libertarian

ajatuksen- ja toiminnanvapauden kannattaja One who advocates liberty, either generally or in relation to a specific issue.

(ux) (one who favors civil liberties)

Landauer's reorientation of anarchist theory and practice in the direction of idealist and völkisch thought was often incomprehensible to the more traditional libertarians, and in the period of the second Sozialist Landauer no longer felt entirely comfortable with the simple "anarchist" label. For Landauer anarchism and socialism had always been different expressions of the same view; now he regarded anarchism as "merely the negative side of what is positively called socialism."

For a long time, libertarian was interchangeable in France with anarchist but in recent years, its meaning has become more ambivalent. Some anarchists like David Guérin will call themselves 'libertarian socialists', partly to avoid the negative overtones still associated with anarchism, and partly to stress the place of anarchism with the socialist tradition. Even Marxists of the New Left like E. P. Thompson call themselves 'libertarian' to distinguish themselves from those authoritarian socialists and communists who believe in revolutionary dictatorship and vanguard parties.

While anarchism and socialist libertarians have a rich history of revolutionary thinkers ranging from Emma Goldman to George Orwell, the best-known socialist libertarian thinker of today is probably Noam Chomsky.