Editing Individualism

{{Short description|Concept regarding the moral worth of the individual}}
{{Redirect|Individual freedom|other uses|Civil liberties}}
{{Individualism sidebar|expanded=all}}

'''Individualism''' is the [[Ethics|moral]] stance, [[political philosophy]], [[ideology]], and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the [[individual]].<ref name="britannica.com">{{Cite web|title=individualism {{!}} Definition, History, Philosophy, Examples, & Facts {{!}} Britannica|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/individualism|access-date=2021-12-25|website=www.britannica.com|language=en}}</ref><ref>[[Ellen Meiksins Wood]]. ''Mind and Politics: An Approach to the Meaning of Liberal and Socialist Individualism''. [[University of California Press]]. 1972. {{ISBN|0-520-02029-4}}. p. 6</ref> Individualists promote realizing one's goals and desires, valuing [[Self-sustainability |independence]] and self-reliance, and advocating that the interests of the individual should gain precedence over the [[State (polity)|state]] or a social group, while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by [[society]] or [[institution]]s such as the government.<ref name="thefreedictionary.com">{{cite web |url=http://www.thefreedictionary.com/individualism |title="individualism" on The Free Dictionary |access-date=2009-12-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190517010759/http://www.thefreedictionary.com/individualism |archive-date=2019-05-17 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Individualism makes the individual its focus,<ref name="britannica.com" /> and so starts "with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation".<ref name="ReferenceA">[[L. Susan Brown]]. ''[[The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism, and Anarchism]]''. Black Rose Books Ltd. 1993</ref> 

Individualism represents one kind of [[sociocultural perspective]] and is often defined in contrast to other perspectives, such as [[communitarianism]], [[Collectivism and individualism|collectivism]] and [[corporatism]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Biddle |first=Craig |date=20 February 2012 |title=Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice |url=https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2012-spring/individualism-collectivism/ |journal=The Objective Standard |volume=7 |number=1}}</ref><ref name="Hayek 1994 17, 37–48">{{cite book |last=Hayek |first=F.A. |title=The Road to Serfdom |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |year=1994 |isbn=0-226-32061-8 |location=Chicago |pages=17, 37–48}}</ref>

Individualism is also associated with [[artistic]] and [[Bohemianism|bohemian]] interests and lifestyles, where there is a tendency towards self-creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors,<ref name="thefreedictionary.com" /><ref name="Bohemia: The Underworld of Art">{{cite journal |last1=Snyderman |first1=George S. |last2=Josephs |first2=William |title=Bohemia: The Underworld of Art |journal=Social Forces |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=187–199 |date=1939 |doi=10.2307/2570771 |issn=0037-7732 |jstor=2570771 }}</ref> and it is associated with [[humanist]] philosophical positions and ethics.<ref>"The leading intellectual trait of the era was the recovery, to a certain degree, of the secular and humane philosophy of Greece and Rome. Another humanist trend which cannot be ignored was the rebirth of individualism, which, developed by Greece and Rome to a remarkable degree, had been suppressed by the rise of a caste system in the later Roman Empire, by the Church and by feudalism in the Middle Ages.[http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/humanism.html "The history guide: Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History"]</ref><ref>"Anthropocentricity and individualism...Humanism and Italian art were similar in giving paramount attention to human experience, both in its everyday immediacy and in its positive or negative extremes...The human-centredness of Renaissance art, moreover, was not just a generalized endorsement of earthly experience. Like the humanists, Italian artists stressed the autonomy and dignity of the individual."[https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/275932/humanism/11824/Anthropocentricity-and-individualism "Humanism" on Encyclopædia Britannica]</ref> "Individualism" has also been used as a term denoting "[t]he quality of being an individual; individuality", related to possessing "[a]n individual characteristic; a [[idiosyncrasy|quirk]]".<ref name="thefreedictionary.com" /> 

== Etymology ==
In the [[English language]], the word ''individualism'' was first introduced as a pejorative by [[utopian socialists]] such as the [[Owenism|Owenites]] in the late 1830s, although it is unclear if they were influenced by [[Saint-Simonianism]] or came up with it independently.<ref name="Claeys">{{cite journal|author=Claeys, Gregory |author-link=Gregory Claeys |title="Individualism," "Socialism," and "Social Science": Further Notes on a Process of Conceptual Formation, 1800–1850 |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |year=1986 |volume=47 |issue=1 |pages=81–93 |doi=10.2307/2709596|jstor=2709596|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press}}</ref> A more positive use of the term in Britain came to be used with the writings of [[James Elishama Smith]], a [[millenarian]]-turned-socialist and [[Christian Israelite]]. Although an early follower of [[Robert Owen]], he eventually rejected Owen's collective idea of property and found in individualism a "[[universalism]]" that allowed for the development of the "original genius". Without individualism, Smith argued that individuals cannot amass property to increase one's happiness.<ref name="Claeys"/> [[William Maccall]], another [[Unitarianism|Unitarian]] preacher and probably an acquaintance of Smith, came somewhat later, although influenced by [[John Stuart Mill]], [[Thomas Carlyle]] and [[German Romanticism]], to the same positive conclusions in his 1847 work ''Elements of Individualism''.<ref name="Swart">{{cite journal|author=Swart, Koenraad W. |author-link=Koenraad W. Swart |title="Individualism" in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (1826–1860) |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |year=1962 |volume=23 |issue=1 |pages=77–90 |doi=10.2307/2708058|jstor=2708058|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press}}</ref>

== Individual ==
{{main|Individual}}
An individual is a person or any specific object in a collection. In the 15th century and earlier, and also today within the fields of [[statistics]] and [[metaphysics]], individual means "indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning "a person" as in "the problem of [[proper name]]s". From the 17th century on, individual indicates separateness, as in individualism.<ref>Abbs 1986, cited in Klein 2005, pp. 26–27</ref> Individuality is the state or quality of being an individuated being; a person separated from everything with unique character by possessing their own needs, goals, and desires in comparison to other people.<ref>{{cite book|author=Gerald N. Izenberg|title=Impossible Individuality: Romanticism, Revolution, and the Origins of Modern Selfhood, 1787–1802|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TQ60DyQi8mYC&pg=PA18|year=1992|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=1-4008-2066-9|pages=18+}}</ref>

=== Individuation principle ===
{{main|Individuation}}
The principle of individuation, or ''{{lang|la|principium individuationis}}'',<ref name=Reese>{{cite book |title=Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofphil00will |url-access=registration |last=Reese |first=William L. |edition=1st |year=1980 |publisher=Humanities Press |location=Atlantic Highlands, NJ |isbn=0-391-00688-6 |page=[https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofphil00will/page/251 251]}}</ref> describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinguished from other things.<ref name=Cambridge>{{cite book |title=The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy |editor1-last= Audi |editor1-first=Robert |edition= 2nd |year= 1999|publisher= Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge |isbn=0-521-63136-X |page=424}}</ref> For [[Carl Jung]], individuation is a process of transformation, whereby the personal and [[collective unconscious]] is brought into consciousness (by means of dreams, [[active imagination]] or [[free association (psychology)|free association]] to take examples) to be assimilated into the whole personality. It is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche to take place.<ref name="jung1">Jung, C. G. (1962). Symbols of Transformation: An analysis of the prelude to a case of schizophrenia (Vol. 2, R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). New York: Harper & Brothers.</ref> Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.<ref name="Jung's Individuation process">[http://soultherapynow.com/articles/individuation.html Jung's Individuation process] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180223145618/http://soultherapynow.com/articles/individuation.html |date=2018-02-23 }} Retrieved on 2009-2-20</ref> In ''L'individuation psychique et collective'', [[Gilbert Simondon]] developed a theory of individual and collective individuation in which the individual subject is considered as an effect of individuation rather than a cause. Thus, the individual atom is replaced by a never-ending [[Process philosophy|ontological process]] of individuation. Individuation is an always incomplete process, always leaving a "pre-individual" left-over, itself making possible future individuations.<ref>[[Gilbert Simondon]]. ''L'individuation psychique et collective'' (Paris, Aubier, 1989; reprinted in 2007 with a preface by Bernard Stiegler)</ref> The philosophy of [[Bernard Stiegler]] draws upon and modifies the work of [[Gilbert Simondon]] on individuation and also upon similar ideas in [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] and [[Sigmund Freud]]. For Stiegler, "the ''I'', as a psychic individual, can only be thought in relationship to ''we'', which is a collective individual. The ''I'' is constituted in adopting a collective tradition, which it inherits and in which a plurality of ''I''{{'}}s acknowledge each other's existence."<ref>Stiegler, Bernard (13 May 2004). [http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/bernard-stiegler-culture-and-technology "Bernard Stiegler: Culture and Technology"]. Tate Modern. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151015235753/http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/bernard-stiegler-culture-and-technology|date=15 October 2015}}. Retrieved 26 September 2020.</ref>

== Individualism and society ==
Individualism holds that a person taking part in society attempts to learn and discover what their own interests are on a personal basis, without a presumed following of the interests of a societal structure (an individualist need not be an [[egoist]]). The individualist does not necessarily follow one particular philosophy. They may create an amalgamation of elements of many philosophies, based on personal interests in particular aspects that they find of use. On a societal level, the individualist participates on a personally structured political and moral ground. Independent thinking and opinion is a necessary trait of an individualist. [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]], claims that his concept of [[general will]] in ''[[The Social Contract]]'' is not the simple collection of individual wills and that it furthers the interests of the individual (the constraint of law itself would be beneficial for the individual, as the lack of respect for the law necessarily entails, in Rousseau's eyes, a form of [[ignorance]] and submission to one's [[Passion (emotion)|passions]] instead of the preferred [[wikt:autonomy|autonomy]] of [[reason]]).

Individualism versus collectivism is a common dichotomy in [[Cross-cultural studies|cross-cultural research]]. Global comparative studies have found that the world's cultures vary in the degree to which they emphasize individual autonomy, [[freedom]] and initiative (individualistic traits), respectively [[conformity]] to group norms, maintaining traditions and [[Obedience (human behavior)|obedience]] to in-group authority (collectivistic traits).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Santos |first1=Henri C. |last2=Varnum |first2=Michael E. W. |last3=Grossmann |first3=Igor |title=Global Increases in Individualism |journal=[[Psychological Science]] |date=2017 |volume=28 |issue=9 |pages=1228–1239 |doi=10.1177/0956797617700622|pmid=28703638 |s2cid=206588771 |url=https://psyarxiv.com/hynwh/ }}</ref> Cultural differences between individualism and collectivism are differences in degrees, not in kind.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Minkov|first1=Michael|last2=Dutt|first2=Pinaki|last3=Schachner|first3=Michael|last4=Morales|first4=Oswaldo|last5=Sanchez|first5=Carlos|last6=Jandosova|first6=Janar|last7=Khassenbekov|first7=Yerlan|last8=Mudd|first8=Ben|year=2017|title=A revision of Hofstede's individualism-collectivism dimension|journal=Cross Cultural & Strategic Management|volume=24|issue=3|pages=3|doi=10.1108/ccsm-11-2016-0197|issn=2059-5794}}</ref> Cultural individualism is strongly correlated with [[Lists of countries by GDP per capita|GDP per capita]]<ref>{{Cite book|last=Inglehart|first=Ronald F.|title=Cultural Evolution|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2018|isbn=978-1-108-61388-0|pages=40|chapter=Chapter 3. Global Cultural Patterns|doi=10.1017/9781108613880}}</ref> and [[venture capital]] investments.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Gantenbein |first1=Pascal |last2=Kind |first2=Axel |last3=Volonte|first3=Christophe |title=Individualism and Venture Capital: A Cross-Country Study |journal=Management International Review |volume=59 |issue=5 |pages=741–777 |date=2019 |doi=10.1007/s11575-019-00394-7 |doi-access=free }}</ref> The cultures of economically developed regions such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea,<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Takano|first1=Yohtaro|last2=Osaka|first2=Eiko|year=1999|title=An unsupported common view: Comparing Japan and the U.S. on individualism/collectivism|journal=Asian Journal of Social Psychology|volume=2|issue=3|pages=311–341|doi=10.1111/1467-839x.00043|issn=1367-2223}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Takano|first1=Yohtaro|last2=Sogon|first2=Shunya|year=2008|title=Are Japanese More Collectivistic Than Americans?|journal=Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology|volume=39|issue=3|pages=237–250|doi=10.1177/0022022107313902|s2cid=145125365|issn=0022-0221}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Takano|first1=Yohtaro|last2=Osaka|first2=Eiko|year=2018|title=Comparing Japan and the United States on individualism/collectivism: A follow-up review|journal=Asian Journal of Social Psychology|volume=21|issue=4|pages=301–316|doi=10.1111/ajsp.12322|s2cid=149676839|issn=1367-2223|doi-access=free}}</ref> North America and Western Europe are the most individualistic in the world. Middle income regions such as Eastern Europe, South America and mainland East Asia have cultures which are neither very individualistic nor very collectivistic. The most collectivistic cultures in the world are from economically developing regions such as the Middle East and Northern Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and South-East Asia, Central Asia and Central America.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Minkov|first1=Michael|last2=Dutt|first2=Pinaki|last3=Schachner|first3=Michael|last4=Morales|first4=Oswaldo|last5=Sanchez|first5=Carlos|last6=Jandosova|first6=Janar|last7=Khassenbekov|first7=Yerlan|last8=Mudd|first8=Ben|year=2017|title=A revision of Hofstede's individualism-collectivism dimension|journal=Cross Cultural & Strategic Management|volume=24|issue=3|pages=29|doi=10.1108/ccsm-11-2016-0197|issn=2059-5794}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Welzel|first=Christian|title=Freedom Rising|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2013|isbn=978-1-139-54091-9|location=New York|pages=87|chapter=Chapter 2. Mapping Differences|doi=10.1017/cbo9781139540919}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Beugelsdijk|first1=Sjoerd|last2=Welzel|first2=Chris|date=2018|title=Dimensions and Dynamics of National Culture: Synthesizing Hofstede With Inglehart|journal=Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology|volume=49|issue=10|pages=1485|doi=10.1177/0022022118798505|pmid=30369633|pmc=6191680|issn=0022-0221|doi-access=free}}</ref> Against this background, a number of prominent authors from various disciplines (e.g., Louis Dumont, Geert Hofstede, Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, Ronald Inglehart) have supported the influential thesis that the modernization of a society goes hand in hand with an increasing degree of individualization. However, this thesis has also found its critics, who point out, among other things, that the cultural-historical development of individualism from antiquity to the present has not proceeded in a straight line, that some societies with a more collectivist orientation are nevertheless highly modernized and that the concepts of individualism, collectivism and modernity lack conceptual clarity so that an appropriately differentiated analysis of the alleged connection is still lacking.<ref>Kagitcibasi, C. (2005). Modernization does not mean westernization: Emergence of a different pattern. In W. Friedlmeier, P. Chakkarath, and B. Schwarz (Eds.), ''Culture and human development (''pp. 255-272). Psychology Press.</ref><ref>Chakkarath, P. (2024). Is the individual an enlightened westerner? Some skeptical remarks on Eurocentric notions of self and the development of individualism. In A. Dueck & L. Sundararajan (Eds.), ''Values and indigenous psychology in the age of the machine and market: When the gods have fled'' (pp. 131-156). Springer International Publishing.</ref>   

