Why am I an Anarchist? That is the question which the editor of The Twentieth Century has requested me to answer for his readers. I comply; but, to be frank, I find it a difficult task. If the editor or one of his contributors had only suggested a reason why I should be anything other than an Anarchist, I am sure I should have no difficulty in disputing the argument. And does not this very fact, after all, furnish in itself the best of all reasons why I should be an Anarchist – namely, the impossibility of discovering any good reason for being anything else? To show the invalidity of the claims of State Socialism, Nationalism, Communism, Single-taxism, the prevailing capitalism, and all the numerous forms of Archism existing or proposed, is at the same blow to show the validity of the claims of Anarchism. Archism once denied, only Anarchism can be affirmed. That is a matter of logic.

But evidently the present demand upon me is not to be met satisfactorily in this way. The error and puerility of State Socialism and all the despotisms to which it is akin have been repeatedly and effectively shown in many ways and in many places. There is no reason why I should traverse this ground with the readers of the Twentieth Century, even though it is all sufficient for proof of Anarchism. Something positive is wanted, I suppose.

Well, then, to start with the broadest generalization. I am an Anarchist because Anarchism and the philosophy of Anarchism are conducive to my own happiness. “Oh, yes, if that were the case, of course we should all be Anarchists,” the Archists will shout with one voice – at least all that are emancipated from religious and ethical superstitions – “but you beg the question; we deny that Anarchism is conducive to our happiness.”

Do you, my friends? Really, I don’t believe you when you say so; or, to put it more courteously, I don’t believe you will say so when you once understand Anarchism.

For what are the conditions of happiness? Of perfect happiness, many. But the primal and main conditions are few and simple. Are they not liberty and material prosperity? Is it not essential to the happiness of every developed being that he and those around him should be free, and that he and those around him should know no anxiety regarding the satisfaction of their material needs? It seems idle to deny it, and, in the event of denial, it would seem equally idle to argue it. No amount of evidence that human happiness has increased with human liberty would convince a man incapable of appreciating the value of liberty without reinforcement by induction. And to all but such a man it is also self-evident that of these two conditions – liberty and wealth – the former takes precedence as a factor in the production of happiness. It would be but a poor apology for happiness that either factor alone could give, if it could not produce nor be accompanied by the other; but, on the whole, much liberty and little wealth would be preferable to much wealth and little liberty. The complaint of Archistic Socialists that the Anarchists are bourgeois is true to this extent and no further – that, great as is their detestation for a bourgeois society, they prefer its partial liberty to the complete slavery of State Socialism. For one, I certainly can look with more pleasure – no, les pain – upon the present seething, surging struggle, in which some are up and some are down, some falling and some rising, some rich and many poor, but none completely fettered or altogether hopeless of as better future, than I could upon Mr. Thaddeus Wakeman’s ideal, uniform, and miserable community of teamy, placid, and slavish oxen. [Online editor’s note: Thaddeus Burr Wakeman (1834-1913), leading American Positivist. – RTL]

To repeat, then, I do not believe that many of the Archists can be brought to say in so many words that liberty is not the prime condition of happiness, and in that case they cannot deny that Anarchism, which is but another name for liberty, is conducive to happiness. This being true, I have not begged the question and I have already established my case. Nothing is more needed to justify my Anarchistic creed. Even if some form of Archism could be devised that would create infinite wealth, and distribute it with perfect equity (pardon the absurd hypothesis of a distribution of the infinite), still the fact that in itself it is a denial of the prime condition of happiness, would compel its rejection and the acceptance of its sole alternative, Anarchism.

But, though this is enough, it is not all. It is enough for justification, but not enough for inspiration. The happiness possible in any society that does not improve upon the present in the matter of the distribution of wealth, can hardly be described as beatific. No prospect can be positively alluring that does not promise both requisites of happiness – liberty and wealth. Now, Anarchism does promise both. In fact, it promises the second as the result of the first, and happiness as the result of both.

This brings us into the sphere of economics. Will liberty abundantly produce and equitably distribute wealth? That is the remaining question to consider. And certainly it cannot be adequately treated in a single article in the Twentieth Century. A few generalizations are permissable [sic] at most.

What causes the inequitable distribution of wealth? “Competition,” cry the State Socialists. And if they are right, then, indeed, we are in a bad box, for we shall, in that case, never be able to get wealth without sacrificing liberty, and liberty we must have, whether or no. But, luckily, they are not right. It is not competition, but monopoly, that deprives labor of its product. Wages, inheritance, gifts, and gambling aside, every process by which me acquire wealth, rests upon a monopoly, a prohibition, a denial of liberty. Interest and rent of buildings rest on the banking monopoly, the prohibition of competition in finance, the denial of the liberty to issue currency; ground rent rests on the land monopoly, the denial of the liberty to use vacant land; profits in excess of wages rest upon the tariff and patent monopolies, the prohibition or limitation of competition in the industries and arts. There is but one exception, and that a comparatively trivial one; I refer to economic rent as distinguished from monopolistic rent. This does not rest upon a denial of liberty; it is one of nature’s inequalities. It probably will remain with us always. Complete liberty will very much lessen it; of that I have no doubt. But I do not ever expect it to ever reach the vanishing point to which Mr. M’Cready looks forward so confidently. At the worst, however, it will be a small matter, no more worth consideration in comparison with liberty than the slight disparity that will always exist in consequence of inequalities of skill.

If, then, all these methods of extortion from labor rest upon denials of liberty, plainly the remedy consists in the realization of liberty. Destroy the banking monopoly, establish freedom in finance, and down will go interest on money through the beneficent influence of competition. Capital will be set free, business will flourish, new enterprises will start, labor will be in demand, and gradually the wages of labor will rise to a level with its product. And it is the same with the other monopolies. Abolish the tariffs, issue no patents[,] take down the bars from unoccupied land, and labor will straightway rush in and take possession of its own. Then mankind will live in freedom and in comfort.

That is what I want to see; that is what I love to think of. And because anarchism will give this state of things, I am an Anarchist. To assert that it will is not to prove it; that I know. But neither can it be disproved by mere denial. I am waiting for some one to show me by history, fact, or logic that men have social wants superior to liberty and wealth or that any form of Archism will secure them these wants. Until then the foundations of my political and economic creed will remain as I have outlined them in this brief article.

On July 28, Aragon Alexandre of Folha de S. Paulo reported that eleven of Brazil’s federal government computers were used to modify Wikipedia pages between 2008 and 2014. The IPs indicate that Serpro (the Federal Data Processing Service) and the Presidency edited articles on both allies and opposition to the current government, adding compliments, suppressing criticism and so on. More recently, on August 12, Exame magazine reported 256 Wikipedia interventions from computers connected to the Presidential Palace’s wifi network.

Controlling knowledge, information and the historical narrative has always been a way of exercising power and enlisting popular support. Since politics is about perception, it has always been necessary to persuade the people that the system in power is just and should be perpetuated, and that one or another group “deserves” power.

In the old Soviet Union, Stalin erased old allies from pictures. In Brazil Getulio Vargas presented himself as a savior of popular and black cultures through his own (selective and controlling) cultural policy, relegating to oblivion recreational, sports, carnival and dancing associations formed by poor and black people in the cities, especially in the old capital, Rio de Janeiro. In fiction, the totalitarian state of 1984 even created a new language to express the worldview of the party in power, formulated so as to make any kind of thinking outside its boundaries impossible.

Politicians have never been short on ideas to manipulate and try to get more power, but the recent attempt to edit Wikipedia articles is at best laughable. The Internet is one of the greatest technologies for free expression, thinking and press.

Wikipedia, especially its English version, is an excellent example of how open collaboration and voluntary cooperation can achieve excellent results. Thousands of people work diligently to make Wikipedia’s content incrementally better, while the government tries to edit articles to meet its objectives. One by one, these edits have been weeded out by other users.

And, so that the government is put under even more scrutiny, the Twitter bot @BRWikiEdits has been created, modeled after the US-centered @congressedits (a move that has also been replicated in Canada and in the UK as well). @BRWikiEdits is a bot that tracks edits to Wikipedia page performed by computers from the Senate, the House of Deputies and several other government branches.

It’s a welcome effort in a cyber-libertarian activism that has also been responsible for a ramping up our online privacy against government surveillance through encryption and helping take our economy out of the corporations’ hands through P2P networks and crypto-currencies. Edit bots now act to protect our information sources, and have already tracked several modifications to Wikipedia pages.

The recent unanimous approval of the Civil Landmark of the Internet in Brazil, without much discussion in society (who does it benefit?) proves the necessity of increased activism online.

The government can’t extend his power over the internet. It’s too powerful a tool to be put in service of power, the re-writing of history and the suppression of freedom of thought.

Translated into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Attivismo Ciber-Libertario: la Gente si Difende.

Os debates presidenciais televisados novamente são o centro dos comentários no Brasil. E novamente nós nos vemos “sem vencedor claro” e pouca ideia de que tipo de discussão assistimos entre os potenciais eleitos. Por que isso acontece?

O jornalismo moderno, uma versão do ideal de Walter Lippman de intermediação dos fatos entre o público e as elites, é especialmente adaptado à produção corporativa de notícias e análises. Como observou Kevin Carson, o modelo jornalístico atual requer mínima referência aos fatos, já que os fatos não são independentemente importantes e devem ser avalizados por algum tipo de elite de “especialistas”.

