I am curious because the generally accepted meaning of life appears to be in helping others and transcending ones own needs which as I see it directly opposes anarchist values. Please correct me where I am wrong.

  • nromdotcom@lemmy.ml
    3·
    4 years ago

    In the US at least, “libertarian” implies “right libertarian” or “conservative libertarian.”

    There are many anarchists on that end of the spectrum (“ancaps” often), but the anarchists you’ll find on this site will most often be - as others have suggested - more closely aligned with socialists.

    • southerntofu@lemmy.ml
      4·
      4 years ago

      Right-wing libertarianism is not anarchism. “anarcho-capitalism” has nothing to do with anarchism, as anarchism was explicitly started in opposition to capitalism. Abolition of private property is a foundational basis of anarchism (“property is theft”) as much as abolition of power structures.

      “Libertarian” is a word coined by the french anarchists when the 3rd republic outlawed anarchist organizing/propaganda (“les lois scélérates”). Right-wing recuperation is more modern (1960s) and specific to the USA. From Wikipedia:

      One person responsible for popularizing the term libertarian in this sense was Murray Rothbard, who started publishing libertarian works in the 1960s.[48] Rothbard described this modern use of the words overtly as a “capture” from his enemies, writing that “for the first time in my memory, we, ‘our side,’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy. ‘Libertarians’ had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over”.

      • poVoq@lemmy.ml
        2·
        4 years ago

        It goes a bit further back than that and while I agree with you that today’s understanding of capitalism is incompatible with anarchism, this distinction was not always so clear. For example the Soviets called the anarchists “economists” because of the promotion of market and self-organising principles and philosophers such as Max Stirner are considered to be part of the anarchist lore (sub-strand: anarcho-individualism). I would even say that Adam Smith (of all people, I know) was in many ways an very early anarchist thinker, who has been grossly misinterpreted by later capitalist thinkers.