James Tuttle alerted me to an appendix discussing Hayek’s conception of coercion in Murray Rothbard’s, The Ethics of Liberty. It serves as the jumping off point for a broader discussion of what constitutes coercion. Let us begin by contrasting the definitions of coercion employed by Hayek and Rothbard. Rothbard defines coercion thus:

the invasive use of physical violence or the threat thereof against someone else’s person or (just) property

Rothbard provides several quotations of Hayekian definitions of coercion. The first one goes:

control of the environment or circumstances of a person by another (so) that in order to avoid greater evil, he is forced to act not according to a coherent plan of his own but to serve the ends of another

He also quotes Hayek thusly:

Coercion occurs when one man’s actions are made to serve another man’s will, not for his own but for the other’s purpose.

The third relevant Hayek statement quoted goes:

the threat of force or violence is the most important form of coercion. But they are not synonymous with coercion, for the threat of physical force is not the only way coercion can be exercised.

Hayek clearly embraces a more expansive definition of coercion than Rothbard does. This brings us to the central question of what kind of response to non-physical violence coercion should be sanctioned on libertarian principle. One guide to answering this question can be found in the principle of proportionality. If I aggressively verbally abuse or ostracize you; shooting me would be disproportionate to the offense. On a similar note, the refusal of service doesn’t justify a violent response either. That doesn’t make it any less odious.

An expansive definition of coercion allows libertarians to achieve a greater depth of understanding about the various ways in which people can be coerced. If we wish to comprehensively eradicate initiatory coercion; we will have to understand the many ways in which it can manifest itself. Apart from the obvious use of physical force; there is the use of economic reward and punishment and social ostracism. Both of which can be used to control people.

The solution to dealing with these kinds of controls is to make use of non-state non-violent protest. If people are unjustly marginalized through social ostracism, we libertarians should come to their aid through social pressure. When people are controlled through economic reward and punishment, there should be a concerted effort to help them achieve greater economic independence. These solutions are necessary to achieve an integrated approach to dealing with coercion.

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Ernest Lesigne’s “Socialism Without Statism” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Ernest Lesigne’s “Socialism Without Statism“.

$1.00 for the first copy. $0.60 for every additional copy.

This booklet contains three provocative letters on socialism, government and property by the French mutualist journalist and historian Ernest Lesigne; three letters which constitute theses on freed-market anti-capitalism, and three defenses of a smallholder, co-operative economy as the only liberating solution to the social problem. The three letters in this collection are:

These “Socialistic Letters” are selections from a series of twelve letters published by Lesigne in the French paper Le Radical during 1887. The three appearing here in English were translated by the American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker, and re-printed in his newspaper Liberty in the same year.

“The entire code of law is the book of guarantees imposed to prevent property, the means of production, the instru­ment of liberty, dignity, equality, from passing out of the hands of the primitive monopolist into those of the con­tem­p­o­r­ary producer; the Code is the isolation of servants con­front­ed with the coalition of masters; it is the pro­hib­it­ion of real con­tract between employer and employee; it is the constraint of the latter to accept from the former exactly the minimum of wages indispensable to sub­sist­ence; and in any case where all these guarantees may have been vain, where a few laborers, by a fortunate stroke, may have succeeded in accumulating a little cap­it­al, the Code is a trap set to catch these little savings, the canal­iz­ation ingeniously organized so that all that has tem­por­ar­ily left the hands of the monopolist may return to them by an adroit system of drainage, – so that the water, as the saying is in the villages, may always go to the river. . . .”

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Barbara Sostaita & Judith Ayers’s “Liberty Beyond White Privilege” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Barbara Sostaita & Judith Ayers’s “Liberty Beyond White Privilege“. 

$1.00 for the first copy. $0.60 for every additional copy.

This article was originally published under the title “What Would Libertarianism Look Like, If It Wasn’t Just White People?” in August 2013 at policymic.com.

“Within today’s libertarianism, topics like racism and classism often take the back burner, or are ignored entirely. Is­sues of in­equality and poverty, solitary con­fine­ment and prison reform, women’s rights, queer and trans* abuse . . . are often met with hostility. But Black com­mun­i­t­ies, and other com­mun­it­ies of color, have long traditions of struggling for freedom. Those trad­it­ions, when acknowledged by and com­bin­ed with libertarianism, could create an em­pow­er­ing and radical message. . . .

“A true, ideological, libertarian re­nai­s­sance can, and will only, hap­pen if we learn to list­en to those who have lived under gov­ern­ment oc­cup­at­ion: those who live in poverty, are iso­lated, and lack access to resources; those who have suffered in soli­tary confinement; those of different sexual identities; those who are vict­ims of the drug war, political prisoners, sex work­ers, domestic work­ers, or undocumented per­sons. Libertar­ians need to talk, and listen to, the survivors, the ‘others,’ the voiceless and the ignored.”

Judith Ayers is a student pursuing double major in Mass Communications and Political Science at York College in Pennsylvania, who specializes in issues of education, poverty, and immigration policy, women’s and children’s issues, race, and culture and hip-hop. Barbara Sostaita is a student at Salem College focusing on International Relations and Religion. As an immigrant from Argentina, she has witnessed her parents struggle for political, social and economic freedom. Both co-authors are active within Students for Liberty, a growing worldwide network of campus groups for young libertarians.