An earlier analysis by [[Ruth Benedict]] in her book [[The Chrysanthemum and the Sword]] states that societies and groups can differ in the extent to which they are based upon predominantly "self-regarding" (individualistic, and/or self-interested) behaviors, rather than "other-regarding" (group-oriented, and group, or society-minded) behaviors. [[Ruth Benedict]] made a distinction, relevant in this context, between [[Guilt–shame–fear spectrum of cultures|guilt societies]] (e.g. [[medieval Europe]]) with an "internal reference standard" and [[shame societies]] (e.g. Japan, "bringing shame upon one's ancestors") with an "external reference standard", where people look to their peers for feedback on whether an action is acceptable or not.<ref>Benedict, Ruth; "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture." Rutland, VT and Tokyo, Japan: Charles E. Tuttle Co. 1954 orig. 1946.</ref>

Individualism is often contrasted either with [[totalitarianism]] or with [[Collectivism and individualism|collectivism]],<ref name="Hayek 1994 17, 37–48"/> but there is a spectrum of behaviors at the societal level ranging from highly individualistic societies through mixed societies to collectivist.<ref>{{Cite web|last=AFS-USA|date=2019-10-30|title=Individualism & Collectivism|url=https://www.afsusa.org/study-abroad/culture-trek/culture-points/culture-points-individualism-and-collectivism/|access-date=2021-07-08|website=AFS-USA|language=en-US|archive-date=2021-07-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210709191136/https://www.afsusa.org/study-abroad/culture-trek/culture-points/culture-points-individualism-and-collectivism/|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|date=2012-02-20|title=Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice – The Objective Standard|language=en-US|work=The Objective Standard|url=https://theobjectivestandard.com/2012/02/individualism-collectivism/|access-date=2021-07-08}}</ref>

A 2022 study published by the [[Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization]] indicates that the individualistic societies have higher levels of [[charitable giving]], providing a response to critics of individualism and [[capitalism]]. The authors propose that individualism increases charity through direct mechanisms ([[self-interest|self-interested]] giving) and indirect mechanisms (reinforcing [[economic freedom]]).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cai |first1=Meina |last2=Caskey |first2=Gregory W. |last3=Cowen |first3=Nick |last4=Murtazashvili |first4=Ilia |last5=Murtazashvili |first5=Jennifer Brick |last6=Salahodjaev |first6=Raufhon |title=Individualism, economic freedom, and charitable giving |journal=[[Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization]] |date=2022 |volume=200 |pages=868–884 |doi=10.1016/j.jebo.2022.06.037 |doi-access=free}}</ref> The findings support [[Classical liberalism|classical liberal]] arguments that individualism has virtues, aligning with the views of thinkers like [[Adam Smith]] and [[David Hume]].

=== Competitive individualism ===
According to an [[Oxford English Dictionary|Oxford Dictionary]], "competitive individualism" in sociology is "the view that achievement and non-achievement should depend on merit. Effort and ability are regarded as prerequisites of success. Competition is seen as an acceptable means of distributing limited resources and rewards.

=== Methodological individualism ===
[[Methodological individualism]] is the view that phenomena can only be understood by examining how they result from the motivations and actions of individual agents.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/methodological-individualism/|title=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|first=Joseph|last=Heath|chapter=Methodological Individualism |editor-first=Edward N.|editor-last=Zalta|date=1 January 2015|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|via=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy}}</ref> In economics, people's behavior is explained in terms of [[rational choice theory|rational choice]]s, as constrained by prices and incomes. The economist accepts individuals' preferences as givens. [[Gary Becker|Becker]] and [[George Stigler|Stigler]] provide a forceful statement of this view:
<blockquote>On the traditional view, an explanation of economic phenomena that reaches a difference in tastes between people or times is the terminus of the argument: the problem is abandoned at this point to whoever studies and explains tastes (psychologists? anthropologists? phrenologists? sociobiologists?). On our preferred interpretation, one never reaches this impasse: the economist continues to search for differences in prices or incomes to explain any differences or changes in behavior.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Stigler|first=George|author2=Gary Becker|date=Mar 1977|title=De gustibus non est disputandum|journal=American Economic Review|volume=67|issue=2|page=76|jstor=1807222}}</ref></blockquote>

== Political individualism ==
{{quote box|align=right|width=30%|quote="With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."|source=—[[Oscar Wilde]], ''[[The Soul of Man under Socialism]]'', 1891}}
Individualists are chiefly concerned with protecting individual autonomy against obligations imposed by social institutions (such as the state or religious morality). For [[L. Susan Brown]], "Liberalism and anarchism are two political philosophies that are fundamentally concerned with individual [[Freedom of will|freedom]] yet differ from one another in very distinct ways. Anarchism shares with liberalism a radical commitment to individual freedom while rejecting liberalism's competitive property relations."<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

[[Civil libertarianism]] is a strain of political thought that supports civil liberties, or which emphasizes the supremacy of [[individual rights]] and [[personal freedom]]s over and against any kind of authority (such as a [[State (polity)|state]], a [[corporation]] and social norms imposed through [[peer pressure]], among others).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/civil%20libertarian?r=14|title=Civil libertarian Definition & Meaning &#124; Dictionary.com}}</ref> Civil libertarianism is not a complete [[ideology]]; rather, it is a collection of views on the specific issues of [[civil liberties]] and [[civil rights]]. Because of this, a civil libertarian outlook is compatible with many other political philosophies, and civil libertarianism is found on both the [[Right-wing politics|right]] and [[Left-wing politics|left]] in modern politics.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://politicalcompass.org/analysis2|title=The Political Compass|first=The Political|last=Compass}}</ref> For scholar [[Ellen Meiksins Wood]], "there are doctrines of individualism that are opposed to [[John Locke|Lockean]] individualism [...] and non-Lockean individualism may encompass [[socialism]]".<ref>[[Ellen Meiksins Wood]]. ''Mind and Politics: An Approach to the Meaning of Liberal and Socialist Individualism''. [[University of California Press]]. 1972. {{ISBN|0-520-02029-4}}. p. 7</ref>

British historians such as Emily Robinson, Camilla Schofield, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Natalie Thomlinson have argued that Britons were keen about defining and claiming their individual rights, identities and perspectives by the 1970s, demanding greater personal autonomy and [[self-determination]] and less outside control, angrily complaining that the establishment was withholding it. Historians argue that this shift in concerns helped cause [[Thatcherism]] and was incorporated into Thatcherism's appeal.<ref>Emily Robinson, et al. "Telling stories about post-war Britain: popular individualism and the 'crisis' of the 1970s." ''Twentieth Century British History'' 28.2 (2017): 268–304.</ref>

=== Anarchism ===
{{main|Anarchism}}
{{anarchism sidebar|theory}}
Within anarchism, [[individualist anarchism]] represents several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and their [[will (philosophy)|will]] over any kinds of external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems.<ref name="ryner">"What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual conscience."[https://www.marxists.org/archive/ryner/1905/mini-manual.htm ''Mini-Manual of Individualism'' by Han Ryner]</ref><ref name="tucker">"I do not admit anything except the existence of the individual, as a condition of his sovereignty. To say that the sovereignty of the individual is conditioned by Liberty is simply another way of saying that it is conditioned by itself." "Anarchism and the State" in ''Individual Liberty''</ref> Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a group of individualistic philosophies that sometimes are in conflict.

In 1793, [[William Godwin]], who has often<ref>Everhart, Robert B. The Public School Monopoly: A Critical Analysis of Education and the State in American Society. Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, 1982. p. 115.</ref> been cited as the first anarchist, wrote ''[[Political Justice]]'', which some consider to be the first expression of anarchism.<ref name="godwinsep"/><ref>Adams, Ian. Political Ideology Today. Manchester University Press, 2001. p. 116.</ref> Godwin, a philosophical anarchist, from a [[rationalist]] and [[utilitarian]] basis opposed revolutionary action and saw a [[Limited government|minimal state]] as a present "necessary evil" that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge.<ref name="godwinsep">{{cite SEP |url-id=godwin |title=William Godwin |last=Philip  |first=Mark|date=2006-05-20}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners |last=Godwin |first=William |author-link=William Godwin |year=1796 |publisher=G.G. and J. Robinson |oclc=2340417 |orig-date=1793}}</ref> Godwin advocated individualism, proposing that all cooperation in labour be eliminated on the premise that this would be most conducive with the general good.<ref>''Britannica Concise Encyclopedia''. Retrieved 7 December 2006, from [https://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9037183 Encyclopædia Britannica Online].</ref><ref name=pmcl119>Paul McLaughlin. Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007. p. 119.</ref>

An influential form of individualist anarchism called [[Egoist anarchism|egoism]],<ref name="Goodway, David 2006, p. 99">Goodway, David. [[Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow]]. Liverpool University Press, 2006, p. 99.</ref> or egoist anarchism, was expounded by one of the earliest and best-known proponents of individualist anarchism, the German [[Max Stirner]].<ref name="SEP-Stirner">{{cite SEP |url-id=max-stirner |title=Max Stirner |last=Leopold  |first=David|date=2006-08-04}}</ref> Stirner's ''[[The Ego and Its Own]]'', published in 1844, is a founding text of the philosophy.<ref name="SEP-Stirner"/> According to Stirner, the only limitation on the rights of the individual is their power to obtain what they desire,<ref name="The Encyclopedia Americana p. 176">The Encyclopedia Americana: A Library of Universal Knowledge. Encyclopedia Corporation. p. 176.</ref> without regard for God, state, or morality.<ref name="Miller, David 1987. p. 11">Miller, David. "Anarchism." 1987. ''The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought''. Blackwell Publishing. p. 11.</ref> To Stirner, rights were ''[[Reification (fallacy)|spooks]]'' in the mind, and he held that society does not exist but "the individuals are its reality".<ref>"What my might reaches is my property; and let me claim as property everything I feel myself strong enough to attain, and let me extend my actual property as fas as ''I'' entitle, that is, empower myself to take..." In Ossar, Michael. 1980. ''Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller''. SUNY Press. p. 27.</ref> Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw [[union of egoists|unions of egoists]], non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will,<ref name="nonserviam"/> which Stirner proposed as a form of organization in place of the state.<ref name=karl/> Egoist anarchists claim that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals.<ref name=carlson>{{Cite book | last = Carlson | first = Andrew | title = Anarchism in Germany |title-link=Anarchism in Germany (book) | publisher = Scarecrow Press | location = Metuchen | year = 1972 | isbn = 0-8108-0484-0 | chapter-url = http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/carlson.html | chapter = Philosophical Egoism: German Antecedents | access-date = 2008-12-04 | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20081210202509/http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/carlson.html | archive-date = 2008-12-10 }}</ref> Egoist anarchism has inspired many interpretations of Stirner's philosophy. It was re-discovered and promoted by German philosophical anarchist and [[LGBT]] activist [[John Henry Mackay]].

