"Rothbard is surely right in thinking that what we now call free-market libertarianism was originally a left-wing position. The great liberal economist Frédéric Bastiat sat on the left side of the French national assembly, with the anarcho-socialist Proudhon. Many of the causes we now think of as paradigmatically left-wing—feminism, antiracism, antimilitarism, the defense of laborers and consumers against big business—were traditionally embraced and promoted specifically by free-market radicals. ... I like calling the free market a left-wing idea—in fact, I like calling libertarianism the proletarian revolution."
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Roderick T. Long, "Rothbard's 'Left and Right': Forty Years Later," Rothbard Memorial Lecture, Austrian Scholars Conference (2006).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Libertarianism
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Libertarianism
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