Libertarians are used to being accused of racism.

This is often due to their position on civil rights legislation. The basis for that particular stance is to be found in the libertarian conception of property rights, freedom of association and non-aggression. Uninformed critics will miss this and attribute the libertarian position to racism. That having been said, there is something amiss in the traditional libertarian attitude on this question. Something that is worth addressing.

To begin with, the traditional libertarian position ignores the initiatory coercion that can flow from discrimination. Let us consult Roderick Long for a definition of coercion:

the forcible subjection, actual or threatened, of the person or property of another to one’s own uses, without that other’s consent.

If someone peacefully walks onto the premises of a business open to the public, they are not coercing anyone. The forcible removal of them from the property by private or public force would constitute an act of coercion.

What about mere denial of service as opposed to forcible removal? This may not involve literal physical force, but it still represents an attempt at authoritarian control of resources. This is especially true when an employee has no issue with serving someone, but the employer has set rules forbidding it.

In light of the above, it’s important for libertarians to recognize that there is nothing to be gained from expending rhetorical energy in opposing civil rights laws. The only exceptions being to demonstrate the viability and desirability of non-governmental solutions or to show how governmental solutions fail to accomplish their intended or stated goals.

The only allies one will acquire through thoughtless criticism of civil rights legislation are bigots. Aside from principled libertarians, they are the only ones who are against governmentalism of this type in this area of social life.

Does the above mean that we libertarians, concerned with civil rights, should embrace force as a solution or be less critical of the use of force? Not at all. As Sheldon Richman points out:

As I’ve written elsewhere, lunch counters throughout the American south were being desegregated years before passage of the 1964 Act. How so? Through sit-ins, boycotts, and other kinds of nonviolent, nongovernmental confrontational social action. (Read moving accounts here and here.)

The tactics of the civil rights movement were eminently libertarian. They deserve to be emulated and studied by contemporary libertarians. There are a whole host of other social problems that could be addressed by this style of direct action. Let us left-libertarians lead the way in embracing this radical approach to social change.

Amanda Marcotte discusses the tribalism of the religious right.

William Norman Grigg discusses police brutality.

David R. Hoffman discusses the NSA and CIA as criminal enterprises.

Arthur Silber discusses psychological manipulation and lying.

Arthur Silber discusses atrocity in the context of war.

Arthur Silber discusses neurosis and terror as national policy.

Arthur Silber discusses a psychologically dead culture.

Kevin Carson discusses what happens when basic services are declared a right.

Shamus Cooke discusses the top three media lies about the peace conference surrounding the Geneva Syrian peace talks.

Barbara Sostaita discusses why the liberty movement isn’t winning.

George H. Smith discusses Rudolf Rocker and the will to power.

Norman Solomon and Abba A. Solomon discusses the problems with liberal zionism and J Street.

Nile Bowie discusses security before politics.

Chase Madar discusses liberal law professors and killing.

Anthony Gregory discusses libertarian factionalism.

Thaddeus Russell discusses how nominally liberal presidents have killed.

Justin Raimondo discusses the Progressive crack up.

Peter Hart discusses apologist reporting on the Afghan War.

Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon discuss ethnic purity policies in Israel.

Gina Luttrell discusses why acknowledging privilege exists is necessary for achieving individualism.

Stephen Zunes discusses the U.S. role in the upsurge of violence in Iraq.

Jeffrey Kaye discusses the Obama administration’s continued use of torture.

Justin Raimondo discusses the use of WW2 by contemporary warmongerers.

Laurence M. Vance discusses Nick Turse’s book on Vietnam.

Rachel Burger discusses 4 programs worth ending before welfare for the poor.

Rosa Brooks discusses the CIA and torture.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the starvation occurring in Syria.

Peter Hart discusses more apologia for the Afghan War.

Bobby Fischer plays the Queen’s Gambit for the first time and kills.

Bobby Fischer plays a fantastically creative game.

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Voltairine de Cleyre’s “to try all strange sensations…” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Voltairine de Cleyre’s “to try all strange sensations…“. 

$1.50 for the first copy. $0.75 for every additional copy.

The essay reprinted in this booklet was originally published as “Anarchism,” in the October 13, 1901 edition of the Anarchist movement newspaper FREE SOCIETY (ed. Abe Isaak). I’ve retitled it because that’s a boring title for an essay about Anarchism in an Anarchist newspaper, or in an Anarchist pamphlet series.

But the content is anything but: A startling, provocative, and moving statement of de Cleyre’s emerging re-conception of anarchy herself as “an Anarchist, simply, without economic label attached,” — and of anarchy as a pluralistic process of social experimentation and self-exploration, — the essay has been retitled with two of the most striking phrases appearing in the text, speaking of the freedom “to try. . .” and of the anarchic, un-ruly self as a bottomless depth of “all strange sensations.”

