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What does libertarian socialism mean? I guess you mean to say, the means of production can be shared across all workers and still economic activity can be direc

What does libertarian socialism mean? I guess you mean to say, the means of production can be shared across all workers and still economic activity can be directed by markets?

anigbrowl 3y ago
That it's meant to be liberating. Historical libertarian socialists were very concerned with issues like female suffrage and freedom from oppressive social norms as much as economic relations - the sort of concerns that would be derided as 'woke' today. Many of them were anarchists and libertarian socialism is generally anti-authoritarian and often anti-state. They were also alert to the possibility of socialism becoming another oppressive orthodoxy; Emma Goldman is famous for saying 'if I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution' (although this is paraphrase of some wordier remark made in an interview). Murray Bookchin is probably the best-known modern exponent of these ideas.
yellowapple 3y ago
There's about as many varieties of libertarian socialism as there are libertarian socialists, but your guess is pretty close. The usual endgame would be the abolition of the state in favor of cooperatives, unions, and mutual aid networks, though a complete abolition of the state ain't really necessary for a society to start to look simultaneously libertarian and socialist in practice. The big historical example was Spain prior to the fascists winning the Spanish Civil War; contemporary examples include Rojava and the EZLN (though the latter tends to reject any particular label). The thing most/all self-identified libertarian socialists have in common is the perception that capitalism and the state are, if not one and the same, heavily reliant on one another, to the point that abolishing one without abolishing the other leaves in place the material conditions that make both inevitable. It ain't enough to replace state agencies with private corporations, because those corporations will simply become the state - nor is it enough to replace corporations with state agencies, because the bureaucrats running those agencies will simply become the new bourgeoisie or outright aristocracy.
int_19h 3y ago
Not necessarily shared across all workers, but, at the very least, owned by workers who actually use those means to produce something.

What does libertarian socialism mean? I guess you mean to say, the means of production can be shared across all workers and still economic activity can be directed by markets?

anigbrowl 3y ago

That it's meant to be liberating. Historical libertarian socialists were very concerned with issues like female suffrage and freedom from oppressive social norms as much as economic relations - the sort of concerns that would be derided as 'woke' today. Many of them were anarchists and libertarian socialism is generally anti-authoritarian and often anti-state. They were also alert to the possibility of socialism becoming another oppressive orthodoxy; Emma Goldman is famous for saying 'if I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution' (although this is paraphrase of some wordier remark made in an interview). Murray Bookchin is probably the best-known modern exponent of these ideas.

yellowapple 3y ago

There's about as many varieties of libertarian socialism as there are libertarian socialists, but your guess is pretty close. The usual endgame would be the abolition of the state in favor of cooperatives, unions, and mutual aid networks, though a complete abolition of the state ain't really necessary for a society to start to look simultaneously libertarian and socialist in practice. The big historical example was Spain prior to the fascists winning the Spanish Civil War; contemporary examples include Rojava and the EZLN (though the latter tends to reject any particular label). The thing most/all self-identified libertarian socialists have in common is the perception that capitalism and the state are, if not one and the same, heavily reliant on one another, to the point that abolishing one without abolishing the other leaves in place the material conditions that make both inevitable. It ain't enough to replace state agencies with private corporations, because those corporations will simply become the state - nor is it enough to replace corporations with state agencies, because the bureaucrats running those agencies will simply become the new bourgeoisie or outright aristocracy.

int_19h 3y ago

Not necessarily shared across all workers, but, at the very least, owned by workers who actually use those means to produce something.