Konkin offered a scenario [PDF], using agorist class theory, to illustrate the difference between a limited-government libertarian and an agorist:

“Consider the individual standing at the corner of the street. He can see two sides of the building behind him as he prepares to cross the street. He is hailed and turns around to see an acquaintance from the local libertarian club approaching in one direction. The latter advocates ‘working through the system’ and is an armed government agent. Walking along the other side of the building is another acquaintance, same age, gender, degree of closeness and so on, who is a practicing counter-economist. She also may be armed and is undoubtedly carrying the very kind of contraband the State’s agent is empowered to act on. Seeing you, the first individual waves and confirms she indeed has the illegal product — and is about to run into the ‘libertarian statist’ at the corner. Both are slightly distracted, looking at you.

The situation is not likely to happen too often but it’s quite possible. Only the removal of ‘complicating factors’ is contrived. If you fail to act, the counter-economist will be taken by surprise and arrested or killed. If she is warned, she may — at this last-minute — elect to defend herself before flight and thus injure the agent. You are aware of this and must act now — or fail to act.

The agorist may take some pains to cover his warning so that he will not get involved in a crossfire, but he will act. The socialist has a problem if the State agent works for a socialist state. Even the ‘libertarian’ has a problem. Let’s make it really rough: the State agent contributes heavily to the local ‘libertarian’ club or party (for whatever reasons; many such people are known to this author). The counter-economist refuses to participate except socially to the group. For whose benefit would the ‘political libertarian’ act?

Such choices will increase in frequency when the State increases repression or the agorists increase their resistance. Both are likely in the near future.

Agorist class theory is quite practical.”

Every day, I’m confronted with articles and opeds that discuss and defend an institution I don’t recognize, an abstraction projected by those who seem to be invested in convincing us that it actually exists. This institution is said to preserve law and order in society through various arms, all accountable to something else called “the people” or “the electorate.” The concept under consideration is identified as the state or government, but there are at least two ways to consider that concept.

The state as we find it in these pieces is the state of fantasy, a phenomenon we might contrast with the state of history. The state of liberal fantasy is a result of social contract, freely developed from the will of autonomous, equal citizens; it provides crucial services, protects individual prerogatives and rights, and furnishes the foundation of society. That this state has never existed is of no import to the proselytizers of statism. Because they want to believe that the state is a well-meaning quasi-charity that the social body has organized and instituted voluntarily, it matters not that the historical state is a very different creature.

Defined by war, conquest and spoliation, the state we find all throughout history has been fundamentally antisocial and antithetical to the principle of contract. Rather than dispensing necessary services and aiding the poor, the historical state has dedicated itself to establishing the preconditions for predation and for the exploitation of the laboring classes. The historical state stole and monopolized in order to make the working poor the tools of the idle rich. Were we ever to find the state of fantasy, it would indeed be inaccurate to call it the state at all. Having shed all of the definitive traits of the state — which is coercive rather than contractual, predatory rather than philanthropic — we mightn’t, as anarchists, find it objectionable at all.

The state of fantasy is in point of fact what we look forward to as proponents of a free society, a condition in which free, sovereign individuals in genuine community provide for one another through consensual trading and giving. The historical state is the foremost enemy and impediment to the emergence of this kind of society. It is interesting, therefore, to see so many apologies for the state from those whose interest in the poor and underprivileged is sincere, those who actually care about wealth inequality and social justice. But these defenses of the state make perfect sense once we understand that the state of fantasy is the one liberals see.

Jacob Huebert has penned a very informative introductory text to libertarian philosophy called Libertarianism Today. It was a pleasure to read, but this left-libertarian market anarchist has some qualms to raise. A detailed review is in the works, so this will be a brief exploration. Quotations from the book will be provided for the reader’s edification. The reader is encouraged to read the whole book.

On pg.39; Huebert states:

Some libertarians argue that libertarianism is not just about property rights and the non-aggression principle, but requires promotion of certain liberal social values.

This left-libertarian market anarchist supports a thick approach to libertarianism. One that emphaizies a broad conception of liberty requiring the promotion of liberal cultural values. The dialectical libertarian model of Chris Matthew Sciabarra serves as an inspiration for this too. The book never mentions thick and dialectical libertarianism. It briefly mentions left-libertarianism, but the coverage is not too extensive. In fairness to the author; the book is intended as an introductory text and broad overview. Not a comprehensive encyclopedia of libertarian thought. 

These thinker’s liberal social views may or may not have merit, but they are not part of libertarianism per se. Again, libertarianism itself is compatible with both liberal and conservative social values.

Is it really? Insofar as conservative social values tend to promote collectivist conformity, deference to traditional or established authority, or self-sacrificial dutifulness, there is a conflict with the individualistic orientation of libertarianism. Implicit in the libertarian conception of individual rights and non-aggression is a liberal sensibility. A society with the conservative social values mentioned above is less likely to sustain it.