“I have now presented the rough skeleton of four different economic schemes entertained by Anarch­ists. Re­mem­ber that the point of agreement in all is: no com­puls­ion. Those who favor one method have no intention of forcing it upon those who favor another, so long as equal tolerance is exercised toward them­selves. . . . For myself, I believe that all these and many more could be advantageously tried in different localities; I would see the habits of the people express them­selves in a free choice in every com­mun­ity; and I am sure that distinct envi­on­ments would call out distinct adaptations. My ideal would be a con­di­t­ion in which all natural re­sources would be forever free to all, and the work­er individually able to produce for him­self sufficient for all his vital needs, if he so chose, so that he need not govern his working or not work­ing by the times and sea­s­ons of his fellows. I think that time may come; but it will only be through the dev­el­op­ment of the modes of pro­duc­t­ion and the taste of the people. Meanwhile we all cry with one voice for the free­dom to try. . . .”

“Are these all the aims of Anarchism? They are just the beginning. They outline what is demanded for the material producer. Immeasurably deeper, immeasurably higher, dips and soars the soul which has come out of its case­ment of custom and cow­ardice, and dared to claim its Self. Ah, once to stand unflinchingly on the brink of that dark gulf of passions and desires, once at last to send a bold, straight-driven gaze down into the volcanic Me, once, and in that once forever, to throw off the command to cover and flee from the knowledge of that abyss, — . . . to realize that one is. . . a bottomless, bottomless depth of all strange sensations . . . quakings and shud­der­ings of love that drives to madness and will not be controlled, hunger­ings and meanings and sobbing that smite upon the inner ear . . . To look down into that, to know the blackness, the midnight, the dead ages in oneself, to feel the jungle and the beast within, . . . — to see, to know, to feel the uttermost, — and then to look at one’s fellow, sitting across from one in the street-car, . . . and to wonder what lies beneath that commonplace exterior — to picture the cavern in him which somewhere far below has a narrow gallery running into your own. . . . Letting oneself go free, go free beyond the bounds of what fear and custom call the ‘possible,’ — this too Anarchism may mean to you, if you dare to apply it so.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912) was a popular Anarchist and feminist writer, speaker and activist. Her contemporary and friend Emma Goldman called her “the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced.” She published articles in Liberty, Twentieth Century, Free Society and Mother Earth, and worked closely with libertarian communists, market anarchists, and mutualists within the Philadelphia social anarchist movement, but refused to commit herself to economic blueprints, adopting a pluralistic view of economic arrangements in any future free society.

Regular C4SS readers may have noticed the emergence of some weekly blogs here at Stigmergy. Trevor Hultner‘s been delivering  excellent media analysis and criticism every Tuesday. And Natasha Petrova brings a litany of left libertarian links with her Weekly Libertarian Leftist and Chess Review. I’ve decided to join the trend with a weekly blog on a topic I care about a lot: prison abolition. As I’ve written previously, I believe prison abolition is both a moral imperative and something we can take practical action to achieve. There are lots of people taking practical actions to help end the massive prison state that currently cages millions of people, and this blog will highlight their work.

One of my favorite prison abolitionists is Dean Spade. He’s a transgender rights activist and a founding member of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), a legal advocacy group that fights for transgender rights and particularly emphasizes prison abolition and the damage done by structural poverty. Next week he will be joining SRLP’s Reina Gossett for a discussion on prison abolition put on by the Barnard Center on Women. Gossett and Spade recorded an excellent video series on prison abolition. The videos deal with many issues, including everyday prison abolitionist practices, how to balance abolitionist goals with immediate needs, addressing the idea of “dangerous people” that make prisons necessary, and understanding the prison system as violently criminal in itself. Dean Spade puts it bluntly, pointing out that “The prison is the serial killer. The prison is the serial rapist.” The fourth video in particular is noteworthy, in that it addresses a topic too many on the left have ignored: the way gun control bolsters the prison system and the bigoted myths behind it. You can register for the online discussion with Spade and Gossett here. 

BCRW research assistant Carly Crane has also written an excellent blog post in relation to the event, titled Exploring Prison Abolition.  It’s a great introduction to prison abolition, discussing the connections between prison abolition and feminism, as well as prison abolition’s broader  role as a principled movement against violence.

One of the most damaging and dangerous aspects of the prison state is the way it criminalizes and cages huge numbers of immigrants who have done nothing more than peacefully cross lines drawn violently by states. Isabelle Nastasia and Jenny Marks recently published an excellent piece at Youngist that deals with immigrants’ rights from a prison abolitionist perspective. Their article uses Justin Bieber’s immigration issues as a jumping off point to discuss some vitally important issues. I highly recommend the article, which deals with the false divisions states use to sustain their structures of violence, queering immigration politics, and a variety of other key abolitionist issues.

These links provide just a few examples of the prison abolitionist action and scholarship is going on all over the United States and all around us. Under a nation state that locks up over 2 million people, such an abolitionist movement is absolutely vital.

