Anarchism is an odd beast and effective advocacy takes a multitude of forms. During the past year, the team behind the Center for a Stateless Society has been focused on exploring how we can best explain and defend the idea of vibrant social cooperation without aggression, oppression, or centralized authority. With limited resources, both financially and in terms of contributor’s time, we must take the time to reflect on our goals, our tactics, and our path forward, changing with the world around us, the social landscape, and the available communications technology.  

This work of planning, rebuilding, and redirecting can be easy to write off. It’s not linear and it’s not nearly as much fun as plunging forward once new paths are forged. But it allows us to do more careful and far-reaching work, providing a much-needed counter-balance to the array of violent and authoritarian political perspectives that dominate the modern political landscape. 

One recent example of which I’m quite proud is our contributors’ coverage of the October Hamas attack and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza. While often horrifying to consider, our writers’ coverage reminded me why our work is so important. As did the considerations I had to make while drafting a call for commentary that stated our collective position clearly and conscientiously.

This is what we do well and hope to keep doing. Preserving a space for nuanced, caring, and yet radical thought, having the hard conversations on what it takes to build a new world, and never accepting the ease of pat answers when effective progress demands we confront the thorny dissonance of modern society and global well-being.

In 2023, we did a lot of reflection. Many of us on the coordinator team faced major life changes and have been working to restructure our workflow towards more efficient uses of our time and energy. I’d like to give a huge shout-out to everyone who worked on the coordinator team in 2023, y’all have been amazing to work with and I’m honored to be part of such an inspiring group of people: 

Translations Coordinator
Enrico Sanna

Editing Coordinator
Eric Fleischmann

Editors
Evan Pierce
Fen
Row

Audio/Visual Coordinators
Can Standke

Financial Coordinator
James Tuttle

Technical Coordinator
William Gillis

Mutual Exchange Coordinator
Cory Massimino

Podcast Coordinator
Zak Woodman

One fun opportunity we had this year was a few of us camping together for the Coup de Gras Festival this past February. We spent many hours in front of a campfire or waiting along parade routes discussing the work of promoting market anarchism, the future of C4SS, and the challenges we face in the current political climate. We were reminded how important it is to get together in person, and how wide-ranging and unwieldy the work of promoting market anarchism really is. As well as the importance of seeking feedback and talking to people outside our traditional audience. 

Between this meeting and others, there are a lot of new ideas floating around within the minds of the C4SS team. I’ve included some that have come to fruition in this past month (January 24) both to show how all that quiet work last year has bloomed already in 2024 and because I took forever to finish this report (please forgive me!). 

For those reading, we’d love to have more voices in the discussion and more hands on deck to help us navigate these complicated times. As you consider the updates below, I hope you feel engaged in the projects we’re pursuing. And I encourage anyone supportive of the Center to reach out about taking part in the behind-the-scenes work of keeping the wheels rolling.

My three major goals for the year are to:

1. Be more accessible.

Last year we didn’t get to as many book fairs, conferences, or other events as we usually do. While this is disappointing, it was unavoidable due to both financial constraints and the increased travel distance faced by many of our coordinators. On the upside, we were able to attend Students For Liberty’s LibertyCon in both 2023 and – just this past weekend – in 2024.

This is always a rewarding experience. Reaching young folks who may not even have heard of market anarchism or mutualism and introducing them to the broader reality of political and philosophical thought is always exciting. And our tabling crew made quite a splash, selling a good deal of books and giving out plenty of stickers, zines, and pins. We’re also planning to have representatives at more of our usual haunts in 2024, including the NYC Anarchist Bookfair.

Of course, these events all require a bit of spending, whether on travel, book shipping, or tabling, and the more support we can get from our followers and friends, the more outreach we can do at events like this. If you’re interested in attending a conference or book fair on behalf of C4SS, please do get in touch at editor@c4ss.org and we can discuss it! You can also help by supporting us on Patreon.

