Libertarian Movement (Italy)
Encyclopedia
The term Movimento Libertario (Libertarian Movement) refers to a political party and a cultural movement organisation based in Italy characterized by a libertarianism
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...

 cultural and political platform: minimal regulation of Italian society, liberism
Liberism
Liberism is a term for the economic doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism first used in English by the Italian-American political scientist Giovanni Sartori....

 of the markets, strong defense of natural rights of liberty and property, non-interventionism
Non-interventionism
Nonintervention or non-interventionism is a foreign policy which holds that political rulers should avoid alliances with other nations, but still retain diplomacy, and avoid all wars not related to direct self-defense...

 in foreign policy, and laissez-faire
Laissez-faire
In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....

 freedom of trade and travel to all foreign countries.

History

The Movimento Libertario was originally an Italian cultural association for the dissemination of libertarianism
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...

. It began on September 24, 2005, in Treviglio
Treviglio
Treviglio is a town and comune in the province of Bergamo, in Lombardy, northern Italy. It lies 20 km south of the capital city, in the lower territory called "Bassa" marked by the Adda and the Serio rivers....

 with the writing of the "Manifesto and Constitution of the Movimento Libertario" by Leonardo Facco. The Movimento Libertario became also an Italian political subject when it was officially founded in September 2007 by Leonardo Facco, Giorgio Fidenato
Giorgio Fidenato
Giorgio Fidenato is an Italian libertarian farmer, co-founder and coordinator of the Movimento Libertario and secretary of Futuragra a cultural association of Pordenone for technological innovation, business culture, defense of private property and free markets in agriculture.He is also president...

 and Marcello Mazzilli, to defend life, liberty and property of each individual within a strong liberist system of free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...

, against any kind of aggression and/or coercion. The Association has its registered office in the Municipality of Pordenone
Pordenone
Pordenone is a comune of Pordenone province of northeast Italy in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region.The name comes from the Latin "Portus Naonis" meaning the port on the river Noncello - History :...

.

The Movimento Libertario has as its symbol a round disk with a yellow-gold background in reference to the gold standard
Gold standard
The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed mass of gold. There are distinct kinds of gold standard...

 and also to its membership in the anarcho-capitalist movement. The symbol is part of the assets of the association.

The term movimento libertario in Italian language has a dual meaning.
Historically, it first generally refers to the Italian anarchism and European anarchist movements (libertarism) with social anarchist inspirations. The anarchist socialist tradition uses the term "libertarism" to describe themselves and their ideas since 1857. The French anarchist communist
Anarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...

 Joseph Déjacque
Joseph Déjacque
Joseph Déjacque was a French anarcho-communist poet and writer. He sought to abolish "personal property, property in land, buildings, workshops, shops, property in anything that is an instrument of work, production or consumption."Déjacque was the first to employ the term libertarian in a...

 employed the term libertario in a political sense in an open letter criticizing Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...

.

Italian libertarians of the Movimento Libertario use the Italian anarchic term libertario not to refer to European ideas and methods of traditional anarchism, but to refer to the concepts of principles of market liberalism
Market liberalism
The term market liberalism is used in two distinct meanings.Especially in the United States, the term is often used as a synonym to classical liberalism...

, introduced in Italy by Bruno Leoni
Bruno Leoni
Bruno Leoni was an Italian classical-liberal political philosopher and lawyer.Besides being editor for the political science journal Il Politico, Leoni was also involved as secretary and later president of the Mont Pelerin Society...

. They want also to remark and increase the cultural distance from Italian and European conception of liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

, that in the 20th century appeared as democratic liberalism
Democratic liberalism
Not to be confused with liberal democracy, democratic liberalism aims to reach a synthesis of democracy which is the participation of the people in the power, and the rational liberalism, which declines the emotional populism....

 forms of statism. Italian libertarians of the ML often prefer to define themselves as libertarians libertari but with adjective connotative of anarcho-capitalists, to distinguish themselves as pro-market supporters from the libertarians socialists or the traditional anarchists.

Traditional and collectivists Italian anarchists, they judge the ML as not a real anarchist movement, but they think that rather is a ploy of the classic liberal elite and middle class to increase social inequality. They also consider that the term libertario or at least inappropriate for the nature of the movement within the Italian historical context.

