…Many libertarians in this century have been, in my view, insufficiently sensitive to the perspective of the poor, of laborers, of women, of minorities. But I view this as a historical aberration, brought about by the fact that a) the triumphant advance of socialism pushed libertarians into a century-long alliance with conservatives, and some aristocratic,…

First, I [1] must begin by affirming my conviction that Lysander Spooner and Benjamin R. Tucker were unsurpassed as political philosophers and that nothing is more needed today than a revival and development of the largely forgotten legacy that they left to political philosophy. By the mid-nineteenth century, the libertarian individualist doctrine had reached the point…

Murray Rothbard rejected, in the strongest terms, this Marshallian attempt at a synthesis of marginalist innovations with the legacy of Ricardo. And with it, he rejected Marshall’s attempted synthesis of labor and waiting as elements of “real cost.” To understand why, we must start with Rothbard’s distinction between the judging of actions ex ante and ex post….

… So we see, even assuming an “anarcho-capitalist” property regime, anything recognizable as “capitalism” to anyone else could not exist. In fact the society would look a lot like what “anarcho-socialists” think of as “socialism”. Not exactly like it, but much closer than anything they’d imagine as capitalism. However, under anarchism, even such a strict…

Alfred Marshall, the founder of the so-called neoclassical school, was also the first prominent economist to attempt a reconciliation of Ricardo with the marginalists. Following the Senior-Longfield school, as interpreted by Mill, Marshall treated the “abstinence” of capital (or “waiting”) as another form of disutility alongside labor. He thus fused them into a unified subjective…

For the next few weeks, C4SS will be publishing and hosting copies of Volume 20, Number 1, of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. This particular volume contains the Symposium on Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy. The articles on and selections from Carson’s book you can look forward to: “Editorial to Symposium on Mutualist…

Many of the nineteenth-century individualist anarchists, and in particular those thinkers associated with Benjamin Tucker’s journal Liberty, sought to combine a political theory based on individual sovereignty and self-ownership with an economic theory based on the labor theory of value. Like Marxists, they tended to condemn the wage system as oppressive, and interpreted profit, rent,…

C4SS Feed 44 presents James C. Wilson‘s “The Homer Simpson Economy” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. While the Simpsons is better known for its liberal or progressive politics, “Homer’s Enemy” gives left-libertarians, individualist anarchists and anti-work activists much more to bite into. Indeed the Homer Simpson economy bares some resemblance to what…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “We Are Market Forces” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Charles Johnson, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. It’s convenient to talk about “market forces,” but you need to remember that remember that those “market forces” are not supernatural entities that act on people from the outside. “Market forces” are…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Chomsky’s Augustinian Anarchism” read by Jeff Riggenbach and edited by Nick Ford. “Chomsky might object that my defense of market accountability ignores the fact that such ‘accountability’ involves voting with dollars, so that the wealthy have more votes than the poor – whereas in a democratic state everyone has an equal…

Uno studio recente condotto in dodici paesi dal Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism ha scoperto un incremento di quasi il 10% nell’uso di dispositivi mobili per l’accesso alle informazioni. Lo stesso studio ha scoperto un incremento del 42% in riferimenti a Facebook come fonte informativa, mentre anche Apple e Google diventano sempre più…

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…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Chad Nelson‘s “Dissolving Borders” read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. “When feuding parties are unnaturally forced apart by walls, be they real or metaphorical, you can count on their disputes escalating into outright aggression against one another. And the states who govern such borders would have it no other way….

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…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty as We Know It” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Charles Johnson, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. The daily experience of the urban poor is shaped by geographical concentration in socially and culturally isolated ghetto neighborhoods within the larger city, which have their…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…