Reason magazine editors Nick Gillespie and Katherine Mangu-Ward have recently debated the question of minarchism (i.e., minimal government) vs. free-market anarchism. As an anarchist, I’m obviously on Mangu-Ward’s side of the debate. But both writers make some assumptions about strategy that I find problematic. I’ll start with Gillespie, who expresses impatience with “boring, tedious, and…

Di Emmi Bevensee. Originale pubblicato il 15 maggio 2018 con il titolo Closed Borders and Black Market Economics. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. Nel 2012, il sedicenne José Antonio Elena Rodríguez fu ucciso a Nogales, in Messico, da un agente di confine che stava dall’altra parte del muro, in territorio statunitense. L’agente sparò stando una quindicina…

In 2012, sixteen-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodríguez was murdered in Nogales, Mexico by a Border Patrol agent across the wall, on the U.S. side. The agent shot from behind the rusted iron slats, the existing border wall in Sonora, about 50 feet above the boy. The murderer claimed that the boy was “throwing rocks in…

When anarchists talk about counter-economic action, we envisage exchanging goods and services independent of state jurisdiction. Our purpose is to press the bounds of the regulatory state. It doesn’t matter if our efforts are illegal per se. Legality is not a moral prescription. A proper concern for institution building is uncommon in counter-economic philosophy. The…

Egoism has a long history among illegalist anarchists. These illegalists rejected the moralistic ideals of their comrades, who argued that seizing the property of the capitalist class was an act of reclamation: one that was justified by the unjust nature of the present property system. But the illegalists found this justification unnecessary.

[Di Chris Shaw. Originale pubblicato su Center for a Stateless Society il 18 febbraio 2017 con il titolo “Full Employment” Useful Idiots. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.] L’economia moderna gira in tondo. L’aumento della produttività non riesce a stare dietro all’inflazione dei salari ed è stagnante, soprattutto in Gran Bretagna. La richiesta di lavoratori si concentra…

The modern economy is stuck in a major rut. Productivity gains have not matched wage inflation, and productivity itself is relatively stagnant, particularly in the UK. Job provision is being increasingly concentrated in low-pay sectors, with temporary work and part-time contracts creating a modern precariat of working class individuals, students and other members of a…

[Di Logan Marie Glitterbomb. Originale pubblicato su Center for a Stateless Society il 14 gennaio 2017 con il titolo Is It Time for the Next Dread Pirate Roberts? Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.] Il venti settembre 2010, craigslist.com è stato costretto a chiudere la sezione “adulti” dal suo portale perché molti annunci erano usati per pubblicizzare…

In September 2010, craigslist.com was forced to take down the “adult” categories from its listings due to the fact that many of them were being used to advertise for sex work. After the categories were removed many sex workers took to posting in other semi-relevant sections using code words. This underground system of coded language…

I confess my reaction on Election Night, when it first looked like Trump might get in the White House, was sheer panic. It was a bit like Philip K. Dick’s “Black Iron Prison” closing down. On a personal level, I was about as terrified as the night I was arrested and put in jail. Now,…

Howdy, folks! Another Sunday has arrived, which means it’s time to talk about what C4SS is doing, where we’ve been and what we’ve got coming down the pike. It’s your Media Coordinator Weekly Update. An Agora Around Agorism God, I love alliterative puns. Anyway, every month C4SS picks a theme, and a selection of our Fellows…

“By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward.” – Attributed to Mikhail Bakunin in Paolo Novaresio’s The Explorers ŸŸŸA revolutionary is someone who knows the political world in which they want to…

Recently two US soldiers were arrested attempting to smuggling undocumented Mexicans over the border. Marco Nava, Jr. and Joseph Cleveland had successfully done this once before and when arrested during their second run, they opted to snitch on the entire operation. It seems that either only a few facts are known or the details of…

Mercato nero e agorismo sono parte integrante di come le persone libere salveranno il mondo dalla perenne oppressione economica e dal disastro ambientale. In cosa consiste l’attività del mercato nero? Cos’è l’agorismo e come fa a sovvertire il potere statale? Come fa l’agorismo a promuovere la sostenibilità ecologica? La risposta migliore viene dall’opera monumentale del…

Black markets and agorism are an integral part of the way free people are going to save the world from unrelenting economic oppression and environmental damage. What constitutes black market activity? What is agorism and how does it subvert the state? How does agorism promote ecological sustainability? These questions are best answered by looking at…

“Dual power” can be nicely summed up by the popular Wobbly phrase of “building the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.” Proponents of a dual power strategy share a belief in developing, at the grassroots level, an “alternative social infrastructure” that piece-by-piece replaces our statist, capitalist, society. Simply put, this…

Smashing the State for Fun and Profit Since 1969 An Interview With the Libertarian Icon Samuel Edward Konkin III (a.k.a. SEK3) (originally published at spaz.org) Samuel Edward Konkin III (SEK3), author of the “New Libertarian Manifesto” coined the term “agorism” to describe his ideology.  Although very similar to anarcho-capitalism, unlike anarcho-capitalism it opposes intellectual property. …

Three and a half years ago I wrote an essay about why Americans should stop participating in the presidential election — either as voters, as supporters of one candidate or another, or as participants in the endless social media and conversational back-and-forths. In short, that they should pay as little attention as possible to the election campaign…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “Weed Legalization as Privatization, Disempowerment” read and edited by Nick Ford. Marijuana’s legalization seems much more like neoliberal privatization of markets than true liberation of them. While I do not question the decency of these first major marijuana retailers, there are legitimate concerns. Those most victimized by the state’s rabid oppression…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “We’re All Illegalists Now!” read and edited by Nick Ford. Being that the drug world is literally under siege by a domestic military operation, it is beyond anyone’s imagination how markets like the Silk Road could keep their doors open without a serious injection of class consciousness. All those involved in…