Where does libertarianism come from?
Modern libertarianism has multiple roots. An important one is the minimal-government republicanism of the U.S.’s founding revolutionaries, especially Thomas Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists. Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and the “classical liberals” of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were another influence. More recently, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of “ethical egoism” and the “Austrian School” of free-market economics have both contributed important ideas. Libertarianism is alone among 20th-century radical movements in owing virtually nothing to Marxism.
