In oppressed groups, libertarianism can seem similar to ideas that have oppressed them over time. The idea of a liberty movement may even be laughable to groups who have already been fighting for their rights from the State for a long time. Since those who are now fighting for liberty may have ignored the struggles of marginalized groups, those groups may be reluctant to join the new movement. It is therefore important to demonstrate an understanding of these differences of experience, to acknowledge that our experiences may be worlds away from those of others. As a white woman, it’s unlikely I will ever be in jail for drug possession. As a cisgender person, I will likely never be fired based on how I express my gender. There are other people who live through those trials (and worse) every day. If we as anarchists and/or libertarians act like the State oppresses us all exactly the same, we ignore realities.

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Secondo la Karam, la sinistra dimentica che l’apparato repressivo dello stato è rivolto principalmente contro le persone ai margini e fa molto spesso pulizia sociale, e la proposta di ulteriore criminalizzazione e repressione (così come la lotta ai crimini finanziari) avanzata dalla sinistra non risolve le contraddizioni strutturali.

I problemi di sicurezza creati dal traffico di droga ne sono un esempio. Invece di chiedere più repressione per ridurre la sensazione di insicurezza, la sinistra brasiliana dovrebbe riflettere sul fatto che è la stessa criminalizzazione della droga a creare il circuito della violenza. La lotta alla criminalizzazione, dunque, diventa lotta alla violenza.

La Karam conclude notando che il ruolo della sinistra dovrebbe essere di critica al sistema prevalente, non di rafforzamento della sua logica.

Durante il dibattito elettorale del 29 settembre, il candidato cosiddetto minore Levy Fidelix, rispondendo ad una domanda dell’altro candidato Luciana Genro riguardo il matrimonio omosessuale, ha fatto alcune dichiarazioni omofobiche offensive sulla televisione nazionale. Fidelix ha messo in mostra la tipica repulsione eteronormativa verso gli omosessuali mascherata da “difesa dei valori famigliari”. Ed è andato oltre dicendo che il “sistema escretorio” non fa parte dell’apparato riproduttivo e che chi non è eterosessuale dovrebbe, in qualche modo, essere escluso dalla vita sociale. “Lontanissimo” dal resto della società così da poter curare i suoi presunti problemi affettivi e psicologici.

Molti a sinistra, non volendo perdere l’occasione, si sono detti a favore della criminalizzazione dell’omofobia, e hanno usato le parole di Fidelix come esempio di quello che bisognerebbe vietare. Secondo questa parte della sinistra, l’omofobia dovrebbe essere un crimine da trattare come il razzismo. Ma è proprio difendendo questo ragionamento che commettono l’errore della sinistra punitiva.

Criminalizzare un comportamento non può rappresentare il sistema principale per risolvere i conflitti sociali, perché si tratta di costrizione, che dovrebbe essere usata solo in caso di aggressione contro la libertà individuale.

L’idea di ricorrere alla criminalizzazione come soluzione di tutti i problemi è alla base dell’espansione drammatica della regolamentazione della vita da parte dello stato. In questo modo, qualunque comportamento può essere definito criminale.

La criminalizzazione delle opinioni inaccettabili è uno strumento diffuso, comune a tutti i regimi autoritari. Non è neanche uno strumento di cambiamento, ma di reazione. Non esiste una versione purificata perché in fin dei conti stiamo criminalizzando opinioni che davvero meritano disprezzo. È sempre e comunque uno strumento autoritario che serve a soffocare il dissenso.

Come fa notare Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature, i grandi cambiamenti storici non sono mai stati il prodotto della “criminalizzazione delle opinioni conservatrici” (cosa che un tempo non era neanche possibile), ma sono passati attraverso un processo storico più complesso che comprendeva la decriminalizzazione delle opinioni e la libertà di espressione. La grande scoperta liberale, se vogliamo garantire la pace sociale, è che non siamo obbligati ad essere d’accordo su tutto, ma solo su chi ha il diritto di decidere chi ha ragione: l’individuo.

Criminalizzare l’omofobia e il razzismo può avere esiti molto spiacevoli. Molti già accusano le femministe di misandria e il movimento Lgbt di “eterofobia”. Accuse assurde, ma non è difficile immaginare che qualcuno potrebbe chiedere la soppressione di queste espressioni, soprattutto se si criminalizza l’opposto, ovvero il machismo e l’omofobia. Nessuno garantisce che questi argomenti non possano in futuro essere criminalizzati come incitamenti all’odio, a tutto svantaggio della libertà di dibattito e dei diritti delle minoranze.