Mais que um modelo de geração de conteúdo, o jornalismo praticado atualmente também é um modelo organizacional, já que ele drena o valor do trabalho jornalístico, que fica sem um ponto de referência e passa a se ater às subjetividades das opiniões daqueles que se encontram em posições específicas dentro das instituições sociais e políticas. Quando o trabalho jornalístico é despido de seu conteúdo dessa forma, ele passa apenas a propagar a validade de uma estrutura social, porque é essa estrutura que valida o jornalismo (a cobertura de protestos, por exemplo, só é validada com a opinião de um representante da Polícia Militar; a cobertura das eleições só é validada com a chancela dos representantes dos partidos estabelecidos; e assim por diante).

Assim, quando o jornalista foge desse modelo de produção e busca fontes e fatos independentes da validação dos agentes estabelecidos, ocorre uma sensação de estranhamento. Há uma fuga do que se tem como ideia do papel da imprensa e uma saída do que se internalizou como “neutralidade” jornalística. Após recentes entrevistas com os candidatos a presidente no Jornal Nacional, por exemplo, circularam muitas críticas à postura incisiva de William Bonner, que tendeu a não se prender aos assuntos autorizados do “bom debate político” (uma das ideias muito disseminadas, atualmente, é que “se deve discutir as propostas dos candidatos”, implicitamente presumindo que a própria existência dessas “propostas” seja algo desejável ou justificável, dado o histórico dos programas e projetos presidenciais).

Nessa busca pela neutralidade institucional, além disso, ocorre um cenário muito comum nas avaliações dos debates presidenciais que começaram recentemente a ocupar os horários das emissoras de TV. Depois dos debates da Band e do SBT, as análises que rodaram tendiam a não tomar como referência qualquer fato indisputável ou discussão que havia acontecido. Em vez disso, os jornalistas agem como consultores de media training, afirmando que candidato fulano estava “nervoso”, ou “se atrapalhou nas respostas”, ou “não mostrou segurança”, ou “foi duro”, ou “passa a imagem de confiança”, entre outras banalidades.

Esse tipo de avaliação não requer qualquer recurso aos fatos e implicitamente dá como certa uma passividade do espectador, que é visto como incapaz de avaliar o desempenho de um candidato e o que ele tem a dizer. Se os jornalistas presumissem um espectador ativo, eles passariam sua avaliação direta sobre o conteúdo e a postura dos candidatos; diriam que o candidato se saiu bem, que apresentou suas ideias de forma boa ou ruim, que é o melhor ou o pior entre as opções. Ao contrário, porém, sempre se imagina que existe um espectador ideal médio, que avalia certas atitudes de maneira específica, que se preocupa mais ou menos com trejeitos e discursos particulares.

Os jornalistas nunca dirão sua própria opinião sobre os políticos, com um paradigma ou ideologias claros como ponto de partida, mas vão falar que os candidatos “foram vistos” como fortes ou fracos e “foram considerados” confiantes ou inseguros. Nunca de seu ponto de vista pessoal, mas sempre do ponto de vista obscuro de um avaliador independente a que ninguém tem acesso — o espectador médio.

O próprio formato dos debates também é questionável: por que é que os candidatos têm qualquer liberdade para eleger temas de que falar? Não é implausível que os próprios políticos saibam o que é mais relevante para o eleitorado? Não seria mais razoável presumir que os postulantes — principalmente a cargos muito altos, que governam milhões de pessoas — estão divorciados das preocupações da população e mais preocupados e manter a própria posição de prestígio?

É por esse motivo que debates eleitorais, embora sejam vistos como excelente entretenimento televisivo (principalmente hoje em dia, quando carregam memes e piadas a reboque em redes sociais), não trazem qualquer conteúdo informativo a respeito da política.

Seu formato é viciado e os jornalistas, que deveriam ser capazes de prover uma avaliação objetiva das discussões, se colocam no lugar de um eleitor imaginário. E os jornalistas não são aqueles que estabelecem quais são as questões importantes a serem discutidas — são os políticos que estipulam os termos do debate, porque o jornalismo em si, da forma como é praticado, não tem validade fora das estruturas sociais existentes.

É por isso que debates eleitorais são um circo.

C4SS Feed 44 presents Dawie Coetzee‘s “There is More to Industrial Enclosure than Patents” read and edited by Nick Ford.

I wonder about the motivation in forgoing these patents, given that many are relatively toothless. Tesla obviously wishes to play the heroic underdog, to imply solidarity with the open-source movement despite operating in an industry legally effectively prohibited from embracing open-source methods in any meaningful way. Open-source becomes trivial when subject to the sort of model conformity which a type-approval regime requires. The resulting lack of diversity of possibility and ad-hoc flexibility is analogous to the difference between representative democracy (let’s all vote on what same things all of us are going to be required to do) and anarchy (let’s all do different things, as and when we variously choose.) Hence, no technological change but only political change is capable of changing the motor industry. Tesla’s very existence counts against them.

Feed 44:

• http://www.c4ss.org/
• http://www.youtube.com/user/c4ssvideos
• https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c4ss-media/id872405202?mt=2
• http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smash-walls-radio/c4ss-media?refid=stpr
• https://twitter.com/C4SSmedia
• http://c4ss.jellycast.com

Bitcoin tips welcome:

• 1N1pF6fLKAGg4nH7XuqYQbKYXNxCnHBWLB

On July 11, the Brazilian federal government decided against selling monopolies on interstate mass transportation to selected companies. The government was trying to pick companies to operate along several routes, but the procedure, started in August 2013 and supposed to finish in January 2014, was suspended by several judicial injunctions and predictably marred by bureaucracy.

It might not look like much, but at least it signals that the government is somewhat responsive to real life circumstances.

In June, president Dilma Rousseff sanctioned a law that modified the model of authorization for interstate highway transportation.

The director of the Terrestrial Transportation National Agency (ANTT), Ana Patriza Goncalves Lira, explained recently her goal: “If there are 30 or 40 companies willing to do the Rio-Sao Paulo route and they’re capable of doing so, we’re going to allow it. Afterwards, the market will adjust.”

Thus, instead of selling off pre-determined routes to specific companies, the government is finally saying that it will allow all comers to operate routes of their creation, provided they meet minimum security and quality standards (which will be decided by the state, of course, but it is a step in the right direction).

The government having backpedaled from their own attempts to further regulate people’s travel was the last breath of the idea, floating around since 2008, that they should be selling interstate highway travel routes.

The natural tendency would be for the state to keep the current crony capitalist system regulated by its centralized bureaucracy, but such a system has its limits. The government has its back against the wall because of very unfavorable circumstances and the inability to justify such an inefficient and expensive system.

But not all is fine and dandy under the new model: Companies will still be able to manipulate the system and exert influence over the minimum requisites of security and quality of service and there will be a cap on ticket prices for 5 years.

Cronyism hasn’t been completely purged, but there’s a little more breathing room now. The state has a limit to its actions and there are circumstances in which nothing is left to it but to give in to reality’s pressure and give up its bureaucratic control.

Several thinkers have examined about this subject. Jeffrey Tucker, for instance, has talked about technologies and practices that allow us to route around the state. Innovation is essential to back the government up against the corner.

David Friedman has mentioned that an ideal stateless society can only work when voluntary institution gradually replace government hierarchies, in such a way that the state is made obsolete. Crypto-anarchy and the expansion of private legal and policing arrangements can and already do play an significant role in achieving that. In that vein, Kevin Carson has also noted that we need to revert the secular process by which central states have suppressed self-management alternatives. We should strive to re-build these alternative social institutions.

Compare these ideas to the protests we witnessed last year in Brazil, when thousands of Brazilians took the streets to pressure the government into not raising bus fares. Those protests were far less effective than the circumstances themselves that made the government back off from its proposals to further cartelize the interstate system.

One of the reasons for that, of course, is that many activists demanded even more state control over the urban transportation infrastructure, which is the problem in the first place. The result, in several cities, was a temporary freeze of bus fares, but the maintenance of a corporate system that benefits only a few capitalists and politicians. The protests fizzled out and the protesters themselves mostly didn’t remember that there are underground transportation services available in several large cities in the country.

After the protests, we saw that to change our transportation system, we have to take from the state what it has taken from us. The people have to provide transportation through voluntary associations and free exchange, because the state will never back off unless its power is made unsustainable.

Translated into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

Talvez por viver em Chicago ou porque trabalho com outros advogados, em minha vida cotidiana estou rodeado por pessoas que se identificam com a esquerda americana e democratas centristas para quem a mera menção da palavra “libertário” incita pesadelos com a direita do Tea Party. Infelizmente, qualquer possibilidade de diálogo com esse grupo de pessoas acaba quando me identifico como libertário; para essas pessoas, o libertarianismo é a extrema direita de um espectro político americano unidimensional a que foram condicionadas a nunca questionar. Frequentemente, sabem algo sobre Ayn Rand até o ponto em que são capazes de considerar o libertarianismo como uma defesa simplista e impiedosa da ganância corporativa, do status quo econômico em que o 1% se torna cada vez mais rico enquanto a classe média diminui e os pobres sofrem em destituição. Ironicamente, esse tipo de social-democrata centrista provavelmente entende os efeitos do capitalismo melhor do que muitos libertários, percebendo a predação econômica e procurando (de forma não-sistemática) por algo que controle seus impulsos. O que eles não compreendem, porém, é o libertarianismo como uma filosofia real ou o abismo que separa o sistema econômico atual do livre mercado genuíno.