On pg.39 to 40; Huebert goes on to say:

To suggest otherwise is an ideological mistake and probably also a strategic mistake. It redefines libertarianism to mean something it has never meant to most modern libertarians, and it narrows the audience for libertarianism to only those people who share this liberal worldview. For many people, the beauty of libertarianism is that it lets everyone pursue their values, as long as they do not feel a need to force their views on the rest of the world.

Redefinition of a paradigm or fundamental change is sometimes necessary to make ideological progress. The subjective comfort of most modern libertarians matters less than pinning down a proper conception of liberty. An abandonment of this liberal worldview could have serious consequences for marginalized populations that run afoul of traditional social norms. It’s also not true that only those with a liberal worldview will then be enticed by libertartarianism. Open minded conservatives who are convinced to challenge their beliefs could still find a reason to jump on board.

Over the weekend, Bill and Emma Keller declared which side they were on in the ongoing blogger vs. journalist debate, and they did it in the worst way I could conceive of: They tag-team attacked a woman with stage four breast cancer for daring to tweet about her experiences, and daring to be optimistic about her chances of survival.

Bill Keller is the former Executive Editor of the New York Times, so his arrival at this position, from up at the peak of the ivory tower, is at least understandable (though no less abhorrent). His wife, Emma? A cancer survivor.

Emma Keller’s post at the Guardian, titled “Forget funeral selfies. What are the ethics of tweeting a terminal illness?” has already been deleted “with the agreement of the subject because it is inconsistent with the Guardian editorial code.” Thanks to the Wayback Machine, we’re able to knock back the clock and see exactly what she said.

“Lisa Bonchek Adams is dying,” Emma Keller writes. “She has Stage IV breast cancer and now it’s metastasized to her bones, joints, hips, spine, liver and lungs. She’s in terrible pain. She knows there is no cure, and she wants you to know all about what she is going through. Adams is dying out loud. On her blog and, especially, on Twitter.”

Is this mockery? I can’t tell. If I wasn’t aware of the title or theme of the article, I would probably say that this was just a very succinct, radio-friendly lede. But it becomes clear very quickly that this is no mere profile of a dying woman. Keller’s distaste of Adams’s practices is apparent by the second paragraph. It is apparently notable that Adams tweets “dozens of times an hour,” and that some of the people who follow her do so like they would a reality television show.

Keller doesn’t mention until further down that she herself is one of those people:

“The clinical drug trial she was on wasn’t working. Her disease seemed to be rampaging through her body. She could hardly breathe, her lungs were filled with copious amounts of fluid causing her to be bedridden over Christmas. As her condition declined, her tweets amped up both in frequency and intensity. I couldn’t stop reading – I even set up a dedicated @adamslisa column in Tweetdeck – but I felt embarrassed at my voyeurism. Should there be boundaries in this kind of experience? Is there such a thing as TMI? Are her tweets a grim equivalent of deathbed selfies, one step further than funeral selfies? Why am I so obsessed?”

If this article were directed at the doubtless innumerable tourists of the internet, then I would most likely have no need to devote blog space to it. But it isn’t. Keller criticizes Adams for using social media as a way to keep herself going.

“It’s clear that tweeting as compulsively as Lisa Adams does is an attempt to exercise some kind of control over her experience,” Keller writes.

“She was enraged a few days ago when a couple of people turned up to visit her unannounced. She’s living out loud online, but she wants her privacy in real life,” she said. “In some ways she has invited us all in.”

Emma Keller ends her piece by saying,

“Will our memories be the ones she wants? What is the appeal of watching someone trying to stay alive? Is this the new way of death? You can put a “no visitors sign” on the door of your hospital room, but you welcome the world into your orbit and describe every last Fentanyl patch. Would we, the readers, be more dignified if we turned away? Or is this part of the human experience?”

Emma seems to oscillate between being frustrated with herself that she has allowed a compelling story to hold her attention, and angry at Lisa Adams for creating that compelling content.

Bill’s article is still standing strong over at the New York Times, and while the snarkiness of his concern-trolling is more subdued, it’s still emblematic of a larger issue the Kellers seem to take with the medium.

He begins his less-virulent hit-job with a more-or-less stone-faced appraisal of Adams’s activity as a blogger over the last seven years. He writes,

“Since a mammogram detected the first toxic seeds of cancer in her left breast when she was 37, she has blogged and tweeted copiously about her contest with the advancing disease.”

The way he describes Adams’s fight with cancer from this point on is reminiscent of a war zone, and that’s not an accident: later in the piece, he reminisces about the time his father-in-law died from cancer in a British hospital, where,

“more routinely than in the United States, patients are offered the option of being unplugged from everything except pain killers and allowed to slip peacefully from life. His death seemed to me a humane and honorable alternative to the frantic medical trench warfare that often makes an expensive misery of death in America.“

Yet Adams, despite the advanced nature of her cancer, does not seem to be miserable; as Keller notes, she is currently receiving care from the New York Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the oldest private cancer research center in the world. Her tweets have lost some of their optimism, but she’s continuing to fight.