Ecco perché il modo migliore di combattere il razzismo, l’omofobia e le altre culture discriminatorie non passa per la criminalizzazione. Scrive Mano Ferreira in un suo articolo, “Por um principio da nao opressao” (“A Favore del Principio della non-Oppressione”): “Quando edifichiamo il principio libertario della non-oppressione, dobbiamo puntare all’espansione della libertà. Secondo me, è attraverso la cooperazione volontaria e il rafforzamento sociale degli oppressi che, legittimamente e efficacemente, si pongono le basi per la lotta all’oppressione. È necessario analizzare profondamente il meccanismo dell’oppressione e le possibilità di eliminarlo: in questa missione dobbiamo riconoscere l’importanza di autori che aderiscono a correnti epistemologiche diverse, capirli e ridare loro importanza.”

L’azione diretta e il boicottaggio sociale sono strumenti molto utili a questo scopo, come ho fatto notare a quelle femministe che combattono la cultura dello stupro.

Quando si lotta per il progresso della società è bene lasciar fuori la criminalizzazione delle opinioni. L’emancipazione delle minoranze si può ottenere, e si otterrà, attraverso un processo di consolidamento storico e di allargamento e svecchiamento delle reti della cooperazione sociale volontaria, dove la criminalità dello stato e l’oppressione sociale sarà rigettata per essere sostituita dalla libertà.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Karam notes that the left seems to have forgotten that the repressive apparatus of the state turns itself mainly against marginalized groups, serving more often than not as a form of social cleansing, and the very proposal of more criminalization and repression coming from the left (such as the fight against financial crimes) does not solve this structural contradiction.

An example of that is the security problem created by drug trafficking: Instead of supporting even more repression to drug trafficking to reduce the feeling of insecurity, the Brazilian left should reflect on the fact that it is drug criminalization itself that creates the cycle of violence related to drugs in the country. Thus, fighting against criminal law is fighting against violence.

Karam concludes that it is the left’s role to criticize the prevailing system, not to reinforce its logic.

In Brazil’s presidential debate on 09/29, so-called dwarf candidate Levy Fidelix made some vile, homophobic and offensive statements on national TV after being asked by fellow candidate Luciana Genro about his position on gay marriage. Fidelix showed the typical heteronormative revulsion to homosexuality disguised as “defending family values,” but he went even further in declaring that the “excretory system” is not a means of reproduction and that non-heterosexuals should be excluded somehow from social life, “far away” from the rest of society to treat their supposed affection and psychological problems.

Never skipping a beat, many leftists manifested themselves in favor of criminalizing homophobia and used Fidelix’s statements as an instance of what criminal law should ban. Homophobia should be a crime in the same way racism is, according to this sector of the Brazilian left. But in defending that position, they make the punitive left’s mistake.

Criminalizing a conduct cannot be the primary means through which social conflict is solved, because it is the most coercive way of doing so and the one that should be invoked only versus aggression against individual liberties.

The idea of criminalization as a solution for all human problems has dramatically expanded state regulation of life. And according to that point of view, there is no individual behavior that cannot be potentially included in our police records.

Criminalizing unacceptable opinions has been a common tool used by each and every authoritarian regime in human history. It is not ever a tool of social transformation, but of reaction. It will not be purified because we are finally criminalizing opinions that are actually worthy of scorn. It is still an authoritarian means to shut off dissent.

As Steven Pinker shows in The Better Angels of Our Nature, great changes in human history have not come from the “criminalization of conservative opinions” (something that was not even possible at the time), but through a more complex historical process that included the decriminalization of opinions and freedom of expression. To guarantee social peace, the great liberal discovery is that we do not have to agree on everything, but only on who should have the right to decide who is right: the individual.

The process of criminalizing homophobia and racism can turn ugly in the future: Many people accuse feminists of being misandric and the LGBT movement of being “heterophobic.” While these are absurd accusations, it is not difficult to think of a defense of suppression of their discourse on those grounds, since their opposite (machismo and homophobia) can become crimes. There is no guarantee that these discourses will not become criminalized and labeled as hate speech in the future, in detriment of free debate and minorities’s rights.

Therefore, the best way to fight against racism, homophobia, and other discriminatory cultures is not through their criminalization. As Mano Ferreira wrote on his article “Por um principio da nao opressao” (“For a Non-Oppression Principle”): “In putting together a libertarian principle of non-oppression, we should have in mind an expansion of human liberty. Thus, I believe that it is through voluntary cooperation and social empowerment of the oppressed that we build legitimate and efficient bases for fighting oppression. In that process, it is necessary to deeply analyze oppression mechanisms and its possibilities of undoing — a mission in which we should recognize the importance of authors who adhere to other epistemologies, understand them and resignify them.”

Direct action and social boycott might be very useful tools for that, something which I have pointed as a helpful tool for feminists against rape culture.

