Watching a short documentary in Spanish class, the following words painted onto a road sign in southern Mexico caught my attention: "Está usted en territoria Zapatista en rebeldia. Aquí, manda el pueblo y el gobierno obedece" (You are in Zapatista rebel territory. Here, the people command and the government obeys). After several weeks of studying nothing but Maoist or Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movements in Latin America, here was finally a slogan with reason behind it, in line with libertarian thought. Power corrupts. The enemy of liberty is government, and therefore it is vital for a free people to keep a handle on their government, not the other way around.
The Zapatistas, who have controlled autonomous indigenous communities in Chiappas since the mid 1990s, do hold such elements of the freedom philosophy. But at the same time, they are resolutely anti-capitalist. How is it possible to be both libertarian and anti-capitalist? Answer: be a Libertarian-Socialist (aka: Left-Libertarian, Anarcho-collectivist, Social Anarchist, Council Communist, or Autonomist). The two camps - Libertarian Capitalists and Libertarian Socialists - basically differ in their conceptions of the relationship between private property and freedom. LS's believe that capitalist property rights lead to unequal holdings of capital, which then lead to inequality of economic status and bargaining power, adding up to the obstruction of freedom, especially for the working class. LC's, on the other hand, believe that the right to private property, the right to do what one will with what one has obtained through the fruits of one's own labor, is the most basic of natural rights and absolutely necessary for the function of a free market economy. LS's hold that degree of freedom can be measured by the equality of bargaining power, while LC's argue that freedom exists wherever individuals are at liberty to bargain with whomever they would.
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