We cataloged 58 “mainstream media pickups” of Center English-language op-eds (and several in translation!) in January, putting us on track to rack up more than 700 pickups in 2014 (assuming we can keep pace). That’s noteworthy, so I wanted to throw out a few thoughts on how we’re doing it:

• Before It’s News picks up nearly all of our material. We had an internal debate as to whether or not these pickups constitute “mainstream media,” and concluded that they do. BIN is a top 1,000 web site in the United States and top 2,000 worldwide, even if it doesn’t look “like most newspapers.” It has a real editorial policy and screens for newsworthiness, etc. as opposed to screening for particular ideology or whatever.
• For the last year or so, we’ve submitted selected C4SS op-eds to Counterpunch. They don’t pick up every submission we send them, but they do pick up quite a few. Once again, we discussed whether or not this constituted “mainstream media.” For me, the deciding factors were 1) that while nominally “left-wing,” Counterpunch is eclectically so, accepting material on current events from across a broad swath of the left-of-center spectrum (as opposed to being e.g. a partisan Democrat rag or a sectarian publication); and 2) that I’ve seen its print edition on “real meatspace newsstands” in the past.
• But aside from those two … debatable … publications, we’ve seen real “pickup” growth in the “regular” newspaper sector. In January, for example, C4SS material was picked up by daily print publications ranging from the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong’s leading English-language daily) to the Norwalk, Connecticut Hour and the Newberry, South Carolina Observer (small-town American dailies) to the Portland, Oregon Skanner (a black community daily). And, of course, many more.
• Over the past year, we’ve started building up a more robust international operation. I’ve always submitted the Center’s material to English-language publications worldwide, but now we’ve got a growing team of international media coordinators “by language,” translating the Center’s op-eds and submitting them to non-English-language newspapers. You’ll be hearing more about, and from, our international media coordinators as the year heats up.

You can keep track of our “MSM pickups” in the C4SS press room — and you can help make it possible for us to produce even more material and get it published in even more places by supporting the Center.

[Erratum Update: Above, I allude to one of our articles being picked up by the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s leading English-language daily, with a circulation of 104,000. The bad news is that while SCMP has run our material before, they didn’t this time. The good news is that the paper that did run David Grobgeld’s piece was Taiwan’s China Post, which has a circulation of about 400,000. The even better news is that we’ve already heard from them that they’re running another piece of ours tomorrow – TLK, 02/06/14]

“So, what would happen if 99% of us got together and showed up to vote?”

Ha, ha, it’s a trick question. If 99% of us got together and showed up to vote, 73,760,300 of us (= 23.5%) would be told to go to hell because they’re under 18, about 22,500,000 (= 7%) of us would be told to go to hell because they’re non-citizens, about 5,850,000 (~ 1.8%) would be told to go to hell because they’re legally barred from voting due to a felony conviction. Then we’d look around and notice that 2,400,000 of us (~ 0.7%) never showed up, because they were in prison and so couldn’t quite make it to the polling place.

The 77% or so of us that were left over would then go into the polling place, and they would vote for whoever the hell the Republican Party or the Democratic Party happened to nominate for President of the United States. It’s hard to know in advance, but probably the Democrat would win. And we would have 4 more years of the kind of revolutionary social transformation we’ve experienced under the past 6 years of Democratic administrations.

So Congress is set to pass another gargantuan ($100 billion per year) “farm bill.”

And of course, the 500-pound gorilla is the “food stamp” portion of the bill, which is set to be cut by a whopping 1%, while the overall measure increases “farm bill” spending by 37% over that of its predecessor bill over its 10-year projected life (I say “projected,” because the last “10-year” farm bill was passed six years ago).

I got that figure from Michael Tanner, who got it from Chris Edwards. Both of them are with the Cato Institute. And being able to get that figure from them was convenient, since it’s Tanner’s latest article on the “farm bill” that I’m about to take issue with. To wit, Tanner writes:

No doubt conservatives will complain about the food-stamp spending, but whatever one thinks about our ever-growing safety net, there is simply no excuse for the farm portion of the bill, which is pure corporate welfare.

Well, no. It’s all corporate welfare.

“Food stamps” aren’t about feeding people. They’re about making taking money from people and then giving some of it back with the requirement that it be spent on farm goods instead of on, say, televisions or tennis shoes.

Ditto for WIC, “school lunch” programs, etc.

No, I’m not saying that these programs don’t feed poor people. I’m just pointing out that the feeding of poor people is a fig leaf, an incidental side effect. The purpose of these programs isn’t to feed people, it’s to transfer money from your bank account to Big Ag’s bank accounts whether that’s where you prefer to spend your money or not.

[cross-posted from KN@PPSTER]

The future of news is much like the future anarchist society we all dream about but can never succinctly put into words: at the end of the day, we just don’t know what it’s going to look like.

Professional prognosticators, including many of my colleagues(?), make a pretty penny predicting the predilections of newsophiles five, 10, or 20 years down the line. And I’m willing to bet a significantly smaller sum that while they may get some details right here and there, on the whole, they’re all going to be wrong to a greater or lesser degree.

The future of news will most likely not consist primarily of radio, television or newsprint, but it might. It will probably operate on a decentralized basis akin to today’s social media (but for everything), but then again, it might not. People already don’t have to rely on network news, public radio or major legacy newspapers – hence the net decline in viewer-, listener- and readership – but these things keep on surviving, leading me to believe that they’ll continue to do so long into “the future.”