Cultural association

The Movimento Libertario, as cultural association intends to be an Italian promoter of the spread of classical liberalism
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....

 and libertarian vision in policy, free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...

 and economic liberalism
Economic liberalism
Economic liberalism is the ideological belief in giving all people economic freedom, and as such granting people with more basis to control their own lives and make their own mistakes. It is an economic philosophy that supports and promotes individual liberty and choice in economic matters and...

 in economy.Their motto is: "Everyone is free to do what he thinks is right for himself, without attacking anyone, and without attacking the property rights of others".The movement's members believe that policy is especially spread of freedom as economic freedom
Economic freedom
Economic freedom is a term used in economic and policy debates. As with freedom generally, there are various definitions, but no universally accepted concept of economic freedom...

 culture: meetings, debates, on the web, and with conferences and publications

Inspiration

The Movimento Libertario is politically inspired by the classical liberalism of John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...

 and the Founding Fathers of the United States
Founding Fathers of the United States
The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were political leaders and statesmen who participated in the American Revolution by signing the United States Declaration of Independence, taking part in the American Revolutionary War, establishing the United States Constitution, or by some...

 conjugated to 19th-century American individualist anarchist
Individualist anarchism in the United States
Individualist anarchism in the United States was strongly influenced by Josiah Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lysander Spooner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Herbert SpencerHenry David Thoreau...

 strand of Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...

, Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...

 and Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner was an American individualist anarchist, political philosopher, Deist, abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the U.S...

.

In economy it is inspired on lessons of the Austrian school
Austrian School
The Austrian School of economics is a heterodox school of economic thought. It advocates methodological individualism in interpreting economic developments , the theory that money is non-neutral, the theory that the capital structure of economies consists of heterogeneous goods that have...

 and in particular to the theoretic formulation of the philosopher and economist libertarian anarcho-capitalist Murray N. Rothbard.
The actions in favor of tax resistance, free entrepreneurship and political non-voting also recall the agorist reflections by Samuel Edward Konkin III
Samuel Edward Konkin III
Samuel Edward Konkin III was the author of the New Libertarian Manifesto and a proponent of the political philosophy which he called agorism. Agorism is a leftward evolution of anarcho-capitalism, and subset of market anarchism...

 although the Movimento Libertario does not officially identify itself in programmatic positions and spectrum of the American left-libertarians.

Movimento Libertario also includes some aspects from the American model of liberty theorized by Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia , a right-libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice...

 (minarchism
Minarchism
Minarchism has been variously defined by sources. It is a libertarian capitalist political philosophy. In the strictest sense, it maintains that the state is necessary and that its only legitimate function is the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud, and...

) and the Objectivism
Objectivism (Ayn Rand)
Objectivism is a philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand . Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception...

 philosophy described in novels by Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....

. The Movimento Libertario refers to freedom of association
Freedom of association
Freedom of association is the individual right to come together with other individuals and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests....

 of the anarchic federalism, anarcho-capitalist free market society and to the Jeffersonian limited government of classical liberalism.
The term "federalism
Federalism
Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and...

" as it is used by the Movimento Libertario, in a sense to be in favor of a political of decentralization
Decentralization
__FORCETOC__Decentralization or decentralisation is the process of dispersing decision-making governance closer to the people and/or citizens. It includes the dispersal of administration or governance in sectors or areas like engineering, management science, political science, political economy,...

 and for a real local fiscality against the centralism of the national Italian State.

The Movimento Libertario is an anti-federalist organization about the Europe; it is against the federal European Union government, preferring the voluntary accession and the unanimity of a Confederation
Confederation
A confederation in modern political terms is a permanent union of political units for common action in relation to other units. Usually created by treaty but often later adopting a common constitution, confederations tend to be established for dealing with critical issues such as defense, foreign...

.
Historians Italian thinkers of reference for the Movimento Libertario in economy and policy include Ferdinando Galiani
Ferdinando Galiani
Ferdinando Galiani was an Italian economist, a leading Italian figure of the Enlightenment. Friedrich Nietzsche called him the "most fastidious and refined intelligence" of the 18th century....

, Cesare Beccaria, Filippo Mazzei, Emerico Amari
Emerico Amari
Emerico Amari was a Sicilian jurist and a pioneer of comparative law.Although of Sicilian aristocratic origin, Amari was a liberal thinker...

, Carlo Cattaneo
Carlo Cattaneo
Carlo Cattaneo was an Italian philosopher, writer and patriot.-Biography:Cattaneo was born in Milan; he died in Castagnola, close to Lugano in the Swiss canton of Ticino, where he had spent the last twenty years of his life in exile.A republican in his convictions, during his youth he had taken...

, Gaetano Mosca
Gaetano Mosca
Gaetano Mosca was an Italian political scientist, journalist and public servant. He is credited with developing the Theory of Elitism and the doctrine of the Political class and is one of the three members constituting the Italian School of Elitists together with Vilfredo Pareto and Robert...

, Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto , born Wilfried Fritz Pareto, was an Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist and philosopher. He made several important contributions to economics, particularly in the study of income distribution and in the analysis of individuals' choices....

