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 Gary Chartier’s “The Conscience of an Anarchist” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Gary Chartier’s “The Conscience of an Anarchist”.

$12.00 for the first copy. $9.00 for every additional copy.

Anarchy happens when people organize their lives peacefully and voluntarily — without the aggressive violence of the state. This simple but powerful book explains why the state is illegitimate, unnecessary, and dangerous, and what we can do to begin achieving real freedom.

As an idea, anarchism is the conviction that people can and should cooperate peacefully and voluntarily. As a political program, it’s the project of doing without the state. Because governments are rooted in the use of force, anarchists maintain that no actual government is legitimate and that, in any case, we would be better off without the state. Anarchists reject any kind of authority acquired or maintained through aggressive violence or fraud. More broadly, many anarchists — including me — maintain that the same ideals that motivate their opposition to aggressive violence prompt them to challenge social institutions and cultural patterns that subordinate, exclude, or impoverish people, stultify their lives, or force them into soul-numbing conformity. People can and should organize their interactions on their own terms. We can defend ourselves against aggression; we don’t need the state to force us not to kill each other. And we don’t need the state’s help to coordinate our interactions. Working together, we can craft meaningful lives and livable communities. [. . .]

In this book, I want to help loosen the hold the state still has on people’s imaginations. I want to point out that, as in Hans Christian Andersen’s famous tale, the emperor really has nothing on at all. I want to encourage you to shift your point of view–to come to see the state as a group of people no different from your neighbors, with no more inherent authority, no greater right to tell you what to do. [. . .] I want to undermine the myth that the state represents us in any meaningful sense, that when politicians and generals act, they’re acting on our behalf. [. . .]

This isn’t a primer, a narrowly academic work in philosophy or economics or political science or history, though it’s informed by the results of inquiry in all those disciplines. It’s a manifesto, a call to action: not to more violence that’s just the mirror image of the state’s own destructiveness, but to the creative work of envisioning a new kind of society and beginning to construct it here and now, right under the noses of the people in power.

Gary Chartier is Associate Dean of the School of Business and Associate Professor of Law and Business Ethics at La Sierra University. He is the author of Economic Justice and Natural Law and The Analogy of Love. His byline has appeared in journals including Legal Theory, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, and the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence.

CONTENTS

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Open Your Mind to Anarchy
• 1. The Dissent of the Governed
• 2. Fish, Bicycles, and the State
• 3. The State, Big Business, and Economic Privilege
• 4. The State, War, and Empire
• 5. The State and Personal Freedom
• 6. Where Do We Go From Here?
• Resources: Stuff to Check Out on the Way to the Future

C4SS Senior Fellow and Karl Hess Scholar in Social Theory Kevin Carson interviewed on the Decline to State podcast.

Kevin Carson, a well-known and well-respected mutualist talks to us about mutualism, his views on a free society, and more. We get to hear his views on economics, including his ideas on how to fuse the Labor Theory of Value with the Subjective Theory of Value, business structures, management, history, and technology.

My favorite bookstore in the world, The Gnu’s Room, is on the ropes. Commercial rents near campus are high in Auburn, and until this month it looked like the bookstore would have to close in July. But there is a real chance to save the store now, and to help it not only continue as a used bookstore and event space, but also to expand into a new arts space (in the emerging Arts District in downtown Opelika). A donor has come forward with a new, low-rent location, so Gnu’s Room is trying to raise some money between now and June 15 which would allow them to cover the fixed costs of the move, and so to keep the bookstore in operation. Here’s more from the Kickstarter campaign page:

The Gnu’s Room: a non-profit bookstore and community art space has been the cornerstone of our independent arts community in Auburn, AL.

Due to the difficulties of high urban rent and waning financial support, The Gnu’s Room is struggling to make ends meet and fulfill its mission of promoting literacy and the arts in Southeast Alabama. Our community is heavily marginalized in the predominant culture of today… and those who love books, independent films, and local music have got to come together and show their support!