Por causa dessa repulsa reflexiva à mera menção do libertarianismo, minhas experiências me levaram a descrever minha posição política como “individualismo de esquerda”. Essa caracterização, pelo que noto, é mais convidativa a perguntas em vez de diatribes raivosas, preparando o terreno para uma conversa proveitosa e não dando lugar a um debate fútil. Peguei a expressão “individualismo de esquerda” de Eunice Minette Schuster, cuja dissertação Native American Anarchism tinha como subtítulo “A Study of Left-Wing American Individualism” (em português, “Um estudo do individualismo americano de esquerda”). O livro de Schuster segeu o anarquismo americano desde suas formas nascentes e prototípicas até seu desenvolvimento em um sistema filosófico e movimento distintos. Seu estudo é importante por dar atenção a uma corrente política que pode parecer confusa e contraditória no contexto dos debates atuais.

Os anarquistas individualistas que Schuster discute na parte do seu livro que trata o anarquismo em seu estado “maduro” eram individualistas extremos e socialistas, arquitetos de um projeto que nós do Centro por uma Sociedade Sem Estado (C4SS) tentamos continuar atualmente. Como defensores da liberdade total de competição, dos direitos de propriedade e da soberania do indivíduo, os anarquistas individualistas são parte da história do movimento libertário contemporâneo. Paralelamente, como o C4SS de hoje em dia, esse grupo se opunha ao capitalismo e considerava o socialismo como o “grande movimento antirroubo”, nas palavras do reformador radical Ezra Heywood. Ao contrário dos libertários atuais, que frequentemente demonizam os pobres como “parasitas” do assistencialismo, pensadores como Benjamin Tucker, Ezra Heywood e Josiah Warren (para mencionar somente alguns) viam os ricos como a verdadeira classe ociosa e parasitária, como beneficiários de privilégios que permitiam que eles manobrassem o sistema para impedir a competição real.

Esses antigos libertários viam que a liberdade e a competição funcionavam por todos os motivos que conhecemos atualmente: divisão e especialização do trabalho, grandes quantidades de informação destiladas em preços e a impossibilidade de planejar a economia através do maior de todos os monopólios, o estado. Eles argumentavam que a competição genuína em um livre mercado é a forma mais segura de garantir que o trabalho receba seu produto total, resolvendo, assim, o que era chamado com frequência de a Questão Trabalhista; isso os tornava socialistas, mesmo que eles não se encaixassem tão confortavelmente dentro do movimento socialista. Também não se encaixavam bem entre as fileiras liberais, que defendiam o livre comércio e a competição — os economistas políticos —, e se viam com frequência tendo que ensinar aos economistas sua própria doutrina, apontando os erros e inconsistências que caracterizavam muito daquilo que era considerado argumento em defesa do livre comércio.

Os anarquistas individualistas eram fanáticos pela coerência; se o trabalho tinha que ser posto em competição, sujeito à oferta e à demanda, então o capital também deveria. Como aponta Schuster, o “anarquismo científico” proposto por indivíduos como Benjamin Tucker, portanto, “não tinha apelo para o Capitalista, porque ele não defendia um ‘individualismo resistente’, mas um individualismo universal” (ênfase minha). Uma vez que os individualistas consideravam a renda, os juros e os lucros (a “trindade da usura) como resultados aproximados dos privilégios coercitivos, eles eram tratados como similares aos impostos, permitindo que os donos do capital se apropriassem a diferença entre os preços sob um regime de privilégio e os preços em um regime de competição aberta. A competição do mercado, portanto, não era o inimigo, mas o aliado do trabalhador. O argumento do anarquismo de mercado é simples: se insistimos que todos têm direito àquilo que conseguem obter num livre mercado, então devemos ao menos tentar chegar a um livre mercado. E um livre mercado não pode tolerar algumas das características históricas mais comuns do capitalismo: o roubo agressivo de terras em larga escala, os sistemas regulatórios e de licenciamento que funcionam como barreiras de alto custo à entrada no mercado e como barreiras ao autoemprego, vários subsídios diretos e indiretos que redistribuem renda a firmas bem conectadas e o sistema governamental de leis e instituições financeiras que produz o cartel de Wall Street que temos atualmente. Assim, o capitalismo parece não combinar com o que os libertários de fato querem quando dão seu apoio ao livre mercado. Não estamos tão perto assim de um sistema de livre mercado como muitos libertários gostam de pensar. Não precisamos apenas de alguns ajustes e algumas reformas aqui e acolá, de algumas privatizações de monopólios estatais e da desregulamentação de algumas indústrias. Para chegar num sistema livre, precisaríamos de uma ruptura completa e sistemática com a tirania capitalista que temos há tanto tempo, um sistema que é o sucessor direto dos sistemas estatistas, desde o feudalismo até o mercantilismo.

Anarquistas como Warren e Tucker compreendiam esse fato e passaram suas vidas lutando contra a desigualdade do status quo capitalista que coloca os trabalhadores em desvantagens sistemáticas. E apesar dos esforços em colocá-los na direita política — ou mesmo de tirá-los da tradição anarquista —, eles pertencem (se é que pertecem a alguma ponta do espectro) à esquerda, como entendia Schuster. Representando a tremenda falaa de compreensão em relação ao anarquismo individualista entre acadêmicos de esquerda, o historiador David DeLeon, em seu livro The American as Anarchist, afirma que Benjamin Tucker é um “libertário de direita” e, incrivelmente, aponta Ronald Reagan e George Wallace como seus sucessores ideológicos. Em outros pontos do livro, DeLeon classifica casualmente Voltairine de Cleyre — cujas explorações dentro do anarquismo não se prestam facilmente a rótulos — como “anarcocomunista”. Preocupante é também sua incrível alegação de que Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau e Walt Whitman todos eram libertários de direita. Se alguém que está tão envolvido nos estudos profissionais desses personagens e de seus movimentos é capaz de interpretar erroneamente suas circunstâncias, não é de surpreender que o anarquismo individualista seja complexo para a maior parte dos leigos em filosofia política.

Apresentar a mim mesmo como “individualista de esquerda” é uma das minhas atitudes para reintroduzir o anarquismo individualista do século 19 no discurso contemporâneo, uma tradição que equilibra o indivíduo e a comunidade de uma maneira que é desesperadamente necessária em um mundo dominado pelo poder centralizado. O movimento libertário, além disso, não deve se apressar tanto em desprezar anarquistas como Tucker como se fossem ignorantes econômicos de eras passadas. Afinal, qualquer consideração sobre os relacionamentos econômicos em um livre mercado necessariamente será marcado pela especulação. Os libertários que acreditam que os relacionamentos seriam como os atuais têm pouca imaginação e não conseguem nem imaginar a profundidade das mudanças que um real respeito à soberania individual traria.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

Today is Labor Day, a federal holiday in the United States designed to promote a sanitized history of labor organizing. As Charles Johnson puts it, “the federal holiday known as Labor Day is actually a Gilded Age bait-and-switch from 1894. It was crafted and promoted in an effort to throw a bone to labor while erasing the radicalism implicit in May Day (a holiday declared by workers, in honor of the campaign for the eight hour day and in memory of the Haymarket martyrs). As a low-calorie substitute for workers’ struggle to come into their own, we get a celebration of labor … so long as it rigidly adheres to the AFL-line orthodoxy of collective bargaining, appeasement, and power to the union bosses and government bureaucrats.”

On this occasion, I’d like to discuss the relationship between prisons and labor. There are many facets to this relationship, from the use of prisons to enforce work discipline, to prisons as sites of slave labor, to the role of police and corrections officers unions in pushing for increasingly coercive criminal justice policies.

Prisons and Work Discipline

Prisons have been used to enforce work discipline for centuries. In his book The Enterprise of Law, Bruce Benson explains how England transitioned from customary law to authoritarian law controlled by the state. He notes that prisons were first used in England primarily in order to control the poor and force them to work:

“Houses of correction” were first established under Elizabeth to punish and reform able-bodied poor who refused to work. A “widespread concern for the habits and behavior of the poor” is often cited as the reason for the poor laws regarding vagrancy and the establishment of facilities to “reform” the idle poor by confining them and forcing them to work at hard labor. But Chambliss reported that “there is little question but that these statutes were designed for one express purpose: to force laborers (whether personally free or unfree) to accept employment at a low wage in order to insure the landowner an adequate supply of labor at a price he could afford to pay.” Such laws clearly reflected the transfer function of government.

In this case, prisons were used as institutions of violent coercion meant to establish work discipline, enforce the work ethic, drive down wages, and thus transfer wealth from poor and working people to landowners.

