Individualists get a bad rap in politics these days. That should come as no surprise; politics these days is dominated by electoral politics, and electoral politics is an essentially anti-individualistic enterprise. With free markets and other forms of voluntary association, people who can’t agree on what’s worthwhile can go their own ways. But the point of government elections is to give people in the political majority a means for forcing through their favorite laws, projects, and rulers over the objections of people in the political minority, and making everybody obey those laws, fund or participate in those projects, and acknowledge those rulers.

Still, even if it is unrealistic to expect individualism to get much respect from people who are deeply invested in electoral politics, it’s not too much to ask them not to try to score political points by totally distorting our position. In any case, if they do, it’s worth taking the time to set things straight.

For example, consider “The Social Animal” by neoconservative New York Times columnist David Brooks (September 12). He begins by quoting Barry Goldwater’s argument (from The Conscience of a Conservative) that “Every man for his individual good and for the good of his society, is responsible for his own development. The choices that govern his life are choices that he must make; they cannot be made by any other human being. . . . Conservatism’s first concern will always be: Are we maximizing freedom?”

Outmoded Notions?

Brooks says that Goldwater’s ideas seem to come from a vision of human life based on solitary, rugged individuals — “the stout pioneer crossing the West, the risk-taking entrepreneur with a vision, the stalwart hero fighting the collectivist foe.” Brooks protests that “a tide of research” in the human and social sciences has demonstrated that Goldwater’s old-fashioned individualist notions aren’t supported by the latest empirical evidence because, Brooks tells us, human beings are social creatures by nature, closely intertwined with each other in the fabric of a shared social life.

He then lays into a number of Republican policies that he considers too locked into the old Goldwater free-market framework — tax cuts, tax-funded education vouchers, and “federally funded individual choice” in health care. He suggests that individualistic free-market principles have kept modern conservatives from coming up with a convincing rationale for the federal government’s gigantic tax-funded bailouts for major investment firms and mortgage capitalists. (Apparently the failure to provide a convincing rationale for government bailouts of big business is supposed to be a problem for individualism, not a problem for the bailouts.) And he concludes that Goldwater’s legacy of unrealistic free-market individualism is now “the main impediment to Republican modernization,” which he believes has hobbled his fellow Republicans’ efforts to provide plausible responses to “the gravest current concerns,” which all trace back to the fact that “people lack a secure environment in which they can lead their lives.”

Maybe Brooks is right that Goldwater’s legacy is holding Republicans back politically. Individualistic ideas can be a tough sell, particularly since the obsessive focus on electoral politics as a panacea for every social ill ensures that genuinely individualistic ideas are almost never presented in the media or discussed in public forums. But whether he’s right or wrong about the best way for Republicans to “fully modernize,” I don’t care much about the Republican Party or its political prospects, or about Barry Goldwater’s reputation. I do care about the prospects for individualism and truly freed markets. And Brooks’s case against them commits a series of serious and misleading errors.

Brooks ultimately condemns free-market policies because they smack of individualism, and he condemns individualism because human beings are demonstrably social animals, who live interdependent lives and gain both utility and meaning through social networks, community, and shared projects. He points out that traditionalist conservative thinkers like Edmund Burke appreciated “the value of networks, institutions and invisible social bonds” — apparently believing that that sets them apart from individualist free marketeers. Of course human beings are social creatures, and networks, institutions, and invisible social bonds are all tremendously important to our shared lives and livelihoods. But to try to use that as an argument against individualism is nothing but a massive non sequitur. What individualist ever denied it?

Individualists, contrary to Brooks’s claims, don’t have any general objection to human sociality. We realize how much we all depend on one another in our everyday lives. That should be obvious enough from the fact that we believe in replacing government regimentation with freed markets and voluntary associations. But if it is not obvious enough, let’s make it as clear as we can.

A freed market is nothing more and nothing less than a form of spontaneous social collaboration. There are no markets without several people cooperating with each other to buy and sell, interdependent with others who work, invent, discover opportunities, and generally hustle to truck and barter. And there are myriad other ways for free people to choose individually to cooperate without cash exchanges, like family networks, charities, community organizations, fraternal lodges, or voluntary mutual-aid societies and workers’ unions.

Cooperation or Coercion

The debate between individualists and “modernized” collectivists has nothing really to do with whether or not human beings ought to live a social life; it has to do with the terms on which we associate to work and live together — whether our social combinations ought to be cooperative or coercive. Social combinations can only be truly cooperative if they are voluntary — if they are organized through persuasion and free agreement among everyone involved, rather than through force and coerced obedience by some to a few.

Apparently Brooks believes that we have only two options: Either we live as a mass of uncooperative but free solitary hermits and devil-take-the-hindmost “rugged individualists” or else we live as a network of cooperative but unfree “socially embedded creatures,” with government taxes and regulations shoving us down to make sure we stay good and embedded in the particular set of social arrangements that government favors — whether or not any of us would choose to make other arrangements with our fellows. But where does that leave the obvious third option — voluntary cooperation?

Individualism is not a philosophical rationale for antisocial attitudes or for indifference or hostility toward your fellow creatures. It is the collectivist, not the individualist, who sees human beings as naturally truculent creatures who don’t care enough about each other to get along peacefully and who need to have plans for collaboration forced on them from the top. Promising social harmony and security, collectivism delivers dissonance and violence.

Individualists believe in individualism precisely because we believe that human beings can and should be both social and civilized to each other at the same time — that community and social life don’t require shoving people around or bullying them into following one big plan. What Brooks fails to see is how — individually — we can peacefully, freely, and naturally form communities, institutions, and invisible social bonds as we make our way through the world.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, L’individualismo si Scontra con la Cooperazione? Per Niente!

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Kevin Carson.

Desde bem em seu começo, o controle de armas de fogo — a tentativa de regular a posse de meios de autodefesa pela população ordinária — esteve intimamente associada a domínio de classe e a estado de classes.

No início da Inglaterra moderna, a regulação da propriedade de armas de fogo estava intimamente entrelaçada com o empenho das classes fundiárias e da agricultura capitalista para restringir o acesso das classes trabalhadoras a subsistência independente oriunda da terra. Esse empenho incluiu o cerco de terras de floresta, paul e ermo — onde camponeses sem terra e sem meios de beneficiar a terra antes caçavam pequenos animais selvagens — para pastagem para carneiros ou terra arável. Também incluiu exclusão das pessoas comuns de florestas, por meio das Leis de Restrição à Caça e permissão de caça somente a fidalgos.

Na escravocracia do sul estadunidense, a propriedade de armas de fogo foi proibida pelos Códigos dos Pretos, que regulavam os pretos livres. E, depois da Emancipação, sempre que a antiga aristocracia conseguia com sucesso afirmar seu poder contra o regime da Reconstrução, ex-escravos eram desarmados por patrulhas que iam de casa em casa, com base nos Códigos dos  Pretos ou então por meio de órgãos irregulares como a Klan.

O mesmo era verdade do empenho visante a Direitos Civis um século depois, após a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Em áreas onde esforços armados de autodefesa de ativistas de direitos civis eram disseminados, eles melhoraram significativamente o equilíbrio do poder contra a Klan e outros movimentos de paramilitares racistas. Numerosos grupos armados de autodefesa — por exemplo os Diáconos pela Defesa e a Justiça, cujos membros usaram rifles e espingardas para repelir ataques de paramiliares brancos na Louisiana nos anos 1960 — ajudaram a equilibrar a correlação de forças entre ativistas de direitos civis e racistas em muitas pequenas cidades em todo o sul.