The paradigm of criminalization of opinions should be abandoned when we are fighting for social progress, since the emancipation of minorities is being obtained and will be achieved through a historical consolidation, amplification and enlightenment of the networks of voluntary social cooperation, where state criminality and social oppression will be fought and rejected in favor of human freedom.

Translated into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Sinistra Punitiva e Criminalizzazione dell’Omofobia.

In spite of the above; the major libertarian theorist, Murray Rothbard, once penned a piece advocating peace within the context of the Cold War that began like this:

To begin with, I wish to put my argument purely on the grounds of American national interest.

How strange to see a libertarian couching their argument in terms of collectivist nationalism. What about how peace will benefit countless people on a global scale by saving them from death at the hands of militaristic warmongering? And lead to the conditions for fruitful internationalist alliances amongst the oppressed everywhere. The oppressed no longer feeling the need to look to nationalist states to protect them from aggressive imperialists.

Rothbard later says:

Simply a genuine policy of peace, or, what is the same thing, a return to the ancient and traditional American policy of isolationism and neutrality.

By using a term like isolationism, he is setting the stage for people living in the territory controlled by the American government to collectively concern themselves only with each other. Of course, Rothbard is discussing the isolation of American military power rather than the kind of isolationism that is anti-trade, anti-migration, and anti-exchange of ideas across national borders. It still has bad connotations of only caring about people within your own immediate collective. Libertarian individualism is about rootless cosmopolitanism rather than national borders. It’s about caring what happens to people without distinctions based on the accident of birthplace. This can mean not being neutral as an individual in the context of something like Nazis vs Jews.

Let us not allow opposition to imperialist interventionism to cloud our judgement about events overseas. If a person is being oppressed or unjustly coerced anywhere on the planet, it’s our concern. An injury to one is an injury to all.

Il calcio è anche alla base del patriottismo brasiliano, che durante i mondiali si innalza. La bandiera nazionale diventa oggetto d’adorazione. E sventola nell’aria.

Ma nel 2014 è diverso. Slogan come “La Coppa del Mondo non Esiste” abbondano, ci sono proteste e l’opinione pubblica si divide sull’impatto dell’evento. Le persone interessate dalle preparazioni hanno scritto una lettera aperta e, il quindici di maggio, c’è stata la Giornata Contro la Coppa del Mondo, che ha spinto migliaia di persone nelle strade in tutto il Brasile.

È stato il risultato prevedibile delle politiche adottate nel paese, politiche che hanno promosso l’uso massiccio di denaro pubblico e il pugno d’acciaio dello stato per mandare via la gente dalle loro case (espropri discutibili anche secondo i traballanti standard legali brasiliani) e costruire pachidermi bianchi per usarli soltanto per un breve periodo. I principali beneficiari sono la FIFA, le ditte di appalti, le grandi aziende alleate tra loro e lo stesso stato.

Per schivare la concorrenza, secondo la Lettera del Primo Incontro delle Persone Interessate dalla Coppa del Mondo, “la Legge sulla Coppa del Mondo istituisce zone di esclusione per un raggio di 1,25 miglia (2 chilometri) attorno alle aree della FIFA e gli stadi, e aree per i fan dotate di megaschermi, aree in cui soltanto gli sponsor possono vendere.” I venditori ambulanti, che muovono miliardi ogni anno, sono esclusi da grosse porzioni delle città.

Si potrebbe dire che viviamo una “situazione sportiva d’eccezione”, ma è un fatto che le preparazioni dei mondiali abbiano mostrato tutte le disfunzioni e le ingiustizie dello stato brasiliano. Le grandi imprese hanno ricevuto grossi aiuti economici tramite la banca pubblica BNDES, imprese che si sono alleate tra loro per attaccare coerentemente la proprietà dei poveri. C’è stato l’impulso irresistibile a controllare l’accesso dei poveri alla terra, per non dire della repressione generale dei venditori ambulanti in un paese in cui le leggi dicono di difendere la classe lavoratrice.

Questo incubo sportivo è la realtà quotidiana del paese, una realtà che punisce i poveri più di ogni altro, ma che oggi appare più evidente che mai per via dell’associazione con uno degli eventi mondiali più importanti per i brasiliani. Questo stato di cose è sempre esistito, ma oggi c’è un pretesto. Il paese del calcio ha capito che i campionati non sono semplicemente sport. Hanno a che fare con il denaro, le influenze, i mezzi politici, non lo scambio volontario.

Niente serve meglio ad illustrare la differenza tra mezzi economici (lavoro, produzione, scambio) e mezzi politici (forza, costrizione), per dirla con Franz Oppenheimer. Un’altra Coppa del Mondo è possibile, un mondiale senza espropri, repressioni, soldi pubblici, ma sarebbe una Coppa del Mondo senza il potere dello stato, fatta da persone che fanno a meno della forza.

