December is almost over and along with it 2014. C4SS had an amazing month and an amazing year and we owe everything to you — our supporters.

This year closes with many people interested in anarchism or, at least, the ground long surveyed and mapped by anarchists. From the stark and gleeful brutality of state sponsored torture to the relentless, metronome regularity of police abuse against peaceful men, women, children and animals, the world is slowly realizing that the state is not only standing on our necks robbing us blind, it is standing in our way holding us back from our future.

This is where, and when, we need more anarchists writing about anarchism — its practicality, its everyday nature and its transformative and uplifting power. Liberty is an acid that dissolves and disintegrates all authority; this is why liberty is blocked at every approach and banned from even basic expression. This is why we need liberty, more then ever, roiling and seething. In 2015 we will do our part in bringing liberty to a boil, but we can’t do it without your support. A stateless society is what we want, more than anything, and C4SS is a concerted way of bringing this goal closer. As Voltairine de Cleyre has said, “We have done this because we love liberty and hate authority.”

If C4SS, as an organization and an idea, is something you like having around or would like to see do more things (like funding more studies, publishing more books, helping with travel expenses for writers to speak at events, updating the youtube graphics, etc), then, please, donate $5 today.

What will $5 a month get you from C4SS? Well let’s see,

For the month of December, C4SS published:

18 Commentaries,
8 Features,
1 Study,
4 Weekly Libertarian Leftist Reviews,
1 Life, Love and Liberty,
7 Blog posts,
2 Reviews, and
19 C4SS Media uploads to the C4SS youtube channel.

And, thanks to the dedication of our Media Coordinators and translators, C4SS translated and published:

12 Italian translations,
4 Spanish translations,
12 Portuguese translations

Jeff Riggenbach on Feed 44

We are happy and honored to have the golden voice of Jeff Riggenbach helping out our growing media project Feed 44. His first contribution is the left-libertarian classic by Roderick T. Long‘s The History of an Idea: Or, How An Argument Against the Workability of Authoritarian Socialism Became An Argument Against the Workability of Authoritarian Capitalism. 

C4SS cannot thank Nick Ford enough for his tireless devotion to the Feed 44 project. This is his garden and it is beginning to yield amazing fruit.

The Anarchism of Everyday Life

In December we published Kevin Carson’s 18th Study, The Anarchist Thought of Colin Ward, a survey of the work of Colin Ward. Colin Ward is one of those social theorists, like Pyotr Kropotkin, David Graeber, Elinor Ostrom, James C. Scott or Karl Hess, that grounds their approach in working people working and the flashes of creative problem solving brilliance found in their everyday collaboration and cooperation.

Like Kropotkin’s, Ward’s was a communism expressed in a love for a wide variety of small folk institutions, found throughout the nooks and crannies of history, of a sort most people would not think of when they hear the term “communism.” Kropotkin himself resembled William Morris in his fondness for the small-scale, local, quaint and historically rooted—especially medieval folkmotes, open field villages, free towns, guilds, etc.—as expressions of the natural communism of humanity. But as David Goodway notes, “Ward… goes far beyond him in the types of co-operative groups he identifies in modern societies and the centrality he accords to them in anarchist transformation.”

No More Cheers for Uber

In Uber Delenda Est, Kevin Carson withdraws his initial “One Cheer for Uber…” while doubling down on a radical p2p iteration of the concept, “hack the app, salt the service, fight the competition with better competition.” Even though Carson has withdrawn his cheer, he couldn’t help but point out the ideological blinders that allows both pro- and con-Uber that see it as an expression of a “free market”,

But anyone who either defends or attacks Uber as an example of the “free market” is a damfool. Uber and Lyft are not genuine sharing services. And they’re sure as hell not “free market” or “laissez-faire” operations, Reason‘s and Pando’s agreement to the contrary notwithstanding. The proprietary, walled-garden app they use to enforce the toll-gates between riders and drivers is every bit as much a state-enforced monopoly as the legacy taxicab industry’s medallions.

The Spectacle of Revolution

Ben Reynolds, in his first article with C4SS, The Image of Revolution, takes us through a brief history of 21st century revolutions and attempted revolutions all the while pointing out why they have failed to achieve their desired ends. Reynolds offers us a rapid series of questions that each would-be revolution should be able to enthusiastically answer positively.

If state power is the foundation of oppression, war, and the monopolization of property, then a genuine revolution must dismantle state power. There can be no half-measures or gradual steps in this regard. There are thus only a few simple questions that the observer may ask of any revolution: Does it struggle for the freedom, equality, and dignity of the people? Does it oppose institutionalized hierarchy and authority wherever it may be found? Does it seek to shatter the state? If a movement cannot answer any of these questions positively, then it deserves neither our support nor our sympathy. To the contrary, if it can, it deserves nothing less than the ardent support and aid of all those who struggle together in the name of freedom.

Consent: More Important Then Ever

As the debate concerning issues of sexual assault in our society and in our institutions continue to demand acknowledgement and solutions there is a tendency to turn to the state as the answer. The state doesn’t — it can’t — solve problems. The state can only smash things apart and give priority to elites over the remaining pieces.

But this doesn’t mean that solutions do not exist or, if kept out of the hands of bureaucrats and away from the hammer of the state, do not merit our consideration. Nick Ford in his feature Affirmative Consent: Yes and No takes a moment to delineate the differences between Affirmative Consent “as a law” versus Affirmative Consent “as a cultural norm”:

As a cultural norm it becomes a bigger conversation between equals. It becomes possible to challenge, revise and reorganize our lives in accordance with this norm. When we suggest to our friends that they should aim for affirmative consent, or hold an impromptu protest, invite a public speaker on the matter, hang up signs or integrate this principle into our daily lives, then we are trying to cultivate a norm about consent and how we deal with its absence.

Liberty and Equality

One of the positions that left-wing markets anarchist defend is the difference between the centrifugal forces of freed markets versus the centripetal forces of capitalism. If we were to look into a system and identify great inequalities of wealth and, its corollary, power, then, by our analysis, we have damn good reason to think somewhere in that system a state, in its myriad manifestations, is present and growing. As David S. D’Amato discusses in his The Warning of Animal Farm: Inequality Matters inequalities, vast or developing, are a warning sign, a symptom, that the cancer of the state is beginning to grow or has already metastasized.

Criticizing inequality ought to be important to libertarianism to the extent that we take our own free market ideas seriously and see the political economy of today as far removed from our model. Libertarians should accordingly welcome socialism and class analysis as found in the work of leftists like Hodgskin and Orwell. It’s time we start emphasizing liberty and equality, not liberty or equality.

Another Entrepreneur Lost

As the world watched the police choke the life out of Eric Garner and, then, see the state vindicate the brutality of its agents against peaceful people, C4SS Adviser Cathy Reisenwitz penned, I’m sorry Eric Garner. I don’t know what else to do. Reisenwitz’s touching letter recognizes the fear, sense of hopelessness and heartbreak that comes from living in a society were our friends, family and neighbors can be killed virtually in front of us. I have no doubt in my mind that we will win the day and build a better world, but this will never change the fact that Eric Garner and many many others will not be able to share it with us.

I’m sad. Beyond angry. Brokenhearted. The Staten Island Grand Jury chose not to indict the officer who choked father of six Eric Garner to death on the street while attempting to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes.

