Introducing Mutual Exchange: Do Free Markets Always Produce a Corporate Economy? What would a free market look like? Most people agree that totally freed markets are nowhere to be seen in today’s world. States intruding on voluntary exchange and standing in the way of free association is commonplace across the globe. There are some markets, yes. But…

Two Letters from Voltairine de Cleyre on the McKinley Assassination: McKinley’s Assassination from the Anarchist Standpoint (1907) Six years have passed since William McKinley met his doom at Buffalo and the return stroke of justice took the life of his slayer, Leon Czolgosz. The wild rage that stormed through the brains of the people, following…

Details have been emerging this week of a clever trick pulled by Volkswagen in North America. The German-based automaker is alleged to have been using software to cheat EPA emissions tests for millions of its turbocharged direct injection (TDI) diesel engine Volkswagen and Audi cars dating back to 2009. New vehicles pretty much the world over are…

Imagine the following person. He believes all individuals should be free to do anything that’s peaceful and therefore favors private property, free global markets, freedom of contract, civil liberties, and all the related ideas that come under the label libertarianism (or liberalism). Obviously he is not a statist. But is he an individualist and a…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “The Expropriation Continues” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. What’s variously called “cognitive,” “progressive” or “green capitalism,” celebrated in Paul Romer’s “New Growth Theory” and heavily promoted by the Gateses, Warren Buffett, and faux-left carpetbaggers like Bono, amounts to a scheme to give capitalism a new…

A little ways into The Utopia of Rules, an anarchist critique of state and corporate bureaucracy, author David Graeber asks, “Why are we so confused about what police really do?” It’s an important question, as the problem of police violence and impunity in America can no longer be ignored. For far too long, argues Graeber,…

A common liberal or “progressive” criticism of so-called “sharing economy” entities like Uber, Lyft and Airbnb (usually appearing in venues like Salon or Alternet) is that they’re “unregulated.”   This implicitly assumes, of course, that regulations like the taxi medallion system exist for some idealistic purpose of serving the “public welfare” and not simply guaranteeing…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Nathan Goodman‘s “The New Deal’s Legacy of Corporate Welfare” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. Mainstream progressives tell us that the New Deal was a victory for the working class and the public interest. But New Deal corporate welfare programs like the Ex-Im Bank and the Raisin Administrative…

As you may know, I’ve got some opinions about capitalism, and about the idea of “anarcho-capitalism.” I think that anarcho-capitalism is an incoherent goal, and in some ways destructive in practice. Not because I’ve got a problem with property, money, competition or market exchange, but because I think the conflation of these market forms with…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. In 2008, we heard a lot of stuff from Obama about the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping and Gitmo; and then in January 2009 Obama turned on a dime and enacted George Bush’s third term on such issues….

Well, kind of. Obviously Benjamin Tucker had no direct opinions about “anarcho-capitalism,” because the term was not even coined until many years after his death, and several decades after his retirement from radical politics. But Tucker did have quite a bit to say about the relationships among anarchism, socialism, and capitalism, and it may be…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “‘Intellectual Property’ Kills’” read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. The key agenda at the center of all the so-called “free trade agreements” is the imposition, at the behest of the giant corporations that depend on “intellectual property” monopolies for their profits, of a form of protectionism…

…Mutualism is a social system based on reciprocal and non-invasive relations among free individuals. The Mutualist standards are: Individual: Equal freedom for each — without invasion of others. Economic: Untrammeled reciprocity, implying freedom of exchange and contract — without monopoly or privilege. Social: Complete freedom of voluntary association — without coercive organization… The libertarian ideal…

Contrary to mainstream classical political economy, which treated the “original accumulation of capital” as the result of thrift, saving and reinvestment on the part of the capitalist, Marx argued in the first volume of Capital that capitalism — as opposed to simple market exchange — was founded on the separation of the peasantry from their…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Chad Nelson‘s “Fiorina Claims She’s Not Part of the ‘Professional Political Class’” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. While it’s refreshing to learn that Americans are waking up to the reality of a patristic, entrenched political elite, it’s distressing that Fiorina doesn’t consider herself and her fellow corporate…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “Toward a New Lexicon of Liberty” read by Dylan Delikta and edited by Nick Ford. Libertarianism is viewed in the mainstream political conversation as the ideology of capitalism, of corporate greed and a toxic expression of globalization, McDonalds, Nike, and all the rest nodding along to rote libertarian…

…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,…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “IP Czar Admits Hamiltonian Nature of ‘Intellectual Property’” read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. Genuine productivity and progress destroys GDP. In a free economy, here’s how it should work: Profit is self-liquidating, and increased efficiency of producing things with less labor and capital — or even…

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…