, Luigi Einaudi
Luigi Einaudi
Luigi Einaudi , Cavaliere di Gran Croce decorato di Gran Cordone OMRI was an Italian politician and economist. He served as the second President of the Italian Republic between 1948 and 1955.-Early life:...

, Bruno Leoni, Gianfranco Miglio
Gianfranco Miglio
thumb|Gianfranco Miglio School Centre in [[Adro]].Gianfranco Miglio was an Italian jurist, political scientist and politician, founder of the Partito Federalista. For 30 years, he presided over the Political science Faculty of Milan's Università Cattolica...

.

Publications

The Movimento Libertario periodically publish two magazines: I Fogli di Enclave and the magazine Enclave which give space to various political issues, cultural, social and economic libertarians Italian and international.In Scientific Committee of Enclave magazine belong: Walter Block
Walter Block
Walter Edward Block is a free market economist and anarcho-capitalist associated with the Austrian School of economics.-Personal history and education:...

, David D. Friedman
David D. Friedman
David Director Friedman is an American economist, author, and Right-libertarian theorist. He is known as a leader in anarcho-capitalist political theory, which is the subject of his most popular book, The Machinery of Freedom...

, Hans Hermann Hoppe, John Hospers
John Hospers
John Hospers was an American philosopher. In 1972 he was the first presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, and the only minor party candidate to receive an electoral vote in the 1972 U.S. Presidential election....

, Antonio Martino
Antonio Martino
Antonio Martino is an Italian politician, who has been Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1994 and Italian Minister of Defense from 2001 to 2006. He is a founding member of Forza Italia, holding party card no. 2.-Career:...

, Pierre Lemieux
Pierre Lemieux
Pierre Lemieux is a politician in Ontario, Canada. He is the MP for the riding of Glengarry—Prescott—Russell in Canada's 39th general election. He represents the Conservative Party of Canada...

, Tibor R. Machan
Tibor R. Machan
Tibor Richard Machan, Ph.D. is a Hungarian-American philosopher. A professor emeritus in the department of philosophy at Auburn University, Machan holds the R. C...

, Jan Narveson
Jan Narveson
Jan Narveson, OC is professor of philosophy emeritus at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. An anarcho-capitalist and contractarian, Narveson's form of libertarian anarchism is deeply influenced by the thought of Robert Nozick and David Gauthier.Narveson was born in Erskine,...

, Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy is a Canadian individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist in 1982.-Sex-positive:...

, Ralph Raico
Ralph Raico
Ralph Raico is an American historian, libertarian, and specialist in European classical liberalism and Austrian Economics. He is currently a professor of history at Buffalo State College and a senior faculty member at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Raico was a student of Ludwig von Mises and...

, Robert Sirico
Robert Sirico
Robert A. Sirico is an American Roman Catholic priest and the founder of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. He is a well-known political and cultural commentator.-Biography:...

, Thomas S. Szasz.

The Movimento Libertario collaborates actively with the members of and their Association (ALT), in cultural and economic free market iniziatives (conferences and publications like I Fogli di Enclave) between libertarians subjects in Italy and Canton Ticino.

Party

Respecting the historical definition of libertarian, the Movimento Libertario seeks to bring in Italy the same contents of others libertarians parties and movements in the world but with the agorist practice of non-voting
Non-voting
Non-voting is a strategy employed by various radical libertarians and anarchists who wish to promote a free society yet who view voting to be either unethical or impractical...

, thus not directly participating in political Italian elections with the symbol of the Movimento Libertario.
Although in fact the Movimento Libertario is an officially registered Italian political party, as anti-statist movement disclaims the State
Sovereign state
A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...

 legality and its political elections.

The Movimento Libertario is not classifiable in the political-ideologic traditions of the 20th century present in Italy. Like other libertarians entities in the world, the subject respects the political spectrum
Political spectrum
A political spectrum is a way of modeling different political positions by placing them upon one or more geometric axes symbolizing independent political dimensions....

 of Nolan Chart
Nolan Chart
The Nolan Chart is a political diagram popularized by the American libertarian David Nolan. He reasoned that virtually all human political action can be divided into two general categories: economic and personal...

. One of its slogans said: "Neither right nor left, nor centrist. Simply free is better".

Principles

The Movimento Libertario in its founding act declares and acknowledges libertarian principles as internals to its Statute:
  • Freedom, understood as the absence of constraint is a natural right of the individual, which nobody (private or public organization) must threaten;
  • The Government
    Government
    Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

    , in its various variants, forces people to obey blindly and accept legislation invasive and oppressive monopoly;
  • Everyone has the right to seek their own happiness and that of his loved ones, taking responsibility for their actions;
  • Each individual is entitled organize in freedom themselves to protect their lives and their belongings, particularly given the enormous difficulties posed by the power of politicians at all levels;
  • The need to eliminate and reduce the state, politicians and bureaucracies in the everyday life, increasingly recognizing the dignity of all people working really, producing their own resources and possessions.
  • Property is a natural and inalienable right of man, is primarily the property of themselves, of the own bodies and of one's life.