Nel 2007, il governo disse che la Coppa del Mondo sarebbe stata pagata interamente dal settore privato. Con lo stato che ci ritroviamo oggi questo non accadrà mai. Nessuna società è disposta ad accollarsi il rischio di investire in un mondiale politicizzato come quello brasiliano. Neil Stephenson, in Snow Crash, la mette così: “Ecco com’è lo stato. È stato inventato per fare quello che un privato non si sognerebbe di fare, il che significa che probabilmente non c’è alcuna ragione di farlo.” Lo stato fa questo, ma fa anche cose che fanno pendere l’ago della bilancia a favore di certe imprese private.

“Speriamo che la nostra storia non sia soffocata dall’urlo goal,” dice la Lettera del Primo Incontro delle Persone Interessate dalla Coppa del Mondo. Se dovesse prevalere la coscienza, l’ingiustizia dello stato nel nome dello sport non potrà essere dimenticata.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Soccer is also one of the foundations of Brazilian patriotism, that reascends during the FIFA World Cup. The flag colors come to be worshipped, the flag itself is flown.

In 2014, however, it feels different. Slogans such as “There Will Be No World Cup” abound, there are protests and public opinion is split regarding the event’s impact. There was an open letter from those affected by the preparations and, on May 15, the Day Against the World Cup, that pushed thousands of people to the streets everywhere in Brazil.

It was a predictable result of the policies adopted in the country, that promoted the extensive use of government money and the iron hand of the state to remove people from their houses — in expropriations questionable even according to the dubious legal standards of Brazil — and build white elephants that will only be used for a short while. The greatest beneficiaries are FIFA, the contractors, allied corporations and the government itself.

To sidestep competition, according to the Letter from the First Meeting of the Affected by the World Cup, “the General Law of the World Cup establishes zones of exclusion of 1.25 miles around FIFA’s areas, stadiums, and fan areas with large screens, where only official sponsors will be allowed to sell.” Street sellers, who move billions every year, yet again, are excluded from large swathes of the cities.

One could argue we are living under a “sporting state of exception,” but it is a fact that preparations for the World Cup have amply shown the disfunctionality and injustice of the Brazilian state. There have been huge subsidies to large enterprises through state bank BNDES, and the uncompromising defense of the property of big corporations allied to the consistent neglect to the property of the poor. There has also been an irresistible impulse to control the poor’s access to land, not to mention the repression of the street sellers all over a country in which the laws claim to defend the working classes.

This sports dystopia is always the reality in the country — a reality that overwhelmingly punishes the poor — but now it seems clearer than ever because it is closely associated with one of the most important world events for the Brazilians. This state has always existed, but it now has a pretext. The soccer country has learned that Cups are not only sport. They are about money and influence, about the political means, not voluntary exchange.

There is no better illustration of the difference between the economic means (labor, production, exchange) and the political means (force, coercion), as Franz Oppenheimer put it. Another World Cup was possible, without expropriations, repression, subsidies, but it would be a World Cup without the power of the state, made by free people forgoing the use of force.

In 2007, the government stated that the World Cup would be paid for entirely by the private sector. However, that would never happen with the state we have nowadays. No company would ever take the risk of investing in a politicized World Cup like the Brazilian one. Neil Stephenson, in Snow Crash, put it like this: “[T]hat’s how the government is. It was invented to do stuff that private enterprise doesn’t bother with, which means that there’s probably no reason for it.” The government also does stuff that allows private enterprise to tilt the table in their favor.

“We hope that a shout of goal won’t suppress our story,” states the Letter from the First Meeting of the Affected by the World Cup. Should conscience win, state injustice in the name of sports can’t be forgotten.

Translated into English by Erick Vasconcelos

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Il Brasile Ha Capito che i Mondiali non Sono Solo Calcio.

Liberty can be described, rather simply, as the state of being free from domination and oppression, imposed by an authority, on one’s way of life, behavior or worldview. This idea means many different things to different people, but the fundamental idea of liberty is individual agency. This libertarian tradition notes that all human beings deserve to be free and equal in dignity and rights. Slavery, on the other hand, can be understood as the absolute domination of the individual — it is the end of agency. Slavery bucks the trend of human progress, it cages liberty. Slavery is unjustifiable and thus illegitimate — it has no place in a democratic society.

To obtain and protect liberty, all illegitimate authority must be abolished. When we tear down systems of domination and oppression, when we liberate humanity from illegitimate power structures, we find the true beauty of human nature. Liberty, then, requires active participation from the populace. Liberty is the product of labor. If a population is passive or apathetic, then systems of power and domination can spread like a cancer throughout society.

