Last week Michael Lind asked a silly question (“The question libertarians just can’t answer”): if libertarianism is so great, why hasn’t any country tried it? The question is silly because the libertarian answer is obvious: Libertarianism is great for ordinary people, but not for the power elites that control countries and determine what policies they…

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 Gary Chartier’s “The Conscience of an Anarchist” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Gary Chartier’s “The Conscience of an Anarchist”. $12.00…

The following article is translated into Deutsch from the English original, written by Charles Johnson and published in The Freeman, July 2008. In welchem Umfang sollten sich Libertäre mit sozialem Engagement, Praktiken, Projekten oder Bewegungen befassen, die soziale Auswirkungen jenseits, oder abgrenzbar, von gewöhnlichem libertären Einsatz zur Erweiterung des Umfanges von Freiheit von staatlichem Zwang haben? Offensichtlich kann ein konsistenter und…

An Evening with Karl Hess and Robert Anton Wilson The libertarian left has many luminaries, but few as quirky, thoughtful or influential as Wilson and Hess. Wilson brought us the SNAFU principle. Hess brought us our understanding of the left/right spectrum. And both brought us a shameless embrace of counter-culture and a playful interest in…

On Tuesday, May 21, 2013, anarchist lawyer and activist Gerald “Jerry” Koch was taken into custody in New York City for refusing to testify before a grand jury regarding the 2008 Times Square Military Recruitment Center bombing. This is the second time Koch has been subpoenaed, after the government informed his lawyers that it was…

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 ALL Distro’s “Laissez-Faire Socialism” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with ALL Distro’s “Laissez-Faire Socialism”. $1.00 for the first copy. $0.60 for…

With the completion of the Voltairine de Cleyre Collection (at least for now…) I’d like to round up the links so it will be easier for people to find where they are located on this site and elsewhere. You can look up the collection itself if you search, “Voltairine de Cleyre Collection” and you can…

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 Paul Goodman’s “The Black Flag Of Anarchy” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Paul Goodman’s “The Black Flag Of Anarchy”. $1.50…

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…