page_title: Libertarianism in the United States
section_title: 19th and 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Libertarianism in the United States / History / 19th and 20th century
context_page_description: Libertarianism in the United States is a political philosophy and movement promoting individual liberty. According to common meanings of conservatism and liberalism in the United States, libertarianism has been described as conservative on economic issues and liberal on personal freedom, often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism.
context_section_description: In the 19th century, libertarian philosophies included libertarian socialism and anarchist schools of thought such as individualist and social anarchism. Key libertarian thinkers included Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Stephen Pearl Andrews and William Batchelder Greene, among others. While most of these anarchist thinkers advocated for the abolition of the state, other key libertarian thinkers and writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Spooner in No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority argued that government should be kept to a minimum and that it is only legitimate to the extent that people voluntarily support, leaving a significant imprint on libertarianism in the United States. The use of the term libertarianism to describe a left-wing position has been traced to the French cognate libertaire, a word coined in a letter French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque wrote to anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1857. While in New York City, Déjacque was able to serialize his book L'Humanisphère, Utopie anarchique (The Humanisphere: Anarchic Utopia) in his periodical Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social (Libertarian: Journal of Social Movement), published in 27 issues from June 9, 1858 to February 4, 1861. Le Libertaire was the first libertarian communist journal published in the United States as well as the first anarchist journal to use libertarian. Tucker was the first American born to use libertarian. By around the start of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed.
  Moving into the 20th century, the Libertarian League was an anarchist and libertarian socialist organization. The first Libertarian League was founded in Los Angeles between the two World Wars. It was established mainly by Cassius V. Cook, Charles T. Sprading, Clarence Lee Swartz, Henry Cohen, Hans F. Rossner and Thomas Bell. In 1954, a second Libertarian League was founded in New York City as a political organization building on the Libertarian Book Club. Members included Sam Dolgoff, Russell Blackwell, Dave Van Ronk, Enrico Arrigoni and Murray Bookchin. This Libertarian League had a narrower political focus than the first, promoting anarchism and syndicalism. Its central principle, stated in its journal Views and Comments, was "equal freedom for all in a free socialist society". Branches of the Libertarian League opened in a number of other American cities, including Detroit and San Francisco. It was dissolved at the end of the 1960s.
  The 1960s also saw an alliance between the nascent New Left and other radical libertarians who came from the Old Right tradition like Murray Rothbard, Ronald Radosh and Karl Hess in opposition to imperialism and war, especially in relation to the Vietnam War and its opposition. These radicals had long embraced a reading of American history that emphasized the role of elite privilege in shaping legal and political institutions, one that was naturally agreeable to many on the left, increasingly seeking alliances with the left, especially with members of the New Left, in light of the Vietnam War, the military draft and the emergence of the Black Power movement. Rothbard argued that the consensus view of American economic history, according to which a beneficent government has used its power to counter corporate predation, is fundamentally flawed. Rather, he argued that government intervention in the economy has largely benefited established players at the expense of marginalized groups, to the detriment of both liberty and equality. Moreover, the robber baron period, hailed by the right and despised by the left as a heyday of laissez-faire, was not characterized by laissez-faire at all, but it was in fact a time of massive state privilege accorded to capital. In tandem with his emphasis on the intimate connection between state and corporate power, he defended the seizure of corporations dependent on state largesse by workers and others. This tradition would continue through the 20th and 21st centuries, being taken up by the left-libertarian, free-market anti-capital
caption: Individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner, whose No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority book greatly influenced libertarianism in the United States
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