The Slavery Connection

Slavery did not experience a clean and straightforward end in the United States. Rather than prohibiting slavery universally, the 13^th Amendment prohibited slavery “except as punishment for a crime.” In the South, this was followed by the passage of the Black Codes, which criminalized a litany of innocuous actions specifically for blacks.  So rather than abolishing slavery, the 13th Amendment simply changed its form.  This created forced labor that was arguably worse than chattel slavery. As Angela Davis explains in her book Are Prisons Obsolete?:

Slave owners may have been concerned for the survival of individual slaves, who, after all, represented significant investments. Convicts, on the other hand, were leased not as individuals, but as a group, and they could be worked literally to death without affecting the profitability of a convict crew.

This convict lease system was truly appalling, and allowed for the enslavement of former slaves under similarly brutal and racialized conditions to the ones they had supposedly been emancipated from. While prison labor is no longer as brutal as it was under the convict lease system, it still persists.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola, is literally a converted slave plantation where inmates are forced to toil in the fields. Companies like Walmart, AT&T, and Starbucks all profit from prison labor. So do war profiteers like BAE, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. The racism of slavery persists; according to the Sentencing Project, 60% of prisoners are people of color, with 1 in 3 black men experiencing imprisonment in their lifetime. America incarcerates on a mass scale, with more than 2.4 million people imprisoned. The abolitionist movement has some unfinished business here.

Prisoners have their rights violated repeatedly, and that’s true with respect to their labor as much as anything else. While most labor unions either ignore this or simply focus on how competition from prison labor drives down wages outside prisons, the Industrial Workers of the World seeks to organize in solidarity with striking prisoners.

Marginalization from the Labor Market

James Kilgore argues that the main labor problem entailed in imprisonment today is not slavery inside, but marginalization outside the prison. Kilgore points to a litany of ways marginalization from the labor market intersects with incarceration. First, he notes how it fuels incarceration, writing “The chief labor concerns about mass incarceration are linked to broader inequalities in the economy as a whole, particularly the lack of employment for poor youth of color and the proliferation of low wage jobs with no benefits.”

Kilgore then notes the numerous ways that those who have been incarcerated are marginalized from the labor market. He explains:

People with a felony conviction carry a stigma, a brand often accompanied by exclusion from the labor market. Michelle Alexander calls “felon” the new “N” word. Indeed in the job world, those of us with felony convictions face a number of unique barriers. The most well-known is “the box”-that question on employment applications which asks about criminal background. Eleven states and more than 40 cities and counties have outlawed the box on employment applications. Supporters of “ban the box” argue that questions about previous convictions amount to a form of racial discrimination since such a disproportionate number of those with felony convictions are African-American and Latino. Advancing these Ban the Box campaigns will have a far more important impact on incarcerated people as workers than pressing for higher wages for those under contract to big companies inside.

However, even without the box, the rights of the formerly incarcerated in the labor market remain heavily restricted. Many professions, trades and service occupations which require certification, bar or limit the accreditation of people with felony convictions. For example, a study by the Mayor of Chicago’s office found that of 98 Illinois state statutes regarding professional licensing, 57 contained restrictions for applicants with a criminal history, impacting over 65 professions and occupations. In some instances, even people applying for licenses to become barbers or cosmetologists face legal impediments.

So here we see criminalization producing a stigma that excludes people from employment in many careers, both due to the judgement of employers and the exclusionary nature of occupational licensing laws. The IWW’s Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee has condemned these forms of exclusion.

Furthermore, Kilgore notes that “the very conditions of parole often create obstacles to employment. Many states require that an employer of a person on parole agree that the workplace premises can be searched at any time without prior warning-hardly an attractive proposition for any business.  In addition, tens of thousands of people on parole are subject to house arrest with electronic monitors.  All movement outside the house must be pre-approved by their parole agent. This makes changes in work schedule or jobs that involve travel an enormous challenge.” In It’s About Time: America’s Imprisonment Binge, criminologists James Austin and John Irwin note that these parole policies lock ex-convicts out of legitimate employment and thus make them more likely to reoffend, not less. 

Immigration Detention and Exploiting Migrant Workers

One of the largest segments of imprisonment in the United States today is immigration detention. Immigrants are locked up in detention centers without charges, trials, or often even access to counsel.

Undocumented immigrants outside of detention centers live in constant fear of being caught, imprisoned, and deported. This fear can easily be used by employers in order to intimidate, abuse, and exploit migrant workers.

A recent documentary from Frontline, Rape in the Fields, exposes how immigrant women are vulnerable to rape and sexual abuse on the job, largely because fear of deportation deters them from reporting such abuse.

In addition to making migrant workers vulnerable to violence, abuse, and exploitation, immigration restrictions trap third world workers in poverty. As Bryan Caplan puts it, “Most would-be immigrants are desperately poor, but could easily work their way out of poverty if they were here.” 

The effect of immigration restrictions is bad for immigrant workers and bad for consumers. Not only are workers trapped in poor countries where they can’t earn much, but their production is also restricted accordingly. As Caplan explains, “Immigration laws trap people in countries where workers produce far below their potential.”

So total production decreases dramatically because of these coercive laws that trap people in poverty and leave violators vulnerable to exploitation and violence.

Unions for the Prison State

While most of this post emphasizes how workers are harmed by incarceration, it’s noteworthy that particular workers benefit from and actively lobby for mass incarceration. Corrections guard unions and police unions are concentrated interest groups that benefit directly from criminalizing the public, expanding prison populations, and expanding the state’s violent powers. These groups engage in persistent rent seeking, lobbying for authoritarian policies. In a sense, imprisonment is a mechanism of plunder, by which these concentrated groups of workers benefit at the expense of most other workers. The prison state means enslavement, exploitation, marginalization, and structural poverty for workers around the globe, but for guards and police it means being given extraordinary power and extracting rents through the state.

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “Avowals of Selfhood: Review of Egoism” read and edited by Nick Ford.

For the egoist, individualism must precede anarchism, for the affirmation of self is the source of the denial of all authority — individualism being the more general thing, anarchism a specific implication. Any anarchism that sets itself up as above individualism becomes its own cause with its own designs and will, subordinating the unique individual, becoming a new “alleged higher interest,” in Apio Ludd’s words. Perhaps this is why many anarchists deny egoists the title, and likewise why many egoists repudiate it themselves, as did Sidney Parker and Dora Marsden.

Feed 44:

• http://www.c4ss.org/
• http://www.youtube.com/user/c4ssvideos
• https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c4ss-media/id872405202?mt=2
• http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smash-walls-radio/c4ss-media?refid=stpr
• https://twitter.com/C4SSmedia
• http://c4ss.jellycast.com

Bitcoin tips welcome:

• 1N1pF6fLKAGg4nH7XuqYQbKYXNxCnHBWLB

“Man the terror alert for London has just been upped I don’t wanna go out now :(”, the text from my friend read. The recent news that Britain’s government has raised its terrorism alert level to “severe” unsurprisingly prompted a renewed climate of fear, reflected on social media and in major news outlets. Yet even if we grant a significantly increased risk of a terrorist attack, how can publicly raising a “threat level” do anything to lessen that possibility?

My friend did not change his plans, of course. Few — if any — do. The only likely change in behaviour amongst the British public is a greater feeling of dread when they see someone who looks “a bit foreign.” This fearmongering serves the state’s agenda of control and power by applying the timeless formula of uniting the population against “the enemy within.” It fits seamlessly into the narrative of xenophobia peddled by successive governments, so successfully that around three quarters of people in Britain are now anti-immigration. In the absence of any sort of protective value, Theresa May’s much-publicised announcement can be viewed as a further attempt to galvanise support for the next election. This support is built on the practice of blaming anyone and everyone but politicians for the country’s economic and social difficulties.

Those who chose not to take the raised alert level seriously displayed the typically British response of taking the piss, with numerous “#ThreatLevel” parodies doing the rounds on Twitter. When you’re nearly fourteen times more likely to die drowning in a bathtub than as the victim of a terrorist attack, such disregard for government threat levels is understandable. Terror attacks are horrific, and no reasonable person would say otherwise. But you (or indeed someone you know) being a victim of an attack is stupendously improbable.

It’s true to say that a small number of Brits are fighting for ISIS in Iraq and Syria. It’s also true to say that making a huge song-and-dance about raising the terror threat level will do absolutely nothing to prevent them from staging a terrorist attack. Maybe if politicians replaced such needless posturing with an examination of the failures of interventionist foreign policy, they might make a real contribution to the safety of Brits. Until then, we are left with a grim irony; the British government’s “terror alerts” help nobody and — if taken at all seriously — only succeed in creating terror.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Livello di Allerta: Insensato.

Dear C4SS Supporters,

A quick monthly update on our media progress:

In August, I submitted C4SS op-eds a total of 44,606 times to 2,595 English-language newspapers world-wide. I’ve cataloged 55 pickups for the month of C4SS English-language material by “establishment” media (and selected alternative, but large-viewership, media).