[[Josiah Warren]] is widely regarded as the first American anarchist<ref name=Slate>Palmer, Brian (2010-12-29) [http://www.slate.com/id/2279457/ What do anarchists want from us?], ''[[Slate.com]]''</ref> and ''The Peaceful Revolutionist'', the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, was the first anarchist periodical published.<ref name="bailie20">William Bailie, {{cite web|url=http://libertarian-labyrinth.org/warren/1stAmAnarch.pdf |title=Josiah Warren: The First American Anarchist |access-date=June 17, 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204155505/http://libertarian-labyrinth.org/warren/1stAmAnarch.pdf |archive-date=February 4, 2012 }} ''Josiah Warren: The First American Anarchist – A Sociological Study'', Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1906, p. 20</ref> For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, "[i]t is apparent [...] that [[Mutualism (economic theory)|Proudhonian Anarchism]] was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren and [[Stephen Pearl Andrews]]. [...] [[William B. Greene]] presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form".<ref name="againstallauthority.org">{{Cite web|url=http://www.againstallauthority.org/NativeAmericanAnarchism.html|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160213201445/http://www.againstallauthority.org/NativeAmericanAnarchism.html|url-status=dead|title=''Native American Anarchism: A Study of Left-Wing American Individualism'' by Eunice Minette Schuster|archivedate=February 13, 2016}}</ref> [[Henry David Thoreau]] was an important early influence in individualist anarchist thought in the United States and Europe.<ref name="thoreau">"Paralelamente, al otro lado del atlántico, en el diferente contexto de una nación a medio hacer, los Estados Unidos, otros filósofos elaboraron un pensamiento individualista similar, aunque con sus propias especificidades. Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), uno de los escritores próximos al movimiento de la filosofía trascendentalista, es uno de los más conocidos. Su obra más representativa es Walden, aparecida en 1854, aunque redactada entre 1845 y 1847, cuando Thoreau decide instalarse en el aislamiento de una cabaña en el bosque, y vivir en íntimo contacto con la naturaleza, en una vida de soledad y sobriedad. De esta experiencia, su filosofía trata de transmitirnos la idea que resulta necesario un retorno respetuoso a la naturaleza, y que la felicidad es sobre todo fruto de la riqueza interior y de la armonía de los individuos con el entorno natural. Muchos han visto en Thoreau a uno de los precursores del ecologismo y del anarquismo primitivista representado en la actualidad por Jonh Zerzan. Para George Woodcock, esta actitud puede estar también motivada por una cierta idea de resistencia al progreso y de rechazo al materialismo creciente que caracteriza la sociedad norteamericana de mediados de siglo XIX."[http://www.acracia.org/1-23a58lainsumision.pdf "Voluntary non-submission. Spanish individualist anarchism during dictatorship and the second republic (1923–1938)"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110723130358/http://www.acracia.org/1-23a58lainsumision.pdf |date=July 23, 2011 }}</ref> Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, [[Development criticism|development critic]], surveyor, historian, philosopher and leading [[transcendentalist]], who is best known for his book ''[[Walden]]'', a reflection upon [[simple living]] in natural surroundings, and his essay ''[[Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)|Civil Disobedience]]'', an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. Later, [[Benjamin Tucker]] fused Stirner's egoism with the economics of Warren and Proudhon in his eclectic influential publication ''[[Liberty (1881–1908)|Liberty]]''.

From these early influences, anarchism and especially individualist anarchism was related to the [[Anarchism and issues related to love and sex|issues of love and sex]]. In different countries, this attracted a small but diverse following of bohemian artists and intellectuals,<ref name="bohemian individualism">{{Cite web|url=http://libcom.org/library/socanlifean2|title=2. Individualist Anarchism and Reaction|website=libcom.org}}</ref> [[free love]] and [[birth control]] advocates,<ref name="freelove">{{Cite web|url=https://ncc-1776.org/tle1996/le961210.html|title=The Free Love Movement and Radical Individualism, By Wendy McElroy|website=ncc-1776.org|access-date=2022-03-17|archive-date=2021-02-18|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210218111508/https://ncc-1776.org/tle1996/le961210.html|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.acracia.org/1-23a58lainsumision.pdf|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110723130358/http://www.acracia.org/1-23a58lainsumision.pdf|url-status=dead|title="La insumisión voluntaria: El anarquismo individualista español durante la Dictadura y la Segunda República (1923–1938)" by Xavier Díez|archivedate=July 23, 2011}}</ref> individualist [[Naturism|naturists]] [[Nudism|nudists]] as in [[anarcho-naturism]],<ref>"Los anarco-individualistas, G.I.A...Una escisión de la FAI producida en el IX Congreso (Carrara, 1965) se pr odujo cuando un sector de anarquistas de tendencia humanista rechazan la interpretación que ellos juzgan disciplinaria del ''pacto asociativo" clásico, y crean los GIA (Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica) . Esta pequeña federación de grupos, hoy nutrida sobre todo de veteranos anarco-individualistas de orientación pacifista, naturista, etcétera defiende la autonomía personal y rechaza a rajatabla toda forma de intervención en los procesos del sistema, como sería por ejemplo el sindicalismo. Su portavoz es L'Internazionale con sede en Ancona. La escisión de los GIA prefiguraba, en sentido contrario, el gran debate que pronto había de comenzar en el seno del movimiento"[http://eljorobado.enlucha.info/bicicleta/bicicleta/ciclo/01/17.htm "El movimiento libertario en Italia" by ''Bicicleta. REVISTA DE COMUNICACIONES LIBERTARIAS'' Year 1 No. Noviembre, 1 1977] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131012054206/http://eljorobado.enlucha.info/bicicleta/bicicleta/ciclo/01/17.htm |date=October 12, 2013 }}</ref><ref name="acracia.org">"Proliferarán así diversos grupos que practicarán el excursionismo, el naturismo, el nudismo, la emancipación sexual o el esperantismo, alrededor de asociaciones informales vinculadas de una manera o de otra al anarquismo. Precisamente las limitaciones a las asociaciones obreras impuestas desde la legislación especial de la Dictadura potenciarán indirectamente esta especie de asociacionismo informal en que confluirá el movimiento anarquista con esta heterogeneidad de prácticas y tendencias. Uno de los grupos más destacados, que será el impulsor de la revista individualista Ética será el Ateneo Naturista Ecléctico, con sede en Barcelona, con sus diferentes secciones la más destacada de las cuales será el grupo excursionista Sol y Vida."[http://www.acracia.org/1-23a58lainsumision.pdf "La insumisión voluntaria: El anarquismo individualista español durante la Dictadura y la Segunda República (1923–1938)" by Xavier Díez] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110723130358/http://www.acracia.org/1-23a58lainsumision.pdf |date=July 23, 2011 }}</ref><ref name="aujourdhui">"Les anarchistes individualistes du début du siècle l'avaient bien compris, et intégraient le naturisme dans leurs préoccupations. Il est vraiment dommage que ce discours se soit peu à peu effacé, d'antan plus que nous assistons, en ce moment, à un retour en force du puritanisme (conservateur par essence)."[http://ytak.club.fr/natytak.html "Anarchisme et naturisme, aujourd'hui." by Cathy Ytak] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090225212442/http://ytak.club.fr/natytak.html |date=February 25, 2009 }}</ref> [[freethought]] and [[Anti-clericalism|anti-clerical]] activists<ref name="mises.org">{{cite web|url=https://mises.org/journals/jls/5_3/5_3_4.pdf|title=Culture of Individualist Anarchism in Late 19th Century America|last=anne|date=30 July 2014}}</ref> as well as young anarchist outlaws in what came to be known as [[illegalism]] and [[individual reclamation]],<ref name="The Illegalists">[http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/illegalistsDougImrie.htm The "Illegalists"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150908072801/http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/illegalistsDougImrie.htm |date=September 8, 2015 }}, by Doug Imrie (published by [[Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed]])</ref><ref name="Parry, Richard 1987. p. 15">Parry, Richard. ''The Bonnot Gang''. Rebel Press, 1987. p. 15</ref> especially within [[European individualist anarchism]] and [[individualist anarchism in France]]. These authors and activists included [[Oscar Wilde]], [[Émile Armand]], [[Han Ryner]], [[Henri Zisly]], [[Renzo Novatore]], [[Miguel Giménez Igualada]], [[Adolf Brand]] and [[Lev Chernyi]] among others. In his important essay ''[[The Soul of Man Under Socialism]]'' from 1891, Wilde defended socialism as the way to guarantee individualism and so he saw that "[w]ith the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all".<ref name="flag.blackened.net">{{cite web|url=http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/wilde_soul.html|title=Oscar Wilde essay The soul of man under Socialism|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130914032335/http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/wilde_soul.html|archive-date=2013-09-14}}</ref> For anarchist historian [[George Woodcock]], "Wilde's aim in ''The Soul of Man Under Socialism'' is to seek the society most favorable to the artist.&nbsp;[...] for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated.&nbsp;[...] Wilde represents the anarchist as [[aesthete]]".<ref name="Anarchism 1962. p. 447">[[George Woodcock]]. ''Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements.'' 1962. (p. 447)</ref> Woodcock finds that "[t]he most ambitious contribution to literary anarchism during the 1890s was undoubtedly Oscar Wilde ''The Soul of Man Under Socialism''" and finds that it is influenced mainly by the thought of [[William Godwin]].<ref name="Anarchism 1962. p. 447"/>

=== Autarchism ===
{{main|Autarchism}}
Autarchism promotes the principles of individualism, the moral ideology of individual liberty and self-reliance whilst rejecting compulsory government and supporting the elimination of government in favor of ruling oneself to the exclusion of rule by others. [[Robert LeFevre]], recognized as an autarchist by [[anarcho-capitalist]] [[Murray Rothbard]],<ref>Rothbard, Murray N. (2007). ''[https://mises.org/books/betrayal.pdf The Betrayal of the American Right]'', [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]], p. 187. {{ISBN|978-1-933550-13-8}}</ref> distinguished autarchism from [[anarchy]], whose [[Anarchist economics|economics]] he felt entailed interventions contrary to freedom in contrast to his own ''[[laissez-faire]]'' economics of the [[Austrian School]].<ref>[http://fair-use.org/rampart-journal/1965/12/autarchy-versus-anarchy "Autarchy vs Anarchy" by Robert LeFevre]. ''Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought'' Vol. 1, No. 4 (Winter, 1965): 30–49</ref>

=== Liberalism ===
{{main|Liberalism}}
{{liberalism sidebar|related}}
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of individual freedom. This belief is widely accepted in the United States, Europe, Australia and other [[Western world|Western]] nations, and was recognized as an important value by many Western philosophers throughout history, in particular since [[the Enlightenment]]. It is often rejected by collectivist ideas such as in [[Abrahamic religions|Abrahamic]] or [[Confucianism|Confucian]] societies, although [[Taoist]]s were and are known to be individualists.<ref>The Ancient Chinese Super State of Primary Societies: Taoist Philosophy for the 21st Century, You-Sheng Li, June 2010, p. 300</ref> The Roman Emperor [[Marcus Aurelius]] wrote praising "the idea of a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed".<ref>Marcus Aurelius, ''Meditations'', Oxford University Press, 2008, {{ISBN|978-0-19-954059-4}}.</ref>

Liberalism has its roots in the [[Age of Enlightenment]] and rejects many [[Foundationalism|foundational]] assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as the [[Divine Right of Kings]], hereditary status, and [[established religion]]. [[John Locke]] and [[Montesquieu]] are often credited with the philosophical foundations of [[classical liberalism]], a political ideology inspired by the broader liberal movement. Locke wrote that "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."<ref name = "locke">{{cite book | last = Locke | first = John | title = Two Treatises of Government | publisher = [[Project Gutenberg]] | year = 1690 | url = http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/trgov10h.htm | access-date = January 21, 2009| edition = 10th }}</ref>

In the 17th century, liberal ideas began to influence European governments in nations such as the Netherlands, Switzerland, England and Poland, but they were strongly opposed, often by armed might, by those who favored absolute monarchy and established religion. In the 18th century, the first modern liberal state was founded without a monarch or a hereditary aristocracy in the United States of America.<ref>Paul E. Sigmund, editor, ''The Selected Political Writings of John Locke'', Norton, 2003, {{ISBN|0-393-96451-5}} p. iv "(Locke's thoughts) underlie many of the fundamental political ideas of US liberal constitutional democracy...", "At the time Locke wrote, his principles were accepted in theory by a few and in practice by none."</ref> The [[US Declaration of Independence]] includes the words which echo Locke that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are [[life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness]]; that to insure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the [[consent of the governed]]."<ref>Thomas Jefferson, ''Declaration of Independence'', July 4, 1776.</ref>

Liberalism comes in many forms. According to [[John N. Gray]], the essence of liberalism is toleration of different beliefs and of different ideas as to what constitutes a good life.<ref>John Gray, ''Two Faces of Liberalism'', The New Press, 2008, {{ISBN|978-1-56584-678-4}}</ref>

== Philosophical individualism ==
=== Egoist anarchism ===
{{main|Egoist anarchism}}
[[File:Stirner02.jpg|thumb|upright|Egoist philosopher [[Max Stirner]] has been called a proto-[[existentialist]] philosopher while at the same time is a central theorist of individualist anarchism.]]

Egoist anarchism is a school of [[anarchist thought]] that originated in the [[philosophy of Max Stirner]], a 19th-century [[Young Hegelians|Hegelian]] philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of [[individualist anarchism]]."<ref name="SEP-Stirner"/> According to Stirner, the only limitation on the rights of the individual is their power to obtain what they desire,<ref name="The Encyclopedia Americana p. 176"/> without regard for God, state, or morality.<ref name="Miller, David 1987. p. 11"/> Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw [[unions of egoists]], non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will<ref name=nonserviam>{{cite journal|url=http://i-studies.com/journal/n/pdf/nsi-17.pdf#page=13 |title=The union of egoists |journal=Non Serviam |volume=1 |first=Svein Olav |last=Nyberg |pages=13–14 |location=Oslo, Norway |publisher=Svein Olav Nyberg |oclc=47758413 |access-date=1 September 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101207042220/http://i-studies.com/journal/n/pdf/nsi-17.pdf |archive-date=7 December 2010 }}</ref> which Stirner proposed as a form of organisation in place of the [[state (polity)|state]].<ref name=karl>{{cite book | last = Thomas | first = Paul |author-link=Paul Thomas (Marx scholar) |title=[[Karl Marx and the Anarchists]] | publisher = [[Routledge]]/[[Kegan Paul]] | location = London | year = 1985 | isbn = 0-7102-0685-2 |page=142}}</ref>

Egoist anarchists argue that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals.<ref name=carlson/> Egoism has inspired many interpretations of Stirner's philosophy, but it has also gone beyond Stirner within anarchism. It was re-discovered and promoted by German philosophical anarchist and [[LGBT]] activist [[John Henry Mackay]]. John Beverley Robinson wrote an essay called "Egoism" in which he states that "Modern egoism, as propounded by [[Max Stirner|Stirner]] and [[Nietzsche]], and expounded by [[Henrik Ibsen|Ibsen]], [[George Bernard Shaw|Shaw]] and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the realization by the individual that they are an individual; that, as far as they are concerned, they are the only individual."<ref name="robinson">{{Cite web|url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Egoism_John_Beverley_Robinson|title=Egoism – The Anarchist Library}}</ref> Stirner and [[Nietzsche]], who [[Anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche|exerted influence on anarchism]] despite its opposition, were [[Relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Stirner|frequently compared]] by French "literary anarchists" and anarchist interpretations of [[Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzschean ideas]] appear to have also been influential in the United States.<ref name="Ref_ae">O. Ewald, "German Philosophy in 1907", in The Philosophical Review, Vol. 17, No. 4, Jul., 1908, pp. 400–426; T. A. Riley, "Anti-Statism in German Literature, as Exemplified by the Work of John Henry Mackay", in PMLA, Vol. 62, No. 3, Sep. 1947, pp. 828–843; C. E. Forth, "Nietzsche, Decadence, and Regeneration in France, 1891–95", in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 54, No. 1, Jan., 1993, pp. 97–117; see also Robert C. Holub's ''Nietzsche: Socialist, Anarchist, Feminist'', an essay available online at the University of California, Berkeley website.</ref>

=== Ethical egoism ===
{{main|Ethical egoism}}
Ethical egoism, also called simply egoism,<ref>Sanders, Steven M. Is egoism morally defensible? Philosophia. Springer Netherlands. Volume 18, Numbers 2–3 / July 1988</ref> is the [[normative ethics|normative ethical]] position that [[moral agent]]s ought to do what is in their own [[wikt:self-interest|self-interest]]. It differs from [[psychological egoism]], which claims that [[people]] ''do'' only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from [[rational egoism]] which holds merely that it is [[Rationality|rational]] to act in one's self-interest. However, these doctrines may occasionally be combined with ethical egoism.

