Outline of libertarianism

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to libertarianism:

Libertarianism – political philosophy that upholds liberty as its principal objective. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and freedom of choice, emphasizing political freedom, voluntary association and the primacy of individual judgment.

Nature of libertarianism

Libertarianism

Supports

• Economic freedom – the freedom to produce, trade and consume any goods and services acquired without the use of force, fraud or theft.
• Egalitarianism under the law - the idea that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or social status.
• Free society - a society in which one has the freedom to obtain the power and resources to fulfill their own potential.
• Individual responsibility – the idea that a person has moral obligations in some situations.
• Self-management – methods, skills, and strategies by which individuals can effectively direct their own activities toward the achievement of objectives, and includes goal setting, decision making, focusing, planning, scheduling, task tracking, self-evaluation, self-intervention, self-development, etc.
• Self-governance - the idea that a people or group are able to exercise all of the necessary functions of power without intervention from any authority which they cannot themselves alter.
• Self-ownership – the concept of property in one's own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to be the exclusive controller of his own body and life.
• Voluntary association – a group of individuals who enter into an agreement as volunteers to form a body (or organization) to accomplish a purpose.

Rejects

• Authoritarianism – a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority.
• Coercion – the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force.
• Discrimination by the state – a form of collectivism that involves treating people based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit.
• Imperialism – defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination."

Debates

• Abortion
• Anarcho-capitalism and minarchism and libertarian municipalism
• Free market and laissez-faire vs. socialism and communism

Branches of libertarianism

Schools of libertarian thought

Libertarianism has many overlapping schools of thought, all focused on smaller government and greater individual responsibility. As interpretations of the guiding Non-Aggression Principle vary, some libertarian schools of thought promote the total abolition of government, while others promote a smaller government which does not initiate force. Some seek private ownership of all property and natural resources, others promote communal ownership of all natural resources and varying degrees of private property.

• Agorism –
• Anarcho-capitalism –
• Austrian School –
• Autarchism –
• Bleeding-heart libertarianism -
• Christian libertarianism –
• Civil libertarianism
• Civil societarianism –
• Classical liberalism –
• Communalism
• Consequentialist libertarianism –
• Crypto-anarchism –
• Deontological libertarianism –
• Free-market anarchism –
• Geolibertarianism –
• Green libertarianism –
• Individualist anarchism –
• Left-libertarianism –
• Left-wing market anarchism -
• Liberism –
• Libertarian Christianity –
• Libertarian conservatism –
• Libertarian municipalism –
• Libertarian socialism –
• Market liberalism –
• Market socialism –
• Minarchism –
• Mutualism –
• Paleolibertarianism –
• Panarchism –
• Philosophical anarchism –
• Propertarianism –
• Right-libertarianism –
• Voluntaryism –

Origins of libertarianism

• Age of Enlightenment –
• Classical liberalism –
• Individualist anarchism –
• Jeffersonian democracy –
• Natural law theory –

Libertarian theory and politics

• Anarcho-capitalism and minarchism
• Criticism of libertarianism
• Debates within libertarianism
• Libertarian perspectives on intellectual property
• Libertarian perspectives on LGBT rights
• Libertarianism in the United States
• Libertarian theories of law
• List of libertarian political parties
• Objectivism and libertarianism

Libertarian ideals

These are concepts which, although not necessarily exclusive to libertarianism, are significant in historical and modern libertarian circles.

• Civil liberties –
• Co-operative economics -
• Counter-economics –
• Decentralization –
• Dispute resolution organization –
• Economic freedom –
• Egalitarianism under the law –
• Free market –
• Free society –
• Free trade –
• Free will –
• Freedom of association –
• Freedom of contract –
• Homestead principle –
• Individualism –
• Laissez-faire –
• Law of equal liberty -
• Liberty –
• Limited government –
• Methodological individualism –
• Natural rights –
• Night watchman state –
• Non-aggression –
• Non-interventionism –
• Non-politics –
• Non-voting –
• Participatory economics –
• Private defense agency –
• Polycentric law –
• Property –
• Self-governance –
• Self-management –
• Self-ownership –
• Spontaneous order –
• Stateless society –
• Subjective theory of value –
• Subsidiarity –
• Tax resistance –
• Title-transfer theory of contract –
• Worker's self management –
• Voluntary association –
• Voluntary society –

Philosophers and economists who have influenced libertarianism

Anarchists

• Émile Armand – one of the most influential individualist anarchists of the early 20th century
• Mikhail Bakunin – one of the main theorists of collectivist anarchism and a major influence on the development of Left-libertarianism
• William Godwin – the first modern proponent of anarchism, whose political views are outlined in his book Political Justice
• Robert Nozick – philosopher and author of Anarchy, State, and Utopia
• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon – the first self-described anarchist and founder of mutualism
• Lysander Spooner – notable individualist anarchist and founder of the American Letter Mail Company
• Max Stirner – founder of egoist anarchism
• Benjamin Tucker – a leading theorist of individualist anarchism in the 19th century
• Josiah Warren – the first known American anarchist and author of the first anarchist periodical The Peaceful Revolutionist

Economists

• Frédéric Bastiat – one of the leading economists of the 19th century and creator of the concept of opportunity cost
• Milton Friedman – Nobel Prize-winning monetarist economist, notable for his advocacy of economic deregulation and privatization
• Robin Hahnel – Modern participatory economics scholar and libertarian socialist
• Friedrich Hayek – Nobel Prize-winning Austrian School economist, notable for his political work The Road to Serfdom
• Elinor Ostrom – Nobel Prize-winning common pool resource theorist and environmentalist
• Ludwig von Mises – was a philosopher, Austrian School economist, sociologist, and classical liberal
• Murray Rothbard – the founder of anarcho-capitalism and a leading Austrian school economist
• E. F. Schumacher – Internationally influential British economist and statistician, author of Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Statistician, philosopher and author of The Black Swan

Objectivists

• Ayn Rand – the creator of the philosophy of Objectivism
• Leonard Peikoff – founder of the Ayn Rand Institute and Rand's designated intellectual heir

Others

• Murray Bookchin – the founder of libertarian municipalism and a leading theorist of the social ecology movement
• Noam Chomsky – pioneering linguist and social critic
• Karl Hess – libertarian socialist and tax resistor
• Hans-Hermann Hoppe – developed extensive work on (argumentation ethics)
• Ron Paul – politician and 2012 presidential candidate
• Henry David Thoreau – one of the leading philosophers of American transcendentalism and anarcho-pacifism
• Robert Anton Wilson – radical author of the Illuminatus! trilogy

See also

• List of libertarian organizations
• Liberalism
• Anti-state · Anti-war
• Anarcho-syndicalism
• Civil libertarianism
• Free-market environmentalism
• Fusionism
• Libertarian Democrat
• Libertarian Republican
• Libertarian transhumanism
• Small government

Categories

• Category:Libertarianism by country
• Category:Libertarians by nationality
• Category:Libertarianism by form

References

External links

• "Libertarianism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• The Humble Libertarian is a libertarian resource and index of libertarian websites.
• Foundation for Economic Education is one of the oldest libertarian organizations in the United States.
• Libertarianism.com a non-profit site for Libertarianism.