I read a post on Medium recently, about a project from 2004 that “predicted” where media was going to be today called EPIC 2014. It was 80 percent incorrect, but the overarching themes of the project still managed to resonate with the developments of the following decade.

For instance:

In the year 2014, people have access to a breadth and depth of information unimaginable in an earlier age. Everyone contributes in some way. Everyone participates to create a living, breathing mediascape.

By and large, that’s true. But it isn’t true that Google and Amazon merged, or that the New York Times spent the 10 years between 2004 and now suing the pants off any new media company or group that dared challenge its hegemony. Potentially, that would have been a more welcome, if also drastically more dystopian world, than the one we live in where paywalls are awkwardly implemented then discarded without hardly a word from the offending parties.

Durante diciembre de 2013 y enero de 2014 logramos algunas reproducciones interesantes de nuestro material traducido al español:

«El Papa Juguetea con la Economía», de Sheldon Richman, fue reproducido por El Librepensador, un periódico online independiente en España.

El Librepensador también reprodujo «La Privacidad en 2014: La Fábula del Acaparador», y «Privacidad 2014: ¿Scroogled?», ambos de Tom Knapp.

Los tres artículos anteriores, así como «2013: Finaliza una Era y Comienza una Nueva» de Tom Knapp, fueron reproducidas por Before It’s News, que publica con bastante regularidad nuestro material en inglés, por lo que es interesante ver que también están publicando nuestro material en español.

Y por último, aunque no menos importante, el blog de El Libertario, un prominente periódico anarquista venezolano, publicó «¿«Privatización» o Corporatismo?» de Kevin Carson, y mi «Patriarcado con Esteroides: La Fiebre de la Cirugía Plástica en Venezuela».

Arrancamos el 2014 con un esfuerzo renovado en cuanto a producción de contenido en español, comprometiéndonos a traducir por lo menos cuatro artículos al mes, y a construir una lista de contactos mediáticos con los que cultivaremos relaciones.

¡Apoya a C4SS!

¡Salud!

Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn discuss the terrorist character of the late Ariel Sharon.

Binoy Kampmark discusses the march to war with Iran.

Andrew Levine discusses what will happen for Obama upon the unraveling of Iraq.

Alfred McCoy discusses the surveillance state.

Kevin Carson discusses the worship of authority.

Jose Martinez discusses Wal-Mart racism.

Melvin A. Goodman discusses the legacy of a congressman who helped reveal covert crimes.

Peter Frase discusses leftism and the state.

Will Wilkinson discusses liberalism, libertarianism, and the illiberal security state.

Chase Madar discusses the hawkishness of supposed human rights advocates.

Eric Draitser discusses the resistance to NATO rule in Libya.

Sheldon Richman responds to a recent hit piece on Juilan Assange, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden.

William A. Cohn discusses the farce of secret law.

David Swanson discusses the stopping of war.

Lew Rockwell discusses 21st century mussolinism.

Stephan Kinsella discusses the libertarian case for gay marriage.

Michael S. Rozeff discusses the national security state.

Nick Gillespie discusses how the FBI’s ugly past undermines Obama’s War on Terror.

Paul Buhle reviews a new book on Robert M. La Follette.

Melvin A. Goodman discusses Robert Gate’s new memoir.

Daniel McCarthy discusses Leo Strauss and the American right.

Carole Simonnet discusses pot smoking in Mexico.

Daniel McCarthy reviews a book on Leo Strauss.

Robert Colls discusses George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War.

Ivan Eland discusses the growing militarization of U.S. society.

Conor Friedersdorf discusses why the GOP can’t win on a hawkish platform.

J.D. Tuccille discusses the weak reforms of the NSA.

Roman Skaskiw discusses Albert Jay Nock’s famous memoir.

Mark Donlan reviews Chess Superminitaures.

John S. Hilbert discusses Charles Seymour Taylor.

Accusations of cruelty are often leveled against Ayn Rand. How accurate is this charge? The answer is a complicated one. One can find traces of both kindness and cruelty in her life/work. Both deserve consideration in formulating a clear perspective.

Let’s examine a case of cruelty first:

“[The Native Americans] didn’t have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using…. What was it they were fighting for, if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their “right” to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it. Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent.” * Source: “Q and A session following her Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974”

Ayn Rand endorses the European conquest and genocide of the Native American population here.

A contrasting example is provided by:

At the time, Rand and husband, Frank O’Connor, lived in a rural area north of Los Angeles, now part of Chatsworth. Rand hired Haruno as a cook—even though June says her mother couldn’t cook very well and in spite of Rand already having a cook. Ryoji was also hired to help Frank with the flowers that he grew on the property—even though Mr. Kato had no previous experience gardening. Ten-year-old Ken was a bit young to be hired for anything. As for June, though she had just graduated high school, and had no experience, Rand hired her as well, to come to the house every weekend and do typing. In addition to paying a salary to June, Ryoji and Haruno, Rand also gave the family two rooms in her house so they had a place to live. Damn, apparently she didn’t know that generosity was against her own philosophy. No one told her. But then, she was such a monster, who would dare? In addition to the Kato family another resident in Rand’s home was Maria Strachova, an elderly refugee who had taught English to Rand as a child. Rand took her in for a year.