Ethical egoism contrasts with ethical [[Altruism (ethics)|altruism]], which holds that moral agents have an [[obligation]] to help and serve others. Egoism and altruism both contrast with ethical utilitarianism, which holds that a moral agent should treat one's [[self (philosophy)|self]] (also known as [[subject (philosophy)|the subject]]) with no higher regard than one has for others (as egoism does, by elevating self-interests and "the self" to a status not granted to others), but that one also should not (as altruism does) sacrifice one's own interests to help others' interests, so long as one's own interests (i.e. one's own [[Desire (philosophy)|desires]] or [[well-being]]) are substantially-equivalent to the others' interests and well-being. Egoism, utilitarianism, and altruism are all forms of [[consequentialism]], but egoism and altruism contrast with utilitarianism, in that egoism and altruism are both [[Consequentialism#Agent-focused or agent-neutral|agent-focused]] forms of consequentialism (i.e. subject-focused or [[Subjectivity|subjective]]), but utilitarianism is called agent-neutral (i.e. [[Objectivity (philosophy)|objective]] and [[impartial]]) as it does not treat the subject's (i.e. the self's, i.e. the moral "agent's") own interests as being more or less important than if the same interests, desires, or well-being were anyone else's.

Ethical egoism does not require moral agents to harm the interests and well-being of others when making moral deliberation, e.g. what is in an agent's self-interest may be incidentally detrimental, beneficial, or neutral in its effect on others. Individualism allows for others' interest and well-being to be disregarded or not as long as what is chosen is efficacious in satisfying the self-interest of the agent. Nor does ethical egoism necessarily [[logical consequence|entail]] that in pursuing self-interest one ought always to do what one wants to do, e.g. in the long term the fulfilment of short-term desires may prove detrimental to the self. Fleeting pleasance then takes a back seat to protracted [[eudaemonia]]. In the words of [[James Rachels]], "[e]thical egoism [...] endorses selfishness, but it doesn't endorse foolishness."<ref name="Rachels 2008, p. 534">Rachels 2008, p. 534.</ref>

Ethical egoism is sometimes the philosophical basis for support of [[libertarianism]] or [[individualist anarchism]] as in [[Max Stirner]], although these can also be based on altruistic motivations.<ref name=ridgely>{{cite web|last=Ridgely|first=D. A.|title=Selfishness, Egoism and Altruistic Libertarianism|date=August 24, 2008|url=http://www.positiveliberty.com/2008/08/selfishness-egoism-and-altruistic-libertarianism.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081202145221/http://www.positiveliberty.com/2008/08/selfishness-egoism-and-altruistic-libertarianism.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 2, 2008|access-date=August 24, 2008}}</ref> These are political positions based partly on a belief that individuals should not coercively prevent others from exercising freedom of action.

=== Existentialism ===
{{main|Existentialism}}
Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who generally held, despite profound doctrinal differences,<ref>Macquarrie, John. ''Existentialism'', New York (1972), pp. 18–21.</ref><ref>''Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', ed. Ted Honderich, New York (1995), p. 259.</ref> that the focus of philosophical thought should be to deal with the conditions of existence of the individual person and their emotions, actions, responsibilities, and thoughts.<ref>Macquarrie. ''Existentialism'', pp. 14–15.</ref><ref>Cooper, D. E. ''Existentialism: A Reconstruction'' (Basil Blackwell, 1999, p. 8)</ref> The early 19th century philosopher [[Søren Kierkegaard]], posthumously regarded as the father of existentialism,<ref>Marino, Gordon. ''Basic Writings of Existentialism'' (Modern Library, 2004, pp. ix, 3).</ref><ref>''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/</ref> maintained that the individual solely has the responsibilities of giving one's own life [[Meaning (existential)|meaning]] and living that life [[Authenticity (philosophy)|passionately and sincerely]],<ref>Watts, Michael. ''Kierkegaard'' (Oneworld, 2003, pp. 4–6).</ref><ref>Lowrie, Walter. ''Kierkegaard's attack upon "Christendom"'' (Princeton, 1968, pp. 37–40)</ref> in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including [[Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard#Despair|despair]], [[angst]], [[Absurdism|absurdity]], [[Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard#Alienation|alienation]] and [[boredom]].<ref>Corrigan, John. ''The Oxford handbook of religion and emotion'' (Oxford, 2008, pp. 387–388)</ref>

Subsequent existential philosophers retain the emphasis on the individual, but differ in varying degrees on how one achieves and what constitutes a fulfilling life, what obstacles must be overcome, and what external and internal factors are involved, including the potential consequences of the [[Christian existentialism|existence]]<ref>Livingston, James et al. ''Modern Christian Thought: The Twentieth Century'' (Fortress Press, 2006, Chapter 5: Christian Existentialism).</ref><ref>Martin, Clancy. ''Religious Existentialism'' in Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism (Blackwell, 2006, pp. 188–205)</ref> or [[atheist existentialism|non-existence]] of God.<ref>Robert C. Solomon, ''Existentialism'' (McGraw-Hill, 1974, pp. 1–2)</ref><ref>D.E. Cooper ''Existentialism: A Reconstruction'' (Basil Blackwell, 1999, p. 8).</ref> Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophy in both style and content as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.<ref>Ernst Breisach, ''Introduction to Modern Existentialism'', New York (1962), p. 5</ref><ref>Walter Kaufmann, ''Existentialism: From Dostoevesky to Sartre'', New York (1956), p. 12</ref> Existentialism became fashionable after [[World War II]] as a way to reassert the importance of human individuality and freedom.<ref>Guignon, Charles B. and Derk Pereboom. ''Existentialism: basic writings'' (Hackett Publishing, 2001, p. xiii)</ref>

Nietzsche's concept of the [[Übermensch|superman]] is closely related to the idea of individualism and the pursuit of one's own unique path and potential.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1998/pg1998-images.html|title=Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None|first1=Friedrich|last1=Nietzsche|year=1999|publisher=The Gutenberg Project|page=8}}</ref> As is seen in the following quote, the concept of superman reflects Nietzsche's emphasis on the need to overcome traditional moral and societal norms in order to achieve personal growth and self-realization:

=== Freethought ===
{{main|Freethought}}
Freethought holds that individuals should not accept ideas proposed as [[truth]] without recourse to knowledge and [[reason]]. Thus, freethinkers strive to build their opinions on the basis of [[fact]]s, [[scientific method|scientific inquiry]] and [[logic]]al principles, independent of any logical [[fallacy|fallacies]] or intellectually limiting effects of authority, [[confirmation bias]], [[cognitive bias]], [[conventional wisdom]], [[popular culture]], [[prejudice]], [[sect]]arianism, [[tradition]], [[urban legend]] and all other [[dogma]]s. Regarding [[religion]], freethinkers hold that there is insufficient evidence to scientifically validate the existence of [[supernatural]] phenomena.<ref>Hastings, James. [https://books.google.com/books?id=ZAwwaxdKMNAC Encyclopedia of Religion]</ref>

=== Humanism ===
{{main|Humanism}}
Humanism is a perspective common to a wide range of [[ethics|ethical stances]] that attaches importance to human dignity, concerns, and capabilities, particularly rationality. Although the word has many senses, its meaning comes into focus when contrasted to the supernatural or to appeals to authority.<ref>{{cite book|title=Compact Oxford English Dictionary|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2007|quote=humanism ''n.'' 1 a rationalistic system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. 2 a Renaissance cultural movement that turned away from medieval scholasticism and revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought.|publication-date = 2007}} Typically, abridgments of this definition omit all senses except #1, such as in the [http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=38402&dict=CALD Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031230202029/http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=38402&dict=CALD |date=2003-12-30 }}, [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/humanism Collins Essential English Dictionary], and {{cite book|title=Webster's Concise Dictionary|url=https://archive.org/details/webstersconcised00rand|url-access=registration|publisher=RHR Press|year=2001|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/webstersconcised00rand/page/177 177]|isbn=978-0375425745}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Definitions of humanism (subsection) |publisher=Institute for Humanist Studies |url=http://humaniststudies.org/humphil.html |access-date=16 Jan 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070118050402/http://humaniststudies.org/humphil.html |archive-date=2007-01-18 }}</ref> Since the 19th century, humanism has been associated with an anti-clericalism inherited from the 18th-century Enlightenment ''[[philosophes]]''. 21st century Humanism tends to strongly endorse [[human rights]], including [[reproductive rights]], [[gender equality]],<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Davis |first1=Lewis S. |last2=Williamson |first2=Claudia R. |title=Does individualism promote gender equality? |journal=[[World Development (journal)|World Development]] |date=2019 |volume=123 |page=104627 |doi=10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104627}}</ref> [[social justice]], and the [[separation of church and state]]. The term covers [[Religious humanism|organized non-theistic religions]], [[secular humanism]], and a humanistic life stance.<ref>{{cite web|title=What Is Humanism?|author=Edwords, Fred|url=http://www.americanhumanist.org/who_we_are/about_humanism/What_is_Humanism|year=1989|publisher=American Humanist Association|access-date=19 August 2009|quote=Secular and Religious Humanists both share the same worldview and the same basic principles... From the standpoint of philosophy alone, there is no difference between the two. It is only in the definition of religion and in the practice of the philosophy that Religious and Secular Humanists effectively disagree.|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100130233229/http://www.americanhumanist.org/who_we_are/about_humanism/What_is_Humanism|archive-date=30 January 2010}}</ref>

=== Hedonism ===
{{main|Hedonism}}
Philosophical hedonism is a meta-ethical theory of value which argues that [[pleasure]] is the only [[intrinsic value (ethics)|intrinsic good]] and pain is the only intrinsic bad.<ref name="stanford">{{cite book|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/hedonism/|title=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|first=Andrew|last=Moore|chapter=Hedonism |editor-first=Edward N.|editor-last=Zalta|date=1 January 2013|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|via=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy}}</ref> The basic idea behind hedonistic thought is that pleasure (an umbrella term for all inherently likable emotions) is the only thing that is good in and of itself or by its very nature. This implies evaluating the moral worth of character or behavior according to the extent that the pleasure it produces exceeds the pain it entails.<!-- This last sentence was:  "The normative implications of this are evaluating character or behavior as morally good to the extent that one is concerned with pleasure/pain qua pleasure/pain or an action leads to a greater balance of pleasure over pain than any other would." -->

=== Libertinism ===
{{main|Libertine}}
A libertine is one devoid of most moral restraints, which are seen as unnecessary or undesirable, especially one who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour sanctified by the larger society.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thefreedictionary.com/libertine|title=libertine|via=The Free Dictionary}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=libertine|title=WordNet Search – 3.1|website=wordnetweb.princeton.edu}}</ref> Libertines place value on physical pleasures, meaning those experienced through the senses. As a philosophy, libertinism gained new-found adherents in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, particularly in [[France]] and [[Great Britain]]. Notable among these were [[John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester]] and the [[Marquis de Sade]]. During the [[Baroque era]] in France, there existed a [[Freethought|freethinking]] circle of philosophers and intellectuals who were collectively known as ''libertinage érudit'' and which included [[Gabriel Naudé]], [[Élie Diodati]] and [[François de La Mothe Le Vayer]].<ref>{{cite book|author=René Pintard|title=Le Libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IeL29wMqdbgC&pg=PA11|access-date=24 July 2012|year=2000|publisher=Slatkine|isbn=978-2-05-101818-0|page=11}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/fideism/|title=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|first=Richard|last=Amesbury|chapter=Fideism |editor-first=Edward N.|editor-last=Zalta|date=1 January 2016|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|via=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy}}</ref> The critic [[Vivian de Sola Pinto]] linked [[John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester]]'s libertinism to [[Hobbesian]] [[materialism]].<ref name=autogenerated2>{{Cite web|url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/02/20/specials/greene-monkey.html|title=A Martyr to Sin|website=archive.nytimes.com}}</ref>

