Libertarianism | Britannica

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His subject areas include philosophy, law, social science, politics, political theory, and religion.</div> </a> <div data-popper-arrow></div> </div> <span class="btn btn-link editor-link p-0 qa-byline-link gtm-byline font-12 byline-contributor text-decoration-underline"> Brian Duignan</span></div> <div class="font-serif font-12 text-gray-700"> <span class="qa-fact-checked-by">Fact-checked by</span> <div class="editor-popover popover p-0"> <a class="d-block p-20 qa-editor-popup font-12" href="/editor/The-Editors-of-Encyclopaedia-Britannica/4419" > <div class="editor-title font-16 font-weight-bold">The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica</div> <div class="editor-description font-12 font-serif mt-5 text-black">Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.</div> </a> <div data-popper-arrow></div> </div> <span class="btn btn-link editor-link p-0 qa-byline-link font-12 "> The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica</span></div></div> </div> <article class="topic-content content mt-20"><figure class="md-assembly md-feature-assembly print-false" data-type="1" data-descid="1"><div class="md-assembly-wrapper card-media" data-type="image"><a href="https://cdn.britannica.com/66/192466-050-7676FBFE/Gary-Johnson-Libertarian-Concord-New-Hampshire-August-25-2016.jpg" target="_blank" class="gtm-assembly-link position-relative d-flex align-items-center justify-content-center " data-href="*"><img src="https://cdn.britannica.com/66/192466-050-7676FBFE/Gary-Johnson-Libertarian-Concord-New-Hampshire-August-25-2016.jpg?w=600&q=60" alt="Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson speaks in Concord, New Hampshire, on August 25, 2016." data-width="1600" data-height="1117" loading="eager"><button class="magnifying-glass btn btn-circle position-absolute shadow btn-white top-10 right-10" aria-label="Zoom in"><em class="material-icons link-blue" data-icon="zoom_in"></em></button></a></div><figcaption class=""><div class="md-assembly-caption text-muted font-14 font-serif line-clamp"><span><button class="js-more-btn d-none btn btn-unstyled font-12 bg-white js-content" aria-label="Toggle more/less fact data"><span class="link-blue">(more)</span></button></span></div><cite class="credit d-block mt-5">© Andrew Cline/Shutterstock.com</cite></figcaption></figure><p class="topic-paragraph">In the upcoming U.S. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/election-political-science" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">election</a> on November 8, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Libertarian-Party" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">Libertarian Party</a> is likely to receive more votes than any other third (neither <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Democratic-Party" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">Democratic</a> nor <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Republican-Party" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">Republican</a>) party in the country, and its presidential candidate, former New Mexico governor <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gary-Johnson" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">Gary Johnson</a>, is likely to receive more votes than any other Libertarian candidate since the party’s founding in 1971. (Johnson also headed the Libertarian Party ticket in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-Presidential-Election-of-2012" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">election of 2012</a>, in which he polled about 1.3 million votes, or roughly 1% of the total.) His party’s increasing strength comes despite his exclusion from televised debates and his near-total absence from major media coverage. In this election, Libertarians are hoping to make their party and their movement more visible and more relevant than ever before, in part by appealing to younger voters and others who may be disenchanted with the two major-party candidates—Democrat <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hillary-Clinton" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">Hillary Clinton</a> and Republican <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Donald-Trump" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">Donald Trump</a>—and to sympathizers of the antigovernment <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tea-Party-movement" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">Tea Party movement</a>, which always contained a strong libertarian current.</p><span class="MOD1"></span><p class="topic-paragraph">The Libertarian Party seeks in its platform to implement the principles of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/libertarianism-politics" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">libertarianism</a>, a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-philosophy" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">political philosophy</a> that places the greatest value on the freedom (or liberty) of individuals and of private associations of individuals, especially in the economic realm. Philosophical libertarians believe in a natural right to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/property-legal-concept" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">property</a>, which entails the freedom to do whatever one wishes with what one legitimately owns (including one’s body), as long as the property rights of others are not violated in certain ways, including through violence, coercion (the threat of violence), fraud, theft, and extortion. Accordingly, libertarians hold that governments may not violate the property rights of individuals in any of these ways; more generally, the powers of government, which inevitably restrict individual freedoms, should be limited to those necessary to protect the property rights of individuals from violation by others.</p><span class="MOD2"></span><p class="topic-paragraph">It follows from these principles that many of the common powers of present-day governments are unjust. For example, the imposition of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/taxation" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">taxes</a> designed to redistribute income or to fund <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/social-service" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">social services</a> amounts to the coerced confiscation of money, in violation of the property rights of more-affluent taxpayers. On the same principles, libertarians advocate <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/laissez-faire" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">laissez-faire</a> <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/capitalism" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">capitalism</a> and oppose most common forms of economic regulation, including those designed to protect the environment or to ensure worker health and safety. They also reject most public services (notably excepting the police and the military), public <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/education" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">education</a>, public <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/health-insurance" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">health insurance</a> (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Medicare-United-States-health-insurance" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">Medicare and Medicaid</a>), and government-provided <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/unemployment-insurance" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">unemployment assistance</a> and retirement benefits (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/social-security-government-program" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">Social Security</a>). In other areas, libertarians oppose all forms of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/censorship" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">censorship</a> and any government regulation of private activities that do not entail harm to others, including sexual relationships and drug use.