Talk:Left-libertarianism

US-centric

It says in WP voice: "People described as being left-libertarian or right-libertarian generally call themselves simply libertarians and refer to their philosophy as libertarianism."

That simply isn't true, in my (european) experience (and it's uncited). In my youth, libertarians were all "left-libertarians". Market capitalists appropriated the term, and now no self-respecting socialist would dream of calling herself "libertarian". Libertarian leftists call themselves "anarchists".

It says 'Left-libertarianism also includes "the decentralist who wishes to limit and devolve State power, to the syndicalist who wants to abolish it altogether. It can even encompass the Fabians and the social democrats who wish to socialize the economy but who still see a limited role for the State."'

The quotation is cited to a Peter Marshall, who seems to be a travel writer. It's complete nonsense; supporting devolution doesn't imply any kind of libertarianism, and no Fabian or social democrat would describe their views as "libertarian". Many anarchists would see Fabians and social democrats as their opponents.

[Edit] The "Tomchuk Travis" reference makes this point about "Demanding the Impossible", Marshall's book on the history of anarchism; his notion of anarchism is very loose. Accordingly, he's not a good source on definitions in this field.

MrDemeanour (talk) 10:54, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm gonna disagree and say that from my experience, left-libertarians are fine calling themselves libertarians still, in an effort to reclaim the term. If anything, many in my experience just clarify in a subsequent explanation they believe in socialist economics; or they call themselves libertarian socialists. Not all are anarchists.

I agree on your interpretation of the Peter Marshall quote, and would say this is very likely an outlier explanation that should be challenged by other sources' explanations. I'd be fine with noting it somewhere still to say that this is Marshall's interpretation of left-libertarianism, while centering the more common understanding. 4kbw9Df3Tw (talk) 16:54, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

This the problem with both "left libertarian" and "right libertarian"; they are mostly invented by and used by "people from elsewhere". Sort of like people on the planet Zircon where the humans all have three legs referring to the humans on earth as "two legged humans". The Wikipedia article on Earth's humans should be called just "Humans" not "Two legged humans". The "two legged human" article should be a brief article on the Zircon term. North8000 (talk) 17:06, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I probably want too far in what I advocated because there are more complexities with libertarianism. North8000 (talk) 20:38, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Collective ownership of natural resources

I did not understand, they think that the collective ownership of natural resources should be owned by which collective? --95.24.70.229 (talk) 03:17, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

By cooperatives, workers' councils, common ownership, local governments, those types of things. 4kbw9Df3Tw (talk) 16:56, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Synthesis

[1] @Grnrchst, is this content not reflected in the sources? If not, we should remove it, rather than leave it tagged. czar 15:50, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

@Czar: That this section was basically just a long list of dudes' names was setting off my synth alarm bells (it's also just really unhelpful for the reader). I've already found a couple cases where the text doesn't match at all with the cited sources, and I haven't found any source that has described classical liberalism as a "school of thought" of left-libertarianism, it's mostly been mentions of different classical liberals' influence on contemporary left-libertarians. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:55, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I think it was just an errant heading. I've removed it and re-sourced the list of people. czar 18:58, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Looking back on it, I realise now that this section was previously a lot larger and based mostly on sources that had nothing to do with left-libertarianism. The heading remaining is really more a lingering effect of past synth. --Grnrchst (talk) 19:45, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Merge?

Based off of the way this is covered in sources, I'm not sure there's enough to support a dedicated article whereas left-libertarianism could be covered in an existing article on libertarianism, comparing it with related libertarian thought. To wit, this is how it's covered in Deshpande & Vinod 2000, within the larger libertarian context and not trying to play left-libertarianism off of right-libertarianism. czar 18:58, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I'd oppose a merge. The main libertarianism article is already a struggling coatrack article, merging would only make the problem worse. I think this article should stick around but needs some severe tightening up. Tagging @North8000, as we've had a conversation about this before. --Grnrchst (talk) 19:28, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Want to point out that this article used to look like this. Less than two years ago, the vast majority of the article was waffle based on hundreds of sources that had nothing to do with the topic. I'd be remiss not to point out that, although it isn't quite there yet, this article is in much better shape now than it has been in the past. --Grnrchst (talk) 19:42, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

