The most important thing to understand about lowercase-L libertarians (as opposed to the Libertarian Party) is that we oppose politics. The capital-L Libertarians believe that politics can be abolished by political means. Lowercase-L libertarian anarchists reject political means as well as political ends. bkMarcus, Violent Revolution Q&A |
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Individualists have always been accused by their enemies of being "atomistic" -- of postulating that each individual lives in a kind of vacuum, thinking and choosing without relation to anyone else in society. This, however, is an authoritarian straw man; few, if any, individualists have ever been "atomists." On the contrary, it is evident that individuals always learn from each other, cooperate and interact with each other; and that this, too, is required for man's survival. But the point is that each individual makes the final choice of which influences to adopt and which to reject, or of which to adopt first and which afterwards. The libertarian welcomes the process of voluntary exchange and cooperation between freely acting individuals; what he abhors is the use of violence to cripple such voluntary cooperation and force someone to choose and act in ways different from what his own mind dictates.
Murray Rothbard, The Libertarian Manifesto