The left column consists of verbatim quotes from Left-Libertarianism: Its Past, Its Present, Its Prospects, with occasional emphasis, mine.
| left-libertarianism of the C4SS variety | anagorism as advanced by Lorraine Lee |
|---|---|
| commitment to freed markets, private property, and laissez-faire; b) an orientation toward class analysis and a rejection of hierarchical workplaces, corporate dominance, and gross economic inequality as evils both akin to and largely enabled by statism (especially by regulations that allow favoured corporations to reap the benefits of economies of scale while socialising the costs of diseconomies of scale), in favour of horizontal organisation and worker self-management; and c) a concern with combating forms of social privilege such as patriarchy and misogyny, white supremacy, heteronormativity and homophobia, cissexism, and ableism, again as evils both akin to statism and standing in relationships of mutual support with it. Opposition to militarism and nationalism, and support for environmentalism and open borders, are also part of the mix. | same principles, reversed priorities: (a) commitment to class consciousness and zero tolerance for hierarchy, dominance, inequality, privilege, militarism and nationalism as evils of comparable magnitude to the problem of statism and (b) orientation toward non-coercion, rights of personal property owners and live-and-let-live; and (c) zero tolerance for social privilege in the form of patriarchy, misogyny, white supremacy, heteronormativity, etc., and an interest in anti-statism to the extent that it is useful as a means to the end of destroying hierarchy in the abstract |
| left-libertarians are closest to the pro-free-market, anti-capitalist, anti-privilege position of such 19th-century individualist anarchists as Stephen Pearl Andrews, Voltairine de Cleyre, William B. Greene, Ezra Heywood, Thomas Hodgskin, Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and Josiah Warren. | The 19th century heroes of anagorism tend to include more Europeans (Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Rocker) than Americans, but include such Americans as Goldman, Spies, Parsons. |
| left-libertarians would agree with BHLs that banning sweatshops would harm workers, but rather than praising sweatshops would favour striving to undermine the social and political structures that systematically deprive impoverished workers of better options than sweatshops. | I believe that “banning” can be effected without statecraft, and my attitude toward the “sweating system” is termination with extreme prejudice. |
| Left-libertarians tend to see existing economic institutions as far more deformed in the direction of inequality and privilege by government intervention than the majority of BHL proponents do. | Anagorists tend to see deformation as primarily something that economic institutions exert upon government (which is generally a weaker social force), although both politics and economics need to be abolished, or at least obviated. |
| Relatedly, left-libertarians tend to look with greater favour on the labour movement and on unions. | I’m pro-union without reservations. |
| One might say that if the dominant BHL aim is to fuse Hayek with Rawls, the dominant left-libertarian aim is to fuse Murray Rothbard with David Graeber. | Hmm, haven’t thought about that one enough. I say for now I’m trying to fuse Michael Albert with Paul Goodman. |
| One concept often associated with left-libertarianism is that of “thick libertarianism”7 – the idea that there are certain value commitments which, while not logically entailed by libertarian principles, are nevertheless bound up either conceptually or causally with those principles in such a way as to make them part of reasonable libertarian advocacy. For example, some of these additional commitments may be part of, or implied by, the most reasonable defense of libertarianism, or may be needed in order to choose between alternative ways of applying libertarian principles, or in order to make a libertarian social order achievable or sustainable. For most thick-libertarian advocates, this does not mean that those who reject such commitments do not count as libertarians; but it does mean that their libertarianism is less than fully realised. | Achievable or sustainable? How quaint. How about non-dystopian? I’m for thick libertarianism, but when push comes to shove I will prioritize the thick part over the libertarian part. I’m also for thick individualism, thick voluntarism, thick contractarianism and thick transparency. |
The main difference is, I use equivocal language to the extent that I advocate for liberty, and unequivocal language in defense of equality.
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