Some folks who describe themselves as libertarians freak me out a bit. I’m not talking about the “big government libertarians”; rather, I mean those folks who correctly rail against government power but who otherwise seem a little too comfortable with all other kinds of power relations. In fact, they seem at times to deny that any other kinds of power relations exist or matter and to assume that all transactions undertaken by people in the absence of the state would be “voluntary”. In the alternative, they promote certain kinds of power relations as entirely proper and desirable, e.g. racial dominance, patriarchy, wealth over poverty, etc.
I’m all for freedom of association, and the idea of using coercion against another to force him to associate or to eschew association is repugnant to me. But at the same time, I think that willfully discriminating against another person based on race or some other physical characteristic is morally wrong. I could never celebrate the exercise of such a prerogative by anyone. My problem is not with the idea that some forms of discrimination are bad; it is the use of coercion to solve the problem that bothers me. I am not dreaming of a world where whites dominate non-whites or where anyone dominates anyone else.
I recognize that people have different ideas about how men and women should relate to one another and about sex roles. The more ideas the better as far as I am concerned. A Muslim woman wants to wear a veil? More power to her. A Muslim man wants to make a woman wear a veil? Screw him. A fundamentalist woman wants to submit to her husband in the way that some fundamentalists say she ought? OK by me. A fundamentalist wants to make all women so submit? To hell with him.
I am all for property rights, but I don’t think that it is a good thing when wealthy people lord it over poorer people or exert economic power over them in unseemly ways or ways that go beyond the relationship itself. Nobody would like it if their employer made demands of them regarding their private lives, especially if the demands had nothing to do with the job. I would not like it one bit if my employer demanded that I become a vegetarian or have sex with my supervisor. Master and servant usually don’t have equal bargaining power, and there is plenty of room for masters to abuse their power. And the masters are not morally superior by virtue of being wealthier or in positions of power. Likewise, let us not despise the poor on account of their poverty. I am not dreaming of a return to a kind of feudalism.
I dream of freedom and individual autonomy, and the state is only one source of oppression. My boss can make my life hell without threatening me with force or using the state against me. My fellow citizens can make me miserable by damning me and my choices relentlessly and by shunning me or refusing to trade with me. If you are a libertarian because the state is interfering with your favorite other form of oppression, then we don’t really have that much in common. A free society, if we ever get one, will not last long if it is populated by busybodies and folks who crave power, even if it is not wielded by the state. A free society depends on an ethos of minding one’s own business as much as possible.
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3 comments:
Right. I think this is the best blog post I've read all week.
I know a good number of libertarians, and none of them ever talk about what you've written here.
The thing that irks me the most about my politics is that I am constantly tempted to defend many of the things that in reality I only want to allow.
Even worse is that, when I argue for allowing them, most non-libertarians think I'm actually defending them.
You mentioned racism. I'd add smoking, adultery, prostitution, child labor, and drug culture. All things I do not care for but would not initiate force to stop.
Even more insidious are the things I don't want government doing but actually put some stock in. . . as long as they're done privately. Take charity and (even better) institutional racial diversity. I'd like to see much more of both those things. Still, when I argue that the government shouldn't be providing them, I'm Scrooge and a racist.
So, great post. I'll be coming to your blog more often. Keep it up.
I should add that on the "institutional racial diversity" thing, I have two Republican friends who know my political views and can't believe that, all things being equal, I think diversity is something to be prized. (Just not forced.)
They're a small sample size to base a conclusion on, but I will tentatively say that this just goes to show how poor a job most statists do of separating in their minds the notions of "things that I should vote for" and "things that I like."
Tanner, I have had the same frustrating experiences. If I say that public education is morally problematic, my interlocutors invariably interpret this as saying that I am against education. I am FOR education, but I don't like the way it is organized and paid for coercively.
I have tried to nip the misdirecting of arguments in the bud by anticipating that my interlocutors will misinterpret me. "Yes, yes, cock fighting is dreadful, but I would not hold a gun to a man's head for the sake of the cock."
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