This piece is useful for noting a) the success of private boycotts, direct action, etc., against the Charlottesville racists, as well as b) the shocking revelation that racists are also sexists.
Note also white nationalists’ fondness for the slogan “Blood and Soil.” Who knew?
I agree with you on (a), but am inclined to think that the consensus view in libertarian circles involves a rejection of private activism on the grounds that the market should, rights aside, be a judgment- and activism-free zone. This piece from Reason Papers (2009) captures what I take to be the standard view, at least among libertarians.
https://reasonpapers.com/pdf/31/rp_31_6.pdf
Of course, it’s not easy to determine “the standard view” is for a group like “libertarians.” But I’ve encountered it often enough.
The idea that the market should be a “judgment- and activism-free zone” seems incoherent to me. What on earth is supposed to drive the market except people’s values?
Or if the claim is that preferences for Corn Chex over Wheat Chex are okay to manifest in the market, but preferences for liberal values over racist and sexist ones are not okay to manifest in the market — why on earth not?
He’s making the latter sort of claim. It’s not literally incoherent, but I don’t think it’s well-motivated or -defended.
I take it that this paper offers a different (non-libertarian) sort of argument to the same (sort of) conclusion:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09515089.2014.972353
I say “I take it” because it isn’t entirely clear to me what counts as “activism” on his view, but I’m guessing that boycotts do.
Irfan, I think one should make a distinction between:
a) People expressing contemptible views that will affect how they live their lives but who will not violate anyone’s person or property by doing so, and the law will not enforce their views on anyone.
b) The same kind of people, but who are either willing to directly impose their views on other people’s person or property or will directly influence the state to do so.
This could just as easily apply to people who have strong moral views that might not indicate anything wrong with their character, such as those who honestly believe that abortion is morally objectionable. The person who opposes abortion on moral grounds but either supports legal protection or does not seek to impose legal sanctions against it is very different from the person who opposes abortion and seeks to push legislation banning it. The first is not a legitimate target of boycott or other social exclusion, while the other one could be, depending on the circumstance.
It seems that the participants in such rallies are not merely expressing a moral stance but seek to have state backing (and have been emboldened by having Trump in a position to hear and respond to their concerns).
The distinction between (a) and (b) is a legitimate and important one, but not exhaustive, whether logically or morally. A third category consists of people who express views that promote injustice (whether contemptible or not). Injustice by definition affects other people but not all injustices involve rights violations, at least on standard accounts of rights and justice. In other words, “justice” is broader than respect for rights. But injustices that cross a certain threshold (without violating rights and without even incurring contempt) could be fair game for boycott. Abortion is a complicated matter, and perhaps not a good example as far as boycotts are concerned. But a business could employ systematically unfair business practices, do so on the basis of some dogmatic (but false) claim about fair business practices, and face a fully justified boycott. For instance, a business that habitually mistreats its employees on the grounds that consumers benefit as a result. That isn’t a contemptible or rights violating view, but I think it could justify a boycott.
Another example: Imagine that a political group committed to limited government decides to create a pointless, irrational blacklist of another faction. It defames these people for decades. Then, when it gets the opportunity to enact the beliefs of the blacklisted people, it quietly does so. I don’t know whether that’s literally contemptible, but it’s wrong. And it need not have anything to do with attitudes toward law or the state. It could just be a form of entirely private vice. But it could justify a boycott right from the outset. If you have trouble imagining this case, just think of the Ayn Rand Institute’s attitude toward its David Kelley-influenced rivals. I was for awhile associated with Kelley’s outfit, and was always disappointed that Kelley refused to endorse the idea of a boycott. This is the view he defended back in 1994. I don’t think it makes any sense.
https://atlassociety.org/about-us/about-us-archive/3742-better-things-to-do
I don’t have a theory of justified boycotts in hand, but at the same time, I wouldn’t regard your point above as an adequacy condition on such a theory. The category I’ve just identifies leaves a lot of room for lots of boycotts unrelated (or only distantly related) to your category (b). As a broader point, I reject the view that Marcoux defends in the article I linked to.
