The Most Difficult Aspects of Anarchy Response to Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder by Shawn Wilbur At base, Kevin and I disagree about the possibility of, as I put it, “a truly anarchic space, outside the legal order and beyond the realm of permissions and prohibitions.” That’s a serious disagreement, since it amounts, for me, to a…

The Spirit of Dialectical Libertarianism Rejoinder to Shawn Wilbur by Kevin Carson At the outset, before going on to dismiss the “usual” criticisms of occupancy-and-use, Shawn raises some far less common questions of his own — very much in the spirit of dialectical libertarianism — about how the character of an occupancy-and-use system would be…

Limiting Conditions and Local Desires Occupancy-and-Use: Neo-Proudhonian Remarks by Shawn Wilbur There is a great deal that could be said in response to Kevin Carson’s opening statement, from the “neo-Proudhonian” mutualist perspective, but I’ll try to keep things at least relatively short. Like Kevin, my introduction to the notion of occupancy-and-use land tenure was through…

Are We All Mutualists? Some General Comments on Occupancy-and-Use It falls to me, in this opening salvo in a symposium on occupancy-and-use land tenure, also known as usufructory property, to write a defense of it. Theoretical advocates of it go back, in some form, at least to Godwin and Paine in the Western tradition. I’m…

Introducing the November 2015 Mutual Exchange Symposium Discourse on Occupancy and Use: Potential Applications and Possible Shortcomings “It’s a shame there’s even a need to say this, but ‘property’ is a word that’s used by different people to mean different things,” reckons Kevin Carson in his opening salvo. Carson’s statement neatly summarizes C4SS’s November 2015…

So, going through the final rounds of work on Markets Not Capitalism with Gary Chartier and the rest of the Collective has really been reminding me that I’ve accumulated a lot of occasional and fragmentary writing — papers, paragraphs, notes, etc. — that I really ought to have been collecting for this blog and sharing more…

If you want to see how inhumane people can be, just watch those who make and execute foreign policy. We could spend all day discussing the cruelties that politicians and bureaucrats commit against people who live inside the United States. Think how many are caged like wild animals because they manufacture, sell, or consume disapproved…

Black markets and agorism are an integral part of the way free people are going to save the world from unrelenting economic oppression and environmental damage. What constitutes black market activity? What is agorism and how does it subvert the state? How does agorism promote ecological sustainability? These questions are best answered by looking at…

Transgender people and issues are receiving more attention in media and policy spaces, but there seems to be some uncertainty from libertarians on how to go about approaching them in both personal and political contexts. This is odd from a group that boasted acceptance of same-sex unions long before the mainstream left or right and…

A complex man with a controversial legacy, Mohandas Gandhi remains one of the pioneers of civil disobedience as a political weapon and a giant in 20th century anti-colonialism. An individualist anarchist who motivated millions to fight to liberate themselves from British rule, his success showed a potentially powerful application of libertarian ideas during a major…

In the contemporary parlance, it is largely supposed that a capitalist is one who favors a free market economic system, yet this wasn’t always the case. In the nineteenth century, as the descriptor capitalist came into more frequent use, it was virtually always deployed as a term of abuse, in identification of exploiters; it was…

Donald Trump’s indictment of the Bush II administration for failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks presents an opportunity for more of a bird’s eye view of American foreign policy in the Middle East, a policy that has killed many hundreds of thousands, maimed countless more, and laid waste to entire societies. As Peter Beinart reminds…

by Voltairine de Cleyre It was suggested to me by those who were the means of securing me this opportunity of addressing you, that probably the most easy and natural way for me to explain Anarchism would be for me to give the reasons why I myself am an Anarchist. I am not sure that they…

by Michael S. Rozeff Introduction Aggressive violence opposes freedom of action. This is a central libertarian tenet. What then are we to make of non-violent means of controlling an individual’s beliefs, such as methodical inculcation of religious, nationalistic, or superstitious beliefs? Do these methods also oppose freedom? How do we characterize such methods and contrast them…

In 1897, then well-known anarchist-without-adjectives, Voltairine de Cleyre, addressed the question of why she was an anarchist by answering “because I cannot help it.” In her honor, I seek to address the same question with my own personal reasons. It is our responsibility to honestly evaluate all sides of an issue, and to follow whichever…

The good news about the presidential election season is that so many voters seem disgusted with career politicians. The bad news is that these voters are naively opting for “outsiders” who in reality are just politicians in another form. They are anti-politician politicians. This, I submit, is not progress. It is certainly a hopeful sign…

A disconcerting part of the (small g) greenish, cooperative and alternative economy movements is fond of proposals for “New Deals” of one kind or another (Green New Deal, and so forth). I say “disconcerting” because, given the broad tendency of those movements to favor decentralism, economic relocalization and horizontal governance, the New Deal is —…

Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder to Steven Horwitz. As with Derek Wall, I’m gratified by the thoughtful tone of Steven Horwitz’s response to my lead essay. Where he agrees with me, he makes some good points of his own that add to what I was trying to say — particularly in regard to “free markets” not meaning the…

Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder to Derek Wall. I appreciate the thoughtful tone of Derek’s response, and I’m certainly gratified by whatever role I may have played in inspiring him to take up brewing beer. And having been strongly influenced by the work of Elinor Ostrom myself, I was pleased to learn that an Ostrom scholar was…

Steven Horwitz’s Response to Kevin Carson. There is much to like in Kevin Carson’s lead essay and even where I think he goes astray, he performs a valuable service by reminding us of the ways in which the state has affected the evolution of really-existing capitalism and he thereby challenges us to think more critically…