Libertarian Socialism is a term essentially synonymous with the word "Anarchism". Anarchy, strictly meaning "without rulers", leads one to wonder what sort of system would exist in place of one without state or capitalist masters... the answer being a radically democratic society while preserving the maximal amount of individual liberty and freedom possible. | | |
Libertarian Socialism recognizes that the concept of "property" (specifically, the means of production, factories, land used for profit, rented space) is theft and that in a truly libertarian society, the individual would be free of exploitation caused by the concentration of all means of wealth-making into the hands of an elite minority of capitalists. | | |
It is recognized that there are authoritarian systems and behavior, distinct from libertarian, or non-authoritarian ones. Since capitalism's early beginnings in Europe, and it's authoritarian trend of wage-slavery for the majority of people (working class) by a smaller, elite group (a ruling, or, capitalist class) who own the "means of production": machines, land, factories, there was a liberatory movement in response to capitalism known as "Socialism". In almost every case, the socialist movement has been divided along authoritarian, and libertarian lines. The anarchists on the libertarian side, and the Jacobins, Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, and reformist state-socialists on the authoritarian side. (And liberals more or less split down the middle.) | | |
There was also a movement called "Propaganda by deed", around the late 1800's to early 1900's, in which some anarchists (Such as the Italian Anarchist Luigi Galleani (1861-1931)), believed that violence was the best strategy for opposing the state. This proved a disaster, alienating anarchists from the general population and exposing them to negative characterizations by the press... the "bomb-toting anarchist" is for the most part a creation of the corporate media- before this stigma anarchism was recognized as an anti-authoritarian socialist movement. (It should be noted that some anarchists dispute that the "Propaganda of the Deed" movement was overtly negative, but the details of this argument are beyond the scope of this essay.) | | |
