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…

Kevin Carson as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde By Walter Block [1] Kevin Carson’s (2004) Studies in Mutualist Political Economy is an infuriating book. On the one hand, its author shows great familiarity with many of the most important libertarian [2] contributors to the field of political economy. Taking them in alphabetical order, they include:…

Benjamin Tucker famously held that property in real estate depends on continued personal occupancy, so that when a landlord undertakes to rent out a plot of land or a building to a tenant, the “landlord” actually surrenders ownership to the “tenant,” who — despite whatever contract she may have signed — has no obligation, enforceable…

…They [anarchists] spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It is not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can be…

There’s an increasing sense of crisis in the far left today. Having lashed itself to an implicit primitivism over the course of the twentieth century now that that ship is sinking much of the left is desperately looking for a way off. The Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics by Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek is…

Many libertarians say the traditional Left/Right political spectrum has become meaningless and useless. But to the extent that this is true for them, this is only because they have allowed themselves to be befuddled by political fraud and, perhaps, by a weak background in political history. The spectrum is just as useful and meaningful as…

The Labor Theory of Value: A Critique of Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy By Robert P. Murphy [1] Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (2004) is an impressive work. It first attempts to rehabilitate the classical labor theory of value (by giving it a subjectivist spin), and then traces the history of capitalism to…

…Many libertarians in this century have been, in my view, insufficiently sensitive to the perspective of the poor, of laborers, of women, of minorities. But I view this as a historical aberration, brought about by the fact that a) the triumphant advance of socialism pushed libertarians into a century-long alliance with conservatives, and some aristocratic,…

First, I [1] must begin by affirming my conviction that Lysander Spooner and Benjamin R. Tucker were unsurpassed as political philosophers and that nothing is more needed today than a revival and development of the largely forgotten legacy that they left to political philosophy. By the mid-nineteenth century, the libertarian individualist doctrine had reached the point…

Murray Rothbard rejected, in the strongest terms, this Marshallian attempt at a synthesis of marginalist innovations with the legacy of Ricardo. And with it, he rejected Marshall’s attempted synthesis of labor and waiting as elements of “real cost.” To understand why, we must start with Rothbard’s distinction between the judging of actions ex ante and ex post….

… So we see, even assuming an “anarcho-capitalist” property regime, anything recognizable as “capitalism” to anyone else could not exist. In fact the society would look a lot like what “anarcho-socialists” think of as “socialism”. Not exactly like it, but much closer than anything they’d imagine as capitalism. However, under anarchism, even such a strict…

Alfred Marshall, the founder of the so-called neoclassical school, was also the first prominent economist to attempt a reconciliation of Ricardo with the marginalists. Following the Senior-Longfield school, as interpreted by Mill, Marshall treated the “abstinence” of capital (or “waiting”) as another form of disutility alongside labor. He thus fused them into a unified subjective…

For the next few weeks, C4SS will be publishing and hosting copies of Volume 20, Number 1, of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. This particular volume contains the Symposium on Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy. The articles on and selections from Carson’s book you can look forward to: “Editorial to Symposium on Mutualist…

Many of the nineteenth-century individualist anarchists, and in particular those thinkers associated with Benjamin Tucker’s journal Liberty, sought to combine a political theory based on individual sovereignty and self-ownership with an economic theory based on the labor theory of value. Like Marxists, they tended to condemn the wage system as oppressive, and interpreted profit, rent,…

President Obama’s recent gun control efforts exemplify the ableism and general discrimination inherent in progressive paternalism. In his latest attempt at gun control, Obama seeks to bar individuals who collect Social Security benefits and whose resources are overseen by “representative payees” due to “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetence, condition, or disease” from owning or…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Grant A. Mincy‘s “Wild and Free” read by Thomas J. Webb and edited by Nick Ford. For me, the old saying from American anarchist and conservationist Ed Abbey rings true: A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. In protecting country from government, we protect ourselves from tyranny. The greatest gift wild…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Nick Ford‘s “GM Deeres to be Stupid” read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. GM, Deere and other similar companies who rely on IP for their profits continue to be some of the best examples of how capitalism goes against the forces of freed markets. It creates artificial enclosure…

The attacks on sex workers by paternalistic politicians and their armed enforcers at the local, state, and federal levels grow worse by the year. As of 2008, only two states — Nevada and Rhode Island — allowed individuals to buy and sell sex. In 2009, Rhode Island closed its legal loophole which allowed for paid…

Mi è capitato spesso di scrivere dell’immunità sistematica della polizia, un problema che solo quest’anno è costato la vita a centinaia di persone. Ma qual è la tattica da adottare contro questa violenza? Come possiamo contrastare questa assenza di responsabilità? Da tre anni, Genevieve Huizarof protesta pacificamente e si interroga sulla questione. All’inizio pensava che…

Steven Fake discusses what Israel could have taught Dixie. Lucy Steigerwald discusses U.S. sensitivity to civilian deaths. David S. D’Amato discusses anarchism and minarchism in American history. Sheldon Richman discusses Clarence Thomas. John Feffer discusses ISIS and the terrible twos. Franklin Lamb discusses Palestine and ISIS. Robert Parry discusses Libya and Hilary Clinton. Chris Toensing…