Especialmente notável foi Robert Williams que, em 1957, organizou defesa armada da residência do presidente do capítulo da NAACP – Associação Nacional para o Progresso das Pessoas de Cor em Monroe, NC, contra uma incursão da Klan e fez os paramilitares fugirem para salvar a própria vida. O livro de Williams Negros com Armas de Fogo inspirou, mais tarde, Huey Newton, um dos fundadores do Partido Pantera Negra – BPP.

Por falar nos Panteras Negras, nenhuma discussão acerca das origens do moderno controle de armas de fogo estadunidense seria completa sem reconhecer o papel daquele partido no inspirar a moderna agenda direitista de controle de armas de fogo.

Prenunciando grupos atuais como Copwatch [‘policiando a polícia’ – www.copwatch.com] e Cop Block [‘distintivos não dão direitos adicionais’ – www.copblock.org], os Panteras, em 1966, organizaram patrulhas armadas de ruas de Oakland com rifles e espingardas, parando para testemunhar interações da polícia com residentes locais, fornecendo informações e oferecendo assistência jurídica quando necessário.

Em 1967 o membro da assembleia legislativa do estado, o Republicano Don Mulford de Oakland, inimigo declarado do Movimento de Livre Expressão de Berkeley e dos Panteras Negras, reagiu com um projeto de lei para proibir porte em público de armas de fogo na Califórnia. Bob Seale, do BPP, protestou contra o projeto de lei mediante liderar um destacamento Pantera, armado com Magnums .357, espingardas de diâmetro 12 e pistolas de calibre .45, subindo as escadas da assembleia (“Tudo bem, irmãos, estamos entrando”), passando pelas portas, e chegando à área de visão pelo público. Ali Seale leu uma declaração denunciando o projeto de lei de Mulford como tentativa “de manter as pessoas pretas desarmadas e impotentes exatamente na hora em que órgãos racistas da polícia em todo o país estão intensificando o terror e a repressão às pessoas pretas,” e advertindo que “é chegada a hora de as pessoas pretas se armarem contra este terror antes que seja tarde demais.”

O projeto de lei de Mulford de controle de armas de fogo foi transformado em lei três meses depois pelo Governador Ronald Reagan.

Milícias irregulares de trabalhadores e formações de defesa armada desempenharam significativo papel na história do trabalho, tanto nos Estados Unidos quanto no exterior. Durante as Guerras do Cobre na virada do século 20, os governadores de diversos estados das Montanhas Rochosas instituíram lei marcial — inclusive confisco de porta em porta de armas de fogo de casas de trabalhadores e acampamentos de grevistas. Em alguns casos, como nas Guerras da Hulha de West Virginia e na greve de Homestead, os trabalhadores combateram em batalhas campais contra Pinkertons(*), milícias do estado e adjuntos de xerifes. (* Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884) foi detetive escocês-estadunidense que criou famosa Agência de Detetives a qual notabilizou-se por acabar com greves e frustrar esforços dos trabalhadores para se sindicalizarem. Ver Wikipedia, Pinkerton Government Services.)

Na Espanha, foi em grande parte graças a milícias de trabalhadores, organizadas sob os auspícios da federação de sindicatos de trabalhadfores CNT e dos partidos da Esquerda, que a tentativa de golpe de Franco em julho de 1936 falhou. Nas áreas de sul e leste de Espanha, onde as forças de Franco não conseguiram vencer, milícias de trabalhadores amiúde desempenharam papel decisivo. Em algumas áreas trabalhadores armados fizeram as tropas de Franco recuarem para seus alojamentos depois de batalhas campais e queimaram-nas vivas lá dentro.

Desde seu início o estado tem sido comissão executiva da classe dominante econômica e instrumento da força armada pelos donos dos meios de produção, habilitando-os a extrair excedente de trabalho do resto de nós. Não consigo imaginar por que alguém esperaria que as políticas de controle de armas de fogo do estado exibissem menos caráter de classe do que outras áreas de políticas. Independentemente da retórica “liberal” ou “progressista” usada para defender o controle de armas de fogo, podemos sem medo de errar apostar que ele será mais duro para os moradores de casas de lavrador do que para a aristocracia, mais duro para os trabalhadores do que para os Pinkertons, e mais duro para os Panteras Negras do que para policiais assassinos.

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 17 de janeiro de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

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 ALL Distro’s “Distributed Technology & Worker Ownership: Five Conversations on the Economics of Anarchy” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with ALL Distro’s “Distributed Technology & Worker Ownership: Five Conversations on the Economics of Anarchy“.

$1.00 for the first copy. $0.75 for every additional copy.

This booklet brings together five interconnected conversations on the social and economic aspects of cooperative ownership, worker self-management, and the new possibilities of distributed systems and a distributed form of social ownership of the means of production.

“Which model the distribution of benefits from technological change follows depends, there­fore, on who owns the machinery and the technology. And in the present envir­onment, if the distribution of benefits follows the second, unequal model, it’s not the result of any purely technological imperative. Far from it. The more affordable the means of production are to the ind­ividual laborer or to small groups of laborers, and the greater the ease of adoption of new technology, the greater the share of total benefits will be appropriated by labor. And the general tendency of the past thirty years has been a cost implosion in production technology. . . .

“Thanks to the desktop revolution in the information indus­tries, an individual computer costing $1000 or less can pro­duce the quality of work in software, music and desktop publishing that once required million­-dollar facilities. . . .

“In purely technological terms, the conventional technological unemployment scenario depends on extremely expensive machinery owned by an employer who controls work­ers’ access to op­por­tun­it­ies for employ­ment. And the over­whelm­ing tech­no­log­ic­al trend is away from that state of affairs. . . .”

Includes Charles Johnson’s “How Not To Argue Against Worker Co-Ops” and “King Ludd’s Throne,” essays by Jed Harris and Micha Ghertner, and Kevin Carson’s “Technological Change: Cui Bono?”

Individualist anarchist, guerrilla abolitionist, insurgent against state monopolies, anti-constitutional legal scholar… Happy Birthday Lysander Spooner!

What could be said about Lysander Spooner that would not be hopelessly inadequate at capturing his spirit, intelligence, generosity or tenacity? Here is just a sample of Lysander Spooner:

Forced Consent

Abraham Lincoln did not cause the death of so many people from a mere love of slaughter, but only to bring about a state of consent that could not otherwise be secured for the government he had undertaken to administer. When a government has once reduced its people to a state of consent – that is, of submission to its will – it can put them to a much better use than to kill them; for it can then plunder them, enslave them, and use them as tools for plundering and enslaving others. And these are the uses to which most governments, our own among the rest, do put their people, whenever they have once reduced them to a state of consent to its will. Andrew Jackson said that those who did not consent to the government he attempted to administer upon them, for that reason, were traitors, and ought to be hanged. Like so many other so-called “heroes,” he thought the sword and the gallows excellent instrumentalities for securing the people’s consent to be governed. The idea that, although government should rest on the consent of the governed, yet so much force may nevertheless be employed as may be necessary to produce that consent, embodies everything that was ever exhibited in the shape of usurpation and tyranny in any country on earth. It has cost this country a million of lives, and the loss of everything that resembles political liberty. It can have no place except as a part of a system of absolute military despotism. And it means nothing else either in this country, or in any other. There is no half-way house between a government depending wholly on voluntary support, and one depending wholly on military compulsion. And mankind have only to choose between these two classes – the class that governs, and the class that is governed or enslaved. In this case, the government rests wholly on the consent of the governors, and not at all on the consent of the governed. And whether the governors are more or less numerous than the governed, and whether they call themselves monarchists, aristocrats, or republicans, the principle is the same. The simple, and only material fact, in all cases, is, that one body of men are robbing and enslaving another. And it is only upon military compulsion that men will submit to be robbed and enslaved, it necessarily follows that any government, to which the governed, the weaker party, do not consent, must be (in regard to that weaker party), a merely military despotism. Such is the state of things now in this country, and in every other in which government does not depend wholly upon voluntary support. There never was and there never will be, a more gross, self-evident, and inexcusable violation of the principle that government should rest on the consent of the governed, than was the late war, as carried on by the North. There never was, and there never will be, a more palpable case of purely military despotism than is the government we now have.

