C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Charles Johnson’s “Socialize, Don’t Privatize” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Charles Johnson’s “Socialize, Don’t Privatize“.
$1.00 for the first copy. $0.75 for every additional copy.
Market Anarchists should oppose neoliberalism and its so-called “privatization” schemes because we are for free markets and private property. What they call “privatization” means only private profit from political power. What we mean is something entirely different, and it’s time to mint some new language in order to talk about the difference.
Left libertarians, like all libertarians, believe that all State control of industry and all State ownership of natural resources should be abolished. In that sense, libertarian Leftists advocate complete and absolute privatization of, well, everything. Governments, or quasi-governmental “public” monopolies, have no business building or running roads, bridges, railroads, airports, parks, housing, libraries, post offices, television stations, electric lines, power plants, water works, oil rigs, gas pipelines, or anything else of the sort. . . . Governments have no business building or running fire departments, police stations, courts, armies, or anything else of the sort, because governments — which are necessarily coercive and necessarily elitist — have no business existing or doing anything at all.
There is something called “privatization” which has been a hot topic for the past 15-20 years. It has been a big deal in Eastern Europe, in third world countries under the influence of the IMF, and in some cases in the United States, too. Naomi Klein has a new book on the topic, which focuses on the role that natural and artificial crises play in establishing the conditions for what she calls “privatization.” But “privatization,” as understood by the IMF, the neoliberal governments, and the robber baron corporations, is a very different beast from “privatization” as understood by free market radicals. . . . What we advocate is the devolution of state-confiscated wealth and state-confiscated industries back to civil society . . . the “socialization of the means of production.” Government outsourcing, government-backed monopoly capitalism, and government goon squads, might more accurately be described as “privateering.” . . .