I’m not too concerned to debate terminology (and you may well be using these terms in the standard way), but I would tend to say that rights are broader than justice rather than the other way around. I take it that injustice is a rights violation that legitimizes a forceful response, whereas there are plenty of other rights violations that do not. (Example: I have a right to be treated with respect by at least a few people in my life, but I would never have a right to force any of those people to treat me with respect. Their lack of respect would be a wrong, but not a case of injustice. Similarly, a Nazi parade would be morally wrong, but not an injustice – assuming it was only a parade.)
If you use the terms the other way around, that’s fine. I just wanted to mention to avoid confusion.
“But injustices that cross a certain threshold […] could be fair game for boycott. […] a business could employ systematically unfair business practices […] and face a fully justified boycott. For instance, a business that habitually mistreats its employees on the grounds that consumers benefit as a result. That isn’t a contemptible or rights violating view, but I think it could justify a boycott.”
I’m a bit confused why you would think it justifies a boycott but avoids being contemptible. Is this simply a case of various thresholds where things are a little wrong, boycott-worthy-wrong, contemptible-but-not-rights-violating-yet-wrong, and finally, full-blown-I’ll-see-you-in-court wrong? If so, I take it that you may require some kind of ill intent to move from boycott-worthy to contemptible. Or is there some other determination?
I think that I would put less emphasis on intent, partly because I think it makes little difference to those who are affected and partly because I think it’s difficult to accurately assess in many cases.
My own take on the libertarian response to such a case would be to ask to what degree the circumstance is sustained artificially by external constraints or external support. (Example: regulation and various forms of direct and indirect subsidy, respectively.) In an industry with robust competition, an employer who pays employees as little as possible because he secretly hates his employees would have little means of surviving if his wage rate did not respond to market realities. So, to the extent that he pays what he wants to pay, it’s coincidental, and his intention seems rather unimportant. To the extent that regulation has put him in a quasi-monopolist position relative to his employees, then the behavior becomes more concerning and possibly deserving of a boycott.
An obvious example is the ways in which libertarians respond to Wal-Mart, alternately seeing it as a paradigm case of the good of the market or as the devil incarnate and an extension of the state’s control over commerce. I see merit in both arguments but lean more towards the latter. (Ironically, I’ve also benefited from Wal-Mart’s providing very cheap insulin, which is a route around the contemptible position of the pharmaceuticals. Fight evil with evil, as Paul the Apostle would say.)
Regarding the third type of case you raise, I think that it would depend substantially on the goals of the individuals responding to such behavior and whether those attitudes tend to promote or hinder those goals. Kelley points out that there was not just the childish behavior but also a deeply closed-minded attitude associated with it, and it seems that if one were trying to promote such ideas as vigorously as possible, that might be sufficient from a purely instrumental view to want to dissassociate or even actively boycott such groups.
In a broader sense, there doesn’t seem to be anything especially anti-market in not wanting to associate with rude people (regardless of how it manifests), since the subjective experience of the transaction is as much a part of what one is exchanging as any physical product. So, in that sense, there may well be a million individual boycotts happening daily without any fanfare or controversy.
I understand your terminology, and don’t think the terminological difference really affects how we discuss the issue.
My point was that wrongful behavior could justify a boycott without being contemptible. Contempt is often (thought not always) elicited by hypocrisy or insincerity. But injustice based on a form of dogmatism could be entirely sincere. It might not justify contempt, but might still justify a boycott.
The point you make about whether an injustice is artificially sustained by external constraints/supports is a relevant consideration in thinking about whether or not to boycott, but (in my view) neither necessary nor sufficient for making a decision in a particular case.