About the withholding tax

Battle to sow GMO maize

The Movimento Libertario favors the free cultivation and the free marketing of seeds and GMO
GMO
A GMO is a genetically modified organism.GMO may also refer to:* Gell-Mann–Okubo mass formula in particle physics* General Medical Officer, a designation for United States Army soldiers* Generalised molecular orbital theory, in chemistry...

 foods and no limits to GMOs in Italy, consumer freedom to choose their own products, and freedom of private scientific research as long as it respect the natural human rights and it does not use public money.
The Movimento Libertario does not support the theory of global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

.

Violence suffered

In April 2010, the Movimento Libertario and its members were subjected to threats and acts of violent vandalism in its headquarters by a Italian Anti-globalization movement
Anti-globalization movement
The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalisation movement, is critical of the globalization of corporate capitalism. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement, or...

 and environmentalist
Environmentalist
An environmentalist broadly supports the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities"...

 group about the question of GMO maize.

Italian Radicals referred in Parliament the threats to person and property that Giorgio Fidenato and Italian Federated Farmers received.
Parliamentary questions mentions also that the Italian government still does not recognize the right to sown GMO maize, as determined by decision of the Italian Council of State
Italian Council of State
The Consiglio di Stato is a legal-administrative consultative body and ensures the legality of public administration in Italy. The council has jurisdiction on acts of all administrative authorities, except when these authorities lack discretionary power, in which case the dispute is considered to...

 and European Community Directive.

Enrico Montesano

In 2009, Italian actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 Enrico Montesano
Enrico Montesano
Enrico Montesano, born in Rome, Italy on 7 June 1945, is a popular actor for theater and cinema in Italy, as well as a showman. He starred in the 1977 film Pane, burro e marmellata and the 1978 film Le braghe del padrone, both times alongside Adolfo Celi.-Career:Montesano comes from a family...

 supports the battle to abolish withholding tax. Montesano is against the subsidies allocated by the government to finance Italian theater and film productions: he supports the proposition that the "work of an artist is judged at the box office and the public decides."

See also

  • Agorism
    Agorism
    Agorism is a political philosophy founded by Samuel Edward Konkin III and developed with contributions by J. Neil Schulman that holds as its ultimate goal bringing about a society in which all "relations between people are voluntary exchanges – a free market." The term comes from the Greek...

  • Anti-Federalism
    Anti-Federalism
    Anti-Federalism refers to a movement that opposed the creation of a stronger U.S. federal government and which later opposed the ratification of the Constitution of 1787. The previous constitution, called the Articles of Confederation, gave state governments more authority...

  • Anti-statism
    Anti-statism
    Anti-statism is a term describing opposition to state intervention into personal, social, and economic affairs. Anti-statist views may reject the state completely as well as rulership in general , they may wish to reduce the size and scope of the state to a minimum , or they may advocate a...

  • Capitalism
    Capitalism
    Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

  • Classic Liberalism
  • Euroscepticism
    Euroscepticism
    Euroscepticism is a general term used to describe criticism of the European Union , and opposition to the process of European integration, existing throughout the political spectrum. Traditionally, the main source of euroscepticism has been the notion that integration weakens the nation state...

  • Free Market
    Free market
    A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...

  • Individualism
    Individualism
    Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...

  • Lasseiz-faire
  • Liberism
    Liberism
    Liberism is a term for the economic doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism first used in English by the Italian-American political scientist Giovanni Sartori....

  • Minarchism
    Minarchism
    Minarchism has been variously defined by sources. It is a libertarian capitalist political philosophy. In the strictest sense, it maintains that the state is necessary and that its only legitimate function is the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud, and...

  • Non-interventionism
    Non-interventionism
    Nonintervention or non-interventionism is a foreign policy which holds that political rulers should avoid alliances with other nations, but still retain diplomacy, and avoid all wars not related to direct self-defense...

  • Non-Violence
  • Non-voting
    Non-voting
    Non-voting is a strategy employed by various radical libertarians and anarchists who wish to promote a free society yet who view voting to be either unethical or impractical...

  • Objectivism
    Objectivism (Ayn Rand)
    Objectivism is a philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand . Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception...

  • Voluntaryism
    Voluntaryism
    Voluntarism, or voluntaryism, is a philosophy according to which all forms of human association should be voluntary. This moral principle is called the non-aggression principle, which prohibits the initiation of aggressive force or coercion...


External links

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