page_title: Left-libertarianism
section_title: Civil liberties
hierarchical_section_title: Left-libertarianism / Philosophy / Civil liberties
caption_attribution_description: English: Photographic portrait of Emma Goldman, facing left. Cropped and restored from original Library of Congress version.
context_page_description: Left-libertarianism, also known as egalitarian libertarianism, left-wing libertarianism or social libertarianism, is a political philosophy and type of libertarianism that stresses both individual freedom and social equality. Left-libertarianism represents several related yet distinct approaches to political and social theory. In its classical usage, it refers to anti-authoritarian varieties of left-wing politics such as anarchism, especially social anarchism, whose adherents simply call it libertarianism. In the United States, it represents the left-wing of the libertarian movement and the political positions associated with academic philosophers Hillel Steiner, Philippe Van Parijs and Peter Vallentyne that combine self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to natural resources. This is done to distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital, usually along left–right or socialist–capitalist lines.
  While maintaining full respect for personal property, left-libertarians are opposed to capitalism and the private ownership of the means of production.
context_section_description: Left-libertarians have been advocates and activists of civil liberties, including free love and free thought. Free love appeared alongside anarcha-feminism and advocacy of LGBT rights. Anarcha-feminism developed as a synthesis of radical feminism and anarchism and views patriarchy as a fundamental manifestation of compulsory government. It was inspired by the late-19th-century writings of early feminist anarchists such as Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre and Virginia Bolten. Advocates of free love viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of individual sovereignty and they particularly stressed women's rights as most sexual laws discriminated against women: for example, marriage laws and anti-birth control measures. Like other radical feminists, anarcha-feminists criticize and advocate the abolition of traditional conceptions of family, education and gender roles. Free Society (1895–1897 as The Firebrand, 1897–1904 as Free Society) was an anarchist newspaper in the United States that staunchly advocated free love and women's rights while criticizing comstockery, the censorship of sexual information. Anarcha-feminism has voiced opinions and taken action around certain sex-related subjects such as pornography, BDSM and the sex industry.
  Free thought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic and reason in contrast with authority, tradition or other dogmas. In the United States, free thought was an anti-Christian, anti-clerical movement whose purpose was to make the individual politically and spiritually free to decide on religious matters. A number of contributors to Liberty were prominent figures in both free thought and anarchism. Catalan anarchist and free-thinker Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia established modern or progressive schools in Barcelona in defiance of an educational system controlled by the Catholic Church. Fiercely anti-clerical, Ferrer believed in "freedom in education", i.e. education free from the authority of the church and state. The schools' stated goal was to "educate the working class in a rational, secular and non-coercive setting".
  Later in the 20th century, Austrian Freudo-Marxist Wilhelm Reich, who coined the term sexual revolution in one of his books from the 1940s, became a consistent propagandist for sexual freedom, going as far as opening free sex-counseling clinics in Vienna for working-class patients (Sex-Pol stood for the German Society of Proletarian Sexual Politics). According to Elizabeth Danto, Reich offered a mixture of "psychoanalytic counseling, Marxist advice and contraceptives" and "argued for sexual expressiveness for all, including the young and the unmarried, with a permissiveness that unsettled both the political left and the psychoanalysts". The clinics were immediately overcrowded by people seeking help. During the early 1970s, the English anarchist and pacifist Alex Comfort achieved international celebrity for writing the sex manuals The Joy of Sex and More Joy of Sex.
caption: American anarchist Emma Goldman, prominent anarcha-feminist, free love and freethought activist
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