The Rentier Economy, Vulture Capital, and Enshittification There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of…
Karl Hess: A Life on the (Right) Left (and Right) Introduction. Focus of This Paper Over the past decade or more, I’ve done a considerable number of C4SS studies on particular anarchist thinkers. Since my formal titles at Center for a Stateless Society include Karl Hess Chair of Social Theory, it’s probably well…
Intellectual Property: A Libertarian Critique 2nd Edition (2009, 2023) Preface to Second Revised Edition (2023) In the fourteen years since the original version of this paper was published, my political and economic views have undergone ideological shifts of the sort that might be expected of anyone who has remained intellectually engaged over…
The Undeclared Condominium The USSR As Partner in a Conservative World Order Introduction Although the Right has typically framed the Soviet Union and “International Communism” as an aggressive and subversive revolutionary force, the reality is — at the very least — considerably more nuanced. In fact, it would be more accurate to…
Traduzione italiana: Io, la matita: Una Rilettura. Introduction There is probably no libertarian polemic more widely distributed and more familiar, or held in higher esteem, than “I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read.” It originally appeared in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman. It has since been circulated as…
Introduction: Two Kinds of Society Illich’s most common term for the kind of society or mode of production he is critiquing is “industrial age.” The overall theme of his projected future writing, he notes, is “an epilogue to the industrial age.” I want to describe the fading monopoly of the industrial mode…
View or download a PDF copy of Eric Fleischmann’s C4SS Study here: Historical Materialism: A Brief Overview and Left-Libertarian Reinterpretation Introduction One of the most famous theories forwarded by Karl Marx is that of historical materialism—although Marx himself apparently never used that exact term in his work [1]. To put it succinctly, Merriam-Webster defines historical…
View or download a PDF copy of Joseph Parampathu’s C4SS Study here: Prison Labor: Capitalism Without Markets, Understanding the Economics of Totalitarian Institutions Abstract Prison labor remains a paradox in many ways. Simultaneously sparsely studied or recorded, and ubiquitous; derided by labor unions and free workers as unfair competition and lauded by businesses as…
View or download a PDF copy of Kevin Carson’s C4SS Study: The Methodenstreit Revisited: Marginalism and the Lost Power Context The Methodenstreit was a long-running and fairly acrimonious debate over the methodology of economic science, between Carl Menger (posthumously regarded as the founder of Austrian economics) and Gustav Schmoller of the German Historical School, which eventually…
Traducción al español: La fatal arrogancia de Hayek View or download a PDF copy of Kevin Carson’s C4SS Study: Hayek’s Fatal Conceit Oskar Lange famously said, against the background of the debates over Ludwig von Mises’ economic calculation argument, that a statue of Mises should be erected in the planning ministry of a future socialist…
View or download a PDF copy of Kevin Carson’s C4SS Study: Capitalist Nursery Fables: The Tragedy of Private Property, and the Farce of Its Defense Traduzione italiana, I Miti del Capitalismo: La tragedia della proprietà privata e la farsa della sua difesa Introduction Since the beginning of class society, every ruling class has required a…
[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés] View or download a PDF copy of Rai Ling’s C4SS Study: Scarcity and Abundance Under Anarchism Introduction To what extent are contemporary production and consumption trends compatible with the abolition of the state and authority in general? There are…
View or download a PDF copy of Kevin Carson’s full C4SS Study: We Are All Degrowthers. We Are All Ecomodernists. Analysis of a Debate. Introduction One of the biggest problems with the debate over “degrowth” is the term itself. In many ways, “degrowth” is an unfortunate choice for a label because it is so ambiguous. On…
The ruling party of the United States has embraced fascism, but people throughout the country are resisting. Donald Trump had fascist tendencies and appealed to fascists since the early days of his campaign, but by now he has clearly embraced a fascist style of governing. The Republican Party has mostly gone along with it. The…
In addition to all kinds of scariness, it’s important also to mention exactly how mediocre 8ch is. It’s the human equivalent of the magazines in your dentist’s but– if it’s even possible– more tryhard. That they consider themselves to be an intellectual vanguard is on par with a grown adult self-identifying as Rick from Rick and Morty. It’s laughably pathetic and sad.
View or download a PDF copy of Kevin Carson’s full C4SS Study: Libertarian Municipalism: Networked Cities as Resilient Platforms for Post-Capitalist Transition Español, Municipalismo libertario: Ciudades en red como plataformas resilientes para la transición post-capitalista We live in a time of terminal crisis for centralized institutions of all kinds, including the two most…
Perhaps the most important characteristic Goodman shares with the other “anarchists without adjectives” in this series is his high regard for human agency, and his primary focus on the way actual human beings assert that agency in interacting with their environment. Read Kevin Carson’s full C4SS Study on Goodman here!
There’s been a lot of talk about Deleuze and Guattari around both academic and activist scenes for quite some time. Sometimes they are objects of unfounded derision (decried as “holy fools” by traditionalist socialists like Richard Barbrook), and other times they are the beneficiaries of overtly non-critical praise.
‘Postmodern Philosophy and Market Anarchism: Allies or Enemies?’ aims to evaluate the extent to which postmodern philosophy can strengthen the case for market anarchism, as well as provide novel modes of praxis for combating power structures (including, but not limited to, the state). Examining the ideas of Foucault, Deleuze, Crenshaw, Derrida…
This study presents a critical investigation of prisons, how they operate, what defines them, and what we can do to move away from them. There are many philosophical, practical and statistical angles by which to evaluate the harm that have prisons have historically inflicted and continue to. These harms not only impact inmates but also impact society as a whole…
