Liberalism, Libertarianism and Neoliberalism in the Context of Economic Anarchy

The three political philosophies of libertarianism, liberalism and neoliberalism all have the common intentions of advocacy for individual liberty socially and economically in which freedom of expression and the strong opposition to an individual acting in any way within society that is against their own will and values (be that relating to the protection of their own needs, supporting and involving themselves with their community, the situations of political corruption, or to further allow them to gain influence within society, along with many other reasons). In spite of this, these philosophies do tend to clash, the main cause of this being due to the varying attitudes towards the state. This is shown with liberals considering it to be the states responsibility to support the people's interests, and for this to be assisted by democratic values within society, libertarianism to relate to the direction of society by the people with complete individual and collective liberty and limited involvement by the state, and neoliberalism being an economic philosophy in which the markets are separate from the state advocating for deregulation, the free market and the promotion of capitalism, with greater freedom to maximise business owners' own gains due to limited intervention. 

As a result, the key ideas observed with the libertarian and neoliberal philosophies can prove to be of importance in paving the way for economic anarchy with this also proving to have been deeply rooted in past and present imperial and neo-colonial relations between nations, with these largely stemming from a capitalist economic structure (one which supports the exploitation and imbalance in power between the workers and those in positions of power in a business). This is considered to have taken place in a way akin to peace having influenced the formation of a stable democratic government, albeit with completely opposite intentions (Powell, 2009). Anarchy, as in the operation of society without influence by a state thus eliminating its corruption of power and putting this directly into the hands of the people, would thus prove to be clearly in line with some of the ideas observed with neoliberal and libertarian philosophies, and so prove that anarchy can be observed across the full breadth of the political spectrum as opposed to being primarily associated with the far left. If anything, this is likely to be even more evident with a more right wing society when observing this form of economic anarchy, in that the reduced regulation of the treatment of the workers so as to provide increased freedom to exploit them by the capitalist business owners, the changes to wealth distribution, and the lack of value placed on the workers' own rights, is unlikely to be favoured by a more socialist society. Socialist forms of anarchy tend to be drastically different in their functioning with their key intentions being to reduce hierarchy and corruption of power by those of higher economic status, and provide complete equality of opportunities. This is evident through a capitalist society appearing to put greater emphasis on supporting the priorities of those of greater economic status, particularly those that own business and take full advantage of economic liberalism so as to use this to greater support their own needs. This presents strong advocacy for a hierarchical economic system functioning in such a way that "wants should be provided for in the order of their importance" (Bye, 1944) 

Social economy (as in the belief that the workforce are seen as more than machines and means of production, and the key aims of a successful economy being to promote greater social security, improved provision of infrastructure, and the subsequent success of this economy being evident through the improved wellbeing of the population), which would also be considered a more socialist principle, would also likely not be favoured by these neoliberal and right-wing libertarian anarchists. This supposedly more successful economy is modelled by the "four leaf clover" model of social economy (Golob, 2008) shown below presenting the four core factors influencing the success of an economy being reciprocal to and directly influencing each other.

Equally, the view of communism being anti-liberalism and seen by conservative liberals advocating collectivism and the hierarchical economic system (in which certain individuals have greater influence than others and so gain increased freedom within the markets) as something hindering a supposedly "free" world, or, as put by Murray Rothbard in his "The Real Agressor", considered that "people may prefer death to communism", would prove to be contradictory when observing the previous points. This would be due to, despite individuals and markets being supposedly sovereign and able to act on their own will and support themselves, libertarian and neoliberal anarchy in favour of this perspective would likely see very little social and economic freedom. This would clearly present the crossing of paths between libertarianism and neoliberalism when developing anarchic systems to somewhat support individual liberty and greater freedom within society, yet this only being able to be observed for certain groups particularly those in positions of power, and to act as poor and limited evidence for the success and development of a free economy. After all, as put by Murray Rothbard, people "might prefer life under Communism to death in a "free world" cemetery" with communism not necessarily being synonymous with this form of anarchy, and this supposed liberalism to be ironically more oppressive.

References:

Van der Vossen, B (2017) Libertarianism- chapter from Oxford Research Encyclopedia of  Politics (pp. 1-8) by Thomson, W (2017). Chapman University Digital Commons. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.86

Lazell, M (2016), Liberalism and the Critical Securitization of Development Debate in Globalizations Vol. 13, No. 4, 361-376, Routledge, DOI: https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/14747731.2015.1111656

Rothbard, M.N Are Libertarians Anarchists? https:www.rothbard.it/articles/libertarians-anarchists.pdf

Rothbard, M (1954) The Real Aggressor in Faith and Freedom 5(8)

Levy, C (1999) Max Weber, Anarchism and Libertarian Culture: Personality and Power Politics In Max Weber and the culture of anarchy (pp. 83-109). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Powell, R (2009) Anarchy in international relations theory: the neorealist-neoliberal debate. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300028204

Golob, U et al (2008) Social economy and social responsibility: alternatives to global anarchy of neoliberalism? International Journal of Social Economics 36(5) DOI 10.1108/03068290910954068