There is no philosophical difference between libertarianism and anarchism, only a difference in how they predict people will behave in the absence of centralized authority.

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komali2 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

There's a huge philosophical difference! American libertarians are highly focused on individualism and zero-sum behavior and thinking, whereas anarchism is a collective ideology focused on mutual aid or even communism (e.g. Kropotkin's Anarchist Communism).

Libertarianism is an application of right-wing ideology subtracting the State. Opposition to the State may be a shared aspect of the ideologies, but for another example, just because Nazism advocated for nationalizing industries doesn't mean it has anything beyond that in common with Marxist Leninist Communism which advocates for the same.

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zeroonetwothree 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

You are thinking only of one type of anarchism, ie the socialist type. There is also individualist anarchism. Which would be closer to libertarianism (although libertarians would support some state activity so it’s somewhat different).

	▲	komali2 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Hence why the "individualist" strain of thought essentially died out as all other anarchist philosophers moved to anarchist communism. It was revived only recently with "anarchist capitalism" which is of course a contradiction. If we were having this conversation in the 1820s before such abominations were dreamed this distinction would be worth making. Nowadays, when people want to talk about "social anarchism," they say, "anarchism," and when they want to say "individualist anarchism," which as been identified for the right wing ideology it is, they say "American libertarianism."

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terminalshort 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Opposition to the State may be a shared aspect of the ideologies

Yes, that's the philosophy. All the rest of what you said is just listing different predictions of what will happen after you get rid of the state. Once you get rid of the state, there is no authority to enforce the "mutual aid or communism" so that isn't a political philosophy. It's just a prediction of what will people will do under their own free will in the absence of a compelling authority.

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komali2 3 days ago | parent [-]

Ah, I think I understand what's happening here, you're operating off an understanding of "anarchism" as literally just, "no state."

In reality Anarchism describes a political ideology that people have been writing about for a couple hundred years. There are a lot of disagreements, but generally all anarchic philosophies agree on a couple things: opposition to coercion, opposition to hierarchy, opposition to state, opposition to capitalism, promotion of mutual aid, promotion of community strength. The majority of anarchist philosophy resolved first around collectivist anarchism, and then around anarcho-communism.

That's why we don't call American libertarians "Anarchists," that's why we have a different word to describe them. Usually it works fine because American libertarians typically want nothing to do with anarchists, often for culture war reasons, but sometimes some American libertarians, such as those leaning "anarcho-capitalist," try to borrow anarchist terms, leading to confusion such as what we're having here.

Anarchist philosophy isn't a prediction, though sometimes anarchist philosophers make predictions. It's a collection of criticisms, values, strategies, and analyses, like any political philosophy.

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terminalshort 3 days ago | parent [-]

> opposition to coercion, opposition to hierarchy, opposition to state

But herein lies the problem. You can't have collectivism without this. Any collectivist system (which is all human societies to differing degrees) faces two fundamental problems of self interest. The free-rider problem and the problem of people who put in more than they get out leaving the collective. This requires coercion. Whether or not you define the authority applying that coercion a "state" is debatable, but that hardly seems like the important distinction here.

	▲	komali2 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Sure I'm happy to debate aspects of anarchic philosophy itself, but the fact of the matter is that essentially all anarchist philosophy has moved in a collectivist (now communist) direction and any remaining "individualist anarchist" strains are no longer considered anarchist (such as "anarcho capitalism"), since one of the few things anarchists seem to agree upon is the critical importance of mutual aid. You're absolutely right to question authority as it surrounds mutualism - that's what anarchists do all the time! > You can't have collectivism without this. Any collectivist system (which is all human societies to differing degrees) faces two fundamental problems of self interest. The free-rider problem and the problem of people who put in more than they get out leaving the collective. This requires coercion. I disagree, and so do many writers, and so does history. First off, the "free rider" problem is a problem under capitalism, not anarchism. We have ample evidence of "free riders" being supported even in ancient societies with high scarcity, such as highly genetically deformed people who lived to a remarkably old age, which means despite their inability to labor, someone was feeding them. Same for people who had traumatic injuries. The idea of a "free rider" is only a problem in a society that believes everyone needs to justify their existence through labor, such as capitalism. Mutualist anarchist societies don't have this problem. Especially a modern day one, now that we've achieved post-scarcity (all scarcity today is artificially enforced). Second, no human coercion is necessary to ensure collective bounty. Humans are intrinsically motivated to create bounty, if nothing else by hunger. And, being social creatures, we are also intrinsically motivated towards collectivism - ample anthropological evidence for this throughout every continent humans have lived on. My proposition to you is that capitalist society is motivated by self-preservation to convince you that what I'm telling you is silly and impossible. The system has glaring faults that we all feel, so it can only continue if it can convince everyone that it's The Only Way. A great resource that covers these historical facts in detail is Graeber's "The Dawn of Everything." If that's too lengthy, the founder of Food Not Bombs wrote a new version of The Anarchist Cookbook that's available as a free PDF https://www.foodnotbombs.net/anarchist_cookbook.html . Ignore the recipes, they're genuinely terrible. The first couple chapters are a good short introduction to the history of anarchy, and as I recall include ancient examples.

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jltsiren 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

In my experience, it's easy to find major philosophical differences between libertarianism and anarchism. For example, you could ask people if they believe that private property is an authoritarian idea.

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terminalshort 3 days ago | parent [-]

I'm not saying you couldn't find philosophical differences between individuals who call themselves "libertarian" or "anarchist." But those differences are irrelevant. Absent a state all property is private property, and who owns what is down to might makes right. Whether you call that "authoritarian" or not just comes down to whether or not you still consider a man with a gun robbing you an "authoritarian" if he's not acting on behalf of a formal government.

But this is, of course, only if you take their claims that they want to abolish the state seriously, which I don't on either side. In reality these people do nothing but describe the state that they want when asked to go into detail. The whole thing is, of course, ridiculous because we are a social animal that when left to our own devices, forms states. The concept of a stateless human society makes about as much sense as cows forming a republic.

	▲	komali2 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think if you read some anarchist philosophy you might be surprised at what you find. Property can be owned in common. Then it's not private property whose ownership rights are enforced by a State. We have that here in Taiwan with indigenous people and it causes issues with the bureaucracy all the time, which is desperate for a name to put down as landowner. Many societies throughout history have common ownership aka no private property. Before you ridicule the idea of anarchy perhaps take a look at history - humans as a social animal tend to form societies, not states.