The term libertarian is sometimes translated as libertarian or libertine, which is a major misunderstanding.

The French term libertaire comes from the 19th-century anarchist tradition, which is derived from socialism. This tradition is historically linked to thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin. Anarchism is the political doctrine that states that all forms of government are unnecessary, oppressive and must be abolished.

For socialist and communist anarchists, property is theft. They want to see the disappearance of money and banks, and a return to a local economy based on barter. They seek an egalitarian society where individual freedom is exercised within a collective framework, without domination.

Unlike libertarians, anarchists are often anti-capitalist, advocating economic forms such as mutualism, collectivism, or libertarian communism.

Socialist anarchists like Mikhail Bakunin and Pierre Kropotkin saw private property and the state as twin sources of oppression, and proposed their abolition.

An anarchist might advocate for self-managed communes, cooperatives, or anti-hierarchical movements, while rejecting state authority and capitalist structures.

They are in favor of abolishing the state, but have renounced violent action against the state for lack of effectiveness. On the other hand, they have not renounced the use of violence against private enterprise. They support public monopolies, accept the labor theory of value, condemn the wage system, and regard profit and interest rates as exploitation. Few left-wing anarchists, like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, actively campaigned against taxation.

For libertarians, on the contrary, the only way to ensure individual freedom is to guarantee private property. The essential divergence between libertarians and anarchists therefore concerns the notion of individual property and contractual freedom. Moreover, libertarians' doctrine on violence is defensive: self-defense and resistance to oppression.

Libertines are activists of sexual freedom. It's not so much a political philosophy as a personal way of life, based on an uninhibited morality opposed to bourgeois morality. Politically, they often align with left-wing anarchists, that is, with anarchists.