That she’s doing it in the public eye apparently deserves the ire of old media. If Adams had taken the time between painful and debilitating chemotherapy treatments to pen a memoir, or, as other writers have quipped, hundreds of thousands of sentences for the New Yorker, Keller (Emma and Bill both) would be weeping over her beautiful eloquence and inspiring prolificness. But because Adams decided to blog, this is not worthy of attention and we should question her motives.

It’s clear that, at least in the minds of some of the old media guard, blogging isn’t just “not-journalism.” It’s not fit for existence. That others are proving them wrong is inspiring in itself.

Adams’s story is not that of attention-seeking. It is emblematic of the struggle for human flourishing, despite astronomical odds against them. That she’s blogging it makes it no less powerful.

Review 12 is here!

Martin Morse Wooster reviews, Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Ceaser’s Mortal Enemy.

Sheldon Richman discusses the ceding of the war power to Israel.

Sheldon Richman discusses how morality and practicality coincide in making the case for liberty.

Jim Miles reviews, Goliath – Life and loathing in Greater Israel.

Kelly Vlaho critiques the show, Homeland.

Jason Brennan discusses Matt Walsh’s take on homeschooling.

Patrick Cockburn discusses events in the Middle East.

Colin Green discusses Israeli militarism in the Gaza Strip.

Clancy Sigal discusses Hitler’s women adherents.

Jorg Guldo Hulsmann discusses the conservative movement and the libertarian remnant.

Amy Goodman interviews Dr. Carl Hart on drugs.

Michael Brenner discusses the militarization of U.S. foreign policy.

Noam Chomsky discusses the common good.

Nick Turse discusses the proliferation of special ops.

Tom Engelhardt discusses the national security state.

Kelly B. Vlahos discusses the war in Afghanistan.

Lawrence Wittner discusses public support for war.

Robert J.S. Ross discusses the funneling of money to sweatshops.

Sheldon Richman discusses the wreckage of U.S. foreign policy.

Christopher H. Pyle discusses Jamses Woolsey’s critique of Edward Snowden.

Kevin Gosztola discuses Fred Kaplan’s critique of Edward Snowden.

Uri Avnery discusses the alleged neutrality of the U.S. in the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

Ivan Eland discusses allowing the army to copy the marine’s mission.

Melvin A. Goodman discusses Robert Gate’s memoir.

Winslow T. Wheeler discusses Robert Gate’s responsibility for the deaths of at least half a million Iraqis.

Ramzy Baroud discusses the Palestinian refugees in Syria.

Ed Krayewiski discusses U.S. interventionism.

Klaus Wiegrefe discusses the continued relevance of WW1.

Michael McGuerty reviews, Aron Nimzowitsch 1928-1935: Annotated Games & Essays. It’s considered a sequel to both My system and Chess Praxis.

John Watson reviews Move First, Think Later. A provocative title and worth checking out.

In a previous post; the following was said:

You’re more concerned with property values than human freedom. What’s truly destructively selfish is your willingness to use initiatory force to uphold your property values. Freedom matters more.

My interlocutor responded to the comment thusly:

It’s not that I’m more concerned with property values than personal freedom (that’s the way an ideologue with a rigid value system phrases things)–these are things that have to be weighed, and in general, our society has more or less held that attacks against property by actions that lower its value are just one step away from outright theft. If you destroy the value, don’t you also destroy the effective use of the property? I thought the libertarian bunch thought that property rights have a major role in human progress. Maybe I misread all that Locke stuff.

Anyhow, your false dichotomy between property and freedom (whatever that is) pretty much reveals a passive-aggressive debate strategy that really irritates. It’s pretty much why most people don’t cotton to ideologues. If you step on their ideological toes, they hurl accusations of being “destructively selfish” for (as in my example) trying to defend my property against the passive-aggressive encroachment of some jerk using his property to his advantage but very much against mine. I didn’t say I was going to shoot the son of a bitch, I thought I was going to take him to court or before the zoning board. Or is that indistinguishable from actual physical violence? Can’t you tell the difference?

Do you at all recognize that one person’s use of property as an extension of his personal “freedom” can be harmful to another?
Think of how one person (or a corporation) engaging in commerce can use your liver, lungs, kidneys and nervous systems to process the by-products of their profitable activity. I believe economists call this kind of activity a “negative externality.”

Apologizes for being passive-aggressive. The point to be made was that the initiation of force hardly represents a non-destructively selfish approach to dealing with others. It’s good to hear you say you wouldn’t shoot the “son of a bitch”, but the government will initiate force on your behalf. In that narrow sense; going to court or the zoning board is equivalent in effect. Men with guns will show up to threaten forcible imprisonment or enforce compulsory payment of a fine.

