This summer, I joined the reading group for Kevin A. Carson’s daunting, 600 page tome Organization Theory. In the first section, Carson presents a compelling mass of research and careful criticism of cross-ideological views of economies of scale. He argues that top economists, from Ronald Coase to John Kenneth Galbraith and Joseph Schumpeter, “accept ‘economies…

This Wednesday, June 25th at the Salt Lake City Library, I will discuss Ending the Prison State in Utah with Kirsten Tynan, director of the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA). I’m quite excited about this. I’ve admired FIJA’s work for a long time. Their work educating people across the political spectrum about jury rights and jury nullification helps…

I leader cattolici, dal Cardinale Maradiaga allo stesso Papa Francesco, quest’anno hanno fatto notizia con le loro critiche alle presunte economie di libero mercato, paragonandole ad una forma di idolatria che sfrutta i poveri e nega loro l’accesso alle ricchezze. Partendo dal fatto che la dottrina sociale cattolica enfatizza l’assistenza e l’aiuto ai meno fortunati,…

Left-libertarianism has been getting a lot of buzz recently in the broader American libertarian community. The term “left-libertarian” has been used many ways in American politics, and there seems to be some confusion within the libertarian community itself as to who left-libertarians actually are. The basic ideas of left-libertarianism, as we at the Alliance of…

As a society, it is in our best interest to create a just peace. This is something, however, that goes unfulfilled throughout the world. Many would think that inheriting this tranquil state might be a simple endeavor, if only certain barriers did not keep it from happening. Just imagining how to create peace is the…

Roman Catholic leaders from Cardinal Maradiaga to Pope Francis himself have made news this year in their criticisms of supposed free market economies, likening them to a form of idolatry that exploits and denies access to the poor. Because Catholic social teachings emphasize stewardship and aid to the less fortunate, clergymen such as Maradiaga have…

One of the main functions the state serves in practice is to forcibly transfer wealth to politically connected interest groups. Prisons serve that function today, and they have served it historically. In The Enterprise of Law,  economist Bruce Benson documents the rise of state controlled law enforcement in England. Stateless customary tort law had previously prevailed,…

The youtube channel AnarchistCollective discuss three defintions of capitalism with many accolades for C4SS writers Kevin Carson and Gary Chartier. http://youtu.be/Hpe1_OtHtLY

The release and return of American POW Bowe Bergdahl started off as simply cause for relief and celebration for his family and friends. Thanks to politics, it keeps taking on additional layers of interpretation for others. The revelation that Bergdahl questioned the continuing mission in Afghanistan prior to his capture has many of the same people who usually…

King Juan Carlos I of Spain’s announced abdication has instigated a flurry of commentary contrasting dictatorship and democracy. The consensus views the remaining non-honorary power of the dozen remaining monarchies in Europe, particularly in diminutive monarchies like Liechtenstein and the Vatican, as vestigial holdouts from the relentless trend towards the representative-democratic nation-state as “the end of history.” A beloved monarch’s…

Robert Anton Wilson’s 203-page mindbender, Quantum Psychology: How Your Brain Software Programs You and Your World, is more than meets the eye. The subtitle suggests a self-help book, and it appears to be just that in many respects. But twenty pages in, one realizes that there is no labeling this one. It is a psychedelic…

Last week, SlutWalk took place all over Brazil. According to the São Paulo organizers, the event, occurring simultaneously in several cities in the country, aims to raise awareness about the fact that “women are not responsible for the violence they suffer; the survivor is never to blame — the aggressor is.” We should remember that…

Center for a Stateless Society No. 17 (Winter-Spring 2014), download this study PDF Introduction: The Primacy of Everyday Life David Graeber chose, as the epigraph to his book Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, a quote from Pyotr Kropotkin’s article on Anarchism for the Encyclopedia Britannica. In it Kropotkin stated that, in an anarchist society, harmony…

If I had to describe “The Conscience of an Anarchist” in one word, it would be beautiful. Gary Chartier’s 100 page anarchist manifesto concisely and elegantly explains the way anarchists analyze public policy discussions, such as foreign policy, the drug war, regulation, subsidies, education, the two party system, infrastructure, the criminal justice system, police violence,…

Net Neutrality is dead. An unstable equilibrium that’s persisted as the default since the 90s, wherein ISPs and telcoms route all ip packets the same without regard for content, origination or destination, the potential for censorship and chilling effects in the current oligarchical environment is a serious concern. However anarchists have long seen this day…

Last Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed something called “the USA Freedom Act.” The bill was intended by its authors to end the National Security Agency’s broad and privacy-shredding bulk data collection program, but the final version that passed is so weak that bulk data collection will still be permitted. Trevor Timm at the…

I saw my first “homemade gun” when I was a kid. Older kids — teenagers — would save up the 4th of July fireworks known (for obvious reasons) as “bottle rockets” and play “war” with them: Stick the firework in a glass soda bottle (this was back when soda came in glass bottles that one…

In a post at the Students For Liberty (SFL) blog, (“Between Radicalism and Revolution: The Cautionary Tale of Students for a Democratic Society,” May 6), Clark Ruper uses the example of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) as a warning against factionalism and division within the libertarian movement. The libertarian movement, he says, should be…

In this recent post at Students for Liberty (SFL), Clark Ruper calls for libertarians to stop fighting between themselves and to band together in the name of spreading freedom. Using the story of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) as a parallel, he decries going too far down a “rabbit hole” of “reflective thinking.” It is Ruper’s…

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Dyer D. Lum’s “On Anarchy” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Dyer D. Lum’s “On Anarchy“. $1.50 for the first copy….