We are trying to raise the seed money to move The Gnu’s Room into a huge, low-cost warehouse space in the new Arts District of Opelika (supported by the Alabama Arts Council, The Railyard independent venue, and the future Cotton Seed Studios)

But we need help to make this move possible!

Pledges of varying amounts can earn you rewards like free books, tickets to our benefit concert, local artwork, and genuine ivory scrimshaw bookmarks…. Plus the added reward of keeping our artistic community strong and well…

Don’t let our favorite meeting place for all things artistic, inspirational, and happily weird disappear! The Gnu’s Room plays a vital role in serving the area with rare volumes of nearly-forgotten wisdom and creating more arts through their publishing house, Solomon & George Publishers. We want to use the freedom of the Opelika Arts District space to expand community services to include e-publication archiving of these rare works, i.e. the Gnu Library, in-house printing services, art galleries, and a scrap exchange program for resident artists. . . . The biggest challenge facing our organization is pursuing often non-existent arts funding in our state and region. We hope to overcome that difficulty by providing useful services in a retail format. For example: We re-sell donated books in our bookstore. The Scrap Exchange will sort and recycle materials to bring low cost arts-and-crafts, packaging, and garden supplies to our proactive community members. . . . The new location will create not just more opportunities for our mission, but continue our ability to provide a common meeting place for the forum of artistic and creative solutions.

— Kickstarter: Save the Gnu’s Room!

The campaign has until June 15, 2013 to reach their fundraising goal. As of press time, there’s about $2,500 left to go in order to meet it. I just backed the project myself; if you can, please consider backing it with me, and help us save this precious community space, one of the long-time strongest supporters and most open forums for the arts, culture and philosophy in the Auburn-Opelika community.^[1]

Also.

• GT 2011-11-28: Markets Not Capitalism in the Gnu’s
• GT 2009-10-11: Gnu’s to me

^[1] The Gnu’s Room has been very supportive of local authors, and among other things they have been very kind and helpful to us for Markets Not Capitalism, which they generously hosted the world’s first book-talk / reading for, back in November 2011, and which they continue to sell on their shelves. ↩

An Evening with Karl Hess and Robert Anton Wilson

The libertarian left has many luminaries, but few as quirky, thoughtful or influential as Wilson and Hess. Wilson brought us the SNAFU principle. Hess brought us our understanding of the left/right spectrum. And both brought us a shameless embrace of counter-culture and a playful interest in all things counter-economic. The first joint is smoked around minute 2:45, the second around minute 27.  Enjoy, then enjoy again.

http://youtu.be/kEdRde6jew0

On Tuesday, May 21, 2013, anarchist lawyer and activist Gerald “Jerry” Koch was taken into custody in New York City for refusing to testify before a grand jury regarding the 2008 Times Square Military Recruitment Center bombing. This is the second time Koch has been subpoenaed, after the government informed his lawyers that it was believed that he was at a bar in 2008 or 2009 where a patron indicated knowledge of who had committed the bombing.

Koch is the latest victim in the Red and Black scare, a FBI campaign which began in earnest shortly after the Occupy Oakland demonstrations in 2011, where activists are being targeted for their political views and not on the basis of suspected criminal activity.

Another recent and prominent victim is libertarian Adam Kokesh, who is being held for resisting arrest during an anti-drug war demonstration. Kokesh may have been targeted due to publicity surrounding his upcoming “Open Carry March” on Washington, an action that remains controversial even among gun rights activists. One salient question is, in light of the successful 3D printing of a firearm (a movement initiated by Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed), whether this flamboyant open rebellion against state encroachment is even necessary.

Witch Hunt

Instead of McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee of the “Cold” War, the Obama administration’s weapon of choice in the war on dissent is the eternally authoritarian grand jury.

This fresh abuse of power comes on the heels of numerous grand jury subpoenas of anarchists on spurious charges in the Pacific Northwest. Young anarchist were targeted in a series of FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force on July 25 of 2012 during an investigation into “acts of vandalism” that took place during the Seattle May Day protests just two months prior.