Ayn Rand performs acts of kindness and geneorosity here.

Which one is the real Rand? Both. She was a complicated human being like the rest of us.

We had a few interesting Spanish-lang pickups between December 2013 and January 2014:

The translation for Sheldon Richman’s “The Pope Dabbles in Economics”, was picked up by El Librepensador, an independent online newspaper from Spain.

The same newspaper picked up the translation for Tom Knapp’s “Privacy 2014: The Fable of the Hoarder”, and “Privacy 2014: Scroogled?”.

These three pieces, as well as the translation for Tom Knapp’s “2013: One Era Ends, Another Begins” were also picked up by Before It’s News, which publishes our English-lang material quite regularly, so it’s interesting to see it publishing our Spanish translations too.

And last but not least, the blog of El Libertario, a prominent Venezuelan anarchist newspaper, published the translation for Kevin Carson’s ““Privatization” or Corporatism?”, as well as my “Patriarchy on Steroids: The Case of Venezuela’s Plastic Surgery Fever”.

We’re starting 2014 with a renewed effort in Spanish translation, with a commitment to post at least four translations of Op-ed pieces per month, and building a list of contacts of Spanish-lang mainstream media contacts that we will cultivate relationships with.

¡Apoya a C4SS!

¡Salud!

The Jacobin recently published a good piece by Peter Frase titled “The Left and the State.” In it he discusses a recent attack on Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange. This attack was published in the well known liberal magazine, The New Republic. He makes use of another good piece by libertarian, Will Wilkinson. Both he and Wilkinson deserve further consideration.

Peter Frase writes:

Wilkinson notes that theoretically, libertarianism is “an argument against the possibility of legitimate government.” This makes it clearly incompatible with most socialist or social democratic attempts to democratize the market or expropriate the means of production. Yet nevertheless, “it’s crazily illogical to reason that the actually existing state is justified on liberal terms just because the libertarian critique of the state is false, and a legitimate liberal state is possible.”

The key word here is “most”. A left-libertarian market anarchist transformation would involve a free market anti-capitalist or laissez faire socialist democratization of the market through freed market means. This could conceivably involve expropriation of state corporatist or state capitalist property. It’s thus clearly possible to accept the libertarian critique of the state as valid and still advocate revolutionary economic transformation. Our ideal is freed markets and not the existing “marketplace”.

Will Wilkinson writes:

Liberals and socialists often accuse libertarians, not without justice, of acting as unwitting apologists for plutocracy. Many free-marketeers do have a bad habit of confusing our unjustifiably rigged political economy with a very different laissez faire ideal, and their defenses of the actually-existing “free enterprise system” really do redound to the benefit of those the system is rigged to enrich. Likewise, liberals do have a bad habit of confusing actual, nominally liberal states with a very different liberal ideal, and their defenses of the actual “liberal state” do tend to redound to the benefit of the insidiously illiberal segments of the state that cannot be justified or accounted for on almost any standard liberal theory of legitimacy. The point being that too many “liberals” are really conservative apologists for the status quo political order, just as too many “libertarians” are really conservative apologists for the status quo economic order.

An excellent unwittingly left-libertarian sentiment. We libertarians will have an easier time making common cause with the left when we choose to acknowledge these truths. The Jacobin article above is a promising step in that direction. Let’s continue to make left-wing market anarchism visible, so we can see even more like it. I look forward to it.

On January 15, freelance sports blogger Caleb Hannan published a longform article at Grantland documenting his eight-month search for the truth behind Yar Golf’s “physics-defying” putter and its inventor, Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt.

Over the course of Hannan’s reporting for this essay, he discovered that Vanderbilt’s claims regarding her academic credentials turned out to be unverifiable. As he dug deeper, he learned from her investors and court documents that she might be a con artist. He also stumbled upon a facet of Vanderbilt’s life that should have been inconsequential, but which he thought was important – nay, “shocking” – enough to focus at least part of his piece on: she was a transgender woman.

According to Hannan’s own accounting of events, Vanderbilt asked him from the beginning to “focus on the science,” and not on her. He agreed to this. As he investigated her claims and found that some of them didn’t pass the smell test, he was well within his rights to do more research. As a journalist he had an obligation to tell the truth given the context of his story. Where that obligation ended – in fact, where that obligation never even approached – was her gender identity.

In his essay, Hannan details at least one scenario where he discussed Vanderbilt’s gender identity with an investor of hers, and it becomes clear as the article progresses that he viewed her transition as another aspect of her con. Indeed, he casts her increasingly agitated email exchanges with him over the course of the reporting period as attempts to obfuscate his ability to tell the entire story. It probably didn’t occur to him that she didn’t want to discuss her gender or have her trans status publicized.

And yet, he did it. And it killed her. Vanderbilt committed suicide on October 18, 2013, almost exactly three months before the piece went to print. Hannan styled the final paragraphs of his essay as a “eulogy,” clicked “save” in his word processor, and sent it to his editors at Grantland, who had no problem publishing the final product.

