You said: “That said, I consider the term "libertarian socialism" an oxymoron. Libertarianism is all about individual rights and freedoms, while socialism is focused on all benefits going to groups.”
I identified as a libertarian socialist for a long time. The funny thing is, it was actually Murray Rothbard that got me interested in libertarian socialism to begin with. Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism is actually based on the market-anarchism of libertarian socialists like Thomas Hodgskin, Benjamin Tucker, and Lysander Spooner. (Cf. Murray Rothbard, The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine) Rothbard borrowed the term “libertarian” from such libertarian socialist writers.
Even though classical market-anarchists were socialists, they weren’t very far from anarcho-capitalism in a lot of ways. For a better understanding of libertarian socialism, and of anarcho-capitalism’s place within the broader tradition of anarchistic philosophy, I would recommend reading Benjamin Tucker’s State Socialism and Anarchism.
The difference from Spooner-Tucker socialist market-anarchism and anarcho-capitalism is the theory of property. Tucker, Hodgskin, and Spooner advocated usufructuary private property as opposed to fee-simple or allodial private property. Thomas Hodgskin makes the case for usufructuary property in The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted, that’s the work that caused me to drift more and more away from anarcho-capitalism.
An interesting fact is that Rothbard originally did not call himself an anarchist. He originally proposed the term “nonarchism” as an alternative because he recognized that one kind of needed to be a socialist in order to fit into the classical anarchist mode. (Cf. Murray Rothbard, Are Libertarians ‘Anarchists’?)
You should check out Kevin Carson, William Gillis, Roderick T. Long, and the folks at the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS), who write from a left-libertarian or market-anarchist libertarian socialist perspective. I’m sure you would actually find a lot of common ground with their ideas.
You said: “A boss or a landlord does not "rule" over you. You agree to follow them, and can agree at any time to stop following them. They are "leaders" which are distinct from rulers. One you agree to follow, the other you do not. Rulers cannot be ignored or denied, while leaders and obligations contractually agreed can be rescinded.”
You should check out my series of posts on Property as Theft: The Libertarian Socialist Critique of Property. I think it would be extremely relevant. To understand why libertarian socialists think that landlords are rulers in the same sense as kings, you really have to understand the libertarian socialist critique of capitalistic property. I actually agree with their critique of the institution of property, even though I don’t agree with the conclusions that they draw from it. (I think that geo-libertarianism and social democracy are better approaches to solving the injustices created by the institution of property, rather than abolishing the institution or fundamentally altering it.)
You said: “In addition, the "individualist anarchists" are not for usufructuary private property. They were for absolute property rights and free markets.”
You seem to be conflating “individualist anarchism” (Benjamin Tucker, Josiah Warren, Thomas Hodgskin, Lysander Spooner, Stephen Pearl Andrews) with anarcho-capitalism (Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, Karl Hess, et al.) Individualist anarchism advocated usufructuary rights as opposed to absolute rights, as I think the sources cited above already demonstrate.
You said: “Although it may make sense to exclude Anarchocaptialism from the discussion, it is a valid concept within the principles of anarchy. Although Morris and Shaw did not experience them, you clearly have, and should take the modern day reality of the term into account, if for no other reason than to reduce ambiguity (and avoid having ancaps critique your work).”
I can’t cover everything in a single post. Technically, I guess that Shaw’s critique of individualist anarchism in The Impossibilities of Anarchism actually would apply to anarcho-capitalism as well. However, I didn’t want to produce a long and drawn-out post, and I had already addressed anarcho-capitalism here (in the comments, mostly), here, and here), as well as in mutliple other places. Perhaps I should have clarified that I meant “social anarchism” and not “anarcho-capitalism,” but I think it was pretty obvious from the text itself. I never mentioned Rothbard or Karl Hess, but I did mention Peter Kropotkin, Mikhail Bakunin, and Murray Bookchin.
You said: “Regarding the examples of "democratic socialism" from the Nordic region - I hear this argument a lot from socialists. "Socialism works, look at the nordic region!" However, the leaders of said region have explicitly stated they are not socialist.”
It’s really a matter of definitions. Different schools of socialism have different definitions. There’s democratic socialism, council communism, orthodox marxism, fabian socialism, evolutionary socialism, libertarian socialism, etc. etc. etc. The Nordic countries are certainly not socialist in the orthodox marxist sense, but they are in the democratic socialist and fabian socialist senses. I am inclined to think that they aren’t totally socialist, but they are somewhat socialist.
You said: “Regarding Russia, I never mentioned it an example, and Russia is but one region of the world that has attempted Socialism. I can list several more, all of which ended badly for everyone, except the ruling class that still existed within every single regime. Cambodia, China, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba, Somalia (prior to its total collapse as a nation), DPRK, Romania, Ukraine, East Germany - this is but a subset, and all of them considered themselves socialist or communist in their philosophical principles.”
Cuba is the only one of those that I think might have a legitimate claim to being socialist. The rest of them had leaders that were philosophically socialist. Having socialist leaders and having a socialist nation is not the same things. If the Prime Minister or President of a nation happens to be a Christian or a Neo-Platonist, does that make it a Christian or Neo-Platonist nation?
There are other sorts of socialism that have been tried in other places, which are worth looking at: Democratic Confederation of Northern Syria (YPJ/YPG), the EZLN, the CNT-FAI, etc. There’s also very successful co-operative socialist experiments in parts of Europe, e.g. Mondragon in Spain, the distributist economy of the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy. The socialistic land-to-the-tiller program in Taiwan was a great example of socialism working. Socialism works all the time, all over the world, and nobody notices it. It’s only when “socialism” fails that anybody realizes it. Government-ownership is only one model of socialism, and not my favorite, but it is the model used by all the examples you cited. We’ve got all kinds of socialism that works. We get our mail delivered by the government-owned postal service, get protection from government-owned police, and drive on government-owned and maintained roads, and then say government-ownership doesn’t work. There may be moral grounds for objecting to government-ownership, but government-ownership can and does work.
You said: "Socialism/Communism wasn't tried in Soviet Russia/China/Cambodia/insert failed socialist state here". This to me, like Jordan Peterson, screams of arrogance. It is used consistently by communists to say "they did it wrong, but if I was in charge...", without making a direct claim that they should be ruler.”
My point was that those examples don’t refute socialism in general. Those State’s were Marxist-Leninist, so their failure is a failure of Marxist-Leninism. They don’t represent a failure of socialism/communism in general, nor even a failure of marxism proper. I do think that marxism, as advocated by Marx, would fail too, but other forms of socialism would not necessarily. The socialism of Eduard Bernstein and George Bernard Shaw, for instance, has really kind of been embraced everywhere, more or less, so that we see it in the U.K., the U.S., Norway, Sweden, Australia, etc. It certainly was not an absolute disaster or total failure.
You said: “I've yet to see an example given of communism which is also holding to the "classical anarchist" terms that you expressed….”
Well, by the same argument, I can say that capitalism has never existed. There has never been a totally free-market system anywhere in the world, ever.
For the record, btw, the communism as a classless, stateless society definition is not just an anarchist definition, it is the definition used by Marxists and many other socialists as well. In Marxist theory, government-ownership of industry is called “socialism,” while communism is a future utopia that arises after the State “withers away.” (Many other schools of socialist though reject the definition of "socialism" as government-ownership, but do agree about communism being stateless.)
RE: The Social Democratic Case Against Anarchism