Libertarian socialism is a political tradition that argues real freedom requires both personal liberty and democratic control over the economic institutions that shape our lives.
Think of it as the inverse of corporate libertarianism: it is skeptical of state power *and* of concentrated private power. One of its best-known modern advocates is Noam Chomsky, along with earlier thinkers like Mikhail Bakunin and Emma Goldman.
At its core, libertarian socialists believe:
Real freedom is impossible without economic democracy. If your survival depends on obeying a boss you didn’t choose, that’s not genuine liberty.
Workers should control their workplaces through cooperatives, unions, and democratic management.
Communities should govern themselves through participatory institutions, not distant state bureaucracies.
Both the state and corporations are potential tyrannies and must be restrained by democratic control from below.
Markets may exist in limited forms, but basic needs (housing, healthcare, energy, transit, information) should not be run for profit.
Chomsky often summarizes it this way: political democracy without economic democracy is an empty shell. You’re “free” to vote, but not free to shape the institutions that dominate most of your waking life.
So why have few heard the term “libertarian socialist”?
There are three main reasons:
1. The word “libertarian” was politically captured.
Originally, “libertarian” meant anti-authoritarian and was widely used by anarchists and socialists in Europe. In the U.S., it was later rebranded by pro-corporate ideologues to mean “unregulated capitalism.” That created the false impression that libertarianism and socialism are opposites, when historically they were linked.
2. Cold War propaganda collapsed all socialism into authoritarianism.
During the Cold War, U.S. media and education systems taught people that “socialism = state control = dictatorship.” That erased traditions like anarchism, council communism, syndicalism, and libertarian socialism from public memory.
3. It threatens both major power centers.
Libertarian socialism challenges:
-the corporate elite by demanding worker ownership and limits on profit power, and
-the authoritarian state by rejecting top-down rule.
Because it threatens both, it lacks powerful institutional sponsors. No billionaire class promotes it. No state ideology protects it. So it remains marginal in mainstream discourse.
Essentially, corporate libertarianism says: “The state is tyranny, markets are freedom.”
State socialism says: “The state will plan everything for you.”
Libertarian socialism says: “Neither bosses nor bureaucrats should rule. People should govern themselves—at work, in communities, and in society at large.”
That combination is exactly why it’s rarely discussed. It doesn’t fit into the standard left–right theater. It aims directly at the deepest source of unfreedom in modern life: unaccountable concentrated power, whether public or private.
Tim Hjersted is the director and co-founder of Films For Action, a library dedicated to the people and movements creating a more free, regenerative and democratic society.
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