Right-libertarianism

Right-libertarianism,[1][2][3][4] also known as libertarian capitalism,[5] or right-wing libertarianism,[1][6] is a libertarian political philosophy that supports capitalist property rights and defends market distribution of natural resources and private property.[7] The term right-libertarianism is used to distinguish this class of views on the nature of property and capital[8] from left-libertarianism, a variant of libertarianism that combines self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to property and income.[9] In contrast to socialist libertarianism,[3] right-libertarianism supports free-market capitalism.[1] Like most forms of libertarianism, it supports civil liberties,[1] especially natural law,[10] negative rights,[11] the non-aggression principle,[12] and a significant transformation of the modern welfare state.[13]

Right-libertarian political thought is characterized by the strict priority given to liberty, with the need to maximize the realm of individual freedom and minimize the scope of public authority.[14] Right-libertarians typically see the state as the principal threat to liberty. This anti-statism differs from anarchist doctrines in that it is based upon strong individualism that places less emphasis on human sociability or cooperation.[2][14][15] Right-libertarian philosophy is also rooted in the ideas of individual rights and laissez-faire economics. The right-libertarian theory of individual rights generally follows the homestead principle and the labor theory of property, stressing self-ownership and that people have an absolute right to the property that their labor produces.[14] Economically, right-libertarians make no distinction between capitalism and free markets and view any attempt to dictate the market process as counterproductive, emphasizing the mechanisms and self-regulating nature of the market whilst portraying government intervention and attempts to redistribute wealth as invariably unnecessary and counter-productive.[14] Although all right-libertarians oppose government intervention, there is a division between anarcho-capitalists, who view the state as an unnecessary evil and want property rights protected without statutory law through market-generated tort, contract and property law; and minarchists, who support the need for a minimal state, often referred to as a night-watchman state, to provide its citizens with courts, military, and police.[16]

Like libertarians of all varieties, right-libertarians refer to themselves simply as libertarians.[2][16][6] Being the most common type of libertarianism in the United States,[3] right-libertarianism has become the most common referent of libertarianism.[17][18]

  1. ^ a b c d Rothbard, Murray (1 March 1971). "The Left and Right Within Libertarianism" Archived 1 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine. WIN: Peace and Freedom Through Nonviolent Action. 7 (4): 6–10. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  2. ^ a b c Goodway, David (2006). Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 4 Archived 7 February 2024 at the Wayback Machine. "The problem with the term 'libertarian' is that it is now also used by the Right. [...] In its moderate form, right libertarianism embraces laissez-faire liberals like Robert Nozick who call for a minimal State, and in its extreme form, anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard and David Friedman who entirely repudiate the role of the State and look to the market as a means of ensuring social order".
  3. ^ a b c Carlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilburn R., ed. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. London: Sage Publications. p. 1006 Archived 7 February 2024 at the Wayback Machine. ISBN 1412988764.
  4. ^ Wündisch 2014.
  5. ^ Reiman, Jeffrey H. (2005). "The Fallacy of Libertarian Capitalism". Ethics. 10 (1): 85–95. doi:10.1086/292300. JSTOR 2380706. S2CID 170927490.
  6. ^ a b Newman 2010, p. 53 "It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism). There is a complex debate within this tradition between those like Robert Nozick, who advocate a 'minimal state', and those like Rothbard who want to do away with the state altogether and allow all transactions to be governed by the market alone. From an anarchist perspective, however, both positions—the minimal state (minarchist) and the no-state ('anarchist') positions—neglect the problem of economic domination; in other words, they neglect the hierarchies, oppressions, and forms of exploitation that would inevitably arise in laissez-faire 'free' market. [...] Anarchism, therefore, has no truck with this right-wing libertarianism, not only because it neglects economic inequality and domination, but also because in practice (and theory) it is highly inconsistent and contradictory. The individual freedom invoked by right-wing libertarians is only narrow economic freedom within the constraints of a capitalist market, which, as anarchists show, is no freedom at all.
  7. ^ Kymlicka 2005, p. 516: "Right-wing libertarians argue that the right of self-ownership entails the right to appropriate unequal parts of the external world, such as unequal amounts of land."
  8. ^ Francis, Mark (December 1983). "Human Rights and Libertarians". Australian Journal of Politics & History. 29 (3): 462–472. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8497.1983.tb00212.x. ISSN 0004-9522.
  9. ^ Vallentyne 2007, p. 6. "The best-known versions of libertarianism are right-libertarian theories, which hold that agents have a very strong moral power to acquire full private property rights in external things. Left-libertarians, by contrast, holds that natural resources (e.g., space, land, minerals, air, and water) belong to everyone in some egalitarian manner and thus cannot be appropriated without the consent of, or significant payment to, the members of society."
  10. ^ Miller, Fred (15 August 2008). "Natural Law". The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Archived from the original on 26 May 2020. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
  11. ^ Sterba, James P. (October 1994). "From Liberty to Welfare". Ethics. Cambridge: Blackwell. 105 (1): 237–241.
  12. ^ "What you should know about the Non-Aggression Principle". Learnliberty.org. 24 February 2017. Archived from the original on 7 December 2021. Retrieved 7 December 2021.
  13. ^ Baradat 2015, p. 31.
  14. ^ a b c d Heywood 2004, p. 337.
  15. ^ Newman 2010, p. 43: "It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism). There is a complex debate within this tradition between those like Robert Nozick, who advocate a 'minimal state', and those like Rothbard who want to do away with the state altogether and allow all transactions to be governed by the market alone. From an anarchist perspective, however, both positions—the minimal state (minarchist) and the no-state ('anarchist') positions—neglect the problem of economic domination; in other words, they neglect the hierarchies, oppressions, and forms of exploitation that would inevitably arise in a laissez-faire 'free' market. [...] Anarchism, therefore, has no truck with this right-wing libertarianism, not only because it neglects economic inequality and domination, but also because in practice (and theory) it is highly inconsistent and contradictory. The individual freedom invoked by right-wing libertarians is only narrow economic freedom within the constraints of a capitalist market, which, as anarchists show, is no freedom at all."
  16. ^ a b Marshall, Peter (2008). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: Harper Perennial. p. 565. "The problem with the term 'libertarian' is that it is now also used by the Right. [...] In its moderate form, right libertarianism embraces laissez-faire liberals like Robert Nozick who call for a minimal State, and in its extreme form, anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard and David Friedman who entirely repudiate the role of the State and look to the market as a means of ensuring social order".
  17. ^ Beltrán, Miquel (1989). "Libertarismo y deber. Una reflexión sobre la ética de Nozick" [Libertarianism and duty. A reflection on Nozick's ethics]. Revista de ciencias sociales (in Spanish). 91: 123–128. ISSN 0210-0223. Archived from the original on 23 March 2019. Retrieved 29 November 2018.
  18. ^ Cite error: The named reference Vallentyne 2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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