I know I could have probably looked this up with a search engine but its more fun to hear what the good people of lemmy have to say
There are two definitions of Anarchy in the society. Leftists think it’s some magical utopian self governing system with no upper authority, while everyone else understands it as just state of no laws being enforced.
I leave impossible utopia to others, and answer with common definitions:
Libertarian framework postulate reduction of state to absolute minimum, leaving everything to free market forces. (for better or for worse)
Anarchy is temporary state at which for some reason (war, cataclysm, ect) there’s no framework at all. It’s temporary because some people organize, and some sort of structure emerges
Broadly speaking it seems mostly to be the point of focus. In Libertarianism it is all about the individual, having freedoms from others, and being an island.
In Anarchism it is about specific external coercive forces. Those forces impact individuals, groups, communities, and so on.
So a Libertarian may think about food security from a perspective of deregulating supply so that you can choose to buy unsafe food because you think it is a good idea. An Anarchist may instead think about mutual aid, local cooperative production, and preventing external power structures like corporations or governments restricting sharing of resources.
Libertarian used to be a polite word for anarchist, it was a contrast to authoritarian. Libertarian socialists still see themselves as part of a historical tradition as an alternative to authoritarian socialists, though that’s more European than American. Then there was a political project of European and American conservatives to redefine libertarians to mean conservatives who believed in strong property rights and a weak state.
Anarchism is a broad ideology against authority. Anarchists are against private property rights because if there is private property, there must be an authority to enforce those rights. Instead, anarchists point to pre-civilization methods of carving out individual spaces from the commons so that people can live without having to “make a living.”
There’s been a massive propaganda push by governments and state powers to define anarchist as “bomb-thrower,” or to try and make anarchist ideas seem ridiculous, but anarchists are extremely invested in people recognizing themselves as moral agents invested in communal good while maintaining individuality. if you’re interested in anarchist ideas, try reading non-fiction like David Graeber, or fiction like Ursula K LeGuin, or speeches by Emma Goldman. Don’t let people on social media’s knee-jerk reaction against anarchism turn you off. Even if you end up not being an anarchist, you can at least engage with the ideas and maybe find some stuff that resonates with you.
Instead, anarchists point to pre-civilization methods of carving out individual spaces from the commons so that people can live without having to “make a living.”
This basically started with farming didn’t it? (If you seed a field and can’t harvest you’re at a loss and possibly starving.) What are these methods? Some are obvious talking nice to each other but some are clearly brutal murder to make a point. I guess I’m a bit more interested in how the brutal murder type techniques are argued to be kept in check
I mean game theory kind of dictates that to achieve a system of anarchy you would need to assassinate a lot of powerful actors. Although that seems to be polling high right now.
Libertarians are basically just conservatives who want to smoke weed.
That’s an unfair oversimplification.
They also want to get rid of that pesky ‘age of consent’.
And progressive taxes
conservatives who smoke too much weed
Seriously libertarians are the civic equivalent of not knowing how potato chips are made.
Right libertarians, yep.
Left libertarians are socialists who want to own guns.
Is gun ownership inherently an anti-left stance? That seems like a very American thing. Didn’t Marx say that the proletariat should never be disarmed?
I’m just saying “libertarian” isn’t a right wing thing. You’ve got left libertarians and right libertarians.
No and yes.
(American) libertarians believe all the ills of modern capitalism ultimately stem from state intervention, while anarchists believe they stem from hierarchical relationships between people.
Libertarians want a Leviathan to enforce contracts.
True—but it’s not “intervention” when it’s doing what they want.
Keep in mind that a lot of political words are contentious and can have multiple definitions.
But in the broadest senses, a libertarian would be someone who orients their politics towards the pursuit or protection of liberty. This can take many forms. In the US at least, many libertarians tend to focus on reducing government interventions in their lives, opposing things like taxes, gun control, abortion and speech restrictions, etc.
Anarchists could be considered a subset of libertarians. However, they go much further in that they believe in the total abolition of the state. Most anarchists also believe in the total abolition of all relationships involving the domination of people by other people. This typically includes things like racial hierarchies, gender hierarchies, or even hierarchies over children.
So a quick distinction might be that libertarians want a minimal state while anarchists want no state.
Should also add that a lot of libertarians in reality tend to be more of the “I want the freedom to repress others” people, eg wanting homeschooling (which can increase abuse), opposing measures that would improve every person’s quality of life (such as universal healthcare) etc.
Anarchists on the other hand, tend to be more often on the socialist or communist kind, in where they favour the abolition of hierarchy and thus favour an egalitarian society, by abolition of private (but not personal) property.
Yeah there is a weird contingent of libertarians who are very close to just fascists who hate taxes. It’s very weird but I attribute it to the political magnetism of Trump and similar fascist leaders.
