Libertarianism, is it viable?

[The_Revolutionair]

I'm new here, so please go easy on me.
I've been through different stages, from being religious to atheist, swinging between socialism and capitalism/libertarianism.
The latter has caught my attention for a while now.
So...my question would be. Is libertarianism a better alternative?why and why not. If possible, maybe you can point out some literature/articles I can read.

Thanx!

[Left Voice]

The first thing to recognise is that there's various different forms of libertarianism.

I'm assuming you are American, and therefore what you know as Libertarianism is actually 'Right Libertarianism', which places great importance on private property.

There is also Left Libertarianism. Guess what that is also known as? Anarchism. Similarly, Anacho-Communism and Libertarian Communism are essentially the same thing, both are anti-authoritarian forms of communism. In oversimplified terms, left forms of libertarianism place emphasis on class conflict, and don't place so much emphasis on private property.

In that sense, what you are asking is quite complicated. Libertarianism and Communism are not necessarily mutually exclusive, depending on what form of Libertarianism you are referring to.

[BIXX]

I'm new here, so please go easy on me.

I've been through different stages, from being religious to atheist, swinging between socialism and capitalism/libertarianism.

The latter has caught my attention for a while now.

So...my question would be. Is libertarianism a better alternative?why and why not. If possible, maybe you can point out some literature/articles I can read.



Thanx!


The short answer is no.

The long answer is that the free market is impossible because there will always be forces making it not free (which requires that the economy is in perfect equilibrium, which outside forces make impossible). Also capitalism is inherently oppressive to the individual, as well as breeding racism and sexism among other things.

[BIXX]

The first thing to recognise is that there's various different forms of libertarianism.

I'm assuming you are American, and therefore what you know as Libertarianism is actually 'Right Libertarianism', which places great importance on private property.

There is also Left Libertarianism. Guess what that is also known as? Anarchism. Similarly, Anacho-Communism and Libertarian Communism are essentially the same thing, both are anti-authoritarian forms of communism.

In that sense, what you are asking is quite complicated. Libertarianism and Communism are not necessarily mutually exclusive, depending on what form of Libertarianism you are referring to.


I think they was referring to right libertarianism because they were pairing it with capitalism.

[Left Voice]

I know. My point is that the OP should broaden their understanding of what Libertarianism is. It's not good to stay rested in misinformation.

[Red Economist]

I'm new here, so please go easy on me.
I've been through different stages, from being religious to atheist, swinging between socialism and capitalism/libertarianism.
The latter has caught my attention for a while now.
So...my question would be. Is libertarianism a better alternative?why and why not. If possible, maybe you can point out some literature/articles I can read.

Thanx! I think the main distinction between (right-wing) libertarianism and socialism will be over the relationship between Freedom and property.
Libertarianism will fall down if it assumes people have 'natural rights' independent of the means of exercise them; private property by which to exercise those rights. I.e we may all have a 'natural' right to life in a legal system but it won't be effective unless we can have basic necessities to eat and drink so that we can in fact live.
The problem with private property is, yeah, libertarian may be ok if everyone has enough property to live off, but the forces of competition quickly make this distribution of property unequal and therefore the rights we are legally entitled to will no longer be effective as we won't have the means to exercise them. As private property is concentrated, so it becomes a mean to coerce people based on getting them to sell their labor in exchange for basic necessities as under a capitalist system.

One solution to this is social ownership of the means of production and the social distribution of it's products so everyone has enough or something approximating an equal share. This can be vaguely considered socialist.
However, libertarians will point out the possibility that 'social' ownership will mutate into an alternative system of coercion, where the state decides who gets what and exercises a lot of power over society in a form of 'totalitarianism'.

This debate takes many forms, but I hope this is a nice summary. Ultimately whether libertarianism or socialism as social systems are better is dependent on certain underlying assumptions being true.

[exeexe]

If enough people wants it, then its viable. If you want to know if its physical viable then yes it is physical viable

[ckaihatsu]

Libertarian thinking is based on a shipwreck -- the centuries-past timeframe of privileged opportunistic land speculation in the New World. Libertarian "rights" are based on an individually circumscribed domain of (rural-oriented) petty-bourgeois property ownership, and that's about it.

So libertarianism would "work" only if everyone had their own inviolate parcel of land, was able to live off of it, and could always form genial, benign relations with neighbors and outsiders.

Obviously what's missing from this libertarian consciousness is the reality of industrial production, city life, mass labor forces, class struggle, and so on.





Most people immediately think 'self-sufficiency' when they think of an agrarian-only society -- it's the idealist dream of 'dropping-out' of regular society in favor of providing one's own necessities with a land-subsistence way of life for oneself and one's family.

If this prolonged libertarian squirm happened -- for whatever unknown mysterious reason -- to be *right in front* of us, what we'd most likely see would be an *eternal stagnation* because, after some time of settling-in and neighborly inter-farm trading, no one would have any interest in doing any more for the sake of social material development ('innovation') -- everyone would always be satisfied by what they produce for themselves in any given workweek, according to the premise of this hypothetical scenario.

In the real-world, of course, there was / would-be the dynamism of primitive-accumulation, such as we saw with Western European imperial explorations in the 1500s, etc.

But in the classic agrarian dream, everyone would just have their own patch of acreage, would be content with kith and kin, would get along fine with neighbors and outsiders, and would live happily ever after -- no need for any large-scale implementations, or revolution.