=== Objectivism ===
{{main|Objectivism}}
Objectivism is a system of philosophy created by philosopher and novelist [[Ayn Rand]] which holds that [[reality]] exists independent of consciousness; human beings gain knowledge rationally from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive and deductive logic; the moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest.<ref>{{Cite web|title=What Is Objectivism? – The Objective Standard|url=https://theobjectivestandard.com/what-is-objectivism/|access-date=2021-07-08|website=theobjectivestandard.com}}</ref> Rand thinks the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure ''[[laissez-faire]]'' [[capitalism]]; and the role of [[art]] in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form{{snd}}a work of art{{snd}}that he can comprehend and to which he can respond emotionally. Objectivism celebrates man as his own hero, "with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."<ref>"About the Author" in {{cite book |last=Rand |first=Ayn |author-link=Ayn Rand |title=Atlas Shrugged |location=New York |publisher=Dutton |year=1992 |orig-date=1957 |edition=35th anniversary |isbn=978-0-525-94892-6 |title-link=Atlas Shrugged |pages=1170–1171}}</ref>

=== Philosophical anarchism ===
{{main|Philosophical anarchism}}
[[File:BenjaminTucker.jpg|thumb|[[Benjamin Tucker]], American individualist anarchist who focused on economics calling them anarchistic-socialism<ref>Tucker said, ''"the fact that one class of men are dependent for their living upon the sale of their labour, while another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labour by being legally privileged to sell something that is not labour . . . And to such a state of things I am as much opposed as any one. But the minute you remove privilege . . . every man will be a labourer exchanging with fellow-labourers . . . What Anarchistic-Socialism aims to abolish is usury . . . it wants to deprive capital of its reward." ''Benjamin Tucker. ''Instead of a Book'', p. 404</ref> and adhering to the [[Mutualism (economy)|mutualist]] economics of [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]] and [[Josiah Warren]]]]

Philosophical anarchism is an [[anarchist school of thought]]<ref>Wayne Gabardi, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1957102 review] of ''Anarchism'' by David Miller, published in ''American Political Science Review'' Vol. 80, No. 1. (Mar., 1986), pp. 300–302.</ref> which contends that the [[State (polity)|state]] lacks [[legitimacy (political)|moral legitimacy]]. In contrast to revolutionary anarchism, philosophical anarchism does not advocate violent revolution to eliminate it but advocates peaceful evolution to superate it.<ref>According to scholar [[Allan Antliff]], Benjamin Tucker coined the term "philosophical anarchism," to distinguish peaceful evolutionary anarchism from revolutionary variants. ''Antliff, Allan. 2001. [https://archive.org/details/anarchistmoderni0000antl Anarchist Modernism: Art, Politics, and the First American Avant-Garde]. University of Chicago Press. p. 4''</ref> Although philosophical anarchism does not necessarily imply any action or desire for the elimination of the state, philosophical anarchists do not believe that they have an obligation or duty to obey the state, or conversely that the state has a right to command.

Philosophical anarchism is a component especially of individualist anarchism.<ref>Outhwaite, William & Tourain, Alain (Eds.). (2003). Anarchism. The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought (2nd Edition, p. 12). Blackwell Publishing</ref> Philosophical anarchists of historical note include [[Mohandas Gandhi]], [[William Godwin]], [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]], [[Max Stirner]],<ref>Michael Freeden identifies four broad types of individualist anarchism. He says the first is the type associated with William Godwin that advocates [[self-government]] with a "progressive rationalism that included benevolence to others." The second type is the amoral self-serving rationality of [[Egotism|Egoism]], as most associated with Max Stirner. The third type is "found in [[Herbert Spencer]]'s early predictions, and in that of some of his disciples such as [[Wordsworth Donisthorpe|Donisthorpe]], foreseeing the redundancy of the state in the source of social evolution." The fourth type retains a moderated form of Egoism and accounts for social cooperation through the advocacy of market. Freeden, Michael. [https://books.google.com/books?id=ocS-zA5zwSYC ''Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach'']. Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-829414-X}}. pp. 313–314.</ref> [[Benjamin Tucker]]<ref>Tucker, Benjamin R., ''Instead of a Book, by a Man too Busy to Write One: A Fragmentary Exposition of Philosophical Anarchism'' (1897, New York)</ref> and [[Henry David Thoreau]].<ref>Broderick, John C. "Thoreau's Proposals for Legislation". ''American Quarterly'', Vol. 7, No. 3 (Autumn, 1955). p. 285</ref> Contemporary philosophical anarchists include [[A. John Simmons]] and [[Robert Paul Wolff]].

=== Subjectivism ===
{{main|Subjectivism}}
Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. In extreme forms such as solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on someone's subjective awareness of it. In the proposition 5.632 of the ''[[Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus]]'', [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]] wrote: "The subject doesn't belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world". Metaphysical subjectivism is the theory that reality is what we perceive to be real, and that there is no underlying true reality that exists independently of perception. One can also hold that it is [[consciousness]] rather than perception that is reality ([[subjective idealism]]). In [[probability]], a subjectivism stands for the belief that probabilities are simply degrees-of-belief by rational agents in a certain proposition and which have no objective reality in and of themselves.

[[Ethical subjectivism]] stands in opposition to [[moral realism]], which claims that moral propositions refer to objective facts, independent of human opinion; to [[error theory]], which denies that any moral propositions are true in any sense; and to [[non-cognitivism]], which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all. The most common forms of ethical subjectivism are also forms of [[moral relativism]], with moral standards held to be relative to each culture or society, i.e. [[cultural relativism]], or even to every individual. The latter view, as put forward by [[Protagoras]], holds that there are as many distinct scales of good and evil as there are subjects in the world. Moral subjectivism is that species of moral relativism that relativizes moral value to the individual subject.

[[Horst Matthai Quelle]] was a Spanish-language German anarchist philosopher influenced by [[Max Stirner]].<ref name="books.google.com.ec">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E6JFPiDRlikC&q=horst+matthai+el+humanismo+como+problema+humano&pg=PA345|title=Textos filosoficos (1989–1999)|first=Horst Matthai|last=Quelle|year= 2002|publisher=UABC|isbn=978-9709051322|via=Google Books}}</ref> Quelle argued that since the individual gives form to the world, he is those objects, the others and the whole universe.<ref name="books.google.com.ec"/> One of his main views was a "theory of infinite worlds" which for him was developed by [[Pre-Socratic philosophy|pre-socratic philosophers]].<ref name="books.google.com.ec"/>

==== Solipsism ====
{{main|Solipsism}}
Solipsism is the [[philosophical]] idea that only one's own [[mind]] is sure to exist. The term comes from [[Latin]] ''solus'' ("alone") and ''ipse'' ("self"). Solipsism as an [[epistemological]] position holds that [[knowledge]] of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. [[Philosophical skepticism|The external world]] and [[problem of other minds|other minds]] cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a [[Metaphysics|metaphysical]] position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. Solipsism is the only epistemological position that, by its own [[wikt:postulate#Pronunciation|postulate]], is both [[wikt:irrefutable#English|irrefutable]] and yet indefensible in the same manner. Although the number of individuals sincerely espousing solipsism has been small, it is not uncommon for one philosopher to accuse another's arguments of entailing solipsism as an unwanted consequence, in a kind of [[reductio ad absurdum]]. In the history of philosophy, solipsism has served as a [[skeptical hypothesis]].

== Economic individualism ==
The [[doctrine]] of economic individualism holds that each individual should be allowed [[autonomy]] in making their own economic decisions as opposed to those decisions being made by the community, the corporation or the state for him or her.

=== Classical liberalism ===
{{main|Classical liberalism}}
Liberalism is a political ideology that developed in the 19th century in the Americas, England, France and Western Europe. It followed earlier forms of liberalism in its commitment to personal freedom and popular government, but differed from earlier forms of liberalism in its commitment to [[classical economics]] and [[free market]]s.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sq-1z8VMhDEC&pg=PA37|title=Modern Political Philosophy|first=Richard|last=Hudelson|year= 1999|publisher=M.E. Sharpe|isbn=978-0765600219|via=Google Books}}</ref>

Notable liberals in the 19th century include [[Jean-Baptiste Say]], [[Thomas Malthus]] and [[David Ricardo]]. Classical liberalism, sometimes also used as a label to refer to all forms of liberalism before the 20th century, was revived in the 20th century by [[Ludwig von Mises]] and [[Friedrich Hayek]] and further developed by [[Milton Friedman]], [[Robert Nozick]], [[Loren Lomasky]] and [[Jan Narveson]].<ref>[[David Conway (academic)|David Conway]]. ''Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal.'' Palgrave Macmillan. 1998. {{ISBN|978-0-312-21932-1}} p. 8</ref>

=== Libertarianism ===
{{main|Libertarianism}}
{{libertarianism sidebar|concepts}}

Libertarianism upholds [[liberty]] as a core principle.<ref name="Boaz">{{cite encyclopedia|title=Libertarianism|url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/339321/libertarianism|encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica|author=Boaz, David|author-link=David Boaz|date=30 January 2009|access-date=21 February 2017|quote=[L]ibertarianism, political philosophy that takes individual liberty to be the primary political value.}}</ref> Libertarians seek to maximize [[autonomy]] and [[political freedom]], emphasizing [[Free association (Marxism and anarchism)|free association]], [[freedom of choice]], individualism and [[voluntary association]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Woodcock|first=George|title=Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements|orig-date=1962|year=2004|publisher=Broadview Press|location=Peterborough|isbn=978-1551116297|page=16|quote=[F]or the very nature of the libertarian attitude{{snd}}its rejection of dogma, its deliberate avoidance of rigidly systematic theory, and, above all, its stress on extreme freedom of choice and on the primacy of the individual judgement {{sic}}.|title-link=Anarchism (Woodcock book)}}</ref> Libertarianism shares a skepticism of [[Political authority|authority]] and [[State (polity)|state]] power, but libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing [[Economic system|economic]] and [[political system]]s. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private [[Power (social and political)|power]], often calling for the restriction or dissolution of coercive [[social institutions]]. Different categorizations have been used to distinguish various forms of libertarianism.<ref>Long, Joseph. W (1996). "Toward a Libertarian Theory of Class". ''Social Philosophy and Policy''. '''15''' (2): 310. "When I speak of 'libertarianism' [...] I mean all three of these very different movements. It might be protested that LibCap [libertarian capitalism], LibSoc [libertarian socialism] and LibPop [libertarian populism] are too different from one another to be treated as aspects of a single point of view. But they do share a common{{snd}}or at least an overlapping{{snd}}intellectual ancestry."</ref><ref>Carlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilburn R., ed. ''The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America''. London: Sage Publications. p. 1006. {{ISBN|978-1412988766}}. "There exist three major camps in libertarian thought: right-libertarianism, socialist libertariaism, and left-lbertarianism; the extent to which these represent distinct ideologies as opposed to variations on a theme is contrasted by scholars. Regardless, these factions differ most pronouncedly with respect to private property."</ref> This is done to distinguish libertarian views on the nature of [[Property rights (economics)|property]] and [[Capital (economics)|capital]], usually along [[Left-wing politics|left]]–[[Right-wing politics|right]] or [[socialist]]–[[capitalist]] lines.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Francis|first1=Mark|title=Human Rights and Libertarians|journal=[[Australian Journal of Politics & History]]|volume=29|issue=3|pages=462–472|date=December 1983|doi=10.1111/j.1467-8497.1983.tb00212.x|issn=0004-9522}}</ref>

==== Left-libertarianism ====
{{main|Left-libertarianism}}
Left-libertarianism represents several related yet distinct approaches to politics, society, culture and political and social theory which stress both individual and [[political freedom]] alongside [[social justice]]. Unlike right-libertarians, left-libertarians believe that neither claiming nor [[Labor theory of property|mixing one's labor]] with [[natural resources]] is enough to generate full [[private property]] rights,<ref name="WhyNotIncoherent">{{cite journal|last1=Vallentyne |first1=Peter |last2=Steiner |first2=Hillel |last3=Otsuka |first3=Michael |title=Why Left-Libertarianism Is Not Incoherent, Indeterminate, or Irrelevant: A Reply to Fried |journal=Philosophy and Public Affairs |volume=33 |issue=2 |pages=201–215 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing, Inc. |year=2005 |url=http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctymio/leftlibP&PA.pdf |access-date=2013-07-23 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121103160534/http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctymio/leftlibP%26PA.pdf |archive-date=2012-11-03 |doi=10.1111/j.1088-4963.2005.00030.x }}</ref><ref name="encyclolib">{{cite encyclopedia |last1=Narveson |first1= Jan|last2=Trenchard |first2= David |title= Left Libertarianism|author-link1= Jan Narveson|editor-first=Ronald |editor-last=Hamowy |editor-link=Ronald Hamowy |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC |year=2008 |publisher= [[SAGE Publishing|Sage]]; [[Cato Institute]] |location= Thousand Oaks, CA |doi=10.4135/9781412965811.n174 |isbn= 978-1412965804 |oclc=750831024| lccn = 2008009151 |pages=288–289 }}</ref> and maintain that natural resources (land, oil, gold, trees) ought to be held in some [[egalitarian]] manner, either unowned or [[owned collectively]].<ref name="encyclolib"/> Those left-libertarians who support property do so under different property norms<ref>Schnack, William (13 November 2015). [https://c4ss.org/content/41572 "Panarchy Flourishes Under Geo-Mutualism"]. Center for a Stateless Society. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180810111658/https://c4ss.org/content/41572|date=10 August 2018}}. Retrieved 10 August 2018.</ref><ref>Byas, Jason Lee (25 November 2015). [https://c4ss.org/content/41583 "The Moral Irrelevance of Rent"]. Center for a Stateless Society. Retrieved 21 March 2020.</ref><ref>Carson, Kevin (8 November 2015). [https://c4ss.org/content/40929 "Are We All Mutualists?"] Center for a Stateless Society. Retrieved 21 March 2020.</ref><ref>Gillis, William (29 November 2015). [https://c4ss.org/content/41653 "The Organic Emergence of Property from Reputation"]. Center for a Stateless Society. Retrieved 8 April 2020.</ref> and theories,<ref>{{cite thesis|last=Bylund|first=Per|year=2005|url=http://www.perbylund.com/academics_polsci_msc.pdf|title=Man and Matter: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Justification of Ownership in Land from the Basis of Self-Ownership|type=master's thesis|work=LUP Student Papers|publisher=Lund University|access-date=12 July 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=Land-locked: A Critique of Carson on Property Rights|last=Long|first=Roderick T.|author-link=Roderick T. Long|volume=20|issue=1|year=2006|pages=87–95|journal=[[Journal of Libertarian Studies]]|url=https://mises.org/journals/jls/20_1/20_1_6.pdf}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Verhaegh|first=Marcus|year=2006|title=Rothbard as a Political Philosopher|url=https://mises.org/journals/jls/20_4/20_4_1.pdf|journal=Journal of Libertarian Studies|volume=20|issue=4|page=3}}</ref> or under the condition that recompense is offered to the [[Local community|local]] or [[global community]].<ref name="encyclolib"/>