While there has been a vast improvement in the last two years (thanks Grnrchst and others!), the most significant and obvious stream of left libertarianism - libertarian socialism - was removed (I can't see why from the edit history), which skews the article towards left libertarianism appearing to be a minor current within US libertarianism, which might encourage the idea it should merge. (Although libertarian socialism actually gets more space within the libertarianism article than it does here.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:13, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

@Bobfrombrockley: The reason for the removal of the libertarian socialism section was twofold: firstly, none of the sources cited in that section actually verifiably described libertarian socialism's relation to left-libertarianism, it was all synth (see several edit summaries from January and August 2023); secondly, when looking through reliable sources, it became clear that it was actually social anarchism that was commonly considered to be a school of left-libertarianism, not libertarian socialism, so that's what replaced it. If libertarian socialism is indeed a "significant and obvious" stream of left-libertarianism, I'd expect it to be born out in the sources, but it wasn't in any of the sources I looked at. --Grnrchst (talk) 09:23, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Re “it was actually social anarchism that was commonly considered to be a school of left-libertarianism, not libertarian socialism”. Surely it’s not either/or. Some consider social anarchism to be a form of (or even synonymous with[2]) libertarian socialism; most consider both to be forms of left libertarianism. BobFromBrockley (talk) 04:06, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

A self-published article on the Spunk Library is almost certainly not a reliable source, it also doesn't use the term "social anarchism" or "left-libertarianism", so I'm really not sure why you're citing it here. If "most consider" libertarian socialism to be a form of left-libertarianism, then it shouldn't be hard to find a mountain of reliable sources confirming this. --Grnrchst (talk) 08:49, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

I've been involved on libertarian articles starting in 2010 including trying to help in some of the big range wars. I have mixed feelings on many on these "two-word topic" libertarianism articles. Including the right-libertarian and left-libertarian articles because they are terms which are not used by the described proponents, often opposed by the described proponents, and in the case of right-libertarianism, a term which is an oxymoron in the US, which has the largest number of proponents. But I lean towards grudgingly thinking that the articles should exist by those terms. I think that they describe the two main "halves" of libertarianism, each benefiting from a large amount of descriptions and content. And unfortunately, there are no other names for these two main groups. Each group typically calls itself "libertarian, by the true meaning of libertarian". This isn't just a tussle over who gets dibs on the term, each group is going by the actual common meaning of the term where they live. What contributes to the issue is that "libertarian" (and related to that "liberal") has common meanings which are very different in the US vs. Europe. But I think we should probably give more coverage to the terminology problems and limitations. Also the libertarianism article is pretty big already and has many other issues. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:32, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Why wouldn't the solution be to disentangle these uses within the same article? Or alternatively, to treat libertarianism (disambiguation) as the primary topic and cover separately each separate claim to the use of the term? czar 03:02, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Have you read the libertarianism article? Attempting to cover these different uses within the same article has made it more tangled, not less. It reads like a giant back-and-forth struggle to shove both left- and right-wing conceptions in, rather than covering the subject broadly. I'm still of the opinion that covering these topics best requires separate articles. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:13, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, my read is that these overview articles are each trying to do too much, so we end up with multiple articles that repeat the lede sections from other articles (just like we had in the anarchism schools of thought articles) but that is a separate discussion.

For purposes of this article and from what I've read in sources, my understanding/proposal is that the libertarian spectrum be covered as the subject rather than treating them as distinct ideologies. I.e., each term (left-/right-) is a container for a broad set of ideas so we can link to each of those ideas like a Set index article rather than duplicating all the content. Everything noteworthy in this Left-libertarianism article seems fully able be covered in its section in Libertarianism. czar 20:13, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