</p><span class="MOD3"></span><p class="topic-paragraph">The current platform of the Libertarian Party generally reflects these principles and policies through its call for elimination of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/income-tax" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">income tax</a> and abolition of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/Internal-Revenue-Service" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">Internal Revenue Service</a> (IRS), the phasing out of Social Security and government aid to the poor, the ending of government environmental regulation in favor of a system based on civil suits for environmental injuries, and the repeal of legal restrictions on <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/abortion-pregnancy" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">abortion</a>.</p><span class="MOD4"></span><p class="topic-paragraph">Critics of libertarianism have argued that under-regulated markets lead to a host of socially undesirable outcomes, including increased <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/poverty" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">poverty</a> and extreme <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/distribution-of-wealth-and-income" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">disparities of wealth and income</a>. Such inequalities in turn tend to undermine democratic institutions, because the wealthy minority is better able than the rest of the population to influence government policy in its own interests, especially in the absence of meaningful <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/campaign-finance" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">campaign-finance</a> laws, which libertarians reject as unjust restrictions on <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/freedom-of-speech" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">freedom of speech</a>.</p><span class="MOD5"></span><p class="topic-paragraph">Other critics have alleged that the libertarian conception of individual freedom is unrealistic or impoverished because it fails to recognize forms of nonviolent coercion that are often exercised by private economic actors, such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/corporation" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">corporations</a>. Libertarian principles, according to these critics, are perfectly consistent with real-world situations in which the disparity of power between a corporation and its workers is extreme, as in the case of workers who are forced to accept paltry wages or unsafe working conditions because there are no other jobs available to them. In the libertarian worldview, such workers are “free” because they are not coerced to work through the threat of violence. They possess a perfect liberty to choose between economic slavery and starvation.</p><span class="MOD6"></span><span class="AM-END-OF-ARTICLE am-inline"></span></article><div class="related-info grid"><div class="col"><div class="learn-more"><h3>Learn More About This Topic</h3><ul class="list-unstyled"><li><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/libertarianism-politics" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">Read more about libertarianism</a></li><li><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Libertarian-Party" class="md-crosslink " data-show-preview="true">What is the Libertarian Party?</a></li></ul></div></div></div><div class="external-websites"><h3>Recommended from the web</h3><ul><li><a class="external" target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://www.lp.org/platform/" data-show-preview="true">Read the Libertarian Party platform</a></li></ul></div> </div> </div> </div> <aside class="cm-rightrail d-none d-md-block ad-rail"></aside> </div> </div> </div> </div> </main> <div class="grid gx-0"> <div class="col"> <div class="md-loading hidden display-4 font-weight-normal"></div> <div class="text-center my-20 mb-100"> <button class="md-infinite-load-next btn btn-blue" data-value="next-page">Load More</button> </div> </div> <div class="col-md-da-320 hidden-xs"> </div> </div></div> </div> </main> <div id="md-footer"></div> <noscript><iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-5W6NC8" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden"></iframe></noscript> <script type="text/javascript" id="_informizely_script_tag"> var IzWidget = IzWidget || {}; (function (d) { var scriptElement = d.createElement('script'); scriptElement.type = 'text/javascript'; scriptElement.async = true; scriptElement.src = "https://insitez.blob.core.windows.net/site/f780f33e-a610-4ac2-af81-3eb184037547.js"; var node = d.getElementById('_informizely_script_tag'); node.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, node); } )(document); </script>  <script> window.ap3c = window.ap3c || {}; var ap3c = window.ap3c; ap3c.cmd = ap3c.cmd || []; ap3c.cmd.push(function() { ap3c.init('ZO4siT4cLwnykPnzZWJtd3Byb2Q', 'https://engage.email.britannica.com/'); ap3c.track({v: 0}); }); ap3c.activity = function(act) { ap3c.act = (ap3c.act || []); ap3c.act.push(act); }; var s, t; s = document.createElement('script'); s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.src = "https://engage.email.britannica.com/app.js"; t = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; t.parentNode.insertBefore(s, t); </script> <script class="marketing-page-info" type="application/json"> {"pageType":"Story","templateName":"SPOTLIGHT","pageNumber":1,"pagesTotal":11,"pageId":5997,"pageLength":null,"initialLoad":true,"lastPageOfScroll":false} </script> <script class="marketing-content-info" type="application/json"> [] </script> <script src="https://cdn.britannica.com/mendel-resources/3-130/js/libs/jquery-3.5.0.min.js?v=3.130.38"></script> <script type="text/javascript" data-type="Init Mendel Code Splitting"> (function() { $.ajax({ dataType: 'script', cache: true, url: 'https://cdn.britannica.com/mendel-resources/3-130/dist/story-page.js?v=3.130.38' }); })(); </script> <script class="analytics-metadata" type="application/json"> {"leg":"C","adLeg":"C","userType":"ANONYMOUS","pageType":"Story","pageSubtype":"SPOTLIGHT","articleTemplateType":null,"gisted":false,"pageNumber":1,"hasSummarizeButton":false,"hasAskButton":false} </script> <script type="text/javascript"> EBStat={accountId:-1,hostnameOverride:'webstats.eb.com',domain:'www.britannica.com', json:''}; </script> <script type="text/javascript"> ( function() { $.ajax( { dataType: 'script', cache: true, url: '//www.britannica.com/webstats/mendelstats.js?v=1' } ) .done( function() { try {writeStat(null,EBStat);} catch(err){} } ); })(); </script> <div id="bc-fixed-dialogue"></div> </body> </html>

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