Bickley, “What Sort of Libertarian Am I?”

Writing at the Libertarian Alliance, Alan Bickley responds to a radical-right Counter-Currents essay defending “conservative socialism,” which argues that conservatives can’t defend both tradition and capitalism. Bickley accepts part of the diagnosis. He dislikes big corporations and enforced conformity, and he is conservative by temperament. But he rejects the remedy, a bigger State with a racial mission. Free exchange is not the problem, he argues. Booms and busts come from credit manipulation, and big business owes its dominance to State privileges: regulation, patents, monopolies, government procurement. He defends unlimited technological progress and says traditions should survive only through voluntary practice. He would abolish privileges first and let the welfare state shrink afterward.

He ends up calling himself a “radical liberal of the old sort,” in the line of Adam Smith, Hodgskin, Cobden and Bright, Auberon Herbert, and Benjamin Tucker, rather than an anarcho-capitalist, left-libertarian, or paleolibertarian.

I agree with much of this, especially on patents and on the State as the real threat to tradition. But I don’t accept that limited liability is a State-granted privilege. That is a long-running and friendly disagreement I’ve had with Sean Gabb and others in the LA orbit; see my PFS 2013 talk and other posts in the Related list below.

From Alan Bickley, “What Sort of Libertarian Am I?” Libertarian Alliance (Nov. 14, 2026):

A few days ago, I read a long essay on a website of the radical right that argued for something its author called “conservative socialism.” It leaned heavily on Alain de Benoist, and through him on the French writer Jean-Claude Michéa, and its thesis was easy enough to state. The modern conservative, it said, wants to defend tradition and capitalism at the same time, and cannot, because capitalism is the most destructive force ever set against tradition. The modern Left wants to fight capitalism in the name of progress, and cannot, because progress is the ideology of capitalism. The way out was a socialism of limits, rooted in nation and custom, which the author thought workable only in a white ethnostate. He ended by saying that the proper name for his position might be fascism, which he thought “quite perfect” except that nobody now knows what it means.

I should have found the whole thing easy to dismiss, and the conclusion I did dismiss. What troubled me was that I agreed with a fair amount of the diagnosis. I dislike the large corporation. I dislike the soft, smiling conformity of the human resources department, and the way that firms which owe their size to the State lecture the rest of us on virtue. I am, so far as my tastes go, rather conservative. At the same time, I believe in free markets without apology, and I believe in scientific and technological progress without any limit that I can name. On the author’s map, those commitments ought not to sit together in one head. Either he is wrong about the map, or I am confused. I have spent some time since deciding which, and this essay is the result.

The question I found myself asking was the one in my title. Libertarians are fond of labels, and we have accumulated a great many of them: anarcho-capitalist, minarchist, paleolibertarian, left-libertarian, bleeding-heart libertarian, thick and thin libertarian, and others I have forgotten or never learned. The word itself has had an odd history. It began as a term of metaphysics, meaning someone who believed in free will as against necessity, and it was only in the middle of the last century, in America, that it was taken up by people who wanted a name for classical liberalism once the word liberal had been captured by its enemies. Labels of this kind are useful only so far as they tell you what someone believes and why. I shall therefore begin with what I believe, and come to the label at the end.

First Principles

My starting point is old and simple. The State should leave people alone unless they are using force or fraud against others. Within that limit, adults should be free to work, trade, worship, write, drink, marry, associate and dissociate as they please, and to make fools of themselves if they choose. I do not think this needs elaborate justification. The burden of proof lies on anyone who wants to stop me doing something that harms nobody else, and it is a burden that the modern State seldom even tries to carry.