They aren’t all like that though.
Good summary :)
Just my 2c regarding
opposing things like taxes, gun control, abortion and speech restrictions, etc.
Opposing abortion is not a libertarian policy, it is a conservative policy. So conservative libertarians hold this opinion because they are conservative, not because they are libertarian. Your example is probably still correct though, because you say it is about US, and I guess in US lots of libertarians are indeed conservatives.
Sorry that was grammatically unclear. I meant opposing restrictions on abortion. I agree with you.
political words are contentious and
can have multiple definitionshave been assigned new made-up definitions for us to ignore .FTFY
So a quick distinction might be that libertarians want a minimal state while anarchists want no state.
Aka house cats and yappy dogs.
Or maybe it just doesn’t answer the question lol.
“I’m downvoted, it must be because I’m right!” is a very silly conclusion.
Updoots = truth is much sillier but k
I never claimed to endorse that view. You certainly can be downvoted for speaking truth. That’s just not the case here.
Usually this is the case when you are polite and articulate but get no serious replies and only downvotes.
When you post a snarky one-liner that ignores the question at hand in favor of some belligerent tribal attitude, that’s just a low quality comment that belongs at the bottom of the thread.
My brother in christ. I disrespect conservatives, libertarians, and anarchists equally.
No one cares about your opinions lol. How are you not getting this?
you sure do
“I’m right because it pisses people off” is pathetic. Find a hobby.
You offended little yappy pup?
Offended by weak trolling? No. You haven’t done anything offensive, just idiotic. It’s sad to see someone try so hard to annoy others and fail. Trolling is easy as fuck and you can’t even do that right.
In terms of actual theoretical frameworks? Libertarianism is highly individualistic, anarchism is highly collectivist. Extreme libertariansim can be described as “Every man for himself” and anarchism as open ended, reciprocal (as opposed to transactional) community.
belief in property rights.
And heirarchy
To expand further Leftists believe in ownership of personal property (your house, your toothbrush ) and not private property (a factory, investment housing)
This is a useful distinction
A more neutral way to put it is that libertarianism and anarchism both value individual freedom, but differ on the role of the state.
Libertarians generally want a minimal state (for things like courts, police, national defense), while anarchists want to eliminate the state entirely.
There are also different kinds of anarchists—some are anti-capitalist, while others (like anarcho-capitalists) overlap more with libertarian ideas.
Why do you keep asking anarchist questions in ask Lemmy and not an anarchist community who would be better able to answer?
I’ll check it out thanks
Both of these terms have more than one meaning, some of which overlap with each other, so the question is impossible to answer objectively. Both terms can refer to a belief system that people would usually describe as “left-wing” (~ “anarchism”, “libertarian socialism”, “left-libertarianism”, “anarcho-communism”), or one that people would usually describe as “right-wing” (~ “anarcho-capitalism”, “(right-)libertarianism”, “minarchism”).
Myself, I use “libertarian” as the antonym of “authoritarian”, so “libertarian” is a positive term for me; after all (like most people) I think authoritarianism is a bad thing. But libertarianism doesn’t need to be, nor is it usually, completely 100% against all hierarchy and all authority. It can still hold that some hierarchy and authority is necessary for getting things to function, but that it should be limited or accountable.
I don’t consider myself any sort of “anarchist”, I think it’s impossible to completely do away with authority, hierarchy, or government, no matter how much I think those things should have limits to their powers.
Of course I also very strongly believe that what leftists call “capitalism” (i.e. the economic system the world currently mostly runs on) is not, like they say, just another class society where the function of the state is to keep the ruling class in power. There are no formally defined classes in a liberal democracy like there were under feudalism. The mere existence of private property rights and wage labor doesn’t create a class society; those things have existed for millennia of human history and are here to stay. So for that reason I disagree with anarcho-communists when they say that in an “anarchy”, there would no longer be private property.
Yo, check this out
This was an interesting thread, thanks
Capitalism
Libertarians want businesses to have complete freedom to operate, believing this will make them ethical.
Hierarchy
Libertarians believe in keeping a hierarchy, the billionaires will still be above you in life.
Individualism
Libertarians generally don’t want to work together, but to be left alone. Anarchism even individualist anarchism still promotes working together as an ideal.
Fun historical fact: Libertarian is the original name for anarchism. The US right co-opted it, same as they try to do with Anarcho-Capitalism. You will still find people on the left calling themselves social libertarians.
I’ve always observed them to be the largely the same thing but on different ends of the ideological spectrum (libertarians holding a more right-wing stance to anarchism’s left-wing stances). Otherwise, they’re both essentially petulant toddlers stamping their feet and saying “I don’t want to, and you can’t make me”.
Libertarians are house cats. Anarchists are yappy little dogs.











