This document discusses and compares libertarianism, leftism, and statism. It defines libertarianism as believing in equal individual rights and that force is only justified in self-defense. It defines leftism as opposing authoritarianism, privilege, and oppression through concepts like intersectionality and anti-domination. It argues that the state uses violence and social norms to systematically oppress minorities and deny individual liberty, while markets free from state intervention could allow more choice and opportunity for the marginalized.

2. What is Libertarianism?
• Equality of Authority: human beings are
fundamentally morally equal.
• Individuals own themselves and any objects they
incorporate into their projects through voluntary
trade or labor-mixing.
• People and property are ends, never mere means.
• Force only justified in self-defense.

3. Libertarianism and Statism
• The State claims a territorial
monopoly on legitimatizing the
use of force.
• Laws enforced through
threat of violence.
• State authority does not rest
on the explicit consent of the
governed
• Violates individual liberty
• Anarchism: social system based
on free association and
voluntary trade, not state
force.

4. What is Leftism?
• Ethic of Non-Domination
• Opposition to
authoritarianism, privilege,
exploitation, hierarchy,
exclusion, subordination, and
deprivation.
• Intersectionality
• Systems of oppression and
privilege overlap or
“intersect”
• Dialectics:
• “Art of context keeping”
• Society is a complex nexus of
interrelated institutions and
processes and must be
understood as such.

5. Leftism and Oppression
• Cultural norms and rules
promote, reinforce, and
tacitly approve of systematic
bias in favor of certain
characteristics and groups at
the expense of other,
minority characteristics and
groups:
• Racism, sexism, homophobia,
cissexism, ableism, ageism,
bossism, classism, xenophobia,
gross unequal access to
resources.

6. Two Forms of Institutional
Oppression
Institutional oppression denies voice and exit and restricts
access to economic resources through two, often
overlapping, ways:
1. Violent institutions (The State)
2. Non-violent institutions (Racist, sexist cultural
norms)

7. Who is the State?
Individuals with their own
goals, desires, prejudices,
cultural attitudes,
relationships, and special
interests.

8. The State and the Birdcage: Social
Justice Edition
• Social justice: concern for a fair, just,
equitable society free of institutional
oppression, domination, and privilege.
• Libertarian conception of social justice
addresses state violence and its unique role
in systematic oppression.
• Forms of oppression are mutually
reinforcing.
• State and society dominated by wealthy,
able-bodied, heterosexual, white cismales
• Minorities marginalized through state law
and social norms

9. “Capitalism”?
• “Capitalism” originated as
derogatory term for
corporatists.
• Leads to conflating whatever
system we have now with
freed markets.
• Often refers to an economic
system pervaded by gross
economic inequality,
hierarchical, oppressive
workplaces, and managerial
bureaucracy.
• No reason to emphasize one
factor of production among
many in freed markets.

10. Costs of Hierarchy
• As firms grow larger, economies of scale (efficiency gains from larger
size) are eventually overtaken by diseconomies of scale (efficiency
losses from larger size):
• Internal calculational chaos as firms become insulated from market
feedback and price system
• Transportation/distribution/advertisement costs
• Capital maintenance and overhead costs
• Net effect of state intervention: artificially distorts the price system so
that diseconomies of scale have less effect.

11. Political vs. Economic Means
Political Means: Unrequitedly appropriating
another’s labor.
Use of force
Zero-sum exchanges: one party benefits at the
expense of the other
Used by the State
Economic Means: Exchanging one’s own labor
for the labor of others.
Voluntary trade between moral equals.
Positive-sum: both parties benefit from the
exchange, otherwise it would never have been
voluntarily agreed to in the first place.
Market exchange and free association
• Libertarian Class Theory:
The State uses political means to exploit those
who rely solely on economic means.

12. The State and the Birdcage: Economics
Edition
• Systematic denial of voice and exit and access
to economic resources through political
means that benefit privileged elites:
• Regressive taxation and regulation, licensing
laws, minimum wages and other price controls,
intellectual property laws, health and zoning
codes, publicly funded infrastructure,
capitalization requirements, various subsidies,
bank cartelization and monetary inflation,
interventionist and expansionary foreign policy,
Keynesian bailout schemes, and more.
• Free competition is a leveling force and ends
class conflict.
• Allows oppressed minorities to escape
majoritarian authority through increased
choice, opportunity, or entrepreneurship.

13. Markets Freed from Capitalism
• Smaller, flatter firms
• More worker autonomy and control
• Worker cooperatives
• Strong voluntary labor unions,
unfettered from government
control
• Self-employment
• Freelance work
• Peer to peer sharing
• Micro-enterprises
• Gift economies
• Mutual aid societies
• Less corporate hierarchy
• More alternatives to
wage labor
• Less bossism

14. A Left-Libertarian Strategy
• Mass Education
• Direct, bottom-up, grassroots action
• Peaceful resistance, civil disobedience, mass protests, rallies,
demonstrations, sit-ins, mass awareness and divestment campaigns,
public shaming and shunning.
• Alternative institutions
• Agorist and black market networks, alternative currencies, community
workshops, p2p sharing, 3-d printing, worker cooperatives, wildcat
unionism, strikes, slow-downs, mutual aid societies, and other
social/technological acts of entrepreneurial activism.

15. Where Can I Learn More?
• C4ss.org
• S4ss.org
• All-left.net
• distro.libertarianleft.org
• Molinari.co
• Praxeology.net
• AAEblog.com
• Radgeek.com
• Mutualist.org
• Sheldonrichman.com