Because of this, those dedicated to the principles of liberty and democracy should be very concerned about a recent report, from the United Nations International Labor Organization (ILO), that says forced labor (read slavery) generates a $150 billion annual worldwide profit. Even worse, $99 billion, (two-thirds) of this total profit, is generated through the sexual exploitation of men, women and children. The rest of the revenue comes from forced economic labor in agriculture, construction, mining and domestic work.

This fundamental evil, forced labor, the unwilling utility and exploitation of another must be abolished. To accomplish this abolition, it is necessary to look at the pre-existing conditions that give rise to such authoritarian systems — poverty, violence, poor education, class struggle, racism, sexism, etc – and confront the mechanisms through which these social forces subjugate human beings. This begs the questions: Where does power come from? Who should posses it? Who is responsible for our lives? These questions should lead to inquiry into our social organization and how to better the rights and welfare of all individuals — the common good.

Our collective libertarian tradition can answer these questions and progress the common good by dismantling power structures from above and building, only when needed, from below. When accomplished, labor will be inclined and liberated. In absolute liberty society will change, as America philosopher John Dewey notes, “from a feudalistic to a democratic social order,” respecting all workers as genuine human beings as opposed to resources for economic exploitation.

Luckily, folks continue to labor for liberty so that all may labor in liberty. The emerging open source, networked order, of autonomous individuals and civic sector groups, is advancing Mutualism and working for emancipation in ways traditional command and control governance is incapable of. This new order is stigmergic – decentralized in the freed market. Groups such as Women at Risk International, International Justice Mission and many more are liberating enslaved individuals in both local and global campaigns.

The New Mutualism is coming. May every individual one day live in liberty — until then, and ever after, let’s labor for the common good.

The bill attempts to specify the kinds of Photoshop it wants to regulate, only applying the regulations to image alterations which “materially change the physical characteristics of the faces and bodies of the individuals depicted.” However, this is obviously an impossible-to-enforce, entirely subjective value judgment.

What we’ve seen with overbroad legislation like this in other industries is selective enforcement. As Laurie Rice pointed out, it’s most likely that “enforcement or non-enforcement will be traded as political favor between members of the FTC and leaders of more powerful advertising companies to crowd out competition from smaller companies – the very companies that might have otherwise offered alternative media with a more positive message for young women.”

Nadine Strossen warned against using censorship to achieve feminist aims in “On Pornography: Lessons From Enforcement:”

The pro-censorship feminists cannot have it both ways. If, as they contend, governmental power is inevitably used to the particular disadvantage of relatively disempowered groups, such as women, it follows that women’s rights advocates should oppose measures that augment that power, including Dworkin/MacKinnon-type laws.

Even if the law were enforced evenly across the board, it puts undue strain on artists who attempt to sell their work. No one wants or needs a struggling photographer to disclose to the federal government exactly how their images were made.

Think that wouldn’t happen? Think again. Carolyn Davis and her son began a moving business after he lost his job in construction. Before long, armed police officers stormed the home of these menaces to society and impounded their vehicle for the crime of advertising and moving people without a license.

Molly Van Roekel put it eloquently: “This is slapping a band aid over the problem and blaming the artists for a cultural problem.”

Miss Representation claims that altered images of perfect models have a negative impact on girls’ satisfaction with their own appearance. This may or may not be true, but there are other, cooperative ways to combat the problem. Parents and educators can challenge the message girls get everywhere from Disney princesses to romantic comedies that their worth lies in their appearance.

Parents and educators should also educate young girls about image alteration. Recognizing that the vast majority of images the public consumes are altered in some way can alleviate girls’ anxiety over not resembling those images.

In addition, the #notbuyingit campaign exists to call out sexism in advertising, and empowers people to stop buying products marketed with sexist messaging.

Luckily, the legislation itself isn’t likely to make any difference. Govtrack gives it a 1% chance of being enacted. The larger problem at play here is that by seeking to ban every kind of speech feminists find distasteful, they discredit a movement with important and worthy goals. Campaigns like this wrongly associate feminists and others concerned about equal opportunity for girls with efforts to curtail speech rights and grow government. Creating a culture which is less hostile to young ladies’ well-being will require proposals which respect the First Amendment and allow a free and open marketplace of ideas.

Privilege is the social, hierarchical construct which is systematically taught to people to value certain characteristics (i.e. – white, heterosexual, and male) higher than other characteristics (anything other than white, heterosexual, and male). Hierarchical or power relationships create systems of domination (racism, sexism, heteronormativity, etc.) which keep marginalized groups from improving their lot, and engenders coercion against them in a Hayekean sense.