A couple of highlights for the month:

• We always get a bit of a giggle when state media picks up our anti-state stuff (that’s generally via secondary routes). This month, that state media was Iran’s PressTV, which picked up Kevin Carson’s “The Roots of Police Militarization” (the pickup was via Counterpunch, a non-state American left publication that I submit some of our material to).
• We don’t get as many campus press pickups as we’d like, but they do happen. For example, Indiana University’s Daily Student ran my own “Ferguson: Nixon Would Make a Solitude and Call it Peace” on August 19.
• As we add media coordinators focusing on languages other than English, our international media presence continues to expand. But until we’re addressing every member of the global community in his or her own language, one of our most productive avenues is English-language media in countries where English may not be the first or most prominent language but is still used. We’re proud of our increasing reach to audiences in Taiwan, Bangladesh and other Asian venues. See our Press Room for details of those pickups!
• One that I missed in last month’s update because it happened right at the very end of July — Joel Schlosberg’s “Reading Rainbow Soars Free” appeared in the Richmond, Virginia Voice — our first pickup that we know of in that state.

We seem to have stabilized somewhere north of 50 English-language pickups per month — the next goal is 100. As always, your support makes our continuing work possible and I personally appreciate it. Market anarchism is the bright future of humanity, and you are building that future, day by day, in the ruins of the statist present.

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Media Coordinator
Center for a Stateless Society

Patrick Cockburn discusses the failed War on Terror and the Saudi connection.

Sheldon Richman discusses mission creep in Iraq.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses proportionality in American law and order.

A. Barton Hinkle discusses whether there could be more Fergusons or not.

Scott Shackford discusses libertarian views on freedom of association and gay marriage.

James Bovard discusses Eric Holder’s record as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Sheldon Richman discusses policing.

Garry Leech discusses the indifference to the deaths of Muslim civilians.

Laurence M. Vance discusses Obama’s national drug control strategy.

Mike Marion discusses how being anti-war is pro-American.

Nebojsa Malic discusses the murderous fruits of empire.

Cory Massimino discusses Obama’s response to ISIS.

Michael Brenner discusses the ISIS threat.

Cosme Caal discusses the Latin Americanization of American police forces.

Laurence M. Vance discusses the GOP’s support for the welfare state.

Shikha Dalmia discusses why Obama can’t lead on Ferguson.

Steven Horowitz discusses libertarians, victim blaming, and structural racism.

David Stockman discusses recent plans to bomb Syria.

Shamus Cooke discusses Obama’s no win war on ISIS.

Glenn Greenwald discusses U.S. policy on Syria.

Kevin Carson discusses the roots of police militarization.

Thomas C. Mountain discusses the career of Gayle Smith.

Rizwan Zulfiqar Bhutta discusses the participation of Pakistani women in political movements.

Jack Cole discusses why heroin should be legalized or decriminalized.

Jochen-Martin Gutsch and Juan Moreno discuss the failed War on Drugs.

Timothy P. Carney discusses Iraq, Ferguson, and the libertarian moment.

James Peron discusses why conservatives aren’t the friends of libertarians.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses what the murder of James Foley says about the U.S.

Fabiano Caurana beats the world champion, Magnus Carlsen.

Fabinao Caurana also beat Veselin Topalov.

Antiwar.com is having its annual fundraising drive. Antiwar.com is definitely a site worth donating to and visiting daily. Its been an indispensable source of information and opinion for me. There are always interesting editorials worth reading and plenty of news to inform you. Not to mention that it’s a single issue site that offers perspectives from across the political spectrum. You won’t get bored easily with the variety being offered.

Another strength of Antiwar.com is the quality of the in-house columnists. Whether you’re reading Justin Raimondo or Lucy Steigerwald; it’s sure to be interesting. These in-house writers make fine additions to the non-in house writers sourced from around the web. Lucy Steigerwald’s work is especially enjoyable and well written.

In addition to the above; Antiwar.com is run by anti-militarist libertarians. Those who appreciate our left-libertarian writing on here are encouraged to help further our anti-militarist stance via donating to Antiwar.com. Antiwar.com is not a left-libertarian site per se, but, it does valuable work that benefits left-libertarianism.

This valuable work includes sourcing news from a wide variety of sites. The kind of news you may not find in the mainstream media. It cuts through corporatist propaganda that serves the interests of the warfare state and political class. Such propagandistic shilling for war is in definite need of being countered. Antiwar.com is your go to resource for that.

Where the war party propagandists mentioned above consistently push war; Antiwar.com consistently pushes peace. The number of lives that could be saved by this unwavering advocacy of peace is high. Antiwar.com is doing its part to save lives from militarism and imperialism every day. This is especially crucial work in the age of extrajudicial drone assassinations and saber rattling at China.

Antiwar.com knows that the above mentioned imperialism and militarism is as much a part of Democratic Party practice as the practice of the GOP. It provides a critique of the war party across party lines. This is especially needed in a time when Obama has renewed the Iraq War started by a Republican president. Warmongering knows no party boundaries and neither should we critics of war know any such boundaries in our criticism.

Anti-militarist work that spares no one guilty of pushing warfare is worth donating to. If you have money to spare; please consider donating to Antiwar.com. You’ll be helping out countless victims of the American empire by bringing their plight to the attention of the public. A very worthy cause.

Amnesty International declared that the sentence passed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, on a case in which the Guatemalan government did not investigate the tragic murder of a teenager, tells the whole world that violence against women will not be tolerated.

Maria Isabel Veliz Franco was 15 when she was sexually abused, tortured and brutally murdered in Guatemala in 2001. Her mother fought for justice and, on July 28, 2014, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that the Guatemalan authorities had not adequately investigated the murder, neglecting it in an environment of systematic violence and discrimination against women.

Sebastian Elgueta, a researcher from Amnesty International who writes on Guatemala, stated that the “lessons from this case will only be apprehended when the death of every women in Guatemala is taken seriously, and when concrete measures begin to be taken to prevent violence against them, creating a safe and respectful society for all.”

This tragic case highlights the importance of courts and rulings outside the nation state, for they judge whether governments are respecting so-called obligations they take upon themselves to respect human rights and hence legitimize their power.

The first case I researched in the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court was also a Guatemalan case, Street Children (Villagran Morales et al) v. Guatemala.

I was already a libertarian then and I was actually surprised to see that the case of five kids killed by the police, which no doubt would’ve been ignored forever if it was up to the Guatemalan state, had been taken to an international independent court that would rule and sentence the state to compensate the families of the victims, investigate and punish the responsible and take measures to avoid that situation in the future.

The emergence of these courts is important in that it’s at least an independent power acting to limit the state and challenging the idea that the state is the final arbiter of our liberties and rights within its borders. The state here is faced with the awkward situation of being the defendant rather the accuser in a court that holds them up to the standard of actually respecting the rights they vowed to uphold.

In a Brazilian case of a mentally impaired patient, Damiao Ximenes Lopes, who had been neglected and died in a nursing home linked to the government health care system, the Brazilian state was condemned for lack of investigation of the occurrence. Another case involved the disappeared people from the Araguaia guerilla during the military dictatorship, where the Court understood that the Brazilian Amnesty Act, forgiving blatant violations of human rights committed by the dictatorship, was illegal, something I’ve touched upon in other article.

From a radical free market perspective, these international courts could allow us to argue that Brazil violates human rights for not allowing union freedom to its citizens.

The possibility exists because the Inter-American Court of Human Rights can evaluate rights violations listed in the American Convention on Human Rights, which deals with civil and political rights, but can also examine some of the provisions of the Protocol of San Salvador, that deals with economic, social and cultural rights. Among them, there’s this one:

Article 8
Trade Union Rights
1. The States Parties shall ensure:
a. The right of workers to organize trade unions and to join the union of their choice for the purpose of protecting and promoting their interests. As an extension of that right, the States Parties shall permit trade unions to establish national federations or confederations, or to affiliate with those that already exist, as well as to form international trade union organizations and to affiliate with that of their choice. The States Parties shall also permit trade unions, federations and confederations to function freely . . .

Since Getulio Vargas, Brazilian workers have had no freedom to unionize, for they must submit to “union oneness,” a legal monopoly that allows only one union to represent a given segment of workers in a territory. No wonder the largest unions in the country, CUT and Forca Sindical, are firmly aligned with corporate interests.

That’s also one of the reasons the Brazilian government doesn’t recognize the Convention No. 87 of the International Labour Organization. ILO in its own constitution establishes the freedom of union association, but by ratifying it Brazil would have to commit to the application of the principle in its work relations. Article 2 establishes that workers, without distinction and previous permission, have the right to constitute the organizations they deem convenient and to affiliate themselves to them, provided they respect their internal statutes. ILO’s Article 2 and PSS’s article 8 are very similar and are meant to protect a simple principle of union relations that the Brazilian government violates.

Should we secure a condemnation of Brazil in an international court for impeding the functioning of a free union, outside its monopoly system, that would be a very important step in calling attention of workers of this aburd denial of their righs to free association and better work conditions.

Thus, international courts may possess one of the few authorities a state might be forced to recognize, and we can use that to have it investigate the murder of street kids or to have it sentenced for not respecting workers’s rights to unionize the way they see fit. The means might not be radical, but the idea is: the state can’t have the last word on our lives and rights.

Legislative activism will not guide us to freedom, but there’s a law on our side, we might as well exploit it.

Translated into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

A administração Obama recentemente anunciou uma política de intervenção limitada no Iraque, usando ataques com drones para impedir a conquista de áreas curdas autônomas pelo Estado Islâmico (ISIS). O aliado principal dos Estados Unidos na região é o Governo Regional do Curdistão liderado por Massoud Barzani e o suporte americano contra o Estado Islâmico se limita às áreas curdas dentro do Iraque.