The One Soldier that Fought for our Freedom

Chelsea Manning turned 27 in prison on December 17th. Manning has been described by Kevin Carson, back in 2010, as the One Soldier Who Really Did “Defend Our Freedom”. She is yet another example of authority’s self-aware fear of liberty and revulsion to conscience. Nathan Goodman in his letter, Happy Birthday, Chelsea Manning, articulated our feelings for her and our hope for her future,

I hope someday, the sooner the better, Chelsea Manning will be able to celebrate her birthday free from the state’s prisons. Until then, I wish her a happy birthday and as much freedom and happiness as possible.

Fellows on Patreon

Kevin Carson and Thomas Knapp have both popped up on the creator supporting site Patreon. Patreon allows individual to directly support their favorite creators, or in this case, left-libertarian writers. You can pledge any amount that fits your budget or enjoyment of their work, and, for certain pledged amounts, they offer bonuses.

Please Support Today!

All of this work is only sustainable through your support. If you think the various political and economic debates around the world are enhanced by the addition of left libertarian market anarchist, freed market anti-capitalist or laissez faire socialist solutions, challenges, provocations or participation, please, donate $5 today. Keep C4SS going and growing.

ALL the best!

Just like use of the first Thanksgiving as a cudgel against the commons, defenses of Ebenezer Scrooge like this Christmas’s Mises Daily article “Correcting Scrooge’s Economics” and Bleeding Heart Libertarians post “Merry Christmas, Mr. Scrooge!” (“Scrooge, then, isn’t as bad as he’s made out to be.”) are a year’s-end holiday perennial on certain parts of the libertarian right:

Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute

“I think Scrooge is clearly misunderstood and used to vilify business.”

Fred Smith, “Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge Was The Ultimate Job Creator” (Forbes, reprinted at the Competitive Enterprise Institute)

“By the tale’s account, Scrooge was honest … perhaps excessively so.”

Ted Roberts, “Ebenezer Scrooge: In His Own Defense” (the Foundation for Economic Education’s Ideas on Liberty)

“And may we all have a Merry Christmas on happy, full stomachs—thanks to inexpensive, imported corn.”

It should be noted that FEE, like Roderick T. Long, is usually more Santa than Scrooge, as Howard Baetjer Jr., David R. Henderson, Daniel Oliver, William E. Pike and Sarah Skwire can attest.

Michael Levin, “In Defense of Scrooge” (Mises Daily)

“So let’s look without preconceptions at Scrooge’s allegedly underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit. The fact is, if Cratchit’s skills were worth more to anyone than the fifteen shillings Scrooge pays him weekly, there would be someone glad to offer it to him. Since no one has, and since Cratchit’s profit-maximizing boss is hardly a man to pay for nothing, Cratchit must be worth exactly his present wages.”

Art Carden, “Christmas and Consumption” (Mises Daily)

“One of my favorite Christmas stories is A Christmas Carol, but my reasons for liking it so much have changed over the years. As I’ve learned more economics, I’ve come to see that Ebenezer Scrooge’s tight-fisted, miserly ways have some admirable qualities.”

Butler Shaffer, “The Case for Ebenezer” (Mises Daily)

“As I became older, I decided that Mr. Dickens had given Ebenezer Scrooge an undeserved reputation for villainy”

Thomas E. Woods Jr. calls Shaffer “devastating” towards “That Bum Bob Cratchit” on Mises Daily’s sister site LewRockwell.com.

Walter Block, Defending the Undefendable (predating, but excerpted in Mises Daily)

“The miser has never recovered from Charles Dickens’s attack on him in A Christmas Carol. Although the miser had been sternly criticized before Dickens, the depiction of Ebenezer Scrooge has become definitive and has passed into the folklore of our time. Indeed, the attitude pervades even in freshman economics textbooks.”

Though it should be duly noted that Mises Daily has been slacking of late. Last year, rather than posting a new Scrooge article, “Ebenezer Scrooge, Humanitarian” merely linked back to Shaffer and Block.

Rand Paul recently suggested that cigarette taxes played a role in the NYPD killing of Eric Garner. This has sparked much ridicule from people supportive of cigarette taxes and taxation in general. Are they right? Is Rand Paul right? This post seeks to offer an opinion on that question.

To begin with, the confrontation might never have happened without Eric Garner selling loose cigarettes. And that would not have been considered a crime without taxation on cigarettes. It’s true that the cops may have still stopped him for another reason or just to harass him, but the likelihood was increased by cigarette taxes.

It’s true that cigarette taxes didn’t literally kill Eric Garner. They did however contribute to the context in which he was killed. When you empower police through compulsory taxation laws; you set up a situation where they may have to forcibly subdue violators. And the act of tax evasion is not a violent one. A person may resist the imposition of a tax with violence, but that doesn’t mean the initial act of refusing to pay a tax is itself violent.

The reason we libertarians oppose compulsory taxation is that we object to the use of force against peaceful people. If the analysis above is correct; tax evaders fall into the category of peaceful persons qua tax evaders. And therefore cannot be justly coerced into paying taxes. Not even taxes with good intent and cause in mind.

The sin kind of taxes leveled on cigarettes are also a particularly loathsome form of taxation. It financially penalizes people who choose to keep buying large quantities of the good being taxed. It’s usually motivated by puritan standards too. The notion that people should meet a state enforced standard of moral or health purity.

Using force to impose such a standard is particularly galling. It would be bad enough for people to receive undue nagging social pressure to enforce purity standards, but the use of physical force to enforce them is even more odious. Such a thing needs to be opposed by liberty lovers everywhere. And we left-libertarians can lead the way.

Some suggestions for working on this issue include peaceful agorist black market activity, educational work, and civil disobedience like occupying congress person’s offices. All of which have been done before with some success. I encourage people to get started on this project today. And to help bring sin taxes to an end. You can trying hooking up with the Alliance of the Libertarian Left or this site, The Center for a Stateless society to assist in the efforts mentioned above.

The Molinari Institute is pleased to announce a new interdisciplinary, open-access libertarian academic journal, the MOLINARI REVIEW, edited by me.

We’re looking for articles, sympathetic or critical, in and on the libertarian tradition, broadly understood as including classical liberalism, individualist anarchism, social anarchism, anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, anarcha-feminism, panarchism, voluntaryism, mutualism, agorism, distributism, Austrianism, Georgism, public choice, and beyond – essentially, everything from Emma Goldman to Ayn Rand, C. L. R. James to F. A. Hayek, Alexis de Tocqueville to Michel Foucault.

(We see exciting affiliations among these strands of the libertarian tradition; but you don’t have to agree with us about that to publish in our pages.)

Disciplines in which we expect to publish include philosophy, political science, economics, history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, theology, ecology, literature, and law.

We aim to enhance the visibility of libertarian scholarship, to expand the boundaries of traditional libertarian discussion, and to provide a home for cutting-edge research in the theory and practice of human liberty.

All submissions will be peer-reviewed. We also plan to get our content indexed in such standard resources as International Political Science Abstracts and The Philosopher’s Index.

The journal will be published both in print (via print-on-demand) and online (with free access); all content will be made available through a Creative Commons Attribution license. We regard intellectual-property restrictions as a combination of censorship and protectionism, and hope to contribute to a freer culture.

We’re especially proud of the editorial board we’ve assembled, which at present includes over sixty of the most prestigious names in libertarian scholarship.

The journal’s Associate Editor is Grant Mincy (a Fellow of the Center for a Stateless Society), whose pathbreaking work in the field of anarchist environmentalism you should check out here and here.

For more information on the journal, including information on how to submit an article, check out our website. (Information on subscribing, or ordering individual copies, will be available later.)

We’re excited about this new publishing opportunity, and we hope you’ll help us make it a success!

George H. Smith begins discussing the ideas of Bishop Butler.

