C4SS Media presents Voltairine de Cleyre‘s “The Gates of Freedom“, read and edited by Nick Ford. The Gates of Freedom is probably one of Voltairine’s least known essays even though it’s probably one of her longer and more important ones. This essay is in much the same spirit of her classic essay, Sex Slavery but instead of talking about…

The Gates of Freedom is probably one of Voltairine’s least known essays even though it’s probably one of her longer and more important ones. This essay is in much the same spirit of her classic essay, Sex Slavery but instead of talking about the general phenomenon, here Voltairine mostly focuses on arguments that justify this…

In the final speech Avrich collected in The First Mayday, Voltairine explains why August Spies and the martyrs all alike held the traits of the common-man and why this is an admirable trait. She goes at length admitting many so-called “faults” of the common-man but then reversing the dialogue and conversation and showing it as…

Throughout most of this speech Voltairine recounts a recent article on the subject of the Haymarket Affair and both gives it limited amounts of praise and a lot more harsh critique where she thinks it deserves it. She points out that she didn’t believe Lingg’s lover at the time gave him the bomb and it’s…

The University of Oklahoma chapter of Students for a Stateless Society hosted a lecture on direct action by OU Philosophy Professor Stephen Ellis on May 1. The lecture begins at about 2:15. http://youtu.be/wkysvpKvKMY

Here, Voltairine recounts why the act that the martyrs did was noble and uses several biblical verses and references throughout to (ironically) prove or add to her points (this was a favorite rhetorical device of Voltairine’s throughout her writings). The end of this speech and the notation of “the judgement” reflects Voltairine’s continuing belief of…

This speech is notable for quite a few things. The beginning part in which Voltairine admits that she had, at first, openly dismissed the martyrs and cheered for their death to be had. This gives us the whole reason (or at least one of the major ones) for why Voltairine did these speeches: a matter…

In this speech Voltairine details the theoretical engagements Parsons and the rest of the martyrs were interested in (i.e. what they stood for and what they did not), what anarchism means and uses the stunning visuals of Olive Schreiner’s “Three Dreams in a Desert”, using her “Land of Freedom” and bridge metaphors specifically at a…

Voltairine uses much of the beginning of this speech to speak through the voices of the martyrs  to let their voices be heard (very much in the spirit of Spies’ last statements). So that should be noted when Voltairine speaks of communism as the one alternative to the crisis that capitalism creates. Past that Voltairine…

In this speech Voltairine recounts the events of November 11th and details why the trial and rulings were obvious shams. In doing this she speaks of the bomb as a “Vengence” (implying the police attacked first and that the bomb was therefore justified) but as we now know, the bomb was thrown before the police…

In the time after the Haymarket Affair it was most likely pretty common to have many big questions in the anarchist “scene” at the time about the incident. One of which was probably, “was the sacrifice worth it?” “how should we feel about it?” and in the first speech in this compilation de Cleyre tries…

Introception: An Introduction to an Introduction Paul Avrich was and still is an acclaimed historian of anarchism and for good reason. First beginning with his research of Russia and the time of the USSR he was fascinated by those who stood in opposition to the early rule and especially the anarchists. From there he would…

Knapp: I don’t accept “anarcho-capitalism”‘s expropriation of the word. You might be an anarchist or you might be a capitalist, but whichever you are, you aren’t both.

C4SS Senior Fellow and Karl Hess Scholar in Social Theory Kevin Carson was recently interviewed on the Liberty Minded podcast by Jason Lee Byas, Grayson English and Trevor Hultner.

In this episode of the Liberty Minded Radio Show C4SS Fellows Jason Lee Byas and Trevor Hultner team up with Grayson English to discuss S4SS, the University of Oklahoma’s Students for a Stateless Society and their successful “Ask an Anarchist Day”.

Higgs: Wishful thinking about the impending triumph of liberty may be uplifting for libertarians, but it avails neither them nor the world anything of real importance.

For every copy of Emma Goldman’s “Minorities versus Majorities” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage.

Gary Chartier: Consider the characteristic Hobbesian argument for the state…

C4SS Media presents Charles Johnson‘s “Anticopyright“, read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford.

Roderick T. Long: Even in what might seem his least Humean moment – his anarchism – Godwin draws more decisively on Hume than on Rousseau.