Key Concepts of Libertarianism | Cato Institute
Individualism. Libertarians see the individual as the basic unit of social analysis. Only individuals make choices and are responsible for their actions. Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility. The progressive extension of dignity to more people to women, to people of different religions and different races is one of the great libertarian triumphs of the Western world.
Individual Rights. Because individuals are moral agents, they have aright to be secure in their life, liberty, and property. These rights are not granted by government or by society; they are inherent in the nature of human beings. It is intuitively right that individuals enjoy the security of such rights; the burden of explanation should lie with those who would take rights away.
Spontaneous Order. Agreat degree of order in society is necessary for individuals to survive and flourish. Its easy to assume that order must be imposed by acentral authority, the way we impose order on astamp collection or afootball team. The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes. Over human history, we have gradually opted for more freedom and yet managed to develop acomplex society with intricate organization. The most important institutions in human society language, law, money, and markets all developed spontaneously, without central direction. Civil society the complex network of associations and connections among people is another example of spontaneous order; the associations within civil society are formed for apurpose, but civil society itself is not an organization and does not have apurpose of its own.
The Rule of Law. Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism. It is not aclaim that people can do anything they want to, and nobody else can say anything. Rather, libertarianism proposes asociety of liberty under law, in which individuals are free to pursue their own lives so long as they respect the equal rights of others. The rule of law means that individuals are governed by generally applicable and spontaneously developed legal rules, not by arbitrary commands; and that those rules should protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways, not aim at any particular result or outcome.
Limited Government. To protect rights, individuals form governments. But government is adangerous institution. Libertarians have agreat antipathy to concentrated power, for as Lord Acton said, Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thus they want to divide and limit power, and that means especially to limit government, generally through awritten constitution enumerating and limiting the powers that the people delegate to government. Limited government is the basic political implication of libertarianism, and libertarians point to the historical fact that it was the dispersion of power in Europe more than other parts of the world that led to individual liberty and sustained economic growth.
Free Markets. To survive and to flourish, individuals need to engage in economic activity. The right to property entails the right to exchange property by mutual agreement. Free markets are the economic system of free individuals, and they are necessary to create wealth. Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous if government intervention in peoples economic choices is minimized.
The Virtue of Production. Much of the impetus for libertarianism in the seventeenth century was areaction against monarchs and aristocrats who lived off the productive labor of other people. Libertarians defended the right of people to keep the fruits of their labor. This effort developed into arespect for the dignity of work and production and especially for the growing middle class, who were looked down upon by aristocrats. Libertarians developed apreMarxist class analysis that divided society into two basic classes: those who produced wealth and those who took it by force from others. Thomas Paine, for instance, wrote, There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes. Similarly, Jefferson wrote in 1824, We have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Modern libertarians defend the right of productive people to keep what they earn, against anew class of politicians and bureaucrats who would seize their earnings to transfer them to political clients and cronies.
Natural Harmony of Interests. Libertarians believe that there is anatural harmony of interests among peaceful, productive people in ajust society. One persons individual plans which may involve getting ajob, starting abusiness, buying ahouse, and so on may conflict with the plans of others, so the market makes many of us change our plans. But we all prosper from the operation of the free market, and there are no necessary conflicts between farmers and merchants, manufacturers and importers. Only when government begins to hand out rewards on the basis of political pressure do we find ourselves involved in group conflict, pushed to organize and contend with other groups for apiece of political power.
Peace. Libertarians have always battled the ageold scourge of war. They understood that war brought death and destruction on agrand scale, disrupted family and economic life, and put more power in the hands of the ruling class which might explain why the rulers did not always share the popular sentiment for peace. Free men and women, of course, have often had to defend their own societies against foreign threats; but throughout history, war has usually been the common enemy of peaceful, productive people on all sides of the conflict.
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Key Concepts of Libertarianism | Cato Institute