Most of Lysander Spooner’s writings can be found, lovingly maintained, throughout the internet. If you are interested in owning a physical copy of his No Treason; The Constitution of No Authority or other classic essays, follow the links below. Purchases also go towards supporting The Center for a Stateless Society through our partnership with the Distro of the Libertarian Left.

In the Gorilla Experiment episode of the Big Bang Theory, Dr. Sheldon Cooper attempts to teach Penny some rudimentary physics. True to his pedantic nature, Sheldon begins his sketch of the history of physics by mentioning the agora, from which we get the modern term agorism. Following Samuel Edward Konkin III’s (SEK III’s) An Agorist Primer, the word “agora” is still used to this day to mean simply the “open marketplace.”

To the modern agorist, the agora or uncorrupted free marketplace is the goal; the means of going from the current statism to the agora is called “counter-economics.” “All non-coercive human action committed in defiance of the State constitutes the Counter-Economy,” according to SEK III in his book An Agorist Primer. He mentions some specific examples of what is meant by non-coercive action in defiance of the State:

• Tax evasion
• Inflation avoidance
• Smuggling
• Free production
• Illegal distribution
• The free flow of both labor (“illegal aliens”) and capital across borders
• Information and secrecy of that information
• And many more

The general idea of counter-economics is very similar to what Robert Neuwirth calls System D as reported in an interview called Why Black Market Entrepreneurs Matter to the World Economy. Neuwirth says that

there’s a French word for someone who’s self-reliant or ingenious: débrouillard…the street economy…l’économie de la débrouillardise—the self-reliance economy, or the DIY economy if you will. I decided to use this term myself—shortening it to System D—because it’s a less pejorative way of referring to what has traditionally been called the informal economy or black market or even underground economy. I’m basically using the term to refer to all the economic activity that flies under the radar of government. So, unregistered, unregulated, untaxed, but not outright criminal—I don’t include gun-running, drugs, human trafficking, or things like that. (bold emphasis mine)

Nevertheless, the reason why I want to mention System D is because it helps me starkly illustrate that in the final analysis what is being discussed here is simply human survival. This is a discussion that, without being hyperbolic, does touch upon life-and-death issues. To make this unexceptionable point crystal clear, Neuwirth, in his book The Stealth of Nations, mentions how System D has helped people survive the financial crisis:

A 2009 study by Deutsche Bank, the huge German commercial lender, suggested that people in the European countries with the largest portions of their economies that were unlicensed and unregulated—in other words, citizens of the countries with the most robust System D—fared better in the economic meltdown of 2008 than folks living in centrally planned and tightly regulated nations.

He further illustrates the survival issue with an example from Latin America:

Studies of countries throughout Latin America have shown that desperate people turned to System D to survive during the most recent financial crisis. This spontaneous system, ruled by the spirit of organized improvisation, will be crucial for the development of cities in the twenty-first century. (bold emphasis mine)

Perhaps one of the most impressive examples of the counter-economics idea in action is that of what businesspeople did in order to evade the price control laws of Nazi Germany. It also gives me the opportunity to bring to light an issue that seems to be neglected; nevertheless, it does play an important role in undermining the establishment of state sovereignty. In a truly brilliant passage found in his book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, James C. Scott mentions that shifting of linguistic practices is vital for state evasion and for state prevention:

State rulers find it well nigh impossible to install an effective sovereignty over people who are constantly in motion, who have no permanent pattern of organization, no permanent address, whose leadership is ephemeral, whose subsistence patterns are pliable and fugitive, who have few permanent allegiances, and who are liable, over time, to shift their linguistic practices and their ethnic identity. And this is just the point! The economic, political, and cultural organization of such people is, in large part, a strategic adaptation to avoid incorporation in state structures. (all emphasis is mine)

With that prologue now out of the way, let me get to my main point: that the behavior of some businesspeople (I cannot say all because it is fairly easy to demonstrate that some businesspeople wanted fascism or even created it) acted as perfect textbook examples of agorists evading the Nazi price controls introduced in 1936.

In his book The Vampire Economy: Doing Business under Fascism, Günter Reimann, much like James C. Scott, emphasizes the importance of permanent change—or subversion of “standardization”—as a key method for evading the will of the State. Conformity truly is the jailer of the world. Reimann notes that

manufacturers may introduce changes in standardized products which result in making the finished article more complicated, solely for the purpose of enabling the manufacturer to claim that the finished product is a “new article,” which will not be subject to the old price restrictions. The State is enforcing more standardization of production in order to save raw materials; manufacturers must do exactly the reverse in order to defend their private interests. (bold emphasis mine)

To further evade the State’s price control system, buyers and sellers would set up these “combination deals” that amounted to selling scarce resources for a higher price while “tricking” the State into thinking that one was following the prescribed price orders. I want to reproduce in full Reimann’s story about how the buyers and sellers executed this legerdemain because it illustrates an actual way of appearing to be “legitimate” while actually being the complete opposite:

A peasant was arrested and put on trial for having repeatedly sold his old dog together with a pig. When a private buyer of pigs came to him, a sale was staged according to the official rules. The buyer would ask the peasant: “How much is the pig?” The cunning peasant would answer: “I cannot ask you for more than the official price. But how much will you pay for my dog which I also want to sell?” Then the peasant and the buyer of the pig would no longer discuss the price of the pig, but only the price of the dog. They would come to an understanding about the price of the dog, and when an agreement was reached, the buyer got the pig too. The price for the pig was quite correct, strictly according to the rules, but the buyer had paid a high price for the dog. Afterward, the buyer, wanting to get rid of the useless dog, released him, and he ran back to his old master for whom he was indeed a treasure.

In the end, the peasant never actually sells his dog since the buyer effectively gives the dog back to him by releasing the dog. The buyer gets the pig, which is the official side of this transaction, but the seller gets to keep the official price for the pig plus the phantom dog sale price, thus the seller gets a price above the State mandated price for selling his pig.

Naturally, the State is going to try to crackdown on such prestidigitation, a fancy word for any sneaky sleight of hand behavior. Being Nazi Germany, the State’s response was quite predictable. According to Reimann, the State used “control purchases” in order to catch people for audaciously circumventing its price rules. What exactly were Nazi “control purchases”? They consisted of the following:

• Secret police agents
• The secret police agents would be plainclothes officers and would pose as harmless buyers, but willing to offer a higher price than the official price
• The secret police agents would then try to induce businesspeople to make an illegal transaction with them

To me this sounds like a drug sting operation but for such prosaic items as selling pigs! A pig sting! (That has double entendre written all over it.)

