What on earth does “Left Libertarian”/"Left Rothbardian " mean?
Different kind of things to different people. Sometimes normative, sometimes descriptive, sometimes within libertarianism, sometimes outside, sometimes relating to political philosophy, sometimes to social philosophy.
To me, it means that the person being described by the term does not believe that all rights and freedoms start with the right of private property or self ownership, or believe that self ownership and the ownership of possessions should be limited by some third party.
I think I know some who would regard themselves as ‘left-libertarians’ and who would disagree with this statement. 
Not saying you are wrong; only saying that the term isn’t as well defined (yet).
The term Libertarian or libertarian is almost completly ambiguous. Some lefties call themselves Libertarians because the original use of the term as I understand it was a term to describe people with progressive leanings. But over the years it has been defined and redefined as much as the terms conservative and liberal.
Is Rush Limbaugh a conservative? He belives in some ideas of classical liberalism. So is he a Liberal? How about a Libertarian? What about Glen Beck? is he any or all of these things.
Libertarian, Conservative, Liberal and to a lesser extent Progressive are just lables used to group people.
The most insane one of these is that the wackjob in Arizona has been cast as anti-government right winger when his own writings have him labeled as a Progressive.
It means you can criticize the “wrong kind of libertarianism” that attracts “the wrong kind of thinking” and look better to “the right (i.e. left) kind of people” without saying much. It also means you get to invent a lot of cool new important sounding Greek/Latin words like “agorism” and act more in tune within Universalist type social signaling. All and all it is a pretty sweet deal.
I can recognize “left libertarian” (ex Noam Chomsky), but what the heck is a left Rothbardian?
Left-libertarians are libertarians that are generally unfamiliar with basic economic theory. If you asked a left-libertarian to identify the major and underlying theme of his ideology, he would probably say something along the lines of, “left-libertarians unequivocally oppose all hierarchies and any asymmetries in bargaining power.”
Again, some of the asymmetries that he would point to aren’t actually asymmetries at all (such as the employer-employee relationship), but the point is that he opposes all such asymmetries and hierarchies even if they emerged naturally and have proven themselves to be efficient social institutions. Never mind the fact that some degree of hierarchy and asymmetry is absolutely inevitable, and any attempt to forcefully eliminate it must necessarily yield inefficient social outcomes.
I’ve never met a left libertarian saying something like that, tbh. I know there are a few on this website; have they identified themselves with ideas like that?
“left-libertarians unequivocally oppose all hierarchies and any asymmetries in bargaining power.”
And this is a huge deal, because there is simply not much meaning in this phrase. And if it is said within a very specific context, I have yet to know what context that is. So many of their words are utterly confusing (just look at how many “hyphenated anarchies” there are) on any analytic or scientific level, and this may be somewhat intentional.
Left Rothbardian is a person, subscribes to the theory Rothbard had two Natures. One left-wing most strongly manifest in the 1960s, the other right-wing most strongly manifest in the 1990s. Takes the Left-Wing Nature of Rothbard as its totem, but is careful to maintain distance to the later Right-Wing Nature of Rothbard.
Esuric, that’s interesting, because I come from an entirely different background from those “left libertarians”.
I was never an anti-establishment type or an anti-state type, and I don’t feel much of one even today. The only thing that slowly converted me was the law of unintended consequences, which established how many benevolent and well-intentioned public actions backfire. I learnt about this law when I was 14, from various economics books I read like Economics In One Lesson (and since 2005, I kept reading more).
So while you have “left libertarians” who are simply anti-authoritarian, I was one who never questioned the character of people in power or thought them to be bad people. I simply felt that their actions backfired, always, and never ever worked.
In his attempt to disseminate his ideals, Rothbard allied himself with various fields within the political field so long as they were congruent with this views. During the 1960’s, Rothbard allied himself with what he called ‘The New Left’ which was a group of individuals mainly composed of leftists who had strain of libertarian thought specifically in their outlook toward foreign relations. They weren’t great in the sense of their domestic views but Rothbard largely agreed with their reluctance to accept American imperialism and American exceptionalism on the foreign stage. They usually showed their distrust of the state through mass acts of civil disobedience which again Rothbard respected. So to be called a “Left Rothbardian” is to be an individual who is more tolerable/accepting of leftists into the libertarian fold. Like many who try to convert conservatives into accepting more liberty through the elimination of the state and the elimination of American imperialism ( the toughest aspect of discussing politics with a conservative ), left Rothbardians try to do such a thing with leftists in the domestic realm.
Well it all really depends who you ask…
A lot of “Left Libertarians” are like Noam Chomsky; they’re anti free-market and anti-property rights.
