Center for a Stateless Society » S4SS

Anarchists United on Feed 44

James Tuttle — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 18:00:01 +0000

C4SS Feed 44 presents Uriel Alexis’ “Anarchists United” from the Students for a Stateless Society‘s Volume 1, Issue 3 of THE NEW LEVELLER read by Dylan Delikta and edited by Nick Ford.

With the growth of the producer’s network and the mutual trust relations promoted by the mutual bank, a truly revolutionary potential is unleashed. Increasingly more complex production processes can be organized through cooperatives, P2P projects, and other kinds of collaboration. This makes the network more and more independent from the state-dominated formal economy we live under today. As this network gets stronger and more resilient, more goods may be created inside of it, such as schools, aid to people in hardship, medical treatment and collective transportation.

…

Once a certain workplace had completely come under worker’s direct self-management, its products can be exchanged inside the network of independent producers on a mutual basis. This would greatly add to the stability and to the welfare of all inside the network, since a large quantity of people are now connected. We can see now that mutualist and anarcho-syndicalists can work together against the state and capitalism, achieving not only the goals they share, but also their more specific aims.

…

In the economic sense, the anarcho-communist societies would be outside the network of independent producers, since there would be no exchanges even in crypto-currencies. But certainly they would be connected by ties of trust and mutual aid. For example, the network could supply products and services for free through those members that so wished.

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Ask an Anarchist Week

Students for a Stateless Society — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 23:00:59 +0000

People are drawn to a commotion. In the marketplace of ideas, winners are often simply the loudest and as anarchists we hold ideas inherently more combative and attention grabbing than those regularly seen on a college campus. This is precisely what makes the campus perfect for radical activism, and was the philosophy which guided the Students for a Stateless Society (S4SS) at Texas State when we held our inaugural Ask an Anarchist Week.

The event intended first to establish S4SS as the primary voice for radical politics and social justice on Texas State campus, and second to communicate to other anarchists on campus that there was an intellectual home for their ideas. Armed with hundreds of pamphlets and a sign which read “Abolish Government Now!”, we set up our tent directly in the middle of campus and invited anyone interested to engage us in dialogue over whatever they wanted. A constant stream of students visited the table, sometimes recognizing the literature and ideas, but more often they were simply interested to hear what the people with the “abolish government” sign had to say. We distributed almost the entirety of our literature, and finished with 40 names on an email list. All metrics point to the event being a great success, but they don’t tell the whole story.

The success of the event was solidified in my mind on the final day of tabling, when I realized almost all of the visitors to the table were repeat visitors coming back to talk about the ideas they had read in the pamphlets we gave them. In our first week of existence, S4SS had not only succeeded in distributing anarchist literature, but managed to create a tiny community where new people explored anarchist ideas and sought deeper understanding of the philosophy.

Ask an Anarchist Week blew through all expectations I had of an anarchist tabling event being held well into the semester, and set a standard for our future activism. I attribute this simply to the commotion we made by being an intellectual group who embraced their radicalism with a touch of flair.

Travis Calhoun is an organizer for S4SS at Texas State University in San Marcos Texas, and a campus coordinator for Students for Liberty.
S4SS at Texas State has a Facebook page and a group.
The group can be contacted through either of the facebook links or email: s4ss.txstate@gmail.com.

Volume 1, Issue 3 of THE NEW LEVELLER now online!

Jason Lee Byas — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 23:00:59 +0000

“Are you interested in individualist anarchism, or at least so frightened by it that you want to keep an eye on its progress? Are you frustrated by capitalism’s love for central planning and communism’s conservative view of human potential? Do you suspect that abolishing the institution responsible for war, police brutality, and mass incarceration might not be so dangerous after all?

Then The New Leveller is for you!”

The third issue of the Students for a Stateless Society‘s newsletter, The New Leveller is now online.

For a link to a PDF of the entire issue (recommended!), click here.
For links to an HTML version of each individual article, click here.

In this issue:
“A Matter of Life & Death” by Jason Lee Byas frames the vision of individualist anarchism as a battle of life against death. This is not only because governments murder, but also because both aggression and domination are at odds with the principle behind life itself.
“Anarchists United” by Uriel Alexis explores ways in which anarchists with divergent views about how a stateless society would (and should) look can still cooperate toward those goals that they share.
“Identity & Individuals” by Elizabeth Tate explains that libertarians and anarchists should embrace, not shun, identity politics.
“Prisons: The Case for Abolition” by Nathan Goodman details reasons that prisons are both an unnecessary and unjust institution, and also shows how attempts at piecemeal reform can actually make things worse. The solution, then, is abolition.
“All Wars Are Unjust” by Jason Lee Byas argues for the conclusion in its title. To support any war is to support murder, dehumanization, regimentation, and theft, all on a massive scale. Because of this, we must reject all war.

The Individualist Anarchist and Work on Feed 44

Nick Ford — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 20:00:47 +0000

C4SS Feed 44 presents Nick Ford’s “The Individualist Anarchist and Work” from the Students for a Stateless Society‘s Volume 1, Issue 2 of THE NEW LEVELLER read and edited by Nick Ford.

