Knapp: There’s some ideological overlap, but it’s fuzzy. There are some people with one foot in each of the two camps (I used to be one of them; now I’m not), which can be confusing.
Carson: Had the industrial revolution taken place in a genuine free market, our economy today would probably be far closer to the vision of Lewis Mumford than that of Joseph Schumpeter and Alfred Chandler.
Gary Chartier: Consider the characteristic Hobbesian argument for the state…
Roderick T. Long: Even in what might seem his least Humean moment – his anarchism – Godwin draws more decisively on Hume than on Rousseau.
Kevin Carson: The large firm and the factory system did not become the dominant economic institutions because of some objective technological imperative, or their superior efficiency in a free market. They became the dominant economic institutions because of their superior effectiveness at controlling labor; and then the state intervened in the market to make them efficient enough to survive.
The question whether people in a stateless society could respond satisfactorily to a disaster like the BP oil spill is really just a special case of the general question whether people without the state can do the things people attempt to do through the state. It seems to me that the answer is “yes.” That’s…
Darian Worden examines Thoreau’s libertarian philosophy and the connections he made between nature and freedom.
It is the responsibility of libertarians to once again pick up the banner of true radicalism, of the anti-draft, anti-militarist, anti-imperialist, and anti-feudal movements.
Consent is always compromised by force; the mere existence of effective force dedicated to some end constitutes coercion toward that end, whatever you may think or want.
Roderick T. Long: The libertarian struggle against statist oppression needs to be integrated (or re-integrated) with traditionally left-wing struggles against various sorts of non-state oppression.
Charles Johnson: If libertarianism needs to slim down, which specific varieties of thickness does it need to avoid—and what’s the health benefit to doing so?
Kevin Carson: Sigh. There you have it. Just about every single cliche from the Art Schlesinger historical mythology, condensed into one short passage for your convenience.
Roderick T. Long: At a time when emotions run high, how should we go about deciding on a morally appropriate response? Should we allow ourselves to be guided by our anger, or should we put our anger aside and make an unemotional decision?
Thomas L. Knapp: Bourgeois libertarianism is a failure not of theory or of ideology, but of imagination.
Benjamin Tucker: The usurer is the Somebody, and the State is his protector. Usury is the serpent gnawing at labor’s vitals, and only liberty can detach and kill it.
Roderick T. Long: We tend to think of the “ruling class” as a Marxist concept, but the notion has a long history before Marx.
Roderick Long: I’m hoping to make you puzzled about a problem that has puzzled me on and off over the years. Misery loves company, I suppose —
Karl Hess: Americans are misguided in their continuing search for new leaders. Rather, they should seek rewarding social institutions to ensure a better life.
Hess speaks about everything from his time as a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater to Euclid, the impending collapse of global communism, children’s education in America, the dawn of the personal computer, and several other fascinating topics.
Kevin Carson: The sooner we restore a society where work is something we do, and not something we’re “given,” a society where we’re in control of our working lives, the sooner we can do away with fake machismo, commodified rebellion, and going postal.