Unfortunately, it seems that most libertarians do not want to join the cause, opting to only see problems on an “individual” basis. This tends to ignore the struggles that are arrayed before un-privileged groups. While we may agree that individual rights are important, it is also important to realize that these marginalized groups tend to experience higher amounts of oppression than the white, heterosexual male. This is due to laws on the books of the federal or state governments, or by the way we operate on a daily basis. By adopting a “refusal to see differences,” or  “colorblind,” argument, that is simply-individual-rights, we tend to ignore or push away from the movement important and needed participants, as we assume that our knowledge is better than theirs. “The call to check one’s privilege”, as Nathan Goodman eloquently puts forward in his essay The Knowledge Problem of Privilege,

…is an attempt to get people to recognize the limits of their knowledge. Libertarians should have the humility to check our privilege, to listen to oppressed people who discuss their experiences, and to respect oppressed peoples’ rights to direct their own struggles for liberation.

Of course, this is just a rehash of the privilege side of the argument which seems to have been done ad nauseum. Critics seem to have other ideas as to why we would acknowledge the affects of privilege in society, stating that we have failed to understand Misesian, Rothbardian, or Hoppean praxeological methods and, above all, the non-aggression principle. I may be inaccurate in my paraphrasing, but the brunt of the argument, as I understand it, goes something like, “if you understood how markets or human action worked in a free market, then you would understand that fighting against privilege is a waste of time or too much of a compromise”, or “while racism sucks, you can’t force people to cater to people/groups they don’t like. You just have to let the market solve the problem.” (See here and here for examples of such arguments)

There are a couple of flaws with these arguments. For one, a strict adherence to the non-aggression principle only recognizes violations of negative freedoms. That is, violations of freedom only occur when one or a group of people violate the life and/or property (whether it is of the self or of possessions) of another person or group of people. This is problematic because it ignores situations where one may have no other option but to agree to a certain contract or has no power to negotiate on an equal level (for instance, the employer/employee contract). Without an understanding of positive interpretations of freedom along with negative interpretations of freedom, there are instances of oppression which are ignored solely because they are not outright aggressive. This puts the right-libertarian in an awkward position, one which says “x problem is bad, but we really can’t do anything about it because it isn’t a violation of anyone’s freedom”. It stops any action to prove that a free society could handle bigotry without resorting to governmental action, and thus turns off or away any interest that marginalized groups may have with libertarianism. This type of stance is better known as “thin libertarianism”, a stance which refuses to take any sort of stance on social commitments besides those which violate negative interpretations of freedom.

My biggest bone to pick with these critics is the insinuation that those of us on the left do not understand praxeology or market methods as described by Austrian economists. As said above, they see fighting privilege as a waste of time and instead advocate a focus on individual rights by getting the government out of the market and our lives. They see this as a better way of solving the problem because a free market will reward those who cooperate and punish those who refuse service. This is the result of rational self-interest, for it is in the interest of the individual to make a profit, and how can he profit if he denies service to somebody because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation? To join the left and advocate fighting against privilege then will only distract us from the true goal, getting the government out of the market and our lives. Any step that is then perceived as a means to this end, or in other words, anything that seems like it gives the right of the individual to do what they will with their life and property is therefore a step in a positive direction because the market gets closer to becoming free.

While as a left-wing market anarchist, I too think that a freed market will reward those who cooperate well with others, however, it does not seem obvious to me that a market freed from just “the government” is one that will be free. From what I know from reading Human Action, the market is just the conglomeration of multiple individual’s value judgments, and if some prefer unequal power over equal power, there will most likely be businesses or groups catering to those needs.

Second, a market freed from government but not freed from privilege is still a market which is distorted, not so much by inflation but by assurance of keeping oppressed groups trapped in a world which seems caged. Such instances include the raised difficulty of getting a loan or the refusal of service or work to transgender people. One could argue that this is a flawed way of thinking; that surely if the under-privileged group provided a better product that provides service to everyone rather than a bigoted business, the bigoted business would go under because it could not compete. In theory, this is exactly the case, but given all of the laws, crimes, ostracism, etc., that oppressed groups get targeted with, the reality is that it seems that there is still value in barring some people from participating in anything at all. While getting the government out of the way would free up the market in certain ways, the oppressors of privileged classes still has power to exert over marginalized groups in a free society, making life free for some and a burden for others.

This is in no way saying that the idea of praxeology or the market process is bunk, as Mises stated about the market,

The market is a process, actuated by the interplay of the actions of the various individuals cooperating under the division of labor. The forces determining the- continuously changing- state of the market are the value judgments of these individuals and their actions as directed by value judgments [emphasis mine].[i]

What this means is that it is the actors in the market that determine what the market will look like. If we allow value judgments to remain as they are, it is quite plausible that human action will lead to a market that will be distorted by privilege and oppression. If we try to listen and actively engage in bringing an end to the oppression of the unprivileged, we can create a market which is both freed from government and unequal power. Either way, if human action is what determines the freed market, then by all means we should join and continue to fight against oppression.

