Most contemporary progressives and most contemporary libertarian socialists would, on a given Tuesday, support the same policies: stronger unions, expanded public housing, universal healthcare, aggressive climate action, stiffer antitrust. The disagreement is about what the policies are for. Progressives treat reform as the project: build durable institutional power that protects working-class interests inside liberal-democratic capitalism. Libertarian socialists treat reform as either preparation for something else or as the slow betrayal of what makes the tradition worth having, depending on which current you ask. The argument has been live since Bakunin walked out of the First International in 1872, and the contemporary participants have not yet closed it.
TL;DR
- Libertarian socialism is the broader anti-statist left tradition that wants common ownership of productive property organised through federated assemblies and worker cooperatives, with no standing state or vanguard party.
- Progressivism is the American reform tradition that uses electoral politics, regulatory agencies, and welfare expansion to address capitalist dislocation inside liberal-democratic institutions.
- They overlap on most specific policies. They diverge on the foundational question of whether the state is the machinery of reform or part of what should be unwound.
Side-by-side
| Dimension | Libertarian Socialism | Progressivism |
|---|---|---|
| Founding moment | Bakunin's break with Marx at the Hague Congress, 1872 | American Progressive Era, 1890s-1920s |
| Political method | Direct action, federated assemblies, mutual aid, sometimes municipal politics | Electoral coalitions, regulatory agencies, litigation, foundation-funded advocacy |
| Stance on the state | Reject in principle; unwind during transition | Use to deliver reform |
| Property form | Common ownership, workers' control | Reformed capitalism with strong public sector |
| Canonical thinkers | Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, Bookchin, Chomsky | Dewey, Addams, Lippmann, Warren |
| Operational expressions | Rojava, Zapatistas, Catalonia 1936, Barcelona en Comu, IWW | New Deal, ACA, ARPA, Inflation Reduction Act, IRA Brandeisian antitrust |
Where they agree
The deepest overlap is the diagnosis. Both traditions accept that contemporary capitalism produces patterns of concentrated wealth, dispossession, and corporate power that ordinary politics will not correct without active intervention. Both support stronger labour protections, expanded healthcare access, public investment in decarbonisation, antitrust enforcement, and a major expansion of the institutions that exist outside the market: tenant unions, cooperatives, public housing, mutual-aid networks.
On housing, the overlap is real. Libertarian socialists prefer cooperative housing held by residents and tenant unions that defend against eviction; progressives often support state-built public housing alongside the same tenant-protection infrastructure. The two converge in practice around expanding the supply of non-market housing and protecting renters from displacement. The Vienna model of large-scale public housing, the Berlin tenant-organising tradition that produced the 2021 Deutsche Wohnen enteignen referendum, and the contemporary US tenant-union movement (Crown Heights Tenant Union, Los Angeles Tenants Union) all involve organising both traditions support, with bracketed disagreement about the long-run ownership form.
On climate, both traditions accept the scale of the problem and support large action. Libertarian socialists emphasise direct action against fossil-fuel infrastructure, bioregional federation as the preferred political scale, and mutual-aid networks for climate-displaced people. Progressives have built the Inflation Reduction Act and the broader public-investment infrastructure. The two converge on just-transition guarantees for fossil-fuel workers and on public ownership of new utility-scale renewables, even where they disagree about whether the state should be running the projects.
On workplace democracy and cooperatives, the overlap is operational. Mondragon, the Argentine recovered-factory movement, the post-2008 worker-cooperative revival in the United States and the UK, and the broader cooperative-economy organising network draw support from both traditions. Italian-style cooperative law, employee-ownership tax incentives, and conversion-on-sale programmes for retiring business owners are policy proposals both support.