The regular funding offered by Patreon subscriptions allows us to plan out the year more effectively and it gives our supporters more access to the team. One option we’re considering for this year is to open up portions of the C4SS discord server to Patreon supporters so we can discuss more directly the future of the Center, our work, and possible collaborations.

While 2023 was very light in terms of bonus content and Patreon specials, we’re hoping to make 2024 a more exciting year for patrons. Look out for a bonus video on “go bags” from yours truly in the coming months as well as more one-off bonus content from folks on the team. 

2. Keep exploring new media.

Our Patreon was started in part to support the podcast program and we’re very grateful for all the help, which has allowed us to host two ongoing shows, The Enragés and Mutual Exchange Radio. While these two shows will be changing in format a bit, this year, we’ll be adding a new monthly show with Cory Massimino and Roderick Long.

The Long Library, a new, long-format podcast, features deep dives into Rodericks’s vast collection of work and interviews on different topics in market anarchism. Check out the first episode on Long’s 2004 monograph “Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections.”  in either audio or video (below) format! And look out for February’s episode on the 2008 Cato Unbound contribution Corporations versus the Market; or, Whip Conflation Now.

With MER and The Enragés, we’ll be producing slightly fewer episodes to allow our editing and hosting team to accommodate the new show and our ever-shifting responsibilities. While there won’t be episodes every single month, we will be releasing new episodes as regularly as we’re able. Our first MER episode for 2024 will feature Akiva Malament and Mikayla Novak on their work regarding gender as an emergent order. 

If you have ideas for guests we should reach out to, or want to contribute to the podcast program as a host, editor, or researcher, please do reach out! We love getting feedback on these shows and want to cover the issues that are important to our audience. 

3. Cover the issues in ways no one else can.

I began this reflection with our contributors’ treatment of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Our ability to cover these issues with not only careful thought and respect for humanity but also with an unflinching commitment to anarchist values and clear-eyed assessments of the evidence remains C4SS’s most important contribution to anarchism. 

Many of our deepest thinkers got together from January 15-18th in New York when C4SS scholars presented at our parent organization The Molinari Society’s mostly-annual Eastern Symposium in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. One panel tackled the thorny issues of Nation-States, Nationalism, and Oppression while the other explored Topics in Radical Liberalism.

We hope this work will advance political and philosophical thought in meaningful ways and maintain anarchism’s influence in both popular thought and academic conversations. To that end, we’ve continued to publish the important work of independent scholar Kevin Carson. His most recent studies published at the Center include The Undeclared Condominium: The USSR As Partner in a Conservative World Order and a revised and updated version of Intellectual Property: A Libertarian Critique. Look out for a few more studies this month as well, going live on Tuesdays in February. 

Thank you to everyone who has contributed time, work, money, ideas, and encouragement to any of these various projects. We really couldn’t do it without all these hands on deck and we appreciate contributions in all forms. We are currently hurting a bit for contributions of time and energy. If you have some to spare and would like to work on any C4SS project, please reach out to editor@c4ss.org. We’re particularly in need of editors, both for written pieces as well as audio and video. Graphic design support would also be helpful. 

If you’d like to support the Center financially, Patreon is still the best way to do that! Our finances have been stretched a bit as various services we rely on have increased their fees. But we hope to continue delivering the same output of written commentary, studies, translations, and audio and video content. 

We’ve had to start pro-rating translation payments, which means we can’t pay our translators what they deserve, or publish as many translations. Your support on Patreon allows us to keep the wheels rolling and pay all our contributors what they deserve. 

You can also make a direct one-time donation through either Stripe (click the link or scan the QR code to the right) or Venmo (@c4ss-dot-org). Purchasing books, stickers, buttons, and more at the C4SS Counter-Economic Store is a wonderful way to support the Center while exploring the ideas of market anarchism, or representing them out in the world.

Thank you all again for an amazing year in 2023. While I’m often worried about the future of humanity and the general thrust of global politics, the work we do does give me hope and illuminates a way forward into the unknown future. 

With love and solidarity, 

Alex McHugh