“We see ‘freedom’ invoked to defend everything from the right of corner gun shops to sell AR-15s without background checks to the right of chemical plants to dump toxic waste in rivers. Shouldn’t we instead ground our politics in alternative values like equality or the alleviation of suffering? These other values are important. Equality matters both in itself and because genuine freedom is impossible amid massive inequality. Reducing suffering is a valiant aim too. But it would be a huge mistake to cede ‘freedom’ to the defenders of the capitalist status quo. The drive to overcome unjust relations of domination has always been at the center of the Left’s project.” “the dichotomy between ‘negative’ freedom from interference and ‘positive’ freedom to act on your ‘real’ underlying interests doesn’t exhaust the possibilities. ‘Republican’ theorists — as in ancient Greek and Roman republics — emphasized freedom from domination, and argued that this was a more fundamental kind of freedom than freedom from interference.” “The men and women who built the trade union movement and fought to end child labor and institute an eight-hour day understood they were fighting for a profoundly important kind of human freedom. Let’s not lose sight of that now.”—”Socialism Is All About Expanding Freedom. Libertarians and conservatives talk a lot about freedom, but the most important kind of freedom is freedom from domination — and if you take that seriously, you should oppose capitalism.”