The search warrants issued required victims to provide agents with “anti-government or anarchist literature,” including flags, cell phones, hard drives, address books and black clothing.

Despite not being present or involved in the May Day march, Maddie Pfeiffer, Katherine “KteeO” Olejnik and Matt Duran were each imprisoned for almost six months for contempt of court after refusing to speak before the grand jury. They were mainly asked whether or not they knew other anarchists in their community and what their politics were.

Manufacturing Political Prisoners

Grand juries are when the state ostensibly believes you have knowledge of a crime and subpoenas you before a court — or else you face prison time. That’s right. If you don’t talk, have fun in prison. No evidence of wrongdoing required. Your freedom is revoked simply by failing to provide information to or submit your body before the cold legal machinations of a witch-hunt state.

Furthermore, you can’t have a lawyer in the room with you when before a federal grand jury, and the proceedings are not open to the public. Finally, there is no judge present in the courtroom. There are instead 16 to 23 citizen jurors and the whole affair is coordinated by the prosecutor, the Assistant US Attorney (AUSA).

As you might imagine, grand juries tend to indict successfully (estimates around 98% of the time). This led Judge Saul Wachler to state that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.”

While the United States has been fond of grand juries, most other “nations” have long ago done away with this barbaric display of state power. The first such courtroom to be called a grand jury began with an 1166 act of Henry II of England, in an attempt to increase the power of the royal court over the local feudal courts. England abolished the grand jury in the Criminal Justice Act of 1948.

Back in the land of the free, the grand jury lays the groundwork for litigation by the attorney general (now district attorney) — prosecution by the state instead of by an aggrieved private party. This is how victimless crimes are punished, most notably the war on drugs (or tax evasion). The Black Panthers, anarchists, communists, environmental and animal rights activists have all been subjected to grand juries.

Take Action 

Koch, who has a record of defending Occupiers and activists, faces 18 months behind bars. An excerpt from a personal statement:

Over the past few decades, the FBI has demonstrated a consistent pattern of harassment and illegal surveillance of anarchists and other radicals not only here in New York, but also across the country.

Throughout this time, federal grand juries (incredibly secretive proceedings that do not permit one’s lawyers to be present) have played a significant role; a federal grand jury is authorized to ask questions about anything and anyone, and often the declared intention is simply a mask to disguise the actual goal of acquiring information for use in other politically motivated cases.

It is my belief that these two federal grand juries—despite the pretense of investigation into the 2008 bombing—are actually being used to gain information about my friends, loved ones, and activists for whom I have done legal support. By declining to testify, I refuse to be coerced into participating in a political witch-hunt that eerily recalls those of the McCarthy era Red Scare.

Please donate to his legal fund. Find out more on the beautifully designed webpage jerryresists.net.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.
– Martin Niemöller

Dear C4SS Readers and Supporters,

Yesterday, May 20th, many communities, especially Moore, OK, were devastated by an EF4 tornado estimated to be more than 2 miles wide.

As many of you may not realize, Oklahoma is the home of many of the writers and volunteers with C4SS.

With more storms on their way, the families of Oklahoma could use all the support and aid they can receive. Every little bit of aid is important. This is where $5 from everyone makes an impact that can change lives. Anarchist activist scott crow summarizes the situation well, “Note to people doing decentralized relief. Just because the state tells you to leave or you can’t do it doesn’t mean you have to listen. Don’t be confrontational. Be creative. The need is great and the state will fail on many levels.”