That being said, you do raise an issue I overlooked in my original post. The question of negative externalities deserves consideration. As a commenter put it:

If a neighbor’s hog farm creates negative externalities like stench and noise that affect their enjoyment of the home as a base of subsistence, they’re entitled to civil remedies.

In my last blog post; I discussed some criticisms of Roderick T. Long’s, An Open Letter to the Peace Movement, by a non-anarchist or non-libertarian friend. This post continues that discussion. It contains responses to a part of my friend’s response not previously dealt with. The earlier comments will be given a second look in a future blog post. Once again; the Roderick T. Long text is in italics, and my friend’s comments are in bold.

Suppose I go to the polls and vote to maintain or increase income taxation, or gun control, or mandatory licensing, or compulsory education. Am I not calling upon the state to invade people’s lives and properties? To impose my will, by legalised force, on those who have done me no harm? To choose violence over persuasion? Am I acting like a peace activist, or am I acting like George Bush?

It looks like what a well organized society looks like instead of a garbage dump full of idiots looks like. I prefer to live in a society based on taxation and the provision of some collective services. Most people do. People also don’t like being ripped off by charlatans and have convinced the government to regulate business dealings and impose licensing standards for professionals. Maybe you’d like to go to a doctor who got his medical degree from a print shop with fancy scrolly lettering…but I want someone who went to Med School…and on from there. Why is it that the libertarian fantasy always looks like a subterfuge for scoundrels? Like an evasion of responsibility for doing harm by swindling people or running a scam?

Your first comment doesn’t really address Roderick T. Long’s point about “calling upon the state to invade people’s live and properties? To impose my will, by legalized force, on those who have done me no harm?” Unless your point is that such a thing is necessary for an organized society to exist. An assertion requiring evidence and proof. The fact that you or most people prefer a society based on taxation hardly renders it just. You also assume that collective services couldn’t be provided in a non-governmental or non-state mutualistic fashion outlined by anarchist, Kevin Carson.

As for the points pertaining to the licensing of professionals. Who wouldn’t prefer a competent doctor who went to Med School to a charlatan? I certainly would prefer the Med School doctor. Quality can be assured through competitive accreditation associations with a vested interest in policing their members successfully. The state or government isn’t the only source of legitimacy or ensuring competence.

Last year, I had a simple, and seemingly achievable, goal as C4SS’s media coordinator: To reach a total of 1,000 “mainstream media” pickups and citations of the Center’s op-ed material (since we started identifying such pickups and citations in mid-2010).

We didn’t make it in 2013. We made it today.

Which pickup is “the 1,000th?” That’s impossible to say — sometimes a piece will appear on the web and then not show up on my search protocols for some time.  Once I find them, I might enter several from or on the same day without regard to when they actually posted at the other site. And sometimes I miss them for a looong time until the author notices one and lets me know. For example, the 1,000th pickup I entered was actually from back in October — Nathan Goodman came across it and dropped me a line about it today.

But, however we got here, here we are. Hooray for us!

One of the bigger media stories coming into 2014 is over whether Patch, AOL’s so-called hyperlocal news organization, will survive or bite the dust. While rumors of the controversial network’s demise were greatly exaggerated, it does appear that the future of the service is in flux – and what that means for hyperlocal.

For y’all keeping track at home, hyperlocal news means exactly what it sounds like: basically, a person or group of persons are covering events in a town, sometimes down to the individual street level, and publishing it for their friends and neighbors – and audiences beyond either – to see. (Sounds awfully like blogging.)

Almost every city in America has a website devoted to something along the lines of hyperlocalism, whether or not they call it that. Some consist of independent reporters covering things they’re passionate about. Others, like Journatic, are in the business of outsourcing hyperlocal, which has made for some interesting and sometimes cringeworthy times.

AOL wanted their network to be the largest in the country, which is not in itself a deplorable goal. Where they went wrong? Trying to flood out their smaller competitors and gouge advertisers for more than they could afford – natural, if you model yourself off your predecessors.

Media critic Jeff Jarvis wrote (“The Almost Post-Mortem for Patch”), “Hyperlocal works in town after town. What doesn’t work is trying to instantly scale it by trying to own every town in sight. That was Patch’s fatal error: acting like an old-media company.”

Instead of trying to own everything from the top down, new, hyperlocal media needs to be built from the bottom up. Stigmergic, decentralized outlets have already been proven to thrive and be as effective – if not more so – than old media sites.

A recent emailing of Roderick Long’s, “An Open Letter to the Peace Movement,” precipitated some criticisms from a non-libertarian and non-anarchist friend. This post will be a response to those criticisms. The author’s name will be withheld. If he so chooses, he can reveal himself in the comments section. The original text of the piece is in italics, and my friend’s criticisms are in bold.

“Dear Peace Activists:

All honour to you. In your opposition to the United States’ impending war on Iraq, you represent a welcome voice for sanity and civilisation, lifted up against the incessant baying of the dogs of war.

But I want to urge you to follow the logic of your position just a bit further.

Much has been said, and eloquently so, about the need, in dealings between nation and nation, to choose persuasion over violence whenever possible. Hear, hear!

But why this qualification: between nation and nation?

If persuasion is preferable to violence between nations, must it not also be preferable to violence within nations?

Here comes the shift from macro-level (nation) to micro-level (persons). Is it really useful to extend this metaphor? Hard to tell. Nations can cause a lot more damage than individuals when they get roused to action, mainly from the collective ability to dish out pain wholesale.

True enough, but the underlying principle of violence over persuasion remains. Nations or other macro collectivities may do more damage, but that doesn’t change the basic principle involved.

Suppose my neighbour runs a business out of his home, and I’d rather he didn’t. If I call the zoning board and ask them to shut his business down by force, am I acting like a peace activist? Or am I acting like George Bush?

So if someone wants to open a pig farm next door or an opium den, I just have to sit by in a non-mobile “investment” or house that now has diminished value. So someone with property can impose expenses on others by using his property with no regard for others (this is why people think of libertarians as selfish assholes, if you didn’t figure that by now.)

You’re more concerned with property values than human freedom. What’s truly destructively selfish is your willingness to use initiatory force to uphold your property values. Freedom matters more.

That’s all for now, but I will address the rest in a future blog post.

Enjoy review 11!

Sam Kierstead discusses Hamid Karzai’s role in determing the future of Afghanistan.

Charlie Hinton discusses the ten steps to dictatorship in Haiti.

Pepe Escobar discusses a provocative incident related to China.

Tanya Golash-Boza discusses Obama’s deportation record.

Julie Mastrine discusses why libertarians shouldn’t slut shame.

Sheldon Richman discusses the Pope’s take on the free market and capitalism.

Dave Lindorff discusses the outing of three CIA Pakistani chiefs.

Jonathan Cook discusses the planned Gazaification of the West Bank.

Tom McNarma discusses the terror of bombing and saying no to war crimes.

John Laforge discusses the treatment of Gitmo detainees.

Tom Engelhardt discusses the bombing of wedding parties.

Mitchell Plitnick discusses Max Blumenthal’s book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.

Aaron Rubin reviews the new film, My Afghanistan: Life in the Forbidden Zone.

Semuas Milne discusses the war in Afghanistan.

Shamus Cooke discusses the potential for peace in Syria.

Norman Solomon discusses Moveon.org’s indifference to the atrioticies of Obama.

Lynn Fitz-Hugh discusses police estatism.

Jonathan Carp discusses Christmas.

Peter Beinart discusses the absence of an anti-war left on Iran.

Josh Marsfeder discusses Miley Cyrus and socail entropy.

Ryan Calhoun discusses libertarians and thre 60’s counterculture.

Noam Chomsky and Stefan Molyneux discuss a range of issues.

Conor Friederdorf discusses why secret operations and self-government don’t mix.

Robert Taylor discusses 10 most libertarian moments of 2013.

Sheldon Richman discusses the Federal Reserve.

Nathan Goodman discusses thick libertarianism.

Dr. Cesar Chelala discusses the application of the Nuremberg precedent to the Iraq War.

Laurence M. Vance reviews, The Moral Case for a Free Economy.

Review of the new algrebaic editon of Winning Chess. Both Irving Chernev and Fred Reinfield wrote this book. Two very prolific chess writers. This is a book on tactics. As the master level player, Teichmann, put it: “Chess is 99 percent tactics”. I own the descriptive notation edition of this book, and can attest to its usefulness.

John Watson reviews Eplus #107 and an e-book version of Chess Praxis. The latter is by the famous Russian player, Aron Nimzowitsch. He was famous for writing My System. Chess Praxis was the follow up game collection to the aforementioned theoretical work.

This was quite the year for left-liberty. Others have already examined the year from different ideological perspectives. This has ranged from Lew Rockwell’s Ron Paul filled piece to Medea Benjamin’s take. It’s time for a retrospective that addresses 2013 from a left-libertarian perspective. There are 4 things worth focusing on.

1) The Canadian Supreme Court’s striking down of the anti-prostitution laws. This was an important step in the direction of sex worker liberation. Not the only step that needs to be taken, but a meaingful one nonetheless.

2) Chelsea Manning’s continued heroic stand against the warfare state. It landed her in jail, but she has many supporters on the outside. Those of us who oppose American warfare statism have much to thank her for.

3) Radley Balko’s book on police militarization earns a spot in this piece, because those police powers are often used against the marginalized and oppressed. The War on Drugs is a notable example, because it predominantly targets African-Americans.

4) Edward Snowden’s revelations about the surveillance state. Glenn Greenwald has been instrumental in helping us find out about the spyng of the NSA. He deserves accolades for this principled behavior. It goes to show that he is one of the more reasonable left-liberals or centre-leftists out there.

I spent a couple of hours this morning scouring the search engines for C4SS “mainstream media pickups” in December.

The good news: Usually December is a month that kind of trails off for us in terms of pickups — newspapers tend to run cheery holiday stuff instead of anarchist polemic at this time of year. But THIS December was an exception! I’ve identified 35 pickups of C4SS material in “mainstream media” — well above our normal expectation of 20 or so.

The better news: All our authors had successes this month, but two standouts are Jonathan Carp, whose “So This is Christmas and What Have We Done?” broke us into Pakistani media for the first time ever and Trevor Hultner, who had pieces published from coast to coast in the US and abroad as well.

The not quite so good news: I had really hoped to break 1,000 total pickups in 2013. We fell short of that — as of today, the count stands at 976. But if January is as good a month as December was, we’ll hit 1,000 this month. Thanks, as always, for your continuing support!

Best regards,
Tom Knapp
Media Coordinator
Center for a Stateless Society

We’re happy to announce the creation of another regular column here at Stigmergy: the C4SS Blog, devoted to the analysis and criticism of mainstream and independent media. Regret the Error will publish every Tuesday.

Every entry-level journalism and media writing textbook will stress objectivity as one of the central standards and practices of the craft. Objectivity is usually defined (with some variations) as “the closest possible version of the truth,” which is a well-meaning sentiment. In practice, however, it usually means, “Talk to two people with opposing views and include equal numbers of quotes in your article, and voila! You’re a paragon of objective journalism.” This is the view from nowhere.

The dangers of glibly playing with moral relativism aside, this is a lazy approach to writing and an even lazier approach to truth-telling. However, I’ve noticed that in some independent media outlets’ dash to be more “hard-hitting” or radical with their coverage than mainstream news, they sometimes take the polar opposite approach to what I described above. Namely, “let’s only publish stuff by people we agree with, because they’re always right/the mainstream media is always wrong!”

This is, I would argue, how sites like Breitbart and The Blaze formulated their mission, at least in the first months of their inception (now you are just as likely to find a well-written story at The Blaze as you are anywhere else). This is also why independent media faces such a huge struggle to become accepted by more people.

Let’s face facts: what independent media needs is not to be diametrically opposed to Big News’ stated values. Independent media needs to be the one to do the jobs no major news org wants to, to do the shoeleather reporting. To offer the context those big, old legacy publications and radio stations and television networks don’t feel like offering. The thing I love about independent media is that we don’t feel the need to play into the trope that all ideas are right, either ethically or factually. We can give our readers, listeners and viewers the tools to figure out their own paths that the major media won’t give.

This is especially important for anarchist media. I think C4SS and other, similar sites have done an excellent job at this so far with op-eds and commentaries, but I don’t think we should shy away from hard newsgathering, either.

One of the best examples of this, I believe, is Nathan Goodman’s reporting for C4SS on Jane Marquardt, a Salt Lake City activist for the Democratic Party and one of the United States’s biggest prison profiteers. William Gillis, our resident Transhumanist and Bay Area correspondent, managed to masterfully explain the context of the recent Google Bus window-smashings without shying away from facts OR going easy on commentary.

This kind of writing needs to be encouraged. To quote Kevin Carson, (who, on an unrelated note, I firmly believe to actually be a cadre of agorists acting collectively as one man):

The way to arrive at truth is to apply logic to the facts and make the best case for reality, as you see it, that you can. Any bias in your case will be ruthlessly cross-examined by others using logic and evidence to make their own case.

When a blogger presents a one-sided version of reality, guess what happens? They’re hyperlinked by an opposing blogger, who then puts their one-sided account into perspective by linking to the information they left out.

It’s only through such an adversarial process, with all the entry barriers removed from the marketplace of ideas, that the whole truth can emerge. This way is certainly better than a deliberate pose of obtuseness, pretending not to see what’s staring you right in the face, for fear the facts might show that reality itself is biased.

C4SS Senior Fellow Gary Chartier talks to right libertarian John Stossel about Markets Not Capitalism and why advocates of freed markets should oppose capitalism.

http://youtu.be/INfSOUgLHG8

Enjoy review 10!

William Pfaff discusses how history will remember Obama

Elizabeth Goiten discusses “good guys” and “bad guys” in the War on Terror.

Bruce A. Dixon discusses how Obama won a court case to keep sentencing disparities intact.

Chris Floyd discusses the murderous character of the American system.

Chris Floyd discusses the NSA spying scandal.

Scott Anderson reviews America’s Great Game.

Chris Floyd discusses the chemical weapons attack in Syria.

Robert Fatina discusses the status of forces agreement with Afghanistan.

Jacob Hornberger argues for a lifting of the Cuban embargo.

Nitin Rao discusses the criminalization of gay sex in India.

Dmitry Minin discusses the Jihadi warriors of Syria.

Arthur Silber discusses problems with Glenn Greenwald on whistleblowing.

Corey Robin defends campus activism and BDS.

Logan Yershov discusses the problems with assassination markets.

Arthur Silber discusses leaking.

Arthur Silber discusses the doctrine of exceptionalism.

Trevor Huitner discusses school shootings and thought crimes.

Christy Thornton discusses NYU grad student unionization.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the bankruptcy of the West’s Syrian policy.

Ann Jones discusses ROTC and child soldiers.

Hayes Brown discusses 5 surprising places that the U.S. military operates.

David Swanson discusses fighting for peace.

Tony Newman discusses the top ten Drug War stories of 2013.

Joshua Holland discusses the massive U.S. prison population.

Sheldon Richman asks whether Obama really wants an agreement with Iran or not.

Dr. Cesar Chelala discusses stopping Iran’s human rights abuses.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the humanitarian emergency in Syria.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses this year’s bad cops.

John Watson reviews My System and Blockade. Both of which are by the famous Russian player, Aron Nimzowitsch.

Chess Cafe offers its annual “year in review” for 2013.

An article at C4SS has had to be corrected due to factual inaccuracies that came out after publication. I regret the error I made in the commentary, “Music Piracy as Market Correction,” and have made the necessary changes to reflect the new information. At the top of that post you’ll find a shorter version of this statement.

One of the great things about working at an anarchist think tank like C4SS is that everyone I write with is also my editor, proofreader and ombudsman. I thank my colleague Jonathan Carp for alerting me to the developments in the commentary’s news hook – mainly that the source of the original Iron Maiden story, Citeworld journalist Andy Patrizio, reported incorrectly on information obtained by analytics company MusicMetric. Citeworld has posted a correction of their own, saying:

Update and correction: Due to writer error, an original version of this article stated that Iron Maiden used MusicMetric’s analysis to plan its South American tours. MusicMetric did not work directly with Iron Maiden. The analysis described in this article was carried out without the band’s participation or knowledge, and we have no confirmation that the band ever saw or used it. CITEworld deeply regrets this error, and we apologize to our readers.

Luckily, the phenomenon described in the commentary – that artists are taking advantage of the tools that brought the recording industry to its knees – is occurring with enough frequency to make this a relevant topic of discussion, with or without an Iron Maiden hook.

At C4SS, news commentary is the main source of content, with feature articles and other work interspersed throughout. This means that we rely somewhat heavily on what is essentially secondhand information – news reports or blog posts about events and issues that display relevance to our mission statement – to form the basis of our work. Every article we publish is discussed, edited and fact-checked to the best of our ability, but sometimes it isn’t enough. To quote a colleague, getting things wrong sometimes is “hard to avoid if you’re trying to be topical.”

Personally, it stings to see an article have to undergo surgery because an element of it doesn’t ring true. And personally, I feel like I got lazy in relying on the Citeworld article to provide my hook. So I do apologize for the error, and I will work to eliminate future such errors before you even read my work as much as possible.

Walter Block recently penned a piece arguing that libertarianism is neither left nor right. In it he argues that libertarians share an anti-unionist bias with the right. It may be true that many libertarians possess an anti-union bias, but that says nothing about the normative compatibility of unions with libertarian principles. It also ignores those left-libertarians who embrace labor unionism like Kevin Carson. His Labor Struggle: A Free Market Model comes to mind.

Walter Block presumably identifies unionism with state or government coercion. This ahistorical take ignores the fact that labor unions have often had an adversarial relationship with the state or government. It wasn’t until the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 that unions received any government or state protection/recognition. Not to mention that government or the state has frequently suppressed unions throughout American history. Some notable examples are the Homestead Strike of 1892, Pullman Strike of 1894, and the Colorado Labor Wars of 1903.

In addition to the above, the courts interpreted labor unionism as a violation of anti-trust law until the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914. Other legal restraints are contained in the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Not to mention that the National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act itself had issues. As Kevin Carson explains:

“This attitude was at the root of the Taylorist/Fordist system, in which the labor bureaucrats agreed to let management manage, so long as labor got an adequate share of the pie. (25) Such a social contract was most emphatically in the interests of large corporations. The sitdown movement in the auto industry and the organizing strikes among West coast longshoremen were virtual revolutions among rank and file workers on the shop floor. In many cases, they were turning into regional general strikes. The Wagner Act domesticated this revolution and brought it under the control of professional labor bureaucrats.”

Block never mentions any of this history.

The final aspect to be discussed is whether unionism is compatible with the normative philosophical principles of libertarianism. An emphatic yes is the answer. Left-libertarian market anarchist unionism involves a voluntary association of free and equal workers working together for their freedom from arbitrary employer power. Voluntary association and freedom are core libertarian principles. They most emphatically apply to the working class.

The Canadian Supreme Court recently struck down the anti-prostitution laws of the country. This sound legal decision provides an occasion for a deeper discussion of the dynamics of sex worker politics. In particular, it allows for a dialectical or contextual left-libertaian analysis. Chris Matthew Sciabarra ably describes dialectics as:

“Dialectics is the art of context-keeping. It is a thinking style that emphasizes the centrality of context in the analysis of systems across time. As applied to libertarian social theory, it counsels us not to disconnect politics from economics, culture, social psychology, ethics, epistemology, and other factors. It views these seemingly disparate aspects as interrelated within a wider totality. Hence, any attempt to understand–or change–society must entail an analysis of its interrelations from the vantage point of any single aspect. This brings forth an enriched portrait of society, and underscores the indivisible connection between theory and practice.”

This brief exploration follows in his footsteps.

Contextually speaking, political legality is important, but it doesn’t exhaust all the factors necessary for sex worker liberation. There is still the necessity of addressing the economic and cultural levels of analysis. Both of which help to provide us with a broader more systemic view of the issue at hand. Without this broader context we risk losing sight of the total picture. This comprehensive picture allows us to grasp the interconnections spoken of by Sciabarra above.

Economically speaking, the mere political legality of sex work matters not without assurances that property owners will not discriminate against sex workers. It also matters not without sex workers receiving a comfortable share of the economic pie. It’s certainly true that the absence of coercive political penalties by the government assists in this, but it isn’t the end of relevant analysis. Private property owners could still use control of economic resources to deny access to sex workers. This is still true with formal legality.

Our final level of analysis is the cultural. In the absence of a sex worker friendly culture, formal legality could be rendered irrelevant by the restrictions of oppressive social mores. This would lead to the economic discrimination mentioned above and induce agitation to restore the laws on the political level. All the more reason to wage an interrelated struggle for sex worker liberation. These three levels of analysis are preferably dealt with simultaneously.

Christmas is full of exhortations to work towards a more peaceful world. But when you get right down to it, what can we actually do, today, to help usher in that world? While there’s no magic button that can be pressed or perfect argument that can be made to bring about peace on Earth, there are a few things we can do to work for peace.

The first thing I’ll mention is something I have some experience with- counter-recruiting. Counter-recruiting is just what it sounds like- counterprogramming the messaging from military recruiters particularly and from our entire culture generally. Young people can go their entire lives without hearing anything bad about the military, and when the recruiter comes calling and they are faced with the choice between mountains of student debt, immediately entering an uncertain work force, or a full-time job with generous benefits that offers to pay for college later, the choice, for far too many, is easy. It’s easy because, as those of us with military experience know, they don’t have all the facts. This work will come naturally to anti-war veterans- just go in there and tell them why the military sucks!- but the venerable American Friends Service Committee offers resources and guides for those, veteran or no, who want to pursue this very rewarding line of work. Convincing even one young person that she has better choices than state servitude is immensely gratifying and makes a tiny but real and material dent in the war machine.

Another great option is Iraq Veterans Against the War’s ongoing Operation Recovery, a project to stop the re-deployment of traumatized troops. What makes Operation Recovery so effective is that it is something even the most bloodthirsty hawks have a hard time arguing with, and yet every step towards the goal puts a little more grit in the military’s gears. At Ft. Hood Operation Recovery, led by the great folks at the Under the Hood Cafe, has made great strides, forcing the commanding general to issue policy guidance to the entire post directing that soldiers not be impeded in their efforts to seek mental health care and that commanders respect physicians’ orders regarding soldiers’ mental and physical health.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, just be a consistent voice for peace. When the hawks start beating the drums of war and the compliant news media start baying for blood, it can feel awfully lonely to be a dove, but you almost certainly are not alone. As we recently during calls for American bombing in Syria and as polling has consistently shown over recent years, war is unpopular and the people are sick to death of it. Rather than letting ourselves be cowed by the talking heads on TV and the screeches of the bloodthirsty maniacs in government, let’s educate ourselves on the crisis du jour and make consistent, persistent arguments against war. It’s a little scary being the first voice at the office or the holiday table to speak out against a war, but I can tell you from experience that once you open the door, others will join you.

In my Christmas op-ed I wrote about some of the Psalms and other scriptures I remember from my church-going youth, but the hymn I remember most clearly is somewhat sappy ditty written by a husband and wife in 1955. The organist would announce it most often as the recessional, and we’d all stand, open our hymnbooks, and tunelessly drone in that inimitable Catholic way these words: “Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.” It’s a long, hard, and uncertain road to peace, but it starts with us, today.