Matt Peppe discusses the U.S. invasion of Panama.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the torture report.

Kevin Carson discusses the question that Michael Lind has yet to answer.

David Roediger discusses the defenders of police violence.

David Stockman discusses Wall Street crony capitalist plunder.

Sheldon Richman discusses getting away with torture.

David S. D’Amato discusses Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Gary Leupp discusses Paul Wolfowitz and the torture report.

Jacob Sullum discusses why torture is always wrong.

Randall Holcombe discusses normalizing relations with Cuba.

Pat Kennelly discusses the year in Afghanistan.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses the obscenity of respectable politics.

Laurence M. Vance discusses detainees in U.S. prisons.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown discusses sexual autonomy.

Henry A. Giroux discusses America’s addiction to torture.

Stephen Kinzer discusses quitting Afghanistan and Iraq.

Jo-Marie Burt discusses the lesson of Latin America for the U.S.

Leon Hadar discusses a new neocon book.

Justin Raimondo discusses why the U.S. government tortured.

Uri Avnery discusses whether the U.S. will decline to veto a U.N. resolution unfavorable to the Israeli government.

Rob Urie discusses torture and state power.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the normalization of relations with Cuba.

Philip Peters discusses the chance for a new policy towards Cuba.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the difference between libertarians and conservatives on torture.

Andrew Levine discusses a Hilary victory.

Zoltan Grossman discusses how the war at home and war abroad are similar.

Lawrence Davidson discusses the futility of torture.

Mark Taimanov defeats Anatoly Karpov

Mark Taimanov defeats Alexsander A Shashin.

In 1950, the US went to (undeclared, and under pro forma UN auspices) war with North Korea.

In 1953, the parties (the US, the UN, South Korea on one side, North Korea on the other) negotiated a cease-fire, which has now been in effect for 61 years.

Over the years, various incidents have occurred which strained the cease-fire. From the point of view of an American media consumer, most of those incidents (the taking of the USS Pueblo, sinking of the ROKS Cheonan, the artillery duel on and around Yeonpyeong, etc.) have been blamed on the north, but …

Earlier this year, Kim Jong-Un’s regime declared that the impending release of a film, The Interview, constituted an act of war. And we all laughed. Well, most of us laughed. I know I did.

Then, earlier this month, the studio releasing the film — an American subsidiary of a Japanese company — came under cyber attack by hackers unknown. Part of the fallout from that hack was disclosure that, well, the production and planned release of The Interview WAS pretty much an act of war. That is, the US government encouraged and facilitated its production for the clearly stated purpose of encouraging the assassination of Kim Jong Un and the overthrow of his regime.

Oops.

Now, most of us are probably still laughing.

I still was, until the Obama regime announced its certainty — unbacked by any disclosure of real evidence, that’s “classified,” see? — that the Kim regime was behind the hack and that the Obama regime plans some regime-to-regime retaliation.

Well, now. This shit is starting to get real all of a sudden, isn’t it?

Could the US go to back to open war with the DPRK over the matter? I’d like to laugh at that notion, too, but then I remember what the Obama regime has done or tried to do to individuals who have initiated embarrassing disclosures about it (the four who come immediately to mind are Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Barrett Brown).

When the US accuses a foreign government of doing things that it has jailed (or tried to jail) and exiled people for, war doesn’t really seem beyond the realm of likelihood. And the US government’s bellicosity abroad seems to run on the same cycle as its descents into banana republicanism and police statism at home. We’re at a pretty high tempo on the latter front right now, for reasons including but not limited to the Ferguson intifada. New attempts at Internet control and censorship here at home, with the Sony hack as an excuse, will almost certainly top the next session of Congress’s to-do list.

Kinda scary.

[cross-posted from KN@PPSTER]

Our pale blue dot has circled its star eighteen times since it lost the astronomer who gave us the perspective to see it that way — and that phrase.

Carl Sagan is not usually remembered as a political prophet, aside from pioneering recognition of the dangers of nuclear war and remaining an inspiration to opponents of drug criminalization. But his inquiry probed any political order’s taboo “set of forbidden possibilities, which its citizenry and adherents must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about” (like the USSR’s “capitalism, God, and the surrender of national sovereignty” or the USA’s “socialism, atheism, and the surrender of national sovereignty”). Otherwise, it would wither, as with antiquity’s Alexandrians who never “seriously challenged the political, economic and religious assumptions of their society. The permanence of the stars was questioned; the justice of slavery was not.”

While not a radical leftist like his feminist wife and coauthor Ann Druyan or his New Leftist friend Saul Landau (who, in a sign of the up-in-the-air alliances of the times, contributed to the Cato Institute’s Inquiry Magazine), his liberalism was influenced by the ferment of SDS’s participatory democracy Whole Earth Catalog-style emancipatory technology. It was thus steadfastly in favor of civil liberties, people power, and sexual liberation, and highly wary of moral panics and calls to trade freedoms for security. Despite being vilified by a right dominated by National Review hawkishness, he sought common ground with pro-lifers. As he said of Albert Einstein, he “was always to detest rigid disciplinarians, in education, in science, and in politics,” and his distrust of politics was evident in proposing “[a] series in which we relive the media and the public falling hook, line and sinker for a coordinated government lie.”

He took note that the flowering of inquisitive, tolerant values in ancient Greece and Renaissance Holland grew from their trading economies; as his muse Bertrand Russell put it,

The relation of buyer and seller is one of negotiation between two parties who are both free; it is most profitable when the buyer or seller is able to understand the point of view of the other party. There is, of course, imperialistic commerce, where men are forced to buy at the point of the sword; but this is not the kind that generates Liberal philosophies, which have flourished best in trading cities that have wealth without much military strength.

His antidote for the existential crises of nuclear war and environmental damage was not consensus reasonable-centrism — he was apprehensive of the triumphalist The End of History prediction “that political life on Earth is about to settle into some rock-stable liberal democratic world government” — but the widest possible experimentation. He recommended two of the great science fiction depictions of functional stateless societies: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, with its “useful suggestions… for making a revolution in a computerized technological society,” and Eric Frank Russell’s “conceivable alternative economic systems or the great efficiency of a unified passive resistance to an occupying power.” He hoped the inspiration of such ideas would make a reality “the beginning, much more than the end, of history.”

Chelsea Manning is one of the great heroes of our time. She released secret government documents that described a litany of crimes committed by the American state. In the process, she influenced the Arab Spring and the US withdrawal from Iraq. The state-enabled criminals she exposed have not been held accountable, though their ranks include murderers, torturers, and child rapists. Instead, Chelsea has been punished for exposing these crimes. She was tortured with solitary confinement prior to her trial and then sentenced to decades in prison.

Today marks Chelsea Manning’s 27th birthday, and I’ve been glad to see an outpouring of support for this heroic whistleblower and political prisoner. Gawker posted birthday wishes for her today from journalist Terry Anderson, former Guantanamo detainee Murat Kurnaz, and rapper Talib Kweli. Yesterday, The Guardian posted birthday wishes for her from fellow whistleblower Edward Snowden, rapper Lupe Fiasco, and many others.

I hope someday, the sooner the better, Chelsea Manning will be able to celebrate her birthday free from the state’s prisons. Until then, I wish her a happy birthday and as much freedom and happiness as possible.

To learn how to write to Chelsea Manning, check out this guide from the Chelsea Manning Support Network.

Matt Peppe discusses Israrel’s nuclear weapons.

Clint Townsend discusses Nathaniel Branden.

Jacob Heilbrunn discusses the myth of the ‘liberal” New Republic.