What bothers me about this way of slicing up the political terrain is not that it is inaccurate; on the contrary, I think it is depressingly accurate in its characterisation both of libertarian feminists and of radical feminists. Rather, what concerns me is the implicit suggestion that to regard something as a legitimate object of feminist concern is ipso facto to regard it as an appropriate object of legislation. On this view, radical feminists see lots of issues as meriting feminist attention, so naturally they favour lots of legislation; libertarian feminists prefer minimal legislation, and so they must think that relatively few issues merit feminist attention. Now this is descriptively all too true; most radical feminists do spend a great deal of time working to increase the power of the state, and most libertarian feminists do spend a great deal of time telling radical feminists to “get over it.” But as I see it, both sides are making the same mistake: they both think of feminist concerns and legislative activity as going together.

One reason I keep pointing to the individualist anarchists of the 19th century (henceforth “the anarchists” for short) as the proper model for feminism is that they did not make this mistake. They were both libertarian feminists and radical feminists.

What is radical feminism? I pick, more or less at random, two characterisations from the web. Here’s one from Wikipedia:

Radical feminism views women’s oppression as a fundamental element in human society and seeks to challenge that standard by broadly rejecting standard gender roles.

Many radical feminists believe that society forces an oppressive patriarchy on women (some masculists claim that patriarchy oppresses men also) and seek to abolish this patriarchal influence. Because of this, some observers believe that radical feminism [should] focus on the gender oppression of patriarchy as the first and foremost fundamental oppression that women face. However, critiques of the above view have resulted in a different perspective on radical feminism held by some which acknowledges the simultaneity or intersectionality of different types of oppression which may include, but are not limited to the following: gender, race, class, sexualist, ability, whilst still affirming the recognition of patriarchy.

And this one is from [the now defunct] “Students dot Washington dot Education”:

Main Tenets of Radical Feminism

1. Women are oppressed by patriarchy.

2. Patriarchy is a hierarchical system of domination and subordination of women by men. It consists in, and is maintained by, one or more of the following:

• Compulsory motherhood and constraints on reproductive freedom
• Compulsory heterosexuality
• The social construction of femininity and female sexuality as that which is “dominated”
• Violence towards women
• Institutions which encourage the domination of women by men, such as the church, and traditional models of the family

3. To end the oppression of women, we must abolish patriarchy. This will potentially involve:

• Challenging and rejecting traditional gender roles and the ways in which women are represented/constructed in language, media, as well as in women’s personal lives.
• Fighting patriarchal constructions of women’s sexuality by banning pornography, and rejecting traditional heterosexual relationships.
• Achieving reproductive freedom
• Separation from patriarchal society?

Two related facts ought to strike us in these characterisations:

First: apart from the silliness about banning pornography (which in any case was described merely as something the abolition of patriarchy might potentially involve), nothing about the radical feminist program as here laid out is inconsistent with libertarianism; various problems are identified as evils to be combated, but nothing is said about the means, statist or otherwise. Plausibly, it is concern with the goal of eliminating patriarchy, not adoption of any particular means to this goal, that makes someone count as a radical feminist.

Second: the radical feminist program here outlined is not terribly different from that of the anarchists; while the anarchists opposed governmental discrimination against women, they certainly did not think that the obstacles facing women were limitedto this. On the contrary, they saw the oppression of women as a vast and pervasive social problem of which state action was only one component. (For documentation, see Wendy McElroy’s excellent anthology Individualist Feminism of the Nineteenth Century, as well as – if you can find a copy – the elusive first edition of her earlier anthology Freedom, Feminism, and the State. And as Chris Sciabarra reminds us, there is a long and illustrious libertarian tradition of regarding political and cultural forces as interlocking but distinct aspects of oppressive social systems.)

Of course today’s radical feminists do in fact, for the most part, seek to employ state coercion as a means to their ends; and in this they differ from the anarchists, who taught that while coercive evils might legitimately be met with violent resistance, noncoercive evils must be combated with nonviolent means such as boycotts, moral suasion, etc. But I can’t see that state coercion is essential to the radical feminist program; for the most part, radical feminists seek statist means to their ends because, like nearly everyone else in our society, they’ve been brainwashed into thinking of statist solutions as the only effective means of social change.

