Libertarian Radicals

At the new Encyclopedia Britannica blog I ask whether Brian Doherty, in his Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, can have it both ways:

Doherty makes two claims about libertarianism that may seem to be in tension: First, as the title proclaims:“The most significant thing about libertarianism, the element that distinguishes its unique place in modern American thought, is that it is radical. It takes insights about justice and order and the fight between liberty and power farther and deeper than most standard American liberals, patriots, or Jeffersonians.”


But he also says:


“Libertarians can believe, with some justification, that we are in some sense already living in their world.…We are not living in Karl Marx’s world.…We live in a world energized and shaped by the beliefs of Marx’s political‐​economic rivals and enemies–the classical liberals, the thinkers who believed a harmony of interests is manifest in unrestricted markets, that free trade can prevent war and make us all richer, that decentralized private property ownership helps create a spontaneous order of rich variety.”

I think he can. And while you’re at the Britannica site, check out my entry on libertarianism.