Noam Chomsky - Libertarian Socialism: Contradicting terms?

Noam Chomsky explains the difference between the way the word "Libertarian" is used in America, and the way it's used in the rest of the world.

Taken from Chomsky's lecture titled "Education & Democracy."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugq86q9KyPE&feature=related

Good stuff.

What happened to MD`s post? :?:

Libertariansim really runs the gamut from Liberal to Conservative. Some think of it as Centrist, but that's an error.

edit: clarified terminology

Liberatarism is basically the freedom from any government intervention. You can basically divide it into two issues: economic and social issues.

Conservatives are very liberal in economic issues. Think of free trade and lower taxes. Socialists(Democrats, liberals) are very conservative and promote protectionism(think about antidumping laws, minimum wage, etc).

For social issues, this is where things become different. Conservative will want government to ban gay marriage, abortions, etc. Socialists will want government programs to help the lower class, another type of government intervention. Liberarianism want neither and would like the government to not interfere in these issues. This means a libertarian supports a woman's right to choose, but does not encroaching gun laws either. In a way, they are the ultimate liberals on the issue.

Chomsky should have stayed in the linguistic field: The Austrian School, especially through the works of Friedrich Hayek, was influential in regard to libertarianism in the 1980s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School

There's a test on the internet that's linked to in a thread here. It presents the political spectrum as a plane, not a line, and plots you on it based on your answers. I come out as a strong left-libertarian basically because I think the government has a duty to regulate the economy to enforce fairness for consumers, and to provide social programs, but beyond that should keep its nose out of the rest of our lives.

Chomsky seems to overlook that it was not the famous Wealth of Nations, but a work on ethics and human nature called The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which made Adam Smith's career. It was the sensation of its age, sold out in weeks. The prominent politician Charles Townshend was "so taken with the performance" (says David Hume) that he hired Smith as tutor to his stepson, the Duke of Buccleuch, and take him on the Grand Tour of Europe...luring Smith away from his professorship at Glasgow with the princely offer of £300 a year for life. Smith had become not just a best-selling author, but a well-off one too.

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith asks that most fundamental question: Why do we regard certain actions or intentions with approval and condemn others? Smith held that people are born with a moral sense, just as they have inborn ideas of beauty or harmony. Our conscience tells us what is right and wrong: and that is something innate, not something given us by lawmakers or by rational analysis. And to bolster it we also have a natural fellow-feeling, which Smith calls "sympathy". Between them, these natural senses of conscience and sympathy ensure that human beings can and do live together in orderly and beneficial social organizations.

http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/tms-intro.htm

To me, libertarian means liberal on social issues and liberal on trade and economic issues. Minimizing government is a policy goal for the US and Canadian Libertarian parties, and I think here is where they have an unrealistic platform.

The fact is that government is required is some areas where a government monopoly has been shown by history to be conducive to a stable society (the government monopoly on national defence, for example). Also, the Liberatarian ethos relies on the primacy of property rights, but, in my opinion, they have not reconciled teh fact that in some cases property rights are unassignable (assigning property rights to the air we beathe, for example). In cases where property rights cannot be clearly defined, government is still required to administrate collective rights.

Libertarianism is popular because it is simplistic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian

I think most people look at Libertarianism and see somethings they really like. Then they see some things that make them go, "WTF?". That was Ron Paul's big problem in the US. Some of his ideas were really good, others were just batshit stupid.