C4SS fellow, Trevor Hultner, does a wonderful job of summarizing the events in Oklahoma and the following recovery effort:

http://youtu.be/sGgIM03DsB0

Volunteers have put together exhaustive lists of how one can send aid or where they can go to volunteer:

• Interoccupy.net‘s #OPOK UPDATE: OKLAHOMA RELIEF
• Moore.recovers.org‘s The City of Moore Recovers
• Moore Oklahoma Tornado Lost and Found Animals
• Infoshop.org‘s Support Oklahoma
• RYOT.org‘s Oklahoma Tornado Victims Fund

Members of Occupy Sandy have begun collecting resources, and volunteers on their way. The Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma has set up a donation service; text the word FOOD to 32333 to give $10 to the Regional Food Bank.

If you want to donate equipment and goods to support the recovery effort, please send them to:

Community Action
c/o Oklahoma Tornado Relief
CSBI Building, E-Wing
1155 E Main
Norman, OK 73071

Priority goods for the recovery effort:

1. Work gloves
2. Backpacks
3. Duffel bags
4. Dust masks
5. Respirators
6. Sturdy shoes
7. Huge tarps
8. Bungee cords
9. Any and all clothes of all sizes

Thank you all for your concern and support. Take care of each other and be safe. And always remember, any (good) thing the state can do, we can do better.

P.S. Any updates, additional information or corrections that need to be added to this post, please let us know in the comments below.

With the completion of the Voltairine de Cleyre Collection (at least for now…) I’d like to round up the links so it will be easier for people to find where they are located on this site and elsewhere.

You can look up the collection itself if you search, “Voltairine de Cleyre Collection” and you can see the individual parts of it.

• The First Mayday – Introduction
• The Fruit of the Sacrifice
• November 11th
• November Eleventh
• Our Martyred Comrades
• The Eleventh of November 1887
• Memorial Address
• November Eleventh, Twenty Years Ago
• The Defiance of August Spies

You can check out the second project I did individually here:

• Gates of Freedom (text version)
• Gates of Freedom (audio version)

All of these posts will eventually be published on my blog, The Anarchist Township, my facebook notes and the Voltairine de Cleyre Facebook page notes.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the work of Voltairine de Cleyre and are interested in more. The best way to do that is to stay up to date with the Voltairine Facebook page.

C4SS Media presents Voltairine de Cleyre‘s “The Gates of Freedom“, read and edited by Nick Ford.

The Gates of Freedom is probably one of Voltairine’s least known essays even though it’s probably one of her longer and more important ones. This essay is in much the same spirit of her classic essay, Sex Slavery but instead of talking about the general phenomenon, here Voltairine mostly focuses on arguments that justify this phenomenon. Add to that specificity a further specificity with it being about scientific arguments and not legalistic or theistic and you’ve got much of this essay. Past that Voltairine has a few notable passages, one imagines the life of a wife under later 19th century marriage and the terror and dread she routinely feels with a life that isn’t hers but her husband’s. Another passage laments the role of religion in women’s mind and the role religion has generally played in reinforcing women’s oppression at the hands of men. Add to this numerous references to Voltairine’s dislike of “natural rights”, references to Story of an African Farm and generally dispelling pernicious sexist and supposedly “scientific” ideas at that time and you’ve got a powerful essay filled with much of Voltairine’s inspiration for opposing the oppression of women.

I recently translated a chronicle of the recent violent crackdown on the Alberdi Hall artists collective in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It’s a perfect case study of statist attack on public property, on an autonomous initiative that produced a highly valued cultural offering for the community with a clear potential of standing on its own financial feet.

But because it was homesteading a space within a crumbling state-owned building neglected by years of governmental missmanagement, it was considered a threat to the bureaucrats who claim they have a better use for the space.

And while nobody knows with certainty what those plans are, the evicted artists’ suspicion that it involves “privatizing” the building for the benefit of a few corporate cronies seems perfectly reasonable, specially given the philosophy and track record of the current government of the city.

The University of Oklahoma chapter of Students for a Stateless Society hosted a lecture on direct action by OU Philosophy Professor Stephen Ellis on May 1. The lecture begins at about 2:15.

http://youtu.be/wkysvpKvKMY

C4SS has received a long overdue paint job and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Crisp, clean and dramatic. This redesign is the work of one wizard, William Gillis. Just check out the cool blacked out social media icons that drop down to show you how many facebook, twitter and reddit shares the article has received.

