(BTW, "libertarian" was coined by an anarcho-communist to evade a French ban on anarchist lit. A century later, US right-wingers captured the term for themselves. Outside the US and England, I believe libertarian is still used in its historically correct sense, what we'd call "libertarian socialism".) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Etymology_and_terminology
^^^^^ CB: Thanks for that historical note on the origin of the term.
USAmericans do have an old tradition of utopianizing the word "Liberty". There were the Sons of Liberty, the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia , etc. We learn in high school American history about the slogan form the Revolutionary period, "The least government is the best government" , sort of a version of your minarchist. Also, the Bill of Rights are said to be legal protections of "Civil Liberties". So, the US petit bourgeois rightwingers have a certain heritage for the term independent of the French history you point out. The petit bourgeois rightwingers are big bourgeoisie in ideological embryo. It's like the vast trans-historic American "settler" or independent small producer population Joanna , Wojtek and I were discussing. They are "little" bourgeoisie, or little bourgeoisie with big bourgeoisie potential. They are a mass pool from which one in ten thousand make it to big burgher.
(See "On the So-called Market Question" by V.I. Lenin)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1893/market/05.htm#v01zz99h-093-GUESS
In the preceding period each producer was already a commodity producer (in the spheres of industry b and c, the only ones we are discussing): each producer separately, on his own, independently of the others, produced for the market, whose dimensions were, of course, not known to any one of them. This relation between isolated producers working for a common market is called competition. It goes without saying that an equilibrium between production and consumption (supply and demand) is, under these circumstances, achieved only by a series of fluctuations. The more skillful, enterprising and strong producer ‘will become still stronger as a result of these fluctuations, and the weak and unskillful one will be crushed by them. The enrichment of a few individuals and the impoverishment of the masses—such are the inevitable consequences of the law of competition. The matter ends by the ruined producers losing economic independence and engaging themselves as wage-workers in the enlarged establishment of their fortunate rival. That is the situation depicted in the table. Branches of industry b and c, which were formerly divided among all 6 producers, are now concentrated in the hands of 2 producers (land IV). The rest of the producers are their wage-workers, who no longer receive the whole product of their labour, but the product with the surplus-value deducted, the latter being appropriated by the employer [let me remind you that, by assumption, surplus-value equals one-third of the product, so that the producer of 2 b (=6) will receive from the employer two-thirds— i.e., 4]. As a result, we get an increase in division of labour—and a growth of the market, where 22 units now appear, notwithstanding the fact that the “masses” are-impoverished”: the producers who have become (partly) ...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1893/market/08.htm#v01zz99h-122-GUESS
Nothing of the kind exists in reality. Commodity production could not have arisen in Russia if the productive units (the peasant households) had not existed separately, and everybody knows that actually each of our peasants conducts his farming separately and independently of his fellows; he carries on the production of products, which become his private property, at his own exclusive risk; he enters into relation with the “market” on his own.
Let us see how matters stand among the “peasantry.”
“Being in need of money, the peasant enlarges his crop area excessively and is ruined.”
But only the prosperous peasant can enlarge his crop area, the one who has seed for sowing, and a sufficient quantity of livestock and implements. Such peasants (and they, as we know, are the minority) do, indeed, extend their crop areas and expand their farming to such an extent that they cannot cope with it without the aid of hired labourers