Libertarianism is primarily an American political theory, though it has adherents in Western Europe. At its simplest it is an extreme form of Liberalism lacking most of the moral overtones of traditional Liberalism. A libertarian believes that radical individual freedom and complete self-reliance is the most desirable of political states, and should be used as the yardstick against which to judge actual social systems and their restrictions on freedom. Libertarianism is not anarchism, mainly because it accepts the need for a state, whereas anarchism propounds regulation by peer-group or other non-state pressure and libertarians want individuals to be genuinely free and independent, not simply free from a coercive state. Anarchism often imagines high degrees of voluntary collectivism—libertarians imagine any collective action as purely contractual and based on coincidence of sheer self-interest.
The libertarian believes in something usually called a ‘minimal state’ where only a very few crucial matters need to be, or morally can be, dealt with by the state, and the state’s power to coerce financial or other contributions towards such provision is severely limited. Probably the only services easily accepted as suitable for the state are internal and external security provision—the police and the army. Even emergency-service provision like that of fire brigades is often seen as something best left to private insurance. Absolutely no intervention in an individual’s free choice on the ground that it is in his interest could be accepted—libertarians commonly criticize legislation restricting the use of drugs, for example. Needless to say, no tax-based provision of welfare services can be countenanced by a libertarian, to whom the sanctity of private property is the core value. The starting point for libertarian thought is the idea that there is no way of legitimizing the rule of one person over another except by his consent, and that such consent must be specifically limited to situations where it is in the objective interest of the consenter to accept very specific orders from the ruler.
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