(Madhusudan Raj, Mises Institute) In discussing the recent boycott of Target, University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers recently told MSNBC:
[If] Target caves into this, then it says that the moment you threaten the employees of even a very large corporation, you get to control its policies. This is economic terrorism, literally terrorism, creating fear among the workers and forcing the corporations to sell the things you want, not sell the things you don’t.
Professor Wolfers is wrong on multiple fronts. First, boycotting products of a company is not an act of terrorism. Boycotting a person, a store, or an organization is to engage in a concerted refusal to have dealings with it, usually to express disapproval or to force acceptance of certain conditions. On the other hand, terrorism is an act of violence where a terrorist is aggressing upon someone’s bodily or physical property.
Britannica defines terrorism as “the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.”
As Professor Murray Rothbard explained:
What such aggressive violence means is that one man invades the property of another without the victim’s consent. The invasion may be against a man’s property in his person (as in the case of bodily assault), or against his property in tangible goods (as in robbery or trespass). In either case, the aggressor imposes his will over the natural property of another—he deprives the other man of his freedom of action and of the full exercise of his natural self-ownership.
Are these conservative boycotters aggressing upon Target’s properties? No. Then, their boycott is not an act of terrorism. On the other hand, several Target stores have received bomb threats from some unknown people who say they are protesting against Target’s decision to pull LGBTQ-themed clothes, something that Wolfers fails to mention.
Second, what Wolfers calls terrorism is the working of a peaceful market process in which consumers are abstaining from buying Target products because they disagree with the company’s policies. Boycotting is a peaceful way of legitimate and legal protest.
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In recent times, we have seen corporations increasingly becoming political. Instead of serving their consumers, corporations have become advocates for political control over the lives of people. They are teaming with authorities in censoring the critics of those in power and their political opponents. Technocrats are increasingly usurping the role of politicians or are working with politicians to nudge society in a leftist direction.
The boycott of Target and other companies by consumers is their way of resisting this technocratic agenda of control.
