One of the virtues of Jacob Huebert’s Libertarianism Today is that it provides ample evidence for the high literacy rates of Americans prior to the introduction of compulsory education laws. The moral and the practical come together beautifully here. Not only is it unethical to initiate force for the purpose of compelling children to attend schools, it isn’t necessary for effectual education. The consequentialist statist is left without good evidence.

Let us turn to a select quotation from the book on page 114:

Professor Lawrence Cremin has estimated that male literacy ranged from 70 to 100 percent. Other research shows that from 1650 to 1795, male literacy rose from 60 percent to 90 percent, and female literacy rose from 30 percent to 45 percent. From 1800 to 1840, literacy in the North rose from 75 percent to somewhere between 91 and 97 percent. In the South during that same time period, it went from 50 to 60 percent to 81 percent. Writer and educator, John Taylor Gatto notes that “by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered.” In 1850, just before Massachusetts imposed compulsory schooling, literacy in that state was at 98 percent.

A highly literate population is clearly possible without state intervention in education. This goes along well with the moral principle of freedom of thought for children idenitfied by the late radical educator, John Holt. This principle demands that young people be free to control their own learning. When allowed to do so, a child is able to fit learning how to read into his or her own desires/interests. A self-directed process of discovery that can strengthen a child’s drive to learn more.

The joy of reading is preferable when not tainted by the evil of aggressive coercion. We left-libertarians are uniquely positioned to encourage literacy without coercion. There are revolutionary alternatives to an statist regime of compelled learning. They include unschooling, Sudbury schools, and Montessori schools. Among these choices, unschooling is my favorite. It provides the most radical alternative to statist models of education. In its respect for individuality, choice, and freedom, it’s the most compatible with libertarian principle.

Cultural change requires a corresponding educational transformation. If we wish to move society towards greater freedom, we will have to raise our children differently. They are to be allowed a great deal of freedom to pursue their own dreams and interests. The educational alternatives mentioned above can help make this a reality. Let’s get started on it!

Translations for this article:

• Turkish, Zorunlu Öğretim, Okuryazarlık, Ve Eğitim Alternatifleri.

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 James Tuttle’s “Direct Action on the Job!” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with James Tuttle’s “Direct Action on the Job!”

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

This article is a transcript of a talk by Director Tuttle, entitled “The Libertarian and Radical Labor Dis­con­nect,” on the culture, techniques and ideas of radical labor organizing, originally presented at the Dallas Students for Liberty Regional Conference in October 2012.

“The case that I’d like to build is threefold. I want to say there’s a distinction between radical labor and conservative labor, and radical labor is, can be de­fin­ed as, solidarity power: decentralized, apolitical — ex­plicit­ly apolitical — and direct action based. And that they’re org­anizing in order to displace power, or gain power where there is none. So from this kind of model, we can understand or start to understand how they operate, operat­ing along — how are they thinking of targets and tactics? — and how are they reacting to them? — where does this militancy come from?

“I would like to suggest there are three themes that are formed in radical organizations. One of them is solidarity. Another one is the concept called ‘visceral orientation:’ you feel it in your gut when you look around. And a culture of resistance, which will start to demonstrate why you’re operating this way, and why they ally in some instances with this group and why not in another instance. . . .

“Work as we experience it and recognize it to­day contains features that undermine or act against radicalism. And that, due to our shared kind of radicalism, that this is a con­cern not just for labor but for libertarianism. I think we can charitably re­gard liber­tar­ian­ism as a project that is the opposite of, or in op­pos­i­t­ion to, authority. . . . Liberty should not be a condition that you clock in and out of. . . If we’re going to be active and political off of work, then why are we clocking in and accepting situations where we can’t actively in­put? It feels weird to fight for liberty, but only after work.”

F.W. James Tuttle is a left-libertarian anarcho-os­tro­m­ite living and working in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Coordinating Director of the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS), a Co-Editor of the left-libertarian zine ALLiance Journal, and a proud organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. A video recording of this talk was uploaded to YouTube by the DFW Alliance of the Libertarian Left; the transcript was prepared through the generous assistance of L.B., and edited for the booklet format by Charles Johnson of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left Distro.

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 Oscar Wilde’s “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Oscar Wilde’s “The Soul of Man Under Socialism“.

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Originally circulated in 1891 as a privately printed book, by the world-renowned gay Anglo-Irish Aesth­et­icist poet, play­wright and critic Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). Wilde declared himself an anarchist following his encounter with the Russian expatriate anarchist Peter Kropotkin. His artistic work, and his later persecution, trial and imprisonment for his sexual relationships with male lovers were widely and sympathetically discussed in the Anarchist press during the 1890s, and his Anarchist writings were later reprinted by Emma Goldman and Alex­ander Berkman’s Mother Earth publishing company. The essay offers a fascinating exploration of the cultural impacts of anarchistic socialism and individualism — not as a tearing-down of all in the name of rigidly formal equality, but rather a liberating opportunity for all to fully express what makes them unique, and and flourish in their idiosyncrasy.

