Libertarianism

[Montmorency1]

From your perspective or experience, have many streams of feminism been predicated on libertarianism?

I refer to both political and metaphysical libertarianism, between which it is important to distinguish, though they are obviously closely related.

I broach this apropos of no single source, but from a general impression that libertarianism is central to most feminisms.

Sorry, skipping the later posts as I don't get this one:

'My feminism is simply that it is economically advantageous to have the full participation of women on equal or near-equal terms to men, and that elements of typical feminist agendas are useful to incorporate into a program of radical social and political collectivization.'

That doesn't really sound like feminism to me. Can you explain what you think is feminist about that? What do you think women aren't participating in, economically?

It goes straight to the core.

First I was introduced to neuroscience accounts of why humans might have come to believe in free will. Then, I wondered about what it really means to have free will. I concluded that the concept was metaphysically-vacuous, an unsubstantiated intuition. I found that I could not conceive of a universe in which such a thing were in force, nor of an entity other than a omnipotent and omniscient God that could possess or exercise it as an attribute - and I'm an atheist anyway.

I do recognize the tendentious nature of this position, but have hope that it will become mainstream in the coming generations.

LRD:

It makes more sense once you realize that I don't uphold ideals of "social justice" for their own sake. From the perspective of the state, it is easy to see how harmonious relations between groups, particularly gender groups, smooths governance and increases the efficiency of the society in achieving goals. Now, such harmony comes about more easily if relations are equitable, and indeed this should be the default unless there is a convincing countervailing rationale.

E.g. From a purely economic point of view, if women are underutilized in the natural sciences innovation suffers, and if women are undercompensated for work then employers accumulate money while those who spend in the economy have less to make do with.

Not to me it doesn't.

Can you explain?

Furthermore, it is important that groups be interdependent but not dependent upon each other, as this causes strain and upheaval, which reduces efficiency by that fact alone as well as the fact of groups not operating at their full potential.

I swear none of this is explicitly Marxian in character though, nor related to any other established school of thought (as far as I am aware). I know little about formal economics and these musings are just what I've gathered over time and by analogy. Again, likely very tendentious, but what can I say?

Another confession:

I'm actually a post-humanist, meaning that I see humanity as "the ladder that is to be kicked away".

Not technically a misanthrope, though.

Totally off-topic - it's nice to spot a Nietschean, post-humanist feminist on mn.

I've nothing against high-minded debate, but when an OP doesn't even hint at lived experience, the question I want to put is: why are you asking?

I'm put off by all the functionalism:

it is economically advantageous to have the full participation of women on equal or near-equal terms to men. Advantageous to whom? What kind of economics?

harmonious relations between groups, particularly gender groups, smooths governance and increases the efficiency of the society in achieving goals. Whose goals? Why are harmony, smoothness and efficiency more desirable than social justice?

I understand libertarianism to mean as little government as necessary, as much freedom as possible. I would see libertarian feminism as the Margaret Thatcher school of feminism, that if everyone has the opportunity to do well, i.e. the state removes barriers but it is then up to the individual to do well.

I might be wrong though. I think it comes, as I think the OP said, from classical liberalism. Liberal feminism was concerned with giving women equal rights to men (the vote, equality in education etc), it was not really concerned with socio-economic equality. Libertarianism is a branch of liberalism.

But I am no expert. I don't think there is anything collective about liberal feminism, only the bit about removing barriers to women's participation in democratic society (economic and social participation, I mean).

Agency, I always think this is a nebulous concept, after all, you would not talk of a wealthy, white, male elite exercising agency. It applies to 'downtrodden' groups to show they do not passively accept their situation. But it does not address the situation. Thus, a woman exercises agency by going round the charity shops to clothe her children; it means the children are clothed within her means, it does not change her means.
Getting a job might change her means, but there are structural factors which mean she can't (childcare costs). The concept of agency puts the onus on her to address the issue, not society.

Not sure if that contributes anything to the OP.

I have no idea what post-humanism means either. Is it post-post-structuralism??

I think that idea of a post-post-structuralism might be rather useful, summerflower. Not just for post-humanism, either.

I am keen to hear Montmorency1's contribution, too.

I've come across the term amongst those who are very keen on the continuation of the critiquing-of-the-Enlightenment project, particularly those who follow in the wake of modern readings of Nietzsche and those who are fond of Deleuze.

It seems (as might be guessed from the title) to have an aim of undoing some of the premisses based on an unexamined supremacy and centrality of a human perspective, and embedded and unreflective notions of what "a" "human" "subject" is.

I'm thinking of examples. I met someone working on a thesis that we "become" multiple organisms when we join political collectives, and pursuing this idea vigorously would take us away from notions of a unified political subject, with an essential alliance, permanently, to one political identity. Instead, "identity" is multiple, relational, fluid. Multiple not only in the Lacanian sense of being riven through with otherness, but also multiple in the sense that we really do form non-unitary subjects with other people, with ideas, and so on. Our identity is also formed in a "real" sense outside the confines of our bodies.