-~*~-

This final product created a firestorm on the Internet.

Audrey Faye at Autostraddle highlighted Hannan’s flippant misgendering of Vanderbilt:

Hannan details Dr. V’s history of lawsuits, relationships and a suicide attempt. He describes outing her as trans to at least one investor without her consent, and without any acknowledgement of the fact that that’s what he was doing. And then, as the linchpin of the piece, he writes “What began as a story about a brilliant woman with a new invention had turned into a tale of a troubled man who had invented a new life for himself. Yet the biggest question remained unanswered: Had Dr. V created a great golf club or merely a great story?”

“A tale of a troubled man who had invented a new life for himself.”

A troubled man.

Just like that, Hannan did what so many people do: he called into question the reality of Dr. V’s gender as if her being trans was as suspect as her missing degrees, engaging in the deplorable and time-honored practice of depicting trans* people, and especially trans women, as duplicitous and deceitful.

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville notes his separation from the human element in his story:

Hannan distances himself from this tragedy by including in the story the report of a previous attempt at taking her own life made by Dr. V, as if to suggest that her suicide was inevitable.

Further, he catalogs her deception about her educational and professional background alongside the revelation that she is trans, in a way that suggests her failure to reflexively disclose that she is trans as part of any introduction to a new person is a lie, just like so many others she told.

When she does not agree to become the focus of his story, which was meant to be about the science, he pouts and tasks her with the responsibility for his aggressive invasiveness: “Dr. V’s initial requests for privacy had seemed reasonable. Now, however, they felt like an attempt to stop me from writing about her or the company she’d founded. But why?” He reports disclosing that Dr. V is a trans woman to one of her investors. He publishes her birth name. He describes the scene of her death. And he concludes the piece by calling it a eulogy.

Grantland responded to the multivarious criticisms with an apology letter from editor Bill Simmons and a response piece by ESPN.com baseball reporter Christina Kahrl. These responses were, in turn, criticized for 1. treating Vanderbilt’s death like they would treat a misspelling of a name, and 2. for continuing to treat Vanderbilt’s identity as part of her con game, respectively. Tim Marchman at Deadspin brought up how inappropriate the chronological nature of the article’s structure was; that, by writing the story in linear time, Hannan apparently felt he had to out Vanderbilt in order for everything else to make sense:

By writing the story chronologically, as a mystery where every revelation led to a further revelation, Hannan essentially locked himself into a structure where he had to reveal that Vanderbilt was a transgender woman to make sense of the blanks he’d found in her background. The chronological structure requires that to be the emotional pivot of the story, the moment when the story begins to open up for the author; the death is only a coda.

This is all the more troubling given that Grantland’s editor-in-chief, Bill Simmons, wrote that the story was filed in something approximating its present form before Vanderbilt killed herself in October. That suggests that in the process of writing, Hannan thought it would be acceptable to out Vanderbilt, by way of buttressing his claims about her background and thus casting doubt on the science behind her putter.

The response to Grantland’s attempted mea culpa was just as fierce on Twitter:

And people are really trying to spin this as “Good journalism violates boundaries.” I need a drink…so I can throw it at you!

— Shaadi (@tgirlinterruptd) January 21, 2014

spent the whole time explaining your journalism fails, totally missed how you failed as a human being @BillSimmons — Daniel José Older (@djolder) January 20, 2014

@sophiaphotos it almost reads like “growing pains”. No. A woman is dead. Her death is not “a mistake” that legitimizes your journalism. — Invincible Joy (@aisha1908) January 21, 2014

This woman’s ENTIRE LIFE is less important than this writer’s FIRST PIECE for Grantland. His career can be fixed. She can’t be brought back.

— GenderTerror.com (@Wolferfly) January 21, 2014

.@bodysnatcher226 @scATX It was terrible. Kahrl’s piece basically said Dr. V was at fault for being stealth. Victim blaming, bull.

— GenderTerror.com (@Wolferfly) January 20, 2014

Grandland laying into stealth trans people is a way to discredit trans people and frame stealth trans people as liars and frauds.

— Sophia Banks (@sophiaphotos) January 21, 2014

Of course, Hannan didn’t have to write the article according to the edicts of linear time, and he didn’t have to out Essay Anne Vanderbilt. And ethically, this shouldn’t have even been a question up for debate by either him or his editors.

-~*~-

Just about every newsroom in the world abides by a code of ethics. Sometimes this is a set of loose guidelines, but usually, it’s written out clear as day and in neon. The Society of Professional Journalists, for instance, has incredibly clear rules regarding conduct and harm reduction. Caleb Hannan should know this. He’s been working as a professional journalist since at least 2010, when he won several SPJ awards for his reporting in Seattle Weekly; he has written for Bloomberg Businessweek, Deadspin and others on a variety of subjects besides sports, so it’s hard to believe he’s green in this regard.

Here’s what the SPJ has to say about harm reduction:

Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.

Journalists should: — Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
— Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
— Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.
— Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.
— Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
— Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes.
— Be judicious about naming criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.
— Balance a criminal suspect’s fair trial rights with the public’s right to be informed.