As for radical feminism’s ends, not only are they not intrinsically un-libertarian, but they also strike me as largely legitimate. I see the problems of which radical feminists complain as genuine ones. That is not to deny that radical feminists often describe those problems in exaggerated and hysterical terms (e.g., the claim that all heterosexual intercourse is rape). But that’s hardly a failing unique to them. Don’t many Objectivists, particularly those of the Peikoffian stripe, often identify genuine problems while likewise describing them in exaggerated and hysterical terms? To attack radical feminist concerns merely because they are often advanced in an extremist fashion is to ignore (and incidentally alienate) all those radical feminists who advance the same concerns in a more reasonable fashion.

I also don’t think their concerns are inherently “collectivist,” though I certainly agree that they are often defended in collectivist terms. Often, not always. This is a remarkably diverse group we’re talking about, and should not be simplistically identified with its loudest and most politically connected representatives.

In their willingness to use state power, today’s radical feminists, most of them, admittedly fall short of their anarchist predecessors. But today’s libertarian feminists likewise tend, in all too many cases, to fall short of their anarchist predecessors to the extent that they treat only state action as a legitimate target of feminist criticism. Much libertarian feminist literature (such as Joan Kennedy Taylor’s What To Do When You Don’t Want To Call the Cops) strikes me as advising women to adapt themselves docilely to existing patriarchal power structures so long as those structures are noncoercive. This sort of advice only reinforces the idea that drives radical feminists toward statism – namely, the assumption that state violence is the only effective means for combating patriarchy. In my judgment, it is perfectly appropriate for libertarian feminists to recognise the existence of pervasive non-governmental obstacles to women’s well-being, and to seek non-governmental solutions to those problems; there are no grounds for libertarian feminists’ concerns to be “narrowly targeted at those remaining areas where the legal and political systems privilege men over women.”

Analogy: Ayn Rand called for a movement to promote Romantic art. Should that movement’s concerns be “narrowly targeted at those remaining areas where the legal and political systems privilege” non-Romantic over Romantic art? Of course not; Rand was concerned to combat social and cultural forces, not just legal and political ones. So what’s un-libertarian about feminists doing the same?

As I’ve written elsewhere:

It may be objected that postmodernists complain not only about legal, governmental barriers to such participation, but private, economic-cultural barriers as well. This is true; according to postmodernism, harmful power relations permeate not only the governmental sphere but the private sphere as well. But isn’t this true? Don’t Objectivists, too, regard cultural forces as formidable obstacles to personal achievement, even when they are not codified in law? Weren’t most of Howard Roark’s battles in The Fountainhead fought against private power? Don’t many of Rand’s stories – Ideal, Think Twice, The Little Street – dramatise the soul-destroying effects of non-governmental cultural forces? Didn’t The Objectivist give Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique a positive review?

Of course postmodernists regard the free market as the cause of such problems, and increased government control as the cure. On this point Objectivists must part company with them. But just as Objectivists can agree with religious conservatives in condemning relativism, without regarding government programs inculcating morality as the proper response to the problem, so Objectivists can agree with academic leftists in condemning various forms of non-governmental oppression, without signing on to the Left’s political agenda.

Robert Campbell is correct in noting a tendency for radical feminists to believe a) that there are pervasive non-governmental forces oppressing women, and b) that these forces must be fought by state violence. He is also correct in noting a tendency for libertarian feminists to believe c) that there are no, or few, such forces, and d) that women should not resort to state violence to promote their interests. My point, however, is that while (a) is essential to radical feminism, (b) is not, and likewise thatwhile (d) is essential to libertarian feminism, (c) is not. (Opposition to state power is definitive of libertarianism, while resort to state power, as we’ve seen, is accidental to rather than definitive of radical feminism.) Hence the form of feminism I favour, like that favoured by the 19th-century individualist anarchists, is both libertarian and radical, embracing (a) and (d) while rejecting (b) and (c).

The “sensitivity toward feminist concerns” that I’ve been recommending is thus a sensitivity toward (a). I favour such sensitivity, first, because I think there are serious social and cultural obstacles to women’s well-being in contemporary society, obstacles that are reinforced by, but no means reducible to or solely dependent on, the political system; and second, because as a strategic matter it’s suicidally imprudent to encourage non-libertarians to believe that their goals can indeed be achieved only through state violence.

I haven’t responded specifically to Campbell’s comments on Naomi Wolf because I think our different interpretations of her story depend less on the precise nuances of Wolf’s prose and more on the interpretive frameworks we’re bringing to the text. My purpose in this post has been primarily to explain my interpretive framework, and thus to explain why, given that framework, I am bound to find Campbell’s division of the contemporary feminist scene into virtuous individualists and villainous collectivists unhelpful. At the risk of sounding like Chris Sciabarra yet again: I see the conflict instead as a false dualism in need of being dialectically transcended.