In order to avoid getting caught, the idea of shifting one’s linguistic practices comes into play among those engaged in productive activity. Reimann points out explicitly that when applying agorism, one must learn to speak a new language:

In order to discuss illegal business transactions in a manner that makes them seem legal, businessmen in fascist countries learn to speak the language of experienced underground adversaries of the regime. They are often uncertain as to whether a prospective buyer is “reliable” and therefore talk in terms which are innocent and the meaning of which can be interpreted in different ways. (bold emphasis mine)

In conclusion, I think that one possible way to “market” agorism to people who are currently not agorists is to show that the underlying ideas have a long and honorable history. I have tried to illustrate this by using both a recent and a historical example. In the recent example, i.e., the current financial crisis, agorism and System D have helped desperate people on multiple continents earn a living and stay alive. Agorism and System D thus are helping people survive. The compare and contrast is blatantly obvious: the greedy ruling class caused the problem through their central bank monetary policies but the agorists provided the solution and it is working in practice. The Nazi example demonstrates that agorism is a tool for undermining a totalitarian regime. Once again, agorism can position itself as being on the side of humanity against some of its most monstrous enemies. And how did our pig buyer and pig seller do it: through a negotiated exchange in which both parties came to an acceptable agreement. In other words, voluntary exchange subverts totalitarianism once again.

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 Darian Worden‘s “Distributed Social Power: Against State-Capitalist Plutocracy” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Darian Worden‘s “Distributed Social Power: Against State-Capitalist Plutocracy“.

$1.00 for the first copy. $0.75 for every additional copy.

In this booklet, left-libertarian Darian Worden explores the relationship between the global economic and political crisis, and the future direction of global power. The three great tendencies for the role of politics in the new world will be a collapse back into reactionary nationalism, plutocracy and global corporate power, or the rise and liberation of a new model for social power — not concentrated, but distributed social power on a global scale.

“While today’s states are very powerful, cracks in their power can open as they adapt to a changing world. […] Possible courses for the changing role of the state in an era of globalization can be represented by three general tendencies: reactionary nationalism, global corporate rule, or global distributed power.

“Reactionary nationalism involves the cultivation of local or national chauvinism, the closing of borders to people, products, and capital, and the suspicion of those perceived as “others” or “outsiders.” Global corporate rule means the rule of political and economic elites, where political power typically is applied so that risk and cost are socialized while profits are privatized as much as possible.

“Global distributed power means that powers held by political and economic elites become more widely dispersed among the population, with no region or body dominating others. It means trade between strong communities. It means that more people are able to exercise more decision-making power over their own lives. […] Of course, most of today’s powerful probably do not want to let go of their power, and they have many resources and techniques to steer events and discourse their way. The solution is to dismantle power structures and create alternative social groupings to disperse power horizontally. […]”

Darian Worden is a left-libertarian writer and activist living and working in New Jersey. He is a News Analyst for the Center for a Stateless Society, a frequent contributor to ALLiance Journal and a host of the internet radio show Thinking Liberty.

In the book Solving Tough Problems Adam Kahane lays out a methodology for dealing with tough problems in the most difficult situations. Kahane played an integral role in the Mount Fleur Process which brought together representatives from Apartheid-era South Africa. Participants discussed what South Africa would look like after Apartheid. After the Mount Fleur Process, Kahane took part in similar gatherings throughout the world (Follow this link to learn more about Kahane’s work).

Many aspects of the book will be useful to people in their everyday lives, I would like to focus on listening. In his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie tells us that by “becoming genuinely interested in people” and “be[ing] a good listener” are two important roles in building successful relationships. That’s great, but what is listening and how do we do it?

Perhaps you are rolling your eyes at the thought of this silly question, but I have been involved in many frustrating conversations with non-listeners. These “conversations” generally become a waste of time and quickly deteriorate into mindless arguments, with people talking past each other.

Adam Kahane details Otto Scharmer’s Four Ways of Listening:

1. Downloading – listening from within our own story, but without being conscious that what we are saying and hearing is no more that a story. When we download, we are deaf to other stories; we only hear that which confirms our own story. This is the kind of nonlistening exhibited by fundamentalists, dictators, experts, and people who are arrogant or angry.
2. Debating – listening to each other and to ideas (including our own ideas) from the outside, objectively, like a judge in a debate or courtroom.
3. Reflective Dialogue – listening to ourselves reflectively and listening to others empathetically-listening from the inside, subjectively.
4. Generative Dialogue – listening not only from within ourselves or from within others, but from the whole system.

According to Kahane and Scharmer, downloading and debating repeat already existing ideas. Nothing new is created. Reflective dialogue and especially generative dialogue can create new social realities. This is intimidating to think about, but can be done quite easily.

The website PersonaDev offers 10 Tips to Be a Better Listener. There are plenty of articles dedicated to active listening, but I think this one is short and to the point. I’m going to provide an excerpt, but I highly recommend the reading article and website.

1. Be Legitimately Interested: Be interested. Drop whatever you were doing and focus. Stop focusing on the email you were writing or the article you were reading and really listen. Put yourself in the speaker’s place and make his or her problems your own. The speaker will consciously or subconsciously pick up on this and you will learn more from the conversation. However, if you are in the middle of something just a little too important to drop…
2. Be Honest About Your Time: If you really are in the middle of something important, tell the speaker. Apologize and plan for another meeting where you can ensure your full attention and focus. This will let the speaker know that you appreciate their coming to you and you want to give them your full concentration. It’s much better than lending half-an-ear and not listening well.
3. Accept the Speaker’s Point-Of-View: At least until he or she is done speaking. Some of us have the desire to get our point across and a word in for every sentence spoken. Even if you disagree with the speaker’s stance on a subject, allow him or her to finish their thought before voicing your disagreement and then only if necessary. Remember, you are trying to be a listener, not partake in a discussion.
4. Use Body Language, Eye Contact, and Repetition: Using body language and eye contact the right way can really have an impact on the speaker. To show you are listening and interested, lean slightly forward in your chair. Not so much that your elbows are on your knees, but enough so you aren’t reclined back on your chair. Make consistent eye contact, but do not stare. Make noises like “mm-hmm,” or say “I see,” and frequently repeat what was just said. These actions show that you are interested and actively listening.
5. Go Beyond the Words: Good listeners are actively thinking not just about what was said but also why andhow it was said. Why did this person come to you to talk (or be heard). Is there excitement in their voice? Resentment? Jealously? Once you determine the motive of the speaker, can you react more smoothly to their words.
6. Get Rid of Distractions: Just by slightly closing a door or turning off your monitor you can portray to the speaker that you are genuinely interested in what they have to say. Focus.
7. Avoid Planning Counterarguments: It is a natural response to automatically start planning a counterargument as soon as something is mentioned. As hard as it may seem, don’t. Mentally record your disagreement and formulate a response later after the whole message has been received.
8. Be Aware of Your History with the Speaker: As a corollary to tip 5, think about how your history with the speaker may affect what is being said. Is there potential for flared feelings? Sympathy? Fear? Figuring this out will help you better understand the speaker’s motives and, thus, respond accordingly.
9. Ask Questions: If there is something said that is not clear to you, ask for clarification. Be careful not to use questions to rebut or represent your point-of-view. Only ask questions that’ll help your understanding of what the speaker is saying.
10. Watch and Learn from the “Good Listener”: We all know one or two “Good Listeners”. Next time you are speaking to them, really pay attention to what they do. One can read a ton of articles and not learn as much as they would from actively watching a good listener in action.

