The protests, police violence, and repression in Ferguson have sparked nationwide conversations about police militarization and misconduct. There’s some incredibly promising potential here, as more and more people become aware of the brutality of the modern criminal justice system. However, there are also some potential pitfalls that deserve cautious examination. First, the good. Popular commentators…

The term “market anarchism” may give some people the mistaken impression that market anarchists envision a society organized primarily around the cash nexus. In part this is because one definition of the term “market” itself equates to the market as an institution: The sphere of exchange. It may also reflect the fact that many anarcho-capitalists,…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Natasha Petrova‘s “Public vs Private Dualities and Contextual Analysis” read and edited by Nick Ford. It’s certainly possible for a non-government controlled space or institution to meet the criteria above. An example is a privately owned local library called Linda Hall Library that is nonetheless open to the public. This example also…

State ideologies require an underlying cultural disposition, if they are to stand the test of time. This cultural disposition is inevitably tied to the core concepts of an ideology. Nationalism subordinates the individual’s values to those of their national community, while numerous strands of socialism focus upon the lives and pastimes of the proletariat. Romantic…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Dyer Lum‘s “Why We Do Not Vote” read and edited by Nick Ford. But, it is alleged, that as both sides resort to fraud, the chances are equal. That is, politics is a game of cards, in which only the best trumps win. Like a game also “we the people” are needed…

A Teenager Slain On Saturday, August 9, eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was walking with a friend on the 2900 block of Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri. He was on his way home on the hot, humid afternoon, walking down the middle of the street when the two were approached by Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson. Reports of what…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Advocates of Freed Markets Should Embrace ‘Anti-Capitalism’” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Gary Chartier, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Defenders of freed markets have good reason to identify their position as a species of “anti-capitalism.” To explain why, I distinguish three potential meanings of “capitalism” before suggesting that…

I’m very proud to announce that both of Students For Liberty’s (very quickly!) upcoming Virtual Reading Groups for this Fall are related to market anarchism, and both of them include C4SS Senior Fellows as Discussion Leaders. The first, led by Charles W. Johnson (with my assistance) will be a general overview of left-libertarianism, individualist anarchism,…

Introduction to the C4SS Edition of Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow Kevin A. Carson Download a PDF copy of The C4SS Edition of Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow. This book is actually a heavily abridged version of Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories and Workshops, edited by Colin Ward with a lot of his commentary thrown in….

The following article was written by Stephen Jay Gould and originally appeared in Natural History 106, June 1997. In late 1909, two great men corresponded across oceans, religions, generations, and races. Leo Tolstoy, sage of Christian nonviolence in his later years, wrote to the young Mohandas Gandhi, struggling for the rights of Indian settlers in South…

Recently in the Los Angeles Times, Carolina A. Miranda published a list of “8 eye-opening prison books.” Out of the books listed, I’ve only read Angela Davis’s excellent treatise on the prison-industrial complex, Are Prisons Obsolete.  I’ll be adding the rest to my reading list, however. This got me thinking about what I would recommend…

Perhaps because I live in Chicago, perhaps because I work with other attorneys, in my day-to-day life I’m surrounded almost exclusively by people who identify with the mainstream, American left, centrist Democrats for whom mere mention of the word “libertarian” calls forth nightmarish imaginings of the Tea Party right. Regrettably, identifying myself as a libertarian…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “A Glance at Communism” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Voltairine de Cleyre, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. An Anarchist-Communist is a person who is a man first and a Communist afterward. He generally gets into a great many irreconcilable situations at once, believes that property and competition must…

Last Friday, August 1st, President Barack Obama commented on the CIA’s use of torture after 9/11. At first glance, his comments look like an acknowledgement of wrongdoing. After all, Obama acknowledged that “When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques – techniques that I believe, and I think any fair-minded person would believe were…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Apio Ludd‘s “The Anarchist As Outlaw” read and edited by Nick Ford. The original debates over illegalism were therefore not about whether anarchists should take illegal actions – it was assumed that all anarchists did – but about whether individual reappropriation was a legitimate tactic – and for an egoist this is not…

An anonymous reader of Center for a Stateless Society‘s Tumblr recently asked: Two questions: 1) How exactly do the theory and practice proposed by free market anti-capitalists challenge the cultural logic of capitalism? 2) Don’t all market institutions — whether a large corporation or a mom and pop shop — desire a state as part…

Markets not Capitalism is a wonderfully compiled set of readings spanning 150 years of the market anarchist tradition. We must first commend Gary Chartier and Charles Johnson on their work in bringing all this great literature together and bundling it in a fantastic book for those interested in what market anarchism truly has to offer, as…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “Weed Legalization as Privatization, Disempowerment” read and edited by Nick Ford. Marijuana’s legalization seems much more like neoliberal privatization of markets than true liberation of them. While I do not question the decency of these first major marijuana retailers, there are legitimate concerns. Those most victimized by the state’s rabid oppression…

American libertaranism has a reputation for being another species of that genus known as American conservatism. This is influenced by the American Libertarian’s penchant for lower taxation and less government spending. A position often described as fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatism must be understood contextually like any other term or issue. To what extent does the…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “The Individualist and The Communist: A Dialgoue” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Voltairine de Cleyre, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. COM.: “Well, I admit that much. Certainly the employé cannot compete with his employer.” INDV.: “Then you admit that there is not free competition in the present state…