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Related

Labels and Terminology

• Kinsella, “What Kind of Libertarian Are You?” StephanKinsella.com (July 8, 2009) — Bickley’s title question, asked about Tyler Cowen’s five types of libertarian; I argue the taxonomy is muddled and that many Cato-style “libertarian” positions depart from principle.
• Kinsella, “What Libertarianism Is,” StephanKinsella.com (Aug. 1, 2009) — Libertarianism is defined by its rules for assigning property rights, not by labels like “capitalism” or “free market,” which are too narrow. Also why a consistent libertarian is an anarchist.
• Kinsella, “The Origin of ‘Libertarian’,” StephanKinsella.com (Sept. 10, 2011) — The “odd history” Bickley mentions: the modern political use dates to the 1950s, with Leonard Read’s FEE circle and Dean Russell’s 1955 proposal to adopt the word, though earlier uses go back at least to 1802.
  • Kinsella, “Rothbard on Leonard Read and the Origins of ‘Libertarianism’,” StephanKinsella.com (Nov. 17, 2014) — Rothbard’s 1983 Libertarian Forum obituary of Read credits him with claiming the name for the movement. Also notes a political use of the word as early as 1796.
• Kinsella, “What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist,” LewRockwell.com (Jan. 20, 2004) — One of the labels Bickley declines. Anarchism is an ethical position, not a prediction that anarchy will work, and since the State necessarily aggresses, a consistent opponent of aggression has to oppose it.
• Kinsella, “Libertarianism After Fifty Years: What Have We Learned?” StephanKinsella.com (Oct. 21, 2014) — My NYC LibertyFest speech. It names thick/thin and left/right as unresolved divisions among libertarians and argues that libertarianism is a radical doctrine distinct from both Left and Right, close to Bickley’s “radical liberal of the old sort.”
• Kinsella, “Call for Papers: Special Issue of the JLS: “Whither Libertarianism?”” StephanKinsella.com (Nov. 2, 2026) — A Journal of Libertarian Studies special issue, guest-edited by Per Bylund, on where libertarianism is headed. Topics include thick vs. thin and alliances with the New Right or the left, the same factional questions Bickley raises.

Capitalism, Socialism, and the Word “Capitalism”

• Kinsella, “Capitalism, Socialism, and Libertarianism,” StephanKinsella.com (April 16, 2010) — The fight over the word “capitalism” is mostly semantic and tactical. Libertarians should use it to mean private ownership of the means of production and reject corporatism. Directly on point for the Counter-Currents essay’s capitalism-versus-tradition framing.
• Kinsella, “Should Libertarians Oppose ‘Capitalism’?” StephanKinsella.com (March 3, 2010) — Sheldon Richman argued that libertarians should drop “capitalism” because the word connotes the historical collusion between business and the State. I disagreed, siding with Bryan Caplan, and Sheldon joined the debate in the comments.
• Juan Fernando Carpio, “Four questions for ‘anti-capitalist’ libertarians (Carpio)/Is Capitalism Something Good? (Richman) (2010),” The Libertarian Standard (April 21, 2010), reposted at StephanKinsella.com (Jan. 6, 2022) — Carpio challenges libertarians who want to abandon the word. The debate centers on Richman’s FEE article “Is Capitalism Something Good?”
• Kinsella, “The new libertarianism: anti-capitalist and socialist; or: I prefer Hazlitt’s ‘Cooperatism’,” StephanKinsella.com (June 19, 2009) — My reply to Kevin Carson’s call for libertarians to embrace “socialism,” the left-libertarian cousin of the Counter-Currents author’s “conservative socialism.” Socialism means collective control of production. If I had to pick a new label, I’d take Hazlitt’s “cooperatism.”

Hoppe’s Realistic Libertarianism

• Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “A Realistic Libertarianism,” LewRockwell.com (Sept. 30, 2014), reprinted in Hoppe, Getting Libertarianism Right (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2018) — Hoppe’s case that libertarianism has to be realistic about natural human inequality, which is why it has more in common with the right than with the egalitarian left. A useful counterpoint to Bickley’s “conservative tastes, radical politics” and his rejection of the paleo label.
  • “PFP128 | Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Realistic Libertarianism as Right-Libertarianism (PFS 2014),” Property and Freedom Podcast (May 19, 2022) — Hoppe’s PFS 2014 talk on the same theme.
  • Kinsella, “Classic Hoppe on the Realistic Right vs. the Egalitarian Left,” Property and Freedom Society (June 9, 2026) — My recent look at one of my favorite Hoppe pieces: the right is realistic about human inequality, the left is not, and that is why libertarians naturally lean right.