C4SS has been able to scrounge together a little bit of money to show our appreciation, but it not near enough for the degree of elegance achieved.

So we have decided to pass the hat for William. If you have also enjoyed or appreciated the new look for C4SS, then please let him know. Please donate to your appreciation fundraiser today.

C4SS Technology Coordinator and Stateless Ex-American, Mike Gogulski, was recently interviewed for an RT segment covering former US Citizens that have renounced their citizenship for tax reason or, in the case of Mike, moral reasons.

http://youtu.be/-R4aodLwB54

“RT segment from April 15, 2013 in “honor” of US income tax day. Features noted figures Jet Li and Eduardo Saverin, who recently quit their American citizenship for tax reasons. Freddi M. Weintraub, a tax attorney, provides insight into the law surrounding expatriation. Segment concludes with an interview with Mike Gogulski (me), who renounced his US citizenship in 2008 for political reasons and has lived without any nationality since — a stateless person.”

In a new paper in the Cato Institute’s Policy Analysis, K. William Watson and Sallie James contend that American companies have increasingly used domestic “regulation as a way to disguise protectionist policy,” a growing problem that advantages U.S. companies at the expense of consumers. The authors counsel a skepticism toward “regulatory proposals backed by the target domestic industry,” warning of “red flags that the proposal is a product of privilege-seeking special interests disguised as altruistic consumer advocates.”

Market anarchists have long understood such mechanisms for limiting competition and thus systematically cheating consumers and workers/job-seekers. Discussing the issue over one hundred years ago, Benjamin Tucker asked, “Why are the capitalists so afraid of the logical extension of their own doctrines?” Championing the “free play for the economists’ boasted law of supply and demand,” Tucker applied Watson and James’ logic to the relationship between established firms and their domestic competitors. His argument is no less relevant today than it was in his time.

We ought to be just as mindful of regulatory protectionism as it exists within the United States’ own borders as we are of its manifestation on the global stage. Influential companies are unceasingly engaged in a competition for the control of and access to legal instruments that can hinder competition in their favor. But this is not the competition that market anarchists past or present have prescribed, instead insisting on less of this sort and more of the kind implicated by the law of equal freedom.

The Center for a Stateless Society launched in October of 2006, since then we’ve blown through many milestones and growing pains. We’ve always had big plans and even bigger dreams, and today we move to a new phase. The site redesign is just the surface of what we’ve got brewing. Browse around, check out our resources page. Tell us what you think and when you’re done having fun throwing rotten fruit, tell us what you’d like to see and how you’d like to help with our various projects.

C4SS Media presents Kevin Carson‘s “I Should Know – I’m the Sheriff“, read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford.

“The real reason killing people extrajudicially with drones is (in the words of Obama’s CIA pick John Brennan) “legal, ethical and wise” is that constitutional restraints on executive power are qualified by the clause “all guarantees void in wartime.” In practical terms, Obama’s claims of plenary executive authority are indistinguishable from the most bravado-laden “Unitary Executive” legal briefs of his predecessor’s pet scholars.

And it’s not like even supposedly liberal “due process” hawks on the Supreme Court are prone to overrule such executive claims. Whether or not it should fall under Congressional oversight is, in Supreme Court parlance, a “political question.” When such authority is challenged by a citizen not actually targeted by it, there state claims lack of “legal standing.” But if you’re actually on the list, well, let’s just say it’s pretty hard to make a legal case after you find out.”

In my latest op-ed, “NYPD Officers Beat The Crowds…And The Charges,” I criticized the failure of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to pursue criminal charges against NYPD Deputy Inspectors Anthony Bologna and Johnny Cardonna for their behavior during Occupy Wall Street protests.

