Libertarian socialism is an anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist political current that emphasises self-governance and workers' self-management. It is contrasted from other forms of socialism by its rejection of state ownership and from other forms of libertarianism by its rejection of private property. Broadly defined, it includes schools of both anarchism and Marxism, as well as other tendencies that oppose the state and capitalism. With its roots in the Age of Enlightenment, libertarian socialism was first constituted as a tendency by the anti-authoritarian faction of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), during their conflict with the Marxist faction. Libertarian socialism quickly spread throughout Europe and the American continent, reaching its height during the early stages of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and particularly during the Spanish Revolution of 1936. Its defeat during these revolutions led to its brief decline, before its principles were resurrected by the New Left and new social movements of the late 20th century. While its key principles of decentralisation, workers' control, and mutual aid are generally shared across the many schools of libertarian socialism, differences have emerged over the questions of revolutionary spontaneity, reformism, and whether to prioritise the abolition of the state or of capitalism.
Political principles Libertarian socialism strives for a free and equal society, aiming to transform work and everyday life. Broadly defined, libertarian socialism encapsulates any political ideology that favours workers' control of the means of production and the replacement of capitalism with a system of cooperative economics, or common ownership. Libertarian socialists tend to see the working class as agents of social revolution, reject representative democracy and electoralism, and advocate for self-organisation and direct action as means to engage in class conflict.
Anti-authoritarianism Libertarian socialism has a grassroots and direct democratic approach to socialism, rejecting parliamentarism and bureaucracy. Libertarian socialists advocate the empowerment of individuals to control their own lives and encourage them to voluntarily cooperate with each other, rather than allow themselves to be controlled by a state. Libertarian socialists therefore uphold civil liberties such as freedom of choice, freedom of expression and freedom of thought. In contrast to authoritarian forms of socialism, libertarian socialism rejects state ownership and centralisation. Instead it upholds a decentralised model of self-governance, envisioning free association based on co-operative or participatory economics. According to Roderick T. Long, some libertarian socialists see such systems as complementary to statism, while others hold them to be an alternative to the state. Libertarian socialists tend to reject the view that political institutions such as the state represent an inherently good, or even neutral, power. Some libertarian socialists, such as Peter Kropotkin, consider the state to be an inherent instrument of landlordism and capitalism, therefore opposing the state with equal intensity as they oppose capitalism.
Anti-capitalism Libertarian socialism views corporate power as an institutional problem, rather than as a result of the influence of certain immoral individuals. It thus opposes capitalism, which it sees as an economic system that upholds greed, the exploitation of labour and coercion, and calls for its overthrow in a social revolution. According to Long, libertarian socialists reject private property, as they consider capitalist property relations to be incompatible with freedom. Instead, libertarian socialism upholds individual self-ownership, as well as the collective ownership of the means of production. In the place of capitalism, libertarian socialists favour an economic system based on workers' control of production, advocating for a system of cooperative economics, or common ownership. They also advocate for workers' self-management, as they consider workers able to cooperate productively without supervisors, whether appointed by employers or by the state. Long says they also tend to see free trade as inevitably resulting in the redistribution of income and wealth from workers to their corporate employers. He says they advocate for the elimination of social and economic inequality through the coercive expropriation of property from the wealthy.
History The roots of libertarian socialism extend back to the classical radicalism of the early modern period, claiming the English Levellers and the French Encyclopédistes as their intellectual forerunners, and admiring figures of the Age of Enlightenment such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. According to Mikhail Bakunin and Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, while authoritarian socialism had its origins in Germany, libertarian socialism was born in France. The modern foundations of libertarian socialism lay in the utopian socialism expounded by Charles Fourier, who envisioned a post-civilisation society based on voluntary association, communal cooperation and passions.
Emergence
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