David Harsanyi discusses how stupid laws get people killed.

Bryan Caplan discusses Paul Krugman’s case against open borders.

Claire Wolfe discusses Eric Garner and police brutality.

Jacob H. Huebert discusses improving thyself.

Lawrence W. Reed discusses 10 rules for advancing liberty.

Baylen J. Linnekin discusses the vestiges of prohibition.

Butler Shaffer discusses Nathaniel Branden.

Jack Perry discusses Eric Garner.

Peter Frase discusses how the police are primarily a danger to others.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the purist approach to libertarianism.

Stephen Kinzer discusses why joining the military doesn’t make you a hero.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses government intervention into our lives.

Larry Rohter interviews someone on Operation Condor.

Reason has a forum on libertarian approaches to foreign policy.

Binoy Kampmark discusses a recent congressional resolution directed at Russia.

Chris Floyd discusses Obama’s reaction to the torture report.

Alex S. Vitale discusses why we need fewer cops.

Justin Raimondo discusses the torture report.

Scott McConnell discusses The New Republic.

Sheldon Richman discusses Eric Garner, smuggling, and cigarette taxes.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses war, torture, and the other.

Matthew Gault discusses how the Soviet and Nazi regimes used torture.

Sheldon Richman discusses Nathaniel Branden.

Melvin A. Goodman discusses the CIA’s disgrace.

Colten Stokes discusses how U.S. torture predates 9-11.

Alexander Alekhine defeats Efim Bogoljubov.

Alexander Alekhine defeats Richard Reti.

Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Akai Gurley. These are just the latest in a line of minorities who have been killed by the police in excessive force cases where no scrutiny was even applied to the cops. While protests arise in the memory of these fallen human beings, I find myself asking a question in their names more abstract at first glance — particularly of the liberal contingent of our alleged “representative” system of government.

There has been from some corners of mainstream liberal opinion justified anger at the disproportionate behavior of the police towards minority populations. However, even this has been couched in terms assuming an overall legitimacy of the system that the victims live within. Consider the view expressed at Salon.com by Elias Isquith, in reaction to Rand Paul pointing out that the excuse used by the NYPD for the harassment and subsequent murder of Eric Garner was enforcement of cigarette taxes: he called this an example of “political narcissism,” unthinking attribution of anything that occurs as vindication of preexisting ideology.

I am not one to deny that such things occur, but to dismiss questions of which laws are enforced in the context of law enforcement — by deadly force, in this case — strikes me as absurd: if indeed the reason that Eric Garner was harassed and subsequently murdered was because of suspicion of circumventing New York City tobacco taxes, then how is that not a valid factor in his death? It is like dismissing the Georgia flashbang grenade maiming of 2 year old “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh — oddly enough, also covered at Salon — in a raid triggered by an alleged petty methamphetamine deal by a relative with “well, The Law is The Law.” Why is the law The Law though? Do outcomes not matter? Is the law a means to its own end of self perpetuation?

An implied reasoning is carried behind the respective mainstream ideologies of US politics, and has been from the beginning. The reasoning has been that there is, within a “representative” government, a range of responsibilities for those granted power of a force monopoly, as well as limits to what indeed can or should be done with such. There is within this an implication: If the responsibilities are unfulfilled, or the limits violated, that legitimacy of the granted force monopoly is void. In other words, the ideologies proposed within the respective wings of defense of “representative” government contain a claimed failsafe that if triggered would see revocation of authority — that is, anarchy — as better than continued recognition. This is to say that eventually everyone is an anarchist, it’s just a matter of when.

Consider the recent circumstances that have led to the administration and justification of deadly force by the State and its officers: Suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes, jaywalking, buying pain medication without a prescription (Rumain Brisbon, in Phoenix), even merely existing in the toy section of a Wal-Mart with a toy gun in the case of John Crawford (in an open carry state, nonetheless).

Frankly, any ideology that can dismiss the laws that led to such harsh enforcement has no standing to even bother criticizing the enforcement itself in my opinion — when you state that an act is to be met with force, or allow some to be seen as threats for other than logical reasons, you essentially court violence for your preference — period.

To simultaneously defend taxation as a behavior modifier while decrying the result of its enforcement is hypocrisy. If you claim tobacco taxation as a justified use of force to maintain, the blood of Eric Garner is on your hands, like it or not. You can feel as bad as you wish, it doesn’t bring the Garner family back their father and husband. Government is a hammer, and it landed where it did.

If the anguish and outrage prompted by the murders committed by the enforcers of the State are to mean anything, they suggest something that is today seen as a bridge too far for those anointed as acceptable within the political sphere.

That suggestion is of the bankruptcy of the Government Is Us myth, leaving the reality that we are faced with an Us versus Them scenario, and we are, to the state, The Enemy. If now is not the time for a liberty or death moment, then when?

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz discusses the myth of Thanksgiving.

Uri Avnery discusses new right-wing bills up for passage in Israel.

Nicola Nasser discusses recent bombings in Palestine.

Jonathan Schell discusses Nick Turse’s book on Vietnam.

Annabelle Bamforth discusses a new report on drone deaths.

Ivan Eland discusses the Afghan war.

Lew Rockwell discusses how the presidents are our enemies.

George H. Smith discusses psychological egoism.

Sharon Presley discusses libertarian feminism.

Mikalya Novak discusses feminist and Austrian critiques of mainstream economics.

Binoy Kampmark discusses the Jewish nation-state bill in Israel.

Uri Avnery discusses the situation in Israel.

Brian M. Downing discusses Iran vs the Islamic State.

J.D. Tuccille discusses the core of government.

Jesse Walker discusses Eric Garner’s death.

Zaid Jilani discusses Democratic Party complicity in police militarization.

Chris Floyd discusses refugees and the paucity of money to support them.

Chris Floyd discusses the plight of a Gitmo prisoner.

Chris Floyd discusses drone strikes and state terrorism.

Glenn Greenwald discusses the new defense chief.

Patrick L. Smith discusses the Russia-Ukraine debacle.

James Carden discusses why grand strategy is bunk.

Rob Urie discusses police violence and the idea of race.

Michelle Renee Matisons discusses class, race, gender, and U.S. policing.

Mike Caccioppoli discusses Darren Wilson.

Kelly Vlahos discusses the loss of a champion of civil liberties in Congress.

Dan Fromkin discusses 12 things to keep in mind when reading the torture report.

Esam Al-Amin discusses how Egypt’s coup leaders are a criminal syndicate.

The famous Samuel Reshevsky loses to Rafael Vaganian.

Thomas Ernst defeats Ferdinand Hellers.

Como afirmei em setembro, nós passaríamos por um momento de apertar os cintos na embaixada em português do C4SS. É claro que isso não significa que vamos cessar todas as nossas atividades, mas apenas que não estamos trabalhando no ritmo frenético em que vínhamos desde fevereiro.

De 26 de setembro a 25 de outubro, publicamos apenas 6 artigos. Em outubro, nosso blockbuster foi o panfleto de Kevin Carson O punho de ferro por trás da mão invisível, que recebeu até uma introdução especial para o público brasileiro pelo próprio Carson.

Já de 26 de outubro a 25 de novembro, publicamos 9 artigos, três deles originais. Valdenor Júnior falou sobre o separatismo brasileiro e sobre a consciência negra. Já o convidado Eduardo Lopes, por ocasião do Dia da Consciência Negra (20 de outubro) falou sobre como a Lei de Terras, sancionada durante o Império no Brasil, impediu os negros de ascenderem socialmente.

