Tag: anarchism
Good Riddance to Old News Outlets
A recent 12-country study from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found a near ten percent increase in the use of mobile devices to access news. Additionally the report found a 42% increase in referrals to news sources from Facebook, with Apple and Google also gaining popularity as news sources. More people, especially younger people, are getting…
Beyond the Hellish Choice of Process Documents or Social Capitalism
One of the best things about The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy is that David Graeber finally tackles issues directly relevant to anarchists. While his prior work has had value, it’s also largely been about rather obvious topics and punctuated with a need to apologize for or defend…
Ambiguity and Anarchism
Existentialism, like anarchism, is a philosophy which places the human individual as the starting point of our thoughts about the world. The individual, says the existentialist, is thrown into the world as a free subject along with other free subjects who both came before them and will come after them. Outside of the individual, other…
Against All Bosses: Government AND Corporate on Feed 44
C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Against All Bosses: Government AND Corporate” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. “My hatred of bosses is at the root of my identification, not only as a libertarian — but as a Leftist. My instinctive affinity for the “you’re not the boss of me” sentiment, which Masciotra dismisses…
The Choice is between Government and Liberty
An article by George H. Smith from a few years ago makes a distinction about freedom that seems worth pursuing. In “Jack and Jill and Two Kinds of Freedom” (also a podcast), Smith distinguishes between (as the title indicates) two kinds of freedom, or between freedom and liberty. He tells the story of Jack, who…
Q: What do Individualist Anarchists Think of An Anarchist FAQ?
McKay, Iain, 2008 An Anarchist FAQ, Section G: Is Individualist Anarchism Capitalistic? Anarchist Writers, accessed 25 May 2015, McKay, Iain (2012) An Anarchist FAQ: Volume 2 (AK Press) Section G: Is Individualist Anarchism Capitalistic?,   The Anarchist FAQ Collective’s “Anarchist FAQ“ is a massive work, which has been constantly maintained and updated since 1996. The FAQ gives very…
GM Deeres To be Stupid
Following in the footsteps of my recent article “Come Take it, I Deere You” I’ve found through Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow that General Motors (GM) has also declared that you don’t really own what you buy. To be more specific, the software that makes up that vehicle is merely “licensed” to the owner of the…
Sao Paulo: Worthy of Wilderness on Feed 44
C4SS Feed 44 presents Grant A. Mincy‘s “Sao Paulo: Worthy of Wilderness” read by Thomas J. Webb and edited by Nick Ford. “Sao Paulo is heavily industrialized and mechanized, however, and the financial sector demands sprawl. The city is heavily managed by zoning restrictions, creating spaces of capital, places of poverty and state enclosure. Social classes are…
Jeff Riggenbach Reads: The Anarchism of Despair on Feed 44
C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “The Anarchism of Despair” read by Jeff Riggenbach and edited by Nick Ford. “There is a deep despondency hidden even within the most sanguine of anarchisms, for imagining and expecting a freer, fairer world tends unavoidably to throw into sharp relief the long and arduous journey ahead. The anarcho-pessimism typified…
Voltairine de Cleyre on “Thing-Worship”
One of my favorite anarchists and writers of all time was recently featured by actress Mary Tuomanen. Tuomanen read an excerpt from perhaps my favorite essay by de Cleyre called The Dominant Idea and it was presented during the 2015 Voices of a People’s History at Plays and Players in Philadelphia. Just for some background, the main…
Anarchist Criminal Justice
With criminal justice reform front and center in today’s news, it’s as good a time as ever to revisit some of the various anarchist approaches to issues of crime and punishment. One particular analysis written by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, Anarchism and Crime, remains as relevant today as when it was written —…
Sunflowers in the Concrete
Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective, Second Edition by scott crow (PM Press 2014), 288 pages. Four years ago, anarchist activist and co-founder of the radical humanitarian aid organization Common Ground Relief (formerly the Common Ground Collective) scott crow released his memoir about the nearly three months where he and…
The Problem with Electoral Politics
On April 29th, the US Supreme Court ruled that states could “prohibit judges and judicial candidates from personally soliciting funds for their campaigns”, in the case of, in the case of Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar. Much has been made of Chief Justice John Roberts remarks: Politicians are expected to be appropriately responsive to the preferences…
Finanziamento dei Beni Pubblici: Sei Soluzioni
La Questione del Fallimento del Mercato Un bene pubblico, così come definito dagli economisti, è un qualunque bene dal cui godimento non possono essere esclusi i non contribuenti. La teoria dei beni pubblici interessa i libertari per due ragioni: primo, perché molte cose che reputiamo importanti (strade di comunicazione, istruzione, difesa personale, antincendio, difesa nazionale,…
May Day: Festival of Labor
Just a quick blog post on May Day. Today is not about state communism, big government or a nationalist takeover of the “democratic” system. Today is a day to celebrate worker solidarity movements that have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor. Today is every bit as much about labor as “Labor Day.” The…
Power to the Individual, Not to the State
How can you tell an American progressive from an American radical? A progressive laments the condition of working people and proposes to further empower the government. A radical laments the condition of working people and proposes to empower individuals by diminishing the power of government. Of course government power and individual power differ in kind:…
Anarchism Without Adjectives on Feed 44
C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Anarchism Without Adjectives” read by Ian Anderson and edited by Nick Ford. “So what can we say about the general outlines of a stateless society? First, it will emerge as a result of the ongoing exhaustion, hollowing out and retreat of large hierarchical institutions like state, corporation, large bureaucratic university, etc. It…
Benjamin Tucker, Boston Anarchist
The Civil War caused a huge schism in the American libertarian movement from which it wouldn’t recover for decades. Inner conflicts between abolitionists who favored the war and the invasion of the South, ones who saw the war as inevitable and required to end slavery, and those who thought the war was an egregious moral…
The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand
Support C4SS with Kevin Carson’s “The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand” Audio version, read by Mike Gogulski • Introduction to the Portuguese Version of Iron Fist • • Versione in italiano • • Версия на русском • << Back to the Market Anarchism FAQ page Introduction Manorialism, commonly, is recognized to have been founded by…
Anarchy is a Scale-Independent Proposition
There’s a particular narrative–surprisingly common in certain corners of the anarchist scene–that no one has really bothered to call out and so has grown rather fat and comfortable over the last few decades. It goes something like this: Thinking or acting from a big-picture perspective is–if not The Problem–then at least a major root cause…
Anarchy and Democracy
Fighting Fascism
Markets Not Capitalism
The Anatomy of Escape
Organization Theory