“We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are un­grate­ful, dis­con­tent­ed, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculous­ly in­ade­qu­ate mode of partial rest­it­ut­ion, or a sentimental dole, usually ac­com­panied by some im­pert­i­n­ent attempt of the senti­mentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? Dis­obe­d­ience is man’s original virtue. It is through dis­obed­ience that pro­gress has been made, through dis­obed­ience and through rebellion. . . .

“It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. . . . Under an industrial bar­rack sys­tem, or a system of economic tyranny, nobody would be able to have any such freedom at all. Every man must be left quite free to choose his own work. No form of compulsion must he ex­er­c­is­ed over him. . . . All association must be quite voluntary. It is only in vol­unt­ary associations that man is fine. . . . Socialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to Individualism.

“Art is Individualism, and Individ­u­alism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense val­ue. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyr­an­ny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. . . . Self­ish­ness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness re­cog­nises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it.”

I recently finished reading the second edition of Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. It was a fantastic read and is highly recommended. There is a comprehensive review in the works, but I want to use this blog post to touch on a particular quotation from We the Living. Kira is quoted thus:

I don’t want to fight for the people, I don’t want to fight against the people, I don’t want to hear of the people. I want to be left alone — to live!

This quotation captures a dialectical transcendence of the false dualism between submerging your individuality in an organicist collectivist conception of the people and sacrificing the mass of people. Kira simply wants to be left alone to live in freedom rather than having to choose between fighting for an elite against the people or on behalf of a mass that demands the sacrifice of her individuality.

The question left unanswered is how a left-libertarian should approach this quotation, because we left-libertarians do strive to improve the living standards of the vast majority of people. A left-libertarian could approach it by embracing the message of individual freedom contained therein while still engaging in militant action against elite power structures. The goal is to transcend the collectivism of both elitism and majoritarian estatism.

The above is best accomplished by making sure that revolutionary organization is structured in a way that discourages intrusions upon individual freedom. Left-libertarians are uniquely placed to fight a revolution without sacrificing individual rights in the process. The Marxist states of the 20th century showed what happens when you abandon respect for the individual. Left-libertarians seek to become the left and avoid the mistakes of the past. They can learn from the failed Marxist experience.

Does this mean abandoning all collective action? Not at all. Collective action carried out by autonomous individuals coming together with a shared purpose is eminently libertarian. Collective action is not the same thing as collectivism. The latter is an organcist doctrine that holds that the individual is a mere cell of a social super organism that is an entity unto itself. This is obvious mysticism and not supported by the evidence of the senses. This doesn’t mean that society doesn’t exist. It exists through the individuals that compose it. Kira’s statement is a cry for privacy and individuality within a social context. Let us help to realize her dream and push towards more freedom.

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 SEK3’s “Counter-Economics Our Means” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with SEK3’s “Counter-Economics Our Means“.

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Counter-Economics is the practice of direct action in economic life — the cultivation of economic relationships that evade, avoid, and defy both the State and the legally-compliant, corporate dominated white-market economy. “Counter-Economics: Our Means” is the classic presentation of Counter-Economics by the man who first coined the concept and developed the theory, Samuel Edward Konkin III of the Movement of the Libertarian Left. The essay reprinted here was originally published as Chapter 3 of the New Libertarian Manifesto (1980), first published by Anarcho­sam­is­dat Press, then in later editions by Koman Publishing Co. / KoPubCo.

“The function of the pseudo-science of Establishment economics, even more than making predictions . . . for the ruling class, is to mystify and confuse the ruled class as to where their wealth is going and how it is taken. An explanation of how people keep their wealth and property from the State is then Counter-Est­ab­lish­ment economics, or Counter-Economics for short. The actual practice of human actions that evade, avoid and defy the State is counter-economic activity. . . .”

“Now we can see clearly what is needed to create a libertarian society. One the one hand we need the edu­cat­ion of the libertarian activists and the consciousness-rais­ing of counter-economists to liber­tar­ian understanding and mutual sup­portiveness. . . . On the other hand, we must defend our­selves against the vested interests or at the very least lower their oppression as much as pos­sible. If we eschew reformist activity as counter-productive, how will we achi­eve that?

“One way is to bring more and more people into the counter-eco­n­omy and lower the plunder available to the State. . . Slowly but steadily we will move to the free society turning more counter-economists onto libertarianism and more libertarians onto counter-economics, finally integrating theory and practice. The counter-economy will grow and spread to the next step we saw in our trip backward, with an ever-larger agorist sub-society embedded in the statist society. . .”

