What is Left-Libertarianism?
Left-libertarianism is a cluster of ideas that take liberty seriously and equality seriously too. In philosophy the term has a precise sense. Each person owns their own body and labor, but the earth, its minerals and its land were made by nobody. So everyone has an equal claim on them. If you take more than a fair share, you may owe the rest of us something, which could pay for a basic income. In everyday speech the label is also used for anti-state thinkers who fight concentrated power, whether it belongs to government or to big business.
Core beliefs
- Every person owns their body, mind and labor.
- Land and natural resources are a common inheritance.
- Those who hold more than an equal share may owe payment to others.
- Free speech and personal choice deserve strong protection.
- Special privileges for powerful firms and states should end.
- A free society should also guard against unjust hierarchies.
History
One root is John Locke's rule that people may claim land only if enough and as good is left for others. Thomas Paine took a step further in Agrarian Justice (1797), saying that landowners owed a ground rent to the community, to fund a lump sum for the young and a pension for the old. Henry George's Progress and Poverty (1879) called for one tax on the value of land. In the same century, individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker attacked both the state and the legal privileges that protected big capital. After Robert Nozick defended strong property rights in 1974, philosophers such as Hillel Steiner and Peter Vallentyne asked how anyone could come to own natural resources in the first place. Their answers created academic left-libertarianism.
Variants
Philosophical left-libertarians focus on equal shares of resources, often through a basic income paid for by resource or land taxes. Geolibertarians follow Henry George and favor a land value tax with otherwise free markets. Left market anarchists say that markets freed of state favors would shrink inequality and corporate power. Some people also use the name for libertarian socialists, who reject capitalist ownership altogether.
Criticisms
Right-libertarians say that treating nature as common property gives the state an excuse to tax and redistribute, which wrecks the case for limited government. They add that a fair share is hard to measure. Socialists say that left-libertarianism still allows too much private property and market inequality. Some egalitarian philosophers worry that self-ownership could block help for people who are ill or disabled, since it limits what can be asked of others.
In practice
No government follows the theory as a whole, but pieces of it appear in real policy. Alaska has paid every resident a yearly dividend from oil income since 1982, which is often cited as an example. Taxes on land values are used in some places, and several countries have tested basic income. The ideas also show up in campaigns for civil liberties, drug law reform and an end to corporate subsidies. On the 12 axes it scores at the Liberty and Democratic ends of Security and Authority, and strongly toward Progressive on Morality.