The end of the world is upon us, or so it may seem. With COVID-19 spreading rapidly worldwide, a mixture of fear, precaution, and opportunism has led state governments to react in predictably authoritarian ways. While some officials have been fighting for moratoriums on evictions and utility shut-offs, paid sick leave, subsidized childcare services, Medicare…

Anarchists face the question: Without nations and states wouldn’t a free society be especially ravaged by pandemics? Who would enforce quarantines without rebuilding a centralized institution of violence? It’s a fair question. Anarchism isn’t about a finite goal, but an unending vector pointed towards increasing liberation. We’re not in the habit of “good enough” compromises,…

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…

For better or worse, the coronavirus has brought the world together. People are scared and worried and many no longer feel confident navigating social spaces they previously took for granted. Questions regarding the hygiene of the Other are now at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Governments and other public institutions are advocating for “social distancing”…

If you’re involved at all in the micromanufacturing, hardware hacking, or open-source hardware communities, or interested (as I am) in their potential for economic relocalization and for undermining corporate power, you’ve probably seen a story going around about makers in Italy 3D printing valves to keep ventilators running for COVID-19 patients in critical condition. According…

[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés] Whenever someone like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk is attacked from the left for their parasitism, the outcome is as certain — and much swifter — than the return of Halley’s Comet. Without fail, we see a swarm of…

Three close friends collectively inherit a house in the country from a departed mutual friend who built it. It’s a dream come true for these young friends, sick as they are of city life and longing to grow their own food. The house is big, gorgeous, and well-maintained. It has a large multifaceted kitchen, which…

Looking at the news on the COVID-19 (or coronavirus) pandemic, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this is one of those lifeboat situations in which a crisis cannot be managed without a resort to large-scale social coercion. China and South Korea seem to have turned the tide on the pandemic, with a reduced number…

Food Not Bombs is an independent international movement whose activists are doing direct action by handing out vegan food to everyone. They believe that their activities help to struggle against poverty, militarism, and violence. Absolutely all existing groups in Russia are decentralized, but they all support the same idea. While the Russian government spends billions…

Artist: Huriana Kopeke-Te Aho In Aotearoa, one of the major forms of social struggle is the indigenous Māori struggling to reclaim the land stolen from them by the New Zealand colonial government as part of the capitalist settler colonisation of Aotearoa. Since 2015, the greatest land struggle in a decade has been happening at Ihumātao…

Some years ago, I coined the term “vulgar libertarianism” to refer to a particular, egregiously bad form of right-libertarian analysis. I did a long series of posts (“Vulgar Libertarianism Watch”) at my now mostly inactive blog, in which I applied the concept to a considerable volume of absolutely wretched material from the right-libertarian commentariat. I…

In my essay The War on Hamburgers: A Practical Alternative to World Veganism, I posited that the way to create a more environmentally-friendly food system would require us to consume less meat but that a majority of people would not do so if it felt like a sacrifice. As such, I touted alternatives such as…

Within any political movement set on radically changing society, there always comes a debate on how best to achieve those goals. Should we unionize towards a general strike? Should we withdraw from the prevailing system by living on scavenged, stolen, and scammed resources in the fashion of classic CrimethInc. propaganda? Should we build cooperatives and…

One of the most twisted words in today’s political discourse is individualism. When people talk about individualism, they tend to conflate two types of individualism and present them as inseparable. The first is ethical individualism which sees the individual as the most important ethical consideration. The second is methodological individualism which sees the individual as…

“They’re even gassing children!” A small affinity group of teenagers raced past me, all in black bloc, one member slowing down only to look at me. I had put my red bandanna away, soaked as it was in tear gas and pepper spray. What remained was a skinny thirteen year old kid in a bright…

Photo credit: Susana Hidalgo, Instagram There are many protests throughout Latin America and the world right now, but the revolt in Chile is a particularly sharp rejection of neoliberalism. Chile has been sold as a model economy in the region that allegedly promotes the “free market” while constructing solid institutions. The reality is that Chile’s…

What keeps all different types of libertarian socialists together is the belief that minimizing hierarchy generates more freedom and equality. Nonetheless, hierarchy is a word etched in ambiguity. The terms power and status are used carelessly. Historically, libertarian socialists, with some notable exceptions, have tended to only be critical of power hierarchies. Feminists and race…

What do we speak of when we discuss the concept of rights? There exists the philosophical concept, the notion that all human beings are embodied with certain inalienable rights, simply by consequence of their being human. This notion refers to human rights as they are commonly understood. Then there exists the legalistic understanding, that of…

Graeber, in his Debt, attacks what he refers to as ‘the myth of barter’ — the idea that money is a communal invention and agreed-upon standard to avoid the problem of having to barter. He’s entirely correct — such a myth is false. However, some of his overzealous fans are incorrect — he at no…

During a recent business meeting, I noticed some ways in which corporate hierarchy leads to negative sum competition and distortions of reality. At my current job in data analytics, I build live business “dashboards” to provide actionable insights to upper management; this includes working with different departments to create new data pipelines and ensure the…