Related terms include ''[[egalitarian libertarianism]]'',<ref>Sundstrom, William A. (16 May 2002). [http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/sundstrom/Sundstrommanifesto.pdf "An Egalitarian-Libertarian Manifesto"]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029212045/http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/sundstrom/Sundstrommanifesto.pdf|date=29 October 2013}}.</ref><ref>Sullivan, Mark A. (July 2003). "Why the Georgist Movement Has Not Succeeded: A Personal Response to the Question Raised by Warren J. Samuels". ''[[American Journal of Economics and Sociology]]''. '''62''' (3): 612.</ref> ''[[left-wing libertarianism]]'',<ref name="Spitz">{{cite journal|url=https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_RAI_023_0023--left-wing-libertarianism-equality-based.htm|title=Left-wing libertarianism: equality based on self-ownership|last=Spitz|first=Jean-Fabien|journal=Raisons Politiques|date=March 2006|volume=23 |issue=3 |pages=23–46 |doi=10.3917/rai.023.0023 |access-date=28 November 2019}}</ref> ''[[libertarianism]]'',<ref>Bookchin, Murray (January 1986). [https://social-ecology.org/wp/1986/01/the-greening-of-politics-toward-a-new-kind-of-political-practice/ "The Greening of Politics: Toward a New Kind of Political Practice"]. ''Green Perspectives: Newsletter of the Green Program Project'' (1).</ref> ''[[libertarian socialism]]'',<ref name="Bookchin & Biehl 1997 p. 170">Bookchin, Murray; Biehl, Janet (1997). ''The Murray Bookchin Reader''. New York: Cassell. p. 170.</ref><ref name="Long 2012 p. 223">Long, Roderick T. (2012). "The Rise of Social Anarchism". In Gaus, Gerald F.; D'Agostino, Fred, eds. ''The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy''. p. 223.</ref> ''[[social libertarianism]]''<ref>Grunberg, Gérard; Schweisguth, Etienne; Boy, Daniel; [[Nonna Mayer|Mayer, Nonna]], eds. (1993). ''The French Voter Decides''. "Social Libertarianism and Economic Liberalism". University of Michigan Press. [https://books.google.com/books?id=IB2siz9e8AUC&dq=social+libertarianism&pg=PA45 p. 45]. {{ISBN|978-0-472-10438-3}}</ref> and ''[[socialist libertarianism]]''.<ref name="Carlson 2012 pp. 1006–1007">Carlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilbur R. ''The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: An Encyclopedia''. Sage Publications. pp. 1006–1007.</ref> Left-libertarianism can refer generally to these related and overlapping schools of thought:
* [[Anti-authoritarian]] varieties of [[left-wing politics]], in particular within the [[socialist movement]], usually known as libertarian socialism.<ref name="Bookchin & Biehl 1997 p. 170"/><ref name="Long 2012 p. 223"/>
* [[Geolibertarianism]], an American synthesis of [[Libertarianism in the United States|libertarianism]] and [[Georgism]].<ref>{{cite web|last=Foldvart|first=Fred E.|url=http://www.progress.org/archive/fold251.htm|url-status=dead|title=Geoism and Libertarianism|work=The Progress Report|publisher=Progress.org|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121104040047/http://www.progress.org/archive/fold251.htm|archive-date=4 November 2012|access-date=26 March 2013}}</ref><ref>DeCoster, Karen (19 April 2006). [http://archive.lewrockwell.com/decoster/henry-george-tariff.html "Henry George and the Tariff Question"]. [[LewRockwell.com]]. Retrieved 23 September 2020.</ref>
* [[Left-wing market anarchism]], stressing the socially transformative potential of non-aggression and [[anti-capitalist]] freed markets.<ref>Sheldon Richman (3 February 2011). [http://www.theamericanconservative.com/blog/libertarian-left/ "Libertarian Left: Free-market anti-capitalism, the unknown ideal"]. ''The American Conservative''. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190610075037/https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/libertarian-left/|date=10 June 2019}}. Retrieved 5 March 2012.</ref><ref>Chartier, Gary; Johnson, Charles W. (2011). ''Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty''. Brooklyn: Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. pp. 1–11. {{ISBN|978-1570272424}}.</ref>
* [[Steiner–Vallentyne school]], named after [[Hillel Steiner]] and [[Peter Vallentyne]], whose proponents draw conclusions from classical liberal or market liberal premises.<ref>{{cite book|author=Will Kymlicka |chapter=libertarianism, left-|editor=Ted Honderich |title=The Oxford Companion to Philosophy |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=New York |year=2005 }}</ref>

==== Right-libertarianism ====
{{main|Right-libertarianism}}
Right-libertarianism represents either non-[[Collectivism and individualism|collectivist]] forms of libertarianism<ref>Olsaretti, Serena (2004). [https://books.google.com/books?id=NZmGrPKu8BMC ''Liberty, Desert and the Market: A Philosophical Study'']. Cambridge University Press. pp. 14, 88, 100.</ref> or a variety of different libertarian views that scholars label to the right of libertarianism<ref>{{cite book|last1=Graham|first1=Paul|last2=Hoffman|first2=John|year= 2003|title=An Introduction to Political Theory|publisher=Routledge|page=93|isbn=978-1-3178-6342-7|quote=A distinction is made between right libertarianism and left libertarianism. Self-ownership is the starting point for all libertarians, but right and left libertarians divide over the implications for the ownership of external things from the self-ownership premise.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Vallentyne|first=Peter|year=2007|chapter=Libertarianism and the State|editor-last1=Frankel Paul|editor-first1=Ellen|editor-last2=Miller|editor-first2=Fred Jr.|editor-last3=Paul|editor-first3=Jeffrey|title=Liberalism: Old and New|volume=24|publisher=Cambridge University Press|pages=187–205|isbn=978-0-521-70305-5|quote=The best known form of libertarianism{{snd}}right-libertarianism{{snd}}is a version of classical liberalism, but there is also a form of libertarianism{{snd}}left-libertarianism{{snd}}that combines classical liberalism's concern for individual liberty with contemporary liberalism's robust concern for material equality.}}</ref> such as [[libertarian conservatism]].<ref>Heywood, Andrew (2015). ''Key Concepts in Politics and International Relations: Palgrave Key Concepts''. Macmillan International Higher Education. p. 37. {{ISBN|978-1-1374-9477-1}}.</ref> Related terms include ''[[conservative libertarianism]]'',<ref>Graber, Mark A. (1991). ''Transforming Free Speech: The Ambiguous Legacy of Civil Libertarianism''. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 18. {{ISBN|978-0520913134}}.</ref><ref>Narveson, Jan (2001). ''The Libertarian Idea'' (revised ed.). Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press. p. 8. {{ISBN|978-1551114217}}.</ref><ref>Passavent, Paul (2003). ''No Escape: Freedom of Speech and the Paradox of Rights''. New York: New York University Press. p. 49. {{ISBN|978-0814766965}}.</ref> ''[[libertarian capitalism]]''<ref>{{cite journal|title=The Fallacy of Libertarian Capitalism|last=Reiman|first=Jeffrey H.|year=2005|journal=Ethics|volume=10|issue=1|pages=85–95|doi=10.1086/292300|jstor=2380706|s2cid=170927490}}</ref> and ''[[right-wing libertarianism]]''.<ref name="Carlson 2012 pp. 1006–1007"/><ref>Goodway, David (2006). ''[[Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward]]''. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. [https://books.google.com/books?id=Fgya85u7S-4C&dq=anarcho-capitalism+right+libertarian&pg=PA4 p. 4]. "'Libertarian' and 'libertarianism' are frequently employed by anarchists as synonyms for 'anarchist' and 'anarchism', largely as an attempt to distance themselves from the negative connotations of 'anarchy' and its derivatives. The situation has been vastly complicated in recent decades with the rise of anarcho-capitalism, 'minimal statism' and an extreme right-wing laissez-faire philosophy advocated by such theorists as Rothbard and Nozick and their adoption of the words 'libertarian' and 'libertarianism'. It has therefore now become necessary to distinguish between their right libertarianism and the left libertarianism of the anarchist tradition".</ref><ref>Marshall, Peter (2008). ''[[Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism]]''. London: Harper Perennial. p. 565. "The problem with the term 'libertarian' is that it is now also used by the Right. [...] In its moderate form, right libertarianism embraces ''laissez-faire'' liberals like Robert Nozick who call for a minimal State, and in its extreme form, anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard and David Friedman who entirely repudiate the role of the State and look to the market as a means of ensuring social order".</ref> In the mid-20th century, right-libertarian ideologies such as [[anarcho-capitalism]] and [[minarchism]] co-opted<ref>Fernandez, Frank (2001). ''Cuban Anarchism. The History of a Movement''. Sharp Press. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130610014449/http://books.google.com/books?id=jKdztbIaHegC p. 9]. "Thus, in the United States, the once exceedingly useful term 'libertarian' has been hijacked by egotists who are in fact enemies of liberty in the full sense of the word."</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Rothbard|first1=Murray|url=https://cdn.mises.org/The%20Betrayal%20of%20the%20American%20Right_2.pdf|title=The Betrayal of the American Right|orig-date=2007|year=2009|publisher=Mises Institute|isbn=978-1610165013|page=83|quote=One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, 'our side,' had captured a crucial word from the enemy. 'Libertarians' had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over.}}</ref> the term ''libertarian'' to advocate ''[[laissez-faire]]'' [[capitalism]] and strong [[private property rights]] such as in land, infrastructure and natural resources.<ref>{{cite book|last=Hussain|first=Syed B.|title=Encyclopedia of Capitalism, Volume 2|year=2004|publisher=Facts on File Inc|location=New York|isbn=0816052247|page=492|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FbVZAAAAYAAJ|quote=In the modern world, political ideologies are largely defined by their attitude towards capitalism. Marxists want to overthrow it, liberals to curtail it extensively, conservatives to curtail it moderately. Those who maintain that capitalism is an excellent economic system, unfairly maligned, with little or no need for corrective government policy, are generally known as libertarians.}}</ref> The latter is the dominant form of [[libertarianism in the United States]],<ref name="Carlson 2012 pp. 1006–1007"/> where it advocates [[civil liberties]],<ref>Rothbard, Murray (1 March 1971). [https://mises.org/library/left-and-right-within-libertarianism "The Left and Right Within Libertarianism"]. ''WIN: Peace and Freedom Through Nonviolent Action''. '''7''' (4): 6–10. Retrieved 14 January 2020.</ref> [[natural law]],<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.libertarianism.org/encyclopedia/natural-law|title=Natural Law|last=Miller|first=Fred|encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism|date=15 August 2008|access-date=31 July 2019}}</ref> [[free-market capitalism]]<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/key-concepts-libertarianism|title=Key Concepts of Libertarianism|last=Boaz|first=David|date=12 April 2019|publisher=Cato Institute|access-date=20 December 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://theihs.org/who-we-are/what-is-libertarian/|title=What Is Libertarian|publisher=Institute for Humane Studies|access-date=20 December 2019}}</ref> and a major reversal of the modern [[welfare state]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Political Ideologies|last=Baradat|first=Leon P.|publisher=Routledge|year=2015|page=31|isbn=978-1317345558}}</ref>

=== Socialism ===
[[File:Emilearmand01.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Influential [[French individualist anarchist]] [[Émile Armand]]]]

With regard to economic questions within [[individualist socialist]] schools such as [[individualist anarchism]], there are adherents to [[Mutualism (economic theory)|mutualism]] ([[Pierre Joseph Proudhon]], [[Émile Armand]] and early [[Benjamin Tucker]]); [[natural rights]] positions (early Benjamin Tucker, [[Lysander Spooner]] and [[Josiah Warren]]); and egoistic disrespect for "ghosts" such as private property and markets (Max Stirner, [[John Henry Mackay]], [[Lev Chernyi]], later Benjamin Tucker, [[Renzo Novatore]] and [[illegalism]]). Contemporary individualist anarchist [[Kevin Carson]] characterizes American individualist anarchism saying that "[u]nlike the rest of the socialist movement, the individualist anarchists believed that the natural wage of labor in a free market was its product, and that economic exploitation could only take place when capitalists and landlords harnessed the power of the state in their interests. Thus, individualist anarchism was an alternative both to the increasing statism of the mainstream socialist movement, and to a classical liberal movement that was moving toward a mere apologetic for the power of big business."<ref>Kevin Carson. ''Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective''. Booksurge. 2008. p. 1</ref>

==== Libertarian socialism ====
{{main|Libertarian socialism}}
{{libertarian socialism sidebar}}

