Before I evaluate the various strands of the libertarian movement with a specific emphasis on the British movement, it behoves me to talk briefly to non-libertarians on libertarians.
A libertarian can best be summed up as a person who opposes coercion in human affairs and believes man should be free to make their own decisions so long as these decisions do not involve using physical force to infringe the rights of another person. In a political sense it believes in individual rights namely the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of property and defends the free market. It holds a kinship with classical liberalism which was dominant in the west in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
A person who agrees that a society which maximised freedom and minimised coercion would be a just and desirable one would be classed as a libertarian, yet despite a unity on a desirable end their is a great devil in the details of realising these ends. The Libertarian movement is thus somewhat similar to the various marxist factions with their stalinist, trotskyist, fabian and anarchist wings. For instance an important division between libertarians is between minarchists who believe in a state limited to the protection of individual rights and anarchists who believe individual rights can be protected only through the abolition of the state. Therefore there is a great diversity of opinion within the libertarian camp over what issues are important and what should be done about them.
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