Em outubro, conseguimos 476 curtidas em nossa página no Facebook. Já em novembro, mais 227, ultrapassando a marca de 3000 curtidas. No Twitter, chegamos a 99 seguidores outubro e permanecemos no mesmo patamar em novembro. Não registrei o número de republicações que tivemos neste mês, que ficarão para o mês que vem, quando farei um resumo das atividades de todo o ano.

Você pode nos ajudar! Doe!

Erick Vasconcelos
Coordenador de Mídias
Centro por uma Sociedade Sem Estado

Portuguese Media Coordinator Update: October-November 2014

As I stated in September, we would be tightening our belts in our Portuguese stateless embassy. It obviously does not mean that we will cease our activities, but that we will not keep the rhythm we had since February.

From September 26 to October 25, we published 6 articles. But during that month our blockbuster was Kevin Carson’s The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand in Portuguese, with a special introduction to Brazilian readers, written by Carson himself.

From October 26 to November, we published 9 articles, three of them originals. Valdenor Júnior talked about secessionism in Brazil and about black awareness. Invited writer Eduardo Lopes, for the ocasion of the Black Awareness Day (November 20th) talked about the Law of Lands, that was sanctioned during the Brazilian Empire and prevented black people from reaching economic independence.

In October, we got 476 likes in our Facebook page, while in November we had 227 likes, surpassing the 3,000 likes mark. On Twitter, we reached 99 followers and remained at the same level in November. I did not register the number of pickups we had this month. I will do so this month, when I will do a retrospective for the whole year.

You can help us! Donate!

Erick Vasconcelos
Media Coordinator
Center for a Stateless Society

Antiwar.com is having its annual fundraising drive right now. And it’s well worth contributing to. You won’t easily find a better and more comprehensive news source. The site also features great in house editorial writers like Lucy Steigerwald and Justin Raimondo. Not to mention providing links to many op-eds around the web.

The site is something I visit everyday to enjoy the above features. It keeps me abreast of the latest machinations of the warfare state. This has led to a few blog posts on war related current events. If you’d like to see those posts continue; one way to help is to donate to the fundraising drive.

Another reason to contribute is that the financial deck is stacked against the forces of anti-militarism and anti-imperialism. The war party has the whole U.S. treasury at their disposal. Both of the two major party establishments are committed to a policy of statist interventionism. A way of countering this imbalance is to make contributions to sites like Antiwar.com.

In addition to the reason above; Antiwar.com is also worth making a contribution to because of the timely importance of the issues it addresses. In light of further U.S. military intervention in Iraq and continuation of drone strikes; its message is more relevant than ever. We can’t afford to lose a valuable source of information on the warfare state’s policies at a time like this.

As the destructive impact of said policies spreads; we need to keep abreast of developments more than ever. Knowledge is part of challenging oppressive militaristic power structures and the fruits they bear. Antiwar.com does a real service in furthering this aim. An aim that can save countless lives around the globe.

The immense loss of life from U.S. military policy in particular justifies special attention and focus. We can’t afford to lose sight of the importance of battling the evils of U.S. military interventionism. Antiwar.com is an invaluable resource for furthering this agenda. It deserves our support and attention.

The war party responsible for the above doesn’t sleep and neither does Antiwar.com. News is updated daily and new op-eds from around the net appear on a daily basis as well. If you have any extra cash to spare; do consider helping Antiwar.com continue to do this. You will be rewarded many times over by the information and opinion it gives you access to. If you can; please donate today. Don’t put if off. Antiwar.com needs your support today.

“I am that whore. I do confess. I put you on just like a wedding dress and run down the aisle.” I’m listening to Wedding Dress by Derek Webb. I go to this song when I’m sad.

I’m sad. Beyond angry. Brokenhearted. The Staten Island Grand Jury chose not to indict the officer who choked father of six Eric Garner to death on the street while attempting to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes.

They chose not to make the officer even stand trial. Despite video. Despite the fact that chokeholds are illegal. Despite the coroner ruling the death a homicide. Despite everything. They found no evidence to indicate a crime may have been committed. But they did indict the man who filmed the killing. And they tell us cameras on cops will make a difference.

This is a hard day. It’s been a hard week. A hard month. A hard year.

You get to that point when you’re not angry anymore. When you read the NYPD Tweet, “The #NYPD is committed to rebuilding public trust. #Wehearyou,” and just sit there with your mouth agape, thinking, “How could you?”

The NYPD Commissioner joked about it.

How could you?

This is what the police are saying.

How could you?

#BlackLivesMatter? Like hell they do.

But, then, how could I? I am complicit. I have not yet burned the fucking system to the ground. The system that allows police to kill young black males twenty-one times more often than their white counterparts. The system wherein people respond to that stat with lies about black criminality. The system where white men Tweet at me, “Why is this about race?” The system which buys cops tanks but never offers consequences for breaking the law, starting with the one that requires them to report on how many people they kill every year. This is the racist, corrupt, lawless, and totally unaccountable system I build and support and allow through my complacency and it is a system for which I must be called to account.

I’m going to the White House tonight. It’s not enough. It’s not even close to enough. It’s so far from enough that, to quote a friend, “A part of me wants to crawl into a hole and never emerge again.” But I’m going. I don’t know what else to do.

David S. D’Amato discusses equality and libertarianism.

David Vine and Nick Turse discuss U.S. bases in the Middle East.

David Stockman discusses how the war party won.

Doug Bandow discusses why North Korea should be talked to.

Grant Babcock discusses non-violence and modern libertarianism.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses Max Boot’s plan for Iraq.

Lawrence Wittner discusses whether wars defend American freedom or not.

Brian Terrell discusses drone strikes and protests to stop them.

David S D’Amato discusses top down anti-poverty efforts.

Glenn Greenwald discusses who the victims of drone attacks are.

Stephen Kinzer discusses why sending troops will not fix Iraq’s problems.

Steve Coll discusses drone warfare.

Dave Lindorff discusses the metasizing of the police state in America.

Sheldon Richman discusses Hilary Clinton and Henry Kissinger.

Faiza Patel discusses the recent Obama admin statement on torture.

Sheldon Richman discusses natural law and immigration politics.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses the torture report.

Gwynne Dyer discusses how Western militarism fuels blowback.

Grant Babcock discusses breaking away from conservatism.

Spencer Ackerman discuses drone strikes and accuracy.

Kathy Kelly discusses Obama’s expansion of war in Afghanistan.

Jason Brennan discusses the morality of killing government agents.

Tom Engelhardt discusses Iraq War 4.0

Kevin Carson discusses how state justice failed Michael Brown.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses the Hunger Game movies and war.

Dave Lindorff discusses Michael Brown’s killing.

Najdorf beats Averbakh.

Najdorf beats anonymous player.

Dear C4SS supporters,

A quick update on English language media for December:

• I made 33,437 submissions of C4SS op-eds last month, each submission to as many as 2,597 newspapers worldwide (some submissions, if they were only relevant to the US or to some particular locale, to fewer publications than that).
• I’ve identified 50 media pickups of our op-eds for November.

A couple high points:

• Our single most picked up piece in November was Kevin Carson’s “Surprise: The Drug War Isn’t About Drugs,” which appeared in seven “mainstream media” outlets.
• Kevin’s op-ed on the killing of Michael Brown — “State Justice Failed Michael Brown. People’s Justice is Just Getting Started.” — is already at four pickups and was only released on the 25th, so I expect some December reprints on that one.
• Also at four pickups and with some likely December mojo is Grant Mincy’s piece on the coal economy in Appalachia, “Wild, Wonderful and Free.” Two of those pickups were from West Virginia newspapers, meaning the piece is actually hitting home in the locale it addresses.