Libertarian socialism, sometimes dubbed left-libertarianism<ref>Bookchin, Murray and Janet Biehl. ''The Murray Bookchin Reader''. Cassell, 1997. p. 170 {{ISBN|0-304-33873-7}}</ref><ref>Hicks, Steven V. and Daniel E. Shannon. ''The American journal of economics and sociology''. Blackwell Pub, 2003. p. 612</ref> and socialist libertarianism,<ref>Miller, Wilbur R. (2012). ''The social history of crime and punishment in America. An encyclopedia.'' 5 vols. London: Sage Publications. p. 1007. {{ISBN|1412988764}}. "There exist three major camps in libertarian thought: right-libertarianism, socialist libertarianism, and ..."</ref> is an [[anti-authoritarian]], [[anti-statist]] and [[libertarian]]<ref>"It implies a classless and anti-authoritarian (i.e. libertarian) society in which people manage their own affairs" [http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionI1#sthash.40vnyElp.dpuf I.1 Isn't libertarian socialism an oxymoron?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171116212712/http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionI1#sthash.40vnyElp.dpuf|date=2017-11-16}} at An Anarchist FAQ</ref> tradition within the [[socialist movement]] that rejects the [[state socialist]] conception of [[socialism]] as a [[statist]] form where the [[State (polity)|state]] retains [[centralized]] [[State ownership|control of the economy]].<ref>"unlike other socialists, they tend to see (to various different degrees, depending on the thinker) to be skeptical of centralized state intervention as the solution to capitalist exploitation..." Roderick T. Long. "Toward a libertarian theory of class." ''Social Philosophy and Policy''. Volume 15. Issue 02. Summer 1998. p. 305</ref><ref name=":0">"So, libertarian socialism rejects the idea of state ownership and control of the economy, along with the state as such. Through workers' self-management it proposes to bring an end to authority, exploitation, and hierarchy in production." [http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionI1 "I1. Isn't libertarian socialism an oxymoron" in] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171116212712/http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionI1|date=2017-11-16}} An Anarchist FAQ</ref> Libertarian socialists criticize [[wage slavery]] relationships within the [[workplace]],<ref>"Therefore, rather than being an oxymoron, "libertarian socialism" indicates that true socialism must be libertarian and that a libertarian who is not a socialist is a phoney. As true socialists oppose wage labour, they must also oppose the state for the same reasons. Similarly, libertarians must oppose wage labour for the same reasons they must oppose the state." [http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionI1 "I1. Isn't libertarian socialism an oxymoron" in] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171116212712/http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionI1|date=2017-11-16}} An Anarchist FAQ</ref> emphasizing [[workers' self-management]] of the workplace<ref name=":0" /> and [[Libertarian socialist decentralization|decentralized]] structures of political organization.<ref>"Their analysis treats libertarian socialism as a form of anti-parliamentary, democratic, antibureaucratic grass roots socialist organisation, strongly linked to working class activism." Alex Prichard, Ruth Kinna, Saku Pinta and Dave Berry (eds) Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red. Palgrave Macmillan, December 2012. p. 13</ref><ref>" ...preferringa system of popular self governance via networks of decentralized, local voluntary, participatory, cooperative associations. Roderick T. Long. "Toward a libertarian theory of class." ''Social Philosophy and Policy''. Volume 15. Issue 02. Summer 1998. p. 305</ref><ref>"What is of particular interest here, however, is the appeal to a form of emancipation grounded in decentralized, cooperative and democratic forms of political and economic governance which most libertarian socialist visions, including Cole's, tend to share." Charles Masquelier. ''Critical theory and libertarian socialism: Realizing the political potential of critical social theory.'' [[Bloomsbury Publishing]]. New York and London. 2014. p. 189</ref>

Libertarian socialism asserts that a society based on freedom and justice can be achieved through abolishing [[authoritarian]] institutions that control certain [[means of production]] and subordinate the majority to an owning class or political and economic [[elite]].<ref>Mendes, Silva. ''Socialismo Libertário ou Anarchismo'' Vol. 1 (1896): "Society should be free through mankind's spontaneous federative affiliation to life, based on the community of land and tools of the trade; meaning: Anarchy will be equality by abolition of [[private property]] (while retaining respect for [[personal property]]) and [[liberty]] by abolition of [[authority]]".</ref> Libertarian socialists advocate for [[Decentralization#Libertarian socialist decentralization|decentralized]] structures based on [[direct democracy]] and [[Federalism#Federalism as the anarchist and libertarian socialist mode of political organization|federal]] or [[Confederation|confederal]] associations such as [[libertarian municipalism]], [[citizens' assemblies]], [[trade union]]s and [[workers' council]]s.<ref>"...preferring a system of popular self governance via networks of decentralized, local, voluntary, participatory, cooperative associations-sometimes as a complement to and check on state power..."</ref><ref>{{cite book | last=Rocker | first=Rudolf | title=Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice | page=65 | year=2004 | publisher=[[AK Press]] | isbn=978-1-902593-92-0 }}</ref>

All of this is generally done within a general call for [[Liberty#Socialism|liberty]]<ref>"LibSoc share with LibCap an aversion to any interference to freedom of thought, expression or choice of lifestyle." Roderick T. Long. "Toward a libertarian theory of class." ''Social Philosophy and Policy''. Volume 15. Issue 02. Summer 1998. pp 305</ref><ref>"...what categorizes libertarian socialism is a focus on forms of social organization to further the freedom of the individual combined with an advocacy of non-state means for achieving this." Matt Dawson. ''Late modernity, individualization and socialism: An Associational Critique of Neoliberalism.'' Palgrave MacMillan. 2013. p. 64</ref> and [[Free association (Marxism and anarchism)|free association]]<ref>"What is implied by the term 'libertarian socialism'?: The idea that socialism is first and foremost about freedom and therefore about overcoming the domination, repression, and alienation that block the free flow of human creativity, thought, and action...An approach to socialism that incorporates cultural revolution, women's and children's liberation, and the critique and transformation of daily life, as well as the more traditional concerns of socialist politics. A politics that is completely revolutionary because it seeks to transform all of reality. We do not think that capturing the economy and the state lead automatically to the transformation of the rest of social being, nor do we equate liberation with changing our life-styles and our heads. Capitalism is a total system that invades all areas of life: socialism must be the overcoming of capitalist reality in its entirety, or it is nothing." "What is Libertarian Socialism?" by Ulli Diemer. Volume 2, Number 1 (Summer 1997 issue) of ''The Red Menace''.</ref> through the identification, criticism and practical dismantling of illegitimate authority in all aspects of human life.<ref name="iaf-ifa.org">"The [[International of Anarchist Federations|IAF–IFA]] fights for : the abolition of all forms of authority whether economical, political, social, religious, cultural or sexual."[http://www.iaf-ifa.org/principles/english.html "Principles of The International of Anarchist Federations"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120105095946/http://www.iaf-ifa.org/principles/english.html|date=January 5, 2012}}</ref><ref name="Ward 1966">{{cite web |url=http://www.panarchy.org/ward/organization.1966.html|last=Ward|first=Colin|year=1966|title=Anarchism as a Theory of Organization|access-date=1 March 2010| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100325081119/http://www.panarchy.org/ward/organization.1966.html| archive-date= 25 March 2010<!--Added by DASHBot-->}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title = The Soviet Union Versus Socialism|url = http://chomsky.info/1986____/|website = chomsky.info|access-date = 2015-11-22|quote = Libertarian socialism, furthermore, does not limit its aims to democratic control by producers over production, but seeks to abolish all forms of domination and hierarchy in every aspect of social and personal life, an unending struggle, since progress in achieving a more just society will lead to new insight and understanding of forms of oppression that may be concealed in traditional practice and consciousness.}}</ref><ref>"Authority is defined in terms of the right to exercise social control (as explored in the "sociology of power") and the correlative duty to obey (as explred in the "philosophy of practical reason"). Anarchism is distinguished, philosophically, by its scepticism towards such moral relations – by its questioning of the claims made for such normative power – and, practically, by its challenge to those "authoritative" powers which cannot justify their claims and which are therefore deemed illegitimate or without moral foundation."[https://books.google.com/books?id=kkj5i3CeGbQC ''Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism'' by Paul McLaughlin. AshGate. 2007. p. 1]</ref><ref name="ReferenceB">"Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations." [[Emma Goldman]]. "What it Really Stands for Anarchy" in ''[[Anarchism and Other Essays]]''.</ref><ref>Individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker defined anarchism as opposition to authority as follows "They found that they must turn either to the right or to the left, – follow either the path of Authority or the path of Liberty. Marx went one way; Warren and Proudhon the other. Thus were born State Socialism and Anarchism...Authority, takes many shapes, but, broadly speaking, her enemies divide themselves into three classes: first, those who abhor her both as a means and as an end of progress, opposing her openly, avowedly, sincerely, consistently, universally; second, those who profess to believe in her as a means of progress, but who accept her only so far as they think she will subserve their own selfish interests, denying her and her blessings to the rest of the world; third, those who distrust her as a means of progress, believing in her only as an end to be obtained by first trampling upon, violating, and outraging her. These three phases of opposition to Liberty are met in almost every sphere of thought and human activity. Good representatives of the first are seen in the Catholic Church and the Russian autocracy; of the second, in the Protestant Church and the Manchester school of politics and political economy; of the third, in the atheism of Gambetta and the socialism of Karl Marx." [[Benjamin Tucker]]. [http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=2803 ''Individual Liberty.'']</ref><ref>Anarchist historian [[George Woodcock]] report of [[Mikhail Bakunin]]'s anti-authoritarianism and shows opposition to both state and non-state forms of authority as follows: "All anarchists deny authority; many of them fight against it." (p. 9)...Bakunin did not convert the League's central committee to his full program, but he did persuade them to accept a remarkably radical recommendation to the Berne Congress of September 1868, demanding economic equality and implicitly attacking authority in both Church and State."</ref><ref name="Brown 2002 106">{{cite book |last=Brown |first=L. Susan |chapter=Anarchism as a Political Philosophy of Existential Individualism: Implications for Feminism |title=The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism and Anarchism |publisher=Black Rose Books Ltd. Publishing |year= 2002 |page=106}}</ref> Within the larger socialist movement, libertarian socialism seeks to distinguish itself from [[Leninism]] and [[social democracy]].<ref>"It is forgotten that the early defenders of commercial society like [[Adam Smith|(Adam) Smith]] were as much concerned with criticising the associational blocks to mobile labour represented by [[guilds]] as they were to the activities of the state. The [[History of socialism|history of socialist thought]] includes a long associational and anti-statist tradition prior to the political victory of the [[Bolshevism]] in the east and varieties of [[Fabianism]] in the west. John O'Neil." ''The Market: Ethics, knowledge and politics''. Routledge. 1998. p. 3</ref><ref>"In some ways, it is perhaps fair to say that if Left communism is an intellectual- political formation, it is so, first and foremost, negatively – as opposed to other socialist traditions. I have labelled this negative pole 'socialist orthodoxy', composed of both Leninists and social democrats...What I suggested was that these Left communist thinkers differentiated their own understandings of communism from a strand of socialism that came to follow a largely electoral road in the West, pursuing a kind of social capitalism, and a path to socialism that predominated in the peripheral and semi- peripheral countries, which sought revolutionary conquest of power and led to something like state capitalism. Generally, the Left communist thinkers were to find these paths locked within the horizons of capitalism (the law of value, money, private property, class, the state), and they were to characterize these solutions as statist, substitutionist and authoritarian." Chamsy el- Ojeili. ''Beyond post-socialism. Dialogues with the far-left.'' Palgrave Macmillan. 2015. p. 8</ref>

Past and present currents and movements commonly described as libertarian socialist include [[anarchism]] (especially [[anarchist schools of thought]] such as [[anarcho-communism]], [[anarcho-syndicalism]],<ref>{{cite book|last=Sims|first=Franwa|title=The Anacostia Diaries As It Is|publisher=Lulu Press|year=2006|page=160}}</ref> [[collectivist anarchism]], [[green anarchism]], [[individualist anarchism]],<ref>''An Anarchist FAQ''. "[[Benjamin Tucker|(Benjamin) Tucker]] referred to himself many times as a socialist and considered his philosophy to be "Anarchistic socialism."</ref><ref>[[Émile Armand|Armand, Émile]] (1907). [http://www.spaz.org/~dan/individualist-anarchist/library/emile-armand/life-activity.html "Anarchist Individualism as a Life and Activity"]. French individualist anarchist Émile Armand shows clearly opposition to capitalism and centralized economies when he said that the individualist anarchist "inwardly he remains refractory – fatally refractory – morally, intellectually, economically (The capitalist economy and the directed economy, the speculators and the fabricators of single are equally repugnant to him.)"</ref><ref>Sabatini, Peter (1994–1995). [http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Peter_Sabatini__Libertarianism__Bogus_Anarchy.html "Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy"]. Anarchist Peter Sabatini reports that in the United States "of early to mid-19th century, there appeared an array of communal and "utopian" counterculture groups (including the so-called free love movement). William Godwin's anarchism exerted an ideological influence on some of this, but more so the socialism of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. After success of his British venture, Owen himself established a cooperative community within the United States at New Harmony, Indiana during 1825. One member of this commune was Josiah Warren (1798–1874), considered to be the first individualist anarchist."</ref><ref>Chartier, Gary; Johnson, Charles W. (2011). ''Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty''. Brooklyn: Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. Back cover. "It introduces an eye-opening approach to radical social thought, rooted equally in libertarian socialism and market anarchism."</ref> [[Mutualism (economic theory)|mutualism]],<ref>[http://www.mutualist.org/id32.html "A Mutualist FAQ: A.4. Are Mutualists Socialists?"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090609075437/http://www.mutualist.org/id32.html|date=9 June 2009}}.</ref> and [[social anarchism]]) as well as [[Communalism (Bookchin)|communalism]], some forms of [[democratic socialism]], [[guild socialism]],<ref>Masquelier, Charles (2014). ''Critical Theory and Libertarian Socialism: Realizing the Political Potential of Critical Social Theory''. New York and London: [[Bloomsbury Publishing]]. p. 190. "It is by meeting such a twofold requirement that the libertarian socialism of G.D.H. Cole could be said to offer timely and sustainable avenues for the institutionalization of the liberal value of autonomy [...]."</ref> libertarian Marxism<ref>Prichard, Alex; Kinna, Ruth; Pinta, Saku; Berry, Dave, eds. (December 2012). ''Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red''. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 13. "Locating libertarian socialism in a grey area between anarchist and Marxist extremes, they argue that the multiple experiences of historical convergence remain inspirational and that, through these examples, the hope of socialist transformation survives."</ref> ([[autonomism]], [[council communism]],<ref>Boraman, Toby (December 2012). "Carnival and Class: Anarchism and Councilism in Australasia during the 1970s". In Prichard, Alex; Kinna, Ruth; Pinta, Saku; Berry, Dave, eds. ''Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red''. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 268. "Councilism and anarchism loosely merged into 'libertarian socialism', offering a non-dogmatic path by which both council communism and anarchism could be updated for the changed conditions of the time, and for the new forms of proletarian resistance to these new conditions."</ref> [[left communism]], and [[Luxemburgism]], among others),<ref name="Bookchin 1992">Bookchin, Murray (1992). [https://www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/Docs/CX6988-BookchinGhost.htm "The Ghost of Anarcho-Syndicalism"].</ref><ref name="Graham 2005">[[Robert Graham (historian)|Graham, Robert]]. [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/robert-graham-the-general-idea-of-proudhon-s-revolution "The General Idea of Proudhon's Revolution"].</ref> participism, [[revolutionary syndicalism]] and some versions of [[utopian socialism]].<ref name="Bromley 1906">Bromley, Kent (1906). "Preface". In Kropotkin, Peter. ''The Conquest of Bread''. London and New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.</ref>

