pagden (1995) onideologies of empire, Todorov (1999) on intercultural relations, Jahn (2000) on its role in International Relations, and Inayatullah and Blaney for its role in International Relations and International Political Economy (2004, 2012). 4 This does not mean that the emancipatory potential of Locke’s thought is strictly limited to property owners...
eBook - ePubNeoliberalism and the Biblical Voice
Owning and Consuming
- Paul Babie, Michael Trainor(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...A seemingly free market, supposed representative democracy and conservative constitutionalism tend to be the result of political equality and neutrality. Together, these institutions of the modern state seek to protect the choices of the individual by confining the state to protocol. 73 Still, equality and neutrality ‘merely restate the prohibition against interfering with the autonomy of subjects’. 74 Figure 2.1 Liberal Social Ontology 71 For liberalism, then, rights take priority even to equality and neutrality, in an effort to achieve limitation of the state from interferences with the autonomy of liberal individuals. Indeed, as Decoste argues, equality and neutrality devolve from rights; they begin and end with rights. And so rights constrain the state through the construction of a ‘biography’ for the liberal individual; in other words, the rights of the liberal individual are defined by the liberal view of the legal subject. Liberal law thus prevents diminishment of autonomy, either by others or by the state. Liberalism defines what may be diminished in defining the rights, what Decoste calls the biography, of the individual. And it is also in this way that liberalism can give content to the equality and neutrality upon which the liberal state is founded. 75 Thus, ‘from the liberal vantage, we are … really all the same politically, [and thus] is it possible for the liberal order to proclaim that it will treat us equally by being neutral.’ 76 D. Your Liberal Legal Biography What, then, is the biography of the liberal legal individual? Decoste identifies three components of a ‘thin political being’...