As of two years ago, my standard for a “successful” month within the Center’s op-ed program was 20 “pickups” — one each weekday in a 30-day month. Lately, that standard has been 50 pickups per month, for several reasons.

One reason is that Before It’s News, a popular aggregation site, picks up most of our material. We had an internal discussion as to whether or not to count those pickups since BIN is an aggregator; we came down on the side of counting them because BIN is an extremely popular site that gets us lots of exposure … exposure worth including in our counts. It regularly ranks in the top 3,000 sites on the Internet per Alexa and its demographics indicate a very broad reader spectrum that qualifies it as “mainstream” in audience. So while there’s a certain “inflationary” effect, it’s not a false effect.

Another reason for raising the bar, of course, is that we expect, want and strive to get better and better at placing our op-eds in newspapers. And in my opinion we are meeting that expectation. Even two years ago, we were lucky to get the occasional pickup in a weekly community newspaper (we loved, and still love, that market, by the way).

These days it’s not at all unusual for our stuff to show up in small town dailies from coast to coast in the US, with occasional penetration into international markets that we had no expectation of getting into back then — Barbados, Jamaica, Fiji and Taiwan are four that come immediately to mind over the last few months.

My new goal, which I have no expectation of making next month but every expectation of making next year, is the 100-pickup month.

I see no reason why we can’t average two pickups per day by “regular daily newspapers” in addition to 40 BIN reprints, left/political media pickups and US/international market/topic-specific “occasionals.”

That’s the next prize. But, and you knew I was going to say this, winning that prize means continuing to ask for, and get, your support. The US Thanksgiving holiday being fresh in memory, let me take this opportunity to thank all of you who have helped make our work effective, and those who will do so in the future.

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
English Language Media Coordinator
Center for a Stateless Society

The talking point popular among right-leaning libertarians that the Plymouth colony is an example of the failure of the commons has been dealt with on C4SS. But it takes a list to make clear just how often the same piece has been rewritten:

1. Tom Bethell, “How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims”, the Hoover Institution’s Hoover Digest
2. Jerry Bowyer, “Lessons From A Capitalist Thanksgiving”, Forbes
3. Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie, “The Pilgrims and Property Rights”, Reason
4. Jim Cox, “Celebrating Individualist Private Property—Based Production Day”, the Ludwig von Mises Insitute’s LewRockwell.com
5. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, “Giving Thanks for Private Property”, LewRockwell.com
6. Richard Ebeling, Thanksgiving: Celebrating the Birth of Free Enterprise in America”, Epic Times
7. Gary M. Galles, “Property and the First Thanksgiving”, the Ludwig von Mises Insitute’s Mises Daily
8. Anthony Gregory, “Giving Thanks to the Market”, the Independent Institute’s The Beacon
9. Daniel Griswold, “How Capitalism Saved the Pilgrims”, the Cato Institute’s Cato at Liberty
10. Henry Hazlitt, “Private Enterprise Regained” (PDF), the Foundation for Economic Education’s The Freeman (In his editorial comments to the 2004 issue, C4SS’s own Sheldon Richman concurred.)
11. Kathryn Hickok. “What Governor Bradford Learned at Plymouth’s First Thanksgiving”, Cascade Policy Institute
12. Aloysius Hogan , “Thanksgiving and Markets“, Competitive Enterprise Institute
13. Jacob G. Hornberger, “Thanksgiving, Socialism, and the Free Market”, LewRockwell.com
14. Richard J. Maybury, “The Great Thanksgiving Hoax”, Mises Daily
15. Benjamin W. Powell, “The Pilgrims’ Real Thanksgiving Lesson”, the Independent Institute
16. Sartell Prentice, Jr., “Our First Thanksgiving”, The Freeman (and summarized succinctly in an official tweet)
17. Howard Rich, “A Thanksgiving Lesson”, Americans for Limited Government’s NetRightDaily
18. Murray N. Rothbard, “What Really Happened at Plymouth”, Mises Daily, excerpted from Rothbard’s book Conceived In Liberty
19. Byron Schlomach, “Giving Thanks for Lessons Learned”, Goldwater Institute
20. Paul Schmidt, “The Real Story Behind Thanksgiving”, the Advocates for Self-Government’s The Liberator Online
21. John Stossel, “The Tragedy of the Commons” (2007), “Happy Starvation Day” (2010), “Thankful for Property” (2013) and “Thanks, Property Rights!” (2014), Creators Syndicate
22. Alex Tabarrok, “A Thanksgiving Lesson”, Marginal Revolution
23. Kim Weissman, “The Plymouth Experiment”, Congress Action
24. “The Real Thanksgiving Story”, webpage with unidentified author on the website of the Foundation for Economic Education (as well as a prominent section in founder Leonard Read’s famous speech “The Essence of Americanism”).

It should be noted that some of the pieces, unlike the one analyzed in the linked C4SS piece, do mention that Plymouth’s economics were imposed by it being a corporation, but none draw a parallel to the modern corporation’s not escaping the same problems. (Prentice’s remark that “Each time I produce less, in my work, than enough to earn a profit for my employer, I am stealing from someone else” gets it even more backward.)

Compare with the take on Plymouth of single-taxers like Fred Foldvary. The elision of the otherwise eagerly-cited account by William Bradford’s noting that his assigning colonists private land was “only for present use (but made no devission for inheritance)” has long been one of their points of contention with the mainstream libertarian movement.

We are nearing the end of the year and November was another fantastic month for the Center for a Stateless Society. We were honored to be able to publish a Portuguese translation of Kevin Carson’s The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand and included a brand new introduction, by Carson, just for our Portuguese speaking readers. Our Portuguese speaking writers and translators are amazing and our growing presence in Brazil is humbling. Our Brazilian fans are the most active and engaged part of our social media outreach. Our C4SS Portuguese facebook “like” page has already reached 3,000 likes, up from 2,000, in only two months. At this rate of growth, I wouldn’t be surprised if Centro por uma Sociedade Sem Estado eclipses our C4SS English facebook counterpart in traffic and support by 2017.

All of this growth and expansion needs your help. Our writers and translators need the information and support that your donations provide. We at C4SS want the resilience and information that comes from a swarm of microdonations from many, many people. A small monthly donation will allow us to provide even more left-market anarchist content to our brothers and sisters in Central and South America. There is a whole galaxy out there that hasn’t, yet, heard of C4SS and we are committed, with your help, to remedying this problem.

If C4SS, as an organization and an idea, is something you like having around or would like to see do more things (like funding more studies, publishing more books, helping with travel expenses for writers to speak at events, updating the youtube graphics, etc), then, please, donate $5 today.

What will $5 a month get you from C4SS? Well let’s see,

For the month of November, C4SS published:

21 Commentaries,
8 Features,
1 Study,
2 Weekly Abolitionists,
1 Missing Comma,
5 Weekly Libertarian Leftist Reviews,
2 Blog posts,
2 Reviews, and
16 C4SS Media uploads to the C4SS youtube channel.

And, thanks to the dedication of our Media Coordinators and translators, C4SS translated and published:

3 Italian translations,
4 Spanish translations,
9 Portuguese translations

Fellows on Patreon

Kevin Carson and Thomas Knapp have both popped up on the creator supporting site Patreon. Patreon allows individual to directly support their favorite creators, or in this case, left-libertarian writers. You can pledge any amount that fits your budget or enjoyment of their work, and, for certain pledged amounts, they offer bonuses.