But unwillingness to hold police to the same legal standards as private citizens is, of course, not just an American problem. As Paul Jay of The Real News Network reports, a similar pattern emerged after evidence of police abuse surfaced following the 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto. In this report from July 2012, Jay rightly asserts that department discipline is not the same as being held legally accountable for abuse of authority. Jay concludes:

– Forcibly denying democratic rights is a crime. Those responsible should be charged.

– The right of journalists to report on police actions must be enshrined in police policy and guidelines. It’s simple: journalists should stay out of the way, and if they do, they cannot be ordered to leave the scene.

– Assault is a crime. It should be treated as such.

I highly recommend this report to C4SS readers.

Well, that’s what the New York Times calls it, but it seems like an Orwellian abuse of the word. The piece is by the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy, and the only thing “libertarian” I can find in it is Levy’s claim to be one.

The most obvious defect, of course, is that Levy seems to endorse letting the state decide who “should” be “allowed” (or not allowed) to buy firearms. But beyond that, he endorses additional government spending and an increase in federal police manpower:

Currently, dealers can charge up to $125 for background checks. If these fees are supposed to promote public safety, the taxpayers — and not just law-abiding gun owners — should foot some of the bill. And more F.B.I. staff members to manage the database would also help expedite the process.

If Levy and Cato want to argue for compromise on this issue, well, I disagree with them, but more importantly I wish they’d be careful not to confuse people by putting a “libertarian” label on their argument.

The C4SS Tor fundraiser will close tomorrow, April 25th. It has been a 130% success!

If you would like to support this project, you still can. Every dollar that we raise over the requested amount will go towards maintaining the Tor Node for the next quarter after this one. So please feel free to contribute a little or a lot to this project.

C4SS needs your support to grow. We function on the enthusiasm of writers and volunteers, but it is the continued donations of supporters that keeps us going. We have big plans and even bigger dreams for the Center and we need your help.

Fundraising is not begging or charity. Fundraising is a barometer of success, support and professionalism. It is about offering an opportunity to participate in the project, the task at hand. So we ask you, dear supporters, let us know how we are doing and play a crucial part in our success.

There are many ways you can support our work. The quickest and easiest way is to share our content with your social networks or review our articles on your blog.

For larger and sustained projects, C4SS relies on micro-donations. We would prefer not to be dependent upon large donations from a small number of supporters, but we will happily accept large donations. Instead we prefer small donations from as many supporters as possible. We prefer micro-donations. We want swarms! 300 supporters donating $5 a month carries more information and networked sustainability than 5 supporters donating $300 a month. It would show us that our work is relevant and desired. And we will be able to bring you more of it.

Please contribute $5 today.

ONE TIME DONATION via Paypal (any amount):

Send donations of Bitcoins:
Donation address: 1N1pF6fLKAGg4nH7XuqYQbKYXNxCnHBWLB
(Bitcoin treasurer: Mike Gogulski)

1. “Anarcho-capitalists want nothing to do with the State.”

If that’s the case, then they are not capitalists, since capitalism requires the state. …

2. “Capitalism” is “a mixed, state-regulated industrial economy.” That’s what the word meant when Thackeray coined it, that’s what the word meant when Marx popularized it, and that’s what the word means to the vast, overwhelming majority of people today.

I don’t accept “anarcho-capitalism”‘s expropriation of the word. You might be an anarchist or you might be a capitalist, but whichever you are, you aren’t both. …

3. “When anarcho-capitalist say capitalism they mean a FREE MARKET, not a regulated one.”

I’m sure they do. That’s what they need to extract crania from recta, learn some English and some history, and stop saying “rat poison” when they mean “cheesecake.”

Thing is, I attempt to give “anarcho-capitalists” maximum benefit of doubt and assume that they are anarchists in error rather than capitalists doing cosplay.

Dear Supporters and Readers,

C4SS has decided to go silent this April 22 in solidarity with the internet protest against CISPA.

CISPA is yet another manifestation of state damage that we will route around.

Anonymous has called for a blackout.