Talk:libertarian

A believer in libertarian socialism?
The first definition provided is "a believer in libertarian socialism". Would that be a libertarian socialist? I have never seen the term libertarian to mean a libertarian socialist (nor a civil libertarian, for that matter). I would like to see some bonafide references to such usage. I mean, isn't providing the meaning of "libertarian socialist" on the page for "libertarian" like providing the meaning for "butter milk" on the page for "milk"? Or like providing the meaning for "hand truck" on the page for "truck"? Or providing the meaning for "milk weed" on the page for "milk"?

For reference, m-w.com simply has:
 * an advocate of the doctrine of freedom.
 * a : a person who upholds the principles of absolute and unrestricted liberty especially of thought and action b capitalized : a member of a political party advocating libertarian principles

Dictionary.com simply states:
 * One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
 * One who believes in free will.

Nothing about libertarian socialism in either official dictinary. Hmm...

Shouldn't wictionary represent how words are actually used, rather than how someone might like to see them used? --27 June 2005 23:24 (UTC) --Serge Issakov 28 June 2005 18:32 (UTC)


 * That is the first meaning that this word ever had, and it continues to be used with that meaning by libertarians. Chameleon June 29, 2005 12:14 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but simply asserting "That is the first meaning that this word ever had, and it continues to be used..." hardly qualifies as bonafide references to such usage. Please provide the references or I will correct the entry accordingly.  Thanks.  --Serge Issakov 22:00, 12 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, it has been a couple of weeks, and no one has objected, or provided bonafide references of the term libertarianism to mean libertarian socialist, so I will correct the entry. --Serge Issakov 21:16, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

RFV discussion: October 2014–July 2015
Anarchist and socialist? Seems contradictory. WikiWinters (talk) 00:31, 1 October 2014 (UTC)


 * It would probably help to have two more clearly distinct senses of socialism. There is the Marxist sense, which is The Government Owns Everything For Your Own Good, Comrade, which is the source of the American political boo-word ("Obamacare is creeping socialism!!")
 * The other is the softer understanding of a general ethos of helping your neighbours and them helping you: working for a generally social benefit. So a capital-S Socialist Anarchist is a contradiction in terms: someone who wants to pull down government in order to ... build an overarching all-controlling government. The soft sense, on the other hand, is someone who wants to bring down government in the expectation that people will naturally work together for communal benefit without a government getting in the way. (This tends to go with a belief that government tends to be captured by oligarchy sooner or later, so that corporate-controlled government is actively working against the common good as seen from street-level). As opposed to the "every man for themselves" anarchist; such as the Randian, for whom everyone should be selfish and greedy and unrestrained by the needs of those around them, and that this is a good thing; or the caricature anarchist who just wants to watch stuff burn.
 * --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 01:18, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * There is such a thing as left-libertarianism. bd2412 T 03:29, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Indeed: libertarian (= seeking individual liberty) does not necessarily mean Libertarian (= Ayn Rand was right about everything). --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 04:34, 1 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Good Hell, I hope that you are trolling. If not, then I am sad to say that you people are bloody ignorant. Socialists, communists, and anarchists (which I consider synonymous) seek the elimination of the state, not the strengthening of it. Look it up. Most anarchists therefore consider ‘anarcho‐socialism’ a pleonasm, in contrast to anarcho-capitalism, which is definitely oxymoronic because capitalism requires the state so that capitalism can sustain itself. The concept of ‘state‐socialism’ was a nonsense concept fabricated by Vladimir Lenin to attract the workers to his movement, and Leninism and its successor ideologies have very little to do with Marxism. Most people have no clue what socialism, communism, or anarchism are. Influential people obfuscated the concept because it could be very dangerous to their power. --Romanophile (talk) 04:12, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm glad you are so firmly convinced that Socialism as exemplified in the USSR doesn't mean what the Soviets thought it meant. (Or that it can't hold two, even potentially contradictory, meanings depending on context.) And that Socialism means exactly the same thing as Communism... in all possible contexts, I assume? Also that Anarchism means only what you think it means, and that there are not such things as anarchists who desire the loss of government so that they can as individuals do and take whatever they want, or people who may be unclear on the inherent contradictions between capitalism per se and anarchism per se, but still identify as "anarcho-capitalists". Are there any other political terms you think everyone except you gets wrong? --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 04:31, 1 October 2014 (UTC)


 * The point is, anarcho‐socialism is not oxymoronic, and your idea of ‘Marxist socialism’ is obviously tosh. Even if you think that it’s still a valid meaning, it can’t possibly be the only meaning. Also ‘…everyone except you…’, that’s wrong, too. --Romanophile (talk) 05:06, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I never said it was the only meaning. It would seem to be you having the problem with the concept of polysemy. The World Socialist Movement doesn't get to define what the word is and isn't allowed to mean either. (I am sympathetic to socialism myself, but the "About Us" page of the World Socialism Movement has as much of a monopoly on the word "socialism" as does the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. That is: none.) --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 05:14, 1 October 2014 (UTC)