C4SS Study: Power and Property

C4SS Fellow, Grant Mincy, has complete the first of two full length studies for C4SS on the topics of power, property, commons governance and ecology. The first, Power and Property: A Corollary, takes us through a sketch of how property and power share a mutually determining relationship that can either liberate or destroy us. He then gives a history of the people, institutions, flora, fauna and biome of the Appalachian Mountains; using the setting as a backdrop for describing and explaining the interconnected relationship between power and property.

When thinking of Appalachia, I am amazed by the sheer amount of water in the region. Imagine a drop of water falling from the sky over the rolling mountain ecosystem. As it plummets towards the Earth, a vast green valley and ridge awaits it. The water may land on a mountaintop, perhaps on the limbs of a great Eastern Hemlock, only to join with countless other molecules and make its way to the topsoil. The water would either provide nutrients to the local plant community or make its way into the ground where millions of microbes and bacteria await to naturally filter the precious resource. Water could escape to fresh mountain springs, to be lapped up by a number of animals or perhaps travel further still — until a great turn in the rocky slope takes it to the beginnings of a trickling stream. Here, the water will travel along the river continuum, passing vast aquatic communities, providing habitat for some of the regions incredible, endemic biodiversity. The water will carve and erode ancient rock, just to lay the sediments that will one day tell future travelers about our unique place in history. Water is nourishment, and it is incredibly important to this regions ecology.

***

In the final analysis, any individual or institution with a claim to property wields power. When the libertarian examines property rights, they must consider systems of power, domination, enclosure and assimilation. If one is to mix labor with land, the individual(s) hold dominion over it. A claim to property is a claim to power, but where should such power lie? If we wish for a society rooted in liberty, then there exist a necessary reclaiming of the commons. Full commitment to liberty demands both the individual and the collective.

Kevin Carson has just turned in his latest study, his eighteenth study for C4SS, surveying the Kropotkinian anarchism of Colin Ward. We expect to publish this study by the end of December.

The Communism of Everyday Life

We were finally able to publish Kevin Carson’s anticipated review of David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years this month. It complements nicely last month’s Debt… review, Debt: The Possibilities Ignored, by William Gillis.

David Graeber is one of the social theorists, along with Pyotr Kropotkin, James C. Scott, Elinor Ostrom and Colin Ward, that offers invaluable insights into how a stateless society is likely to look and feel. Graeber also offers us important historical and analytical tools for identifying weak points in the state’s hold over our lives and drawing attention to those existing aspects of our lives that offer a bulwark against the state and possibilities for expanding liberty. As Kevin Carson summarizes:

If we look at things in another few decades, I think, I think we will see a world in which surviving states, corporations and other hierarchical institutions are much weaker and much smaller, the major portion of social life will be coordinated by self-organized, horizontal institutions like local markets, p2p networks and social commons, and average people have a degree of control over the circumstances of their daily lives unprecedented since the hunter-gather era or the pre-state agrarian village.

Graeber’s book, and the view of human nature presented in it, is a tribute to the fact that — in the words of the Inuit hunter’s declaration — we are human; and because we are human we help each other. We have done this since our hunter-gather origins, long before the rise of states, and states — despite their pretensions of the contrary — have acted largely to suppress this human tendency or subvert it, in the interest of making us easier for one parasitic ruling class after another to exploit.

Jester’s for the Warfare State

Ryan Calhoun‘s article, Jon Stewart, Jester for the Warfare State, struck a chord, positively and negatively, with audiences that see him as an important critique against the absurdity of state power and those that see him as running interference for the status quo against radical levelling alternatives to the state altogether.

Stewart is a Fool. He will apologize to the King and his Court for disrespecting their most holy of political processes and go back to smashing pies in people’s faces as if that makes him different. He is in reality an integral part of the mechanism which maintains the legitimacy of the warfare state. His opinions differ in only boring, trivial minutia from your average Neocon. He must apologize because he realizes he doesn’t just mock the system but himself. He will never have to apologize for his comments on the draft. He will never have to apologize for his worship of Harry Truman. Frankly, as a fan of comedy and honesty, I wouldn’t want him to. Stewart has his beliefs and I want him to be open about them. I want to know who the warmongers are and who the fools are. I know now, like I never knew before, that he is a jester for murderers. Analysis of his comedy above that level is an insult to Carlin and to every revolutionary mind that made American comedy more than just a late night TV gag.

Privatization as a Means for Disaster Capitalism

Kevin Carson’s Detroit, Disaster Capitalism and the Enclosure of the Water Commons offers us a powerful look at the false promises of “privatizing” our way towards liberty. He summarizes the “privatization cycle” as a means for Disaster Capitalists to subsidize and expand modern day enclosures of common pool resources.

The typical “privatization cycle” occurs as follows:

First, a basic infrastructure is created at taxpayer expense, either funded directly by taxpayer revenues or by bonds that will be repaid by the taxpayers. When it’s a country outside the US — especially a Third World country — foreign aid or World Bank loans may also help fund the project.

The infrastructure’s main purpose is usually to provide below-cost water or electric utilities, transportation, etc., to big business interests. In the Third World, that means foreign aid and World Bank loans to build the local power, water and transportation infrastructure needed to make Western capital investments (like offshored production) profitable. In California, the whole corporate agribusiness sector depends on massively subsidized water from government-funded dams. And as we will see below, large-scale business and industrial water consumers in Detroit have received preferential treatment like forbearance on tens of thousands of dollars in past-due water bills, while ordinary household ratepayers in poor neighborhoods are treated without mercy.

Second, Disaster Capitalists (to use Naomi Klein’s term) seize on opportunities presented by US-sponsored coups (like Pinochet and Yeltsin), economic meltdowns (the European periphery and Detroit) and military regime change (the US invasion of Iraq) to coerce governments into selling off that debt-financed infrastructure to global capital. And the Disaster Capitalist toolkit includes using such debt (either to bondholders or to foreign lenders), and fiscal insolvency from debt, in exactly the same way as debt peonage or debt to a company store — to blackmail government entities into “privatizing” their infrastructure to “private” (but politically connected) corporations or to domestic kleptocrats. The purchase price is a sweetheart deal, pennies on the dollar, because of the purchasing corporations’ insider ties to the political authorities selling off the goods.

Third, governments frequently spend more in capital investments to make the “privatized” infrastructure salable than they realize from the sale of it.

Fourth, the first item on the agenda of the corporation acquiring the newly “privatized” infrastructure is typically asset-stripping — jacking up rates, using the revenues as a cash cow, and simultaneously starving it of needed maintenance expenditures. The asset-stripping frequently yields more in returns, in a short time, than the company paid for the infrastructure.

And fifth — as Nicholas Hildyard pointed out in “The Myth of the Minimalist State: Free Market Ambiguities” (Corner House Briefing 05, March 1998) — far from operating as a “free market” actor, the newly “privatized” utility or other infrastructure usually operates within a web of state subsidies and protections that more or less guarantee it a profit.

The Production of Uncertainty

Grant Mincy describes the terrifying process of community disempowerment and manufactured consent through the dual monocropping effects of uncertainty and narrative control in his On the Horizon: Quiescence and the Production of Uncertainty.

Quiescence is often used to portray the legitimacy of systems of power and domination. The state seeks social and economic stability and utilizes power to ensure such stability. Because of this, systems of power and domination are maintained not because of their legitimacy, but because of quiescence itself. This is the very nature of power: Maintain the existing order by further centralization.

