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Forums - Politics Discussion - Libertarian Socialism is an Oxymoron?

I have been reading a lot lately, and it seems this ideology is very popular among young progressives my age.

However, I sort of find the ideology sort of conflicting in nature?

If you want to create a society that is more progressive, you need greater government intervention in society and as a result society is less 'free' and therefore less libertarian in nature? I am not saying that is a bad thing...

It seems to me libertarian socialism can only exist if those libertarian principles do not apply to economic freedom?

 

 

What are your thoughts? 



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Libertarian socialism is not an oxymoron if you look at their separate meanings. Libertarianism actually originates as a leftist idea instead of the free-market small government idea that it's associated with now. Socialism is worker's control over the means of production, too, instead of social democracy/welfare capitalism with high taxes like most people associate the term with in the United States.

I'm a libertarian socialist, but I'm not really what people would consider a progressive, because that usually refers to Bernie-style policies.



Government intervention is required to give everyone a chance to be free. The "freedom" capitalists love to talk about is only for a minority of the population. Leaving a society to their own devices leads to chasms and elites that only benefit a few people at the top.

So yes, more government intervention is more freedom net total.

We wouldn't need intervention if the human nature was altruistic. But alas, it's the opposite.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

It kind of is.

in the same way that "pale black" is an oxymoron. But it can help to describe certain things.



VGPolyglot said:

Libertarian socialism is not an oxymoron if you look at their separate meanings. Libertarianism actually originates as a leftist idea instead of the free-market small government idea that it's associated with now. Socialism is worker's control over the means of production, too, instead of social democracy/welfare capitalism with high taxes like most people associate the term with in the United States.

I'm a libertarian socialist, but I'm not really what people would consider a progressive, because that usually refers to Bernie-style policies.

Worker control of production would only happen through government efforts though in todays society which is not libtertarian lol



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LadyJasmine said:
VGPolyglot said:

Libertarian socialism is not an oxymoron if you look at their separate meanings. Libertarianism actually originates as a leftist idea instead of the free-market small government idea that it's associated with now. Socialism is worker's control over the means of production, too, instead of social democracy/welfare capitalism with high taxes like most people associate the term with in the United States.

I'm a libertarian socialist, but I'm not really what people would consider a progressive, because that usually refers to Bernie-style policies.

Worker control of production would only happen through government efforts though in todays society which is not libtertarian lol

It wouldn't happen through government efforts, politicans get massive amounts of money from corporations and they use the police force to suppress revolt.



Libertarian socialism (and there are several different forms of it including guild socialism, syndicalism, anarcho-marxism, etc.) are all based on the idea that the proletariat ought to control their own means of production without intervention from the government (much like right-libertarians, libertarian socialist believe that the state should have little or no control over citizens) and outside of a capitalist or any other hierarchal form of production (for example, many lib-socialists are also against slave and feudal production systems, because they also have hierarchies). Essentially think about lib-socialists as attempting to create a society without hierarchal control, such as one inflicted through a central government or through capitalism; as such this political group attempts to create a more fundamental change in society where all are equal as opposed to their statist counterparts that attempt to promote equality through government intervention. In addition, libertarian socialists put a much greater emphasis on individualism than statist socialist (particularly Leninists and Maoists), who prioritize the collective over the individual).

It is also worth mentioning that Marx's original conceptions of an alternate system to capitalism was much closer to libertarian-socialism than it was to statist socialism. This was particularly made clear when he advocated that in order to achieve human emancipation (a concept he differentiated from political emancipation, which is the granting of rights by a state; which is what statist socialists are more concerned with), individuals need to overcome alienation (alienation is the estrangement of man from himself, his fellow men, his productive process, and the end result of his production that occurs when he has no control over what and how he produces) by taking control back of means of production; radical statist socialists, like Leninist, believe that the state ought to control production, which does not overcome alienation because it simply transfers the control over production from the capitalist (or feudal lord, in a feudal system, and slave owner, in a system of slavery) to the state, where the net result for the worker is that he still does not have control over production, and hence he cannot achieve emancipation.

You will find that right-liberatarians and libertarian-socialists have lots in common. Both put emphasis on individual rights (and both believe these are rights that transcend beyond what a state grants). Both believe in a limited central government(s) (with some of the more radical branches of both movements believing that government should not exist at all). Where they differ, however, is their agreement on the economic system. Right-libertarians believe in private ownership of the means of production through capitalism, whereas libertarian-socialists believe in worker ownership of the means of production (through worker co-operatives, syndicates, guilds, etc.). It should be further noted that a free market plays a major role in right-libertarian's conception of capitalism (intervention in the dynamics of the free market by, say the government or another outside force, has led to the term crony capitalism being used by right-libertarians), whereas attitudes towards the free market differ between various ideological factions of libertarian-socialists (with some libertarian-socialists believing that the free market is sufficient in distributing goods, whereas others prefer alternative distribution systems).



Most businesses nowadays are service based and do not require much physical assets (capital) to start - what you need is a functional business model, passion, smarts, customer base, knowledge, good workers etc - all intangible "assets" that cannot be given to someone else. The idea of transferring the means of production makes little sense for any service based business.

The physical assets of production even for large companies like google are very small, mostly servers & computers that will quickly depreciate in a few years.

Redistributing the means of production is a late-feudal idea ("land reform") and requires stable physical assets like land for agriculture.



Regardless of what Libertarian originally meant, nowadays Libertarian Socialism is a massive political oxymoron, even compared to other ones I can imagine.

"Your a Gay Conservative married to a man? How does that work?"

"I'm a Financial Conservative and vote for moderates socially."

"....You haven't voted in a few years, haven't you."



The Democratic Nintendo fan....is that a paradox? I'm fond of one of the more conservative companies in the industry, but I vote Liberally and view myself that way 90% of the time?

LadyJasmine said:

Worker control of production would only happen through government efforts though in todays society which is not libtertarian lol

Yes, but economic liberalization also needs to happen through government, so that's only a small detail.

There are only 3 options to move your economic system, the government, violence or worst of all, both. Capitalism didn't exactly install itself peacefully and because the workers and craftsmen thought it was the best idea.