The other complexity is that in Wikipedia we try to cover the various types as developed philosophies (which of course, we need to do) whereas the numerically largest group of self-identifying libertarians (the 50- 100 million in the US) just have a vague one sentence philosophy "prioritize smaller and less intrusive government" in the US context ) and the closest European word for them is "liberals" not "libertarians" . So it's more of a phenomena than a developed philosophy. So the main libertarian article is saddled with trying to both cover a whole bunch of philosophies and philosophy terminology and also this phenomena, and involves words/terms that have fundamentally different common meanings in the US vs. Europe. This makes trying to do a good job on the top level article a Herculean task. In any event, I think that we need do a much stronger job of recognizing and covering these terminology issues. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:52, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Also oppose such a merge. Libertarianism and (especially) the left are both huge, complex, heterogeneous movements and trying to shoehorn that into the top level article is not viable. This is a real topic with a massive literature and, although the article needs work, the topic clearly deserves an article. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:07, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

One think that I've been trying to learn. Do left-libertarians usually consider that to be a good or OK term to refer to themselves? North8000 (talk) 15:54, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

@North8000: In the sources I've read, it seems that "left-libertarian" was a self-applied moniker in most cases, as social anarchists, free-market anti-capitalists and later contemporary philosophers sought to distinguish themselves from "right-libertarians". Whether the same can be said about "right-libertarian", I'm not sure. Where I live, the word "libertarian" never lost its original meaning, so this whole "left-libertarian"/"right-libertarian" distinction never made any sense, where it may be more useful in places more influenced by USian capitalistic libertarianism. --Grnrchst (talk) 08:54, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

I think that that reinforces that we need to treat "left-libertarianism" and "right-libertarianism" as more as mere academic taxonomical terms or just a way to differentiate from the "other" type rather than as common names, and acknowledge that they are not common names (but that we still need them sometimes). And that those two meta-groups both self-identify as just "libertarian" and so do not have any differentiating common names. While it's a bad but fun analogy, it sort is like a definition of "World music" which is "music from somewhere else"... by that definition nobody performs what they would call World music. :-) North8000 (talk) 13:43, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

In any case, I think I need to take another break from editing this article (and probably a couple others). These kinds of umbrella term articles are a headache to maintain. --Grnrchst (talk) 14:05, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

those two meta-groups both self-identify as just "libertarian" and so do not have any differentiating common names

This is the crux of my original proposal, that we cannot cover one without the context of the other, so there's little point in separate articles for each czar 19:51, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Give it a little longer please

Grnrchst You tagged this saying you'd give the author time to work on it, and then deleted it another editor deleted it after just three days. Please give me a little time. As I said in my previous message, I was travelling this week and am back now. Only some of t he text was authored by me, but none of it is "bad faith info". BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:38, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I didn't delete it nor did I accuse you of bad faith, so I don't know why you're pinging me about this. --Grnrchst (talk) 12:42, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean you'd accused me of bad faith. You described the content (as I said, mostly not authored by me) as "bad faith info". It needs more robust citations (which I'm slowly working on), but I don't think it's bad faith. The ping was just because I think your deletion was hasty. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:13, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I didn't delete it! What are you talking about?! --Grnrchst (talk) 09:55, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

I apologise Grnrchst; I did indeed get that completely wrong! BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:01, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Also, I called it bad info, not bad faith info. I stand by that. If a source doesn't verifiably relate to the subject, then we are providing our readers with bad information by including it in the article anyway. --Grnrchst (talk) 09:57, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

The diff that you provided was to an edit/removal done by @Czar: not Grnrchst. North8000 (talk) 18:08, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Bob, you're welcome to restore it if you can reliably source it. I removed it because your edit summary said your merged content needed to be checked for synthesis. I removed it after the content failed that check. czar 03:00, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Apologies again for my misattribution of edits above, which I'll strike. I've restored and done some more editing to make the sourcing more robust. I still have about 100 tabs open with further literature, after a very comprehensive Google Scholar search, and will continue to work on this slowly, but I hope other editors will now agree that there is enough verified sources to includes. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:01, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Kerr in Reading list

As far as I can see, the Kerr chapter in the reading list is about geo-libertarianism, which he identifies as a niche micro-variant of left-libertarianism. Should geo-libertarianism be covered in this article? If not, should this be removed from the reading list? BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:10, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Move "Philosophy" section to philosophy sub-section of Schools

The section currently entitled "Philosophy" relates completely to the last school of thought listed in the section currently entitled "Schools of Thought". Proposal: to move the content of the former into the latter. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:05, 12 September 2024 (UTC)