Where they diverge
The first divergence is the state. Progressives treat the state as the machinery of reform. The regulatory commissions established during the Progressive Era, the New Deal regulatory state, the post-1965 civil-rights enforcement infrastructure, and the contemporary FTC under Lina Khan are operational expressions of this commitment. The state is improvable; the project is to make it more responsive to majority preferences. Libertarian socialists, especially in the Bakunin-Kropotkin tradition, treat the state as the armed defense of property and the political form ruling-class power takes. The project is to unwind it, not to make it more responsive. Noam Chomsky's more pragmatic version (the state is at least in principle accountable, while corporate power is not, so use the state to constrain capital in the short run) is the bridge position closest to progressivism, but even this version treats the state as a temporary tool rather than the long-run frame.
The second divergence runs through the question of representation. Progressivism organises through elected representatives, professional advocacy organisations, foundation-funded policy infrastructure, and broad-tent political parties. Its institutional homes are large, professional, and coalitional. Libertarian socialism organises through federated assemblies with recallable delegates, direct action, mutual-aid networks, and (in some currents) municipalist experiments. The Barcelona en Comu municipalist project under Ada Colau, the Cooperation Jackson project in Mississippi, the Rojava assembly infrastructure, all run on a different logic of representation than progressivism's electoral coalitions.
Third, the empirical record sits at different places. Progressivism has delivered most of the regulatory architecture of twentieth-century American political life: the FTC, the Federal Reserve, the New Deal, civil-rights legislation, the ACA, ARPA, the IRA. Libertarian socialism has built impressive local institutions (Catalonia 1936, Rojava, Mondragon, contemporary mutual-aid networks) and struggled with continent-scale coordination and military defense against organised state adversaries. Robin Hahnel's critique from inside the tradition is honest about this: libertarian socialists were the worst underachievers among twentieth-century anti-capitalists, partly because anti-reformism kept them out of the institutions that actually move policy. The progressive critique of libertarian socialism reads similarly, with less internal sympathy.
Fourth, the contemporary American left's intra-family argument. The post-2018 democratic-socialist revival around Sanders and the DSA sits closer to progressivism than to libertarian socialism in its strategic commitments, even where its policy goals (Medicare for All, the Green New Deal) overlap with both. The libertarian-socialist current inside the broader American left organises through tenant unions, mutual-aid networks, the IWW, and the post-Occupy direct-action milieu rather than through electoral campaigns. The Boric coalition in Chile is the live test case for whether libertarian socialism can govern from inside the executive branch of a modern state; the early evidence is mixed.
Who tends to hold each view
Libertarian socialism's contemporary base is the broad direct-action milieu and the cluster of operational experiments: Rojava in northeastern Syria (about four million people), the Zapatistas in Chiapas (smaller, older), Barcelona en Comu and similar municipalist projects, the IWW, the contemporary tenant-organising and mutual-aid networks, and the academic infrastructure around David Graeber's late work and contemporary anarchist anthropology. The voter base is younger, more urban, more involved in direct-action politics, and more skeptical of electoral engagement than the progressive base.
Progressivism's base is the post-2010 American Democratic Party left and analogous center-left currents across OECD democracies. The Center for American Progress, the Roosevelt Institute, the Working Families Party, the Squad and Justice Democrats infrastructure, the foundation-funded policy world, academic political science, and broadsheet center-left journalism form the institutional infrastructure. The voter base is the educated professional class, organised labour in its post-2010 revival, climate movements, racial-justice advocacy, and the broader urban-and-suburban center-left coalition.
What the Votely quiz would say
If your answers run economic-redistributive, governance-democratic, and you treat liberal-democratic institutions as the working frame for political action, the Votely quiz will place you in Progressivism, with neighbours in Social Liberalism or Democratic Socialism. If those redistributive instincts pair with skepticism toward the state itself and a preference for federated, locally-rooted political forms, the quiz will pull toward Libertarian Socialism, with neighbours in Anarchism or Anarcho-Syndicalism. The single answer that most separates the two clusters is your reading of state power: improvable machinery for reform, or the political form ruling-class power takes when it is being polite.