1. “Rejoinder” to Murray Rothbard This is not, properly speaking, a rejoinder — obviously, since Rothbard’s article predates my book. But since it was chosen to set the tone for this symposium issue, and includes some comments on individualist anarchism in general, I’ll make a few remarks anyway. On the land issue, I reserve comment, since that is also…

The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey, by Michael Huemer (Palgrave McMillan – 2012) Introduction The Problem of Political Authority, by Michael Huemer (2012) was collecting dust on my bookshelf until a month ago. I received it from a friend around a year ago, and…

C4SS Feed 44 presents James C. Wilson‘s “The Problem With Electoral Politics” read by Joey Clark and edited by Nick Ford. Those with great wealth inevitably find ways to use it to secure more political favors for themselves at the expense of the rest of us. The system inevitably becomes increasingly rigged in their favor….

In the farcical, technocratic future society of Vonnegut’s Player Piano, you have to have at least a bachelor’s degree to do even the most menial service jobs — of which there aren’t a lot left. The great majority of jobs have been automated out of existence, and the ranks of the still employed are dominated…

In 1888, France’s leading libertarian periodical, Gustave de Molinari’s Journal des Économistes (stronghold of Lockean property theory and proto-Austrian economics) published a largely favourable and appreciative (if somewhat condescending) review of the United States’s leading libertarian periodical, Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty (stronghold of Mutualist property theory and Proudhonian economics). [1] Tucker’s journal returned the favor in…

C4SS Feed 44 presents T.J. Scholl‘s “Even Cops Should Have the Right to Make an Honest Living” read by Thomas J. Webb and edited by Nick Ford. Radical feminists and other social critics often point out that the pressures of capitalist androcentrism blur the line between free choice and force, resulting in marginalized women being…

…Mutualism is a social system based on reciprocal and non-invasive relations among free individuals. The Mutualist standards are: Individual: Equal freedom for each — without invasion of others. Economic: Untrammeled reciprocity, implying freedom of exchange and contract — without monopoly or privilege. Social: Complete freedom of voluntary association — without coercive organization… The libertarian ideal…

Freedom is Slavery: Laissez-Faire Capitalism is Government Intervention: A Critique of Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy By George Reisman [1] Kevin Carson’s new book Studies in Mutualist Political Economy centers on the incredible claim, self-contradictory on its face, that capitalism, including laissez-faire capitalism, is a system based on state intervention, in violation of…

So, just a reminder as electoral season resumes: If you want to say that I am obliged to support Bernie Sanders’s campaign on the grounds that, however much it may offend my purist sensibilities, I need to speak to real-world practical gains, then you need to show me how, practically, me being invested in this…

…Left-libertarians share with other leftists the recognition that big businesses enjoy substantial privileges that benefit them while harming the public. But they stress that the proper response to corporate privilege is to eliminate subsidies, bailouts, cartelizing regulations, and other state-driven features of the legal, political, and economic environments that prop up corporate power rather than…

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….