 * The sense of "libertarian" nominated for RFV is "An anarchist, typically with socialist implications." Please let us have attesting quotations, and, they absent, let us eventually fail this RFV. I am suspicious of the sense, since dictionaries don't have it. . --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:41, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I've added a couple which clearly put libertarians, anarchists and socialists into the same semiotic pot, and a couple more which I'll add here rather than there, because they are not the noun, but used adjectivally:
 * 2011 Carissa Honeywell, A British Anarchist Tradition: Herbert Read, Alex Comfort and Colin Ward, p. 146
 * He highlighted libertarian traditions of socialism and linked them to anarchism in the British context.
 * 2012 David Goodway, Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward p.15
 * The Labour Emancipation League had been founded in the East End in 1882 and, while never calling itself anarchist, was always libertarian socialist and became anti-parliamentarian, as expressed in Joseph Lane's notable An Anti-Statist, Communist Manifesto of 1887.
 * --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 04:10, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The three quotations present in the entry do not attested the sense, IMHO. I mean 1973 Eugene Lunn, 2009 Peter Marshall and 2012 Wilbur R. Miller. Consider the third one: "While anarchism and socialist libertarians have a rich history of revolutionary thinkers ...": how do you infer that "anarchism" and "socialist libertarians" are terms intended to mean the same in the sentence? --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:06, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Obviously, I think they rather do. They are all used in the context of Anarchist/Socialist theory, and are contrasting specific subtypes of that ideology. The last reference, the one you quote, is also contrasting socialist libertarians against right-libertarians. The preceding sentence reads "Socialist libertarianism sounds like anarchy, and for good reason; in fact anarchists began using the term libertarian in the mid-1800s, far before the right-wing usage in the United States that began in the 1950s." Maybe that would have been a better quote? But it explicitly draws out socialism, anarchism, and libertarianism as different strands of the same basic ideology. The 2009 quote also explicitly contrasts socialist libertarianism against authoritarian socialism, which contrast Seth seemed to have such difficulty with in the conversation above. --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 20:08, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Also: "how do you infer that "anarchism" and "socialist libertarians" are terms intended to mean the same in the sentence?"
 * Semantics. If they were different movements, it would say that "... anarchism and socialist libertarians have rich histories ...". As it gives the two terms a singular history of revolutionary thinkers, it follows that they are different aspects of the same thing, QED. --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 21:52, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
 * What about this: "The Asian civilizations of India, China, Korea, and Japan each have a rich history of design development extending back for thousands of years", boldface mine. Looks like a refutation of your argument to me. To find more sentences like that, check . --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:25, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * You yourself bolded the difference. Each: "The phrase beginning with each identifies a set of items wherein the words following each identify the individual elements by their shared characteristics. The phrase is grammatically singular in number, so if the phrase is the subject of a sentence, its verb is conjugated into a third-person singular form."
 * With the "each" the singular subject "a rich history" applies to each individual civilisation of India, China, Korea and Japan. Without it, "The Asian civilizations of India, China, Korea, and Japan have a rich history" implies a singular shared history between them as a group. --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 22:44, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * You must be kidding me by now. There is "Shreveport and Bossier City have a rich history [...]"; find other quotations at . Your argument, which by the way was syntactic rather than semantic, is flawed. In general, a phrase of the form "X and Y have a rich history" does not suggest X and Y to be synonyms. As for "have rich histories", few people write that even when the subject is plural: . When the subject is singular, it is, with "has" rather than "have". --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:33, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh for Deity's sake: the references are giving the history of anarchists and socialists and calling them libertarians, and somehow you can't extract any meaning from that? Do you think that someone is talking about A and B having a history of C because there isn't a semantic connection between them? If that is the case, please describe the sort of source and/or wording which could possibly convince you.
 * Moreover, that more people fail to observe the singular verb with multiple subjects and 'each' doesn't stop it working in that way. Arguably the bit about verb conjugation in the Usage Notes of "each" is not accurate, certainly not for "has". I still maintain that "A and B have a rich history" implies a shared history between them; where the technically correct "A and B each has a rich history" and the more common in use "A and B each have a rich history" both imply separate and distinct histories. --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 12:37, 18 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I've revised the definition a bit — I think emphasizing "anarchist" at the beginning was a bit inartful, unnecessarily confusing for peopel who, like WikiWinters, find "libertarian" and "anarchist" contradictory. However, the definition is well cited by the citations in the entry and provided above, which clearly refer to left-libertarianism. I'd say this passes. - -sche (discuss) 09:14, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

3. (chiefly US) A member of a political party that emphasizes self-government in economic and personal issues.
Small-L libertarian always pertains to political philosophy and big-L Libertarian always pertains to a political party in the same way that small-D democrat and small-S socialist always pertain to political philosophy and big-D Democrat and big-S Socialist always pertain to a political parties. We already have a page for big-L Libertarian and we already have a see also to that effect at the top of the page. Thus, I am removing this definition from the list. allixpeeke (talk) 21:53, 5 August 2016 (UTC)