O concorrente principal de Barzani pela lealdade do povo curdo é Abdullah Ocalan, o líder do Partido dos Trabalhadores Curdos (PKK), que é ativo em todos os quatro países com minorias curdas significativas.

Quando liderava o PKK, que era originalmente marxista-leninista, de dentro de uma prisão na Turquia, Ocalan estudou o trabalho do anarquista Murray Bookchin e adotou uma variação de sua filosofia “municipalista libertária” (que ele denominou “confederalismo democrático”). A filosofia de Bookchin chamou a atenção de Ocalan no meio de uma onda de interesse no pensamento libertário socialista entre os nacionalistas curdos após a queda da União Soviética. Ocalan via o confederalismo democrático — também influenciado por lutas horizontalistas como a do EZLN mexicano — como alterativa ao capitalismo corporativo ocidental e à economia de controle soviética.

O confederalismo democrático se tornou a base para o Grupo de Comunidades no Curdistão, uma tentativa do PKK de administrar territorialmente as áreas curdas. Trata-se de um modelo muito próximo às democracias diretas federadas buscadas por Bookchin, espelhadas na Comuna de Paris, nos sovietes que surgiram na Rússia depois da Revolução de Fevereiro e nas células anarquistas locais da Revolução Espanhola. A economia é governada por uma mistura de autogestão pelos trabalhadores e planejamento participativo. As mulheres são importantes nas unidades municipais e de milícia e têm lutado valentemente — por motivos compreensíveis — contra o Estado Islâmico.

O PKK é listado ainda como uma organização terrorista por conta de sua insurreição violenta contra o governo turco, embora tenha mantido uma trégua com a Turquia durante o ano passado e tenha ganho significativa autonomia territorial nas áreas curdas do leste turco. Desde a trégua, o PKK moveu a maior parte de suas milícias para o Curdistão iraquiano em abril.

O apoio ao PKK seria provavelmente muito mais efetivo se Obama realmente quisesse parar a penetração do Estado Islâmico no Curdistão iraquiano, especialmente dada a paz do partido com a Turquia e a independência de facto das áreas curdas no nordeste da Síria. O PKK e milícias aliadas na Síria têm tido muito mais sucesso militar contra as forças do Estado Islâmico do que o Exército Livre da Síria, que é apoiado pelo Ocidente. O PKK defendeu as áreas dos Yazidis do Curdistão iraquiano e realocou os civis em risco quando as forças Peshmerga de Barzani se dissolveram. Os combatentes do PKK da Turquia evitaram a queda de Kobane no Curdistão sírio, que está além das linhas de comunicação entre as áreas do Estado Islâmico na Síria e no Iraque. Ocalan e o PKK, ao contrário de Barzani, têm apoio popular em todo o Curdistão, não só na sua região iraquiana.

Isso tem pouca probabilidade de acontecer, porém. A única coisa pior que uma vitória do ISIS, para o estado americano seria uma demonstração da alternativa tanto ao capitalismo corporativo quanto ao socialismo de estado, baseada no descentralismo, na democracia direta e na autogestão.

O Curdistão tem muito em comum com a Coreia do pós-guerra. No vácuo de poder deixado pela saída das forças japonesas da península coreana, como escreve o companheiro de C4SS William Gillis (“Mass Graves“, reproduzido no Austro-Athenian Empire, 25 de maio de 2008), “algo incrível aconteceu. Os anarquistas coreanos, defensores de longa data das lutas de resistência, surgiram e formaram uma federação nacional de conselhos municipais e de trabalhadores para supervisionar um projeto enorme de reforma agrária”. As autoridades de ocupação soviéticas no norte rapidamente impediram o projeto, liquidando o projeto anarquista e instalando o regime de Kim. As forças americanas foram significativamente mais lentas, dando à Coreia um intervalo de paz e liberdade. Ao chegarem, porém, os comandantes militares americanos “não tinham protocolos para lidar com federações regionais e comunas anarquistas”. Assim, eles restauraram a propriedade das terras para a aristocracia expropriada e ajudaram os senhores a estabelecerem um governo militar. Com o começo da Guerra da Coreia, o assassinato dos anarquistas e de outros esquerdistas pelo regime militar, que já ocorria antes, foi multiplicado. Pelo menos 100 mil suspeitos anarquistas, socialistas e comunistas ou simpatizantes foram enterrados em valas comuns.

O estado americano preferiria que o ISIS não vencesse. Mas, assim como os fazendeiros em A Revolução dos Bichos de George Orwell, os homens têm um interesse em comum com os porcos que passa por cima de todos os outros: eles não querem que os “animais” — ou seja, as pessoas comuns — governem a si mesmos.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

Cathy Reisenwitz announced last week that she was quitting full-time libertarian commentary to pursue a career in sales. She wrote in her blog post announcing this move that, “I want to learn to connect better. And getting successful at sales will require humility and constant feedback, and self-improvement is so incredibly important to building a happy life.” I don’t think I am making a presumptive statement when I say that we here at C4SS wish Reisenwitz the best in her new career path, and that she continues to have a place here, should she choose to take it.

Mediante una declaración hecha pública el mes pasado en la conferencia Río +20 (Conferencia de la ONU para un Desarrollo Sostenible), “La economía que necesitamos”, la Red Intercontinental para la Promoción de una Economía Social y Solidaria (RIPESS) critica el modelo de la “denominada economía verde” promulgada “por gobiernos y corporaciones” con el desprecio que se merece.

Hay al menos dos problemas con el movimiento de la economía verde. El primero es destacado en la declaración de RIPESS: es, en realidad, un intento tendencioso de crear un modelo nuevo y aparentemente verde de acumulación de capital adaptado al capitalismo corporativo global, basado en la “comercialización de los bienes comunes”.

El capitalismo verde (o progresista, o cognitivo), al igual que la primera Revolución Industrial, está basado en un proceso de acumulación primitiva a gran escala (un término técnico que utilizan los marxistas cuando se refieren al “robo masivo”).

La acumulación primitiva anterior al auge del sistema fabril en la Inglaterra industrial implicó el cercamiento de las tierras comunales: primero, de una parte importante de los “campos abiertos”, que eran pastizales para las ovejas, durante varios siglos a finales de la Baja Edad Media y comienzos de los tiempos modernos; luego, los cercamientos de los pastos, bosques y terrenos baldíos comunales ordenados por el parlamento en el siglo XVIII.

El nuevo modelo verde del capitalismo de estado corporativo, tal como sugiere la declaración de RIPESS, logra la acumulación primitiva mediante la privatización del comunal informacional. El economista Paul Romer la denomina la “nueva teoría del crecimiento”. Se basa en el acaparamiento de la innovación e información digitales —cosas que son libres por naturaleza— como fuente de ingresos. Este modelo “progresista” de capitalismo, promovido por Warren Buffett, Bill Gates y Bono, depende de las patentes y los derechos de autor mucho más que la actual versión del capitalismo corporativo.

El modelo “capitalista verde” intenta ser una respuesta a la principal amenaza con que se enfrenta el capitalismo corporativo y su modelo de acumulación de capital: las tecnologías de la abundancia. Si se les permitiera funcionar sin trabas, la adopción libre de tecnologías de producción efímeras y de bajo coste y los efectos radicalmente deflacionarios de la información digital replicable no solo destruirían los beneficios de la mayoría de las corporaciones existentes, sino que convertirían en superflua la mayor parte de las inversiones de capital.

Dejando de lado toda la retórica “progresista”, el “capitalismo verde” pretende atajar esta amenaza. Es un último esfuerzo para rescatar todo el sistema de privilegios de clase y explotación económica basado en la escasez artificial de los efectos revolucionarios de la abundancia.

El modelo de economía solidaria promovido por RIPESS —y por mis camaradas anticapitalistas de libre mercado del Centro para una Sociedad sin Estado— es todo lo contrario. Lo que queremos es una economía descentralizada y autoorganizada, en la que la gente ordinaria pueda aprovechar las nuevas tecnologías de la abundancia (como las tecnologías de producción de bajo coste y la información libre) para construir nuestra propia economía, en la que las enormes acumulaciones de tierras y capitales de las clases rentistas carecerían de valor.

Esto fue presagiado por las cooperativas owenitas [del socialista utópico Robert Owen, N. del T.] de la década de 1830, en la que comerciantes desempleados crearon talleres cooperativos y mercadearon sus productos entre sus compañeros trabajadores, canjeándolos por vales de horas de trabajo. El problema fue que este modelo solo funcionó en producciones artesanales, en las que los medios de producción eran todavía asequibles para los individuos. No funcionó en formas de producción industrial que dependían de máquinas grandes, especializadas y muy caras. Los Knights of Labor (Caballeros del Trabajo) aprendieron esta dura lección cuatro décadas más tarde, cuando sus intentos de crear cooperativas de trabajadores chocaron frontalmente con los costes de capitalización del sistema fabril.

