C4SS Feed 44 presents Jeff Riggenbach‘s “Why I Am a Left Libertarian” edited by Nick Ford and read by Riggenbach himself. Many libertarians say the traditional Left/Right political spectrum has become meaningless and useless. But to the extent that this is true for them, this is only because they have allowed themselves to be befuddled…

by Voltairine de Cleyre It was suggested to me by those who were the means of securing me this opportunity of addressing you, that probably the most easy and natural way for me to explain Anarchism would be for me to give the reasons why I myself am an Anarchist. I am not sure that they…

“Anarchism rejects any form of the domination of the man by man, and no form of the exploitation of man by man, since it tackles all forms of authority: Political authority: the State. Economic authority: Property. Moral authority: Fatherland, Religion, Family. Legal authority: Courts, Laws and Police Force. All the (authoritarian) social forces receive the vigorous and…

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…

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 T.J. Scholl‘s “Border Authoritarianism is Not Only an Institution of the Outwardly Racist” read by Thomas J. Webb and edited by Nick Ford. Anti-immigrant sentiment has found a home in political platforms across the nation and on both sides of the aisle. One such politician is Wisconsin Governor and 2016 Republican…

It was 1975 when the first same-sex Americans were “permitted” to marry one another. It was Clela Rorex who processed these licenses illegally. This act of sabotage against the state’s marriage monopoly was eventually discovered, and Rorex quit — many calling for her to face legal punishment. She’s said of her activism, “I didn’t want…

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….

C4SS Feed 44 presents Nick Ford‘s “The NSA is Phoning it in Again” read by Joey Clark and edited by Nick Ford. The fact that Alexander needed convincing that the program was a failure is proof enough that it was mostly talk. If you need to convince your boss of something that is widely known…

1. “Rejoinder” to Murray Rothbard This is not, properly speaking, a rejoinder — obviously, since Rothbard’s article predates my book. But since it was chosen to set the tone for this symposium issue, and includes some comments on individualist anarchism in general, I’ll make a few remarks anyway. On the land issue, I reserve comment, since that is also…

In 1888, France’s leading libertarian periodical, Gustave de Molinari’s Journal des Économistes (stronghold of Lockean property theory and proto-Austrian economics) published a largely favourable and appreciative (if somewhat condescending) review of the United States’s leading libertarian periodical, Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty (stronghold of Mutualist property theory and Proudhonian economics). [1] Tucker’s journal returned the favor in…

Freedom is Slavery: Laissez-Faire Capitalism is Government Intervention: A Critique of Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy By George Reisman [1] Kevin Carson’s new book Studies in Mutualist Political Economy centers on the incredible claim, self-contradictory on its face, that capitalism, including laissez-faire capitalism, is a system based on state intervention, in violation of…

Kevin Carson as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde By Walter Block [1] Kevin Carson’s (2004) Studies in Mutualist Political Economy is an infuriating book. On the one hand, its author shows great familiarity with many of the most important libertarian [2] contributors to the field of political economy. Taking them in alphabetical order, they include:…

Many libertarians say the traditional Left/Right political spectrum has become meaningless and useless. But to the extent that this is true for them, this is only because they have allowed themselves to be befuddled by political fraud and, perhaps, by a weak background in political history. The spectrum is just as useful and meaningful as…

The Labor Theory of Value: A Critique of Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy By Robert P. Murphy [1] Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (2004) is an impressive work. It first attempts to rehabilitate the classical labor theory of value (by giving it a subjectivist spin), and then traces the history of capitalism to…

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…

… 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…

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,…

Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant nationalism has positioned him far to the right of his fellow 2016 GOP hopefuls and has given him a serious boost in the polls. Such support for a man who made, and repeatedly defended, the patently racist claim that undocumented Mexican immigrants are “rapists” should serve as a clear indicator of the depth…