Being a good, active listener makes life a lot easier. Your conversations will be more enjoyable and less nuanced. More importantly, your active listening will encourage others to do the same. Whether you are trying to solve a tough problem, perform a group mediation, or plan your weekend, everything will go a lot smoother and more will be accomplished.

The large scale implications are what interest me the most. In our current society, people are quick to call the police if a problem or disagreement arises. A more ideal situation would involve people talking out their issues either by themselves or with a mediator. A lot of conflict can be resolved by listening and understanding the other person’s motivations.

Peer mediation is a common model in elementary and high schools for a reason. . .it works. Children and youth are encouraged to work problems out amongst themselves. A group of youth mediators told me that mediation works and has led to a decrease in violent behavior amongst their peers. Active listening plays and important role in mediation and conflict resolution.

A lot of conflict stems from not listening to what the other person (group, etc) is saying. Further, we often do not even bother sharing our ideas because we don’t feel as the other person actually cares what is being said. On a personal level this can destroy relationships. On a larger level it can destroy communities, organizations, and the entire world. If you doubt the validity of my claim, consider politics and war.

Altering our communication methods is an easy thing that we as individuals can do to create a better society. We don’t have to wait for “The Rev”. . .we can do it now. In Rules for Radicals Saul Alinsky explained that it is important to take advantage of easy victories much like a championship boxer chooses opponents carefully. He calls this the cinch fight.

Our cinch fight is listening. On one hand it involves deep personal reflection. After reflecting we must change our listening habits to incorporate various components of active listening. Some will be easy and some will not. The important thing is that we make the effort.

Shut up and listen.

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Kevin Carson.

Em recente coluna (“Aaaron Swartz e Aqueles Que Resistem Até à Morte Defendendo a Propriedade Intelectual“), o Diretor de Mídia do C4SS Thomas Knapp lembra a pergunta de John Kerry a respeito da Guerra do Vietnã: “Como pedir a um homem que ele seja o último homem a morrer na defesa de um equívoco?” Do mesmo modo que a guerra dos Estados Unidos para dar amparo ao regime dos generais colaboracionistas japoneses e aos latifundiários do delta do Mekong em Saigon, a guerra em favor da escassez artificial de ideias estava condenada desde o início. Uma guerra para impedir uma população inteira de fazer o que está decidida a fazer está condenada ao fracasso — mesmo quando você se refira aos “lugarejos estratégicos(*)” usando os nomes “paywalls(**)” ou “walled gardens(***).” (* Strategic Hamlet Program (Programa de Lugarejos Estratégicos) na Guerra do Vietnã, plano do governo do Vietnã do Sul e dos Estados Unidos para combater a insurgência comunista mediante isolamento dos camponeses, impedindo-os de ter contato com a comunista Frente Nacional de Libertação. Ver Wikipedia.) (** Paywall, muro de pagamento, é um sistema que impede usuários da internet de acesso a conteúdo noticioso e acadêmico sem assinatura paga. Wer Wikipedia.) (*** Walled garden, jardim murado, é um sistema em que o provedor do serviço controla quem pode ou não ter acesso ao conteúdo na internet. Ver Wikipedia.)

Como Tom escreve, a “Guerra pela Propriedade Intelectual” é

“uma guerra de 300 anos de idade que, para todos os propósitos práticos, acabou já há anos com o triunfo das forças da liberdade e total debandada daqueles que confiam, quanto a seu destino, no poder do estado para extrair rentismo do uso, pelas pessoas, das próprias mentes e corpos delas.”

Exatamente correto. A guerra já acabou. Como Tom argumenta em outro lugar, as indústrias de conteúdo patenteado e seus lobistas são como soldados japoneses entrincheirados nas florestas tropicais da Indonésia vinte anos depois de Hiroshima, ainda esperando reforços. O Leviatã da escassez artificial, o monstruoso sistema de exploração econômica baseado na extração de rentismo oriundo do uso da informação, já está morto. Michael Eisner, Bill Gates, Bono, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, RIAA – Associação da Indústria de Gravação dos Estados Unidos e MPAA – Associação Cinematográfica dos Estados Unidos são apenas vermes retorcendo-se no corpo morto em decomposição.

Danah Boyd, da NYU – Universidade de New York (“Processo pela morte de Aaron Swartz,”13 de janeiro)  argumenta que a perseguição, pelo Departamento de Justiça e pelo MIT – Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachusetts de Aaron Swartz foi impulsionada inteiramente pelo desejo de torná-lo um exemplo: “o motivo de terem ido ao extremo formulando todas as acusações possíveis contra ele não foi darem-lhe uma lição, e sim deixarem claro para toda a comunidade hacker de Cambridge que ela estava completamente derrotada.”

Contudo, isso foi completamente inútil. O modelo acadêmico de paywall é que está copletamente derrotado. A “lição” da Linha Maginot era simplesmente: “Não ataquem de frente biliões de toneladas de concreto reforçado com aço, metralhadoras e obuses pesados.” E o General von Manstein aprendeu muito eficazmente essa lição, contornando a parafernália toda na ofensiva de Ardennes de 1940.

A “lição” do processo contra Swartz, analogamente, é “não faça o download de quatro milhões de arquivos do JSTOR(*) para expressar uma grande ideia sem palavras.” No interim, contudo, imagino que alunos de pós-graduação dententores da condição de membros do JSTOR fazem downloads de mais PDFs do que isso para amigos, todo santo ano. (* JSTOR é um sistema de arquivamento de periódicos acadêmicos. Ver Wikipedia.)

Sou bom exemplo disso. Como acadêmico independente, não pagarei por condição de membro do JSTOR. E estou certo de que não comprarei artigos de atrás de um paywall na base de $20 dólares ou mais por vez. Proibições de download e cópia de artigos acadêmicos não são diferentes, em natureza, das regras feudais contra ter uma moenda manual privada a fim de evitar a taxa do senhor cobrada para que o milho de alguém fosse moído. Tenho amigos bastantes na academia com privilégios JSTOR dispostos a fazer-me um favor, especialmente se eu contribuir com alguns dólares por seu tempo e percalços.

Como escreveu uma vez Cory Doctorow, o computador é máquina para copiar bits com custo marginal zero, e um modelo de negócios que dependa de impedir que as pessoas copiem bits está condenado ao fracasso. Assim, as pessoas que acossaram Aaron Swartz levando-o à morte fizeram isso nem sequer na esperança realista de vitória, e sim inspiradas apenas no mesmo impulso vingativo que leva um invasor derrotado, em sua rota de retirada, a infligir mais uma humilhação ao país violado. Aaron Swartz não foi o último homem a morrer por um “equívoco,” e sim — esperemos — a última atrocidade infligida por um agressor criminoso.

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 14 de janeiro de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Supporting gun control laws means giving government more credit than it deserves. Government is an institution run and staffed by people with their own interests and personalities. Are they really any smarter, more competent, or less likely to escalate violence than the average person?