Put it this way: a strike is not precisely a boycott, but close enough to one for present purposes. But the choice of whether or not to go on strike in a given case has little to do with whether or not workplace conditions are externally supported or not. Conclusive evidence of external support (or of its exact explanatory relevance) may be hard to find. For instance, I have no idea to what extent conditions at my university are explained by its reliance on state support, and to what extent they’re not; indeed, some of the relevant information may be proprietary. (Even the non-proprietary data can be hard to get, as I know from hard experience.) But I can know pretty conclusively that conditions are bad enough to justify a strike. I can also know with high probability that other options have been exhausted, and that a strike is our best bet. In a case like that, a strike may be justified. Once we go on strike, we may well want to call on the support of the wider community to support our strike: the request that consumers not cross a picket line is in effect a boycott of the institution against which the strike was called. I don’t think the considerations you’ve mentioned are directly relevant to cases like this. We could worry about external support, but we need not do so. We could “let the market work it out,” or we could consider our strike a market mechanism of its own. There are many kinds of case, and many factors involved. My point is simply that there are cases such that boycotts are sometimes justifiable.
In the Kelley case, your statement of the issue basically resolves it, as far as I’m concerned. Having been there at the time, I think it was obvious that from a purely instrumental perspective, Kelley’s outfit had no chance of success unless it differentiated itself (its “product”) from ARI (from ARI’s “product”), then called on its partisans (or members, or customers, whatever) to differentiate themselves from ARI. But Kelley lacked the stomach for a moral crusade of that kind–which is why, I think, his outfit ended up failing as badly as it has.
Your last paragraph makes me wonder whether we’re really disagreeing. Perhaps we’re just thinking of different kinds of case, and consequently emphasizing different things, but agreeing on the basic principle. We both agree that boycotts are in principle justifiable and both agree that it can be complicated to know when exactly to call one. And I guess we agree that it can be counterproductive to call for a boycott in some cases. But that set of agreements (if that’s what they are) puts us in a camp that is at odds with the view of many libertarians who are reflexively hostile to (or at least strongly skeptical of) the idea of boycotts, or in a more general way, of activism driven by concern for “social justice.” “SJW” has become a term of derision in certain circles, not simply because people disagree about conceptions of justice, but because certain people are made uncomfortable by the very idea of connecting moral principles and ground-level political practice. But principles don’t mean anything unless they’re put into practice. Even beyond the issue of boycotts, that’s my larger point.
I understand your terminology, and don’t think the terminological difference really affects how we discuss the issue.
My point was that wrongful behavior could justify a boycott without being contemptible. Contempt is often (thought not always) elicited by hypocrisy or insincerity. But injustice based on a form of dogmatism could be entirely sincere. It might not justify contempt, but might still justify a boycott.
The point you make about whether an injustice is artificially sustained by external constraints/supports is a relevant consideration in thinking about whether or not to boycott, but (in my view) neither necessary nor sufficient for making a decision in a particular case.
Put it this way: a strike is not precisely a boycott, but close enough to one for present purposes. But the choice of whether or not to go on strike in a given case has little to do with whether or not workplace conditions are externally supported or not. Conclusive evidence of external support (or of its exact explanatory relevance) may be hard to find. For instance, I have no idea to what extent conditions at my university are explained by its reliance on state support, and to what extent they’re not; indeed, some of the relevant information may be proprietary. (Even the non-proprietary data can be hard to get, as I know from hard experience.) But I can know pretty conclusively that conditions are bad enough to justify a strike. I can also know with high probability that other options have been exhausted, and that a strike is our best bet. In a case like that, a strike may be justified. Once we go on strike, we may well want to call on the support of the wider community to support our strike: the request that consumers not cross a picket line is in effect a boycott of the institution against which the strike was called. I don’t think the considerations you’ve mentioned are directly relevant to cases like this. We could worry about external support, but we need not do so. We could “let the market work it out,” or we could consider our strike a market mechanism of its own. There are many kinds of case, and many factors involved. My point is simply that there are cases such that boycotts are sometimes justifiable.
In the Kelley case, your statement of the issue basically resolves it, as far as I’m concerned. Having been there at the time, I think it was obvious that from a purely instrumental perspective, Kelley’s outfit had no chance of success unless it differentiated itself (its “product”) from ARI (from ARI’s “product”), then called on its partisans (or members, or customers, whatever) to differentiate themselves from ARI. But Kelley lacked the stomach for a moral crusade of that kind–which is why, I think, his outfit ended up failing as badly as it has.