==== Mutualism ====
{{main|Mutualism (economic theory)}}

Mutualism is an [[anarchist school of thought]] which can be traced to the writings of [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]], who envisioned a socialist society where each person possess a [[means of production]], either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the [[free market]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.mutualist.org/|title=Mutualist.Org: Free Market Anti-Capitalism|website=www.mutualist.org}}</ref> Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank which would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate only high enough to cover the costs of administration.<ref>Miller, David. 1987. "Mutualism." The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought. Blackwell Publishing. p. 11</ref> Mutualism is based on a [[labor theory of value]] which holds that when labor or its product is sold, it ought to receive goods or services in exchange embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility" and that receiving anything less would be considered exploitation, theft of labor, or [[usury]].<ref>Tandy, Francis D., 1896, ''[[Voluntary Socialism]]'', chapter 6, paragraph 15.</ref>

== Criticisms ==
The [[ancient Greece|Greek]] philosopher [[Plato]] emphasized that individuals must adhere to laws and perform duties while declining to grant individuals rights to limit or reject state interference in their lives.<ref>Sharma, R.N. (1991). Plato: An Inter-disciplinary Perspective. New Delhi, India: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors. pp. 131–132.</ref>

German philosopher [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]] criticized individualism by claiming that human self-consciousness relies on recognition from others, therefore embracing a [[holism|holistic]] view and rejecting the idea of the world as a collection of atomized individuals.<ref>"Hegel" by Charles Taylor, Part II: Phenomenology: IV The Dialectic of Consciousness, V Self-Consciousness</ref><ref>"Social and Political Recognition" by Paddy McQueen</ref>

Fascists believe that the liberal emphasis on individual freedom produces national divisiveness.<ref>Marvin Perry, Myrna Chase, Margaret Jacob, James R. Jacob. Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society – From 1600, Volume 2. 9th ed. Boston, Massaschussetts: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2009 pp. 760</ref>

[[Pope Francis]] criticised a "me"-centred form of individualism in his 2015 [[encyclical letter]] ''[[Laudato si']]'':{{quote|Men and women of our [[Postmodernity|postmodern]] world run the risk of rampant individualism, and many problems of society are connected with today's self-centred culture of instant gratification.<ref name=ls>Pope Francis, [https://www.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en.pdf Laudato si'], paragraph 162, published 24 May 2015, accessed 18 April 2024</ref>}}As an example he comments on parents who "can be prone to impulsive and wasteful consumption, which then affects their children who find it increasingly difficult to [[home#Tenure|acquire a home]] of their own and build a family."<ref name= ls/>

== Other views ==
=== As creative independent lifestyle ===
[[File:Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony. Three-quarter-length photograph, seated.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.7|[[Oscar Wilde]], famous [[Irish people|Irish]] [[socialist]] writer of the [[decadent movement]] and famous [[dandy]]]]
The anarchist<ref>"The most ambitious contribution to literary anarchism during the 1890s was undoubtedly Oscar Wilde ''The Soul of Man under Socialism''. Wilde, as we have seen, declared himself an anarchist on at least one occasion during the 1890s, and he greatly admired [[Peter Kropotkin]], whom he had met. Later, in ''De Profundis'', he described Kropotkin's life as one "of the most perfect lives I have come across in my own experience" and talked of him as "a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ that seems coming out of Russia." But in ''The Soul of Man under Socialism'', which appeared in 1890, it is Godwin rather than Kropotkin whose influence seems dominant." George Woodcock. ''Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements.'' 1962. (p. 447).</ref> writer and [[Bohemianism|bohemian]] [[Oscar Wilde]] wrote in his famous essay ''[[The Soul of Man under Socialism]]'' that "Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine."<ref name="flag.blackened.net"/> For anarchist historian [[George Woodcock]], "Wilde's aim in ''The Soul of Man under Socialism'' is to seek the society most favorable to the artist, [...] for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated. [...] Wilde represents the anarchist as [[aesthete]]."<ref name="Anarchism 1962. p. 447"/> In this way, ''individualism'' has been used to denote a personality with a strong tendency towards self-creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors.<ref name="thefreedictionary.com"/><ref name="Bohemia: The Underworld of Art"/>

Anarchist writer [[Murray Bookchin]] describes a lot of individualist anarchists as people who "expressed their opposition in uniquely personal forms, especially in fiery tracts, outrageous behavior, and aberrant lifestyles in the cultural ghettos of fin de siècle New York, Paris, and London. As a credo, individualist anarchism remained largely a bohemian lifestyle, most conspicuous in its demands for sexual freedom ('[[free love]]') and enamored of innovations in art, behavior, and clothing."<ref name="bohemian individualism"/>

In relation to this view of individuality, French individualist anarchist [[Émile Armand]] advocated [[ethical egoism|egoistical]] denial of social conventions and dogmas to live in accord to one's own ways and desires in daily life since he emphasized anarchism as a way of life and practice. In this way, he opined that "the anarchist individualist tends to reproduce himself, to perpetuate his spirit in other individuals who will share his views and who will make it possible for a state of affairs to be established from which authoritarianism has been banished. It is this desire, this will, not only to live, but also to reproduce oneself, which we shall call 'activity.{{'}}"<ref name="lifeactivity">{{cite web|url=http://www.spaz.org/~dan/individualist-anarchist/library/emile-armand/life-activity.html|title=Emil Armand "Anarchist Individualism as a Life and Activity"|last=_wlo:dek}}</ref>

In the book ''Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism'', humanist philosopher [[Tzvetan Todorov]] identifies individualism as an important current of socio-political thought within modernity and as examples of it he mentions [[Michel de Montaigne]], [[François de La Rochefoucauld (writer)|François de La Rochefoucauld]], [[Marquis de Sade]], and [[Charles Baudelaire]].<ref name="Princeton University Press 2002">''Imperfect garden : the legacy of humanism''. Princeton University Press. 2002.</ref> In La Rochefoucauld, he identifies a tendency similar to [[stoicism]] in which "the honest person works his being in the manner of a sculptor who searches the liberation of the forms which are inside a block of marble, to extract the truth of that matter."<ref name="Princeton University Press 2002"/> In Baudelaire, he finds the [[dandy]] trait in which one searches to cultivate "the idea of beauty within oneself, of satisfying one's passions of feeling and thinking."<ref name="Princeton University Press 2002"/>

The Russian-American poet [[Joseph Brodsky]] once wrote that "[t]he surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even{{snd}}if you will{{snd}}eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://quotes.dictionary.com/The_surest_defense_against_Evil_is_extreme_individualism |title=Dictionary.com|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101119120030/http://quotes.dictionary.com/The_surest_defense_against_Evil_is_extreme_individualism |archive-date=2010-11-19 }}</ref> [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] famously declared that "[w]hoso would be a man must be a nonconformist"{{snd}}a point of view developed at length in both the life and work of [[Henry David Thoreau]]. Equally memorable and influential on [[Walt Whitman]] is Emerson's idea that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines". Emerson opposed on principle the reliance on civil and religious social structures precisely because through them the individual approaches the divine second-hand, mediated by the once original experience of a genius from another age. According to Emerson, "[an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man." To achieve this original relation, Emerson stated that one must "[i]nsist on one's self; never imitate", for if the relationship is secondary the connection is lost.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://iep.utm.edu/ralph-waldo-emerson/|title=Emerson, Ralph Waldo &#124; Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy}}</ref>

=== Religion ===
People in Western countries tend to be more individualistic than communitarian. The authors of one study<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.science.org/content/article/how-early-christian-church-gave-birth-today-s-weird-europeans|title=How the early Christian church gave birth to today's WEIRD Europeans|website=www.science.org}}</ref> proposed that this difference is due in part to the influence of the [[Catholic Church]] in the Middle Ages. They pointed specifically to its bans on [[incest]], [[cousin marriage]], [[adoption]], and [[remarriage]], and its promotion of the [[nuclear family]] over the [[extended family]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/11/07/777276474/western-individualism-may-have-roots-in-the-medieval-churchs-obsession-with-ince|title=Western Individualism May Have Roots In The Medieval Church's Obsession With Incest|first=Rhitu|last=Chatterjee|date=November 7, 2019|website=NPR}}</ref>

The Catholic Church teaches "if we pray the Our Father sincerely, we leave individualism behind, because the love that we receive frees us ... our divisions and oppositions have to be overcome".<ref>[https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p4s2a2.htm#2792 "Catechism of the Catholic Church 2792"].</ref> Many Catholics have believed [[Martin Luther]] and the [[Protestant Reformation]] were sources of individualism.<ref name="Chalamet Delikostantis Getcha Parmentier 2021 p. 187">{{cite book | last1=Chalamet | first1=C. | last2=Delikostantis | first2=K. | last3=Getcha | first3=J. | last4=Parmentier | first4=E. | title=Theological Anthropology, 500 Years after Martin Luther: Orthodox and Protestant Perspectives | publisher=Brill | series=Studies in Systematic Theology | year=2021 | isbn=978-90-04-46125-3 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EIs5EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA187 | access-date=2023-05-06 | page=187}}</ref>

== See also ==
{{Portal|Philosophy}}
{{Columns-list|colwidth=22em|
* [[Anti-individualism]]
* [[Individualist feminism]]
* [[Individualistic culture]]
* [[Market fundamentalism]]
* [[Muhammad Iqbal's concept of Khudi]]
* [[Natural and legal rights]]
* [[Negative and positive rights]]
* [[Non-aggression principle]]
* [[Personalism]]
* [[Self-help]]
* [[Self-interest]]
* [[Self-sustainability]]
* [[Social issue]]
* [[Voluntaryism]]
}}

== References ==
{{Reflist|30em}}

== Further reading ==
* Albrecht, James M. (2012) ''Reconstructing Individualism : A Pragmatic Tradition from Emerson to Ellison''. Fordham University Press.
* {{cite book |author=Brown, L. Susan |title=The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism, and Anarchism|year=1993|publisher=Black Rose Books|author-link=L. Susan Brown|title-link=The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism, and Anarchism}}
* [[John Dewey|Dewey, John]]. (1930). ''[[Individualism Old and New]]''.
* {{cite book |author=Emerson, Ralph Waldo |title=Self-Reliance|year=1847|publisher=London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. |author-link=Ralph Waldo Emerson}}
* Gagnier, Regenia. (2010). ''Individualism, Decadence and Globalization: On the Relationship of Part to Whole, 1859–1920''. [[Palgrave Macmillan]].
* {{cite book |author=Dumont, Louis |title=Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective |url=https://archive.org/details/essaysonindividu00dumo|url-access=registration|year=1986 |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |location=Chicago |isbn=0-226-16958-8|author-link=Louis Dumont }}
* {{cite book |author=Siedentop, Larry |title=Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism |date=2014 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=9780141009544 |language=en |url=https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/106410/inventing-the-individual-by-larry-siedentop/9780141009544 |author-link=Larry Siedentop}}
* {{cite book |author=Lukes, Steven |title=Individualism |url=https://archive.org/details/individualism0000luke|url-access=registration|year=1973 |publisher=[[HarperCollins|Harper & Row]] |location=New York |isbn=0-631-14750-0|author-link=Steven Lukes }}
* [[C. B. Macpherson|Macpherson, C.B.]] (2018). Individualism. In: ''[[The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics]]''. Palgrave Macmillan, London
* [[Ellen Meiksins Wood|Meiksins Wood, Ellen]]. (1972). ''Mind and Politics: An Approach to the Meaning of Liberal and Socialist Individualism''. [[University of California Press]]. {{ISBN|0-520-02029-4}}
* {{cite book |author=Renaut, Alain |title=The Era of the Individual|year=1999 |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |location=Princeton, NJ |isbn=0-691-02938-5|author-link=}}
* Shanahan, Daniel. (1991) ''Toward a Genealogy of Individualism''. Amherst, MA: [[University of Massachusetts Press]]. {{ISBN|0-87023-811-6}}.
* [[Ian Watt|Watt, Ian]]. (1996) ''Myths of Modern Individualism.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-48011-6}}.
* [[Gad Barzilai|Barzilai, Gad]]. (2003). ''Communities and Law.'' Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. {{ISBN|0-472-11315-1}}.

{{political spectrum}}
{{political ideologies}}
{{Libertarianism}}
{{Social and political philosophy}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Individualism| ]]
[[Category:Libertarian theory]]