James J. Martin once said that libertarians are born, not made. As a social psychologist, I’m not sure I agree with that, although I do know that I was always a maverick, albeit a quiet one, until I got to college. Berkeley in the 60s--ah, heady stuff!  I wasn’t political before college but then, like so many libertarians, I read The Book []: Atlas Shrugged. Naturally, it changed my life. First the taped NBI lectures, then the Goldwater campaign, then the Free Speech Movement. I was on my way. Next, a group of us libertarians and conservatives founded Cal Conservatives for Political Action (CCPA), a daring move on the Cal campus in 1964!  In 1965, when we realized that we weren’t actually conservatives, Greg Moore, Tom McGivern and I formed the Alliance of Libertarian Activists, the first nationwide libertarian organization.

The second important political milestone for me was attending Rampart College in Larkspur Colorado in 1967. There I read Lysander Spooner’s No Treason VI. I was wowed and knocked out by Spooner’s irrefutable logic and became an anarchist instantly. After that, I read Men Against the State by James J. Martin and Our Enemy the State by Albert Jay Nock. I was hooked.

During the next few years, I finished my M.A. in psychology at San Francisco State.  My thesis was a study comparing cognitive and personality characteristics of libertarians and conservatives. I had found a way to marry my two major interests--libertarianism and psychology.

The third important milestone came in 1972 when I helped John Muller found Laissez Faire Books (LFB) in New York City. How exciting those times were! The crème de la crème of the libertarian movement came through our doors--Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, Roy Childs, Peter Breggin, and many more. I will always feel that the five years I was co-proprietor of Laissez Faire, picking out the books, writing reviews for our Catalog and Review, spreading the written libertarian word, was one of my most important contributions to the movement. Authors get most of the glory but the ones who help the authors’ books get read deserve credit too!

During the years at LFB, I was also busy finishing my Ph.D. in social psychology from the City University of New York Graduate Center. There I had the immense good fortune to study with Dr. Stanley Milgram, author of the classic study, Obedience to Authority, and the most famous social psychologist in the world. My dissertation, under his sponsorship, was a study comparing political resisters to authority to nonresisters on measures of moral judgment and attitudes toward authority, the perfect combination of psychology and political philosophy. The study of obedience and resistance to authority has been my specialty ever since.

My other political passion in the 70s (and now!) was libertarian feminism. In 1975, I was a founding member of the national Association of Libertarian Feminists in New York City, serving as its National Coordinator until 1982 and then again starting in 2003. During that time, Lynn Kinsky and I wrote “Government is Women’s Enemy,” since reprinted many times. I also developed a continuing passion for the history of libertarian feminism, writing two early pieces on anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre and libertarian Suzanne La Follette, two important but neglected libertarian feminists. The La Follette piece remains the most extensive biography of her to date. The anthology from SUNY Press, Exquisite Rebel: Voltairine de Cleyre: Anarchist, Feminist, Genius, co-edited with Crispin Sartwell, is the continuation of my intense interest in forgotten libertarian women.  I am now (in 2005) working on an anthology of American women resisters to authority.

Over the next two decades I continued my interest in the history of American anarchism. My essays included “Feminism in Liberty,” written for the anthology Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty and  “John Henry Mackay’s 'The Anarchist': Its Message for Libertarians,” one of the prefaces for the reprint of the 19th century classic, The Anarchists by John Henry Mackay. 

In 1992, I continued my interest in individualism and critical thinking by founding Resources for Independent Thinking, a nonprofit organization providing educational tools to help people think for themselves and increase their critical thinking skills.  Critical thinking about authority became RIT’s specialty. As I write this in 2005, I am working on a popular book on how to stand up to experts and authorities, once again combining psychology and individualist philosophy.

In addition to Rand, Spooner and Nock, major influences on me included Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty, Etienne de la Boetie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Frank Chodorov’s One is a Crowd and Out of Step, and Karl Hess’ “The Death of Politics.”   If I were to name my “heroes,” the ones whose lives and words have inspired me the most, I would have to say Lysander Spooner, Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman and John Henry Mackay.

Libertarianism is more than just a passion for me, it’s a way of life. It permeates my thoughts, my writings, the classes I teach (though not overtly or heavy-handedly!).  To me, libertarianism is psychological as well as political. To turn around an old cliché, the political is the personal.  "Laissez faire" translated into psychological terms means nonauthoritarian personal relationships as well as nonauthoritarian political associations.  It’s an association that I continue to explore.

Albert Camus, in his book Neither Victims Nor Executioners, wrote that a basic existential choice we face in modern times is to stand up to tyranny or be part of it. In “Isaiah’s Job,” Albert Jay Nock wrote of the Remnant, “the ones who will come back and build up a new society.”  Libertarians have made that existential choice to stand up to tyranny. In my view, libertarians are also the vanguard of the Remnant and I am proud and glad to have played my small role in this vanguard.


Dr. Sharon Presley is the Executive Director of Resources for Independent Thinking (www.rit.org) and the National Coordinator of the Association of Libertarian Feminists (www.alf.org). She is a Lecturer at California State University, East Bay (formerly Hayward), where she teaches psychology and critical thinking courses. She can be reached at presley@rit.org or presley@sharonpresley.com.