La belleza de la época en que vivimos es que las nuevas tecnologías de producción están revirtiendo este proceso. Una parte creciente de la producción tiene lugar en talleres que emplean herramientas y maquinaria informáticas baratas y de uso general. Un pequeño negocio, equipado con un torno, un router, una impresora 3-D, etc., por un coste de entre 10.000 y 20.000 dólares, puede producir artículos que antiguamente requerían una fábrica de un millón de dólares. Y una parte mucho más grande de estos métodos de producción ya es asequible. En la producción de alimentos, la horticultura en terrazas intensiva en el uso del suelo ya eran mucho más productiva que la agricultura industrial. Las nuevas técnicas, como las de John Jeavons, la están haciendo más productiva todavía.

Es tecnológicamente factible que los trabajadores y los consumidores autofinancien una economía basada en el modelo owenita, con poco suelo y capital.

Por tanto, la pregunta es: ¿qué modelo queremos seguir? ¿Nos doblegaremos ante el modelo verde hamiltoniano de “progresistas” como Gates y Buffett, orientado a proteger sus beneficios de los efectos radicalmente deflacionarios de la abundancia? ¿O aprovecharemos de estos efectos deflacionarios para que personas como nosotros reemplacen la dominación de los patronos, del trabajo asalariado y de las deudas con una sociedad de autogobierno, ocio y cooperación mutua?

No deberías tener que pensar mucho en ello.

Artículo original publicado por Kevin Carson el 12 de julio de 2012.

Traducido del inglés por Javier Villate.

Anarchism and hierarchy have a tricky and messy relationship. Some anarchists proclaim to be against all hierarchy (sometimes even defining anarchism as such) and others proclaim they are simply against the state and don’t care about hierarchy itself. I believe individualist anarchism, rightly understood falls somewhere in between these extremes.

Individualist anarchism, in short, is the view that the individual human being is the building block of “society.” Therefore, whatever political system, or more accurately, apolitical non-system, is in place, ought to give primacy to the individual and respect their sovereignty as a free being. The non-system that best accomplishes this is anarchism.

Hierarchy is “a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority.” In some instances this kind of system is inherently wrong (or bad in itself); in others it is permissible and even good, in even others it is not inherently bad but still objectionable.

Where hierarchy is obviously problematic, even immoral, is when it is maintained through the initiation of force. As individualists, we maintain the sovereignty of the individual and regard a person’s personal autonomy as extremely morally relevant. The ability to exercise one’s faculties and capacities to the best of their ability according to their own volition is each individual’s fundamental right (and since each person has this right, it implies a limitation for when one forcibly impedes the actions of another).

The act of subordinating another’s goals by force and replacing them with your own is an affront to the individuality of both people and a violation of rights. The act of aggression is immoral in itself, yes. But a system of hierarchy maintained by aggression makes certain individuals subject to the authority of others; where one is merely a serf, obedient to the higher levels of the hierarchy, there is no individuality – something we are obviously against.

This leads the individualist to reject the use of violence, and therefore, the state. The state, contrary to the social contract theorists, relies on violence to maintain its funding and its monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a region. States are systems of aggressive, hierarchical, predators. They are the antithesis to individualism.

For many anarchists, private property is inherently hierarchical, and therefore impermissible. They are only partially right. In some sense, private property does create a hierarchy between the owner of a piece of property and everyone else. However, private property has other benefits that are worthy of consideration. There is no reason to restrict our analysis to a single question of hierarchy or no hierarchy. There are other morally relevant factors.

Private property is useful for a number of reasons, many of them consequential. A system of private property creates a prosperous, wealthy, society that can efficiently allocate scarce resources. Additionally, and of significant importance for the individualist, private property is vital for personal autonomy. As Roderick Long writes,

“The human need for autonomy: the ability to control one’s own life without interference from others. Without private property, I have no place to stand that I can call my own; I have no protected sphere within which I can make decisions unhampered by the will of others. If autonomy (in this sense) is valuable, then we need private property for its realization and protection.”

Without private property, the scope of the individual is restricted in favor of the community or society. As individualists we ought to be concerned with maximizing the autonomy of each person and private property is beneficial to that goal.

Furthermore, the replacement of private property with collective ownership doesn’t eliminate the existence of hierarchy. It merely changes the higher level of the hierarchy from the property owner to the majority of the collective. Under collective ownership, whoever happens to be in the majority has the say over what the property is used for, and are, therefore, in a place of authority over the minority.

Worthy of note is the question of parenting or the family. The parent-child relationship is historically hierarchical. However, without going too much into the complicated realm of children’s rights, the authority employed by proper parents in raising their children does not rely on force in the same sense that force is used against an adult (where to draw that line is another messy question). While there are instances of force that are unjust, such as abuse, there are other instances of force that are just, such as making a child eat their dinner. And since the parent-child hierarchy is seemingly beneficial to the individuals involved, the individualist anarchist is alright with it. (For more on an individualist anarchist view of children’s right, see the section of this essay entitled “The Rights of Children”)

What about systems of non-violent hierarchy? Many of these will depend on the details of the situation and the specific context. But we can generally say hierarchy, even “consensual” hierarchy, is always potentially problematic for the individualist. Since we consider autonomy and the exercise of one’s faculties of primary importance, situations where people voluntarily submit to the complete authority of others, creating a hierarchy, might very well be objectionable.

Consider a small town in which everyone, for one reason or another, voluntary submits all their property to collective ownership. For reasons explained above about the effects of private property on consequences and autonomy, we can say a town of private property is preferable to a town of collective ownership. So as individualists who value prosperity and autonomy, we have good reason to object to the voluntary communist town – even if it’s merely taking the stance that the townspeople are making a poor decision and should instead adopt a system of private property.

For reasons mentioned above, the initiation of force is impermissible for the individualist. After all, using force would be subjecting the townspeople to our will, which is actively immoral and worse than their voluntary decisions. So it would be wrong to use force to prevent the townspeople from creating voluntary communism.

However, using things such as persuasion, educational campaigns, or boycotts are permissible, and perhaps encouraged (whether are not these are effective, worthy measures is a different question). We recognize that voluntary communism is a bad system for the people who live there (and also potentially bad for others, for economic reasons or if the ideas start to spread and gain support), and subjecting themselves to the whim of the majority is misguided, so it wouldn’t make sense to remain ambivalent on the question.

There is also the concept of communal property forms that are horizontally organized and self-managed. These aren’t exactly the same a collective ownership models. Common pool resources where he private possessory rights of the individual are strictly defined are much more likely to protect and encourage personal autonomy and individualism than full on collectivism, despite being possibly problematic depending on how exactly the pools are organized.

The question of workplace hierarchy is possibly objectionable, but not inherently. Large, hierarchical workplaces that tend to treat workers like cogs in a machine or tools of the employers are clearly not in line with the individualist philosophy. A workplace where the employees on the lower rungs are pushed around and treated with little respect from their employers ought to be objected to (non-aggressively) by anyone concerned about autonomy and respect for persons.

Now, this doesn’t imply that all workplace hierarchy is everywhere and always bad. Sometimes it will be preferable for economic reasons. Sometimes the hierarchy is minimal and the employees have a say and are treated with respect. Sometimes the firm is hierarchical, but still relatively flat. While many of the giant corporations today are antithetical to individualist commitments, not all workplace hierarchy is inherently bad. It merely has the potential to be bad.

Merely asking if something is hierarchical and ending our moral analysis there is misguided. Similarly, merely asking if something is coercive and ending our moral analysis there is misguided. Individualism holds multiple things to be morally relevant. Aggression and negative liberty is important, yes. But so is personal autonomy. And so are prosperity and good consequences. Both political economy and moral philosophy require a kind of value pluralism combined with meticulous analysis.

The lesson to be learned about non-violent hierarchy is that it, like most things in life, is not inherently bad but it has the potential to be bad. Voluntary systems of hierarchy promote a culture of obedience and collectivism, and could possibly lead to systems that do rely on violence. They discourage individuality, freethinking, and autonomy. For these reasons, non-violent hierarchy is never inherently wrong for the individualist anarchist, but is always potentially problematic and often objectionable.

The individualist anarchist position on hierarchy falls somewhere between “it’s always wrong” and “it’s never wrong.” Sometimes it is. But other times, it’s not. Like I said earlier, the relationship between anarchism and hierarchy is tricky and messy. Part of being an individualist, a human being, is to rigorously and exhaustively think through things yourself. There aren’t always hard and fast principles that do our thinking for us, no matter how comfortable the armchair is.

Translations of this article:

• Spanish, El anarquismo individualista y la jerarquía

.

The Obama administration recently announced a policy of limited intervention in Iraq, using drone strikes to stave off conquest of Kurdish autonomous areas by ISIS. The main US ally on the ground is Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Regional Government, and US support against ISIS is limited to Kurdish areas inside Iraq.

Barzani’s main competitor for the loyalty of the Kurdish people is Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), which is active in all four nations with substantial Kurdish minorities.

While leading the originally Marxist-Leninist PKK from inside a Turkish prison, Ocalan studied the work of anarchist Murray Bookchin and adopted a form of his “libertarian municipalist” philosophy (which he renamed “democratic confederalism”). Bookchin’s philosophy came to Ocalan’s attention as part of a larger wave of interest in libertarian socialist thought among Kurdish nationalists after the fall of the USSR. Ocalan saw democratic confederalism — also influenced by horizontalist struggles like Mexico’s EZLN — as an alternative to both Western corporate capitalism and the Soviet command economy.