The individualist anarchist may first notice in this situation that the individual is crushed not only by the political arrangements but the systematic and institutional arrangements of work. Whether you are in retail, the food industry — or even in the upper echelon of a big corporation — it remains true that the individual is crushed.

This is chiefly because of how the individual is both treated and seen.

By now it may be regarded as an overstated sentiment but within the context of corporate culture one is treated as a cog in the machine. None of the individuals are important in of themselves but only insofar as their roles are concerned in relation to the corporation.

The solution to all of these problems and more relies on not just abolishing the state and capitalism but abolishing work as well.

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Toward An Anarchy of Production, Pt. II on Feed 44

James Tuttle — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 19:00:54 +0000

C4SS Feed 44 presents Jason Lee Byas‘s “Toward an Anarchy of Production, Pt. II” from the Students for a Stateless Society‘s Volume 1, Issue 2 of THE NEW LEVELLER read by Stephen Ledger and edited by Nick Ford.

A new worry, then, might be that we’re just stuck between two equally unappealing alternatives: either rigidly conservative communism, or an alienating world of atomized individuals who can only relate to one another through buying and selling. Oppressive cultural norms can be hellish, but so can that crushing sense of isolation.

Luckily, I don’t think that’s a choice we have to make. Putting a hard line of separation between markets and civil society is a mistake, and what distinction does exist will only get blurrier and blurrier in a free society.

Just because one aspect of a given interaction is profit-seeking doesn’t mean that it can’t also be a source of social cohesion.

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A General Idea of Revolution on Feed 44

James Tuttle — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 18:00:47 +0000

C4SS Feed 44 presents Gabriel Amadej’s “A General Idea of Revolution” read by Stephen Ledger and edited by Nick Ford.

This means we can short-circuit the political programs dreamed up by progressive-minded bureaucrats. Cody Wilson, famous for his involvement in constructing the first 3D printed gun, effectively killed “the gun-control debate” by publishing a tool of symbolic terrorism: an unlicensed digital firearm that we can (more or less) assemble from our laptops. Wilson’s project heralds not just open access to guns, but to products traditionally commanded by large-scale manufacturers.

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The Planet vs The State on Feed 44

James Tuttle — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 19:00:43 +0000

C4SS Feed 44 presents Zoë Little’s “The Planet vs The State” read by Stephen Ledger and edited by Nick Ford.

As a self-proclaimed environmentalist, I sincerely wish that it were somehow possible to entrust the protection of the environment to some perfect and benevolent central power that could magically fix all our problems by passing a bunch of laws or something. Unfortunately, the existence and efficacy of such a body is equally unfathomable to congress voting to reduce their own salaries.

Now, I’m not claiming that our environmental woes would disappear in a free society, but at least we could begin to undo the damage already done by the state.

You might be thinking, “It’s not the government ruining our natural resources, it’s the evil corporations.” While TransCanada, Tyson and Monsanto may be the boots on the ground of environmental degradation, one must consider how these players came to be so damn evil.

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Liberty by Design on Feed 44

James Tuttle — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 19:00:20 +0000

C4SS Feed 44 presents Andy Bratton’s “Liberty by Design” read by Stephen Ledger and edited by Nick Ford.

I sometimes feel the need to justify my presence at these events and draw a specific connection between the work I do and the libertarian and anarchist philosophies I hold so dear. That’s what I will attempt to do here, not so much because for the purpose of validating my interest in activism, but to lay out an argument for what I think ought to be the next step for liberty activism: to break out of the box of academia and pursue the endeavors of the market as a career or, at the very least, as extra-curricular interests.

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No Loyalty on May 1st on Feed 44

James Tuttle — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:00:35 +0000

C4SS Feed 44 presents Benjamin Blowe‘s “No Loyalty on May 1st” read by Stephen Ledger and edited by Nick Ford.

On May 1st, 1961, under President Eisenhower’s backing, Congress’ passed a joint resolution that established that day as Law Day – a day the American Bar Association describes as “a national day set aside to celebrate the [United States’] rule of law.” Also called “Loyalty Day” or “Law and Order Day,” Law Day is an offense to not just the global working class, but those who take laws and government accountability most earnestly – anarchists.

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Who is the Government? on Feed 44

James Tuttle — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 20:00:40 +0000

C4SS Feed 44 presents Jason Lee Byas‘s “Who is the Government?” from the Students for a Stateless Society‘s Volume 1, Issue 1 of THE NEW LEVELLER read by Stephen Ledger and edited by Nick Ford.

On this month 29 years ago, the Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a row house in order to attack the black liberation organization MOVE. The fire raged on, destroying 61 houses and killing 11 people. Was that just a standard demolition planned by and for the neighborhood to get rid of some houses they didn’t really want anymore?

Of course not.

That these people all held the right to vote clearly did not guarantee to them any meaningful control over how the government’s resources would be used. They were not the government, and they were kidnapped, shot, or burned alive by someone whose interests were not their own.

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