Worker cooperatives have long been championed by anarchists, socialists, communists, Marxists, anti-capitalists, and post-capitalist types as a means to achieve worker-ownership and workplace democracy within capitalism. Not only does their internal structure of horizontal democratic decision making help to internally solve Hayek’s local knowledge problem, but, according to Democracy At Work, [w]hen workers have a say in…
I’ve been re-reading Avrahm Yarmolinksi’s Road to Revolution. It’s one of my favorite books on radical history. I happened to stumble upon it by chance sometime in twenty seventeen, a mere year after first self identifying with anarchism. Back then, while I never totally identified with anarcho-communism, I was adjacent to that as I primarily…
Market anarchism, as defined by Center for a Stateless Society, is the “advocacy of replacing the state with civil society while pointing to free market economics to explain the workability and/or desirability of such.” This ideology has very rarely if ever supported a sizable movement on its own and instead has, according to Charles Johnson…
I have previously pointed out that the on-the-ground efforts in Rojava and Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi can be seen as… attempting, as Wesley Morgan describes, “to create ‘dual power’ through the creation of cooperatives.” Morgan disapprovingly terms this “market syndicalism” and critiques it for simply creating “units in a market economy” and still relying “upon…
I’ve admitted before and will admit again that “I am not particularly tech-savvy. I am a cheerleader for open-source, peer-to-peer, decentralized, appropriate, etc. technology, but, otherwise, I am only about as knowledgeable about this stuff as your average zoomer.” However, I have observed that with the rise of cryptocurrencies and blockchain there has emerged a line…
Di ZH. Originale: #redefinework, 29 luglio 2021. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. Sono il fondatore e direttore esecutivo della Automotive Free Clinic (AFC). La AFC è una libera autocarrozzeria a basso costo di Prattville, Alabama, una cittadina appena fuori Montgomery, progettata secondo i principi del mutuo aiuto e della teoria del valore lavoro di Marx. Nasciamo…
I am the founding Executive Director of The Automotive Free Clinic. The AFC is a free and low cost automotive repair shop in Prattville, Alabama, a small town outside of Montgomery, that was designed on the principles of mutual aid and Marx’s labor theory of value. We were founded in March of 2020 as a…
Advocating work abolition, I encounter one specific objection very often. “Work,” they say, does not refer to, nor imply, coerced labour. An authoritarian Marxist I recently encountered made the claim that to speak of work abolition is the language of “empty” radicalism. They went on to claim that such “empty” radical language is confined to…
In this episode of The Hadal Quadrants, host Leslee Petersen speaks to activists Kitty Stryker and Cathy Reisenwitz about sex work, decriminalization, and the bills FOSTA/SESTA and its impact on sex work and internet culture. Kitty Stryker has been working on defining and creating consent culture for over 10 years through her writing, workshops, and…
Mutual Exchange Radio The Enragés Green Market Agorist Anti-Nazi Gaming League Welcome to the home of all things audio-visual at C4SS! In addition to audio recordings of popular articles, we produce three original podcast series. Mutual Exchange Radio is our flagship show, featuring deep dives into anarchist…
It is with great excitement that I announce the formation of the Northeastern Young Anarchists Network. Formed by libertarian socialist members of several broadly leftist student activism groups on college campuses in the American northeast, NYAN (yes, like that nyan) seeks to be a lateral connecting point between anti-authoritarian leftists to discuss the finer points…
I. Centralized Bargaining, Card Checking, and an Alternative Is there a way to make joining a union easier for employees? And in the process of making it easier for employees to join a union, is there a way to maximize a person’s freedom to associate (or not associate) without weakening the support structures that workers…
In my previous essay Bullshit Jobs and the End of Work (As We Know It) I discussed the economic phenomenon that David Graeber coined as “bullshit jobs,” how the (transitionary) solution he suggested was to establish a universal basic income (UBI) and embrace automation leading to the end of work as we know it, and how this mirrors the…
A little over 100 years since anarchists, socialists, communists, libertarians, and radical unionists in the so-called united states successfully won the long, difficult, and bloody battle for the eight hour workday, we are still overworked and underpaid despite technological advancements necessitating less and less labor to maintain the same quality of life. To quote Bertrand…
It’s fun to reimagine the same damn fights among anarchists over “markets” with “network” substituted in its place. After all, “market” just stands for “trade network.” And while opposition to the act of trade is a distinct and important component of most rejections of markets — see my prior parable about the benefits of trade…
When talking to your local anarcho-syndicalist on why someone should join their union, they usually give a long list of all the things taken for granted today that are the result of organized labor fights in the past, with the weekend being the most enthusiastically mentioned. Now it is easy to believe that the eight-hour…
Our former Lysander Spooner Research Scholar in Abolitionist Studies, Nathan Goodman — now a PhD candidate at George Mason University — has been producing some great work on the costs of war, the abuses of empire, and the possibility of non-state defense projects. His work critiques the massive cost of the US military empire, as…
It will always remain astounding how the authoritarian left shares so much archaic morality with the right-wing when we talk about the idea of fucking for pay. The most deeply devoted members of the alt-right, the centrist core, and left-wing radicals all turn into pearl-clutching suburban soccer moms when the subject of sex-work is broached….
Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Missouri have all come under fire recently for their passing of various –extremely restrictive and possibly unconstitutional– anti-abortion laws. The goal of such laws –it is claimed– is to curb abortion rates, preferably to zero. The problem is, however, that prohibition has never worked to achieve such goals….
You can now subscribe to Mutual Exchange Radio on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Today’s guest is Maggie McNeil, an author, journalist, blogger, sex worker, and expert on sex work. Maggie has written a series of short stories on sex work, Ladies of the Night, runs her own blog, The Honest Courtesan, and has had her writings featured in…