Samuel Edward Konkin III (1947–2004) was an anarchist libertarian active from the late 1960s until his untimely death in 2004. Founder of the Movement of the Libertarian Left and editor of several irregularly published movement papers (New Libertarian Notes, New Libertarian Weekly, New Libertarian), he became an influential critic of smaller-government reform­ism, electoral politics, and the “Libertarian” Party. He is best known for his role in developing the philosophy of agorism, a direct-action movement of revolutionary market anarchism, to be achieved through the conscious practice black and grey market activities to grow the ‘counter-economy.’

(Emilie Rensink at the Anti-Media has a really, really good basic intro post to independent journalism. Go check that out over here. Read this blog, split up into two parts, when you’re done.)

I’ve been on a podcast binge recently, thanks to my job graciously granting me a forced, unpaid two-week vacation. Over the past couple of days I’ve listened to dozens of podcasts, including a more objective analysis of a few episodes of my own show. I’ve got podcasting on the brain.

If we’re friends (all of you are now my friends), you know I’ve been podcasting for years. I’ve done a music show, many political shows, an attempt at a straight news podcast for my college paper, and more. I recently worked on a freelance piece for a podcast called Radio Dispatch.

Let’s be honest, everyone is podcasting, and no one outside of the NPR bubble is doing it in the studio. One of the most popular podcasts around, WTF with Marc Maron, is recorded in the dude’s garage. Another popular show I listen to is an unedited recording of a Skype call. Podcasting is an incredibly accessible medium, and you can start doing it almost immediately – no studio required.

Recording Equipment

So, if you’ve decided to start podcasting, take out your phone. Most smartphones come with native recording apps now, and they produce sound of variable quality. I was using my iPhone 4s and iPod 3 to record whole episodes, from the interviews to the monologues, and while the sound wasn’t great, it was better than most basic digital recorders – plus, it didn’t cost me anything.

The native recording apps are great if you’re just getting used to talking into a microphone for any extended period of time, but they’re not the best options available. There are several great free iPhone apps that produce professional broadcast quality sound, including Soundcloud, the Tascam PCM Recorder, 1st Video, Hindenburg Field Recorder Lite, and more. A lot of those apps are also available on Android phones as well.

(Don’t have a smartphone? You can still podcast. BlogTalkRadio is a free solution, where you can host a live talk show straight from your phone. And if you’re interested in getting a smartphone but don’t want to enter into a contract with AT&T, Verizon, or other carriers, Motorola has made a phone that only costs $179 unlocked – six times cheaper than the full retail price of the average contracted smartphone – and is just as powerful.)

If you’re not me, and you don’t have two phones lying around (one has been deactivated but I can still use its microphone), it’s going to be difficult to interview someone hundreds of miles away. Skype is a good internet call program and it’s what I use, but there are others out there that aren’t hindered by the bloated carcass of Microsoft.

Editing Equipment

If you have a computer that runs Windows, Mac or Linux and live on a budget of “free,” Audacity is hands-down the best audio editing software. Coincidentally, it’s also the only software I’m going to recommend here; Adobe Audition is much more powerful and comprehensive, but its current asking price of $19.99/month via Creative Cloud is a bit steep. Also, Audition is incredibly complicated – while Audacity suffers from its own problems of initial opacity, Audition takes that to the next level. Basically, don’t bother with it unless you already know what you’re doing (in which case, why are you here?).

Another thing I’m going to recommend is external storage. Whether you decide to do this the free way and take advantage of cloud storage or bite the budget bullet and buy an actual brick you can put on your desk and take with you when you’re done, external storage is incredibly important. Recording audio takes up a lot of room on a hard drive if you’re not compressing the files to within a hair’s breadth of their lives, and if your computer isn’t pre-built with 131524512134TB of storage, you’re gonna have a bad time once you’ve collected more than 24 hours’ worth of audio.

Finally, I wish I could say that the computer you use isn’t important, and in some senses that’s true, but I started on a laptop that used Windows 7, I went backwards to early-version Windows XP, and now I’m on a Linux machine that I’m 89 percent certain isn’t configured properly. It matters. Oh god, does it matter. Use what you have, but if an opportunity arises to get a usable, faster computer for cheap, do it. Don’t even hesitate. (And if you have a Chromebook, god help you.)

Recording Environment

Your environment is as important, if not more so, than your equipment. You can have all the best microphones and soundboards and fancy studio tools the market has to offer, but if you’re sitting in the middle of a construction zone, you’re going to have a bad time.

Find a place – it doesn’t have to be your home – where everything is reasonably quiet, then make it ten times quieter. If you or your friends have a bunch of egg cartons lying around, use those as a do-it-yourself form of soundproofing. Some producers just hide their heads and the microphone under a blanket and they get good results. Try to minimize as much background noise as you can, especially if you use your smartphone.

(Next week: Part Two – Find your voice)

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“. 

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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…“. 

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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.