Democratic confederalism became the basis for the Group of Communities in Kurdistan, a PKK attempt at territorial administration in Kurdish areas.  It adheres closely to Bookchin’s model of federated direct democracies on the model of the Paris Commune, the soviets that emerged in Russia after the February Revolution, and local anarchist bodies in the Spanish Revolution. The economy is governed by a mixture of worker self-management and participatory planning. Women figure prominently in its municipalities and militia units, and have fought valiantly — for understandable reasons — against ISIS.

PKK is still listed as a terrorist organization because of its violent insurrection against the Turkish government, although it has maintained a truce with Turkey for the past year and gained significant regional autonomy for Kurdish areas in eastern Turkey. Since the truce the PKK moved the bulk of its fighting forces into Iraqi Kurdistan this April.

Supporting the PKK would arguably be far more effective if Obama really wants to stop ISIS penetration of Iraqi Kurdistan, especially given the party’s peace with Turkey and de facto independence of Kurdish areas in northeastern Syria. The PKK and allied militia in Syria have been more successful militarily against ISIS forces than the Western-backed Free Syrian army. PKK defended the Yazidi areas of Iraqi Kurdistan and relocated endangered civilians, when Barzani’s Peshmerga forces melted away. PKK fighters from Turkey have prevented the fall of Kobane in Syrian Kurdistan, which sits across lines of communication between ISIS areas in Syria and Iraq. Ocalan and the PKK, unlike Barzani, have popular support throughout Kurdistan — not just the Iraqi part.

But that’s unlikely to happen. The one thing worse than an ISIS victory, from the American state’s perspective, would be the demonstration effect of an alternative to both corporate capitalism and state socialism, based on decentralism, direct democracy and self-management.

Kurdistan has much in common with postwar Korea. In the power vacuum left by the retreat of Japanese forces from the Korean peninsula, C4SS comrade William Gillis writes (“Mass Graves,” reproduced at Austro-Athenian Empire, May 25, 2008), “something amazing happened. The Korean Anarchists, long the champions of the resistance struggle, came out of the woodwork and formed a nationwide federation of village and workers councils to oversee a massive project of land reform.” Soviet occupation authorities in the north quickly put a stop to this, liquidating the anarchist project and installing the Kim regime. American forces were considerably slower to arrive, giving southern Korea a respite of peace and freedom. When they did arrive, though, American military commanders “had no protocol for dealing with regional federations and anarchist communes.” Accordingly they restored land to the dispossessed aristocracy and helped the landlords set up a military government. With the start of the Korean War the military regime’s murder of anarchists and other leftists, already underway, kicked into high gear. At least 100,000 suspected anarchists, socialists and communists or sympathizers were buried in mass graves.

The American state would rather ISIS not win. But as with the farmers in Orwell’s Animal Farm, the men have one interest in common with the pigs that trumps all others: they don’t want the “animals” — ordinary people — to rule themselves.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Obama Vuole Sconfiggere Isis, ma non Molto.

O termo “anarquismo de mercado” pode dar a alguns a falsa impressão que anarquistas de mercado defendem uma sociedade organizada primariamente em torno do nexo monetário. Em parte, isso se deve ao fato de que uma das definições do termo “mercado” é igual à do mercado como instituição: refere-se à esfera das trocas. Ela também pode refletir o fato de que muitos anarcocapitalistas, que até recentemente eram aqueles que atraíam a maior parte da atenção dentro do meio, tendem a enfatizar a operação de empresas dentro do nexo monetário como forma primária de organização social.

Nós, anarquistas de mercado, levamos esse nome pelo fato de que, ao contrário dos libertários comunistas, sindicalistas e outros anarquistas explicitamente antimercado, vemos as trocas voluntárias do mercado como uma forma perfeitamente válida de organizar a vida econômica. Mas isso não significa que o nexo monetário será a forma predominante de organização dentro de uma sociedade sem estado. Como David Graeber mostrou em seu livro Debt, o nexo monetário se torna a forma dominante de organização da vida econômica somente em sociedades baseadas na conquista militar e na escravidão.

Como anarquistas, almejamos uma sociedade em que todas as funções são organizadas, nas palavras de Kropotkin, por “acordos livres entre vários grupos, territoriais e profissionais, constituídos livremente para a produção e o consumo, além da satisfação das várias necessidades e aspirações de uma pessoa civilizada”. Isso inclui os mercados. Também inclui economias sociais e da dádiva, produção P2P e redes horizontais de todos os tipos.

Os comuns (também chamados pelo termo inglês “commons”) podem ser a forma mais eficiente de organizar algumas funções econômicas. Isso é provavelmente verdadeiro em relação a recursos não-renováveis como minerais e todos os tipos de recursos compartilhados como florestas, pastos e pisciculturas, que Elinor Ostrom dedicou sua carreira a estudar. É certamente verdadeiro em relação à informação, que é infinitamente replicável a um custo marginal zero.

Mercados são melhores para a esfera de produção e distribuição de bens replicáveis, mas somente a um custo em esforço. Mas mesmo dentro dessa esfera de bens produzidos pelo trabalho humano de oferta elástica, os bens e serviços que são mais adequados à produção em pequena escalas podem ser organizados fora do nexo monetário, através de várias organizações sociais primárias: sindicatos locais, sociedade mútuas, projetos de coabitação e compostos de família estendida ou multifamílias, associações de bairro, comunidades intencionais e outras unidades sociais usadas para partilha de recursos, custos e riscos.

A precificação em dinheiro deve ser a opção preferível em casos que envolvem insumos produtivos (por exemplo, microprocessadores) que requerem grandes fábricas e áreas de mercado, além de bens que sejam distribuídos por longas distâncias e envolvem certa anonimidade (como formas de produção que requerem máquinas mais caras e uma rede de distribuição que cobre toda uma cidade).

Mesmo no caso da produção para o nexo monetário, em uma sociedade genuinamente livre sem direitos de propriedade artificiais, escassez artificial, monopólios e outros privilégios garantidos pelo estado, podemos esperar que formas cooperativas e autogestionárias de produção sejam muito mais comuns que no presente e que ocorram em um ambiente em que a maior parte dos trabalhadores tenham a opção de se retirar para os comuns por algum tempo e se recusem a trabalhar para ofertas que não sejam de seu agrado (como os camponeses ingleses faziam antes dos cercamentos, que podiam aceitar o trabalho agrícola assalariado ou abandoná-lo e subsistir através dos comuns).

É também importante lembrar que a troca monetária ocorrerá em um contexto em que os bancos não mais possuem um monopólio sobre a emissão de crédito e sobre os meios de troca.

Os anarquistas de mercado, como todos os anarquistas, partem da premissa de que as pessoas comuns encontram e trabalham umas com as outras como iguais, decidindo sem coerção como combinar seus esforços para atender às suas necessidades mútuas. Isso pode ocorrer através da troca dos produtos de seu trabalho, pela produção cooperativa ou pelo compartilhamento. O principal, como David Graeber argumentou, é que as formas de organização surjam através de um processo aberto de interação entre iguais em que nenhuma das partes tem o poder de usar a força armada para compelir os outros a obedecer sua vontade.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

A charge that has been leveled by the pro-government left is that anarchists are simply neoliberals without money or some variation upon this. The tweeter in question provides no definition of neo-liberalism, so, we turn to Dictionary.com to provide us with a definition of neoliberalism to be used in analyzing this charge. It’s as follows:

a modern politico-economic theory favouring free trade, privatization, minimal government intervention in business, reduced public expenditure on social services, etc

There’s a wide range of anarchist views and types of anarchism. Some of which largely or entirely reject economies based on notions of free exchange or free trade. Anarcho-communism and anarcho-primitivism come to mind. They tend to favor gift economies and oppose market economics. There are forms of anarchism like mutualism and left-wing market anarchism that do support free trade and markets. Their conception of free trade and markets is not neo-liberal however. These types of anarchism involve worker control and opposition to usury in some cases.

The related notion of privatization is another supposed feature of neo-liberalism that anarchists allegedly also agree with. There is a huge problem with this accusation. Anarchists favor the abolition of capitalist private property. A faulty assumption at work is that the government sphere and public sphere are the same thing. It’s possible to advocate “privatization” in the sense of non-government or non-state control/ownership without ditching the idea of public space. The kind of corporate capitalist privatization favored by neo-liberals is also not what anarchists support. A related point to be made is that neo-liberal “privatization” tends to involve just outsourcing a government monopoly to a private corporation. This corporation is the new monopolist protected by law and gains tax dollars via government compulsion.

What about minimal government intervention in business? Not all anarchists advocate business arrangements. Those that do are proponents of non-capitalist markets. It’s also important to note that our present neo-liberal system includes plenty of subsidies to corporations. This corporate welfare is something anarchists oppose.

Anarchists also don’t have the same ideas about what should replace government social services. We oppose capitalist arrangements as a viable alternative. Neo-liberals don’t. This is an important difference to note.

A final and very important difference to note is that neo-liberalism is not really so anti-government. Peter Frase noted this in a good Jacobin piece. He said:

Neoliberalism is a state project through and through, and is better understood as a transformation of the state and a shift in its functions, rather than a quantitative reduction in its size. In his Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey underlines the importance of the state in forcibly creating a “good business climate” by breaking down barriers to capital accumulation and repressing dissent.