All that is very human, though! I've met other people who are very into the whole idea of "becoming animal".

I'm quite interested in writers who have suggested that god is a useful way of positing, and thin king about, the beyond-human. Not just Levinas, some Catholics too. I wonder how that would sit with Nietzsche? I think he'd insist that we need to create new means of thinking about this.

I'm really interested to hear from an actual post-humanist, though.

And I think I might follow summerflower into a bit of on-line reading.

Thinking more, I think a lot of writing that might make up a post-humanism booklist is concerned with an interrogation of our notions of what is, and is not "real", and the power relations embedded in that.

I think it's very philosophy based.

Donna Haraway. I'm willing to bet she is a key post-humanist text. Even though that essay is very old.

I agree summer about agency. I think, like most classical liberalism, it was constructed by powerful men to take power from more powerful men. Now it is used to justify doing nothing to help people nor to shape society so long as this mythical agency is invoked. The rise of liberalism has had benefits but has also contributed to a loss of ideology as we have an idea that nothing matters except to the people directly involved in something.

I used to find libertarianism quite appealing but I think now that is because I don't like being told what to do and have a reasonable amount of "power" to exercise my agency. However, I only got that power because of collectivist actions by my forebears to remove barriers of class, sex and religion. It feels deeply selfish of me to value libertarianism. However, I'm not sure what the ideological underpinnings of society are now or what they should be. Other than a feminist, I'm not sure what other kinds of -ists I am now. What other -ists still have any currency?

Hmm, it seems to have several meanings so hopefully the OP will clarify.

The most obvious would be where you are going with Donna Harraway; that we are going, or have the potential to go, beyond humanity, with technological, and environmental developments. Technological is certainly cyborg stuff, I would need an example of environmental.

Less obvious is humanism in the Rennaisance sense, but the only way I can see of being post-Renaissance humanism is to be utilitarian

The comment about kicking away the ladder leads me to believe the OP means more the first sense.

I am curious as to how this relates to libertarian feminism.

The ladder quote is from Nietzsche: "man is a bridge to be crossed", a ladder to be kicked away, something to be overcome.

Sorry, that was an x-post FloraFox, I was musing on the post-humanism question.

I agree that opportunities and rights today have been hard won (and need to be defended). I am curious about the relationship of libertarianism to neoliberalism, as the latter is clearly rooted in economic doctrine. And if we only see ourselves as economic actors, something is lost.

I don't think there is an -ism at the moment to counter neoliberalism. Ideas of agency come out of that, I am sure, because we are all supposed to be individual actors making self-interested and rational choices.

Ah, that makes sense. I did Nietzsche too many years ago and did not really get it. But in the context of the discussion that makes sense!

I think (and I could be wrong about this) one of the (many) critiques of agency (and free will) is derived from post-humanism and is based in the question as to the extent that humans are, actually, algorithmic. The hunt for "mind" and "spirit" is a bit deluded. We are made up of many organisms, viruses, unconscious processes, not all of which work to pursue the same goal. I almost wrote "our" goal there - but there isn't really an "our". Given that we are made up of these multiple drives and forces, and that social forces play such a big part, where does that leave "free will" and this notion of "agency" (with its attendant suggestion that our agency is expressing the pursuit of our self-interested desires)?

I think the OP was identifying the notion of an agent, pursuing her self-interests, and an uncomplicated view of a human subject, acting free of social forces, with libertarianism. Obviously, I can't be sure of that - I'm not the OP. If I've misrepresented you, OP, I really apologise.

Some strands of feminism do seem a bit like that. I remember Natasha Walter's first book coming out and thinking it seemed a bit libertarian. It just seemed to assume that a lot of the really boring stuff, the social binds, were gone. But I'm probably misrepresenting that book completely. And there are various feminists who do espouse an argument, n varius issues, that sounds quite libertarian.

I don't think they can be dismissed as "not-feminism". I think, rather, that there are "feminisms" - and that plural is important, even if it is silent.

I don;t think it's an either/or.

But I don't know ...

Hope someone/you all will add a bit more????

I think post-post-structuralism is yet to be defined, isn't it? In my limited opinion, I think it needs to bring the economic and material factors of life back into the analysis, because that shapes the decisions we make, and in some way challenge these. The last bit is added optimistically!

I have been reading Foucault on governmentality. Not sure how to apply it to anything yet. I have a book called Foucault and feminism which I have not read yet. It may help me on the path to post-post structuralism. Truth and ethics sounds good.

That reading of Nietszche is very post-Darwinist, and a very post-structuralist (post-Nietszchean reading of Darwin, too!).

I think post-humanists are very fond of SF writer Octavia Butler.