If anything, institutional interests and incentives combine with the difficulty of holding government actors accountable to make them more dangerous. The laws they enforce make them an even bigger threat to public safety. Government workers with assault weapons break into people’s homes if they are suspected of having unapproved medicine, haven’t paid off the banker, or happen to live at the wrong address. If those government workers feel threatened during their adrenaline rush they are liable to shoot the terrified residents and their pets — and get away with it. I wouldn’t feel any safer knowing that these were the only people who could legally buy 30-round magazines.

Dispersing the tools of personal defense among peaceable individuals and consensual communities makes life safer by reducing the power of (and indeed the perceived need for) militarized official protectors.

Of course, not everyone is average, and gun violence committed by private citizens is frightful. But the prevalence of violence often signals a power imbalance, usually government enforced.

Mass shootings often, but not always, take place in institutions of rigid hierarchy where an individual made powerless by the system sees aggressive violence as a means of empowerment through conquest. Such motivations can be limited through widespread personal empowerment based on respect for autonomy and the cultivation of responsibility rather than obedience.

True, not every mass shooting fits this pattern, and unfortunately it is doubtful that any society can entirely prevent murder. But it is possible to reduce the number of victims. The best way to do that is by reducing institutionalized dislocation and by encouraging people within the community to take responsibility for defense rather than calling on — and waiting for help from — government officials. Having powerful weapons with big magazines can help them accomplish this. After all, police departments point to active shooter scenarios to explain why they need the types of guns targeted by assault weapon bans.

Most deadly violence committed by private citizens occurs in areas suffering from institutionalized discrimination. Unofficial economic segregation leads to some areas getting the worst schools, the most hostile police forces, the lowest levels of investment, and the largest burden of environmental hazards. These are usually places where minority racial groups, targeted by the bigotry of the powerful, live. The Black Panthers recognized this; their gun-toting swagger was part of their community improvement and empowerment program.

Today government policy — carried out by the people gun control advocates trust with assault weapons — makes neighborhoods into drug war battlegrounds while local politics tries to isolate the problem into particular school districts. Youth are harassed and an obscene percentage of adults are imprisoned, stifling the potential for open and peaceful community development.

The original Black Panthers were not perfect, but remain instructive. They certainly got attention. Rebels at the bottom of every power imbalance can probably learn valuable lessons from their experience.

While we make society more compassionate — which cannot be done without cultivating respect for liberty and autonomy — we should respect the gun rights of all responsible individuals. It is amazing that an 18-year-old can vote and serve in the military, but cannot legally buy a handgun for personal defense, especially since it was once common for rural students to bring guns to school and leave them in the principal’s office so they could go hunting before or after school. If guns are viewed as familiar but dangerous instead of as mysterious sources of forbidden power, they will probably be handled more responsibly.

The alternative to moving toward freedom is making society more prison-like, with heavily armed paramilitaries standing guard while those considered “off” are subject to “mental health” inquisitions. The path to greater responsibility, accountability, and compassion is found in the pursuit of liberty.

“Gun Control: Who Gets Control?” on C4SS Media.

Translations for this article:

• Dutch, Wapenverbod: vrijbrief voor geweldsmonopolie.
• Portuguese, Controle de Armas de Fogo: Quem Obtém Controle?

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 Roderick T. Long‘s “Ten Common Objections to Market Anarchy, with 10 Responses” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Roderick T. Long‘s “Ten Common Objections to Market Anarchy, with 10 Responses“.

$1.00 for the first copy. $0.75 for every additional copy.

In this lecture from 2004, left-libertarian philo­soph­er Roderick Long takes on ten common objections to Market Anarchism and makes the argument for a free and flourishing stateless social order. Long tackles statist fallacies from the philosophical tradition and from modern econo­m­ists, including:

1. “Government is not a coercive monopoly!”

2. “Government is necessary for cooperation!”

3. Locke’s three “inconveniencies” of anarchy

4. “Private protection agencies will battle!”

5. “There’s no final arbiter of disputes!”

6. “Property rights cannot emerge from the market!”

7. “Organized crime will take over!”

8. “The rich will take over!”

9. “The masses will demand bad laws!”

10. “Private protection agencies will become a de facto government!”

The transcript of the lecture appears here along with the discussion from the Question & Answer period, in which Long discusses division of labor, what will prevent private prot­ection agencies from be­com­ing a protection racket, and what best explains the origins of the State. . . .

The following article is translated into Spanish from the English original, written by Kevin Carson.

En un artículo reciente (Aaron Swartz y la Tozudez Irracional de la Propiedad Intelectual), Thomas Knapp, Director de Medios de C4SS, nos recuerda la pregunta que en su momento hizo John Kerry sobre la guerra de Vietnam: “¿Cómo se le pide a un hombre que sea el último en morir en nombre de un error?”. Al igual que la guerra estadounidense para apuntalar el régimen de generales colaboracionistas japoneses y terratenientes del delta de Mekong en Saigón, la guerra por la escasez artificial de las ideas estaba condenada al fracaso desde el principio. Declararle la guerra a una población entera para que deje de hacer lo que está empeñada en hacer no puede sino fracasar — incluso cuando uno se refiere a las “aldeas estratégicas” como “modelos de pago” o “jardines vallados”.

Tal como lo dice Tom, la “Guerra de la Propiedad Intelectual” es

“…una guerra de 300 años, que para todos los propósitos prácticos, terminó hace años con el triunfo de las fuerzas de la libertad y la total derrota de aquellos cuyas fortunas dependen del poder del estado para extraer rentas del uso que la gente hace de sus propios cuerpos y mentes”.

Eso es exactamente lo que es. Y la guerra ya se terminó. Tal como Tom lo afirma, las industrias de contenido propietario y sus lobistas son como los soldados japoneses atrincherados en la jungla de Indonesia veinte años después de Hiroshima, esperando aún por refuerzos. El Leviatán de la escasez artificial, el monstruoso sistema de explotación económica basado en la extracción de rentas por el uso de la información, ya está muerto. Michael Eisner, Bill Gates, Bono, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, la RIAA y la MPAA son gusanos retorciéndose en el cadáver putrefacto.

Danah Boyd, de NYU, argumenta (en el artículo “Processing the Loss of Aaron Swartz”) que el acoso del MIT y el Departamento de Justicia estaba totalmente motivado por darle a Swartz un castigo ejemplar: “la razón por la que querían castigarlo tan duramente no era darle una lección, si no darle a entender a toda la comunidad hacker de Cambridge que los habían pwned“.

Pero esta manera de actuar es totalmente inútil. Es el modelo de pago predominante en el mundo académico el que está totalmente pwned. La “lección” de la Línea Maginot fue simple: “No lanzarse a un ataque frontal contra millardos de toneladas de hormigón armado, ametralladoras y obuses”. Y el general von Manstein aplicó esa lección muy efectivamente, esquivando el armatoste en la batalla de las Ardenas en 1940.

La “lección” del enjuiciamiento de Swartz es “no te bajes cuatro millones de archivos de JSTOR para hacer un gran pronunciamiento”. Pero mientras tanto, me imagino que los estudiantes universitarios con membresía de JSTOR se bajan discretamente una cantidad por año mayor de archivos PDF para sus amigos.