Then there are pro-free-market “Left Libertarians”… Some are actually consistent whilst others have strange wishy-washy ideas like mutualism (or even anarcho-syndicalism). I think a lot of them create a false distinction between their market-anarchism and our anarcho-capitalism. A lot of it is just semantics. They seem to be trying to make libertarianism more appealing to anarcho-syndicalists by saying they are against capitalism.
Example: http://c4ss.org/content/4043
However there are some who very consistent in their defense of property and markets. Sheldon Richman is a great writer who has very cogent articals on corporatism and political capitalism. Check him out.
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/tgif/is-freedom-a-radical-idea/
It just seems like it’s all semantics and people falling over themselves so that they can show off the label “leftist” by saying they don’t like racism or sexism and like workers.
Well Left-Libertarianism has a few meanings.
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A kind of socialism which is anti-state .Very Similiar if not undistingushable to Anarchism e.g. Chomsky.
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A spectrum of views by libertarians who incorporate traditionally left wing concerns.In my view, it sees the links between libertarianism and leftism.It is pure and consistent libertarianism devoid of the false capitalism/socialism paradigm and devoid of rightwing/corporatist/pro establishment vulgarism.To use Gary Chartier’s phrase, “It is socialist ends by free market means”.
Left-Libertarianism is not a set philosophy or even a single philosophy like An-cap ,it’s a range of views with rather blurry boundaries. Left- libertarianism ranges from roughly Left-Rothbardianism (which I’ll explain below) , Agorism to things like Mutualism, Libertarian Socialism,Anarcho-Socialism,Anarcho-Communism etc.
Left -Rothbard.
It too has two meanings.
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Coming from Samuel Konkin describes someone who sees themself as more ‘left’ or to the left of Rothbard.Konkin applied it to himself.
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Left-Libertarians who take inspiration from Rothbard’s left-leaning days in the 60’s when he wrote the Left and the Right before he moved towards the LP party and Paleoism.They see Rothbard as split between left/right periods with no clear period of shift inbetween.Some somewhat agree with this but see Rothbard as a Opportunist.It varies quite a bit.This view is rather different from the LVMI version.
I used to be one of these but am gradually moving away from it as I find Rothbard’s left-leaning position not deep enough for me and find attraction to Mutualism and traditional kinds of Anarcho-Socialism such as Anarcho-Syndicalism.
“such as the employer-employee relationship),”
How is that not?
“proven themselves to be efficient social institutions.”
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If true,irrelevant.
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It’s relation to statism would need to be made clear to check it is not based on statism.
I’m an Audiophile-Libertarian. I seek to have good audio equipment YET I also support a free market.
When somebody calls themself a “left libertarian” or a “left Rothbardian,” that usually means that they are trying to combine some leftist views with libertarianism and/or Rothbardianism. The “leftists” are often trying to smuggle in support for labor unions or even some of the bigoted beliefs of anti-male feminists (I remember reading a “left-libertarian” article about a year or so ago actually trying to defend the feminist writer who claimed that “all men are rapists”; what is even more disturbing is that the author, if I remember correctly, was male). Another thing they often do is attack corporations and attempt to claim that corporations are incompatible with libertarianism (they also seem to have a pathological hatred for the word “capitalism”).
The so-called “left Rothbardians” are not Rothbardians. Yes, they claim to agree with 1960s/1970s Rothbard, but Rothbard in that era was no friend of labor unions nor was he any friend of the man-hating feminists (see his book Egalitarianism, which features an essay written in the early 1970s refuting and ridiculing the “women’s liberation” movement). Yes, Rothbard moved rightward in the 1990s, but the main areas where his views changed were immigration and a question regarding the use of government property. Rothbard was never supportive of the feminist movement or the environmentalist movement, nor did he ever support labor unions. Rothbard was certainly not anti-corporation either, although he was against corporations receiving government privilege. Nor will you find anything written by Rothbard attacking the word capitalism or claiming to be a socialist.
More than anything, this “left-libertarianism” seems to me to be a strategy to try to sell libertarianism to communists, especially to communists who pretend to be “anarchists,” especially the “vandarchists,” as Stephen Kinsella accurately labeled that group of common criminals that think that breaking windows is “anarchist.”
The other group of “left-libertarians” are the New Hampshire “Free Staters” who seem to think that vandalizing sidewalks (and possibly a War of Northern Aggression monument, although they haven’t been proven to have done that) and exposing themselves to buses of schoolchildren (both of these things have reportedly happened during 2010 from the “Free Keene” group) are effective ways to advance the libertarian cause.