***

The tools of uncertainty manufacture consent. From disasters such as the TVA ash spill, the BP Horizon incident, or any industrial disaster, the public arena is dismissed while government/industry scientists, state agencies and the corporate sector dominate the discussion. This allows systems of power and domination, as explained by Button, to both define and control the distribution and interpretation of knowledge, while community members are made to feel as if they are arbitrators of uncertainty. Furthermore, Sociologist Max Weber notes that power systems wish to increase the superiority of the professionally informed by keeping knowledge and intention a secret. This allows the elite to hide knowledge and keep their actions protected from criticism. The control of the discussion governs what is understood about disasters — manufactured uncertainty produces quiescence.

Please Support Today!

All of this work is only sustainable through your support. If you think the various political and economic debates around the world are enhanced by the addition of left libertarian market anarchist, freed market anti-capitalist or laissez faire socialist solutions, challenges, provocations or participation, please, donate $5 today. Keep C4SS going and growing.

ALL the best!

Cheryl and I had our first Uber experience yesterday and thought I’d report on it. The experience itself was first-rate. Things went just as widely reported — but better. I wanted a ride from my home to the tobacco shop that I frequent, about seven miles away. I launched the app on my phone, which immediately located me via GPS. I entered the destination, and in a split second I was informed that a car was three minutes away and that the estimated fare would be $18-$22. Two points about the fare: 1) I’m told this is what the regulated monopoly taxicab company would have charged; 2) I knew that the ride would be free because Uber is giving away its service until it gets clearance from the city government. (That’s another story.)

When I tapped “request a ride,” a window popped up with a picture of the driver, his first name, the make and model of his car, and the license-tag number. Then a map appeared with an automobile icon, enabling me to see the driver’s progress toward my home. Another tap gave me the option of calling or texting the driver. I could also cancel the ride.

In minutes the car turned the corner and stopped outside my door.

I entered a perfectly clean automobile. The driver had placed a bottle of water and some candy in the backseat console. He was friendly and happy to engage in conversation at my prompting. I discussed Uber with him (he said he is quite pleased with his situation), and I was pleasantly surprised by his knowledge of basic economics and political economy, especially regarding how the local government was looking for ways to regulate Uber.

Cheryl and I arrived at our destination in about 10 minutes thoroughly satisfied with the experience. As I expected, the app asked me to rate the driver. (I know he was asked to rate me.) I gave him the maximum five stars. (If a driver’s average falls below a 4.2, Uber “deactivates” him.”)

The return trip was similarly pleasant. (However, the two-door Volkswagen GTI was not as comfortable as the earlier four-door Volkswagen Jetta, and there was no water.) Again, the driver was able to talk about Uber in terms of economics and monopolistic rent-seeking by the taxi monopoly. I was impressed. I gave him the highest rating also.

Now to some concerns.

I’ve been vaguely aware of leftist complaints about Uber, but had not looked into them closely. I regret not having done so. My friend and left-libertarian colleague Kevin Carson has voiced some of these grievances, and I should have known better than not to have paid closer attention.

Anyway, the clue that I had something to look into was a small signed hanging from the mirror of my second driver. The sign, with Uber logo, stated:

While tips are not required, they are appreciated.

I was surprised by this. I had understood — exactly why, I’m not sure — that tipping was taken care of. The app says nothing about it; there is no option to add X% for the driver. I also understood (or thought I did) that the Uber ride was to be a cashless and cardless experience. A rider does not pay the driver directly, either by credit card or cash. The app takes care of that. My drivers didn’t even realize that I would not be charged for my rides. They had no reason to know this because I would not have paid them directly in any case. (Uber, so I understand, pays the drivers their 80 percent of the fare even when the ride is free to the customer. Uber, then, is forgoing the 20 percent it would have made.)

I decided not to ask the driver if the sign raising the issue of tipping is an official Uber sign. I suspect it is not. How could it be when the company’s website says:

Being Uber means there is no need to tip drivers with any of our services.

I also saw an email apparently from Uber to drivers saying that they should not ask for or accept tips.

In other words, the sign is an indication that at least some Uber drivers are trying to communicate with riders against the wishes of the company. Is this part of the driver resistance I’ve been reading about?

Further investigation informed me that tipping is quite a controversy surrounding Uber. Company statements tell riders that there is no need to tip because the tip is included in the fare. But some drivers, commenting at various forums, and others contend that this can’t be true. Drivers say that their company pay statements do not indicate that part of the fare is a tip. My receipts indicate no tip. Moreover, if the tip is really included in the fare, that would mean the company skims 20 percent off drivers’ tips. That’s not how tips work.

So why is the company discouraging tipping by telling riders the tip is already included in the fare? What’s the motive? On a moral level, it’s not right for Uber to mislead riders, with the effect of depriving drivers of tips they would have collected. Uber says drivers make a good living (some dispute this) without tips, but that’s irrelevant. Falsely telling riders that explicit tipping is redundant or unnecessary is wrong and harmful to the drivers.

When I reported my favorable experience on Twitter, someone identifying himself as an Uber driver responded:

we strive to provide the very best level of service to our riders! Glad you had a pleasant experience:)

But when I asked about the tipping controversy, he said:

there is no need to tip! We never want are [sic] riders to feel obligated to do so. We do appreciate tips tho:D

Then he followed up:

the fuss is because Uber lied to the riders saying the tip was included when it wasn’t.Now they just say it’s not required.

Lied to the riders. This is wrong, yes, even from a libertarian standpoint. I still wonder what the motive is.

I hope driver and customer pressure will push Uber to change the policy and change the app so that riders can add a tip that would go entirely to the drivers. I’ve read that the app offered by Lyft, a competing service, permits this. (Lyft has not come to my area yet.)

But I will add this: there is no right answer to whether a firm or industry should create the expectation of explicit tipping, as opposed to some other system, such as bonuses for high ratings. After all, tipping is not inscribed in the natural law. This is an issue for the competitive market process to determine through the free actions of consumers and producers. The key here is to truly free the market. No privileges. No regulations.

Controversy has also swirled around Uber’s abrupt fare-cutting, which of course reduces drivers’ incomes, regardless of how much it pleases riders. The company assured drivers that the increased volume of business would make up for the lower per-ride return, but some say that this has not happened.

Uber has the right to set its fares, of course, but the issue raises the question of whether drivers would be better off in some kind of peer-to-peer arrangement rather than essentially being wage-laborers for Uber. I know that they are independent contractors, but their status is not very different from that of a staff employee. They have no say, for example, in the fare structure or other matters. True, drivers don’t have to work for Uber, but that doesn’t mean they have no right to use peaceful pressure — and to organize — to change the company’s policies. Calling drivers “micro-entrepreneurs” does not make up for the company’s treatment. (I realize there are other labor controversies, but I’ll have to get to them another time.)

Let’s hope the grievances against and publicity about Uber accomplish two things: 1) pressure the company to make the changes suggested here, and 2) more fundamentally, stimulate the search for an alternative arrangement in which drivers truly work for themselves while being part of a self-governed network that exploits the wonderful technology that makes such fantastic services available to consumers.

PS: I am increasingly annoyed by an attitude of some libertarians with respect to Uber and other firms that amounts to this:

Thou shalt not speak ill of any business. If you dislike something a company does, patronize a competitor or do without the service or good. But otherwise shut up.

What are the grounds for believing libertarianism forbids criticism of the labor or other practices of particular firms? Rights violations are not the only offenses against persons worth talking about. (Must we re-litigate this issue?) Even if we lived in a freed market, criticism and badmouth publicity would be a perfectly proper part of the market process. But it’s especially proper in the corporate state.

I say all this qua libertarian. I am promarket, not probusiness, dammit.

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