It’s been explained to me that every writer—whether of highbrow novels or online internet discourse—always has one or two things they’ve written that they dislike and which haunts them. For me that piece is “A Critical Consideration of Hensley’s Appalachian Anarchism,” which is a response to Dakota Hensley’s article “Appalachian Anarchism: What the Voting Record…

Talking about “Christianity” is difficult; Christianity is the largest religion in the world, comprising a multitude of denominations, regional variants, and political projects – each with their own complicated histories and specific contexts to unpack. This means that any statement or conclusion with the words “all” or “most” will necessarily miss something, even in the…

Noam Chomsky, a self-described anarchist, presents anarchism as:  Primarily [a] tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified. It assumes that…

Ash P. Morgans has a lengthy critique of the contributions made by a number of “moralists,” including myself. And in reading their response I realized that what I thought I had written—a relatively short piece with a narrow-focus—was, in fact, a confused mess. This doesn’t mean I now disagree with my arguments: I still think…

The labor theory of value or LTV is, according to Wikipedia, “a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of ‘socially necessary labor’ required to produce it.” This theory of value was popular among early liberal economists like Adam Smith and David…

Two years ago, I gave a presentation titled “Prerequisites for Freedom: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective” to a philosophy discussion group, in which I talked about the connection between thick libertarianism and 19th century North American individualist anarchism and how progressive and liberatory values are necessary for genuine and necessarily anti-capitalist individualism. For the uninitiated, the…

Written originally as notes for the Egoist and the Anarchist, consider this final essay as a kind of postscript where I hope to challenge what I see as a problematic line of thinking present throughout this symposium: a tendency I’ll call phrase-making. Countless modes of thought, from metaphysics to political discourse, rely on “phrases,” i.e.,…

One of the most famous community currencies in the United States is Ithaca HOURS, so a review of its history, function, and effectiveness seems appropriate at any time. As accounted by anthropologist Bill Maurer in his book Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason, Ithaca HOURS was started in 1991 in Ithaca, New…

Comments by Laurance Labadie on Interview Between Kerry Thornley and Harry Pollard on “Dialogue”  It may be somewhat gratuitous to comment on what Mr. Kerry Thornley has said on what he considers to be his understanding of economics in only a half hour show, but he has said enough I think plus his explicit endorsement…

Superstition and Ignorance versus Courage and Self-Reliance Every well informed person knows, today, that man has evolved from lower forms of animal life. With this evolution in my mind, we may imagine the progress he has made in ideas and social valuations. Primitive man worshipped the sun, which was natural because from it came both…

I have for so long held the same ground – roughly where the anarchic end of Chestertonian Distributism overlaps the individualist end of Proudhonian Mutualism – that I am willing to go so far as to propose as a rule that getting it in the neck from both sides of a false dichotomy is a…

Justice To what extent, if any, is violence justifiable? To answer this question some standard of “justice” must be postulated. What are we to understand by the term justice? Are we to determine it in terms of the individual or in terms of society? To what extent do these starting points overlap? Does the individual,…

Objections to Communism It places the inefficient on par with the efficient, the lazy with the industrious, and the thrifty with the extravagant. Therefore it places a premium on idleness and lacks spur to industry and thrift. It makes the celebate contribute for the support of the children of his procreative brother. It divides responsibility…

Comments on S.E. Parker Re article by Sid Parker Mr. Parker totally misapprehends the meaning of the economics of liberty or anarchy. He can hardly evade the charge of being remiss, nor gloss over what may be his own ignorance, by attributing the words “panacea” and “system” to the insistence of individualist anarchists that equitable…

Anarchy and Law Clarity, definiteness, and specificity are desired for the enhancement of understanding. But anarchism as a social philosophy suffers from the handicap of not being an affirmative theory about the activities of humans. It is rather a negative philosophy in the sense that it tries to ascertain what is invasive of the maximum…

Marxian Socialism Socialism can be explained partially by man’s eternal desire and faith in a better life to come [1]. The very attitude of dogmatism and cock-sureness brands Socialism as unscientific. The socialists hold an exaggerated idea of the importance of economics in the materialistic interpretation of history. They hold the incorrect labor-cost theory of…

This essay is a response to Jason Lee Byas’ series of essays: “Against Moral Cannibalism,” “Anarchy is Moral Order,” “The Authority of Yourself.” There is something else happening in Byas’ account of our own self-enslavement that I find interesting. It’s not just that Byas’ portrayal of anarchism is meant to be retroactively binding, emerging from…

This essay is a response to Jason Lee Byas’ series of essays: “Against Moral Cannibalism,” “Anarchy is Moral Order,” “The Authority of Yourself.” Many problems rear their heads when attempting to establish moral systems. Determining proper criteria, defining rights and wrongs, or establishing a certain degree of objectivity are just some of the rocky surfs…

It was really the silliest thing; a trifle in the scheme of things. The hose to the hand-shower in our bathtub broke, because the way it was installed required the hose to make a sharp bend. Fixing it so that it would last required the installation of a right-angle elbow between the wall spout and…

Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze’s Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now is a fantastic survey of decentralized anti-capitalist projects across the globe. In particular, they use the examples of Unitierra—“a new form of university”—and the Zapatistas in Mexico to identify the difference between “scaling up” and…