Thick vs. Thin

• Kinsella, “The Limits of Libertarianism?: A Dissenting View,” StephanKinsella.com (April 20, 2014) — Libertarianism is a political philosophy about aggression, not a complete social philosophy, and the thick/thin paradigm is neither coherent nor useful. So there is no tension between conservative tastes and libertarian politics.
• Kinsella, “Wombatron’s ‘Why I Am A Left-Libertarian’,” StephanKinsella.com (Dec. 1, 2009) — Against the claim that libertarianism is at bottom a leftist philosophy; “thick” and left-libertarianism blur the non-aggression principle with other values.
• Kinsella, “The ‘Liberty Is Your Only Value’ Canard,” StephanKinsella.com (April 29, 2025) — Liberty is not our only value, but it is the one libertarianism is about. Thickists and “humanitarian” critics who say otherwise often end up condoning aggression.
• Walter Block vs. Roderick Long on Thick vs. Thin Libertarianism, YouTube (Sept. 2, 2015) — The thick/thin debate argued out by a leading “thin” libertarian (Block) and a leading “thick” one (Long). Bickley lists “thick and thin” among the labels he finds unhelpful.

Corporations, Limited Liability, and My Friendly Disagreement with Sean Gabb

• Kinsella, “The Role of the Corporation and Limited Liability In a Free Society” (PFS 2013), Property and Freedom Society (Dec. 2, 2013) — My PFS 2013 talk arguing that the corporation and limited liability are compatible with a free society. The Q&A includes exchanges with Sean Gabb, who also wrote up notes on the speech.
• Kinsella, “Sean Gabb’s Thoughts on Limited Liability,” Mises Wire (Sept. 26, 2006) — An early round of my friendly disagreement with Sean. Holding shareholders liable for employees’ torts requires a real causal connection, and the only plausible candidate is their power to elect directors.
• Kinsella, “Mercadente, The Illiberal Nature of Limited Liability: A Libertarian Critique,” StephanKinsella.com (March 29, 2025) — My reply to Bryan Mercadente’s Libertarian Alliance critique of limited liability, which makes much the same argument Bickley does. A shareholder’s liability should turn on actual control and causal role, not on the State’s label “owner.” Sean posted a version of my reply at the LA.
• Kinsella, “Libertarian Answer Man: Do Corporations have “Privileges”?” StephanKinsella.com (May 13, 2026) — A direct answer to Bickley’s claim. Limited liability is not a “privilege,” because shareholders shouldn’t be liable for others’ torts in the first place.
• Kinsella, “Left-Libertarianism on Corporations and Limited Liability,” StephanKinsella.com (Jan. 24, 2011) — My reply to Thomas Knapp and other C4SS left-libertarians, who make the left-libertarian version of Bickley’s claim. They never show why passive shareholders should be vicariously liable for employees’ torts.
• Kinsella, “Corporate Personhood, Limited Liability, and Double Taxation,” StephanKinsella.com (Oct. 18, 2011) — The corporate features critics call State privileges (legal personhood, perpetual existence, limited liability) can all arise by contract. The State should stop chartering corporations, which would also end double taxation.
• Kinsella, “Libertarian Answer Man: Legal Entities and Corporations in a Free Society,” StephanKinsella.com (Feb. 29, 2024) — How firms, trusts, and other entities could form in a private-law society without State registration. Liability turns on causation and responsibility, and contract, reputation, and insurance can reproduce the corporate form.
• Kinsella, “How Corporate America Went Full Left,” Property and Freedom Society (May 19, 2026) — Why big business allied with the left: for power and protection, not compassion. This is common ground with Bickley’s complaint about State-fattened firms lecturing the rest of us on virtue.
• “KOL465: Sheldon Richman on Corporations, Limited Liability, Price Controls, Thickism, Abortion, Pipes,” Kinsella on Liberty Podcast (May 17, 2025) — A friendly discussion with Sheldon Richman covering two of the issues here: the corporate form and limited liability, and thick vs. thin.

See also posts tagged thickism, left-libertarianism, corporations, and limited liability.