INTRODUCTION

Libertarianism needs a theory of class.

This claim may meet with resistance among some libertarians. A few will say: “The analysis of society in terms of classes and class struggles is a specifically Marxist approach, resting on assumptions that libertarians reject. Why should we care about class?” A greater number will say: “We recognize that class theory is important, but libertarianism doesn't need such a theory, because it already has a perfectly good one.”

The first objection is simply mistaken. While the prominence of the Marxist theory of classes may have left rival approaches obscured in its shadow, class analysis is thousands of years older than Marx; and in Marx's own day the Marxist version of class analysis was only one of a number of competing and very different theories, including several far more congenial to libertarianism. The problem of class is one that faces any serious political theory, Marxist or otherwise.

The second objection is also mistaken, but not so simply. It is true that a libertarian theory of class already exists. More precisely, several different theories of class are current among today's libertarians, inherited from different strands within libertarianism's intellectual ancestry. But although each of these theories offers important insights, I propose to argue that none of them is adequate, and that the shortcomings of libertarian thinking about class have done serious harm to the libertarian cause.