[RedWorker]

Dear comrade:

First of all, you must understand that "libertarianism" simply means an ideology which strives for the most freedom available to the individual. There are forms of left-wing libertarianism, and right-wing libertarianism. For example, the "Libertarian Party" of the United States would be an example of right-wing libertarianism. There are socialist parties that have individual freedom as one of the most important goals.

Hereinafter, we will define "private property" as private ownership of the means of production. Of course, in socialism and communism, personal possessions would still belong to each person.

Right-wing libertarians claim that private property is a natural right which enhances freedom. However, is that not the opposite? Private property is not a right; it is a selfish human creation. It means to take what belongs to all, and re-assign it to one-self. Why should that be a right, rather than a crime?

There are 50 million poor people in the United States. The Libertarian Party wants a world which is like 200 years ago: no social rights to anyone, no welfare, no nothing. They want a world in which everything is a business, and there are no services publicly available - a medieval view. They will shut down the little current social spending, gravely aggravating the many social problems that already exist in the United States. They say, "freedom is for the rich not to pay taxes that benefit us all", "freedom is for everything to be monopolized rather than a service available to all", "freedom is not to share".

They want to make education a business, healthcare a business, dominated by private hands. As if they were not already in the United States - they want to make it even more so.

They say, "Freedom is for the state not to intervene in the economy". So, is it freedom to leave everything in the hands of the burgeois, the upper class of society, to offer services? The little social conquests that were made and are enforced by the state, should be removed, and substituted - leaving everything in the dirty hands of these who own the businesses? Why not also shut down the justice system?

What freedom is that, when someone gets sick and dies out of a curable illness merely because a number was not high enough on his bank account? What freedom is that, when a mother is unable to feed her children, or to send them to a school? What freedom is that, when someone lives in the streets? That is not freedom. That is burgeois cruelty enforced by state passivity.

Freedom for the businesses, freedom for the rich men. In other words, freedom for the exploiter, for the criminal; worthless freedom.

They say: Stop welfare! Let private charities care for the poor. Let donations from the working class alleviate the problems the wealthy burgeois produce every day.

Left-wing libertarians say: Freedom is the well-being of everyone. It is the right for everyone to say what they want. It is the right for everyone to live as well as everyone else.

That is freedom. True freedom.

[ComradeOm]

Is libertarianism a better alternative?why and why notNo. It, or at least relatively free market capitalism, has been tried and found wanting. The simple reality is that when left unhindered market mechanisms are not particularly stable and simply lead to crisis.

Hence the entire purpose of today's bourgeois state is to provide a scaffold to support the operations of capitalism. Both in mitigating against the excesses of the market (eg monopoly law) or ensuring that class tensions never reach boiling point. Marx called the state "a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie", for Adam Smith government was "in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."

Which strikes at the central folly of libertarianism - that the state is in fact a hindrance to capitalism's growth. Knock away or significantly trim back the state while (somehow) retaining the market and what results is a return to the robber baron era or/and the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie. It is fundamentally unsustainable in a way that socialism, which inherently rejects the emergence of such inequalities, is not.

[exeexe]

between socialism and capitalism/libertarianism.
The latter has caught my attention for a while now Thanx!

Wait wait,, lets go one step back and look at what you are saying. You said between socialism and capitalism, ok thats cool, but then you also said:
between socialism and libertarianism.. wait what?

Why do you think socialism and libertarianism exclude each other?



With wage-workers and tenants, property became “the right to use [something] by his neighbour’s labour” and so resulted in “the exploitation of man by man” for to “live as a proprietor, or to consume without producing, it is necessary, then, to live upon the labour of another.” Like Marx, but long before him, Proudhon argued that workers produced more value than they received in wages: “Whoever labours becomes a proprietor . . . And when I say proprietor, I do not mean simply (as do our hypocritical economists) proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages, – I mean proprietor of the value he creates, and by which the master alone profits . . . The worker retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right in the thing he has produced.”

...

He was well aware that in such circumstances property “violates equality by the rights of exclusion and increase, and freedom by despotism.” It has “perfect identity with robbery” and the worker “has sold and surrendered his liberty” to the proprietor. Anarchy was “the absence of a master, of a sovereign” while “proprietor” was “synonymous” with “sovereign” for he “imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control.” Thus “property is despotism” as “each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property” and so freedom and property were incompatible.

...

People “are proprietors of their products — not one is proprietor of the means of production.” Thus “right to product is exclusive” while “the right to means is common.” Workers’ control would prevail as managers “must be chosen from the workers by the workers themselves, and must fulfil the conditions of eligibility. It is the same with all public functions, whether of administration or instruction.” So whether on the land or in industry, Proudhon’s aim was to create a society of “possessors without masters” The following year saw Proudhon pen a second memoir (“Letter to M. Blanqui”) in which he clarified certain issues raised in the first memoir and answered his critics. He again argued for socialised property and use rights for “wealth, produced by the activity of all, is by the very fact of its creation collective wealth, the use of which, like that of the land, may be divided, but which as property remains undivided.” Proudhon aimed to “reduce” property “to the right of possession” and “organise industry, associate workers” in order to “apply on a large scale the principle of collective production.” He called this “non-appropriation of the instruments of production” the “destruction of property.” Thus use rights replace property-rights with common ownership ensuring individuals and groups controlled the product of their labour, the labour itself and as the means of production used. In short: “I preach emancipation to the proletarians; association to the workers.”

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/laying-foundations-proudhon-contribution-anarchist-economics