Your last paragraph makes me wonder whether we’re really disagreeing. Perhaps we’re just thinking of different kinds of case, and consequently emphasizing different things, but agreeing on the basic principle. We both agree that boycotts are in principle justifiable and both agree that it can be complicated to know when exactly to call one. And I guess we agree that it can be counterproductive to call for a boycott in some cases. But that set of agreements (if that’s what they are) puts us in a camp that is at odds with the view of many libertarians who are reflexively hostile to (or at least strongly skeptical of) the idea of boycotts, or in a more general way, of activism driven by concern for “social justice.” “SJW” has become a term of derision in certain circles, not simply because people disagree about conceptions of justice, but because certain people are made uncomfortable by the very idea of connecting moral principles and ground-level political practice. But principles don’t mean anything unless they’re put into practice. Even beyond the issue of boycotts, that’s my larger point.
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Thanks for explaining the distinction between contemptible and not. I’ve heard somewhat similar criteria from some libertarians (example: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/03/nativism_agains.html) that the intention of the speaker is the key determination of rudeness. I would argue that intention should be taken into account, but it seems that someone who is blind to social concerns and blind to their own unwitting participation in promoting or excusing social harms might be considered ‘rude’ or ‘contemptible’ in the same sense that we believe people can cause great harm through negligence as much as through direct intent. The response to each may be slightly different, but we certainly don’t think that negligence is no big deal, and there are plenty of contemptible people whose only crime (in the colloquial sense) was *not* doing what they should have done or being blind to what was clearly in front of them.
But I take your point, so thanks for explaining.
Regarding strikes, it’s true that there may be many reasons why a strike would or would not be appropriate, but if it’s determined that it could be legitimate, I would think that the following would be key criteria in coming to that conclusion:
1) Striking is considerably easier for most involved than simply switching to another employer or starting one’s own enterprise.
2) The employer (and, by extension, the strikers themselves) would not face any considerable threat in the competitive environment by agreeing to the demands of the strikers.
So, for example, if I’m working at a donut shop and don’t especially like how my boss is treating me, it would be silly to try and organize a strike by the two other employees if there were a dozen other donut shops on the same block with “help wanted” signs in their windows. And it wouldn’t really matter how contemptible the boss happened to be.
Or say that the donut shop boss is perfectly fine, except we want to get paid more. It may be that the profit margin is so low that agreeing to our wage demand would effectively put the place out of business (or at least make that much more likely), it also seems silly to launch the strike, purely for reasons of self-interest.
So, when I talk about external regulation and external support, I’m not merely mentioning it as some moral evil that should be opposed for its own sake. (Though, I’m fine with that conclusion, too.) I’m saying that it would seem that those contribute to the two criteria above, and so they provide good reason to think that a strike might be effective.
I work in financial aid at a public university, and I can tell you that there’s clearly a lot of both regulation and external support, and my job is entirely based around dealing with both of those things. (I try not to let it get me down.) So, to the extent that it is difficult and burdensome for professors to find alternative means of employment because of those various regulatory circumstances, and to the extent that the university is protected from competition, then it’s likely that both criteria above are met, and you could at least consider a strike as a live option. (Obviously, that’s not all that should be considered in coming to that decision.)
Regarding your last paragraph, I would say we’re mostly in agreement and really just emphasizing different aspects. My sense of the “error” libertarians often make regarding social action is that nearly all libertarians undervalue non-coercive action, just in different ways. The so-called ‘thin’ libertarians would tend to see the best response to “contemptible” behavior to be passive disassociation, “letting the market decide,” which would tend to cast boycott and strikes as somehow “non-market” activities. As I think you say correctly, a strike could simply be seen as another market mechanism. On the other hand, there are libertarians who seem to not appreciate how destructive non-coercive social forces can be, and I worry that they would end up becoming a kind of non-violent thought police who end up causing more harm than good by punishing any perceived moral vice disproportionately. That’s less terrifying than a police state, but only by a little.
Thanks for the discussion. I appreciate your perspective.
Sorry, didn’t mean to copy your entire response. Sloppy copy-pasting on my part. Not sure that I can edit it, though.