Yo soy un buen ejemplo de esto. Como intelectual independiente, no voy a pagar membresía de JSTOR. Y seguro que no voy a comprar artículos por 20 dólares o más cada uno. Las prohibiciones a las bajadas y copia de artículos académicos no difieren esencialmente de las reglas feudales que impedían a la gente ser dueña de su propio metate, para obligarlos a pagar al señor por moler el maíz en su molino. Tengo muchos amigos en la academia con privilegios en JSTOR que están dispuestos a hacerme el favor, especialmente si les dejo una propina para compensarles su tiempo y esfuerzo.

Tal como escribió una vez Corey Doctorow, la computadora es una máquina para copiar bits a costo marginal nulo, y un modelo de negocio que depende de prohibirle a la gente que copie bits está condenado al fracaso. Por eso es que la gente que acosó a Aaron Swartz hasta su muerte lo hizo no con una esperanza realista de victoria, sino debido al mismo impulso vengativo que lleva a un invasor derrotado a infligir una indignidad más al país violado en su retirada. Aaron Swartz no fue el último hombre en morir por un “error”, pero esperemos que sea la última atrocidad infligida por un agresor criminal.

Artículo original publicado por Kevin Carson el 14 de enero de 2013.

Traducido del inglés por Carlos Clemente.

From its very beginning, gun control — the attempt to regulate the possession of means of self-defense by the ordinary populace — has been closely associated with class rule and the class state.

In early modern England, regulation of firearm ownership was closely intertwined with the struggle by the landed classes and capitalist agriculture to restrict the laboring classes’ access to independent subsistence from the land. This included enclosure of common woodland, fen and waste — in which landless and land-poor peasants had previously hunted small game — for sheep pasturage or arable land. It also included exclusion of the common people from forests via the Game Laws and restriction of hunting to the gentry.

Under the slaveocracy of the American south, firearm ownership was prohibited by Black Codes that regulated free blacks. And after Emancipation, whenever the old landed gentry managed to successfully assert its power against the Reconstruction regime, former slaves were disarmed by house-to-house patrols, either under the Black Codes or by such irregular bodies as the Klan.

The same was true of the Civil Rights struggle a century later, after World War II. In areas where armed self-defense efforts by civil rights activists were widespread, they significantly improved the balance of power against the Klan and other racist vigilante movements. Numerous armed self-defense groups — e.g. the Deacons for Defense and Justice, whose members used rifles and shotguns to repel attacks by white vigilantes in Louisiana in the 1960s — helped equalize the correlation of forces between civil rights activists and racists in many small towns throughout the south.

Especially notable was Robert Williams, who in 1957 organized an armed defense of the Monroe, NC NAACP chapter president’s home against a Klan raid and sent the vigilantes fleeing for their lives. Williams’s book Negroes With Guns later inspired Huey Newton, a founder of the Black Panthers Party.

Speaking of the Black Panthers, no discussion of the origins of modern American gun control would be complete without recognizing their role in inspiring the modern right-wing gun control agenda.

Foreshadowing current groups like Copwatch and Cop Block, the Panthers in 1966 organized armed patrols of Oakland streets with rifles and shotguns, stopping to witness police interactions with local residents and provide information and offers of legal assistance when necessary.

In 1967 Republican state assemblyman Don Mulford of Oakland, a vocal enemy of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the Black Panthers, responded with a bill to prohibit publicly carrying firearms in California. The BPP’s Bobby Seale protested the bill by leading a Panther detachment, armed with .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns and .45-caliber pistols, up the steps of the statehouse (“All right, brothers, we’re going inside”), through its doors, and into the public viewing area. There Seale read a statement denouncing Mulford’s bill as an attempt “at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless at the very same time that racist police agencies throughout the country are intensifying the terror and repression of black people,” and warning that “the time has come for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.”

Mulford’s gun control bill was signed into law three months later by Governor Ronald Reagan.

Irregular workers’ militias and armed defense formations played a significant role in labor history, both in the US and abroad. During the Copper Wars at the turn of the 20th century, the governors of several Rocky Mountain states instituted martial law — including door-to-door confiscation of firearms from workers’ homes and striker encampments. In some cases, as with the West Virginia Coal Wars and the Homestead strike, workers fought pitched battles against Pinkertons, state militia and sheriffs’ deputies.

In Spain it was largely owing to workers’ militias, organized under the auspices of the CNT trade union federation and the parties of the Left, that Franco’s July 1936 coup attempt failed. In the areas of southern and eastern Spain where Franco’s forces failed to carry the day, workers’ militias often played a decisive role. In some areas armed workers drove Franco’s troops back into their barracks after pitched battles and burned them alive inside.

From its beginnings the state has been an executive committee of the economic ruling class and an instrument of armed force by the owners of the means of production, enabling them to extract surplus labor from the rest of us. I can’t imagine why anyone would expect the state’s gun control policies to display any less of a class character than other areas of policy. Regardless of the “liberal” or “progressive” rhetoric used to defend gun control, you can safely bet it will come down harder on the cottagers than on the gentry, harder on the workers than on the Pinkertons, and harder on the Black Panthers than on murdering cops.

A (Brief) People’s History of Gun Control on C4SS Media.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, (Breve) História Popular do Controle de Armas de Fogo.

Check out David de Ugarte’s latest and incisive blog post on the recent French military intervention in Mali:

“…the worst is yet to come. What begins with a military escalation of France’s own, today, will eventually end with the region in the hands of private military businesses and warlords, following the US model. Decomposition is characterized by fragile alliances, and if the Tuareg, who were recently allies of AQMI, offer their help to the French army, tomorrow, some of them might break away into local feifdoms that happen to be tempting to those occupying them.”

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 & David S. D’Amato‘s “Converge and Overtake!: The Stigmergic Revolution and The General Idea of the Revolution in the 21st Century” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Kevin Carson & David S. D’Amato‘s “Converge and Overtake!: The Stigmergic Revolution and The General Idea of the Revolution in the 21st Century”

$1.00 for the copy. $0.75 for every additional copy.

From Kevin Carson and David S. D’Amato, two Market Anarchist takes on the concept of stigmergy and spontaneous order, and its relationship to the explosion of networked, leaderless resistance in grassroots, radical social movements.

The term ‘stigmergy’ applies to any form of human social­iz­at­ion in which coordination is achieved not by social negotiation or administration or consensus, but entirely by independent individual action against the background of a common social medium. That’s essentially the organizational form used by the Linux developer community, by networked resistance movements like the Zapatista global support network of the 1990s, and by the post-Seattle anti-globalization movement. Those with the highest level of interest in a particular aspect and the highest affinity for finding a workable solution contribute to that part of the project. In networked movements, any contribution or innovation in a single cell will only be adopted by those who find it valuable. Those that are considered valuable instantly become the property of the entire network, and those solutions that work become immediately available for adoption by each cell deciding only for itself.

That’s exactly what’s happened with the social movements of the past year and a half. The Occupy movement itself operates stigmergically, with innovations developed by one node becoming part of the total movement’s common toolkit. It’s only a matter of time until local Occupy movements become centers of innovation, not only in protest tactics, but in new forms of social organization in the communities where they live. In communities all across the country, people will realize that they’re neighbors who live in the same town or city – there’s no reason their cooperation has to be limited to the park or town square. Occupy will become not just a protest movement, but a school for living. . . . All over the world, we’re figuring out ways to live without the land and capital of the classes who think they own the planet, ways to make their land and capital useless to them. And they can’t stop us because we have no leaders. . . .

Includes “The Stigmergic Revolution” (Carson) and “The General Idea of the Revolution in the 21st Century” (D’Amato).