In the bluntest terms, Hannan objectified Vanderbilt’s transness; he saw her gender identity as a hook to get more eyeballs to his story and his work, and he wasn’t going to let frivolous facts, like transgender people being 25 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population, get in his way. He disregarded her desire to keep this aspect of her life private. He, and Grantland, profited from her death.

Hannan’s essay is journalistically unethical. It’s also grossly inhuman.

“This is one of the most horrifying, despicable things that I have seen all day. People who post this kind of adulation for this mass murderer — an immensely privileged millionaire dynastic politician, who imprisoned hundreds of thousands of innocent people in military internment camps solely on the basis of their race, who repeatedly turned away Jews fleeing the Holocaust, who sponsored and administered nativist immigration policies and spoke in openly racist terms against “the mingling of Asiatic blood with European and American blood,” whose policies and whose court appointments resulted in some of the worst adverse civil-rights decisions of the 20th century — the man who authorized the firebombing of Tokyo and the creation of the atomic bombs, who spent the 1930s courting votes from Jim Crow Dixiecrats, who repeatedly used federal forces to imprison striking workers during the Depression, who drove Congress to create the House Un-American Activities Committee and who ordered J. Edgar Hoover to begin the massive covert political espionage program which later became COINTELPRO, . . . — people who post this kind of adulation, I say, thinking that they are doing so in the name of liberalism, are white-washing history and excusing the violation of human rights in defense of immense, unaccountable privilege.

Nobody who professes to have even an ounce of concern about social justice or civil liberty should have anything but disgust for the record of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

Wendy McElroy reviews a historical work on the surveillance state.

Jonathan Cook discusses the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Sheldon Richman discusses how intellectual property creates corporate concentration.

Jim Lobe discusses the fall of Fallujah.

Stephen Kinzer discusses the potential detente with Iran.

Thaddeus Russell discusses The Other America.

Kevin Carson reviews AFFEERCE: A Business Plan to Save the United States and then The World.

Brian Doherty discusses petty law enforcement directed against the poor.

Barry Lando discusses the American legacy in Iraq.

William Blum discusses the NSA spying.

Peter Van Buren discusses 10 NSA myths.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the war in Afghanistan.

Chase Madar discusses the use of police power against kids.

Kevin Carson discusses 5 libertarian reforms to fight for.

Ryan Calhoun discusses state control of the weed market.

Molly Crabapple discusses the 12 anniversary of Gitmo.

Noam Chomsky discusses Ariel Sharon.

Joseph Stromberg discusses Gabriel Kolko.

Clancy Sigal discusses Fallujah.

Sheldon Richman discusses how our leaders don’t mean well.

Sahar Aziz discusses the War on Terror’s authoritarian template.

Naomi Wolf discusses the use of secret assassins by Obama.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the Syria peace settlement.

Jonathan Blanks discusses how recognizing power structures is not incompatible with individual liberty.

Sheldon Richman discusses how rights violations aren’t the only bads.

Chris Gilbert discusses U.S. intervention in Colombia.

Uri Avnery discusses Ariel Sharon.

Kathleen Wallace discusses an infamous raid on Lawrence, Kansas.

Chris Wainscott reviews Position and Pawn Tension in Chess.

John Watson reviews a whole heap of opening books.

John Stossel recently penned a piece titled Equality vs Liberty. In it, he argues that wealth inequality is not a serious issue. This post is the beginning of a lengthier response to him. It will be expanded into an opinion editorial. Quotations from Stossel will be used in both pieces.

Stossel remarks:

It’s true that today, the richest one percent of Americans own a third of America’s wealth. One percent owns 35 percent!

But I say, so what?

Stossel is oblivious to the fact that control of wealth and property allows a person to dictate the terms of existence to another. A person with little money is more likely to have to work for a boss, because they don’t have the resources to survive otherwise. Inequality is by definition a phenomena involving subordination. When people aren’t relatively equal – command and control ensues. Individual liberty and equality are thus intertwined.

Stossel goes on to say:

Progressives in the media claim that the rich get richer at the expense of the poor.

But that’s a lie.

Hollywood sells the greedy-evil-capitalists-cheat-the-poor message with movies like Martin Scorsese’s new film, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which portrays stock sellers as sex-crazed criminals. Years before, Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” created a creepy financier, Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, who smugly gloated, “It’s a zero-sum game. Somebody wins; somebody loses.”

This is how the left sees the market: a zero-sum game. If someone makes money, he took it from everyone else. The more the rich have, the less others have. It’s as if the economy is a pie that’s already on the table, waiting to be carved. The bigger the piece the rich take, the less that’s left for everyone else. The economy is just a fight over who gets how much.

But this is absurd. Bill Gates took a huge slice of pie, but he didn’t take it from me. By starting Microsoft, he baked millions of new pies. He made the rest of the world richer, too. Entrepreneurs create things.

Stossel is also unaware of the extent to which state intervention in the “market” props up established wealthy economic players. A genuinely freed market would not involve people getting wealthy at the expense of others, but we don’t live in such a society. A genuinely freed market would likely have a more egalitarian distribution of wealth. Not a perfect equality, but a substantially better one. This is what we left-wing market anarchists aim for.