This article is a list of major figures in the theory of libertarianism, a philosophy asserting that individuals have a right to acquire, keep, and exchange their holdings and that the primary purpose of government is to protect these rights.
Étienne de La Boétie (1530–1563): French judge, writer, and "a founder of modern political philosophy in France."
Josiah Warren (1798–1874): Inventor, social theorist, and believer in "individual sovereignty." Influenced John Stuart Mill. States "commit more crimes upon persons and property than all criminals put together."
Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850): French classical liberal theorist, political economist, author of The Law.
Adin Ballou (1803–1890): American Christian anarchist.
William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879): American abolitionist libertarian and journalist. Influenced Frederick Douglass, ex-slave and anti-slavery crusader.
Lysander Spooner (1808–1887): American abolitionist, lawyer, entrepreneur, and individualist anarchist theorist. Author of The Unconstitutionality of Slavery and No Treason.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865)
Stephen Pearl Andrews (1812–1886): Abolitionist who tried to sell Texas to Britain to prevent it becoming a slave state.
Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912): French liberal economist and author of The Production of Security in which he argued that security can be produced better through the market than through government monopoly policing.
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903): Anarchist British parliamentarian. Advocated the "right of people to ignore the state."
Auberon Herbert (1838–1906): Anarchist British parliamentarian, founder of "voluntaryism" and anti-democrat. Advocated that the voting majority has no more right to decide a man's life than "either the bayonet-surrounded emperor or the infallible church."
Benjamin Tucker (1854–1939): American editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty. Called anarchists "simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats."
Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973): Austrian philosopher, economist, and author of Human Action. After his death, his name was used for the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968): American journalist, travel writer, novelist, and libertarian political theorist.
Leonard Read (1898–1983): American economist and founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, America's first libertarian think-tank.
Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992): Austrian economist and political thinker, author of The Road to Serfdom.
Ayn Rand (1905–1982): American philosopher and novelist whose books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged influenced many towards libertarianism.
Milton Friedman (1912–2006): Nobel Prize–winning American economist and professor at the University of Chicago. Advocated free market capitalism in books like Capitalism and Freedom.
Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995): American philosopher, economist, historian, and the leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism. Authored For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto and The Ethics of Liberty.
Ron Paul (1935–present): American author of The Revolution: A Manifesto and Liberty Defined, physician, and former politician who has been characterized as the "intellectual godfather" of the Tea Party movement.
Robert Nozick (1938–2002): American philosopher and author of Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
Samuel Edward Konkin III (1947–2004): American political philosopher and author of New Libertarian Manifesto in which he promotes a philosophy he named agorism, a revolutionary form of market anarchism that aims to dissolve the state through counter-economic activity.
Wendy McElroy (1951–present): Canadian individualist anarchist, individualist feminist, and cofounder of The Voluntaryist magazine.
Timeline of libertarian thinkers Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA