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 Kevin Carson‘s “Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Kevin Carson‘s “Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective“.

$25.00 for the first copy. $20.00 for every additional copy.

This book applies the economic principles of individualist anarchism, as developed in Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, to the study of the large organization. It integrates the insights of mainstream organization theory into that framework, along with those of more radical thinkers like Ivan Illich, Paul Goodman, and R.A. Wilson. Part One examines the ways in which state intervention in the market, including subsidies to the inefficiency costs of large size and regulatory protection against the competitive consequences of inefficiency, skews the size of the predominant business artificially upward to an extent that simply could not prevail in a free market. Part Two examines the effects of such large organizational size on the character of the system as a whole. Part Three examines the internal pathologies and contradictions of organizations larger than a free market could support. And Part Four surveys the potential building blocks of an alternative, decentralized and libertarian economic order.

As long as free-market advocates continue to embrace a theory of the firm that is contradicted by the daily experience of millions of ordinary people, they will continue to be regarded as apologists for big business – and deservedly so. Carson does a brilliant job of showing how the swollen, hierarchical, exploitative firms that dominate our economy are the product not of the free market but of systematic government intervention on behalf of the corporate elite. Carson’s work offers a compelling alternative to both the right-wing package deal (embrace predatory capitalism in order to get the benefits of free markets) and the left-wing package deal (reject free markets in order to avoid the evils of predatory capitalism), and lays out an inspiring blueprint for workers and consumers to take back power from the bureaucrats and plutocrats. – Roderick T. Long, professor of philosophy, Auburn University

Kevin Carson’s book touches many of the key subjects regarding the transformation of our political economy into a post-capitalist, ‘peer to peer’ logic, examining not just the organisational logic of productive organizations, but also the transformation in the nature of machinery and capital goods (which are becoming more and more distributed and miniaturized) and the new culture of cooperation that is taking root in open design communities. I don’t think there is an equivalent book that look so seriously and deeply into the real potential of social and economic transformation, anchored in a detailed study of contemporary productive capacities. – Michel Bauwens, P2P Foundation

Carson brings so-called ‘economies of scale’ down from the clouds so that we can compare them with different economies of different scales we might otherwise have enjoyed of states and corporations had not so helpfully inflicted a particular pattern of artificial bigness on us for nearly 200 years. He analyzes in great detail the top-down bossism of large-scale organizations. Conversant with a wide range of literature on management questions, he applies the Austrian theorem on economic calculation to a critique of corporate capitalism – an area where Austrians fear to tread. At the same time, Carson sketches out an alternate set of arrangements – without large-scale accumulations of political-economic power. All who have followed this book’s emergence will be very happy to see it in its final form; not least because of the work’s systematic and synoptic vision, which brings empirical reality into focus in reltion with the relevant theory. – Joseph Stromberg, Independent Institute

Kevin Carson’s new book offers another remarkable contribution to the theory of the freed market, and his defense of cottage industry and cooperative organization strikes a powerful blow against the ideological underpinnings of Progressive managerialism and state capitalism – an ideology shared by the statist Left and Right, and by all too many libertarian apologists for actually-existing capitalism. In the individualist tradition we have written a great deal about the need for consensual and respectful free association, but not nearly enough about just what our organizations, networks, and cooperative projects might look like in a world free from the coercion of the State; Carson argues exhaustively and persuasively for a vision of a cooperative, localized, green and durable economy – a vision which calls libertarians back to our historical roots in the radical (anarchistic Left), while prodding us forward to a new and fuller understanding of the full social and economic implications of radical freed-market ideas. – Charles Johnson, Molinari Institute

Kevin A. Carson is a contemporary mutualist author and a prolific writer on subjects including free-market anti-cap­it­al­ism, the in­div­idualist anarchist tradition, grassroots technology and radical unionism. He is the author of ”The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand”, Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective and The Homebrew Industrial Revolution. He keeps a blog at mutualist.blogspot.com and frequently publishes short columns and longer research reports for the Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org).

CONTENTS

• Preface

Part One: State Capitalist Intervention in the Market

• A Critical Survey of Orthodox Views on Economy of Scale
  • Cross-Ideological Affinity for Large-Scale Organization
  • Chandler, Galbraith, and Push Distribution
  • Williamson on Asset-Specificity
  • Appendix A. Economy of Scale in Development Economics
• A Literature Survey on Economies of Scale
  • Economies of Firm Size
  • Economies of Plant Size
  • The Comparative Significance of Scale Economies and Organizational Efficiency
  • Increased Distribution Costs
  • The Link Between Size and Innovation
  • Economy of Scale in Agriculture
  • Conclusion
• State Policies Promoting Centralization and Large Organizational Size
  • The Corporate Transformation of Capitalism in the Nineteenth Century
    • The Nineteenth Century Corporate Legal Revolution
    • Subsidies to Transportation and Communication Infrastructure
    • Patents and Copyrights
    • Tariffs
  • Twentieth Century State Capitalism
    • Cartelizing Regulations
    • Tax Policy
    • The Corporate Liberal Pact With Labor
    • The Socialization of Corporate Cost
    • State Action to Absorb Surplus Output
    • Neoliberal Foreign Policy

Part Two: Systemic Effects of Centralization and Excessive Organizational Size

• Systemic Effects of State-Induced Economic Centralization and Large Organizational Size
  • Radical Monopoly and Its Effects on the Individual
  • Systemic Effects on Institutional Culture
  • The Large Organization and Conscript Clienteles
  • The New Middle Class and the Professional – Managerial Revolution
  • Postscript: Crisis Tendencies
  • Appendix. Journalism as Stenography
    1. Scott Cutlip
    2. Justin Lewis
    3. Sam Smith
    4. Harry Jaffe
    5. The Daily Show
    6. Brent Cunningham
    7. Avedon Carol

Part Three: Internal Effects of Organizational Size Above That Required for Optimum Efficiency

• Knowledge and Information Problems in the Large Organization
  • The Volume of Data
  • The Distortion of Information Flow by Power
  • Conclusion and Segue to Chapter Six
  • Appendix. The NHS’s IT Program as an Example of Systematic Stupidity
• Agency and Incentive Problems within the Large Organization
  • Introduction
  • Mainstream Agency Theory
  • Radical Agency Theory
  • Summary
  • Toilet Paper as Paradigm
• Economic Calculation in the Corporate Commonwealth (the Corporation as Planned Economy)
  • The Divorce of Entrepreneurial from Technical Knowledge
  • Hayek vs. Mises on Distributed Knowledge
  • Rothbard’s Application of the Calculation Argument to the Private Sector
  • Conclusion
  • Appendix. “The End of the Quarter Shuffle”
• Managerialism, Irrationality and Authoritarianism in the Large Organization
  • The Corporate Form and Managerialism
  • Self-Serving Policies for “Cost-Cutting,” “Quality” and “Efficiency”
  • The Authoritarian Workplace: Increased Hierarchy and Surveillance
  • Authoritarianism: Contract Feudalism
  • Authoritarianism : The Hegemony of “Professionalism”
  • Motivational Propaganda as a Substitute for Real Incentives
  • Appendix A. Blaming Workers for the Results of Mismanagement
    1. Senators Were Warned of Lexington Air Controller Understaffing
    2. Dian Hardison. “I F—ing Warned Them!”
    3. MSHA Makes The “Wrong Decision” To Blame Workers For Accidents
    4. Labor Relations in the Health Care Industry for Nurses
  • Appendix B. Corporate Rhetoric vs. Corporate Reality: The Case of “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap
• Special Agency Problems of Labor (Internal Crisis Tendencies of the Large Organization)
  • Introduction
  • The Special Agency Problems of Labor
  • Labor Struggle as Asymmetric Warfare
  • The Growing Importance of Huma n Capital : Peer Production vs . the Corporate Gatekeepers
  • Austrian Criticism of the Usefulness of Unions
  • Appendix A. Sabotage in a London Nightclub: A Case Study
  • Appendix B. Yochai Benkler on Open – Mouth Sabotage : Diebold and Sinclair Media as Case Studies in Media Swarming
  • Appendix C. DeCSS as an Example of Media Swarming
  • Appendix D. Open-Mouth Sabotage, Cont.: Alisher Usmanov as a Case Study in Media Swarming
  • Appendix E. Open Mouth Sabotage, Cont.: Wikileaks as a Case Study in Media Swarming
  • Appendix F. Stupid White Men as a Case Study in Media Swarming
• Attempts at Reform from Within: Management Fads
  • New Wine in Old Bottles
  • Lip Service and Business as Usual
  • Management by Stress
  • Dumbing Down
  • Conclusion and Segue to Part Four
  • Appendix. The Military Origins of Quality Control

Part Four: Conjectures on Decentralist Free Market Alternatives

• The Abolition of Privilege
  • Reciprocity
  • Privilege and Inequality
  • Specific Forms of Privilege, and the Effect of Their Abolition
    1. The Credit Monopoly
    2. Artificial Property Rights in Land
    3. Patents and Copyrights
    4. Occupational Licensing and Safety Codes
  • Appendix. Reciprocity and Thick Libertarianism
• Structural Changes: The Cost Principle
  • Introduction
  • Peak Oil and the “Long Emergency”
  • The Scale of Possible Savings on Energy Inputs
  • Path Dependency and Other Barriers to Increased Efficiency
  • The Cost Principle and the Work-Week
  • The Cost Principle and Local Autonomy
• Dissolution of the State in Society
  • Revolution vs. Evolution
  • Dialectical Libertarianism and the Order of Attack
  • The “Free Market” as Hegemonic Ideology
  • Gradualism and the “Magic Button”
  • “Dissolving the State in the Economy”
  • Counter-Institutions
  • Counter-Institutions and Counter-Economics
  • The Two Economies and the Shifting Correlation of Forces
  • Privatizing State Property
• Decentralized Production Technology
  • Introduction
  • Multiple-Purpose Production Technology
  • The Transition to Decentralized Manufacturing
  • Desktop Manufacturing Technology
  • Polytechnic
  • Eotechnic, Paleotechnic, and Neotechnic
  • Decentralized Agriculture
  • A Soft Development Path
• Social Organization of Production: Cooperatives and Peer Production
  • Introduction
  • Self-Employment: Increased Productive Efficiency
  • Cooperatives: Increased Productive Efficiency
  • Innovation Under Worker Self-Management
  • Social Benefits of Worker Empowerment
  • Peer Production
  • The Social Economy and the Crisis of Capitalism
• The Social Organization of Distribution, Exchange and Services
  • Demand-Pull Distribution
  • Local Exchange Systems: Household and Informal Economies
  • Certification, Licensing and Trust
  • Social Services
  • Mutual Aid and the Voluntary Welfare State
  • Education
  • Healthcare

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 Victor S. Yarros’s “Socialist Economics and the Labor Movement” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Victor S. Yarros’s “Socialist Economics and the Labor Movement“.

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

A sharp look, from a radical and libertarian socialist perspective, at the limitations of conservative trade-unionism and business union reformism. The essay first appeared as a three-part serialized review of George Gunton’s book Wealth and Progress, written for the Boston radical newspaper Liberty. This edition collects the serialized articles together in print for the first time.

“FOR A SHORT TIME IT REALLY SEEMED AS IF THE DAY OF conservative ‘labor reform,’ trades-unionism, strikes, and boycotts, was over, and the emptiness of the talk about ‘fair wage,’ ‘harmony between capital and labor,’ arbitration, profit-sharing, and ‘the American way of adjusting difficulties’ demonstrated beyond a doubt. Today the fact which most impresses every student of the labor movement is that nearly all the able and influential leaders and tribunes of organized labor are, if not professedly Anarchistic or Socialistic, at least very pronounced in their tendencies and inclinations to either one or the other of these schools of radical and revolutionary reform . . . . Little is now heard about ‘fair wages,’ but the propositions that labor is entitled to its full natural reward, that usury must be abolished, and that capital must be dethroned, are everywhere being discussed.”

“SOCIALISTS KNOW THAT THE PRESENT CONFLICT BETWEEN capital and capital and capital and labor, this three-cornered fight, is the inevitable and direct effect of the inherent and fundamental vice of usury, which dooms the capitalistic system to an early extinction. Because of this knowledge they pronounce all ‘moderate’ measures futile and ridiculous, and regard eight-hours and kindred remedies as about as efficacious as fasting and prayer. Socialists arrive at the conclusion that usury and equity, capitalism and social order, reward of capital and justice to labor, are mutually exclusive. Consequently they do not flatter, delude, or ‘pacify’ the laborer; neither do they waste any efforts on the humanization of capitalists. They declare that the capitalistic order must be wiped out. And all who desire progress without poverty must prepare to bury the whole system of usury forever. And labor, to secure equity, needs freedom, full freedom, and nothing but freedom. . . .”

Victor S. Yarros (1865–1956) was a Russian-American anarchist, one of the most prolific writers and speakers of the American individualist anarchist milieu. Yarros was originally attracted to communist anarchism but later became an individualist, stressing Spencer’s evolutionary theory and ‘law of equal liberty.’ Yarros was a close friend and co-worker of Benjamin Tucker’s, an editor and popularizer of the works of Lysander Spooner, and sometime co-editor and frequent contributor to the individualist anarchist newspaper Liberty.

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 Kevin Carson‘s “Studies in Mutualist Political Economy” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Kevin Carson‘s “Studies in Mutualist Political Economy“.

$15.00 for the first copy. $13.00 for every additional copy.

First published in 2005 by the author. Second edition published in 2007.

When describing his book, Kevin says: “This book is an attempt to revive individualist anarchist political economy, to incorporate the useful developments of the last hundred years, and to make it relevant to the problems of the twenty-first century. We hope this work will go at least part of the way to providing a new theoretical and practical foundation for free market socialist economics.” Speaking for the Distro, I think Kevin is much too modest. This is Kevin Carson’s first big book, an immensely important document in the contemporary revival of left-libertarianism and anti-capitalist individualist anarchism, and one of the most significant developments in the last century for both libertarian politics and radical economic thinking.

Anarchists tend to look embarrassed when the subject of economics comes up. Or we mumble something about Proudhon and then sheepishly borrow ideas from Karl Marx… A specifically anarchistic approach to economic analysis has lain dormant for the last 130 years. However, with the publication of Kevin A. Carson’s STUDIES IN MUTUALIST POLITICAL ECONOMY this period of dormancy has finally come to an end. –Larry Gambone, Red Lion Press.

I highly recommend Carson’s book… That doesn’t mean I agree with everything in the book… But where I agree with it I think it is an excellent defense of the sort of anti-corporatist, pro-labour, left-libertarianism I embrace; and where I disagree with it I think it makes intelligent arguments that deserve consideration. –Roderick Long, editor, JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES

Overall it is a valuable contribution to political economy and a timely reminder… to libertarians of how radical their creed actually is. In my view, one cannot overstate the importance of Carson’s asking libertarians: what are you defending, the free market or the political-economic system we currently live in? –Sheldon Richman, editor, THE FREEMAN

… his remarkable STUDIES IN MUTUALIST POLITICAL ECONOMY… displays an admirable range of reading and the style invests the driest economic questions with a certain peculiar charm. –Ken MacLeod, author, FALL REVOLUTIONtrilogy

Kevin A. Carson is a contemporary mutualist author and a prolific writer on subjects including free-market anti-cap­it­al­ism, the in­div­idualist anarchist tradition, grassroots technology and radical unionism. He is the author of ”The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand”, Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective and The Homebrew Industrial Revolution. He keeps a blog at mutualist.blogspot.com and frequently publishes short columns and longer research reports for the Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org).

CONTENTS

• Preface

Part One–Theoretical Foundations: Value Theory

• Chapter One–The Marginalist Assault on Classical Political Economy: An Assessment and Counter-Attack.
  • A. Statement of the Classical Labor Theory of Value
  • B. “Vulgar Political Economy,” Marginalism, and the Issue of Ideological Motivation
  • C. The Marginalists versus Ricardo
  • D. Exceptions to the Cost-Principle: The Classicals in Their Own Defense
  • E. The Marshallian Synthesis
  • F. Rothbard versus the Marshallian Synthesis
• Chapter Two–A Subjective Recasting of the Labor Theory of Value
• Chapter Three–Time-Preference and the Labor Theory of Value

Part Two–Capitalism and the State: Past, Present and Future

• Chapter Four–Primitive Accumulation and the Rise of Capitalism
  • Introduction
  • A. The Expropriation of Land in the Old World
  • B. Political Preemption of Land in Settler Societies
  • C. Political Repression and Social Control in the Industrial Revolution
  • D. Mercantilism, Colonialism, and the Creation of the “World Market”
  • Conclusion: “The World We Have Lost”–And Will Regain
  • Appendix: On the “Necessity” of Primitive Accumulation
• Chapter Five–The State and Capitalism in the “Laissez-Faire” Era
  • A. Tucker’s Big Four: The Land Monopoly
  • B. Tucker’s Big Four: The Money Monopoly
  • C. Tucker’s Big Four: Patents
  • D. Tucker’s Big Four: Tariffs
  • E. Infrastructure
• Chapter Six–The Rise of Monopoly Capitalism
  • Introduction
  • A. Liberal Corporatism, Regulatory Cartelization, and the Permanent Warfare State
  • B. Power Elite Theory
  • C. Monopoly Capital and Super-Profits
  • D. Socialization of Costs as a Form of Cartelization
• Chapter Seven–Monopoly Capitalism and Imperialism
  • Introduction: Elite Reaction to Crisis (With Digression on Maldristribution of Income)
  • A. “Open Door Imperialism” Through the 1930s.
  • B. The Bretton Woods System: Culmination of Open Door Empire
  • C. Export-Dependent Monopoly Capitalism (with Digression on Economy of Scale)
• Chapter Eight–Crisis Tendencies
  • Introduction
  • A. Accumulation Crisis
  • B. Fiscal and Input Crises
  • C. Legitimation Crisis
  • D. Neoliberal Reaction and Political Repression
  • E. Built-In Limits to Effectiveness of Neoliberal Reaction
  • F. Neoconservatism as Attempted Defense Against Legitimation Crisis
  • G. The Frankfurt School: Fascism and the Abandonment of the Law of Value
  • H. Global Political Crisis of Imperialism

  Part Three–Praxis

  • Chapter Nine–Ends and Means
    • A. Organizing Principles
    • B. Getting There

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 Roy A. Childs’s “Big Business and the Rise of American Statism” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Roy A. Childs’s “Big Business and the Rise of American Statism“.

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

In this booklet, the free market anarchist Roy A. Childs takes a careful historical look at the rise of American business empires, and the regulatory state supposedly introduced to curtail their power. A closer look at the evidence shatters the conventional, Patriotically Correct text-book treatment of the regulatory state as a check on big business: in fact it was largely the product of the Robber Barons’ corporate empires: their much-desired creation, their most powerful ally, and their most dangerous weapon against disruptive competitors, demanding customers and smaller-scale alternatives.

“THIS, THEN, WAS THE BASIC CONTEXT OF BIG BUSINESS; these were the problems that it faced. How did it react? Almost unanimously, it turned to the power of the state to get what it could not get by voluntary means. Big business acted not only through concrete political pres­sure, but by engaging in large­scale, long­run ideological propaganda or “education” aimed at getting different sect­ions of the American society united behind statism, in principle and practice.

“TO A LARGE DEGREE IT HAS BEEN AND REMAINS BIG businessmen who are the fountainheads of Ameri­can statism. If libertarians are seeking allies in their struggle for liberty, then I suggest that they look elsewhere. . . . and begin to see big business as a destroyer, not as a unit, of the free market. Liberals should also benefit, and reex­amine their own premises about the market and regulation. Specifically, they might reconsider the nature of a free market, and ponder on the question of why big business has been opposed to precisely that. Isn’t it odd that the interests of liberals and key big businessmen have always coincided?

“LIBERTARIANS SHOULD TAKE HEART. OUR HOPE LIES, not with any remnants from an illusory ‘golden age’ of individualism, which never existed, but with to­ morrow. Our day has not come and gone. It has never existed at all. It is our task to see that it will exist in the future. The choice and the battle are ours.”

“Big Business and the Rise of American Statism” first appeared as a two-part serialized essay in the U. S. libertarian magazine Reason, with parts of the article in issues 2.11 and 2.12 (February — March 1971). This chapbook features an excerpted version of the essay, which is an off-print of Ch. 23 from the market anarchist anthology Markets Not Capitalism, edited by Charles W. Johnson and Gary Chartier (Minor Compositions, 2011).

Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1949–1994) was a New York essayist, activist and critic. As a teenager, he published two essays — “The Contradiction in Objectivism” and “An Open Letter to Ayn Rand” — which became incredibly influential in creating a “free market anarchist” tendency within the emerging libertarian movement in the U. S. Influenced by the teaching of Robert LeFevre, he was involved in the Rampart College Freedom School, the Society for Individual Liberty, publications including The Individualist and Libertarian Review.

C4SS Fellow, Nathan Goodman, discusses LGBTQ liberation, prison abolition, and the future of resistance activism on Outright Arizona.

From the Markets Not Capitalism audiobook read by C4SS fellow Stephanie Murphy.

Colonel Denise Lind, “judge” of the court martial of PFC Bradley Manning, infamously and illegally ruled that the US government could proceed with its show trial despite the fact that it had held Manning for more than four times the absolute legal maximum time prior to arraigning him.

Then she infamously and illegally ruled that the government could change the charges and introduce new witnesses after both prosecution and defense had rested.

Now, she has infamously and illegally overruled the defense’s objections to the use of illegal secret testimony against Manning.

Question: If Manning isn’t allowed to violate the law, why is Lind?

Answer: Because the law doesn’t apply to the political class. The law only applies to its victims.

Public Service Announcement:

If you’ve been relying on Firefox and The Onion Router (Tor) for online anonymity/security, it may be time to reconsider …

Security researchers tonight are poring over a piece of malicious software that takes advantage of a Firefox security vulnerability to identify some users of the privacy-protecting Tor anonymity network.

The malware showed up Sunday morning on multiple websites hosted by the anonymous hosting company Freedom Hosting. That would normally be considered a blatantly criminal “drive-by” hack attack, but nobody’s calling in the FBI this time. The FBI is the prime suspect.

Things change. Sometimes they change fast. And although the forces of freedom usually have an edge tech-wise, sometimes the state scores. Beware.

Update: A comment via email from William Gillis seems worth reproducing in its entirety:

I think it’s irresponsible not to note more prominently how this attack worked, which is to say it exploited a month old hole in Firefox 17, which the Tor Browser Bundle is currently built on. The latest Tor Alpha was ALREADY immune before the attacks, although regrettably delayed in deployment as a major update. Further the attacks exploit windows machines specifically. Lastly this isn’t something that attacks Tor per se, people running Tor but not the browser based on Firefox didn’t get hurt. Telling folks they should reconsider using the Tor Onion Router is ridiculous when this is an attack against the Tor Browser Bundle. I think it would be better to frame this as a *reminder* to not rely too deeply on tbb alone and disable javascript by default with noscript/notscript/etc and swap to linux.

C4SS Fellows Jason Lee Byas and Trevor Hultner discuss war, the anti-war movement, the civil war and left libertarianism with Smash Walls Radio.

Immigration is an issue on which there logically should be very little daylight between factions of the libertarian movement. It’s not that complicated: “National borders” are imaginary lines drawn on the ground by over-grown street gangs, and no one owes them any recognition whatsoever.

Alas, logic seems to have little weight in the argument, and lots of alleged libertarians have come up with lots of ways to get around the facts and arrive at the results they prefer.

Some of those ways are just silly, e.g. Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s suggestion that we should — just this once! — pretend that the state is a legitimate property owner, whose preferred disposition of its property just happens to match Hoppe’s own ideas on who should and should not be allowed to pass over that property and under what conditions.

Lately, however, the arguments are getting beyond silly and into purely bizarre (“[The ruling class] wishes to avoid more than token identification with the English people at large. … State-sponsored mass immigration has been the most obvious evidence of this desire.” ) and superstitious (“[I]f there’s national will to address it as a problem that threatens the foundations of a society, then a Nation has every right to do so.”) territory.

What’s up with that? If the subject were anything but immigration, libertarians would recognize the forgoing as the combination of Hitlerian ethnic pseudo-science and aboriginal witch doctor bullshit (but I repeat myself) that it is.

Recently, I spoke at the “Syria: Not Our War” anti-war rally in Oklahoma City. My topic was something like “there are no humanitarian interventions.” One correction is that when I say “any worse” toward the end, I meant to say “any better.”

http://youtu.be/GFDKqJlTzYQ

Thanks to Alan Brown from Liberty Minded for getting video!

The third issue of The Industrial Radical is on its way back from the printers. The first issue has been made available as a free PDF. The second, here.

You can support C4SS and get a hard copy of The Industrial Radical for only $7.00 through our partnership with the ALL Distro. You can also makes sure not to miss out on the third issue, or the fourth, by subscribing!

$7.00 for one issue. $4 for every additional issue.

$14.00 for six months. $28.00 for a year.

The Industrial Radical is devoted to radical libertarian political and social analysis in the tradition of Benjamin Tucker’s 1881-1908 Liberty, Emma Goldman’s 1906-1917 Mother Earth, and Murray Rothbard’s 1965-1968 Left & Right.

For too long libertarians have treated market anarchism almost the way Scientologists treat Xenu, as an “esoteric doctrine” to which one is introduced only after one has thoroughly assimilated some more moderate form of libertarianism — as though anarchism were an impediment rather than an asset in making the case for liberty.

Of course this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: potential converts find anarchism off-putting because they don’t know what it is, and they don’t know what it is because we avoid explaining it. In fact market anarchism can and should be one of libertarianism’s greatest selling-points, highlighting a radical and inspiring alternative to the present system rather than some variant of economic conservatism. It’s time to put market anarchism front and center in our educational efforts, time to start making it a familiar and recognizable position — while at the same time continuing to educate ourselves and exploring new horizons in market anarchist thought.

The Industrial Radical does not impose a party line; we welcome discussion and vigorous debate from all quarters, and in particular from other anarchists and radical libertarians from the left and from the right.

• Purchase titles at individual prices, $7.00 per issue.
• Or get our full print run: 1 Anarchist Classics zines for $7^.00 (or only $4^.00 when you order multiples).

We encourage everyone to consider operating as a Tor relay node yourself. If this, for whatever reason, is not an option, you can still support the Tor project and online anonymity with a $5 donation to the C4SS Tor relay node.

C4SS maintains a Tor relay node with a freedom friendly data center in the Netherlands. The relay is part of a global network dedicated to the idea that a free society requires freedom of information. Since June 2011 C4SS has continuously added nearly 10 Mbps of bandwidth to the network (statistics). Although we can’t know, by design, what passes through the relay, it’s entirely likely that it has facilitated communications by revolutionaries, agorists, whistleblowers, journalists working under censorious regimes and many more striving to advance the cause of liberty and the dissolution of authority.

If you believe, as we do, that Tor is one of the technologies that makes both state and corporate oppression not only obsolete, but impossible, please consider operating as a Tor relay or donating to support the C4SS node.

The State is damage, we will find a route around!

If you are interested in learning more about Tor and how to become a relay node yourself, then check out our write up on the project: Stateless Tor.

In 2008, Eliot Spitzer resigned as governor of New York. Not because he got caught using his office, as he had his past position of attorney general, to routinely steal people’s wealth and constantly attempt to run people’s lives, but because he’d been caught paying for services from (presumably willing) sex workers.

If that sounds backward, it is. While it’s certainly possible that Spitzer’s extramarital sexual activities violated his agreeements with or obligations to his spouse, they were otherwise nobody’s damn business. But his activities as attorney general and governor were inherently and actively evil and damaging to the commonweal.

I consider it strange to see Spitzer’s attempt to return to his previous life of crime as as a prospective candidate for New York City Comptroller portrayed as redemptive.

Today I had the great pleasure of appearing on my friend Jake Shannon’s radio show. Mostly we discussed WikiLeaks whistleblower Pfc. Manning, and the work I’m doing with Freedom Torch in Salt Lake to stand in solidarity with Manning and other whistleblowers. C4SS was one of the first sponsors of the Freedom Torch Parade. While whistleblowers were the centerpiece of the discussion, we also discussed C4SS, the rising non-religious in America, counter-economics, the corporate state, slavery, the prison industrial complex, and whether there’s anything to celebrate on the Fourth of July. Audio of the conversation can be found here.

The recent reports of secret NSA surveillance reveal the important role the whistleblowers play in uncovering government wrongdoing. Edward Snowden is the latest whistleblower to face the Obama administration’s wrath for uncovering executive branch criminality. But another victim of the administration’s War on Whistleblowers is Private Bradley Manning. Manning  currently faces charges of “aiding the enemy,” and was tortured in solitary confinement for months on end, all for releasing documents to WikiLeaks.

While there is no evidence that anyone was harmed by these leaks, the good they have done is enormous. Manning exposed a litany of US war crimes, most famously US troops shooting innocent civilians in the Collateral Murder video. Manning’s disclosures helped end the US occupation of Iraq by revealing “evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence.” The leaks also played an important role in helping start the Arab Spring.

But not everyone appreciates Manning’s courageous stand for truth, justice, peace, and liberty. Lisa Williams, president of the board of San Francisco Pride, said that “even the hint of support” for Manning’s actions “will not be tolerated by the leadership of San Francisco Pride.”  This even though Manning is a courageous member of the LGBT community, and has been praised by famed gay rights activist Lt. Dan Choi.

The San Francisco Pride Festival is this weekend, and freedom fighters across the country are uniting to show far more than a “hint” of support. The Bradley Manning Freedom Torch Parade began this weekend in San Francisco, and will feature solidarity events across the US. We at the Center for a Stateless Society were among the first organizations to sponsor this effort to defend whistleblowers. If there is an event near you, I urge you to participate. If not, I suggest you organize one.

Whistleblowers like Manning risk their lives and liberty to shine a light on abusive state power. It’s time for us to stand in solidarity with them.

Last Wednesday I gave a talk titled “Which Way Forward for the LGBTQ Movement” in which I argued that LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning) rights are undermined by the state and capitalism, and that anarchism is the solution. Topics discussed include the Stonewall Riots, police violence, prisons, HRC, Jane Marquardt, Israeli pinkwashing, healthcare, patents, and the repression of Private Manning.

We at the Center for a Stateless Society stand in solidarity with you, the Turkish protestors in your struggle that began with resistance to a particular instance of government cronyism but has widened into a revolt against police-state tactics, religious intolerance, and corporate privilege generally. Thank you for heroic and inspiring efforts!

The Center for a Stateless Society stands for left-wing market anarchism: anarchism, because we favor the establishment of a peaceful, free and orderly society without any state; market, because we defend market mechanisms as desirable and equitable means of non-state social coordination; left-wing, because we see the implementation of these ideals as crucial to combating subordination, exclusion, and deprivation, and giving ordinary people power over their own lives.

We know that many of you see a more secular and liberal constitutional republic as your final goal. We invite you to consider a society without a state as a more appropriate goal. After all, any state, by its nature as a coercive territorial monopoly, always acts, to greater or lesser extent, to impose its own vision by force on peaceful unconsenting people. Your recent and ongoing protests demonstrate the power and the beauty of human relationships that are voluntary rather than coercive, horizontal rather than hierarchical. Why not let those be a model for the society you seek?

Instead of police, have only security guards or neighborhood watch groups, responsible to their local communities.

Instead of statutory law, have only contracts and arbitration.

Instead of state monopolies to provide services, let many enterprises and voluntary associations of all kinds openly compete.

Instead of collecting taxes, let each person choose which services they want to pay for and whom to purchase those services from (or perhaps provide such services themselves, either individually or through local cooperatives).

We also know that some of you are anarchists already. But you who are anarchists tend to include not just the state, but private property and market competition, among the evils you combat. This is understandable, given the horrendous effects of policies that generally come wrapped in the free-market label. But we invite you to consider whether what are usually called free-market policies might not actually be violent interventions by the state on behalf of corporate interests terrified of the leveling effects of a genuinely freed market.

A world of only voluntary interaction without statist coercion is possible. The power of any state ultimately rests on the acquiescence of those it rules. Given the knowledge that a better world is possible, your creativity and courage can build it.

We look forward to an ongoing dialogue with you.

Thank you.

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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 Kevin Carson’s “The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Kevin Carson’s “The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand”.

$2.00 for the first copy. $1.50 for every additional copy.

This essay, originally pub­lish­ed by Red Lion Press in 2001, was one of Carson’s first ground-breaking contributions to the revival of Mutualist ideas within today’s anarchist and libertarian milieus. It has been re-issued in a beautiful new printing by ALL Distro.

“Manorialism commonly, is recognized to have been founded by robbery and usurpation; a rul­ing class established itself by force, and then com­pel­led the peasantry to work for the profit of their lords. But no system of exploitation, including cap­it­al­ism, has ever been created by the action of a free market. Capitalism was founded on an act of rob­bery as massive as feudalism. It has been sus­tain­ed to the present by continual state inter­ven­tion to protect its system of privilege, with­out which its survival is unimaginable.

“The current structure of capital ownership and org­an­iz­ation of production in our so-called ‘market’ eco­n­omy, re­flects coercive state intervention prior to and ex­tra­n­e­ous to the market. From the outset of the industrial re­vol­ut­ion, what is nostalgically called ‘laissez-faire’ was in fact a sys­t­em of continuing state intervention to sub­sid­ize ac­cum­ulation, guar­ant­ee privilege, and maintain work discipline.

“A world in which peasants had held onto their land and property was widely distributed, capital was freely available to laborers through mutual banks, productive tech­nology was freely avail­able in every country without pat­ents, and every people was free to develop locally without col­on­ial robbery, is beyond our imagination. But it would have been a world of decentralized, small-scale production for local use, own­ed and controlled by those who did the work — as dif­fer­ent from our world as day from night, or freedom from slav­ery. . . .”

Kevin A. Carson is a contemporary mutualist author and a prolific writer on subjects including free-market anti-cap­it­al­ism, the in­div­idualist anarchist tradition, grassroots technology and radical unionism. He keeps a blog at mutualist.blogspot.com and frequently publishes short columns and longer research reports for the Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org).

Mutualism, as a variety of anarchism, goes back to P.-J. Proudhon in france and Josiah Warren in the u.s. It favors, to the extent possible, an evolutionary approach to creating a new society. It emphasizes the importance of peaceful activity in building alternative social institutions within the existing society, and strengthening those insti­tut­ions until they finally replace the existing statist system; doing whatever is possible (in the words of the Wobbly slogan) to “build the structure of the new society within the shell of the old” before we try to break the shell.

From the Markets Not Capitalism audiobook read by C4SS fellow Stephanie Murphy.