C4SS writer and Senior Fellow, Darian Worden, presents for Alt Expo “A Left Libertarian Approach to Politics”.

Also available as a “ready to print” zine (PDF)!

With the continued success of the Distro of the Libertarian Left and C4SS partnership, we would like to offer similar referral-donation services to our Homebrew inspired supporters.

A supporter and friend of C4SS, has put together a “small batch” screen print of the C4SS “box” logo with a DIY finish.

If you decide on purchasing one of Ian’s shirts, let him know that you also want to support C4SS with your purchase and C4SS will get a 10% of purchase price donation.

If you think this kind of partnership or something similar would be helpful to your Homebrew (ad)venture, then let C4SS know. We are happy to work out details and provide graphics. Email C4SS with the title “Support-Donations” to faq@c4ss.org 

“This is our first task as a society,” said US president Barack Obama at a January 16th press conference: “Keeping our children safe.”

The event’s purpose was to leverage last month’s school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut into support for a set of new executive orders and legislative proposals relating to what supporters euphemistically refer to as “gun control.”

In an evolutionary and biological sense, Obama has a point. The primary of function of human society IS to protect our young so that they can grow up, reproduce and perpetuate that society.

On the other hand Obama, in his role as president, represents the single most powerful and counter-productive human institution relating to that goal: The state. The power grabs he just put on the state’s agenda serve only the interests of that institution — not just instead of, but at the expense of, the children he’s exploiting as political capital in pursuit of that agenda (and in particular, as the Center for a Stateless Society’s Nathan Goodman points out, the children of the besieged minority communities Obama’s party claims to offer protection to).

Obama’s purported opponents within government aren’t much better. Their line, as voiced by US Representative Dave Reichert (D-WA), boils down to a cowardly “the laws that we have in this land already need to be enforced.”

Well, no, they don’t.

“The laws that we have in this land already” forcibly compel the daily assembly of millions of children on convenient killing floors (“public schools”).

“The laws that we have in this land already” forbid — or at least onerously regulate — possession of the tools of defense to those children, to their parents, and to their teachers.

“The laws that we have in this land already” notify any and all monsters with the ability to read a sign (“Gun-Free School Zone”) that those children are defenseless and at said monsters’ mercy.

Other species teach the principles of survival — including but not limited to the use of such weapons as they naturally possess — to their young at the earliest practical age. Humans deny their young those weapons and even, in this day and age, actively punish thought or speech relating to self-defense.

Other species protect their children from predators at all costs. Humans set out our children as an all-you-care-to-eat buffet for predators, then turn to the most voracious predator of all — political government, which regularly seizes double-digit percentages of our sustenance for its own gluttonous purposes, and occasionally throws murderous and even genocidal tantrums — for “protection.”

It’s not difficult to see why politicians support “gun control,” which is more accurately described as “victim disarmament.” What predator wouldn’t prefer that its prey lack teeth or claws? In Barack Obama’s world, events like the Newtown massacre are a small price to pay for the uncontested ability to do wholesale what Adam Lanza did retail.

What’s hard to understand is why we’ve put up with the predator for so long. In the 20th century alone, governments murdered in excess of 260 million people, and that’s an extremely low-end estimate (its promulgator, Dr. RJ Rummel of the University of Hawaii, excludes the deaths associated with the workaday operations of “democracies” from his statistics).

Fortunately, Obama’s proposals will go nowhere, as another set of statistics should make clear: At least 70 million Americans own more than 200 million guns (those numbers are also lowball, selected from competing sets I’ve seen). And the technology for unlimited home production of more is now fast becoming irrevocably and universally available. If the politicians think they can “control guns,” they’ve got another think coming.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, “Controle de Armas Para o Bem das Crianças?” Sinto Muito, Não É.

In probably the most unbelievably smug move the state could have taken in the wake of Aaron Swartz’s death, US Attorney Carmen Ortiz dropped the case against Swartz in a US District Court in Massachusetts late Monday.

“Pursuant to FRCP 48(a), the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Carmen M. Ortiz, hereby dismisses the case presently pending against Defendant Aaron Swartz,” Ortiz wrote in a submission to the court on Monday. “In support of this dismissal, the government states that Mr. Swartz died on January 11, 2013.”

Despite Swartz’s family literally placing the blame for his death on the state, and both MIT and JSTOR releasing public statements that were largely positive in how they portrayed him, a spokesperson for Ortiz told the Los Angeles Times, “We want to respect the privacy of the family and do not feel it is appropriate to comment on the case at this time.”

After a year and a half of state harassment, the threat of over 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine hanging over Swartz’s head, after both JSTOR and MIT dropped their criminal charges (though MIT still wanted to go ahead with their civil suit), the government went after Swartz like a rabid dog – and got a kill.

And now it is gloating.

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 Charles Johnson’s “State Capitalism and the Many Monopolies” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Charles Johnson’s “State Capitalism and the Many Monopolies“.

$1.00 for the first copy. $0.75 for every additional copy.

In this essay, the individualist Anarchist writer Charles Johnson offers an analysis of the concrete mechanisms of capitalism, and of how the revolutionary potential of free economic relationships is diverted and deformed when markets are constrained to labor under bosses, monopoly and government. Johnson revisits, and updates, Benjamin Tucker’s classic “Four Monopolies” analysis of state capitalism, arguing that the case for Tucker’s free-market anticapitalism is stronger than ever, as we take into account not only the growth and retrenchment of the Land Monopoly, Money Monopoly, Patent Monopoly, and Protectionist Monopoly, but also the metastatic spread of state-capitalist monopolies into Agribusiness, Infrastructure, Utilities, Health Care, and Regulatory Protectionism.

For most of the twentieth century, American libertarians saw themselves, and were seen as, defenders of “capitalism.” Until nearly the end of the 20th century, anticapitalist anarchism was sidelined in political debate, and most simply ceased to be treat it as a live option; mean­while, most American libertarians, and nearly all of their opponents, seemed to agree that opposing state control of the economy meant defending business against the attacks of “big government.” The purpose and effect of laissez faire was simply to unleash existing forms of commerce from political restraints, and to produce something which would look, more or less, like business as usual, only more so: bigger, faster, stronger, and no longer held back by government from pushing the corporate business model to the hilt.

This was almost a complete reversal from the attitude of traditional libertarians like Benjamin Tucker, an attitude which we might call ‘free-market anti-capitalism.’ Tucker was one of the best-known defenders of free markets in nineteenth-century America. . . Yet he repeatedly described his views as a form of “Anarchistic Socialism.” . . . What could “social­ism” mean for a radical, free-market individualist like Tucker? Certainly not govern­ment control of industry. Rather, what Tucker was pointing out was his opposition to actually-existing capitalist business practices, and his support for workers’ control over the conditions of their own labor – the control denied by the Four Monopolies and the artificial inequalities of wealth and bargaining power they fostered. For Tucker, then, a libertarian politics meant an attack on economic privilege – by removing the political privileges that propped it up, and dismantling monopolies by exposing them to competition from below. . . .

I highly recommend this new video from Dan D’Amico and Learn Liberty on how America’s criminal justice system promotes racial inequality.  D’Amico does an excellent job explaining the enormous racial inequalities in who the state cages. But, perhaps even more importantly, he makes it clear that this isn’t just an issue about individual racist cops, judges, or jurors. Rather, perverse incentives and laws that appear colorblind have created a structural problem of racism.