The following piece was originally published at the blackstarwritings blog and is the first part of a continuing series on war and anarchism. The subject of warfare has been one that I have held a great interest in for some time. With roots in early humanity about five thousand years ago, it is a factor…

The state depends on its cops to enforce private property. Without them present, the owners would have to hire private security to protect their property from seizure, and that is (due to economies of scale of which the state takes advantage) massively more expensive on the whole. So, one of the most effective ways to…

We anarchists are usually very good at being edgy, and edginess is one of the personality traits that probably attracted many of us to anarchism. Anarchists, like any fringe movement, need to counter-signal against the political mainstream in order to remain relevant. These two things are not necessarily bad; an edgy predisposition enables you more…

This is not a review of Bullshit Jobs. My verdict on the book is simple: it is good, and you should read it. You should, actually, probably read it before you read this. I’ll be re-explaining some of the concepts in it, but I will not cover them in the same depth as the book…

“Attention to all racists: we will not just “replace” you, we will erase you. All trace of your worthless empty lives will be discarded from history. Your murderous temper tantrums will be like so much static noise lost forever as you are shuffled into the dirt.” – William Gillis, Twitter The internet is a place…

When a person with good intentions tries to penetrate into the nepotistic state-capitalist system, only one scenario awaits him. This system will swallow him, and — after indigestion — the system will tear up the remnants of all the good things in this person. A system that aims from the very beginning to rot will…

Agorist theory has been enriched a lot since Samuel Edward Konkin III introduced the initial theory. Through the writings and work of visionaries such as Karl Hess, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Defense Distributed, and Derrick Broze, we have seen agorism grow and expand in ways never thought possible both intellectually and in practice. And the…

In 1917, H.P. Lovecraft wrote the following lines in his short story “Dagon”: “I dream of a day when [the nameless things] may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst…

Poetry has a long history in the anarchist tradition. It is often through poetry that we find ways to say the things we can’t say with prose, whether for fear or simply because they can’t be expressed properly that way. Fits of emotion are a part of radical politics, and for many it is these…

This is the story of how I became an anarchist. I believe it to be fairly typical, though I could be wrong. Ultimately, these are merely my own, personal experiences — and, as such, these writings should not be taken as more or less than that. Dearest thanks and apologies to Miss Cleyre, as this…

It was only a matter of time before state legislatures jumped onto the bandwagon of “free expression” protection measures. Truly, laws like Utah’s recent bill to include political expression as a protected class in the state, have nothing to do with free expression itself. Instead, they are an outgrowth of the — largely false —…

In Ursula K Le Guin’s classic short “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” she considers a prosperous and happy society whose success is somehow purchased through a dark bargain — the torture and abject immiseration of a single child. Despite the positive good won for the many, a few starry-eyed children of Omelas refuse…

If capitalism is good at anything, it is making things. I mean “things” not in an ontological or otherwise formal sense but more in the manner that declutter gurus use it: general assorted human-made and/or human-claimed objects.

Welcome to the second edition of the Against Utopia monthly newsletter, where I explore problems of social organization, philosophy, biology, politics, and more through an epistemological anarchist lens. Or in simpler (cruder) terms, analyzing the authorities’ basis of knowledge and mostly concluding that they should fuck off, so we can flex our autonomy. If you’re…

If you follow the news about Russia, then you probably know what’s happening right now with opposition and political activists. Putin’s dictatorship focuses on torture and imprisonment of everyone who disagrees with authoritarian anti-social politics. If somebody is struggling against total poverty and unfairness, then they will face repression from  government structures such as FSB…

Sadly, there are still some people — people within the activist left, even, who are pacifistic. When I describe someone as pacifistic, I do not only mean that they are intentional, explicit pacifists — though, yes, all pacifists are pacifistic. By ‘pacifistic’ I don’t mean that they are explicit pacifists, but that they are irrationally…

Anarchist bookfairs are one of the most interesting features of anarchist life. A bookfair is immediately recognizable as hierarchical. There are the booksellers and there are the consumers. What separates the two is not merely the physicality of a table, but the capital investment it represents. Those distroing have usually been required to purchase space…

It is not a coincidence that when patents and copyrights are described in formal documents or discussions they are always labeled as “intellectual property” and virtually never as the simple term “property.” Calling it simply property would generate confusion with actually existing forms of private property, such as land, cars, and stocks. Such private property…

You can donate to Chelsea Manning’s legal fund here.  “[I] will accept whatever you bring upon me,” Chelsea Manning told a judge before being jailed for refusing to testify to a grand jury, mostly likely concerning her heroic efforts at leaking American war crimes almost a decade ago. Grand juries are secret hearings designed to…

Many would-be radicals mistake throwing the baby out with the bath water for radical inquiry. “Abolish X thing” has been a useful frame for the moral immediatism we espouse. If it is cruel and unjust, our goal must be its abolition. However, after identifying X thing as Bad, we may, in our haste, obscure the…